by Kim Lawrence
She shook her head mutely and managed to mouth a barely intelligible, ‘I’m fine. It’s just…’ Mutely she shook her head. ‘I wish sometimes.’
‘You wish things had been different?’
‘I wish things could be like this all the time.’ With a sigh she let her head fall against his chest. ‘Sometimes I get so tired…’
‘Things will be better when you have help…a nanny.’
‘Not that sort of tired.’ She closed her eyes as he lifted her hair off the nape of her neck and touched his lips to the gentle curve of her throat. ‘And I don’t need a nanny.’
‘We are rarely alone.’
‘That’s part of being a parent.’
‘I’m not complaining. It makes stolen moments all the more precious.’
Georgie gave a low, broken gasp of pleasure as she felt his tongue flicker moistly over her ear. Things low and deep in her belly shifted and tightened. ‘Is that what this is?’
‘It’s whatever you want it to be.’
The sensual promise in his voice made her shiver. Their eyes met and suddenly she was scared. Her eyes dropped from his but she extended her hand to him. ‘Come on,’ she said huskily. ‘I want to see what’s through there.’
After a moment Angolos took her hand and allowed himself to be led through the door into an adjoining room.
Georgie stopped dead. This was obviously the master bedroom.
‘I’ve never slept in a four-poster,’ she said, gazing at the impressive centrepiece of the room with its heavy canopy and elaborate carvings.
Angolos’s voice above her head had a strained, husky quality to it. ‘It isn’t something I have had strong feelings about—until now. Suddenly I want very much to sleep in a four-poster bed.’
‘Me too.’
His breathing was audible in the quiet room.
Georgie was hardly breathing at all as she turned around and lifted her face up to him. His was a dark blur as his warm lips immediately came over hers, hard and hungry. It felt so good, it felt so right, and most of all it felt mind-blowingly exciting.
‘I convinced myself that I was over you,’ she confided against his mouth as the deep, hungry assault morphed seamlessly into a series of soft, biting kisses.
She felt the muscles of his upper arms bunch beneath her hand and he slid his fingers into her hair, pushing through the slippery strands to mould the shape of her head. ‘And are you?’
‘I’ll tell you on the condition you don’t stop doing what you’re doing if you don’t like the answer.’
‘I doubt I could stop if I wanted to,’ he retorted. His throaty laugh did not reach his dark eyes; they remained intense and hungry.
‘I was only over you in my dreams…and actually not there either.’ Her dreams had always been filled with Angolos.
She was barely breathing as he leaned forward and slipped the buttons on her shirt. His eyes held hers as the fabric parted.
‘Take it off for me.’ Arms folded across his chest, he took a step backwards and waited.
The sensual request shuddered through her. Her eyelashes fluttered against the flushed curve of her cheeks as she lifted her gaze to his. ‘You want me to…?’
‘I just want you,’ he inserted throatily.
Her breath snagged in her throat as he added, ‘I always did and I always shall. From the first moment I laid eyes on you I was bewitched,’ he imparted thickly.
The air felt cool against her overheated skin as she let her shirt fall to the floor. Thrusting one hip forward in a consciously provocative pose, she stretched her hands behind her back until her fingers found her bra clasp.
Sexual challenge glittering in her wide-spaced tawny eyes, she looked directly into his eyes. ‘This too?’
He swallowed and nodded.
Georgie didn’t watch the lacy scrap fall to the floor.
She watched Angolos.
Her heart felt as if it were trying to batter itself out of her chest. Her breathing was fast and shallow, her mouth dry. They weren’t touching but she was so aroused she could barely breathe.
As her pink-tipped breasts sprang free of their confinement his eyes dropped. She heard his sharp intake of breath from where she was standing and she simply dissolved.
In one stride he was at her side. He carried her to the bed and fell with her onto the mattress. Before her head had hit the pillow his hungry mouth was on hers. He pulled her under him and she moaned into his mouth, squirming, relishing the heat and weight of his body pressing her down.
