Greek Affairs in his Bed: Sleeping with a Stranger\Blackmailed into the Greek Tycoon’s Bed\Bedded by the Greek Billionaire (37 page)

‘Oh, yes …’ she managed again, her lips pressed against his cheek, her body molten against his. ‘Yes! Living well
is
the best revenge … and this is truly living …’

But, even as she spoke, she felt the change in Angelos’s mood,
the sudden stiffening of his long body beside her. The words died in her throat as she sensed the terrible change in the atmosphere, the sudden destruction of the heated passion, the soaring pleasure that had gripped her.

‘Ochi!’

Angelos moved suddenly and shockingly, his caressing hand snatched away, his proud dark head flung back, and he pushed himself to a sitting position and then, appallingly, jackknifed off the settee and on to his feet. Standing like this, he towered above her, big and dark and disturbingly powerful. Jessica risked one terrified glance into his dangerously furious face and then flinched away again, burying her face in a cushion, with her eyes closed for good measure.

‘Ochi!’
he snarled at her again, his normally near-perfect grasp of English deserting him in the throes of the icy-black rage that burned in his eyes. ‘No! No way! I am not a substitute for any man.’

‘
Substitute
… Oh, no!’

Sheer horror brought her eyes wide-open again, her whole body shaking in panic and reaction to the cruelly abrupt end to their lovemaking. Tremors of fulfilment were still shaking her body, shockingly combined with the need for more than the delights she had experienced, the longing for the total satisfaction of his full possession.

A possession that was to be totally denied her as, ruthlessly ignoring what must be his own body’s still clamouring demands, Angelos stooped and snatched up his jacket and shirt from the floor. Flinging them on, he stamped his feet into the shoes she had never even noticed him kicking off in the height of their passion.

‘Angelos—please—no …’

‘I will not be used for your revenge on your rat of a fiancé!’

‘Angelos—no—it was never like that …’

She struggled to sit up but the cushions underneath her were
too soft to give her full support and she only succeeded in writhing in a wild ungainly struggle that got her nowhere as Angelos whirled on his heel and headed for the door.

‘Please …’

But she was talking to the empty air as his powerful, furious stride carried him away from her and out of the room, the door slamming loudly behind him.

‘Angelos …’

Even though she knew he couldn’t hear her, or if he could then he was not going to listen, Jessica still called out after him as she stumbled to her feet and started to rush after him. But, tripping over the tangle of clothes on the floor, she was reminded of her embarrassing state of undress and the impossibility of running after him like this.

But her trousers and underwear were knotted together and she was still struggling to get them fit to put on when she heard the main door in the hall bang hard against the wall as if Angelos had wrenched it open with a strength and force that revealed every burning degree of the fury that gripped him

‘Wait!’

She knew it was useless but still she had to try. She had managed to get her trousers back on, abandoning the knickers as useless time wasting, and she was still pulling them up and struggling to fasten them as she ran on bare feet out into the hall and towards the main door that was still coming slowly to full closure. ‘Angelos!’ she yelled after him in the vain hope that he might hear her, but deep inside she knew it was already too late.

A fear that was confirmed as she reached the far side of the hall, got her fingers on the door handle … only to hear the full-throated growl from the engine of Angelos’s powerful car as he swung it away from its parking space out in the courtyard and roared off down the drive at breakneck speed.

But still she couldn’t stop herself from wrenching open the door and stumbling out into the darkness of the night.

‘It wasn’t like that … Please—it wasn’t like that at all …’ she cried despairingly, knowing that there were only the owls in the trees or perhaps a whirling bat flying through the air to hear her as she watched the red tail-lights of the car disappear down the winding drive and out of sight into the darkness.

T
HE
grandfather clock that stood in the hallway was chiming yet another hour as Jessica prowled restlessly round the library, checking once more out of the window in the hope that there might at last be some sign of Angelos’s return. Her ears strained to hear the sound of his car engine, her eyes hunting for the gleam of his headlights in the pinkish light of dawn but to no avail. She’d followed exactly the same routine only a few moments before and there had been nothing to see. There was little point at all in trying again.

And yet she just could not keep still.

It had been like this all through the night. Ever since the moment that Angelos had stormed out of the house, she had been unable to settle, unable to concentrate on anything. She had paced up and down the hallway, half longing and yet half terrified that she would hear the sound of the car and know that he had come back. He had to come back so that she could explain to him that she had not meant her wild, foolish words in the way that he had taken them. But, knowing the mood in which he had left, she dreaded actually confronting him and seeing his face, reading the fury in his eyes. She suspected that, no matter how hard she tried, he would never believe her. But she had to try.

She’d seen that look in his eyes—the black fury, the total
contempt, the absolute rejection of everything about her—once before, on that dreadful night when Marty had found them together. And then, so much younger and more naïve, she hadn’t acted on it. Instead, she’d reacted out of fear—being so desperate for her stepfather’s approval—and pain as a result of the bitter hurt of Angelos’s stinging rejection of her that she had lashed out unthinkingly.

She had been knocked for six from the first moment that she had seen Angelos at work in the stables. Nothing in her few immature connections with the boys she knew had prepared her for the sheer physical impact of a fully adult male, dark and dangerous and oh so sexy.

