Secrets of Cinderella’s Awakening by Sharon Kendrick
CHAPTER THREE
HISLIPSWERESOFT. Surprisingly soft. Marnie had thought they would be hard. Hard like his body. Hard like the fierce blue glint of his eyes. But what did she know, other than when Leon Kanonidou pulled her into his arms it felt as if this were the reason she’d been born?
They had left the restaurant and walked slowly along the sand, the pain in her heel gradually receding as they watched the setting sun make its slow descent in the sky before finally slipping into the sea. Their arms brushing occasionally, they had commented on the soft sound of the waves and the fiery glow of the dying embers. But that conversation had felt mechanical, rather than natural, and it had filled Marnie with all kinds of fears—the main one being that she had totally misjudged the situation and maybe the attraction she felt for him was one-sided.
She’d found herself wishing he would touch her. But he hadn’t. They’d just walked and walked until all the daylight had disappeared and faint stars had begun to puncture the moonless sky, before turning to retrace their steps towards his motorbike. And the more he had kept his distance, the more she had wanted him.
They had turned to retrace their steps and Marnie had seen the restaurant in the distance—all brightly lit up like a cruise liner. They must have started playing music after they’d left but as they stopped to listen to the faint chords of a bouzouki drifting on the warm air, she had been acutely aware of a sinking sense of disappointment.
So was this it? Was her determination to do something wild and free for the first time in her life about to amount to nothing, because the man she was with wasn’t interested in her? Maybe he really had just been acting as an impromptu guide, eager to show the English tourist the hidden delights of Paramenios.
And then, almost as if he’d read her mind, Leon caught hold of her and turned her round, his hands on either side of her waist. She held her breath because his touch felt electric and he studied her upturned face for what felt like a long time, before lowering his head to kiss her.
It was...dynamite.
It was...life-changing.
Marnie swayed in disbelief, her limbs growing instantly boneless. How was it possible for a kiss to feel this good? How could anything feel this good? At first there was barely any contact between them—just the intoxicating graze of his mouth over hers. Did he know how desperately frustrating that was? Was that why he deepened the kiss so that, suddenly, everything changed? The pressure of his lips became seeking. Super-charged and somehow profound. As if she were the sleeping princess in the pages of a fairy story, who had been woken by a gorgeous prince.
He deepened the kiss and began to stroke one of her breasts. Her nipple was pushing against her baggy T-shirt dress towards the circling of his thumb. She could feel the syrupy rush to her bikini bottoms and realised she wanted him to touch her there, too. She wanted things she’d never wanted before and she wanted them very badly. Was it that which made her writhe her hips against his with instinctive hunger, causing him to utter something in Greek which sounded almost despairing?
The sound broke the spell and she drew back, though in the faint light all she could see was the hectic glitter of his eyes. ‘What...what did you just say?’
‘I said that you set my blood on fire, agape mou. And that I want you very much. But you already know that.’
Well, she knew he wanted her, yes. She wasn’t actually sure about the ‘blood on fire’ bit, because nobody had ever said anything like that to her before. And although she liked it, her instinct was not to believe him because even if they were true, she knew compliments always came with a price.
Yet what was the point of all this if she was just going to pepper the experience with her usual doubts, and spoil it? Couldn’t she have a holiday from her normal self and shake off all the worries which had been weighing her down for so long? Couldn’t she be a different Marnie tonight—one who was seeking nothing but uncomplicated pleasure? She had always been the responsible one. The one who looked out for other people, always preparing herself for the shadows which inevitably hovered just out of sight. Wasn’t it time to articulate what she wanted for a change?
She cleared her throat. ‘Would you mind speaking in English so I can understand what you’re saying?’
She could hear the amusement which deepened his voice.
‘Are we planning to do a lot of talking then, Marnie? Is that what turns you on?’
Something warned her she’d be straying into dangerous territory if she told him she didn’t know what turned her on because she’d never given herself the chance to find out. But while she didn’t want to lie to him, that didn’t mean she couldn’t tell a different kind of truth.
‘You turn me on,’ she said boldly and something about the breathless rush of her words made his powerful body tense.
‘Oh, do I?’ he questioned, tilting her chin with his fingers so that their darkened gazes clashed. ‘So what are we going to do about that, I wonder?’
She didn’t dare answer in case she said the wrong thing. In case she frightened him away with her appalling lack of experience—because her gorgeous biker looked and kissed like someone who knew his way around the block. So instead, she just did what she’d been aching to do all evening, which was to touch his face—grazing her fingertips down over its sculpted planes, as if she were committing them to memory.
