The Greek's Forbidden Princess Read online

  Her neck was stiff as she raised her head again to peer towards the pair in the water. They were closer now, Lambis’s dark eyes unreadable as he stared straight at her.

  ‘Well done, Seb.’ Her voice was croaky and uneven. ‘You have very sharp eyes. I’ve never seen a turtle in the wild.’

  ‘I think we ought to head back,’ Lambis said. ‘Your aunt is tired.’

  ‘Oh, no. Please. Couldn’t we stay a little longer?’ It was Amelie who spoke, not Seb. She was loath to leave this magical place where miracles clearly happened. Seb was happy and relaxed here. Surely a little bit more of that magic could only help? ‘Are you tired, Seb?’

  He merely shook his head, his attention on the water, and Amelie told herself not to expect too much. Small steps were a vast improvement on none at all.

  She met Lambis’s eyes and found herself smiling.

  * * *

  Lambis stood in the shadows of the wide terrace, watching Amelie. The westering sun gilded her, turning her into an ethereal creature of gold.

  She still wore the swimsuit and sarong from their trip to the cave and, as usual, it was all but impossible to drag his eyes away. Technically the filmy fabric covered her from where it was tied, just above her breasts, to just above her knees. Yet it teased and tantalised, giving glimpses of her toned body that meant he’d been forced to spend most of their earlier outing in the water rather than on dry land where his arousal would be obvious.

  Deliberately he’d closeted himself in his office this afternoon, catching up on work. Allowing Amelie private time with her nephew. Now Sébastien was in bed and there was nothing to distract Lambis from this constant tug of desire.

  Last night, after that kiss, he’d waited, hoping she’d change her mind and come to him. Accept his offer of an affair. For, God help him, it was all he could offer. That and this place as a refuge.

  She needed, and deserved, far more. That was why he’d pulled back from her years ago, rather than pursue the intense attraction between them. But now, here they were, both alone, both hungry for each other.

  Amelie had given herself away last night. She wanted him with a flagrant, earthy hunger that matched his.

  He’d wondered if she’d be too refined to let herself go with a man, too fastidious for absolute passion.

  Her response last night, her soft gasps of encouragement and pleasure, the demands of her beautiful body sliding against his, had been a revelation.

  She walked the length of the white sand beach, then turned, looking towards the headland they’d visited earlier. Her shoulders hunched and her head dropped as she wrapped her arms around herself. Even from here Lambis recognised her pain. It echoed through him too.

  Damn it! He thought she’d be happy after hearing Sébastien speak. Had something else gone wrong? The thought sent fear crashing through him.

  Before he could stop to consider, he was striding down the steps to the sand.

  He might not be able to offer what she most wanted, but he couldn’t leave her alone, hurting. Lambis’s mouth turned down in a tight grimace.

  Every day this woman taught him something new. He’d believed all the tenderness within him had died years ago with his wife, Delia, and little Dimitri. But here it was again, welling like an enormous tide, terrifying and unstoppable.

  It had trickled over him as he’d watched Amelie at his mountain home, so brave in defence of her nephew, proud yet so vulnerable. It had flooded high when Sébastien had broken down, turning to him in his grief. Lambis had discovered anew the powerful, once familiar feelings of affection and protectiveness as he’d held the little boy tight. Then today, watching Amelie’s face when Sébastien spoke—Lambis had been swamped by emotion.

  ‘Amelie?’ He halted behind her on the sand, so close he smelled the sweet floral perfume of her hair. ‘What’s happened? What’s wrong?’

  Her shoulders rose as if to shut him out.

  ‘Nothing. Everything is good.’ Yet her voice broke.

  Lambis didn’t wait for more lies. He stepped around her, then looked down into her face. Amelie’s eyes shone huge and bright and her lush mouth tugged down at one corner as if she bit it.

  ‘Tell me.’ Distance was impossible.

  She shook her head and golden strands of hair feathered her neck where her neat chignon collapsed. ‘There’s nothing wrong.’ She blinked and forced a smile. He could tell it took effort. ‘It’s silly of me. I tucked Seb into bed and told him I loved him. And he...put his arms around my neck and told me he loved me too.’ Her smile turned lopsided. ‘That and those few words in the cave are the first time he’s spoken since the accident. Isn’t it ridiculous? I should be celebrating!’

