A Deal at the Altar

by Lynne Graham

  When Sergios strolled into the bedroom, Bee was putting the finishing touches to her appearance. Her full-length blue evening dress fitted her like a glove without showing a surplus inch of flesh. His brilliant eyes narrowing, she watched in the mirror as Sergios subjected her to a considering appraisal.

  ‘Sexy,’ he pronounced approvingly.

  Bee stiffened defensively. ‘It’s high at the neck and it doesn’t even show my legs,’ she argued.

  Her immediate protest at his comment made amusement curl the corners of his handsome mouth. He scanned the lush swell of breast and derriere so clearly defined by the clinging fabric and said nothing at all. No skin might be on show but the dress hugged her every curve and those she had in abundance.

  He touched the end of a straying strand of her dark hair where it lay on her shoulder. ‘Grow your hair again. I liked it longer.’

  ‘Are you used to women doing what you like with their appearance?’ Bee prompted a tad sourly.

  ‘Yes,’ Sergios proclaimed without a shred of discomfiture.

  ‘Any other orders, boss?’ Bee could not resist the crack.

  ‘Smile and relax,’ he urged. ‘Nectarios is already very taken with you. He sees a big improvement in his great-grandsons—’

  ‘My goodness, it’s not down to my influence. I’ve only been with the children a few weeks—’

  ‘But they didn’t see that much of their own mother, so your attention means a great deal to them.’

  ‘Why didn’t they see much of their mother?’

  ‘She was a popular TV presenter and rarely at home. Timon adored her.’

  Suddenly she wanted to know if Sergios had adored Krista but she found that she couldn’t imagine him in thrall to a woman, eager to impress and please. There was a bone-deep toughness and a reserve to Sergios that suggested that nothing less than pole position in a relationship would satisfy him. Yet he had only been twenty-one when he wed Krista and to marry so young he must have been a good deal less cynical about the institution of marriage. Comparing that to his attitude at their wedding the day before, Bee could only assume that he had got badly burned by Krista in some way. Of course there was the alternative view that losing Krista and their unborn child had hurt him so much that he had resolved never to fall in love or marry again.

  Suddenly irritated by her curiosity, she asked herself why she should care. He had married her purely for the sake of Timon’s children and she needed to remember that. This afternoon he had wanted to bed her and the motivation for that staggering turnaround was not that hard to work out, Bee reflected ruefully. How many other sexual options could this little Greek island offer Sergios? He was supposed to be on his honeymoon and if he wanted his grandfather to believe that it was a normal marriage he could scarcely ditch his bride and rush off to seek satisfaction in some other woman’s bed. So, for the present, Sergios was trapped in a masquerade and Bee had become miraculously desirable through a complete absence of competition. Right now she was the only option her sensual Greek husband had. It was an acknowledgement that would certainly ensure she didn’t develop a swollen head about the precise nature of her attractions.

  Dinner was served on a terrace outside the formal dining room. The sun was going down over the sea in fiery splendour and the food was delicious. Bee ate with relish while Nectarios entertained her with stories about the history of the island and family ownership. As the two men finally succumbed to catching up on business, it amused her to recognise how alike Sergios and his grandfather were in looks and mannerisms and she told them she would not be offended if they switched to talking in Greek. She would have to learn the language and quickly, she recognised, grateful that learning languages came relatively easily to her, for it was essential that she be able to communicate effectively with the staff and the children. She did not want to be shut out of half of the conversations going on around her.

  She contemplated Sergios over her fresh fruit dessert. The low lights gleamed over his cropped black hair and cast shadows on his strong bronzed profile. He was extraordinarily handsome and even the way he moved was sensual, she thought abstractedly, her eyes following the elegant arc inscribed by an eloquent hand as he spoke. When she glanced up and realised that Nectarios was watching her watch Sergios she went pink. A few minutes later she said it was time she looked in on the children and she left the table.

  Having checked on the kids and agreed to take Paris down to the beach in the morning, Bee walked past the door of the main bedroom and on up the final flight of stairs to the bedroom at the top of the tower. Earlier that evening she had found the room and had decided that it would do her nicely as a bolthole. Hadn’t she read somewhere recently that it was fashionable for couples with sufficient space in their homes to pursue a better night’s sleep by occupying different bedrooms? Separate beds need not mean that anyone’s relationship was on the rocks and that was what she would tell Sergios if he tried to object.

  She slid on a light cotton nightdress that was far from glamorous, for she had disdained the silk and satin lingerie the personal shopper had directed her towards in London. She climbed into her big comfortable bed and lay with her cooling limbs splayed in a starfish shape to let all her tension drain away. In time this house and the new life she was leading would feel familiar and comfortable, she told herself soothingly.

  The door opened and she jerked in surprise, lifting her head several inches off the pillow to peer across the room. The light from the stairwell fell on Sergios’s lean strong features and glimmered over his bare, hair-roughened chest and the towel that appeared to be all he was wearing. Bee’s short-lived relaxation dive-bombed and her limbs scissored back together again as she sat up and switched on the light.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  ‘As you’ve deserted the marital bed so must I. Wherever we sleep, we stay together,’ Sergios spelt out with hard dark eyes and an unyielding angle to his jaw line.