She’d followed him round like a puppy, had tried to flirt and been so bad at it that she had blushed and stammered her way through any conversations she had had with him. She’d even bought tickets for a show, claiming they’d been a gift, and invited him to join her. He’d said that he had to work but that night she’d seen him walking back from the pub with Lucille, one of the maids. He’d taken the girl into his flat, where she could just imagine what sort of ‘work’ they’d be doing.

Burning with humiliation and jealousy, she’d determined that she would show him.

She’d got hold of the spare key to his flat, gone up there when she knew he was out, wearing just some brand new underwear under her coat. She’d had a long, nerve-racking wait until she’d heard his footfalls, heavy, weary, coming up the stairs. Then, just as he’d come into the room, she’d stepped forward into a patch of moonlight and thrown her coat off.

His reaction had been far from welcoming.

‘Go away, Jessica,’ he said. ‘Leave me alone.’

But of course she couldn’t do that. Having nerved herself to get this far, she wasn’t going to back down, not unless she had to. And so she flung herself into his arms, pressed her mouth
against his, insisting that she was all woman, every bit as much a woman as Lucille. And, just for a moment, she could have sworn that he responded.

But then he wrenched his mouth from hers, grabbed at her arms to push her away.

‘Don’t delude yourself, child,’ he flung at her in a voice thick with contempt. ‘I have no interest in you in that way at all. I don’t play with little girls.’

In her mind she could see the scene all over again. The way that the light had flicked on so shockingly unexpectedly, and the appalling tableau that it had revealed. Herself in Angelos’s powerful arms, her hair mussed into tangled disarray, her inexpertly applied lipstick smudged all over her face, her only clothing the white lace knickers and bra—one strap falling down over her arm, almost at her elbow.

And she could still hear her stepfather’s shocked voice, the fury that threaded through the words, as Marty bellowed, ‘Just what the hell is going on here?’

For a second her mind went blank in total panic. The next moment she reacted in unthinking fear and desperation. Pushing hard at Angelos’s chest, she struggled in his arms, frantically trying to get away.

‘I didn’t mean to …’ she said. ‘I never wanted to—he made me …’

And it was on those words that Angelos let her go, flinging her from him as if her touch defiled him, so that she spun halfway across the room, stumbling hard against the arm of a chair as she came to a clumsy halt. One corner rammed into her naked thigh, making her head spin with pain, her eyes blurring with instinctive reaction to the throbbing bruise so that she heard her stepfather’s roar, saw the blow he aimed at the younger man’s jaw, through a haze of distress.

‘Get out of here and don’t come back …’

She had tried to convince herself that Angelos had less than her to lose. That as a man, and older than her, he was more likely to be able to shrug off the unpleasantness of the night, to turn his back on things—on her—and walk away without a mark on his arrogant hide. His skin was too thick, his pride too strong to feel the pinpricks of the petty arrows she had fired at him and that Marty had taken up and used as weapons too.

Now, older and more experienced, there was no way she could look at it like that. She’d been stupid, immature, totally selfish. She’d thought only of herself and of putting herself in a good light, and she’d never stopped to think of the possible consequences for Angelos. And she should have done. She should have told Marty the truth so that at least he could have offered Angelos his job back. She doubted that he would have taken it—but at least she should have tried to make reparation.

She still should. Even if Angelos had made a brilliant success of his life after Marty had fired him, she had still been responsible for him being thrown out without a job or a reference—without even a roof over his head.

And now she knew how that felt.

She knew one other thing. And that was, whether he listened to her or not, this time she had to stay and face him. Then, she had let Marty bundle her up in his jacket and half walk, half carry her away and back to the Manor House where, after making sure that Angelos had not actually harmed her, he had given her brandy ‘for the shock’ and stayed with her until the fierce spirit had taken effect and she had fallen asleep.

When she had woken she had been told that Angelos had gone. That he had left Manorfield for good and she had nothing to worry about any more. And, weak as she had been, the mental lacerations of Angelos’s rejection of her still burning in her soul, she had accepted that and had hoped that it was true.

Now, she could no longer let that easy explanation satisfy her.
Angelos was back with a vengeance and she had to face him this time. She couldn’t run away again.

If he ever came back.

Once again, she made the weary trek to the window and looked out. The dawn was almost complete now, the sky a glowing pink, and the old saying, ‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd take warning’ echoed ominously inside her head. Never mind the shepherds. She strongly suspected that the warning implied in the sky’s bright colouring was just for her.

She wasn’t going to watch from the window any longer, she told herself. All the watching and waiting in the world wouldn’t bring Angelos back to the house any quicker than he wanted to come so there was no point in staying there, staring out into the brightening dawn. Besides which, the last thing she wanted was for him to drive up to the house and see her standing there, watching for him.

