by Lynne Graham
‘Is that a complaint?’
‘No.’ A wicked charismatic grin slashed his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘That was an “any time you want me, I’m yours” speech,’ he teased.
‘You can be yourself with me, you know,’ she whispered feelingly. ‘Just do what you feel like.’
‘Can’t,’ Nikolai incised, passing her the package. ‘I’d eat you alive. Happy wedding day, Mrs Drakos.’
‘I didn’t get you anything.’
‘You gave me you...unforgettably,’ Nikolai growled, flipping open the box for her in his impatience and lifting out a three-strand pearl necklace with an elaborate emerald and diamond clasp.
‘My word...’ Ella stroked a wondering finger over the gleaming iridescence of the perfect pearls. ‘It’s really beautiful.’
Nikolai clasped the necklace round her throat. ‘Their purity reminded me of you.’
‘I’m not pure... I’m not perfect...nobody needs to be perfect,’ Ella declared in a rush, thinking of the secret she was holding within her body, fearing his reaction more than ever because, the happier she became, the more she feared a potential fall.
‘You’re a lot more pure and perfect than I will ever be.’ Nikolai pushed the tangle of bronze-coloured hair back behind her small ears and tipped up her chin to kiss her again.
The heat inside her claimed her again faster than she could’ve believed. It was as though her body were programmed to his. A muscular, hair-roughened thigh slid between hers as he rested her back on the pillows again and everything below her waist tingled with awareness.
‘I want you so much,’ she whispered helplessly.
‘And you’re going to get me. Over and over and over again,’ Nikolai husked hungrily against her swollen mouth.
Ella stroked the long, thick length of jutting virility against his stomach, no longer nervous, no longer unsure. He wanted her every bit as much as she wanted him and knowing that set her free and filled her with happiness.
‘If you do that I won’t last.’
Ella reared up and pushed him flat. ‘Oh, stop with the threats, Mr Drakos!’ she told him, laughing down at him.
Nikolai could never remember laughter along with sex but he liked it. He liked it even more when he pulled her back down again and reinstated supremacy because there was no way he would allow her to call the shots in bed. He felt strange, almost giddy, and he wanted to smile and he wondered what was wrong with him. His little hummingbird of a bride was changing him and he knew as he looked down into her hectically flushed, laughing face that there was no way he was ever going to willingly hand her over to another man.
‘I want this night to last for ever,’ she murmured against his chest, drunk on the smell of his skin.
‘For ever is a big challenge,’ he husked, rocking his hips against hers, letting her feel the hardness of him, sending a wanton thrill of naked hunger shooting through her veins.
‘It wasn’t a challenge,’ she protested as he touched her where she most needed to be touched and she jerked and whimpered, defenceless against the surge of need controlling her.
He eased over her, rearranged her to his satisfaction, slowly surged in and she shut her eyes tight, every nerve screaming for the satisfaction only he could give. Inch by agonising inch he entered her and when he was finally fully seated she loosed a sound of pleasure she couldn’t hold back. She could feel how damp, how ready she was and his sheer strength as he lifted her up to him, muscles bulging in his forearms, left her weak with longing. He slid back and then plunged, his speed picking up. Excitement detonated inside her and she wrapped her legs round him. As she bucked he pinned her to the mattress and thrust into her fiercely with a primal grunt of pleasure. It went on and on and on until she was sobbing with excitement and the band of tension at the centre of her body was tightening and tightening. Release came in a rush of feral fire, lighting up every nerve and skin cell, and she cried out, her nails raking down his back in an ecstasy of pleasure.
She was dizzy with lingering joy when she recovered enough to be aware of her surroundings again.
‘I’m flattening you.’ He dropped a gentle kiss on her brow and released her from his weight to turn over.
Flatten away, she almost told him, until her attention was grabbed by the tattoo on his shoulder. Yes, it was a winged goddess, but incongruously a tiny rainbow and the head of a unicorn peeked out from below one wing. ‘A rainbow and a unicorn?’ she queried, tracing the design with a curious fingertip.
Nikolai went rigid and flipped back to face her, dark eyes grim in his lean, strong face. ‘To remember my sister...the fairy-tale things she liked,’ he confided with a reluctance she could feel.
‘That’s sweet...when did she...?’
‘Five years ago.’ His rich, dark drawl had gone all gravelly. ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’
‘OK,’ Ella said lightly, although it wasn’t OK in any way and his reserve hurt.
Did you really think being married to Nikolai was going to be all rainbows and unicorns? she asked herself irritably. He wasn’t going to have a personality transplant overnight and suddenly begin sharing his every innermost thought and feeling. Obviously he still felt the loss of his sister deeply and he wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. That was all right. She didn’t have to blunder in where angels feared to tread, did she? She didn’t have to know everything about him...did she?
Love was a hard taskmaster, she conceded then, running a tender fingertip over the hard line of his tense mouth before giving up on that approach and rolling away from him to climb off the bed. ‘I’m still wearing my boots,’ she noted in wonderment.
‘I like them,’ Nikolai told her in a driven undertone.