  ‘Not ridiculous at all. You’ve carried this burden too long.’ She’d been so worried for Sébastien she probably hadn’t had time to deal with her own grief.

  Lambis paused. The old impulse to protect and care might be back but he was woefully out of practice. Besides, instinct, sharp as a blade to his bones, warned against getting involved. Yet it was too late. He was involved.

  Sea-green eyes fixed on his and for a moment the impression of water and sky and the warm breeze died, as he lost himself there.

  ‘Hold me for a little? Please?’

  Without thought he moved closer, enfolding her in his embrace, pulling her head to his chest and letting his hand slide over the pure silk of her hair.

  Lambis’s breath faltered as she sank against him, her arms sliding around to hug him tight. He inhaled deeply, drawing in salt air and gardenia perfume, the sea and the rich scent of Amelie’s skin. She nestled against him and he was torn between a trembling, poignant joy and the unstoppable, inevitable tension creeping through his body as arousal flared.

  It was no good; despite his determination to squash it, desire rose. His body hardened, his erection pressing against her slim, soft form.

  Yet Lambis stood unmoving, except for his fingers in her hair, gently circling and soothing, trying to offer the comfort she needed.

  Finally, with a juddering sigh he felt all the way to his core, Amelie lifted her head. She arched her beautiful neck back and captured his gaze. Something deep within jolted and teetered, off balance. His breath stalled with the effort it took not to kiss her.

  ‘Is your offer still open?’

  ‘Offer?’ It couldn’t be what he thought. Life had taught him never to expect joy.

  ‘For a no-strings affair.’

  Silently Lambis stared down into her flushed, beautiful face.

  Through the years he’d assuaged pain with brief sexual encounters, intense only in their carnality.

  With Amelie any liaison would be more. Headier, more exciting, more satisfying. His arms tightened and his mouth curved in a hard feral smile of anticipation that ignored the warning voice inside.

  Lambis knew happiness was transitory. Seven years ago God, life, fate had stolen everything from him and left him mired in an endless sea of pain and remorse. But not now. Not tonight, with Amelie bright and vital in his arms.

  Tonight he wanted to live.

  For one brief, glorious interlude he could have everything he hadn’t permitted himself to dream about.

  He didn’t answer her question. Instead he swept her up in his arms and marched towards the villa, his stride lengthening to take the steps to the terrace three at a time.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHE’D NEVER KNOWN a man like Lambis. The touch of those hard hands, his potent strength as he snatched her off the ground, beckoned to her at a primitive, visceral level. He held her high against his chest, the sturdy beat of his heart against her.

  Amelie looked up at the beautiful, utterly male planes and angles of his face, and felt more feminine, more cherished than she ever had in her life.

  Stupid when he was taking her inside for what she hoped would simply be hot sex that would obliterate her cares for an hour.

  But it was true. Despite the fierce light in his eyes and the almost aggressive jut
of his starkly defined jaw, she did feel cherished. And desired.

  It had been ten long years since she’d had a lover. Ten years to lick her wounds and vow never to give herself to a man unless she was sure he loved her as she did him.

  She cared for Lambis, cared too much. She was willing to throw over her hard-earned rules for a night in his arms.

  She was fed up waiting for love.

  Fed up being alone.

  She’d take sex and the euphoria it brought. Even if the reason she’d eventually agreed to his proposition was the caring side Lambis usually hid.

  Amelie pressed her hand to his chest and his heartbeat quickened. She turned and buried her face against the soft fabric of his shirt and inhaled the intriguing scent of soap, earthy male and base notes of musk that set her trembling with desire.

  ‘I want you,’ she murmured. So much easier to say it when she wasn’t meeting that piercing stare.

  Movement rippled through him, like an earth tremor, and his pace quickened.

  She smiled. He was as eager as she.

  Then he shouldered open a door to the master suite. Amelie had an impression of white walls, a lofty ceiling and touches of turquoise furnishings before she landed with a soft gasp on a wide mattress.

