The Konstantos Marriage Demand (12 page)

She heard the rasp of a zip and knew a moment of agonising tension, her breath held in her lungs, before he came back to her again. Lifting her so that she was half on, half off the edge of the desk, he opened her legs wide, knees bent, feet braced against the polished wood and moved between them. His mouth took hers again, his tongue probing deep, in the same moment that he used his hands on her hips to lift her, move her, then draw her down on to his hard, heated length.

‘Nikos!’

His name was a long drawn out sigh of pure satisfaction and delight, and for a moment she would have been content to stay like that, close to him, filled with him, abandoned to him. But Nikos was not prepared to stay or wait. Already he was moving, stroking deep inside her, in and then withdrawing almost to the end, before plunging in deeply over and over again. Her hands were around his neck, fingers digging into his shoulders, her mouth moving against his jaw, kissing, licking, nipping at the stubble-roughened skin, tasting the salt of his sweat against her tongue. After only a very few sec
onds she had lost herself, unable to do anything other than absorb herself into the moment, giving herself up purely to sensation. Mindlessly, blindly, she was moving with him, on him, feeling him inside her, taking her higher, higher, until he finally pushed her over the edge into the blazing, whirling oblivion of total ecstasy.

She heard a voice cry out aloud, and from a distance vaguely realised that it was her own, but she was too far gone to care if anyone had heard. A few seconds later she heard Nikos too give a raw, exultant sound as he followed her, and for a long time after that she knew nothing at all. Only the slow, slow drift back to a form of reality, a sort of return to consciousness, but one that kept floating to and fro, coming back to her and then swirling away again. Taking her into the glowing darkness where all she was aware of was the strength of Nikos’s arms around her, the heave of his chest as he fought for control of his breathing, the thud of his heart underneath the powerful ribcage, the scent of his skin where her head rested, totally limp and spent against his shoulder.

It was a good thing there was the desk here to support them both, Nikos reflected, when some of the thundering haze had left his head and he could finally begin to think again. At least it was there to take some of Sadie’s weight and allow him to prop himself up on it until he recovered. After the onslaught of wild and uncontrolled passion that had taken him—taken them both—by storm, he seemed to have lost the ability to focus, to recognise reality when it came back to him. He felt as if he had been at the centre of some furious whirlwind, snatched out of reality and spun around in a spiralling, blazing typhoon of feeling, then dumped back down on still not quite steady ground again, not knowing which was up and which was down. His arms were shaking, his legs unsteady beneath him, and he still couldn’t manage to get enough air into his
raw and aching lungs. He was quite sure that the racing of his heart would never ease so that his pulse rate could return to anything approaching normal.

And Sadie was in no better state than he was. In fact, she seemed barely conscious, her head dropped on to his shoulder, her breath scorching his skin as she too struggled to breathe normally. Her whole body sagged against him, limp as a marionette with its strings completely snapped in two, nothing to hold her upright. And the only noise in the room was the raw, unsteady sound of their breathing, that and the faint splash of the waves coming in to shore out beyond the open window, where ordinary everyday life was going on as normal, oblivious to the wild and sensual storm that had raged inside the villa.

But they could not stay shielded from reality for ever. Sooner or later life must start again. Someone might come in. They had to collect their thoughts and return to normality, for the time being at least.

And then they would have to face the repercussions of what had just happened here.

He for one would have to face the fact that he had stupidly, blindly, rashly rushed into this without a thought, without a moment’s consideration for common sense or practicality. Or even,
Thee mou
, even safety.

He had just had sex with the woman he had hated for the past five years, a woman he had learned the hard way not to trust. And he had done it without even the use of a condom to protect him now and against the future. He hadn’t paused to think about such things but had been totally at the mercy of his body, his libido, as lust-crazed as a newly horny teenager—and every bit as mindless. Both of them had been wildly out of control, responding in such a white hot fury of desire that any weak attempt at a rational thought had been burned away,
reduced to ashes in the blazing conflagration they had lit between them.

And the worst, the most stupid thing of all was that he would do it again at the drop of a hat. Even now, with his breathing barely back under control, his pulse-rate still far from normal, she only had to move and he could inhale the clean, fresh scent of her skin, overlaid with some delicate flowery perfume, or feel the brush of her soft hair against his cheek and the heavy throb of blood would start to rise within his body. If she sighed, exhaling warm breath against his shoulder, so that it slid in to caress the skin at the open neck of his shirt, then he was still tempted to turn and take her in his arms once more, to kiss her hard and strong. Kiss her until their senses woke again, fought off the lassitude of satiation, destroyed all rational thought, and the heated hunger and yearning took possession of them once more.