  Bee was intimidated by the amount of naked masculine flesh on view. He was tall and broad and, stripped, his big strong shoulders, powerful torso and tight flat stomach were distinctly imposing. ‘Don’t you dare take off that towel!’ she warned him thinly.

  ‘Don’t be such a prude,’ Sergios told her impatiently. ‘I sleep naked. I always have.’

  ‘I can’t treat you like a brother if I’ve seen you naked!’ Bee snapped back in embarrassment.

  Sergios, engaged in wondering why she would want to treat him like a brother when his own intentions had roamed so far from the platonic plane, threw up both hands in a sudden gesture of exasperation. ‘You must’ve seen loads of guys naked!’

  ‘Oh, is that a fact?’ Bee hissed, insulted by that assumption. ‘You think I’ve slept with a lot of men?’

  ‘I’ve had quite a few women. I’m not a hypocrite,’ Sergios said drily.

  Bee was seething. ‘FYI some of us are a little more particular.’

  ‘Did they all wear pyjamas?’ Sergios asked, unable to resist that crack as his wondering gaze took in the full horror of the nightdress she wore: a baggy cotton monstrosity edged with fussy lace.

  Bee cringed inwardly. ‘There hasn’t actually been anyone yet,’ she admitted, hoping dismay at her inexperience would persuade him that she really did need her privacy.

  Sergios came to an abrupt halt about ten feet from the foot of the bed. A frown had drawn his brows together. ‘You can’t mean that you’ve never had a lover…’

  Bee reddened but she lifted and dropped both shoulders in a dismissive shrug as though the subject did not bother her at all. ‘I haven’t.’

  Momentarily, Sergios was transfixed by the concept. He had believed virgins had died out around the same time as efficient contraception was developed. He had certainly never expected to find one in his bed. He swung on his heel and strode back out o
f the room without another word. Released from stasis, Bee breathed in slow and deep and switched out the light. Well, that news had certainly cooled his jets, she conceded. She had fallen out of the challenge category into the sort of unknown territory he evidently had no desire to explore.

  But in that conviction Bee was wrong for the bedroom door opened again, startling her, and she raised herself on her elbows with a frown. Sergios was back, minus the towel and clad in a pair of black boxers, which did spectacularly little to conceal the muscular strength and bronzed beauty of his powerfully masculine body.

  Sergios got into the far side of the bed in silence. A virgin, he was thinking with unholy fascination, a novelty calculated to appeal to even the most jaded palate.

  Bee’s toes encountered a masculine leg and she pulled hurriedly away as if she had been burned by the contact. His persistence in doing exactly what he wanted to do, regardless of her objections, was beginning to wear down even her nerves of steel.

  ‘I’ve never gone to bed with a virgin before…’ Sergios informed her in his deep drawl. ‘In today’s world you’re as rare as a dinosaur.’

  And at that astonishing assurance a bubble of unquenchable mirth formed and swelled in Bee’s chest and then floated up into her throat to almost choke her before she finally gave vent to her laughter.

  Sergios snaked out an arm and hauled her close. ‘I wasn’t trying to be funny.’

  ‘Try to picture yourself as a d-dinosaur!’ Bee advised, shaking with a hilarity she could not restrain. ‘I just hope you weren’t thinking of a T-Rex.’

  Her laughter was even more of a surprise to a man who took life very seriously and sex more seriously still. He held her while wave after wave of uncontrollable amusement rippled through her curvy body and rendered her helpless. Her breasts rubbed his chest, her thighs shifted against his and he breathed in the soapy scent of her, picturing her equally helpless from passion in his arms. Desire roared through him afresh with a savagery that took even him aback.

  Knotting one hand into the fall of her hair to hold her steady, Sergios dipped his tongue between her parted lips with erotic heat. All lingering amusement left her in the space of a moment as he plundered her ready response, nibbling and suckling at her full lower lip, skating an exploration over the sensitive roof of her mouth until her toes were curling and she was stretching up to him helpless in the grip of her need for more.

  ‘Sergios…’ she framed in vague protest when he let her breathe again.

  ‘You’ll still be a virgin in the morning,’ Sergios murmured. ‘I promise, yineka mou.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BEE was trembling, insanely conscious of every erogenous zone on her body, but that saying that curiosity had killed the cat was playing in the back of her mind as well. Sergios was playing a game with her and she didn’t know the rules, was convinced that she would live to regret letting down her defences. But there was a tightening sense of pressure at the heart of her that pulled tighter with every insidious flick of his tongue against hers and she could not resist its sway.

  He inched the nightdress down over her slim shoulders, trapping her arms at the same time as he exposed her generous breasts. In the moonlight pouring through the filmy drapes those high round swells were the most tempting he had ever seen. He kneaded them with firm hands, closed his mouth hungrily to a rigid pink nipple and teased with his lips and his teeth while her back arched and she whimpered beneath his attentions. He switched his focus to her other breast, treating her to one tantalising caress after another, steadily utilising more pressure and urgency on her increasingly sensitised flesh.

