Satin Dreams (27 page)

The chauffeur took Nicholas’s jacket and tie as he had taken the overcoat, silently.
 

Nicholas came to the side of the bed and stood looking down at her. “I’ll find out who you really are,” he said, somberly. “So why don’t you save me the trouble and tell me now?”
 

Alix didn’t look up. “They knew you at the—at that sex club.”
 

“I was at a Christmas party at the Hilton and Mar—the club called me. You and the Arab kid got there first, and they let you in by mistake.” He put his hand to his face and rubbed it, tiredly. “Where were you all night? I tried to find you.”
 

“But they knew you at that club,” Alix cried. “You’ve been there before.”
 

“I went there years ago, when I was young and stupid.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, lifted one foot and placed it across his knee. “It’s for freaks and crazies and kids who’re curious.” He pulled off one black evening oxford and dropped it to the floor. “I didn’t need to punish myself.”
 

“
Punish
yourself?”
 

“For being rich.” He pulled off a sock and rubbed his toes, wincing. “Lakis,” he said without looking up, “go get some sleep.”
 

“No! Don’t do that,” Alix cried as he pulled off the other shoe and dropped it to the floor. Too late, she heard the door shut. “Call him back! You can’t stay here!”
 

He pulled off the other shoe. “Yes, I can.”
 

“No, no, I want you out of here!” Alix was suddenly very aware of his closeness, his very masculine body in the white shirt and tailored black tuxedo trousers.
 

He scowled again. “Lakis will come back with the car in the morning.”
 

“No! You’re not staying ... and you’re not going to do anything.” Alix slid to the far side of the bed. “Ugh, how can you think of sex after that place!” She shuddered. “Why in the world would a young girl let them do those terrible things to her?”
 

He pulled off the other black silk sock. “Maybe she thought she was enjoying it.”
 

“You can’t mean that.”
 

Nicholas sat beside her on the bed in tuxedo trousers, black suspenders dangling to his thighs, and a thin cotton undershirt. The V of the neck revealed a sprinkling of wiry dark hairs. His body was powerful, leanly beautiful, full of confident sexuality.
 

She was afraid of him, Alix realized with a shock.
 

She was afraid of his tantrums, his Greek trigger temper, his spoiled arrogance, his unrelenting intensity, his irrational accusations, his paranoia—
 

He was too much like Robert, she thought desperately. And like all the ruthless men she hated. To love someone like him would be—
enslavement.
He demanded everything. She couldn’t endure that; she had fought long and hard to break out of her own prison.
 

He had deliberately moved into her field of vision. Her eyes met his, submitting to his dark, questioning gaze.
 

“Who are you?” he repeated softly, his thumb and forefinger touching her face, turning it up to him. Again that probing look. “Are you planning to kill me, too? What will happen to me, beautiful Alix, when I surrender to your trap?”
 

For a long, quivering moment, held in that burning gaze, Alix couldn’t speak.
 

“I’m not a trap. That’s so unfair.” She still couldn’t wrench her eyes from the hypnotizing stare that seemed to bore into her soul, demanding the truth. “I—I’m not trying to kill you.”
 

“No?”
 

“It—it has nothing to do with you.” This was more of an admission than she wanted to make: she felt as though it had been dragged out of her. “Please, leave me alone.”
 

He looked at her with resignation. “I’d be crazy to trust you.” His thumb stroked her lower lip absently. “Lakis thinks I am mad. He’s probably outside the door at this moment, waiting for me to call for help.”
 

He took her hand, turned it over, and brought her opened palm to his mouth. He kissed it, softly, his lips warm. “Tell me,” he muttered against her palm, “why you were still a virgin.”
 

She stared at him helplessly. This heated tenderness took Alix unawares. She was trembling with just the sense of him, the nearness of that hard, supple body, that passionate lightning strength so close to her.
 

“Why were you still a virgin?” he repeated.
 

“I wanted to study music!” She tried to wrestle her hand free. “Let go of me!”
 

His black eyes locked with hers. “One doesn’t have to be a virgin to study music.”
 

“I’ve never wanted to have sex with anyone,” she blurted. “I don’t know much about—about—your sort of world! I’ve gone to school most of my life.”
 

She didn’t know if he believed her. Nicholas abruptly stood up, pulled off his undershirt, and tossed it to the floor. Alix watched him, her heart in her throat.
 

“I don’t really know you.” Her whisper was anguished.
 

He sat down and pulled her down beside him. “I don’t know you, either.” He pushed her back against the bedspread and leaned over her, hands braced. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know your real name. But you haunt my dreams. I saw you in Mortessier’s, and all I could think was, I’ve never wanted a woman so much.” He looked down at her, his mouth curving sardonically. “Do you know what it means to a man like me, to have a beautiful woman who has never loved another? That first time he takes her, feels her trembling in his arms, feels her soft and innocently yielding, and knows she’s his?” He bent, and his lips brushed her mouth. “It’s never happened to me before.”
 

She looked up at him with frightened eyes. “It doesn’t mean anything!”
 

“Oh, doesn’t it?” His lips touched hers again, another whisper of a kiss. “It means a great deal to me. It means I want to make love to you. Many times.”
 

“No, you can’t,” she gasped. “You have to go home.”
 

“Lakis has taken the car.”
 

“No, I don’t want to. Besides,” she wailed, “I didn’t like it!”
 

He laughed softly and drew his fingers lightly down the side of her cheek in a gentle caress. Then, with the merest hint of a sigh, Nicholas lowered his dark curly head until his face nestled in the warm hollow of her throat. She felt the weight of his body move across hers.
 

