‘Andros—no,’ she murmured shakily and tried a squirming shift of her body in an attempt to evade what was going to come.
His hand slid further around her waist and banded her to him. ‘Say that again,’ he gritted.
‘Say what?’ Too distracted by his closeness, she just looked blank.
‘Andros,’ he murmured in that low, deep, huskily sensual way that robbed her of her ability to breathe. Had she said his name like that? She couldn’t remember. She hoped she hadn’t because it gave too much away.
His other hand came up to coil around the thick silk lock of her pony-tail and began tugging with gentle relentlessness so he could gain access to the long column of her neck. She knew what was coming, her breath caught in her throat. If she let him put his tongue to that spot beneath her earlobe she was going to explode in a shower of electric delight.
‘Say it,’ he repeated, his eyes dark like molasses, his face locked in the taut mask of a man on the edge. His lips had parted, and were coming closer to her angled neck.
She released a stifled choke. ‘Andros,’ she whispered.
His mouth diverted. It was so quick, so rewarding that she didn’t stand a single chance. He claimed her mouth with devastating promise. He devoured it while she fought for breath. Her breasts heaved against his hard chest, her hips ground against the glorious power of his. Nothing went to waste, the kiss, touch, taste, scents, and even the sounds they made were collected in and used to enhance the whole experience.
It had always been like this. One second nothing, the next they were embroiled in a heady, sensuous feast. His fingers were in her hair. The next moment it was flowing over his hand and she quivered with pleasure because it always felt so very sexy when he set it free like this. Her T-shirt was easy; it disappeared without a trace. His shirt came next, revealing a torso that made her groan as she scraped her fingernails into the curling black mass of hair.
They kissed like maniacs; she nipped his lip, he bit back. Their tongues danced, their eyes locked together. She slid down his zip and covered him with the flat of her hand. He groaned something. He was hot and hard and out of control but then so was she. With one of his swift silent moves he picked her up and put her down on the divan bed then bent to rake the rest of her clothes down her legs.
‘I’m going to eat you alive,’ he said as he stripped himself naked. And he meant it. He began by bending his dark head and fastening on to one of her breasts. She squirmed with pleasure, her fingers clutching at his shoulders so she could pull him down next to her on the bed. He was magnificent, he was beautiful, his skin felt like oiled leather and she stroked and scored and kneaded it until he couldn’t take any more and came to claim her mouth.
Every single inch of him was pumped up and hard with arousal. Every single inch of her was lost in a world of fine, hungry tremors that demanded to be quelled. They kissed, they touched, they rolled as a single sensual unit. When he reached between her legs, she cried out so keenly that he uttered a black oath and had to smother the sound with his mouth. The room shimmered in the golden light of the low afternoon sun. The heat was tremendous, their bodies bathed in sweat. His first plunge into her body brought forth another keening cry. He muffled this one with his hand. She turned her teeth on him, latching on to the side of his palm until he groaned in agonised pleasure, then pulled the hand away and finally buried his mouth in her neck.
Starbursts swirled in the steamy atmosphere. Her legs wrapped around his waist. With each thrust of his body she released another thickened cry and he groaned deep in his throat. It was a blistering, blinding coupling, incandescent and uncompromisingly indulgent in every sense. He brought her to the edge, then framed her face with his hands. His heart was pounding. His eyes were black, his beautiful mouth tight, his total commitment to what was about to happen holding his features drawn and tense.
The first flutters of orgasm took her breath away. He groaned, ‘Oh, my God,’ as her muscles rippled along the length of his shaft. His eyes closed, her eyes closed, and each flutter lengthened with each driving thrust until the whole experience became one long, tempestuous shower of sensation. It had always been like this for them; there wasn’t a place where they could separate the sensuous storm at work inside each other.
