‘I don’t believe I would make such a cold-blooded bargain,’ he murmured.
‘I thought—’ Her voice lurched to a stop as he reached out and touched her, the tips of his fingers gently combing the trailing strands of her hair away from one of her shoulders, before continuing like a caress to curve around her nape, making her draw in a sharp little breath.
‘You thought what?’ he prompted huskily.
‘I …’ The words just dried up when he stepped in closer. ‘You didn’t want me,’ she finally managed to squeeze out.
‘You chose which bed you wanted to sleep in. I merely respected your wishes.’
Had it really been that simple? Zoe didn’t think so. For when had he bothered to respect her wishes before their big showdown in her grandfather’s study?
‘And now you’ve chosen not to respect my wishes?’ Never one to go down without at least a token fight, she watched the glint of appreciation of that fact light his eyes and he smiled, revealing the edges of his even white teeth.
‘Let us agree to say that I knew what you wanted tonight because I want it too.’
And to validate his point he trailed those gentle fingers again, tracing the fine strap to her silk nightdress all the way over a stain-smooth shoulder to the creamy slope of her breast, where the skin was already blooming to the pleasure of his touch.
Lifting up her chin, she looked into his eyes again, his dark, beautiful eyes, then lifted her arms up around his neck. A sigh feathered the aching wall of her throat. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispered.
It was a shockingly dangerous thing to confess because it left her so exposed and vulnerable. Yet she still reached up to go in search of his mouth. He let her. He let her feather soft kisses across his lips, while he trailed his fingers down the fine silk covering her body, tracing its slender shape. ‘No more fighting,’ he husked.
‘No more fighting,’ she agreed, and was rewarded when he took over her soft kisses and turned them into something slow and driving. It felt different, somehow, though she was way too seduced by it to want to work out what why that was. He did not need to draw her against him, because she tilted her head back and arched into him, so his hands only needed to hold her there, warm against him.
They remained like that, kissing in the moonlight coming in through the open window and in no hurry to move things on to the next place. It was just so good to let go of all the restraints they’d been using to hold each other at arm’s length all the week. When he did decide it was time to move them he did not pick her up and make a macho charge for his bedroom. He utilised a far more disturbing method, feeding her beneath an arm he rested across her shoulders and walking her there.
She was never going to fight this again—because she knew that she couldn’t. Anton Pallis—her lover, her husband—was in her blood and she wanted him to be there. If she’d dared, she would have whispered, ‘I love you,’ but that was one truth she managed to hold back.
He kissed her again when they stood beside the bed.
Still, slow and sensually alluring, he placed soft-clinging kisses on her face and her throat and eased the straps of her nightdress down her arms until the silky garment slithered sexily down her body to lie in a blush-pink pool at her feet. Drawing back just a little, Zoe lowered her gaze to concentrate on her fingers as they worked to untie the belt on his robe and part it. He did not attempt to help, the vibrations between them were humming as she fed the fabric off his wide shoulders and sent it the same way as her nightdress.
Naked at last—both of them. It felt just so good. When he eased her back against him she breathed out a sigh of pure contentment and pressed her parted lips to his. Her breasts were alive with pleasurable tremors, their distended tips loving the electric rasp against the hair on his chest. He moved against her, using a rhythm older than time, and so beautifully intimate and familiar to her now she even lifted her head up to smile at him.
‘You feel glorious,’ she told him softly.
‘You have just doubled the state of my prowess.’ He smiled too.
‘I know,’ she teased him then without any gap in between; slow and sensual lost out to urgent and hot.
He kept her standing there, though. He did not allow her to sink in a puddle of feelings onto the bed. He aroused her with his kisses and his hands and the proud thrust of his manhood. He brought her to the scintillating edge of her peak then took her over it in one purely masculine move which had him filling her up so he could experience the shimmer of her orgasm, her legs now wrapped around his waist and her fingernails scoring his back.
She loved it that he was trembling. She loved it that she could taste the ragged agony of his breathing inside her mouth and on her tongue. When he finally lowered them down onto the bed to conclude their flaming rise into ecstasy, she cried his name out and he robbed it from her lips with a growl.
The next morning Anton woke her up by dragging her out of the bed.
‘What did you do that for!’ Zoe snapped at him from the tumbled-haired and sleepy rubble she’d ended up at his feet.
‘A surprise,’ he announced, and without a single ounce of sympathy for her sleepy grumpiness he bent to lift her up then marched her into the bathroom. ‘You have ten minutes to make yourself presentable.’
Ten minutes to the dot, Zoe appeared out of the dressing room wearing shorts and a skimpy camisole-top. ‘This had better be a good surprise,’ she warned when she found him lounging on the bed waiting for her.
He’d barely let her sleep a wink last night. As far as passionate wedding-nights went, she suspected she’d been treated to the very best. But she was tired now, dull-witted and puffy-eyed, though not so puffy-eyed that she could not appreciate just how sexy he looked in a pair of old grey cut-offs and a white tee-shirt that moulded every impressive muscle—so she didn’t have to tax her brain to remember what he looked like without it.
Rolling off the bed, Anton grabbed her hand and trailed her out of the bedroom and down the stairs.