Did his quick intake of breath mean he liked it—was that why he pulled her back into his arms and hauled her up close to his body, so that they felt glued together? Her nipples were stony and she could feel the hot slick of desire between her legs. As he moulded the curve of her buttocks with his open palms, she became aware of the rocky outline of his erection, which was pressing through the soft denim of his jeans against her.
‘Can you feel how much I want you?’ he taunted softly.
Maybe she should have been daunted by all that virile power, but weirdly enough she wasn’t. Because it all seemed so natural. As if it was meant to be. As if her life up until now had been nothing but a preparation for this moment. ‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘Yes, I can.’
His fingertips were hovering close to the hemline of her dress. ‘I want to see you,’ he husked. ‘I want to see your body, Marnie.’
Marnie closed her eyes. She could hear the raw hunger underpinning his words and sense the barely restrained need in them. And didn’t that match her own hunger and make it easy to know how to respond to him, despite her pitiful innocence? No need to point out that the moonless night would make twenty-twenty vision impossible and it would be practically impossible for him to see her with any degree of detail. ‘I’m not stopping you,’ she whispered boldly. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Meta haras.’His words sounded like dark honey coating her skin with sweetness. With a fluid movement he peeled the dress over her head and let it fall to the sand, one-handedly unclipping the fastening of her now-dry bikini top, so that her breasts came tumbling free. And if at times Marnie had despaired about her disproportionately large bust, Leon Kanonidou’s murmur of appreciation was enough to banish those complaints for ever.
‘My turn, I think,’ he said, pulling off his T-shirt and dropping it to the ground, so that his torso was as bare as hers.
He pulled her into his arms and that first contact of skin against skin felt so delicious that Marnie gave a little gurgle of joy. He was smoothing his fingers through her hair. He was kissing her and kissing her, until once again she was in that blissful state of molten compliance. He slid his fingers between her legs and she held her breath as they pushed aside the panel of her bikini bottoms—terrified he was going to stop his intimate exploration.
But he didn’t stop.
He started to stroke his fingers over her and a ragged moan escaped from her lips.
Maybe it was the shock of discovery which made her so instantly responsive or maybe it was the things he was saying to her, some in English and some in Greek. She no longer cared which language he was using—all she cared about was the way he was making her feel. That sweet, savage tightening in her groin and exquisite aching of her breasts. Her heart was racing as waves of something unbearably beautiful beckoned her towards an unknown destination. The tension grew and her body felt so taut that she didn’t think she could bear it any longer. And then she went under—or was it over?
His kiss drowned out her spiralling cries of pleasure as Marnie began to spasm around his finger, trying like mad to hold onto the feeling until her body gradually grew still. She was dimly aware of him supporting her weight while he bent to smooth his T-shirt over the sand to form a makeshift sheet—admittedly on the small side—before very gently easing her down on top of it. His shadow fell over her as his hand went to the button of his jeans and the image was reminiscent of when she’d seen him on the beach earlier. And that was when reality hit her befuddled brain with a bombardment of urgent questions.
You realise what you’re about to do? You’re about to have sex with a man you barely know. All those things which have scared you all your life are right here. Things you were determined never to do. Things you know you shouldn’t do.
That reality hit should have been enough to make her stop but it wasn’t. Because as he slithered out of his jeans, Marnie was able to ignore the voice of her conscience by noticing several things. Firstly, that he wasn’t wearing any underpants—which seemed more erotic than shocking. Secondly, that he was withdrawing a foil packet from his back pocket—making her wonder if he always carried a condom with him. And if that were the case—then didn’t that make her just one in a long line of conquests of women he barely knew?
But those discoveries were quickly eclipsed by another—which was that she had been completely wrong about the available light. Because while there was no moon, the sky of Paramenios was incredibly clear and the millions of stars were certainly bright enough to illuminate Leon Kanonidou’s magnificent body. Twenty-twenty vision it might not be, but the starlight was strong enough to emphasise the rippling muscles and honed flesh. She gazed at the hair-roughened chest and narrow hips, which led down to those long, powerful legs coated in a silvery gleam.
Naked, Leon Kanonidou was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen. Even the proud pale pole of his erection springing from a dark blur of hair wasn’t enough to daunt the innocent Marnie as she opened her arms to him.