Tenderness followed. It had to. They couldn’t share something so deeply intimate and special then get up and walk away. Leandros rolled onto his back and took Isobel with him, curving her into his side with a possessive arm while he took deep breaths. Her cheek lay in the damp hollow of his shoulder; her arm lay heavy across his chest. She could feel the aftershocks at work inside him and turned her mouth to anoint him with a slow, moist kiss. It was one of those exquisite moments in time when nothing else mattered but what they were feeling for each other and through each other.
Then the lights flicked on. The small refrigerator in the corner began to whir. Muffled cheers sounded through the thin walls and reality returned with the electricity.
Leandros jerked into a sitting position then jackknifed off the bed. ‘Tell me again that this bed is not big enough for two people,’ he rasped and strode off to her tiny bathroom, slamming the door behind him in his wake.
He must be mad, he told himself as he turned on the poor excuse for a shower and attempted to wash the sweat from his flesh with tepid water that dribbled rather than sprayed.
Did he really want all of this back again? Did he want to feel so out of control all the time that he could barely think? She touched him and his skin was enlivened, she spat fury at him and it excited him out of all that was sane. She hated his family, she hated his lifestyle, she had learned his language but had not bothered to tell him so she could listen in like a sneaky spy on every conversation happening around her. She was already threatening to cause trouble and he would be a fool not to take her seriously.
He knew her. She was a witch and a hellion. Had he not reminded himself of these things only two weeks ago in Spain? Sluicing water down the flatness of his stomach, his hand brushed over the spot where she had laid her final kiss. Sensation quivered through him; hot and sweet, it caused a fresh eruption of flagrant passion to flow through his blood. Her barbs were not always sharp, he recognised grimly as he switched off the shower.
Grabbing one of the stiff hotel towels, he began to rub himself dry with it. It smelled of Isobel—her perfume was suddenly back on his skin and floating round his senses like a magic potion meant to keep him permanently bewitched. Did this dump of a hotel not even change the towels daily? Glancing around the tiny bathroom, he saw the signs of female occupation but no sign of a man’s stamp anywhere.
No hint of a man’s scent lay on the towels. Was she telling the truth? Ah, he would be a bigger fool to believe it, he told himself harshly. If the muscle-bound hulk did not know what it was like to fall apart in that woman’s arms then he was no man, in his estimation.
Did he really want all of this back in his life?
It had been a day of madness, that was all; pure madness. He had seen and remembered and wanted and now had. It should be enough to let the rest of Isobel return to her other life so he could return to his.
But it wasn’t, and he knew it the moment he stepped out of the bathroom with one of the towels wrapped round his hips. She was standing by the window in a blue towelling bathrobe, which looked familiar to him. Could it be the same one of his from his house in Athens that she used to pinch all the time because she liked to feel him close to her skin? Her hair lay down the back of it, her hands were lost in its cavernous pockets. He wanted to go over there and wind his arms around her but anger and frustration and outright damn need held him back from doing it.
Did he want to let her go again? Not in this lifetime. ‘You can use the bathroom now,’ he said as calmly as he could do and turned away from her.
‘I will when you’ve gone,’ she replied.
He was about to recover his scattered clothes when she said that but his movements froze on a sudden warning sting. �
��In case you have forgotten,’ he finished, bending to pick up his trousers, ‘you are coming with me.’
‘No, I’m not.’
His legs suddenly felt like lead beneath him. ‘Of course you are,’ he insisted. ‘You cannot stay in this place, and your mother is…’
She turned to look at him then. His ribcage tightened in response. She looked so pale and fragile—ethereal, as if she could float away if the window were open.
‘I would appreciate it if you could put my mother up for tonight,’ she requested politely. ‘You are right about this hotel; it isn’t the place for her and I don’t want to upset her further by moving her on again. But I’ll stay here and collect her tomorrow in time for us to catch our flight home.’
‘You come with me,’ he insisted yet again and did not want to think about tomorrow.
But she shook her head. ‘I think we’ve made enough mistakes for one day.’
