The Greek Tycoon's Secret Child (11 page)

Mattie reflected on this in shocked, subdued silence. ‘What did you do?'

‘I confronted her, told her that if she didn't stop I would be forced to go to the police, that her parents would get to know about it. Thankfully that worked, but that's why I'm, let's just say, a little cautious about further involvement with the fairer sex. So you see, our potted life stories have more in common than you think.'

They had reached his apartment block without Mattie really even realising they had been travelling. She got out, waited for him to join her, and then said, thoughtfully, on their way in, ‘And how did you feel, you know, about…?'

‘How did I
feel
?' This time there was no awkward sitting in the lobby. He was leading her straight towards the elevator, although, ludicrously, he still didn't know whether they would end up in his king-sized bed together. It frustrated the hell out of him.

‘Yes,
feel
,' she was saying now. ‘Were you in love with her?'

‘I was very fond of her in the beginning.'

‘What about love?'

‘What about it?' The elevator doors slid shut. The mirrored sides reflected them. He could see those forth-
right green eyes watching him from every angle. And, in her head, Mattie was already climbing down from pushing him for an answer to that one, because she realised she didn't want to have an answer. She didn't want to imagine him hurting because he had fallen in love with a woman who had turned out to be the wrong woman for him. She preferred to stick with the option that he had been fond of her because…because…

She sighed with relief when the doors opened, but relief was short-lived, soon replaced with the steady beat of her heart, racing faster as he slipped his key into the door and pushed it open.

‘History, Mattie,' he murmured, standing aside to let her brush past him. ‘This is the present. For both of us, wouldn't you say…?'

H
E MADE
such perfect sense. Two people, disillusioned from their past relationships, helplessly drawn towards each other, both knowing the undesirability of becoming too involved.

Once bitten, twice shy, Mattie thought now. She seemed to be thinking in proverbs.

From all accounts, she and Frankie should have made the ideal match. They had gone from childhood friends to childhood sweethearts. They should logically have ended up as blissfully happy adults with the statutory two children and pet dog. Instead, it had all unravelled like a ball of wool.

And Dominic hadn't needed to tell her what she had assumed for herself. That Rosalind had breathed the same privileged air that he did, and that, despite that, the relationship had collapsed under the weight of its own inadequacies.

So here they were now, not looking for anything beyond the present.

And heavens, how she wanted him, wanted him with every fibre in her body.

She refused his offer of a drink, met his eyes steadily and felt shaken but delirious at the molten heat of his gaze.

‘No drink for Dutch courage?' he asked, moving towards her, then at last giving in to his need to touch her, but only delicately, only capturing her face between his
big hands so that he could stroke the sides of her cheeks with his thumbs.

‘I only need Dutch courage if I'm about to do something I don't want to do,' Mattie said. She placed the flat of her hands on his chest and then began to unbutton his shirt with trembling fingers. Each undone button gave her a glimpse of his hard, bronzed torso and the muscular strength of his shoulders.

‘You'd better stop that,' Dominic told her roughly, ‘or you might find that we don't make it to the bedroom.'

He scooped her up and carried her towards one of the rooms, kicking open the door with his foot.

He made his way to his bed and deposited her gently, then proceeded to look at her for a few heart-stopping seconds, before switching on one of the lamps on the low chest of drawers that covered almost the length of one of the walls.

Then he returned to where he had been standing. That look. Mattie wanted to stretch like a cat and bask in the heat of it. She squirmed a little, sighed and then watched in fascination as he began undressing.

Anyone would think that she was a virgin witnessing her first glimpse of the male body in all its glory. Not that many were as glorious as his. If any at all.

He tugged off his shirt, exposing broad shoulders, a firm, hard stomach, flat brown nipples and then, as he slowly unbuckled his belt, Mattie's gaze drifted to where he was now unzipping his trousers and sliding them down over his lean hips.

‘You do know,' he said with a low laugh, ‘that when I'm done, it's going to be your turn…'

‘I may have worn tight outfits when I worked at the club, but performing a striptease is not my kind of thing.' Her mouth felt dry as she watched him slip his fingers
beneath the elasticated waistband of his boxer shorts and then a smile of pure, wicked satisfaction curved her lips at the sight of his impressive manhood.

‘Well, we'll have to work on that, won't we?' He bent over her and began undressing her, savouring every second of his gradual exposure of her body.

Her skin was as smooth as satin. First her shoulders, then the rest of her with only her lacy bra modestly covering her breasts. A clasp at the front and it was undone. Dominic pulled aside both halves of the bra and groaned as he saw the generous pale mounds spill out, saw the rosebud circles that he had imagined caressing.

