by Lynne Graham
‘Let go of me...you’re flattening me!’ Leah slung back at him in fury.
‘Maybe you’ll get to like it.’ Nik shifted sinuously above her and meshed one hand into her tumbled hair. He stared down at her for a long, timeless moment. ‘Theos, I am so hungry for you, I ache,’ he muttered raggedly.
Leah’s entire body was an angry pillow of rejection. ‘Go find a bimbo, Nik,’ she urged shakily. ‘At least you won’t have to tell her lies.’
‘I’m not lying. How could I? A man’s body betrays his arousal.’ Sliding a lean thigh between hers, Nik moved against her, shamelessly introducing her to the hard bulge of his manhood. ‘No lie,’ he completed huskily.
Pink starred her cheeks even as an insidious heat flared between her thighs. ‘You’re disgusting.’
‘I want you.’ He buried his mouth hotly in a hollow just below her collarbone.
‘No!’ she whispered frantically, feeling that hot wire of sensation pull tight and reacting in panic.
He lifted his dark head, a blaze of desire in his hot gaze, and then he took her mouth with explosive passion. It was an act of possession, a stamp of ownership blatant in its intent to dominate. And she knew it, fought what he was making her feel with every fibre, but with every kiss, with every sweetly invasive thrust of his tongue, he taught her to want the next. Her hands rose, curved compulsively to the satin-smooth skin of his shoulders, holding him to her.
He rolled over, carrying her with him, and dispensed with her T-shirt by whipping it over her head. He uttered a savage groan as her unbound breasts rubbed against his hair-roughened chest and a split-second later she was lying flat again, his hands shaping the pouting mounds he had discovered.
She shut her eyes, gasping for breath, all reasoning power wrested from her. He found a distended pink nipple with his mouth and she dug her hips into the mattress, her back arching, a wildness she had never known tearing at her. Her heart was racing, her skin damp, every cell firing on red alert. He employed his tongue and his teeth in a grazing torment of a caress, cupping her breasts, sucking at the sensitive buds he had aroused. And she speared her fingers into the depths of his thick, silky hair and moaned with the intensity of the pleasure.
‘You are mine,’ Nik grated in a voice so tortured that she didn’t initially realise that he had spoken in English.
She wasn’t listening anyway. He was apart from her. She didn’t like it. She lifted her head and touched his sensual mouth with her lips and then, more daringly, with the tip of her tongue, unconsciously imitating what she had learnt from him. He shuddered and accepted the invitation with a raw passion that consumed her, his arms banding so tightly around her that she could barely breathe.
They rolled over again, welded together by an increasingly uncontrollable excitement. She heard something rip. It meant nothing to her. She was lost entirely in the heat and the scent and the feel of him. He felt so hot. His scent was an aphrodisiac that sent her senses spinning. Every tiny shift of his lean, muscular body against hers drove her wild, every caress an incitement to a hunger fast reaching fever pitch.
Her breasts had become incredibly sensitive and he played with the tender flesh with every atom of erotic expertise in his repertoire. His fingers flirted with the damp tangle of curls at the base of her taut stomach and she panted for oxygen and then moaned helplessly as his heated exploration roved to the very heart of her.
She couldn’t be still, couldn’t control her own limbs. The wild pulsebeat of desire had taken her over. Her hips jerked up in a rhythm she didn’t know but somehow found, her head thrown back, her slender throat extended. An intolerable ache was building up, making her sob out his name over and over again.
Nik said something in Greek and groaned against her reddened mouth like a man in torment. ‘I can’t wait.’
And then he was there where she most wanted him to be, pushing up her thighs with wildly impatient hands, sliding against the honeyed welcome he had prepared for himself. Her eyes flew wide, passion-glazed sapphire locking with burning jet. She tensed. She could feel him, hot and smooth and hard, suddenly threateningly male. She searched his taut features and saw such a look of vulnerability momentarily etched in those beautiful eyes that her heart lurched. And all of a sudden she wanted him so badly it hurt.