‘I haven’t even said good morning to Toby!’ she complained. ‘And I need a cup of tea.’
‘Later.’ he walked them right past the small dining-room and out into the bright morning sunlight.
At which point Zoe blinked herself so wide awake it was startling.
‘Oh my God,’ she gasped out.
Standing right in the middle of the garden was the very best surprise he could have come up with. Her eyes took fire with electric-blue delight.
‘Where did you get it from? How did you get it here? Oh my God!’ she repeated with a squeal and took off running barefoot across the springy grass, leaving Anton standing on the terrace watching her through indulgently amused eyes as she danced around the yellow brass telescope glinting in the sun.
He ordered breakfast to be brought out onto the terrace then lounged back on a chair to watch while she tweaked and turned things, chanting out a commentary as to what she was doing which meant absolutely nothing to him. He did not care. His bride was happy. He was seeing the bright, sunny creature he’d always suspected hid behind all the grief and pain of recent weeks. She was glorious, spectacular mix of golden long-limbed beauty, childlike excitement and serious intelligence that quite frankly took his breath away.
By the time night fell on Thalia he was beginning to wonder if he’d made a tactical mistake. He’d taken second place to a damn telescope. For a man who had never been second to anything or anyone in his adult life, the blow to his ego was tough to take. In the end he went off to his study to catch up on some work while Zoe spent the whole day pouring over the heavy manuals and checking the internet for stargazing stuff that passed right over his head.
Even Toby barely got a look in. ‘You and I have been abandoned,’ Anton informed the boy who stayed awake longer now and listened with a fierce concentration when someone talked to him. ‘We have been sidelined by a tube of brass with a fancy glass lens.’
Diamonds might have been a better choice, he mused ruef
By nightfall Zoe was ready to remember Anton’s presence, and was beginning to feel guilty for the way she’d forgotten about him all day. She hadn’t even got round to saying thank you for giving her such a fabulous surprise.
For once all the drilling she’d suffered from Anthea came in useful; she decided to set right that omission. She had a roomful of rattan furniture hauled out onto the grass while Anton stayed shut away in his study. Then she arranged with Anthea for them to eat dinner out there by soft, romantic candlelight. She changed into the sexiest dress she could find on her rail of clothes—a skimpy, slinky blood-red silk thing which clung to her figure much like last night’s nightdress had done, only the dress finished high up her long slender thighs.
His eyes turned polished black when he saw her. Her hair shone as brightly as the lustrous smile on her lips. She took his hand, trailed him outside and fed him his favourite food—according to Anthea—and teased him terribly by assuring him he was going to love the surprises she had in store for him later. She was going to let him see what she saw when she looked through her lovely, wonderful new telescope.
And she did. She made him look through the lens at the coordinates she’d carefully set up. She gave him a lecture on that far-distant spot in the heavens as seen from his garden, and refused to notice that he was bored out of his handsome, dark head. When eventually she let him pop the cork on the champagne bottle, he looked so relieved she almost laughed.
‘Now,’ she said, pushing him down onto the rattan sofa. ‘Time for your wedding gift from me.’
Curiously, Anton watched her step back to the table and put down her glass. Even more curiously, he watched as she fed her hands up beneath her dress, wriggled out of a pair of flimsy red-lace panties and dropped them on the grass.
No longer needing to hide his boredom, he was suddenly riveted to what was about to take place. For he knew what was coming. He’d been seduced too many times not to recognise the build-up. However, this was different. This was his bride—his reluctant bride—and the heat already dancing around his loins caught fire as she walked over to him then slowly straddled his lap.
‘You’re supposed to be impressed,’ Zoe told him. ‘It’s the first time I’ve tried a full-on seduction.’
‘I am impressed,’ he assured her. ‘But we are outside, agape mou, where anyone can see us.’
‘Oh, you prude,’ she pouted in disappointment and lifted his glass to her lips.
Her eyes were twinkling at him brighter than the starlight sky he’d just been forced to admire. ‘You have this problem covered, don’t you?’ he murmured, raising a sleek black-satin eyebrow.
‘I am by nature a very organised kind of person,’ Zoe confirmed, deadpan.
Deadpan, because she was moving ever so slightly against him, so she knew exactly what was happening to him. ‘Do you want a sip?’ She offered the glass back to him. He took it and tossed it away into the night. Zoe watched the glass fly through the air until it landed on the grass. ‘Well, that was a very imaginative way of answering me,’ she murmured.
‘And you, wife, are a dreadful tease,’ he threw back.
She was not just a tease, she was a seductive tease. Without removing her eyes from his, she fed her hands down and began tugging his shirt free from his trousers.
‘You want me naked,’ he surmised. ‘Yes please.’ She nodded.
That he was already heeling his shoes off said he was ahead of her anyway. She unbuttoned his shirt and spread it wide then bent to taste the salty warmth of his skin. On a muttered curse, Anton dragged the shirt off altogether then wrapped his bare arms around her and demanded she lift her head. The first kiss was everything Zoe wanted. It spun them down into a darkened world of sultry heat and sensual caresses. Only when she needed to tell him that she wanted him inside her did she lift her hands up to frame his face.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘For my surprise.’