She would go with him too. He knew that without thinking. Knew that he had only to touch her and both of them would go up in flames, the most basic, most primitive parts of their natures responding to the instinctive demands of their bodies.

And that would be the most damnably stupid way to behave imaginable.

He had to get a grip and fast, before things got completely out of control.

‘Sadie…’

At first he found that his voice wouldn’t work and he had to clear his throat and try again.

‘Sadie.’

This time she heard and lifted her head, slowly and with difficulty. Her eyes, still hazed by the storm that had assailed her, the explosive climax that had erupted like a volcano in her slender form, blinked and tried to focus, almost but not quite succeeding.

‘We need to talk—’ Nikos began, then broke off as the sound of the phone ringing broke through the silence, tearing apart the atmosphere that was rich with the heavy clouds of sensuality and jolting them back to the real world in a second.

Automatically Nikos reached for it, lifted the receiver.

‘Yes?’

Hearing his father’s voice, he knew that he had no alternative but to deal with whatever Petros had on his mind.

‘I have to take this,’ he said to Sadie. ‘And I may be some time.’

She looked as if she needed the time anyway. How could they talk when she was so clearly not yet capable of doing so? Besides, he would prefer to have some time to collect his thoughts himself. Decide just where he was going to go from here.

But first he had to deal with his father. And if Petros discovered who was with him—if Sadie spoke or gave herself away—then they would be back on the terrible old treadmill of the family feud before he could stop it. That had complicated his relationship with Sadie once before. He was not about to let it happen again.

‘Go and clean yourself up…’

His eyes swept over her dishevelled state, the red linen dress hanging open heavily crumpled and creased, her bra half on and half off, and her knickers discarded in two separate tiny pieces on the office floor. Stooping, he picked them up and dropped them into her hand while she was still clearly gathering her thoughts.

‘But…’ she began, but Nikos shook his head, hunching one shoulder to hold the phone between it and his ear as he turned her and propelled her firmly towards the door.

‘Take a shower—or maybe swim in the pool. I’ll come and find you when I’m ready. What?’

The sound of his father’s voice drew his attention back to the phone conversation.

‘No,’ he said, in response to the older man’s enquiry as to whether the person he was with should take priority over him. ‘No one important. Nothing that can’t wait.’

It was only when the door slammed closed behind Sadie that he realised that he had spoken in English. Even when talking to his father.

W
ELL, THAT WAS
her well and truly dismissed.

Finding herself in the corridor outside the study door without quite realising how she had got there, Sadie did not quite know whether to explode in fury or to burst into shocked, bewildered tears. She was quite capable of both, and the resulting combination was so volatile that any one tiny incident would be enough to spark it off.

For a moment she actually considered spinning round, marching back into the room and confronting Nikos over what he had said. Snatching the phone receiver from his hand and tossing it well out of reach if she had to. She even half turned, ready to do just that. But the thought of the danger she might put herself in—and her mother and George—as a result stayed her movement and kept her feet moving right in the direction that was safest: away from the office and back up to the safety of her bedroom, moving as quickly as she could for fear that she might meet some member of staff which, in her present dishevelled and disreputable state, would be just the worst thing possible.

It couldn’t be more obvious just what she had been up to. Her crumpled dress was still gaping over her exposed breasts and her underwear barely existed. Looking down at the totally
destroyed knickers she held in her hand, she couldn’t suppress a shudder of revulsion at the sight of them and the thought of just how they had got into that appalling mess.

And she had only herself to blame.

‘All right.’ She could hear her own voice in her thoughts, husky and inviting—seductively so. ‘Let’s deal with what there is between us.’

And of course Nikos had taken her at her word. Who could blame him? She’d handed herself to him on a plate, without a care or thought for the consequences.

Reaching her bedroom, she hurried inside and slammed the door shut, leaning back against it as the last of her mental strength deserted her, leaving her shaking and distraught.

She hadn’t even had the sense to insist that he use a condom! She had made every possible mistake in the book. The sort of thing that even her twenty-year-old self had managed to handle so much better in the past. So she had no right to complain if Nikos had treated her like the easy conquest he obviously believed her to be.

The easy conquest she had let herself be.

With a cry of disgust and horror, Sadie flung the ruined knickers into the wastepaper bin, not caring that one part of them fell far short, fluttering down on to the deep gold carpet like a wounded and dying bird. A moment later the dress and bra followed them, tossed aside in total revulsion. She couldn’t wait to get out of them as soon as possible. Just the thought of ever wearing them again made her stomach heave.

Take a shower, Nikos had said. He was damn right. She would take a shower. She needed to wash the scent of him from her body, the taste of him from her mouth. If only she could erase her memories as easily, she told herself as she stood under a hot shower, letting the water pound down on her head, sluice over her skin. She scrubbed every inch of her
body, shampooed her hair twice, but she still couldn’t get rid of the feeling of having been used and then discarded without a second thought.