Mattie lay perfectly still, watching him watching her, and felt a swell of desire so powerful that she half closed her eyes and sighed under the force of it.

She wanted him to touch her. Her breasts were positively aching to be touched.

Instead he finished what he had started doing, removing the rest of her clothing until she was completely naked.

‘Happy?' he asked unevenly. He covered her body with his and just looked at her for a few moments. More than anything, he wanted her to be happy, to know that she was coming to him with every part of her soul open and willing, no doubts, no shadows.

‘Happy,' Mattie agreed, in a similarly unsteady voice. She reached up to coil her hands behind his head, and brought him down to kiss her. The kiss seemed to go on forever, slow, tantalising. The exploratory, leisurely kiss of two people for whom time had finally stood still.

‘I feel like a teenager,' she finally laughed breathlessly, and he smiled at her.

‘We should have met when you were.'

‘Oh, at sixteen I was besotted with Frankie.' Mattie
reached up to deliver a series of fluttery kisses on his mouth, moving her body sinuously beneath him and loving the feel of his hardness pressing against her.

‘Because you hadn't yet met me.' He moved down, trailing his tongue against her collarbone and along the cleft between her breasts. Mattie held her breath, arched back and then released a long groan of utter pleasure as his mouth finally circled one nipple and he began sucking on it, tugging the tight bud into his mouth, grazing it with his tongue.

He captured her restless hands with his, splaying them out to either side while he continued to play with her breasts and tease them with his mouth. First one, then the other until her nipples were throbbing from the onslaught.

When she cried out, it seemed to be someone else's voice, coming from some other place.

This languorous seduction was like nothing she had ever experienced before. She knew that she was writhing beneath him, wanting more and wanting it now.

Although he was taking his time.

He had waited for this woman. Touching her, feeling her move, hearing her whimper for him—it felt as though he had been waiting for her all his life. He wasn't going to rush things now, even though if she so much as reached out and touched him he felt that he might have a struggle not to come. He was no long the master of lovemaking. The lovemaking was controlling him.

He released her hands and moved lower, feeling the taut flesh of her stomach with his mouth, then the indentation of her belly button, knowing that her body was responding instinctively now, her legs parting to accommodate his mouth.

Mattie gasped as his hands gently rested against the
soft inside of her thighs, allowing him unfettered access to the honeyed moistness of her femininity.

Then his tongue was playing games with that small bud, flicking across it until she wanted to scream with the exquisite agony that wanted release. Every so often, when he had taken her to the brink, he pulled back, waited for sensation to subside before starting again, tasting her, licking her, sending her to another planet, one she had never visited before.

Was it because he had had to wait for her to come to him that he felt so wildly and uncontrollably turned on? Dominic had no idea. Just looking at her, lying supine on the bed in all her glorious nakedness, had given him such a powerful charge that he had been momentarily bereft of thought.

And now, tasting her, feeling her move under him…

He eased his long body up and swivelled her so that she was lying on top of him. Her breasts dangled provocatively by his face and he captured one nipple in his mouth and sucked hard even as she sank neatly onto him, a tight, warm fit, moving with a perfect rhythm that matched his.

Their bodies were attuned to one another. United, as one, and when they finally soared upwards they soared there together in a shuddering orgasm that left him shaking.

Mattie collapsed onto him with a little sigh and eventually rolled off so that they were lying next to one another, then she turned to her side and propped herself up on one elbow so that she could look at him.

She could have feasted her eyes on him forever. Then she reminded herself that never was not a word that existed in her vocabulary, at least not when it came to him.
Nor was it one she would give house room to. Young she might be, but stupid she most certainly wasn't.

Dominic turned so that they were looking at one another, and he gently pushed her hair back, then pulled her onto him, tucking her head just under his chin so that he could kiss her fine blonde hair.

‘I suppose I should be thinking of heading back home,' Mattie eventually said. She made a few circles on his chest with her finger, then delightedly traced the outline of his nipple.

‘Why?'

‘Because it's usually where I spend the night?'

‘Usually?'

‘Well, always.'

‘There's no need for you to go back there,' Dominic told her, and Mattie laughed.

‘What, you mean ever?'

She was teasing, he knew that, but even so the throw-away remark provoked a thought that flashed across his mind like a shadow, leaving as quickly as it had come, too quickly for him to reach out and take hold of it to analyse.