Then she raised up her hips and lowered them slowly, taking him deep, deep inside. The way he closed his eyes and breathed unsteadily, ‘Thee mou,’ made her feel like the happiest new bride on this earth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ZOE forgot to keep reminding herself that this was only temporary. That it was a straight business-deal with a lot of hot sex thrown in. She was happy. After weeks of feeling so unhappy it was like dragging a heavy weight around with her, she allowed herself to embrace her new life in Greece with Anton by pushing to the back of her head any small pangs of doubt that occasionally crept in.
Then, four weeks later, reality arrived with a painful thump. Her grandfather passed away quietly in his sleep. A lawyer came out from Athens to read them his last will and testament. Other than for the expected provisions made for those people Theo had cared about, and had cared about him, the bulk of the estate went to Zoe and Toby. Anton retaining control of all business interests until such time as if and when they divorced, at which point his granddaughter would be free to make her own arrangements. There was very little either she or Anton could say. It was exactly how Anton had always said it would be, and she’d stopped disbelieving him so long ago it was a distant memory.
She left him to deal with the lawyer while she made herself scarce, spending the next few hours with her brother, sending Melissa away so she could sink herself into the comforting routine of caring for the baby by herself.
When Anton eventually came looking for her it was late, way beyond the time they would normally sit down for dinner. He found her lying on one of the loungers in the garden, silently mapping stars while she tried to keep her thoughts at bay.
For this was it, the moment she had been putting off in some vague hope it would never happen. But it had happened and now she had to think about hers and Toby’s future away from this place. Away from Anton and their marriage of convenience, which had never felt to her like a business agreement even though that was exactly what it was.
She’d been offered a job working at the observatory in Athens. The offer had come out of the blue only a few days ago, via her professor in Manchester. It was almost too good to be true, she mused, whispering a sigh up into the dark sky. She could pay off her student loans and not miss the cash, and she and Toby could move into her grandfather’s house in Glyfada. After all, she had all the money in the world now to ease the path for any decision she wanted to make. Melissa could come with them. She could hire her own staff.
Or she could continue to bury her head in the sand and do absolutely nothing. And why was she considering that as an option? Because she did not want to leave here, this island, this house.
‘Not eating tonight?’ Hearing the even-pitched voice—belonging to the big reason why she didn’t want to leave here—Zoe turned her head to watch as Anton stretched out beside her on the other lounger. It was really quite funny the way they’d formed their own private living area out here on the lawn over the last few weeks.
Only Zoe wasn’t laughing. In fact she felt so unhappy she wanted to cry. She looked back at the night sky again and watched it blur out of focus.
‘Theo asked me only the day before he died if I still hated him,’ she confided.
Threading his long fingers with hers, he asked, ‘What did you say?’
‘I told him the truth. I told him that at first I wanted to hate him but when I looked at him I saw my own father, so how could I hate the man who gave me the love of the most wonderful father I could have had?’
‘You made your peace with him, agape mou,’ Anton said gently. ‘That is a good thing.’
Pressing her trembling lips together, Zoe nodded her head. ‘I—liked him.’
‘For all his irascible manner, Theo kind of grows on you,’ Anton said with a smile. Then he stopped smiling. ‘However, he has become yet another person you cared about who has passed out of your life.’
Another person she cared for she’d lost … That was three people already this year, and now she was having to come to terms with the knowledge that she was about to lose another one.
On impulse she lifted their clasped hands and pressed kisses on his fingers. ‘I’ve been offered a job,’ she whispered tragically.
She felt his fingers tighten on her fingers before he untangled them, and wished she could learn to hang on to secrets as well as he did.
‘A good one?’ he asked after a tense moment.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed, then went on to explain. ‘It feels like those heavens up there have been pulling strings for me down here. If I take the job it will mean I can finish my post-grad course while I work—get some normality back in my life. You too,’ she added carefully, aware that she was opening the can of worms she had wanted to keep sealed up so tight no one would be able to prise off the lid.
‘My life is fine the way that it is,’ Anton responded smoothly. ‘We can both commute,’ he decided then. ‘I do it every day as it is.’
‘You know that wasn’t what I meant.’ Sitting up, she wrapped her arms around her bent knees. He wasn’t so slow on the uptake that he hadn’t already worked out where she was going with this. ‘We had an—arrangement,’ she spelled it out. ‘Now it’s time for us to—bring it an end.’
For a minute his silence was agony. For a minute she even questioned whether or not he had heard what she’d said. She wanted to look at him, but she couldn’t bring herself to look, and the tears were rolling freely down her cheeks.
He sat up too, only he got up, rising to his full height and shoving his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘Don’t do this, Zoe,’ he growled out.
‘Don’t do what—talk about the thing we have both been hiding away from here? Theo is gone.’ Feeling the need to bite down on something to stop the sobs from forming in her throat, she bit down hard on one of her knees.
‘And if you are trying to tell me that you want out of this marriage because of Theo’s death, then try telling me so with a bit more enthusiasm than that stupid comment muffled by the thickness of your tears!’
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