‘I can’t get enough of you,’ she gasped when his mouth lifted momentarily from hers.
‘You can have as much of me as you want,’ he promised throatily.
‘Don’t stop, I’m…’ she protested as he rolled away and pulled himself onto his knees.
A slow, predatory smile spread across his face as he looked down at her pale body, naked to the waist. ‘You really are the most perfect thing.’
He cupped one breast in his hand. The feverish lines along his cheekbones drew attention to the glitter of his inky dark eyes as they moved over her skin like a caress. ‘You’re softer and fuller,’ he marvelled, his eyes riveted to the quivering rise and fall of her breasts with their tightly engorged nipples.
‘A baby, breast-feeding.’ She was afraid the admission would break the mood, but it had the opposite effect on Angolos, whose breathing became even more ragged and uneven as he started to rip off his own clothes.
Her pulse was pounding in her ears as she watched him through the screen of her lashes. Halfway through he changed his mind and, leaving his shirt hanging open, he began to slide Georgie’s jeans down her thighs.
Georgie eagerly kicked her way free of them. The sight of his dark head outlined against her breasts was an image that had featured in her dreams on countless lonely nights. The reality, the scalding pleasure that convulsed her body as his tongue moved back and forth, relentlessly over the rosy areola, surpassed any dream Georgie had ever had.
As he licked his way down her stomach she tangled her fingers in his dark silky hair.
Angolos lifted his head when he reached the barrier of her underwear. He smiled, a smile of predatory promise as he watched her face. Georgie’s eyes closed and a keening cry was drawn from somewhere deep inside her as he slid his fingers under the lacy material. She released a second long moan of naked pleasure as he slid a finger over her slippery heat and inside her.
‘This is…I can’t…Angolos, I need you…now…now…!’ She reached up and grabbed either side of his shirt. A determined tug brought him down on top of her.
The skin-to-skin contact as her breasts crushed against his hard, hair-roughened chest was almost too good to bear. She moved and the searing pleasure created by the friction of his sweat-slick skin against her own wrenched a series of sharp whimpers from her dry, aching throat. Her head was spinning, her starved senses reeling from sensual overload.
They kissed with frantic hunger.
But there was only so much of the kissing and touching Georgie could bear; she wanted more, much more.
Angolos responded to her loud announcement to this effect by grabbing her hair in one hand and forcing her head back onto the pillow. She listened to the passionate flood of words that flowed from his lips. He seemed unaware that he was speaking in his native tongue and Georgie didn’t care. The expression stamped on his dark, driven features told her everything she needed to know.
As he rolled a little to one side and tugged at the zip of his trousers her eyes followed the sound.
‘Oh!’ she gasped as she saw the hard column of his engorged erection brush against his flat, hard belly. Her body was flooded by a tidal wave of hot longing that made her feel faint.
Watching her reaction with glittering eyes, his own dark features taut and strained, Angolos kicked aside his pants and reached for her.
Lying on top of him, she took his dark head between her hands and kissed him. She let her tongue dart into his mouth an
d felt the satisfying pulse of his rock-hard erection grind into the softness of her belly.
‘Theos…!’ He groaned an electrifying raw sound against her mouth, and flipped her over. Parting her legs with hands that trembled, he slid into her in one smooth, thrusting motion. ‘Look at me!’ he instructed throatily. ‘I want to see you…I want to see you feel me.’
Georgie opened her eyes; his face was a dark blur above. ‘Anything,’ she sobbed as he moved inside her. ‘Anything. I’ll do anything for you.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
GEORGIE and Nicky were installed in the house two days before the start of term. Angolos was called away on urgent business and it was all terribly rushed so when her father phoned out of the blue and offered to help, after she had picked herself up off the floor Georgie said, ‘Yes, please.’
‘I don’t know what you said to him,’ Georgie said four days later as she sat on the edge of the desk in the room Angolos had done out as an office.