‘I knew you would...but my feet are hurting now,’ she admitted, sitting down by the table with the flowers to take the boots off and noticing the envelope sitting there unopened. ‘Oh, you haven’t opened this yet. It must be from whoever sent the flowers.’
Sitting up in the bed, Nikolai tensed again as she dug out the card. ‘Dido and Dorkas Drakos...the flowers are from your great-aunts!’ Ella exclaimed with satisfaction. ‘You’ll have to go and look them up now.’
‘I hate to rain on your parade but I met them years ago when I was having this place renovated,’ Nikolai admitted abruptly.
‘You didn’t mention that,’ she said in surprise. ‘Were they friendly?’
‘Very...but it seemed a bit too late in the day to get sucked into the family circle when I had spent most of my life alone,’ he admitted stiffly.
‘When did they first find out that you existed?’ she pressed.
‘When I inherited from my grandfather.’
‘Then you can’t blame them for not being around when you were younger,’ Ella pointed out squarely. ‘We should go and visit...see how it goes.’
Nikolai rolled his eyes and said nothing. Meeting his relatives would make her happy and it would cost him nothing. He knew she was keen to give him family roots on Crete. She couldn’t grasp that he had lived most of his life without such ties and that they meant a great deal less to him than they did to her. He had learned a lot in his first ten years at the hands of totally detached parents.
A little hurt by his discouraging silence, Ella went for a shower. As she stepped out of the cubicle, however, he stepped in.
‘Do you want some supper?’ Nikolai enquired when he wandered back into the bedroom clad in the twin of the dark towelling robe she had found hanging in the bathroom.
‘Is there anything available?’ Ella asked, knowing that he wasn’t much better at cooking than she was. At home she had looked after her father when he’d needed care and had generally taken over his jobs, keeping the garden and lighting the fire, while Gramma had presided over the kitchen. There had never been any need for Ella to learn how to cook.
>
Nikolai gave her an amused appraisal. ‘I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.’
Ella was bemused when she heard dogs barking somewhere nearby. Nikolai opened the bedroom door and Rory and Butch charged in to careen round his feet. He moved the vase of flowers to allow Max to settle a laden tray down on the table.
‘This was my surprise,’ Nikolai told her wryly.
‘I thought it was the pearls.’
‘No, Max and the dogs flew out the day before yesterday to ensure our comfort while we’re here. They’re staying in the guest cottage down the lane.’
As the dogs romped around her, deliriously excited at the reunion, Ella could not have been more pleased by Nikolai’s surprise. Although she had already been aware that Max was to continue working for them, the older man was a fabulous cook and organiser as well as being wonderfully pet friendly. His presence on the domestic front meant that Ella could totally relax.
* * *
Nikolai eyed the level in the wine glass and watched Ella reach for her water bottle. He knew the main reason why women usually stopped drinking and it sent a chill of dismay down his spine. But how could Ella possibly be pregnant? One of the qualities he most admired about Ella was her unflinching honesty and in his world that was rare indeed. Had she been pregnant he knew she would have told him immediately.
‘Why have you stopped drinking?’ Nikolai asked lazily.
Ella had been almost drugged by the sun-drenched scene before her. They were lying on a rug in the shade of a giant chestnut tree only a few yards from a deserted cove where unbelievably blue and clear water washed a pale sand shore. Weeks of relaxation on Crete had brought down most of Ella’s defences and she only stiffened a little in receipt of that awkward question, relieved that she had an answer already prepared.
‘I had a ghastly hangover a couple of months back and I just lost my taste for alcohol.’
‘But why pretend to still drink?’ Nikolai broke in.
Her tension soared up the scale. ‘It can make people uncomfortable when you say you don’t drink.’
‘It doesn’t make me uncomfortable.’
‘Then I won’t pretend any more,’ she told him glibly but she was shocked at herself. She was actually lying to Nikolai and it was wrong. When had wrong begun to seem right? She had had three perfect weeks with Nikolai, without a doubt the happiest three weeks she had ever enjoyed. Even flying back to the UK to attend the funeral of the bar manager who had died in the hotel fire had not doused that happiness. Nikolai had said that she didn’t need to accompany him but she had wanted to give him her support and she knew he had appreciated her presence. She had not accompanied him though when he had had yet another interview with the police, but had shared his relief when the police had intimated that, although they were as yet nowhere near charging anyone for arson, they did have leads to follow.
Back on the island Nikolai and Ella had continued to make memories. They had visited fabled ancient Minoan sites, including the archaeological dig that was currently taking place on land Nikolai owned nearby. They had explored Chania after dark on several evenings, eating at lively tavernas, shopping for gifts and visiting clubs in the old harbour area. Ella preferred the seafront bars to the clubs once she saw how blatantly Nikolai was besieged by predatory women drawn by his looks and wealth. Returning from the cloakroom to find him surrounded had been unnerving and had ramped up her insecurity.
How attractive would Nikolai still find her once pregnancy changed her body? There were already little changes that only she was aware of. Her breasts were a little bit fuller and her nipples more tender. When they had visited the almost tropical lagoon at Elafonisi it had become very hot and she had felt dizzy for the first time. In a Byzantine monastery in the mountains that glowed with colourful frescos and icons, she had felt nauseous because they hadn’t eaten in hours and Nikolai had fussed all the way down the hill to the village café, where they had stuffed themselves full of pizza.