  Lambis stood above her, his shoulders rising and falling with each deep breath. His hooded eyes glittered.

  ‘Take your clothes off.’ His lips barely moved. If it weren’t for the tension radiating off him, Amelie might have taken offence at his brusqueness.

  Her eyes dropped to his hands, clenching and releasing at his sides, and the unmistakable bulge in his trousers. The bulge she’d felt press into her on the beach.

  ‘Why don’t you do it for me?’ She spread her arms wide, as if casual sex was an everyday occurrence and her throat hadn’t dried with excitement and nerves.

  She refused to let her relative inexperience matter. Excitement skittered through her at the demands of this new Amelie, who focused, for the first time, on satisfying her own wants.

  ‘Because,’ he growled, his voice soft yet taut, ‘I don’t dare lay hands on you yet. I want to last long enough to give you pleasure.’

  Heat seared Amelie’s throat, climbing to her cheeks and washing down her breasts. Her nipples turned to hard nubs and she caught her breath as Lambis’s eyes zeroed in on them. Her body came alive as if he’d touched her with that hard stare and delicious anticipation quivered the length of her spine.

  ‘Then take off your clothes for me.’ She couldn’t believe she addressed him so coolly when she was burning up, her body melting in places she hadn’t even been conscious of for years.

  A muscle worked in his jaw and his nostrils flared, accentuating the proud line of his nose and the ripe fullness of those chiselled lips. Without a word, his hands lifted to his shirt front and yanked it open. Tiny buttons spattered her thigh, ripped off by his violence, and Amelie’s pulse quickened.

  Lambis shrugged off the torn garment, revealing that broad golden torso she’d spent the morning trying not to stare at.

  Lambis was a big man. Tall, well-muscled, built like an athlete. Not a fine-boned long distance runner but the sort of man who could wrestle or toss a javelin or swim. Broad at the shoulders, deep across the chest, his torso was a perfectly sculpted example of male power. Defined pectoral muscles, flat belly and tight abdominals. His flesh glowed golden olive and a light dusting of dark hair covered his chest then thinned to a narrow line that bisected his torso and disappeared into his jeans.

  Her gaze dropped to his narrow hips and solid thighs. And that other solidity hidden by straining denim.

  Amelie swallowed and found the movement difficult, as if her throat muscles forgot how to work.

  He was magnificent, virile and outrageously sexy. And so different from Jules, who’d been young and boyishly skinny. For a second Amelie felt a flicker of trepidation, wondering if she was out of her depth.

  Then Lambis tugged open his belt and reached for the zip of his jeans and Amelie was too excited to feel anxious. Slowly, deliberately, he undid his jeans, then peeled his clothes down.

  Amelie’s pulse hammered out of control and her breath came in little pants as he revealed himself. There was a tingling, melting heat between her legs and she shifted on the bed, pressing her thighs together as if that would ease the ache within.

  Lambis saw the movement and his lips tilted at one corner in what might have been a smile if his expression weren’t so taut.

  Finally he kicked off his clothes and stood before her, utterly, gloriously naked.

  The symmetry of his beautiful body made Amelie wish she were an artist, to capture him for posterity. But as she took in those long, heavy thighs, the thatch of black hair above them, and the proud, massive erection pointing towards her, the urgency gripping her had nothing to do with art.

  Her fingers fumbled at the tie of her sarong. The knot of it tightened, grew more uncooperative with each attempt, till her hands grew damp with frustration.

  She jerked her gaze away from Lambis and focused on the fabric, finally tearing it open and tossing the material off the bed. As she did, he stepped close and her heart beat double-time in anticipation. But, instead of coming to her, he opened a bedside drawer and took out a foil packet.

  Amelie averted her eyes. Not from prudishness, but from fear she’d explode from the sheer carnal excitement of watching him sheathe himself. She’d never been so turned on. Her whole body was alive with pinpricks of awareness. Even the brush of bed linen beneath her bikini-clad flesh was too much, and the rub of the material against her nipples...

  ‘Take the bikini off.’ His voice had bottomed out to that bass resonance that seeped into her bones and melted any last scrap of doubt.