‘Damn him!’

Finally having to get out of the shower, before she reduced her skin to the state of a prune, Sadie rubbed at her hair with a towel, ruffling it impossibly.

‘Damn, damn, damn him!’

She was strongly tempted to put on fresh clothes, stamp back down to the study—but to do so would reveal to Nikos just how much his behaviour had upset her. That and the fact that as long as she didn’t push things to the ultimate extreme then her mother and George were still safe in Thorn Trees. If she made one mistake, took a wrong step, then she had little doubt that Nikos would carry out his threat to have them thrown out of their home and on to the streets.

Or would he do that anyway? The frantic movements of Sadie’s hands stopped and she stared at herself in the mirror, looking anxiously at her face where the flush of colour from the heat of the shower was now fading rapidly from her cheeks. Just what did Nikos plan to do next?

He had got her here under false pretences, claiming that he needed her to plan and organise his wedding. But there had been no wedding to organise at all. It had been nothing but a deceit from start to finish. So had this really been his plan? To get her back into his bed—not that she had actually been in his
bed
, she acknowledged grimly. She had fallen right into his hands like a ripe plum the first time he had kissed her in his London office and that must have given him the cue he had needed—if in fact he’d needed any such thing—to go ahead with the scheme that she now saw was his ultimate attack on her family and his personal revenge on her.

‘But there must be some arrangement we can come to!
Surely there’s something I can do—anything…’ Her own words came back to haunt her, making hot colour flood every inch of her body. She could see just how that had sounded—and how Nikos would naturally have interpreted it.

‘And exactly what sort of services did you have in mind?’ he had come back at her. ‘What exactly are you offering…?’

She’d denied it furiously at the time, but obviously she had put a seed in his mind and he had determined that the real price of letting her stay in Thorn Trees was to be paid in kind.

If she had any sense, she’d be out of here—fast. She had her passport. She might just be able to afford a plane ticket home on the little that was left on her credit card—she hoped.

If she had any sense, or any choice. Because she could be in no doubt as to what would happen if she did run out on Nikos now. Just the thought of her mother being thrown out of her home after the delight of thinking that she had been given a reprieve made the tears burn at the back of Sadie’s eyes. She couldn’t even call the police and tell them how Nikos had kidnapped her. As he had pointed out, he had used no sort of force, and she had come with him only too willingly.

And if they heard about what had just happened in Nikos’s office…

She was trapped, but that didn’t mean she had to sit back and take whatever Nikos tossed her way. A quick glance at the clock revealed how much time had gone by since he had bundled her—as ‘no one important’—so unceremoniously out of his office. Any minute now, she was sure that he would be coming looking for her.

She didn’t want him to come here and think that she had been sitting waiting for him. Sitting on the bed waiting for him. What she wanted him to think was that she didn’t care. That the words he’d said had had no effect on her.

Take a shower he’d said—or have a swim.

She’d do that. Moving hastily to one of the drawers in the wardrobe, she pulled out the swimming costume she had tossed into her case at the very last minute, never really expecting that she would ever have a chance to wear it, and hurried herself into it. When Nikos came to find her, she wouldn’t be here. She would be in the pool—swimming and relaxing in the sun, without a care in the world. And not sparing a single thought for the heated scene in the office.

It almost worked. The warmth of the sun beating down on her head, the cool clarity of the water, the regular physical activity of the strokes up and down the pool soothed her jangled nerves. She actually managed to empty her head of the anxious thoughts that preyed on her mind and focus only on what she was doing. Until the moment that a dark shape blotted out the sun and there was a splash, a brief glimpse of a powerful form slicing into the pool in a perfect dive. A few seconds later, Nikos surfaced, dashing water from his face, tossing back his wet hair as he trod water beside her.

‘So this is where you’ve been hiding yourself.’

‘Hardly hiding,’ Sadie managed with careful insouciance. ‘It’s a hot day and I didn’t want to waste the luxury of having a pool at my disposal.’

She prayed that he would take the ragged edge to her voice as being the result of the exertion of her swimming and not what it truly was—an uncontrollable response to his closeness. To the sight of the powerful chest and shoulders that showed above the surface of the water, black body hair slicked against the tanned skin under which the strong muscles flexed and bunched as he balanced carefully, keeping himself from going under.

‘After all, it’s not every day I see a pool like this. And I do love swimming.’

In spite of her effort to control it, a note of longing slid into
her voice. For years now there had been no time for this sort of relaxation, not even in the local public pool. Her mother’s illness and the need to look after George had taken up any free time she had from running the business.

