by Penny Jordan
‘Why did you think I would want to punish you?’ Kieron asked abruptly when they were alone. Briony had expected him to leave the room with Héloise and Nicky, but he had stayed, going to stand by the window where he had stared out to sea, before turning to confront her with the question.
‘Did I?’ she asked huskily, wetting her dry lips. ‘I.…’
‘In your dreams…during your fever.…It was constantly on your mind,’ Kieron said harshly. ‘You kept begging me to forgive you and pleading with me not to hurt you any more.’
‘I was frightened you’d blame me for not taking proper care of Nicky,’ Briony admitted breathlessly. ‘Will you leave me now, please, Kieron? I…I’m…rather tired.’
She could not endure any more of his questions. If he continued to probe and press like this she would be bound to betray herself and admit that it had been his love and understanding she had been pleading for.
When he had gone she couldn’t sleep. She had a shower and went back to bed, counting sheep until at last exhaustion claimed her.
She had the dream again. The one where she woke up and Kieron wasn’t there, and in her fear and pain she called his name endlessly between her frantic sobs, unaware of the fact that she was not alone until she was shaken awake to find herself in Kieron’s arms, his face drawn and harsh.
That he must have been in bed with her for some time was obvious, for the alarm clock showed three o’clock in the morning, and the bed held a heavy warmth which spoke of shared closeness of more than merely a few minutes.
‘Briony.…’
‘Don’t touch me,’ she sobbed bitterly, still held by the memory of the dream. ‘You don’t care about me, only Nicky holds your heart.…’
His hand was smoothing her hair back from her heated face, and it stilled suddenly, his eyes penetrating.
‘And you want to?’
She froze from the question, her heart thudding under the hand he had slid down to cover it, one arm curving her against him so that she was resting against the strength of his body.
‘Do you want to, Briony?’ he prompted. ‘Was that what it was all about down on the beach, mm?’ His lips were touching her shoulder and her body ached to respond, but she remembered how he had cruelly rejected her and stared up at him with fear-shadowed eyes.
‘Were you really giving me the gift of yourself, sweet Briony,’ he whispered softly, ‘and not just teasing as I thought?’ There was a new deep timbre to his voice, his lips teased her skin gently.
Her body quivered against him, and although she tried to hide it from him she knew he had felt it. His tongue stroked gently along the delicate skin behind her ear, arousing all manner of delicious sensations, and her lips had to be clamped tightly together to prevent her small moan of pleasure escaping. His hands were stroking slowly along her body, pushing aside the thin silk of her nightgown and laying bare the satin flesh. His mouth touched her throat and then slid lower.
This time it was impossible to deny her reaction. Her throat ached with tension, her head falling back against the pillows as she begged him to stop.
He laughed softly, the sound feathering along her nerves. ‘You don’t really mean that, do you?’ he murmured against her. ‘That tantalising creature who came to me from the sea can’t have disappeared entirely.’ His arms wrapped round her, holding against his hardness, his mouth coaxing hers into slavish, mute subjugation as it parted for him.
His groaned satisfaction set off an answering chord deep inside her, and despite the promise she had made herself, never to betray her feelings to him again, she was reaching despairingly for him.
Her skin burned with fire, her mouth dry with tension. She touched the hard body with passionate demand, shuddering deeply as her fingers trembled over the flat hardness of his stomach, the powerful thighs and male loins pulsating so arousingly beneath her touch.
‘Dear God, Briony,’ Kieron protested harshly, pushing her away and substituting the soft warmth of her body for her straying hands, his arms clamping her to him, letting her know the effect her touch had had upon him.
‘This time there’s no turning back—for either of us,’ he warned her on a fierce mutter, parting her thighs insistently. ‘No teasing. No.…’ He shuddered slightly, cupping her face, and fastening his mouth on her parted lips, draining its sweetness, the weight of his body pushing her into the bed and keeping her there, while the deep agonising ache inside her built up to a crescendo of intensity.
‘Love me, Kieron,’ she moaned huskily against his throat, her skin hectically flushed. ‘Don’t leave me this time. Don’t stop.…’
His fingers tangled in her hair, his breathing harsh and laboured, the first moment of possession unbearably sweet as he stroked and enticed her body into melting surrender, the pleasure intensified by his unhurried response to her plea for complete fulfilment.
There was a moment when she thought he was going to withdraw from her, and she arched against him frantically, her arms clinging to his shoulders, but his hoarse, ‘It’s all right, darling…it’s all right, Briony,’ soothed her, and then his hardness possessed her completely, her gasped pleasure stifled against his mouth, his husky, ‘Let me have you completely, Briony, body and soul,’ sending her frantic with a desire which was only satiated when the world burst into flames around them, and Briony floated peacefully thousands of miles from earth on a cloud of pure heaven.
‘Did you enjoy that, darling?’
The words reached her from a distance, and she cringed faintly from them.
‘You wanted me,’ Kieron reminded her, ‘just like you did on the beach.’
On the beach! That recalled things she would far rather forget. ‘That was different!’ He had made love to her, but there was still so much unresolved between them.