‘This is not a mistake.’ Had he really just said that? While he had been locked away in the bathroom he had agreed with her. Now, when he could look at her again, he did not want it to be a mistake! ‘We’ve just made love—’
‘No,’ she denied that, and what made it all the more frightening was that she did it so calmly. ‘You’ve made your point.’ A slight tilt of her head acknowledged his success at it. ‘Two can lie in that narrow bed—I stand corrected. Now I would like you to leave.’
Leave, he repeated inwardly. She was dismissing him. ‘So that the Adonis can get back in?’
Spark, he urged her silently. Say something like—Of course, he’s waiting outside the door! Then I can retaliate swiftly. I can toss you back down on that blasted bed!
But she didn’t say anything. She just turned and walked into the bathroom and left him standing there like a fool!
CHAPTER FIVE
LEANDROS turned to stare at the small hotel bedroom, with its scuffed grey marble flooring and the furniture that must have been there since the First World War. He stared at the bed with its coffee-coloured sheets covered with an orange spread made of cheap nylon, and thought of his own luxurious seven-foot bed set upon smooth white tiling and draped in cool mint-green silk over the finest white cotton sheets.
No effort was required to place Isobel’s image on the mint-green coverlet, or to sit her cross-legged on the cool white floor while she sorted through a new set of photographs. Wherever he placed her in his bedroom, she created a glorious contrast to everything. He had missed that contrast in more ways than he had dared let himself know.
But he now had to ask himself if it was because he had missed her that he had gone to Spain and rarely returned to Athens for two years. Was it her ghost that had driven him out of his home and even now forced him to take a deep breath before he could walk back into it?
The sound of the shower being shut off had him moving out of his bleak stasis. By the time the bathroom door opened he knew what was going to happen next and that Isobel was going to have to accept it.
‘What do you think you are doing?’ Isobel came to a halt in surprised protest.
He was dressed and in the process of packing her suitcase. Beside the case, draped like a challenge on the bed, lay fresh underwear and the only dress she had brought with her to Greece.
‘I believe that must be obvious,’ he answered coolly.
‘But I said…’
His glance flicked towards her. The way it slithered down her front made her heart give a shuddering thump. ‘I recognise the robe,’ he announced.
Without thought, her fingers went up to clutch the edges of her robe together across her throat. ‘I…’
‘You what?’ he prompted, his dark eyebrows rising to challenge the guilty flush trying to mount her cheeks. ‘You took it with you by mistake when you left me, then forgot to send it back to me? Or you stole it because you needed to take a part of me with you and have been hugging me next to your beautiful skin each time you have worn it since?’
‘It’s comfortable, that’s all,’ she snapped, shifting impatiently. ‘If you want it back—’
‘Yes, please.’
Without hesitation he walked towards her as if he was going to drag the stupid robe from her back! His dark eyes mocked the jerky step she took. They also saw the darkening swirl taking place in her eyes. He knew what that swirl meant. He knew everything about her.
Too much! she acknowledged helplessly as her senses began to clamour and he reached towards her with a hand. Prising her unwilling fingers free of the robe’s collar, he then bent his dark head, buried his face in the soft towelling and inhaled.
‘Wh-what are you doing?’ she jerked out on a strangled breath.
‘I am checking to see if you douse the robe with my aftershave,’ he explained as he lifted his head. ‘But no,’ he sighed. ‘It smells of you.’ He took a step closer. ‘And the promise of what awaits beneath.’
‘I wish you would just stop this and leave,’ she murmured crossly.
‘Liar,’ he drawled. ‘What you want is for me to take the robe from you. You would love me to rip the thing from your body then throw you back on the bed and spend the next few minutes reminding you why I am still here!’
She was beginning to tremble. ‘This is intimidation.’
‘No,’ he denied. ‘It is a case of pandering to your preference for melodrama.’ His fingers moved, releasing the towelling so he could brush a lazy fingertip across her pouting bottom lip. There was contempt in the small action but still her lip pulsed as the finger moved; it heated and quivered. ‘You want me to make you surrender,’ he said huskily. ‘You would love me to use due force to make you come home with me so that you do not have to give up your precious stubbornness.’