He entered her with a stifled groan, slowly, gently, and the pain she was braced to withstand was merely a fleeting stab of discomfort, quickly past and forgotten under the storm of fiery sensation which engulfed her. Instant meltdown. Every thrust lifted her higher, burning out everything but the feeling, submerging her in the hungry demand of her own need. He moved faster and she wrapped her arms round him, out of control, her heart pounding, her pulses racing, and then it happened, an explosion of white-hot heat flying up inside her, sending her out of her mind with its strength.
‘S’agapo...s’agapo.’ Nik drove into her violently and then shuddered with the force of his own release.
Blissfully pliant, still floating gloriously slowly back to earth, Leah snuggled into him as he slid onto his side, every quivering curve glued to him. She pressed her lips to a muscular brown shoulder, nostrils flaring at the musky damp scent of him. The light went out. Silence fell. Leah wandered over the edge of complete exhaustion into sleep, sprawled on top of him.
CHAPTER FIVE
NIK’S VOICE, talking Greek...but she was in bed. Her feathery lashes shot up, revealing startled sapphire-blue eyes. Her arrested attention fell on Nik. He had his back turned to her. He was standing at the window, one lean hand occupied by a mobile phone. Shock rolled over her in a debilitating wave. A Technicolor replay of the events of the night before sizzled through her brain, not a single X-rated second deleted.
And she couldn’t explain how it had happened. That was the most appalling discovery of all. One minute she had been screaming at him in fury, the next...? As she stiffened below the crumpled sheet, unfamiliar muscles complained and a faint ache intimately reminded her of the explosive passion which had flared up between them.
Hot colour burnished her cheeks. Had Nik not still been physically present, she would have believed it was all a dream...a nightmare, she amended with a shudder. She rubbed at her temples, vaguely conscious that her head was sore, her throat slightly raw.
Join the bimbo fraternity, she told herself with sudden fury. But join at the bottom of the class.
The average bimbo had a certain native cunning, knew where she was going and how. Leah had fallen at the first major hurdle. She had finally got up the courage to leave Nik, had felt good about that decision, indeed had felt empowered by it...and then he had brought her down on this bed and kissed her and inexplicably the balance of power had swung violently back to the enemy; for he was the enemy. Anyone capable of reducing her to this level was definitely the enemy. As she moved her head on the pillow, it swam.
Her tortured gaze rested on him, on the angle of his well-shaped dark head, the breadth of his shoulders beneath the fine cloth of his jacket, the jut of his narrow hips as he dug a lean hand into the pocket of his tailored trousers and splayed his long legs. And she was shattered by just how much she liked looking at him, how familiar every gesture was, every fluid change of stance. Pain traversed her tight features. She knew then how it had happened.
She had blocked out Nik’s attraction, blocked out the hunger, blocked out every thought of him. Self-preservation had taught her to do that. But all along that attraction had still been there, a sexual craving denied and buried and made all the more dangerous by that suppression. It was that same craving which had escaped and betrayed her in Nik’s arms. Given the opportunity, she had grabbed him...just as he had always said she would.
Hot moisture lashed the back of her eyelids but she wouldn’t let the tears fall. She really didn’t feel well but that was no good reason to give way to such weakness.
Nik turned and strolled across to the bed. He was too much of a predator not to smile, his sensual mouth curving with self-satisfaction as h
e looked down at her. He couldn’t even hide it. He settled down on the edge of the mattress, lustrous dark eyes tracking over her intently. ‘It’s a beautiful morning.’
She could hear the wind lashing the rain against the windows.
‘In Athens,’ he added softly, lifting a hand and skating a finger along the taut line of her lower lip. ‘And if you tell me you’re not coming— No, don’t you dare tell me that,’ he warned as her lips began to part. ‘Not after last night.’
‘That was just sex,’ Leah bit out, a heady flush staining her skin.
His smile merely grew in brilliance as he lowered his dark head. ‘Never just sex,’ he reproved huskily. ‘Fabulous, wonderful, incredible sex. If the jet wasn’t on stand-by, I’d still be in bed.’
Her teeth gritted. ‘Yesterday, I left you—’
‘Theos mou! And today we are closer than we have ever been. Life is so unpredictable,’ Nik pointed out with immovable self-assurance. ‘Think of this as the first day of our marriage.’