The words were wrung from her, and Kieron cupped her face with his hands, his eyes searching it intently, feature by feature, lingering longest on her trembling mouth.
‘Why? Because Tante Marian had just told you about my illness? Oh yes, I know. She told me while you were ill. Is that what melted the barriers, Briony? Is that why you responded to me so passionately?’
His thumb was stroking her throat, and she tried to escape the small caress. Even now after their lovemaking her body was still frighteningly responsive to him.
‘You already know why I did,’ Briony responded tightly. ‘It was all part of your plan to reveal the “woman” in me, wasn’t it? And then to reject me like.…’
‘Like I thought you’d rejected me?’ Kieron prompted. ‘Is that what you thought? Is that what you’re thinking now?’
There was a long silence when she felt totally unable to speak, and Kieron moved restlessly against her.
‘Do you really want to know the truth?’ he asked at last.
Her throat was a tight ball of pain. She nodded, willing herself to endure whatever he said.
‘When you came to me out of the sea like that I thought you were the sexiest, most desirable thing I’d ever seen, and then, the way you responded to me.…I thought I must be going out of my mind.…Do you know how long I’ve dreamed of having you like that?’ he demanded savagely. ‘God, Briony, all through those months in Africa, and then when I got back and was so ill. I came very close to hating you then, my love. I could understand you being bitter, but I never thought you would reject me totally. I told myself I could forget you. I was offered a job in America and leapt at the chance. London was too tempting. I could easily have found myself haunting your flat, begging for crumbs from your table. And then I came back, and damn near the first thing I see is you, but you’d changed. You were cold, and more infuriating, you seemed to think I was the one who ought to be suffering from guilt. You were so hard and cold, I couldn’t believe you meant it when you accused me of making you like that. I thought you were just trying to make me feel bad, and then I found out about Nicky and it all seemed to make sense. This was your revenge for my leaving you with a child. But by then it was too lat
e anyway, I was as hooked as I’d ever been. It wasn’t just for the Myers story back then—you must try to believe that. I wanted you very badly, my darling, but I couldn’t confide in you. There was no way you were capable of concealing the truth from Susan Myers, so I told myself that once it was all over I would explain and that we’d laugh about it together once we were married. You gave yourself to me so sweetly, I couldn’t believe it when you rejected me. I didn’t marry you solely for possession of my son, Briony. I could have got that through the courts. No, I knew the moment I set eyes on you again that I had to have you, no matter what the cost, and then once we were married it wasn’t enough, I wanted to turn you into the warm, loving girl you’d been before.…’
‘I thought you were just tormenting me.’
‘I know—now. When Aunt Marian told me that you’d never had my letters I thought you must be lying, and then I asked myself why you would—what would be the point?’
‘Susan Myers must have taken your letter,’ Briony whispered. His hands were stroking over her ribs, cupping and moulding her breasts and suddenly she no longer wanted to talk.
‘I thought that you’d just left me, Kieron, and I was so bitter. We’d made love and it was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to me. I kept fantasising about how you would come back, but you never did, and then there was the scandal, and when I discovered about Nicky.…I was so hurt to think that you would never see him, never know what a perfect child we had made together.’
‘I thought when I married you that eventually you might come to love me again.…’
‘I never stopped,’ Briony confessed, nuzzling his shoulder. ‘I told myself I had, but I was lying. When Marian told me what had really happened, and I knew that you had loved me, I could think only of that, I thought if I let you see how I felt, we could overcome the past, but I’d forgotten that you too would be bitter.…’
‘And so you gave yourself to me like a sea sacrifice,’ Kieron said gently, ‘and I tormented you, spurning your precious gift.…’ His lips brushed her ear. ‘Would the sea give me a second chance, do you suppose?’
In the darkness, Briony stared at him. ‘You mean.…’
‘I mean a re-enactment of the sea god’s gift, but this time, my darling, I promise you it will be properly received. Not now, but when you feel that you can trust yourself entirely to me, when you have truly forgiven me, we can wipe out the bitterness of the past and.…Where are you going?’ he demanded harshly as she slid off the bed.
She paused and smiled mischievously over her shoulder, pure Eve, and deliberately tantalising.
‘Where do you think?’ she said provocatively. ‘I suddenly have this strange desire to swim.’
The look in Kieron’s eyes as he reached for her assured her beyond any doubt how he felt about her, even before she heard his husky words of love.
‘For ever, and for always,’ he assured her shudderingly as he lifted her hands to kiss the soft palms in tender worship.
‘As I love you,’ Briony murmured unsteadily.
All at once she couldn’t wait to be on the beach, the same tide that drove the sea eternally against the shore rising slowly inside her. Her hands trembled in Kieron’s, the glow in her eyes lighting an answering fire in his, and with a sudden prescience she knew that tonight she would conceive the child which would be Nicky’s brother—or sister.
A faint smile curved her lips. A gift not from the gods, but from her husband—a gift of life; a gift of love.
* * * * *
More than a Convenient Marriage?
Dani Collins
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
GIDEON VOZARAS USED all his discipline to keep his foot light on the accelerator as he followed the rented car, forcing himself to maintain an unhurried pace along the narrow island road while he gripped the wheel in white-knuckled fists. When the other car parked outside the palatial gate of an estate, he pulled his own rental onto the shoulder a discreet distance back then stayed in his vehicle to see if the other driver noticed. As he cut the engine, the AC stopped. Heat enveloped him.