The place was full of space-age technology that made her nervous and the room next to it was occupied by his PA, a pleasant young man called Demitri.
‘But Dad was being really nice. Not a single snide remark…and he made admiring noises about the house.’
‘Say…? What makes you think I had anything to do with it?’
‘Well, the last time my dad backed down was…’ She pressed a finger to the faint dimple in her chin and pretended to consider the matter. ‘Let me see…never.’
‘Nothing to do with me,’ Angolos insisted. ‘Maybe…?’ he began closing the laptop in front of him.
‘Maybe what?’ she prompted when he didn’t continue.
Angolos looked up, his dark eyes grave. ‘Maybe he could see you are happy…?’
Without warning Georgie felt her eyes fill. She blinked and swallowed past the emotional constriction in her throat.
‘Maybe he could,’ she admitted quietly.
In reply Angolos simply nodded, but she saw the flare of fierce satisfaction in his eyes before he opened his laptop once more.
This was the closest either of them had come to discussing whether their arrangement was working out. For her part, Georgie was afraid that admitting out loud that things were going well would be tempting fate.
Of course there had been awkward moments, and she wasn’t totally at ease with being around him, but there had been none of the major difficulties that she had expected—not yet. Maybe, she mused, there had been so few disagreements because they were both being terribly diplomatic…?
And for Georgie there was the added complication of knowing that if she started speaking without first carefully thinking about what she was going to say the love word might inadvertently creep out.
Such behaviour was clearly out of the question when your husband wanted you back in his life because you were the mother of his child, not because you were…well…you. She was sure that someone as controlled and in charge of his emotions as Angolos would not welcome overt emotional displays.
It made her cringe to remember how as a newly-wed she had been all over him like a rash—well, he wouldn’t be able to complain about that this time around.
Nicky, on the other hand, wasn’t trying; he was just being Nicky. He had had no problem accepting Angolos’s presence in his life. Angolos for his part was touchingly eager to be with his son. Even the most cynical observer, seeing them together, could not doubt Angolos’s devotion to the child.
‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ she said, sliding off his desk.
‘No need to run away.’
‘You’re busy and I should…’ Their eyes locked and she paused.
‘Wash your hair…?’ he suggested. His eyes touched the silky waves and he decided it didn’t look as though it needed washing; it looked shiny, slippery clean. He felt the urge to bury his face in it and inhale at the most unorthodox of moments.
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’
‘And there’s no need for you to be so painfully polite. The only time you actually relax around me is in bed.’
She refused to blush at the allusion. At night she didn’t have to watch her tongue because it was a well-known fact that people said things they didn’t mean in the slightest when they were in the grip of passion. She meant them, of course, but so far Angolos hadn’t caught on. And anyway he said some things he didn’t mean too, once the lights were out. Fortunately she didn’t take them seriously.
‘I don’t want to intrude. I’m still feeling my way.’
I know my way pretty well around his body.
‘Anyhow,’ she added, her colour significantly heightened, ‘you’re not exactly acting normally around me, are you? If you were you would never have sat and watched that weepie movie with me last night.’
‘That was compromise, not unease, and I wasn’t watching the movie, I was watching you.’
‘Oh!’
‘I like watching you,’ he added.
Georgie licked her dry lips; her heart had started thumping very fast. ‘That’s really strange. I’m not exactly—’
‘Shall I tell you what you are?’
Angolos had half risen from his chair when his assistant walked in through the connecting door with a computer printout in his hand. He was speaking in Greek, and frowning at the page in his hand.
Angolos replied in the same language and the young man looked up, flushing darkly.
‘Sorry, I didn’t know you were busy. I’ll—’
‘No,’ Georgie said, leaping to her feet. ‘I was just leaving.’ Carefully avoiding her husband’s eyes, she swept out of the room.