Dominic frowned slightly. ‘I mean…'

‘Don't worry, Dominic. I know what you mean.' Mattie's voice was dry but the reply was very quick and very unequivocal. She attempted to sit up and he tightened his grip so that she snuggled back down against him.

‘Frankie's not there. All that's waiting for you is an empty house. Why go back there tonight? You can stay here, share my bed with me.' His voice was husky. ‘I may be an old man but my stamina would surprise you.'

‘You're not an old man. How old are you anyway?'

Old enough to be cynical, Dominic thought. ‘Thirty-four.'

‘Ten years older than me,' Mattie said lazily. ‘The…' The perfect age gap, she nearly said, and then caught herself in time. Now, that would have been a dangerous observation, and she couldn't figure out why she would have made it anyway. ‘The age when most men are married off,' she amended. ‘Aren't your parents frantic for you to be settled and having a few grandchildren for them to coo over?'

‘Frantic is a strong word. These aren't the Dark Ages any more.' His voice was laced with amusement. ‘Keen, might be a better adjective. I'm an only child. My father would like to see something being done about the blood-line continuing and my mother thinks that I need a woman to anchor me. From my past experiences, I can say with my hand on my heart that anchoring is the last thing a woman has managed to achieve for me.'

Hence the perfection of their situation, Mattie thought. He had laid his cards on the table with her and now he could relax, safe in the knowledge that she wasn't going to pursue what was unattainable.

Which left her feeling just a little depressed.

‘How is it that you didn't marry that boyfriend of yours?' Dominic asked. When he looked down, he could see the smooth line of her thigh curving across his and the push of her soft breast against his chest. He felt a moment of complete and pleasurable peace.

‘Oh, just never got around to it,' Mattie said airily. ‘These aren't the Dark Ages, you know.' She threw his cliché back at him and felt the rumble of his laughter under her. It was a good feeling. Too damned good. ‘We ended up living together but then things weren't right between us. It would have been wrong to marry. My
parents weren't overjoyed at us living together, of course, but they didn't press the issue.'

‘Perhaps they knew that he was wrong for you and were happy to wait for you to come to your senses.'

‘I'd never thought of that before,' Mattie said slowly then she shrugged. All this talk of marriage made her feel as if she was somehow, without realising it, standing on quicksand. In a minute, she could start sinking. ‘Anyway, I really must go.' She pushed herself up and laughed when she saw the startled expression on his face, quickly followed by irritation.

‘You still haven't explained why.'

‘And I don't have to.' She stood up and looked around her, then spotted her clothes, which she began walking towards.

From his position on the bed, Dominic followed her progress and tried to stifle his massive frustration at her leaving. Shouldn't it be the other way around? he thought, scowling. Shouldn't the man be edging the woman away instead of the woman striding towards her clothes as if speed was now of the essence?

‘I'll drive you back,' he grated, pushing back the rumpled bedclothes. ‘And before you launch into a speech about being perfectly capable of getting a taxi back to your house, forget it. I'm dropping you home and seeing you safely to your door.'

Mattie paused and smiled sweetly. ‘A lift back would be much appreciated.'

‘Quite unnecessary,' Dominic continued to grumble, as they took the lift down and then walked out into the night air towards his car. He slung his arm around her shoulders and she linked her fingers through his. ‘What's the point of having freedom if you don't utilise it?'

‘By which you mean, accommodate you whenever
necessary?' She disentangled herself so that she could slip into the passenger seat of his car, and buckled herself in.

‘Accommodate
both
of us, actually.' Instead of switching on the engine, he shoved the key into the ignition and proceeded to look at her, resting his head against the glass window of the door.

He could reach over right now and make love to her all over again. Right now, right here, like a sweaty adolescent without the privacy of a bedroom to fall back on. She turned him on. Not just her body, or the way she was looking at him now, eyes slightly contemplative, as if she was sizing him up but was not about to give him her verdict.

No, it was the way she was. Forthright, funny, private, with a mind that was as sharp as any he had ever encountered.

‘Oh, really?' Mattie grinned. ‘So you're thinking of both of us! Well, maybe another time. Now, perhaps we should get going? I expect you have a busy day tomorrow. Wouldn't want to be the cause of your not being able to function at work because you went to bed too late. Empire builders need their beauty sleep, I expect.'

‘Witch,' Dominic muttered, but he started the engine and edged out of his parking slot. He would quite happily have taken a day off work if the plus side was spending all of it in bed with her. ‘Just to fill you in, I can get by on very little sleep. I frequently do. As you must have when you were doing that ridiculous job of yours.'