Sighing, she made her way back into the library and curled up on the settee before the big fireplace there. The leather was old and worn, the stuffing battered from long wear so that it was far from the most comfortable place she could sit. But there was no way she was going to be able to settle in the sitting room, not with the settee there holding such shocking memories, reminding her of how she had lost all control, abandoning sanity completely and giving herself up to Angelos’s sensual mastery. And, by doing so, she had given him a power over her that she knew he would never forget—and neither would she. She would only have to look at him to remember how it had felt to be in his arms, feel his touch, his kisses. Just the burn of his eyes on her would reawaken the fiery need that she had experienced in response to his caresses. And he would be able to look into her eyes and know just how she was feeling because, now that she had let him know the truth of how much she hungered for him, she would never, ever be able to hide it from him again.

And a night without sleep wouldn’t help either.

If she had any sense of self-esteem then she would go upstairs now and try to pick herself up. A shower and a change of clothes might give her some mental strength with which to face Angelos when he came back.

If he came back.

Oh, of course he would come back. He had gone to so much trouble to get his hands on this place; there was no way he was going to abandon it just because of a complete loss of his temper.

A huge yawn took her completely by surprise and had her blinking suddenly heavy eyelids as she fought against the thick waves of tiredness that swept over her.

She really should get cleaned up, make herself look respectable …

She really should …

Her eyes had closed before she had completed the thought and exhaustion swamped her completely, taking her consciousness with it.

The idea had been to drive far enough and fast enough to work off some of the black rage inside him and to calm down enough to be able to think.

At least that had been the plan, Angelos told himself as he steered his car through the main gates and headed up the drive in the light of the early morning. But the truth was that, far from evaporating, or even easing, the blazing fury had compacted, set in a cold, hard mass deep in his heart, sitting there like a lump of black stone, irremovable and unbreakable. And the realisation that the way that Jessica had behaved had driven him out once again, away from the house he owned—
his
home—just as she had done years before, only darkened his mood even more, making him determined that this time she was not going to get away with it.

This time he was the one in charge. He was the one with all the cards in his hand, cards he fully intended to play against her just as soon as he got back inside. This time, it would be Jessica Marshall who would find herself thrown out of house and home. That had been his plan all along and only a temporary mental glitch had distracted him from his purpose for a moment.

But not any more, he resolved as he drew the car to a halt outside the house and yanked on the brakes. This time, Lady Jessica would be out of here and on her way before she even knew what had hit her. And he would be only too pleased to see the back of her for good.

The door he had slammed behind him so furiously last night was unlocked and standing just a tiny bit open, swinging inward at his touch in a way that made him frown darkly. Had she gone already, leaving the place open and exposed to possible robbers when she left? Certainly the house was silent and apparently empty, his footsteps echoing loudly on the wooden floor.

‘Jessica?’

No response. So had she packed and gone? The thought should have pleased him, fulfilling the dark ambition he had set himself, but instead it simply made his displeasure so much worse, deepening his anger at the way that he had been deprived of the satisfaction he’d planned.

Satisfaction of more than one kind, he remembered grimly. Because, even now, hours after savage fury had put an abrupt end to the sexual satisfaction every sense had craved, his body still ached with hungry frustration, each tightly stretched nerve screaming a protest at the way he had slammed the brakes on their arousal and forced them under brutal control once again.

If Jessica had gone, then she had thwarted him in all ways, snatching away his need to demonstrate his power over her, the way that he now had the upper hand and he fully intended to use it.

‘Jessica?’

Louder this time, but there was still no response, the name seeming to swirl in the air, disturbing the stillness, the silent atmosphere of the apparently empty house.

Cursing with fluent savagery in Greek, Angelos was about to head upstairs for a much-needed shower when an unexpected sound finally caught his ear. It was soft and barely audible, so much so that he might not have caught it if he hadn’t been listening intently, looking for just something like that. It came to him as he placed his foot on the first step, making him freeze instantly, waiting, listening again—trying to grasp whatever it was that had tugged at his attention.

There it was again, faint and almost inaudible. A tiny sound, just a sigh or a breath, coming to him from behind the open door into the library.

At once he changed direction, stepping back down off the stairs and turning to cross the hall.

‘Jessica?’

At first he thought that he had it wrong. There seemed to be no one in the library and it was as still and silent as the rest of the house. But then that sigh came again, drawing him across the room to look over the high back of the big leather chesterfield, his eyes narrowing as he spotted the figure of the woman lying there.

She was sprawled half on and half off the seat, as if she had just tumbled there as sleep claimed her, having no time to settle into a comfortable position. Her limbs, softened in sleep, were loose and relaxed—hell, everything about her was softened by sleep. Those clear, often icy, blue eyes were closed and the long, lush lashes lay in dark arcs above cheeks that were faintly flushed with warmth. Those cheeks still bore the tracks of the tears she had shed for her no good rat of a fiancé, making savage anger burn in him at the memory of how she had tried to replace the other man with him, using his kisses, his caresses to erase the memory …

Damn it, no! He did not want to remember that.

Jessica’s burnished chestnut hair was wildly tousled by what seemed to have been disturbed sleep and fell in tumbling disarray over the cushions, several tangled strands of it straying across her cheeks, stirring faintly with each breath she took. Her full pink mouth was very slightly open, revealing just a glimpse of white teeth and, as another of those soft sighs escaped her, his own mouth moistened, remembering the taste of her lips, the play of her tongue against his.