The headmistress was flatteringly reluctant to accept her resignation, but when she saw that her mind was made up she promised Georgie an excellent reference.
‘You’ve been an invaluable member of the team,’ she told Georgie warmly. ‘And we’re all going to miss you.’
Georgie, touched by the genuine warmth, left the office close to tears. Part of her felt sad and scared that this chapter of her life was ending. She wondered for the hundredth time if she was doing the right thing…
The news spread around the staff room the way secrets always did and by the end of the day at least six people had asked her if it was true.
The next morning at coffee she made an announcement.
‘Yes, the rumours are true. I’ve handed in my notice and I’m leaving at half-term. My husband…’
The rest of her rehearsed speech was lost as the room quietly erupted.
‘Oh, didn’t I mention I was married?’ she said when the hubbub had died down. She gave them a carefully edited version of the events that had led to their reconciliation.
They all thought it was dreadfully romantic and wanted to know when they were going to meet the man himself. Georgie was deliberately vague and not encouraging.
‘He’s snowed under with work. I don’t expect I’ll see him much myself.’
She did see him only a few hours later; so did the rest of the school. He made quite an impression—big surprise!—as he strode into the playground with Nicky perched on his shoulders. About to go back in the building after her stint on playground duty, she ushered the last child inside and closed the door.
‘Hello, sweetheart.’ Her smile faded as she shifted her attention to the elder Constantine male. ‘What,’ she demanded, ‘are you doing here?’
‘Are you this stern with the children?’
‘Nicky should be in nursery and,’ she added grimly, ‘they shouldn’t have let you just take him. You could have been anybody!’
‘Not according to staff there. They were of the opinion that Nicky and I were—what was the expression?’
‘Two peas in a pod?’ she suggested drily.
‘That is it,’ he agreed with a complacent smile. ‘They were charming.’
‘I’ve noticed you have a way with women of a certain age.’
His dark eyes danced with amusement as he clicked his tongue in reproach. ‘Animals like me t
oo and I am asking your permission to take Nicky here out of nursery early. That children’s theatre group you mentioned, they are putting on an afternoon performance. I thought I might take him. Don’t look now,’ he added, ‘but I think we are being watched.’
‘Of course we are being watched!’ Maintaining a fixed smile was making her facial muscles ache. ‘Could you be any more conspicuous if you tried?’ she demanded, eyeing his tall, supremely elegant figure with exasperation.
‘Is there something wrong with the way I look?’
Her eyes skimmed his tall, powerful body; he looked incredible, but no more incredible than he always did. Dark jeans that matched the cashmere sweater he wore clung to the powerful muscles of his long thighs. They were simple clothes if expensive, but when he wore them they became something special.
‘No,’ she gritted grimly. ‘That’s the problem. Have you any idea what I’ll have to put up with now? They’ll all be talking about you,’ she predicted gloomily.
They were, and more than a few envious glances were cast in her direction.
She smiled through the questions, the favourite being: ‘He’s gorgeous. How on earth did you catch him?’ To her relief as the term progressed the excitement and teasing died down, though when Angolos appeared to collect her or Nicky he always caused a minor sensation amongst staff and mothers alike.
To Angolos she grumbled about their behaviour; privately she understood it—didn’t her own pulses leap every time she saw him…?
It wasn’t until the landlord contacted Georgie and said he had a new tenant for her flat that she realised she still had several boxes of her stuff sitting there. He went on to explain he needed her to clear the place by the end of next week.
‘You really don’t mind?’ she asked the next day as she climbed into the Transit she had borrowed from the school secretary.
‘You kidding?’ Her friend Alan said, swinging Nicky high above his head, much to the child’s delight. ‘We’re going to have a ball. Isn’t Daddy helping you move out?’
Georgie grimaced; she didn’t want to get into this.
Alan had made no secret of the fact that he thought her decision to move back to Greece with Angolos was crazy. ‘The guy made you as unhappy as hell the first time, Georgie!’