Welcome to hell.
He hated Greece at the best of times and today was predicted to be one of the hottest on record. The air shimmered under the relentless sun and it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. But the weather was barely worth noticing.
The gates of the estate were open. The other car could have driven straight through and up to the house, but stayed parked outside. He watched the female driver emerge and take a moment to consider the unguarded entrance. Her shoulders gave a lift and drop as though she screwed up her courage before she took action and walked in.
As she disappeared between imposing brick posts, Gideon left his own car and followed at a measured pace, gut knotting with every step. Outrage stung his veins.
He wanted to believe that wasn’t his wife, but there was no mistaking Adara Vozaras. Not for him. Maybe her tourist clothes of flip-flops, jeans chopped above the knees, a sleeveless top and a pair of pigtails didn’t fit her usual professional élan, but he knew that backside. The tug it caused in his blood was indisputable. No other woman made an immediate sexual fire crackle awake in him like this. His relentless hunger for Adara had always been his cross to bear and today it was particularly unwelcome.
Spending the week with her mother. This ain’t Chatham, sweetheart.
He paused as he came alongside her car, glancing inside to see a map of the island on the passenger seat. A logo in its corner matched the hotel he’d been told she was booked into. And now she was advising her lover where to meet her? Walking bold as you please up his million-dollar driveway to his billion-dollar house? The only clue to the estate’s ownership, the shields welded to the gate, were turned back against the brick wall that fenced the estate from the road.
Gideon’s entire body twitched with an urge to slip his reins of control. He was not a poor man. He’d got past envying other men their wealth once he’d acquired a certain level of his own. Nevertheless, a niggle of his dock-rat inferiority complex wormed to life as he took in what he could see of the shoreline property that rolled into a vineyard and orange grove. The towering stone house, three stories with turrets on each corner, belonged on an English estate, not a Greek island. It was twenty bedrooms minimum. If this was the owner’s weekend retreat, he was an obscenely rich man.
Not that Adara needed a rich man. She had grown up wanting for nothing. She had a fortune in her own right plus half of Gideon’s, so what was the attraction here?
Sex.
The insidious whisper formed a knot of betrayal behind his breastbone. Was this why she hadn’t shared that stacked body of hers with him for weeks? His hands curled into fists as he tried to swallow back his gall.
Dreading what he might see as he looked to the front door, he shifted for a full view. Adara had paused halfway to the house to speak with a gardener. A truck overflowing with landscaping tools was parked midway up the driveway and workers were crawling like bees over the blooming gardens.
The sun seared the back of Gideon’s neck, strong enough to burn through his shirt to his shoulders, making sweat pool between his shoulder blades and trickle annoyingly down his spine.
They had arrived early this morning, Adara off the ferry, Gideon following in a powerboat he was “test-piloting.” She’d been driving a car she’d rented in Athens. His rental had been negotiated at the marina, but the island was small. It hadn’t surprised him when she’d driven right past the nose of his car as he had turned onto the m
ain road.
No, the surprise had been the call thirty-six hours previously when their travel agent had dialed his mobile by mistake. Ever the survivor, Gideon had thought quickly. He’d mentioned that he’d like to surprise his wife by joining her and within seconds, Gideon had had all the details of Adara’s clandestine trip.
Well, not all. He didn’t know whom she was here to see or how she’d met her mystery man. Why was she doing this when he gave her everything she asked for?
He watched Adara’s slender neck bow in disappointment. Ha. The bastard wasn’t home. Grimly satisfied, Gideon folded his arms and waited for his wife.
* * *
Adara averted her gaze from the end of the driveway where the sun was glancing off her rented car and piercing straight into her eyes.
The grounds of this estate were an infinitely more beautiful place to look anyway. Groomed lawn gently rolled into vineyards, and a white sand beach gleamed below. The dew was off the grass, the air moving hotly up from the water with a tang of salt on it. Everything was brilliant and elevating.
Perhaps that was just her frame of mind, but it was a refreshing change from depression and anxiety and rejection. She paused to savor the first optimistic moment she’d had in weeks. Looking out on the horizon where Mediterranean blue met cloudless sky, she sighed in contentment. She hadn’t felt so relaxed since... Since ever. Early childhood maybe. Very early childhood.
And it wouldn’t last. A sick ache opened in her belly as she remembered Gideon. And his PA.
Not yet, she reminded herself. This week was hers. She was stealing it for herself and her brother. If he returned. The gardener had said a few days, but Adara’s research had put Nico on this island all week, so he obviously changed his schedule rapidly. Hopefully he’d return as suddenly as he’d left.
Just call him, she cajoled herself, but after this many years she wasn’t sure he’d know who she was or want to hear from her. He’d never picked up the telephone himself. If he refused to speak to her, well, a throb of hurt pulsed in her throat as she contemplated that. She swallowed it back. She just wanted to see him, look into his eyes and learn why he’d never come home or spoken to her or her younger brothers again.