‘That is the most nauseating suggestion I’ve ever heard!’ Leah snapped, goaded beyond bearing. ‘I don’t want to go to Athens.’
Nik slid upright. ‘But you will. My family are all gathering to meet you at my mother’s home. I don’t care if I have to drag you kicking and screaming all the way to the airport,’ he delivered with sudden harshness, his strong jawline clenching. ‘To be blunt, agape mou, you made your decision last night!’
‘You did it deliberately!’ Leah gasped.
‘Yes.’ The unvarnished affirmative was like a slap in the face. ‘Now why don’t you get dressed? I instructed your maid to pack for you. I assume that what you have here wasn’t planned with Greece in mind.’
Wrapping herself awkwardly in the sheet under Nik’s grimly amused gaze, Leah was conscious of her swimming head and for the first time acknowledged that she really wasn’t feeling well at all.
She went into the bathroom. This was her penance, that was what it was. Her punishment for stupidity. The knowledge that she had helplessly connived in her own downfall was a bitter pill to swallow. But Leah made herself swallow it, trailing out every thought, every feeling with masochistic candour.
She had believed she was in love with Paul. Had Paul been her escape route from her marriage? Deep down had she needed the belief that someone loved her to work up the courage to leave Nik? The idea that she was loved had given her strength, had restored her faith in herself. But yesterday she had been forced to face reality.
Paul hadn’t loved her...but had she loved him? For a while he had made her feel good about herself. But yesterday she had seen through his superficial charm so clearly that she had marvelled that she had ever been taken in. Yes, it had been very painful, having to accept that he had viewed her as a purely profitable enterprise. But did she still long for him? No, there had been a terrible finality to the sense of alienation she had felt. She never wanted to see Paul again. So had she ever loved him? Or had it been an infatuation born of her loneliness?
Lord, the bathroom was hot. Leah sank down dizzily on the side of the bath in the midst of trying to dress herself. She felt as weak as a kitten and light-headed. It was becoming an immense challenge to concentrate but still she forced herself to the task.
Last night had been a ghastly mistake. Did she now hang her head in shame and let Nik browbeat her into staying with him even though she felt that that was the very worst thing she could do? She lifted an unsteady hand to her pounding temples and knew she had to make herself strong, knew she had to stand up for herself.
Emerging from the bathroom, she leant back against the door-frame for support. Nik surveyed her with narrowed eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I think I’ve got the flu...but that’s not important.’ Breathing in to sustain herself, she stared sickly back at him. ‘I’m staying here...not coming back to you—’
‘You’re not feeling well. You don’t know what you’re saying,’ Nik cut in. ‘I’ll take you down to the car.’
‘No!’ she gasped, tears of frustration and weakness gathering in her eyes as her wobbling lower limbs threatened to collapse under her. ‘Don’t you ever listen? You’re wrong for me!’
Nik swept her up in his arms in spite of her feeble attempt to evade him.
‘Please!’ Her failure to get through to him or persuade him to put her down again drove her crazy. ‘I don’t want to go with you. I want to stay here.’
‘Theos...you’re expecting him, aren’t you?’ he raked down at her with barely restrained anger. ‘If you weren’t sick I’d shake you!’
Her cases were already gone, she saw in horror as Nik thrust open the door of her room, holding her steady with one powerful arm.
‘Let me go!’ Her swimming head fell back against his shoulder as he strode down the corridor.
‘If I let you go you’ll fall in a heap at my feet.’ He muttered something guttural in Greek, his set, dark features as unyielding as stone as he hit the call button for the lift again with positive violence.
‘I want a divorce...I’m not going to Greece!’ she gasped strickenly.
‘You should have thought of that last night.’ He stepped into the lift.
‘It was a mistake!’ she protested, unable even to lift her pounding head. ‘Put me down...’
‘You don’t know what you’re doing or saying,’ Nik contended with tenacious determination, refusing even to meet her distressed gaze.
‘I know...’ She would have screamed the assurance had she had the strength. As it was, the amount of energy she had expended on frantic argument and the stress of her own emotional conflict had absolutely drained her. Nick’s strong, dark features blurred as her weighted eyelids lowered. ‘I hate you,’ she mumbled hoarsely.