She had already decided to tell him about the baby once they had returned to London. She had an almost superstitious fear of breaking the news on their idyllic honeymoon. He didn’t love her. She was very, very conscious of that, because she had been the idiot who had involuntarily shouted out her feelings in bed one night and he had not reciprocated, although he had held her close afterwards while probably fighting the desire to apologise for not being able to return the sentiment.
And that was what she didn’t want: a male who felt guilty because he didn’t love her, because eventually that guilt would eat away at what he did feel. Even so, a man in love with his wife would be much more accepting of an unplanned pregnancy than one who merely suffered from insatiable desire. And Nikolai was insatiable with her, she conceded, a secretive smile tilting her lips as long fingers swept below the hem of her dress to stroke her thigh in a way that sent tiny hot tremors of helpless anticipation rippling through her. That seemingly unquenchable hunger of his made her feel safe. She was willing to admit that it wasn’t the fairy-tale relationship she had once dreamt of having, but it was still a lot more real and passionate than anything she had ever known.
Nikolai kissed her, slow and deep, and then lifted his tousled dark head again. ‘My sister, Sofia...’ he framed with startling abruptness, ‘committed suicide. She took an overdose. That’s why I find it hard to talk about.’
Emerging from a male as reserved as Nikolai, that speech was a breakthrough and Ella gazed up at him with warmly concerned eyes. ‘That must’ve been very tough for you to accept.’
‘I didn’t even know she was depressed. I hadn’t seen her in months,’ he explained in a bitten-off, tight undertone. ‘I kept on offering to fly her over to London and she made excuses. I should’ve realised something was wrong and flown to her in Athens, but that was in the days before my private jet and I was working night and day on getting my first hotel opened up. I neglected her. I put profit first.’
‘You didn’t know there was anything wrong. When you’re busy time goes by and you don’t notice.’
‘Don’t try to comfort me,’ Nikolai interposed darkly. ‘I let Sofia down when she needed me, the only time she ever needed me. I had all these ideas about what we would do together once I made some money, but I should’ve been concentrating on the present, not the future.’
Ella’s eyes stung, for she could feel the guilty grief he had never managed to overcome. ‘You didn’t know, Nikolai, and obviously she didn’t want you to know or she’d have told you how she was feeling.’
His lean, strong face froze. ‘I found out by reading her diary. I felt bad about doing that but I needed so badly to know...why...’ he completed jaggedly.
‘Of course you did. That’s human nature,’ she murmured softly, touched that he had finally chosen to confide in her, her heart full to overflowing with love.
She still didn’t know what it was about him that had made her fall so deeply in love at such speed, she only knew that the thought of life without him terrified her.
And in their differing ways that evening as they attended a party at Nikolai’s great-aunts’ house in Chania, both of them mulled over that conversation and reached certain conclusions.
After being widowed in their sixties, the twin sisters had set up home together again and as each of them had had several children, all of whom lived locally, they were rarely without visitors. From their very first visit, Nikolai and Ella had been made wonderfully welcome, long-lost members of the family being brought back into the fold. Ella had watched Nikolai slowly unfreeze and lose the cool distrustful front that he so often wore to the world. That particular evening, Ella saw him tripping up over one of the toddlers and pausing to pick him up and dry his tears.
‘He’ll make a good father, unlike his own,’ Dorkas Drakos pronounced with satisfaction.
‘Our brother was a misery all his life. His mo
ney never brought him happiness,’ Dido piped up at her sister’s elbow. ‘Nikolai is very different.’
Guilt was nagging at Ella as she watched Nikolai with the little boy. Maybe she shouldn’t wait until they returned to London to make her announcement...
Straightening, Nikolai met his bride’s luminous green eyes. He had to tell her the truth. She had said she loved him but had she meant it? Nikolai had never seen himself as remotely loveable. When other women had told him they loved him he had known in his bones that the only thing they really loved was his wealth and generosity, but he knew that wasn’t true of Ella, who thought he spent money far too freely on her and got embarrassed whenever he gave her anything.
But to tell her the truth would entail hurting her and he had never dreaded anything more than he dreaded that prospect. If she was too badly hurt would she fall out of love again? Would she walk away? Would she never again see him in the same light? Would he irrevocably damage all that was special between them?
The more those anxieties infiltrated Nikolai, the more determined he became to clear his conscience. He didn’t want to keep secrets from Ella. How could he expect her to trust him when he had yet to trust her with the truth about himself? Nor would he ever forget Ella insisting that with her he could be his real self. Even so that was still a major challenge for a male who had never before shown a woman his real self...
Early the following morning, however, everything changed without warning. They were having breakfast when Nikolai dug his phone out to answer a call. Ella watched his lean, darkly handsome face freeze and then saw the colour steadily draining from below his bronzed skin. His eyes cloaked as he put the phone down.
‘Cyrus Makris has been arrested and charged for paying two men to set my hotel on fire and for Desmond’s death,’ Nikolai relayed flatly.
With the air of a sleepwalker, Nikolai rose upright and walked back indoors.