The Greek Tycoon’s Disobedient Bride

by Lynne Graham

  CHAPTER NINE

  L YSANDER studied Ophelia, sensing a lingering tension that went beyond her natural modesty. Her beautiful crystalline eyes still had a wary light that challenged him.

  Her heart was banging like a drum inside her ribcage. She reached up and pulled him down to her, wanting his stubborn sensual mouth so much she burned for it. The taste of him was dynamite to her senses. She loved his kiss, the feel of his body against hers. Her fingers delved into his ebony hair and clenched possessively in the springy strands.

  He lowered his lips to the swollen crests of her small, full breasts and she loosed a stifled moan. Lying naked while he was still clothed made her feel brazen and yet there was an urgency in her, a newly fierce craving for him that she couldn’t restrain. Belatedly she appreciated how much strength it had taken to walk away from him and how overpowering was the sense of reprieve rolling through her in a cathartic surge. With impatient hands she wrenched at his shirt.

  ‘No…’ Loosing a husky sound of amusement, Lysander trapped her hands in his and held them captive above her head. ‘I like your enthusiasm, but this is my show. I’m about to drive you out of your mind with pleasure and prove that business doesn’t always come first.’

  ‘You’re very confident,’ she whispered.

  ‘Always.’

  Ophelia connected with his golden bronze eyes and awareness prickled over her entire skin surface, wild anticipation snaking through her nerve endings. He bent his handsome dark head to her and she shivered. He kissed her just once; the slow, deep stroke and delve of his tongue was intensely erotic. It didn’t begin to satisfy her craving, only notched up her longing a little higher.

  He traced a tantalising path of seduction from her delicate collarbone to the rigid pointed buds of her nipples. A tight ache stirred in her pelvis and she shifted restively. He took his time, laving the straining tips of her breasts with his tongue and grazing them with his thumbs and the edge of his teeth to a volcanic level of sensitivity that left her biting back tiny moans.

  A phone rang. They both jerked into stillness. Lysander dug his mobile out of his trouser pocket. A slim hand closed into the front of his shirt. ‘No…’

  Sleek ebony brows pleating, he stared down at her. ‘But-’

  ‘Don’t answer it.’

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Is this a normal marriage?’ Her blue eyes were bright as sapphires, her intonation accusing.

  ‘Didn’t I say it was?’

  Before he could guess what she intended, Ophelia snatched the phone out of his hand. Switching it off, she tossed it onto the dresser and then waited, wide-eyed, for the fallout.

  Lysander was stunned by her daring. ‘Theos…’ he began.

  Ophelia curved slender fingers to his blue-shadowed jaw line. Metallic-bronze eyes fringed by dense black lashes surveyed her with incredulous force. He was so beautiful, she could hardly breathe for wanting him.

  ‘Kiss me…’ she begged.

  Lysander almost reached for his phone, just to show her that she could not do what she had just done and expect immunity. But the shy desire in her eyes and the inviting curve of her peach-soft lower lip concentrated his thoughts on more immediate necessities.

  ‘You need to learn my language. Filise me.’ He translated her request into Greek and waited until she had obediently repeated it. Only then did he respond to her request by crushing her soft mouth under his and kissing her until the blood drummed at an insane rate through her veins.

  Desire seemed to punch a hole through Ophelia’s lungs and breathing became a challenge as he explored the moist, delicate flesh between her legs. He pushed her hands away when she tried to pull him down to her and pressed his lips to the taut quivering softness of her belly.

  ‘No, you can’t,’ she mumbled in shock when she realised his objective as he splayed her slim thighs.

  Undaunted, Lysander just laughed and called her a little prude, and went right on ahead as if she hadn’t spoken. Nothing could have prepared her for that level of intimacy. Intense reaction engulfed her from his first carnal touch. Terrified that the low throaty moans escaping her might be heard beyond the room, she forced her face in a pillow and bit it while her hand closed round the brass bars of the bed and clenched there. Her frantic response pushed her out of control very fast. In an effort to contain the fevered need he had awakened, she dug her slim hips into the mattress. If he hadn’t held her steady she would have writhed. The irresistible charge of sensation forced her quivering, wildly aroused body to the edge of torment. Excitement surged to an unbearable peak and then the sweet melting pleasure consumed her from inside out. So powerful was that release that it shredded her awareness of her surroundings for long, timeless moments of bliss in the aftermath.