She drifted in and out of awareness from that point, too utterly wretched to consider anything but her own physical misery. Nik carried her on to the jet, wrapped in a blanket, and a while later she surfaced to hear a vaguely familiar voice sigh, ‘The poor thing. I feel so sorry for her,’ with a kind of oozing insincerity that grated on her hearing.
She recognised the stewardess, sultry wine-tinted mouth to the fore as she passed Nik a glass. As Nik lifted Leah and tilted the contents of the glass to her mouth, she said, ‘She hopes it’s fatal.’
‘Drink; it’ll make you feel better,’ Nik urged.
Nothing would. Bitterness enveloped Leah. Nik had taken cruel advantage of her illness. Was nothing sacrosanct? As another shiver racked her aching body and she drank the noxious liquid because she knew that argument was futile, she looked up at him with condemning sapphire eyes. An act which ran little short of kidnapping was inexcusable.
‘I couldn’t leave you alone in a hotel in this condition,’ Nik murmured as if she had spoken out loud.
‘I’ll never forgive you,’ Leah mumbled. ‘I hope you catch it!’
Unexpectedly he laughed, the arm cradled round her shoulders curving her close in a blatant challenging of contagion which didn’t surprise her. Nik was never ill. The very idea amused him. He had a godlike faith in his own robust health.
Her impressions became increasingly more fleeting from that point on. She lost her sense of time, her ability to distinguish between waking and sleeping. Had she been sleeping? she wondered when her eyes took in the crowds milling around them. A fleeting exchange of Greek told her that they must have landed. It was the airport, she decided bitterly, and shut her eyes again, engulfed by a drowning sense of failure.
A sharp exchange of voices dragged her back to awareness. She was laid down on something, the blanket removed, a thermometer thrust into her dry mouth. Her heavy eyelids lifted on a white ceiling. Not an airport, a hospital, she decided. She could hear Nik talking. He sounded angry, upset, and the other voice, which had been equally angry, was suddenly soft, soothing...a richly expressive, very female voice. With an enormous effort, Leah turned her head to one side.
A woman in a white coat stood in the circle of Nik’s arms. With on
e slim hand she was smoothing his black hair, caressing his hard jawline, and even as Leah looked she was reaching up to kiss him. Her lashes dropped again in shock.
The thermometer was removed...soon afterwards, a long time afterwards? She was sliding in and out of awareness. The next time she opened her eyes the woman was giving something to Nik and she saw her properly—the superb oval of her classically beautiful face below her crown of glossy black hair, the creamy skin and the great dark eyes brimming with so much warmth as they rested on Nik. A dry cough jolted through Leah and both heads spun round.
Nik moved first. ‘I thought you were asleep. This is Dr Kiriakos—’
‘Eleni,’ his companion inserted with an air of rather forced informality as she regarded Leah with cool, professional distance. ‘I am afraid that you will feel worse before you feel better, Leah.’
Leah closed her eyes, shutting them out in self-defence. She already felt a hundred times worse. She could feel her crumpled clothes, shiny, perspiring face and limp, damp hair. Her very bones were hurting. She wanted to cry but she didn’t have the energy. Dear God, he brought me to his mistress for treatment; only Nik could be that cruel. Never in her life had Leah felt more savaged.
‘I was really scared,’ Nik muttered roughly as he carried her somewhere. ‘You looked so ill. I thought it might be pneumonia or something. And I didn’t know what to do and I panicked.’
Panicked? Nik? It was an unlikely image in Leah’s disorientated mind. Then he was talking to someone in Greek, yet another female, this one younger, warmer, less controlled. Leah was dimly aware of what sounded like a pretty heated argument and then she drifted off again, too wretched to care what was happening to her or around her.
* * *
There was a rushing sound somewhere in the background. Leah’s memory banks produced a jumbled mass of images and feelings. She had had a fever. She had gone from perspiring, shivering misery into the heat of what had felt like hell, with a whirling Catherine wheel of pain behind her temples. Day and night had merged indistinguishably.