Was he right? Yes, he was right, she conceded bleakly. Beneath the robe her body was already alive with anticipation, her breasts were tight, her abdomen making those soft, deep, pulsing movements that said fresh arousal was on its way.
With a toss of her head, she displaced his finger. ‘It isn’t home to me,’ she denounced, utilising that stubbornness he spoke about. Then spoiled it all when her tongue slipped out to moisten the point where his finger had lingered.
Dark lashes lowered over even darker eyes as he watched the revealing little gesture. The power of his sexuality had never been a question for any woman who could witness that look. He was a dark golden figure with a dark, honeyed, sensual promise attached to everything he did.
‘But it will be,’ he assured, dragging her attention back to the argument. ‘Just as soon as you take off that robe and put on the clothes I have laid out for you, then we will drive home, together, as husbands and wives do—and find the nearest bed to finish what we have started here.’
With that, he turned and walked back to the suitcase, leaving her standing there having to deal with a sense of quivering frustration, which converted itself into a spitting cat. ‘Will Diantha be joining us for a cosy little three-some?’ she asked tartly. ‘Or is this the point where I call up Clive and invite him along just in case we need the extra…?’
Her tongue cleaved itself to the roof of her mouth when he looked at her. Like the swinging gauge on a barometer, his mood had turned from tauntingly sexual to a cold contempt.
‘There is no Diantha. There is no Adonis,’ he clipped out with thin incision. ‘This will be the last time either name will be mentioned in the context of our marriage again. Our marriage has just been re-consummated in this bed,’ he added tightly. ‘Here in Greece men still hold some authority over their women. Don’t force me to impress upon you what that means, Isobel.’
He would, too, she realised as she stood staring at him while her mind absorbed his coldly angry expression. His willingness to be ruthless if she forced him into it was scoring lines of grim certainty into the lean cast of his face. Maybe she paled; she was certainly taken aback by his manner. They’d had many fights in their short-lived, highly volatile marriage, but she could not remember another time when he had used an outright threat
.
Frissons sparked from one set of eyes to the other. Her fingers jerked up to clutch the robe again, closing the soft towelling across the pulse working in her throat. He watched it happen while he waited for a response from her. She saw a hard man, a tough man—much tougher than he had been three years ago. It was as if those years had taught him how to hone his strengths and use them to his own advantage. Four years ago he had been coming to terms with the knowledge that he no longer had a father to check every decision he made before it was put into action. Aristotle had been dead for only six months when Leandros and Isobel married. Leandros had been living with the stress of having to walk in a highly revered man’s shoes. Advisors had hung around him like circling vultures, vying for a position of power in the new order of things that would eventually emerge from the melting pot of chaos into which his father’s sudden death had thrown the Petronades empire. Leandros had lived in a permanent preoccupied state in which small things irritated the hell out of him because the big things totally obsessed his mind.
She had been a small thing. She had been a nagging irritant that he did not need during this dangerous crossover period of his life. Oh, he had loved her to begin with. During that two-week sojourn in London, when most of the vultures had been left behind in Athens, he had been able to cast off his cloak of responsibility and become a carefree young man again for a while. So they met, fell in love, almost drowned in their happiness. Then they had come here to Athens, and he’d donned his heavy cloak again and become a stranger to her.
She hadn’t understood then. She had been too young—only twenty-two herself. She had been too demanding, selfish and possessive and resentful of everything he placed higher on his list of priorities than her. Understanding had come slowly during the years they’d been separated, though the resentments had remained and hurts he’d inflicted upon her had refused to heal.
But she was now realising that Leandros had changed also. The circling vultures were no longer in evidence. The stress-packed frown of constant decision-making no longer creased his brow. He had grown into his father’s shoes—had maybe even outgrown them to become a man who answered to no one, and was even prepared to be ruthless to get his own way.
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