Her soft curves accommodated his hard planes and sculpted limbs as if they’d been designed for that purpose. Was it always like this? she wondered dizzily as he moved over her. So...easy? His lips began to explore her skin, his tongue sliding over her as if he had all the time in the world ahead of him. He licked her nipples and belly and then the delicate skin between her thighs and she shivered. His fingers moved to reacquaint themselves with the slickness between her legs, feathering her with that dextrous touch which made her feel as if she were drowning in sweetness. Should she be doing something back? she wondered. Actively participate by touching him,even though her clumsy movements might give away the fact that he was with a novice?
But while she was plucking up the courage to curl her fingers around his rocky shaft, he dissolved all rational thought by kissing her again.
‘You taste salty,’ he murmured, against her lips.
‘So do you,’ she murmured back—and something about that small interchange felt as intimate as anything else they’d done and filled her with a newfound confidence, so that when he reached for the condom which lay on the sand beside them, Marnie felt nothing but eager for what was about to happen. She watched as he stroked on the protection, his starlit expression a study in concentration until he had sheathed himself, his lazy smile of complicity emphasising the closeness of the moment.
‘Now, where was I?’
He was right here. Holding her, and stroking her, and Marnie was touching him back and he was almost purring with pleasure. His fingers were tangled in her hair and his body was pressing down on hers so that she could feel the soft sand at her back. There was a sudden rapid escalation of need and a subtle shift in tension and her thighs parted eagerly as if some unseen force was choreographing her movements. She held her breath as he made that first deep thrust inside her, her quick cry the only indication that pain had momentarily eclipsed the pleasure.
But Leon must have heard it. Or felt it. Or something. Because he stilled inside her, and when she looked up into his face all she could see was confusion glinting from his narrowed eyes.
‘Please don’t stop,’ she whispered, and afterwards she would be ashamed at having said that. For pleading with him, almost.
But his answer took her by surprise.
‘I can’t stop,’ he said, almost bitterly, and began to move again.
She’d thought that this unmistakable disconnect would be enough to shatter the magic so that she would feel nothing—but she had been wrong. Because Leon immediately adapted to what he’d just discovered by moving inside her at a completely changed pace. At first, his thrusts were performed with almost exaggerated care, until her newly awakened body had adjusted itself to the rocky width of him and to what was happening to her. He took it slow. So very slow. Until she had completely relaxed.
‘Oh, Leon,’ she cried out.
Until that sweet urgency had flared up inside her again, building into such a pitch until she could hold it back no longer. And this time when she came, his body bucked in perfect time with hers.
But this time he did not kiss her quiet.
Leon rolled off Marnie’s soft body with a reluctance which unsettled him even more than what he had just discovered. He wanted to feel anger and indignation. He wanted to accuse her of misrepresentation. Yet all he could think about was the moment when he’d entered her—recalling that fleeting sensation of resistance before being encased in her molten tightness. He had wanted a novel experience, he reminded himself bitterly. Well, this one had certainly ticked all the right boxes. Or the wrong ones. He gazed up into the star-punctured vault of the black sky and even though he told himself he wasn’t in the least bit interested in her motivations, he found himself biting out a single word.
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’ she questioned, her voice soft and replete.
He rolled onto his side to look at her and instantly regretted the action, for her cushioned flesh looked utterly inviting and he could detect the musky perfume of her sex on the air. Leon swallowed, hovering on the brink of unbearable temptation. He wanted to touch those peaking breasts again. He wanted to part those silken folds and plunge into her with the erection which was already growing rigid against his belly.
‘You were a virgin!’ he accused.
Her eyes fluttered open. ‘So what?’
‘Are you kidding me? Virgins don’t just have random sex on beaches with men they’ve just met.’
‘You mean, they should save it for their wedding night?’ Her laugh was tinged with a cynicism he recognised as something regularly found in his own repertoire. She sat up, her hair falling over her breasts. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Leon—you can wipe that look of horror from your face. I’m not about to start demanding you provide me with a gold ring and white dress!’
‘Because I’d say the white dress would be redundant by now, wouldn’t you?’ he drawled.
‘And a marriage would be a lot harder to walk away from than this!’
He watched as she scrambled to her feet with an innate sexiness which made him want to pull her back down again, but she cursed as she put her weight onto her injured foot and, instinctively, he frowned. ‘Careful with that foot.’
‘Just leave my damned foot out of it, will you?’
He wished he could. He wished he’d never heard her stricken scream. He wished he were a million miles away from here, but he felt a responsibility towards her—one he didn’t want, but which he would honour. It was the least he could do in the circumstances. Rising to his feet, he reached for his jeans. ‘You’d better get dressed,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ll take you back.’