  It was like being taken apart and put together again in a different sequence, Bee acknowledged in an agony of uncertainty that did nothing to stop the raging hunger that controlled her. She might never be the same again yet she still could not summon the will power to pull back or insist that he stop touching her. Her clenching fingers delved into his luxuriant hair while he stroked deliciously at her pointed nipples and kissed and licked his passage across the creamy slopes of her breasts before possessing her mouth again, drinking deep from her. She was wildly, seethingly aware of the brimming heat and moisture between her thighs and the ache of longing that had her hips digging into the bed beneath her. Her hands shifted back and forth across his satin-smooth shoulders as the knot of tension at the heart of her built and built. She pushed up to him desperate for more powerful sensation and she couldn’t stay still then, couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t stop the gasps emanating from her throat either. And then suddenly it was all coalescing into one explosive response and she was arching and jerking and crying out in ecstasy as her body took her soaring onto another plane and there was nothing she could do to control any of it.

  Afterwards, Bee wanted to leap out of the bed and run but there was nowhere to run to. The thought of cowering behind the bathroom door was not appealing. Still in his arms, she lay like a stone that had been dropped from a height, insanely conscious of her ragged breathing and racing heartbeat, not to mention the feel of his potent arousal against her hip. Dear heaven, what had she done?

  ‘That was interesting,’ Sergios purred with dark amusement. ‘Definitely an ice breaker.’

  ‘Er…you…?’ Bee mumbled unevenly, conscious that events had been distinctly one-sided.

  ‘I’ll have a cold shower,’ Sergios said piously.

  Her face burning, Bee was relieved by the get-out clause. She knew it was selfish to be relieved but she was out of her depth and feeling it. She hadn’t known, hadn’t even guessed that she could reach a climax that way and she was not pleased that he had put her on that path of sexual discovery.

  ‘You’re a very passionate woman, moli mou,’ Sergios intoned as he vaulted out of bed. ‘Obviously Townsend wasn’t the right guy for you.’

  Bee went rigid. ‘What do you know about Jon?’

  Sergios paused in the doorway of the bathroom and swung back. ‘More than you were prepared to tell me,’ he admitted unrepentantly. ‘I had him checked out.’

  ‘You did…what?’ Bee was righting her nightdress and trying to get out of bed at one and the same time, the simultaneous actions resulting in a clumsy manoeuvre that only infuriated her more. ‘Why on earth did you do that? I told you he was a friend of mine—’

  ‘But he wasn’t—he was your ex, which made the little get-together in the bar rather less innocent, moli mou,’ Sergios intoned, studying her furious face with level dark eyes. ‘But, as I see it, since you never slept with him he doesn’t really count.’

  ‘If you ever touch me again I’ll scream.’

  ‘No complaints on that score. I love the way you scream in my arms,’ Sergios traded with silky sardonic bite and shut the bathroom door.

  Bee knotted her hands into furious fists and contemplated throwing something at that closed door. It would be childish and she was not childish. But she had let herself down a bucketful by succumbing to his sexual magnetism. A tide of irritation swept through her then. No wonder he had called her a prude. She might feel mortified but they had hardly done anything in terms of sex. She was taking it all far too seriously and it would be much cooler to behave as though nothing worthy of note had happened.

  But, without a doubt, Sergios was lethal between the sheets. The minute he got in she should have got out because compared with him she was a total novice and certain to come off worse from any encounter. And why had he checked Jon Townsend out after her single trivial meeting with her former boyfriend? Didn’t Sergios trust anybody? Obviously not. How often had he been betrayed to become that suspicious of other human beings? It was a sobering thought and, although he had not been in love with her sister, Zara had agreed to marry him and then let him down. Perhaps had Bee chosen to be more honest with him he might have had more faith in her.

  Around that point of
self-examination, Bee must have drifted off to sleep because she wakened when Sergios stowed her into a cold bed. ‘Er… .what…where…Sergios?’

  ‘Go back to sleep, Beatriz,’ he intoned.

  Her eyes fluttered briefly open on a view of the circular main bedroom in the moonlight and she simply turned over and closed her eyes again, too exhausted to protest. She woke alone in the morning, only the indent on the pillow across from hers telling her that she had had company. After a quick shower she put on Bermuda shorts and a sapphire-blue tee for the trip to the beach she had promised the boys. Nectarios was reading a newspaper out on the terrace where Androula brought Beatriz tea and toast.

  ‘Sergios is in the office working,’ his grandfather told her helpfully, folding his paper and setting it aside. ‘What are you planning to do today?’

  ‘Take the boys to the beach,’ Bee confided.

  ‘Beatriz…this is your honeymoon,’ the elderly Greek remarked thoughtfully. ‘Let the children take a back seat for a while and drag my grandson out of his office.’

  Her imagination baulked at the image of getting Sergios to do anything against his will, but she could see that Nectarios was already picking up flaws in their behaviour as a newly married couple. He asked her about her mother and said he was looking forward to meeting her. Having eaten, Bee went off to find Sergios, although after their intimate encounter the night before she would have preferred to avoid him.