  Lysander removed his hand from her parted lips and smiled down at her. ‘Noisy little thing,’ he teased, long fingers surprisingly gentle on her cheeks, which were damp with tears. ‘I love your passion. I love watching you lose control and knowing that I did it, hara mou.’

  Her blue eyes open and vulnerable from the lingering sensual shock of her experience, Ophelia stared up at his lean dark face and she revelled in his mesmerising smile and unusual warmth. She felt amazingly close to him. The mortification that had threatened to overpower her at her loss of control evaporated. So, she had been a little too vocal in her appreciation and tears had come to her eyes at the height of ecstasy. In her opinion anything that had the power to make him look at her like that could not be wrong.

  Lysander rolled back off the bed and began to shed his clothes. ‘Tomorrow we will spend all day in bed. No flights to catch, no interruptions-’

  ‘No phone calls,’ she slotted in, lazily enjoying the sight of the sleek muscled perfection of his strong, hard body. He skimmed off his boxers revealing the thick jutting length of his manhood.

  ‘My wife is becoming sexually aware,’ Lysander mocked as he saw her stare and noted the colour unfurling like flags in her cheeks.

  He pulled her into his arms and, watching her steadily, brought her hand down to his bold erection. Now she learned what he liked and it was an exercise that she found wildly arousing as well as informative; the afternoon hours slipped inexorably away and neither of them noticed the passage of time.

  Mid-evening, as Ophelia emerged from the bathroom Lysander was on the phone. She was in a bodily daze of satiation, for he had taken her again and again with an insistent passion that had been as exhilarating as it was intense. Now she found that she headed for him with the instinct of a homing pigeon. She leant up against him, driven by an ongoing need for physical contact that was new to her. Disconcerted by that dangerous instinct to stay close to him, she tensed in rejection of the prompting and began to pull away from him again.

  Bronze eyes slumberous, Lysander curved a confident arm round her to keep her where she was. ‘We’re dining at the taverna.’

  ‘The taverna?’ she gasped in sudden dismay at the prospect of descending the stairs so many hours after Lysander had come up them. ‘Can we just slip out the back way-?’

  ‘Our transport is waiting at the front of the building.’

  Ophelia winced. ‘I know it’s silly but…everybody’ll know what we’ve been doing!’

  ‘We could just have been talking…’ Lysander turned to survey the well-used bed with its tossed and crumpled sheets and an unholy masculine grin slashed his handsome mouth. ‘Possibly not. But what else do newly married couples do? Why should that embarrass you?’

  In fact, when they arrived at the taverna, they were ushered straight out to a private terrace overlooking the beach where they dined by candlelight in perfect privacy. The food was divine and cooked by Lysander’s chef, who also owned the taverna. Lysander, when he made the effort and switched off his phone, was incredibly good company. But, try as she might, a certain matter still nudged at Ophelia’s newfound contentment and made her uncomfortable.

  ‘I have just one more question about that perfume
episode this morning,’ Ophelia informed him in a rush. ‘No, don’t look like that-I mean, I can’t help being curious. Does one of your employees wear that perfume?’

  Lysander expelled his breath in a long-suffering hiss. ‘My mother wears it.’

  Ophelia was very much taken aback by that reply for it was the very last answer she had expected. His mother? She felt that it should have occurred to her that he might have family he wanted to see in Athens before he flew out to Kastros.

  ‘Virginia likes to hug,’ Lysander added, as if such displays of affection could only be forced on him and tolerated in the name of politeness.

  ‘Didn’t your mother want to meet me?’ That brash question leapt straight off Ophelia’s tongue before she could think better of it. The slight tensing of his strong bone structure warned her that she had the light touch of an elephant in the field of tact.

  ‘She was reluctant to intrude on our honeymoon,’ he responded casually.

