‘OK, fine. I’ll call you a cab and get you a coffee.’ Lucy walked in and stood back to let Aristotle through. Immediately the air seemed to be sucked out of the room and replaced with his sheer dynamism. Lucy closed her door just as she heard the very drunken-sounding laughter of her neighbour and gave a sigh of relief.
As Aristotle started to prowl around her humble sitting room Lucy spied a lacy bra hanging over the chair nearest the kitchen. She dived for it while he was turned away and hurriedly balled it up. Aristotle turned round and Lucy’s belly spasmed.
‘Coffee,’ she babbled. ‘I’ll get the coffee on.’ She turned and fled into the small kitchen off the sitting room and stuffed the bra into a cupboard, taking out coffee and setting the kettle to boil. She kept looking surreptitiously into the sitting room. Aristotle was still prowling around. Except now he’d taken off his jacket, and she could see the broad line of his back tapering down into an impossibly lean waist. Her gaze followed the line down over taut buttocks and long, long legs …
The shrill, piercing scream of the kettle made her jump, and she winced when drops of boiling water splashed on clumsy hands. She gathered her dress together and walked back into the sitting room, noticing that Aristotle had put on some lights. Their glow of warmth lent an intimacy to the scene that raised her blood pressure. She had the vague thought of going to get changed out of the dress, but couldn’t contemplate the idea of removing a stitch of clothing while he was anywhere near. She noticed then that he was studying a photo in his hand, with a slight frown between those black brows. Lucy was terrified he might recognise the woman in the picture. She handed him the coffee, forcing him to put the picture down and take the cup.
He just gestured with his head. ‘Who is that? You and your mother?’
Lucy looked down at the photo in the frame and fought the urge to snatch it out of sight. It was a favourite one of her and her mum, taken in Paris when Lucy had been about twelve. They were wrapped up against the cold, their faces close together, but even from the picture you could tell that Lucy hadn’t taken after her mother’s delicate red-haired beauty. She’d already been taller than her mother by then.
She nervously adjusted it slightly and replied, ‘Yes,’ clearly not inviting any more questions.
Aristotle looked at Lucy. She was as nervous and skittish as a foal—avoiding his eye, her hand in a white-knuckle grip on that dress. That was what had pushed him over the edge. Seeing those soft pale thighs exposed to his gaze, one long leg already out of the car. It had taken every ounce of restraint not to reach out and run his hand up the soft inner skin of one gloriously lush thigh.
Especially after an evening that had been a form of torture, trying to focus on work while she’d stood beside him. Following her out of the car and up to this apartment had felt as necessary as breathing. But now he forced himself to take a step back, sensing her extreme nervousness.
She gestured jerkily to a seat. ‘Please, sit down while you have your coffee. I’ll call a cab. It may take a while to come at this hour.’
Aristotle sat down on a springy couch under the window and watched as Lucy went to the phone on the other side of the room and made the call, turning her back firmly to him. He tried to bank down the intense surge of desire even her back was igniting within him and thought back to the function.
She’d been a surprisingly pleasurable and easy date, offering intelligently insightful comments on more than one person, showing snippets of dry humour. At one point she’d caught him off-guard entirely, when she’d seamlessly switched to accentless and fluent French. He’d become accustomed to people saying they were multi-lingual and meaning they had the basics, like hello and goodbye. Something dark lodged in his chest. He’d also been inordinately aware of the keen male interest she’d generated and how seemingly oblivious she’d been to it. He wasn’t used to that.
Fighting the sudden surge of something very primal, he let his eyes drift down over her body and long legs; a vivid image exploded into his head of the moment her dress had split. He wondered how those legs might feel wrapped around his waist as he thrust deeper and deeper into her slick heat. Arousal was immediate and uncomfortable. He shifted on the seat, and even the evident relief in Lucy’s voice when she got through to the cab company did little to dampen it.
When Lucy put the phone down, she could finally turn and look her boss in the eye. Escape was imminent. She just had to make some small talk. ‘Ten minutes for the cab.’ She sat down gratefully in the chair beside the phone, relief making her feel weak. She was still clutching the torn dress over her legs, hanging on to it like a lifeline.
Aristotle leant forward and put down his coffee cup. He had an intense gleam in his green eyes. ‘We’re going to be spending a lot of time together in Athens.’ He looked around her apartment, and then back to her. ‘I thought this might be a good opportunity to get to know each other a little better.’
Something treacherously like disappointment rushed through Lucy, but everything within her rejected it. Had she been so blind? Had she truly suspected for a moment that Aristotle had been rushing her up here to try and make love to her? She felt very brittle all of a sudden.
‘Of course. I mean, I could …’ She racked her brain. Evidently she had to find some way of giving some information to Aristotle, so he didn’t feel as if he had to follow her up to her apartment to talk to her. ‘I could fill out a questionnaire …?’
He arched a brow.
‘A personal questionnaire … if you want to get to know more … about my history.’ A leaden weight made her feel heavy inside. She’d become an expert at putting a glamorous spin on her life with her mother. On her history. Glossing over the reality.
But Aristotle was shaking his head and standing up, coming towards her. He came and stood right in front of her, and Lucy realised that she was in a very vulnerable position, her eye level at his crotch. She stood too, so suddenly that she swayed, and Aristotle put out his hands to steady her. They were on her waist. Immediately it was an invasion of her space—especially when she was so self-conscious about her body.
With one hand she tried to knock him away but his hands were immovable. Her other hand was still clinging onto her dress with a death grip. She looked at him and her brain felt hot, fuzzy. He was too close. She could smell his fresh citrusy scent, mixed in with something much more male, elemental. All she could see were his eyes; all she could feel were those hands, like a brand on her body.
He was talking. She tried to concentrate on his words.
‘… more along the lines of this …’
And then, as realisation exploded inside her, Aristotle’s head was coming down, closer and closer. Everything went dark as his mouth covered hers, warm and firm and so exotic that she couldn’t move.
It was so shocking that Lucy continued standing there like a statue. Through her mind ran the comforting words, You won’t feel anything. You’re cold inside. You’re not your mother.
You don’t react to this. You don’t crave men … sex … You’ve proved this to yourself …
But, as if disconnected from her mind, a radiating heat was taking over, spreading upwards from a very secret part of her. A core she’d never acknowledged before. A core that had never been touched.
Aristotle was pulling her closer. Those big hands were still around her waist, spanning it now, fingers digging into soft, yielding flesh. He was warm and firm, and as he brought her flush against his body she realised just how hard he was. How tall, and how strong. He was huge, and she had the distinct impression for the first time in her life of being … somehow delicate. No one had ever made her feel like that.