by Sarah Morgan
Kelly swallowed and scraped her hair behind one ear. ‘Maybe,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Possibly. Perhaps. Are you saying I’m unreasonable?’
‘No.’ He breathed out unsteadily. ‘But I’m trying to point out that I can’t win. Whatever I do can be misinterpreted if that’s what you’re determined to do. You don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you for that. In the circumstances it would be odd if you did. I know I have to earn your trust. I’m trying to do that.’
‘You’re turning this all around to make me feel bad. And none of that explains why you behaved like a caveman last night over dinner. You virtually thumped that guy! I know he was incredibly boring, but that’s no excuse. I don’t like violence.’
‘And I don’t like men trying to poach my woman.’
‘You’re very possessive.’
‘I’m Greek.’ Alekos gave a dangerous smile. ‘And, yes, I’m possessive. That is one accusation I am not denying. Nor am I apologising. The day I smile on you flirting with another man is the day you know our relationship is dead. I will fight for our relationship, agape mou, even if that means offending your non-violent principles.’
Reluctantly fascinated by that unapologetically male, territorial display, Kelly found that her heart was pounding. ‘I wasn’t flirting with another man. I wasn’t even enjoying his company,’ she squeaked, a strange weakness spreading through her limbs as she eyed his pumped-up muscles and darkened jaw. ‘If you want the honest truth, he was the most boring, creepy person I’ve ever sat next to.’
His eyes glittered dark and deadly. ‘You were laughing and smiling. I’ve never seen you so happy.’
‘You told me it was an important business meeting. I presumed you wanted me to be polite! And I was happy because, up until the point where you completely lost your mind, I really thought we were doing OK. You were being really nice to me; you called it our home, not my home, and I thought that meant we were making real progress, and—’
‘Our home?’ Alekos interrupted her, a curious look in his eyes, and Kelly gave a little shrug.
‘That’s what you called it: “our home”. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy.’
‘Warm and fuzzy? This is the same feeling you got from giving away a lump of money to a good cause, no?’ Looking slightly dazed, Alekos jabbed his fingers into his hair and Kelly chewed one of her fingernails, wondering whether it was even possible for two people so different ever to understand each other.
‘You made us sound like a pair,’ she mumbled, trying to explain. ‘A couple. We were an us. I honestly thought things were going really well, that’s why I was happy. And when I’m happy I smile.’
His attention caught by that frank declaration, Alekos studied her intently. ‘I presumed you were happy because of him.’
‘I was happy because of you.’ Kelly twisted the bedcover in her fingers. ‘But don’t get big-headed, because believe me it didn’t last very long. You were completely vile during that dinner. And actually I feel pretty unappreciated, I can tell you, given that I worked so hard to be nice to him for your sake.’
‘For my sake?’
‘You told me it was an important meeting. I worked very hard to be nice to them and not let you down. And I was doing really well until you said that thing about the baby.’ Remembering how she’d stalked out of the restaurant and left him to handle them on his own, Kelly covered her face with her hands, mortified. ‘Now I feel bad. Which is horrible, because actually ninety percent of this was actually your fault.’
‘I completely agree.’
Taken by surprise, Kelly peeped through her fingers. ‘You agree?’
‘Yes, I was monumentally insensitive. Until you pointed it out, it hadn’t occurred to me how easy it would have been for you to misinterpret my reluctance to discuss the baby with strangers—but now I see that, yes, of course you were going to feel that way after I’d told you that I didn’t want children.’ Alekos yanked the bow-tie away from his neck and dropped it on top of the jacket. ‘I have been up all night, trying to find ways of convincing you that I do want you and the baby.’
Distracted by the cluster of dark curls at the base of his throat, Kelly gulped. ‘Up all night? Gosh, poor you, you must be so tired. Perhaps you’d better have a nap or something.’
‘Sleep is not at the top of my list of priorities at the moment. Sorting this out is more important.’ Alekos paced over to the chair where he’d deposited the parcels. ‘I do think about the baby. Just to prove it to you, I thought it was time to deliver these: I’ve been buying them over the past few weeks, but I was afraid that if I gave them to you you’d take it the wrong way.’ Filling his arms with the brightly wrapped boxes, he gave a rueful smile. ‘It seems that by not giving them you took it the wrong way, so there doesn’t seem any point in waiting.’
‘What are they?’ Kelly stared at the precarious tower of gifts in fascination. ‘If that’s jewellery, then you’re going to need a bigger girlfriend.’
‘It’s not jewellery. None of this is for you. I bought gifts for the baby.’
Kelly blinked in amazement at the mountain of carefully wrapped presents. He’d bought gifts? For the baby? ‘I—I’m not even two months’ pregnant. We don’t know what sex it is…’
‘I did the wrong thing?’ Alekos was as tense as a bow. ‘I can take them back.’
‘No. Don’t do that.’ He’d bought presents for the baby. Just when she’d thought he’d blocked it out of his mind, he’d been buying stuff.
‘All right, now I feel really, really horrible,’ Kelly confessed in a thick voice, and he gave a wry smile.
‘I wasn’t trying to make you feel horrible,’ he said gruffly. ‘I was trying to please you. That isn’t proving as easy as I thought it would.’
‘Thanks. That makes me feel even more horrible. What did you buy?’
‘Open them and look.’ Alekos gently spilled the parcels onto the bed and Kelly stared at the assortment of packages in disbelief.
‘There are loads of them. I’m having one baby, not sextuplets.’