  He was a terrifyingly good dissembler, Ophelia conceded with a sinking heart. He met her gaze levelly, employed just the right note of dispassion and betrayed not an ounce of unease. Yet she wasn’t fooled. Somehow-and she genuinely didn’t know how-she sensed that, clever as he was, he was telling her a whopping fib and most probably doing so out of pity. Evidently his mother-her own mother’s former best friend, Virginia-had no wish to meet her son’s bride.

  Was it an aversion based on Ophelia’s parentage? If it was simply the secret wedding that had contrived to cause offence, a few weeks might make all the difference to the older woman’s outlook. On the other hand, the alternative-a mother-in-law who totally hated her sight unseen-struck Ophelia as too awful to contemplate. It also reminded her of another necessity she had yet to tackle.

  ‘I’ve just about wrecked your car,’ Ophelia admitted.

  ‘And to manage that within two hundred yards of the garage is pretty good going.’ Lysander lounged back in his chair like a sleek black panther ready to pounce. ‘You drive like you’re on a race track.’

  Ophelia went from being anxious and apologetic to stiff and bristling with annoyance. ‘No, I do not!’

  Lysander planted a strong hand over hers to prevent her from rising from her chair. His brilliant dark gaze was hard, his jaw line squared. ‘I watched you leave. You were going too fast for someone in an unfamiliar car. You also drove on after the collision, even though the car was damaged. That was a really dangerous decision.’

  ‘Are you quite finished?’ Ophelia prompted tartly.

  ‘Ne-yes. Next time you get into a driving seat, you’ll be much more careful,’ Lysander forecast, lifting her hand and pressing a kiss to her palm in a graceful movement that sharply disconcerted her. ‘Naturally I don’t want you to get hurt.’

  Ophelia swallowed hard. ‘You didn’t even ask me how the accident happened.’

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  Her blue eyes anything but submissive after his criticism, Ophelia lifted her chin. ‘I am proud to say that I single-handedly saved the lives of three goats.’

  His elegant ebony brows pleated.

  ‘The goats were on the road and it was them or the car,’ Ophelia delivered the punchline.

  Reluctant amusement lit his metallic eyes. ‘Very funny-but you could have been injured and that isn’t funny, hara mou.’

  Lysander walked Ophelia out through the bar. Their departure was a slow process, for many of the taverna’s diners were eager to speak to him and offer both of them their good wishes. Lysander was held in considerable esteem. He introduced her as his wife as naturally as though he had been doing it for years. His usual formality and reserve were strikingly absent from his manner. It was yet another intriguing glimpse, she registered, of the deeply complex and private man who lay beneath the cold, tough façade that had made him a legend in the business world.

  ‘The worst thing that ever happened to me as a teenager?’ Lysander was proud of the reality that he didn’t grimace. He wanted his marriage to work and when he put his mind to any objective he was single-minded, thorough and very practical.

  ‘I just feel so close to you when you talk to me.’ Ophelia gave him a huge beaming smile that lit up her heart-shaped face like Christmas lights. She was discovering that it took endless digging and encouragement to get Lysander to tell her anything about his past. It was as if he had locked up his entire childhood and thrown away the key of memory.

  ‘The worst thing…’ Lysander could not think of one single thing that he wanted to share with her. ‘Why don’t you go first?’

  Two weeks on Kastros with Ophelia had taught him that she liked to talk. She liked to talk…a lot, and sometimes she liked to talk about the sort of stuff that Lysander would have happily taken to the grave with him. He had treated other women’s conversation as background prattle to which he rarely, if ever, responded. No woman had complained until now, when Ophelia fixed wounded eyes on him and accused him of not being interested in her.

  A fast learner, he now knew that if he didn’t respond or, even worse, didn’t listen, Ophelia would shut up, look unhappy and retreat into herself in a way that he had discovered he absolutely couldn’t stand. She wasn’t sulking when she did it and she certainly wasn’t having a tantrum, but whatever the label he found it intolerable. Disappointment stifled her natural exuberance and made him feel like the sort of guy who kicked puppies. If, however, he gave her the right sort of attention, she glowed and displayed promising signs of turning into the perfect wife. Attentive and sexy, cute and entertaining, very low maintenance, he acknowledged with rich masculine satisfaction. In his opinion, marriage was simply a matter of skilled relationship management.