“Put your arms around me.” He kissed the damp skin under her earlobe. “Just hold me.”
 

She gulped. “H-hold you?”
 

“Yes, put your arms around me.” He nestled closer. “That’s good.” She felt him release a long breath. “Ah, I’m so damned tired of this world.” His voice dropped to an almost inaudible murmur. “Of everything.”
 

With her arms around Nicholas, holding him, Alix was overcome with emotion. She suddenly felt warm and safe and cherished. She knew it was merely a fleeting illusion, and yet she longed to make the moment last.
 

His mouth moved on her bare shoulder. “Alix?”
 

She cleared her throat. “Yes?”
 

“I want you to love me. Do you know how to do that?”
 

She shook her head, mesmerized.
 

“You touch me—” He took her uncertain hand and put it against his forehead, rubbing her fingers back and forth slowly. “Like that. And you say—” He reached to spread her fingers so that he could run them through his thick, curling hair. “You say, ‘Niko, darling.’ Like that.”
 

Nicholas guided her hand across the top of his head. Alix trembled, pressed against him, her soft breasts brushing his chest.
 

“What are you making me do?” she breathed.
 

“I don’t know.” His other hand had crept under the short nightdress, his fingers spread to stroke lightly over the silky bare flesh of her rounded bottom. “You’re so warm, so beautiful. I want to get close. I want to make love to you. And have you make love to me.”
 

Alix’s fingers slid to the back of his neck. She was fighting the realization that she was doing everything she had promised she’d never do again. Not after that painful, humiliating episode in his apartment. Yet she felt herself faltering under the inexorable pull of his strength, his almost weary tenderness.
 

She lifted her mouth to his and heard his swift intake of breath. “Ah, love,” he whispered.
 

He moved his big body over her quickly, his mouth taking hers in such a blaze of hunger that Alix tried to pull back. She fought a strange sense of drowning, of surrendering to a rush of feeling that sensitized every inch of her skin, shot into her flesh and buried itself there, mysteriously. She clung to the man who held her as though the world would come to an end in his arms.
 

He dragged his lips away. “Darling, don’t be frightened. I will make it beautiful for you this time, I swear.”
 

He held her with one hand while he pulled the filmy gown over her head. Suddenly Alix found herself naked. “I don’t think I can do this,” she moaned.
 

He pulled her into his arms. “Beautiful Alix, let me love you,” he murmured. “Close your eyes.”
 

His trembling hands swiftly explored her, cupping her breasts, his thumbs teasing and exciting her nipples, then skillfully stroking down her legs and her inner thighs. When Alix moaned, he laid her back down against the bed and got up.
 

With somnolent, half-closed eyes, she watched Nicholas Palliades pull off the rest of his clothes, scattering them across the floor. His naked body was singularly graceful, so powerful and muscular, so male. He stripped off his briefs to expose the root of his power, erect and ruddy, amazingly big against a dark background of pubic hair.
 

She flinched when he turned to the bed and knelt beside her. “Do you want me?” He reached to pull her into his arms, sensing her resistance. “Be still, be still,” he murmured. “I will just lie down beside you and sleep, if that’s what you want.”
 

With a rush of tremulous feeling, Alix knew that despite Nicholas’s desire for her, he would do as she asked. Tentatively she wrapped her arms around him. “I want you,” she whispered.
 

“Thank God.” He held her against his warm, naked body as he kissed her face, her mouth, her throat, her bare shoulders in a burst of passion. His long fingers, then his mouth, defined her breasts.
 

She clutched his thick hair, making wordless sounds of surprise and delight. She groaned as his fingers found the hot folds of her flesh and carefully, tantalizingly invaded her. When she stiffened, his mouth covered hers in a passionate kiss, coaxing her surrender.
 

Did she really want someplace, Alix wondered, where she would be warm, safe and cherished? Was this what she was finding in this tumultuous blaze of heated desire, in Nicholas Palliades’s arms? Certainly nothing could be more tender, more ardent—more mind-destroying! “Nicholas?” she cried.
 

Her only answer was his triumphant growl. He took her to a peak of writhing, mindless desire and then drew back, cradling her in his arms as his eyes devoured her tangled blaze of hair, her kiss-swollen mouth, her firm little breasts with their glistening pink buds rising and falling. “Now this is what you want?” He smiled.
 

“Nicholas.” Alix could hardly think.
 

“You must love me, too.” He took her hand and put it around him, and she felt him, hard, hot, and rigid. When her fingers moved, exploring him awkwardly, he gasped. “Ah, God, gently!”
 

But Alix was on fire. “
Please
, Nicholas!”
 

He pulled his head back, hair in his eyes, his face flushed. “You’re not my enemy, are you?” he muttered.
 

“No,” she said against his mouth. “No, I am not your enemy.”
 

It was the truth.
 

He pulled himself over her and shifted her hips under him. His mouth was trembling, too, as it covered hers. Slowly, with excruciating care, he crowded himself into her.
 

When Alix stiffened, clutching him, he stopped. “Shhh, it is only your second time.” The words were torn out of him. “Please darling, let me do it.”
 

But Alix couldn’t stop. The pressure of his flesh inside her created a driving, searing heat that grew more insatiable. She tried to pull back, then convulsively thrust herself against him. The world began to spin wildly, centered on a burning ache, hot with desire, frenzied with madness. She cried out, winding her legs and arms around his body in a fierce burst of longing.
 

The effect on him was just as uncontrolled. With a groan, he battered her with thrusts that drove her to the brink of passion, his breath harsh and ragged, his body raking her, almost lifting her from the sheets with his need.