  Reaching back, Amelie tugged at the bikini strap, then, not allowing herself time to think, hauled the swimsuit top up and over her head, feeling the bounce of her freed breasts.

  The hiss of his indrawn breath yanked her gaze around. His eyes were molten silver, hot enough to incinerate. His gaze travelled over her nakedness and she felt it as if he’d traced one big callused palm over soft flesh.

  ‘Now the rest.’ It wasn’t a request but an order. Yet the harsh edge to his voice was a caress.

  Amelie kept her eyes on his as she lifted her hips and wriggled free, dropping the scrap of fabric off the bed. He watched every movement with a hawk-like intensity that might have made her nervous if she weren’t so eager.

  ‘Come here.’ It wasn’t her voice. It was the voice of a sultry stranger. Lambis lowered himself to the bed, kneeling astride her, his hands braced wide so his shoulders blocked the dying daylight.

  Amelie shook, drawn so tight with arousal she could barely contain it. Just the waft of air across her bare flesh as he moved was like invisible fingers stroking. She smelt heat and musk and that heady, uniquely earthy tang that was Lambis.

  She slipped her hands around his neck and felt him shudder. He closed his eyes, soft, incomprehensible words spilling from his lips. Yet she understood. This was both delight and torture.

  ‘Amelie.’ She’d never heard her name sound like that. A groan and a prayer. Instead of being awed or nervous about their mismatch in experience and size, it made Amelie feel strong.

  ‘Take me, Lambis. Now.’ She shifted, lifting her hips towards him.

  His eyes snapped open and it was like watching an electrical storm over the Mediterranean. Searing light and piercing brilliance.

  Yet despite the glaze of carnal intent in those stunning eyes, and the pared back determination on his bold face, Lambis didn’t settle between her legs. Instead he dipped his head between those incredible shoulders and slowly, deliberately licked her breast from bottom to top.

  Amelie gasped, her hands tightening around his neck, tangling in his dark, soft curls.

  He did it again, stopping this time to circle her nipple, making her bow up to meet his mouth. The heat between her legs intensified and she wriggled, spreading he
r thighs till they met his, solid on either side of her.

  She tried to pull his head down, clamp him to her breast, but he wouldn’t be pushed. Instead he moved lower, nuzzling her ribcage, pressing kisses in a line down to her navel where his tongue took possession in a caress that nearly undid her.

  ‘Lambis!’ Amelie had thought she’d known desire but, with each second of his slow caresses, she moved from eager to officially desperate.

  Her fingers dug into his slick shoulders and her hips lifted as he forayed further, licking her belly and planting tiny kisses across to her hip bone and back. One big hand feathered her inner thigh, sliding up to stroke her cleft and the wetness there.

  Amelie shuddered, her eyelids fluttering shut as her breath snagged. He stroked again, sliding further this time, testing her, then his mouth—

  ‘No! No, don’t!’ She snapped her eyes open to find him blinking up at her as if he’d been the one roused from sensual abandon instead of the one playing her body like a finely tuned instrument.

  ‘You don’t like it?’ His brow furrowed and for the first time Amelie read something other than confidence and arousal in his features.

  ‘Too much,’ she panted. ‘Please. I want you.’ She had no doubt she’d have flown to the moon at the touch of his hand or mouth, or both, but that wasn’t what she craved.

  His jaw tightened and again she saw the fascinating little tic of pulse betraying his agitation. ‘The way you make me feel, I won’t last long enough to—’

  ‘Good.’ She shuddered. Just talking about it drew her to the brink. Or maybe it was the way his breath feathered her sensitive skin and his thumb circled the slick centre of her. ‘I want you now.’

  The words were barely out when he moved. Lambis nudged her knees wide then lifted her calves in his big hands, stroking then kissing them as he placed her heels on his shoulders. A moment later he rose on his knees, his hands gentle on her legs as they rose with him.

  Amelie’s breath sawed. His erection lay hard against her and she felt so open to him. He could see her stretched out before him and with her feet up in the air, her legs resting on his solid body, for a moment she felt scarily helpless.