‘That won’t be necessary!’ Speaking through gritted teeth, she stepped into her bikini bottoms and hauled them up over her hips. ‘I certainly don’t need your grudging charity. Don’t worry about it. l can make my own way back.’
The sting of pride in her words made him feel an unexpected wash of gentleness towards her. ‘Marnie,’ he said patiently. ‘It’s getting late and you’re in one of the most remote parts of the island. How are you proposing to get back on your own? It’s not like we’re in Act On. There isn’t a reliable bus service.’
‘You’ve obviously never been to Acton, or you’d know that reliable is the last word you could ever use to describe our bus service!’
He could see her struggling to do up her bikini top and instinctively reached out to help her but she batted him away. ‘I can do it myself. Though I expect you’re far more practised at it than I am!’
Half in amusement, he watched while she fumbled with the clip until her magnificent breasts were constrained once more, and then pulled on the rather ugly T-shirt dress, which successfully concealed all her curvy magnificence. Lastly, she shook her hair and ran her fingers through it, but still it looked wild and indescribably sexy as she turned to face him. She was struggling to control her rapid breathing and appeared to be choosing her words with care. ‘Look, what just happened was obviously a huge mistake.’
‘It’s done now,’ he returned, slightly irritated by the less than flattering sentiment. Was she trying to imply that she hadn’t enjoyed it? Or that she regretted it? ‘You’re sure you’re okay?’
‘Well, it doesn’t hurt, if that’s what you mean,’ she responded bluntly. ‘Or is this the moment when I’m supposed to pour on copious amounts of praise about your skill as a lover?’
Easing the zip over his hardness with difficulty, he winced. ‘That is what usually happens.’
‘Oh!’
For a moment he thought she was going to launch herself at him and start drumming her fists against his chest and wasn’t there a part of him which wanted her to do that, because the fury on her face was turning him on more than it should have done and if she attacked him then surely he would be justified in kissing her? Yet even as he rejected such a scenario as folly, Leon couldn’t shake off the sensation of being...cheated. Feeling as if she had lured him into a honey trap with the skills of an ancient siren. Lured him into something he’d been having second thoughts about and then delivered something he hadn’t been expecting.
All through dinner he had acknowledged the powerful chemistry sizzling between them, but during their walk on the beach he had forced good sense to prevail. As the soft sand had ridged between his bare toes, he had silently listed the reasons why making love to Marnie Porter was a bad idea—and there were plenty. They were strangers. They were from different worlds. It was why he hadn’t kissed her. Why he had walked chastely by her side even though he had been aching with desire and frustration, and her body language had indicated she felt the same way.
Yet as the throbbing in his groin had become unbearable, he had wondered just who he was protecting. Just because he’d never done a casual hookup before, didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. He wanted it and she wanted it. Where was the problem? They were both adults. But he’d assumed she was similarly experienced. Why wouldn’t he? He had always steered clear of virgins—and for precisely the reasons she had sarcastically joked about. Because women didn’t just give their innocence to a passing stranger, did they—not without wanting something in return? Especially when the stranger in question possessed riches beyond most people’s wildest dreams.
His mouth flattened. Maybe he was the one who was being naïve, not her. Maybe she did know his true identity and she had been saving herself for someone from whom she could reap some very attractive benefits. Someone with money. He shook his head. Wouldn’t it be almost easier if that were the case? If he were able to place her into the well-worn compartment in his life labelled gold-digger? But deep down he didn’t really believe that. There was something too proud about her to let him believe she was motivated by greed.
Yet whatever her intentions had been, it mustn’t happen again. Because for all her bravado, Leon had detected an unmistakable trace of tenderness when she had opened her arms to him. And because he hadn’t been expecting that either, it had thrown him. He had briefly lost himself in her softness, disorientated by a swirl of conflicting and unrecognisable emotions, which had troubled him. He was the only man she’d ever had sex with, he reminded himself, and, despite her insolence towards him afterwards, she would inevitably read too much into it. Women always did. They were experts at seeing what they wanted to see. At obscuring and manipulating the truth if it didn’t fit in with their own needs.
His jaw tightened. Hadn’t he learnt that to his own detriment—and hadn’t the fallout turned him into a man who had been accused too often of having a lump of ice for a heart? He was certainly not the kind of person this little innocent should be associating with.
So he would make her realise she would be better off without him. And the sooner she was out of his life, the sooner he would forget her.
Digging into the back pocket of his jeans for his keys, he turned to her—steeling himself against the soft quivering bow of her lips, made silver by the starlight. ‘Grab your helmet, Marnie,’ he instructed coldly. ‘I’ll take you back to the hotel.’