‘You should have stayed with me.’

Nikos pushed both hands through the darkness of his hair that lay sleek and black, plastered to the strong shape of his skull by the weight of the water. Drops of moisture still lay along the broad slash of his cheekbones, sparkling in the sunlight as he turned towards her.

‘You should have stayed with me,
glikia mou
,’ he returned sardonically. ‘Then you could have swum in a pool like this every single day’

‘Not if I’d married you when it was originally planned—five years ago.’

The memory of the way that Nikos had trapped her, making her believe that he was going to marry someone else, made her voice sharp. No matter how much she tried to push it out of her mind that telling phrase, ‘
The one woman I have ever planned on marrying is you
’ just would not be pushed away. She knew he didn’t mean it—how could he mean it?—but still her brain just wouldn’t let it go. And she was forced to face up to the appalling possibility that in a moment of weakness, of longing for it to be so, she had let that lying declaration influence her earlier, when he had kissed her.

Was it possible that she had actually let herself believe that he meant it? And that that was the reason—part of the reason—why she had given in so easily—too easily—to his passionate seduction?

‘You weren’t in such good financial shape then, were you? Or why else would you have come after me in the first place?’

One corner of Nikos’s sensual mouth quirked up into a half
smile. Seeing it, Sadie couldn’t help but remember the sexual devastation that mouth had worked on her hungry body when he had kissed every inch of her while she had lain, aroused and yearning, on the polished surface of his office desk. The heat that raced through her veins at the memory had no chance at all of being cooled by the lapping water of the pool.

‘Didn’t what happened earlier give you the answer to that?’ he drawled softly, the wicked gleam in his eyes heightened by the glare of the sun. ‘Surely that would have shown you that you have no need at all of false modesty?’

‘There’s nothing false about it,’ Sadie flashed back. ‘Or modest. I’m simply being realistic and honest—and I wish that you would do me the courtesy of being the same. The fact is that if I had not been Edwin Carteret’s daughter and the heiress to his fortune then there is no way you would ever have sought me out at the start.’

‘I—’ Nikos began, but she had seen the look in his eyes, the subtle change in his expression, and knew that, in spite of the way that he tried to hide it, he was thinking through his response very carefully, planning exactly what to say.

‘Honesty, Nikos. You owe me at least that.’

For a long moment his golden eyes locked with hers and she could almost hear his clever, ruthless brain working through the possibilities and coming to a decision.

‘Honestly, then…’ he said at last. ‘The answer is no. If you had not been your father’s daughter, then I would never have sought you out in the first place.’

If he had reached out and grabbed her hard by the shoulders, wrenching her towards him and pushing her down hard underneath the cool water, then he couldn’t have caused more of a shock to her heart.
But, be honest with yourself too,
Sadie reproached her foolish mind.
Did you really think there would be any other answer?
Hoping for a different response was
such a foolish weakness. A wishful fantasy that could never be achieved.

‘And, yes, I lied to you—or at least kept from you the fact that the Konstantos finances were not in the best possible shape. But who can blame me when I already had overwhelming evidence of the way your father was working to bring the corporation down?’

‘You could have confided in me. Trusted me.’

‘Trust!’ Nikos scorned, throwing back his dark head in a laugh that seemed to turn the air around them into ice and then splinter it into a million tiny pieces. ‘You dare talk to me about trust when all the time you were part of the whole conspiracy your father had set up. When I was fighting for my life—for my family’s life—you were there, just waiting to stab me in the back.’

That was more than Sadie could take. In the past she had been forced to play along with her father’s wicked plans, forced to keep silent about everything that was going on in order to keep her mother and her as yet unborn baby brother safe. Now that part of the problem, at least, was all over. Her father was dead; he couldn’t hurt anyone any more.

‘If I hadn’t done what I did, then you would have lost your fight.’

‘What?’

Nikos’s intent stare from swiftly narrowed eyes made her wish that she could duck down into the water to escape it. But she’d embarked on telling at least this part of the truth. She couldn’t back down now. She doubted that Nikos would let her do it even if she tried.

‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’

Dredging up her courage, Sadie faced him across the clear sparkling surface of the water. Pride stiffened her spine and brought her chin up defiantly.

‘You talk about fighting for your family’s life, but it was really just to preserve some part of the family fortune.’

She’d missed something there. The sudden hard blink of those amazing eyes told her that she wasn’t actually in possession of all the facts. Once again Nikos had adjusted his expression, so that the one he showed to her was a carefully assumed mask, a polished veneer that hid reality behind it. But she couldn’t stop to think about what it might mean. So far Nikos had seemed to hold the upper hand, but in this at least there was something he didn’t know and she was determined to make sure he knew it.