  Clad in a purple polka-dot bikini, Ophelia lay back in the shade, watching the sunlight dance across the glittering surface of the turquoise sea. It was a glorious day. The sundeck on Lysander’s magnificent yacht was wonderfully comfortable. She stifled a sigh as she registered that, once again, Lysander had deftly sidestepped her invitation to talk.

  ‘When I went to live with my grandmother, she sent me to a posh co-ed school,’ she said ruefully. ‘I didn’t fit in so I wasn’t very popular. I fell for a boy in upper sixth. I was ecstatic when he asked me out. But he dumped me after our first date because I wouldn’t have sex with him.’

  Recalling his own less than presentable youthful track record in the sexual stakes, Lysander contrived not to wince. ‘Boys of that age are a raging bunch of hormones.’

  ‘Yes, well, unfortunately for me, Todd was a liar too,’ Ophelia confided heavily. ‘He told everyone I’d slept with him. All the girls started calling me a slag.’

  ‘You’re very beautiful, yineka mou.’ Lithe and bronzed and still damp from his swim, Lysander settled down beside her. ‘I imagine that you inspired a lot of jealousy.’

  ‘I was badly bullied. When I tried to fight back, the abuse only got worse. That’s why I didn’t stay on at school to do my A-level exams.’

  ‘I bet the experience made you even stronger.’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted.

  Lysander pulled her to him. Arms wrapped round her, he eased her down onto powerful thighs. She responded with an enthusiastic hug and kissed his smooth, muscular shoulder, his strong brown throat and a sculpted cheekbone in quick succession. His handsome mouth quirked in the sun-warmed tumble of her golden hair. She was very affectionate and it rarely ended in a platonic embrace. He curved appreciative hands to the firm, rounded swell of her bottom and lifted her, clamping her knees to his waist, to carry her indoors.

  ‘Talk first?’ Ophelia whispered.

  Lysander groaned out loud and brought her into expressive connection with the heat and thrust of the erection moulded by his wet trunks.

  Even as she trembled in helpless response, she tipped her head back. ‘Why won’t you tell me anything about yourself?’ she pressed. ‘Why is it such a sensitive subject?’

  The suggestion that he might be sensitive affected Lysander much like a red rag waved in f
ront of a bull. ‘Why would it be sensitive? Perhaps I was trying to protect you from embarrassment. The worst thing that happened to me when I was a teenager?’ he repeated in a raw undertone. ‘Seeing my father’s photo in the newspaper when he was knifed to death in prison! He was a drug dealer.’

  Ophelia had frozen in shock in his arms. Aristide Metaxis? A drug dealer? What on earth was he talking about?

  ‘You’re the first person I have told about that, so that should please you. It’s very exclusive information,’ Lysander derided. ‘Virginia prefers to believe that I no longer recall being with my birth parents and I’ve never seen the point of upsetting her by telling her how good my memory of my early years is.’

  Ophelia’s stunned silence lasted all the way into the opulent saloon. She fixed questioning eyes on his lean hard-boned face. ‘Birth parents? Are you saying that Virginia and Aristide Metaxis adopted you?’

  ‘When I was five years old. My natural mother was a cousin of Aristide’s-a minor Metaxis and a drug addict disowned by her family. When she died of an overdose I was four years old and my father tried to use me as a bargaining chip to get money out of her parents. But they didn’t want to know and I was left in his charge to be beaten and neglected.’

  Ophelia was staring at him in horror. ‘I had no idea…I swear…I wouldn’t have kept on at you if I’d known. I would’ve minded my own business.’ Pale blue eyes swimming, she was in floods of guilty tears, for she finally understood why he was so reluctant to discuss his past.

  Startled but surprisingly touched by that emotional response, Lysander lowered her down onto the edge of the pale wood dining table and soothed her with words of Greek. ‘Why shouldn’t you know? I’m not used to talking about it. I’m grateful that the media never dug up that connection-’