‘I went shopping a couple of times when I flew to Athens.’ Looking distinctly uncomfortable, he undid another button on his shirt. ‘It’s possible I may have got a little carried away.’
Touched that he’d thought about the baby during his hideously busy working day, and feeling more and more guilty that she’d misjudged him so badly, Kelly lifted the first parcel, which was large and extremely squashy. Ripping off the paper, she pulled out a huge brown bear sporting a red ribbon. ‘Oh. It’s gorgeous.’
‘I thought if I bought one with a blue ribbon you’d be angry with me for assuming the baby was going to be a boy, and if I’d bought a pink ribbon and the baby was a boy then we would have had to change the ribbon…’ His voice tailed off as he watched her face. ‘So I thought red was best. Is it OK?’
Kelly, who had never before considered the purchase of a child’s toy to involve a complex decision-making process—certainly not for a man who made decisions involving tens of millions of dollars every day—was stunned by the agonies he’d clearly endured in making his choice. ‘It’s really lovely. Perfect.’ Noticing that the label said ‘not suitable for children under eighteen months’, she tucked it under the red ribbon so that he wouldn’t see it, and made a mental note to position the bear in a strategic point in the nursery where the baby could see but not touch. ‘I know the baby will love it.’
She opened the next parcel and found another bear, identical to the first. Bemused, but extra-careful not to hurt his feelings, she smiled brightly. ‘Another one. That’s—great. Fantastic.’ What was he thinking? A bear for every day of the week?
‘You’re thinking I’ve gone mad.’
‘I’m not thinking that,’ Kelly lied, and Alekos gently removed the bear from her grasp and stared down at it, a strange look in his eyes.
‘My bear was the one constant in my life when I was little,’ he said huskily. ‘No matter how up and down my life, my b
ear was always there. I slept with him every night. And then one day I lost it. I took it to my grandmother’s, left it in the back of a taxi and never saw it again. I was devastated.’ He lifted his head and gave her a mocking smile. ‘Tell that to the press and you’ll ruin my reputation for good.’
Hot tears scalded her eyes as she thought of the little boy losing his beloved bear. ‘I—I’d never tell that to anyone,’ she stammered, a lump in her throat. ‘But couldn’t you have got it back? Couldn’t they have just phoned the taxi firm?’
‘No one thought it was important enough.’ Alekos handed the bear back to her carefully. ‘I wanted our baby to have two identical bears, just in case. A spare is always useful. Maybe you can put one in a drawer or something. Then, if we have a crisis, we can sneak the other one into its place and avoid all that heartbreak.’
‘OK, we’ll do that.’ The tears spilled down her cheeks, and Alekos looked at her in horror.
‘Why are you crying? What have I done? Too many bears—not enough bears?’
‘It isn’t the bear,’ she sobbed. ‘I love the bears. Both of them. It’s the fact that you had to go to sleep without it. I keep thinking about you, just six years old having to choose between your mum and dad, and it’s just vile and hideous; it’s no wonder you’re a bit screwed up about things.’ Tears smeared her face and Alekos muttered something in Greek.
‘You’re crying over something that happened to me twenty-eight years ago?’
‘Yes.’ Kelly scrubbed her hand over her cheeks and tried to pull herself together. ‘I think being pregnant might be making me a little bit emotional.’
‘Very possibly,’ Alekos said faintly, handing her a tissue. ‘Just a little bit. I was worried I’d made a mistake with the bears.’
‘The bears are beautiful.’ She blew her nose hard. ‘Both of them. And having a spare is a completely brilliant idea. I feel really bad now that I accused you of denying the baby when you’d already bought all that stuff. I want to make it up to you. I’m sorry I’m crying; I’m just so tired and I feel bad.’
‘You have nothing to feel bad about,’ he said softly, removing her tears with his thumb. ‘I know I’m not good at this. And it’s not surprising you’re tired after last night. I upset you badly. I know I’m doing it all wrong, but I am trying, agape mou.’
‘I know. What else have you bought?’ It was an agonisingly tender moment and Kelly opened the other parcels one by one, touched by the variety of things he’d purchased. There were more toys, clothes in neutral colours and books in both Greek and English.
‘I thought he ought to learn both languages.’ Alekos watched her face as she unwrapped parcel after parcel. ‘I want him to know that he is Greek.’
‘She.’ Kelly emphasised the word carefully as she stacked the books that undoubtedly wouldn’t be read until the child was at least four. She grabbed another tissue and blew her nose hard, not even wanting to think about how she must look. ‘She will also be half-English.’
‘It is going to be a boy, I know it.’
‘Even you can’t dictate the sex of the child.’ But Kelly was incredibly touched by the gifts. Most of them were completely inappropriate for a newborn, but it was the thought. ‘They’re all lovely, Alekos.’
‘Good. So, now I have proved to you that I’m thinking of the baby, and you have explained to me that you weren’t flirting, so everyone is happy.’ Dragging his eyes away from her bare shoulders, Alekos sprang from the bed and strolled towards the bathroom. ‘And now I’m going to take a long, cold shower because, while I agree with the theory of separate bedrooms, I am finding the reality rather hard to sustain. I’ll meet you on the terrace for breakfast once I have given myself frostbite.’
Chapter Eight
KELLY stood with her hand on the door to the bathroom, listening to the sound of water running.
Raising her eyes to the ceiling, she gave herself a lecture. What was wrong with her? Whether they had sex or not wasn’t going to have an adverse effect on how this relationship progressed. In fact, she was fast coming to the conclusion that the opposite was true: abstaining made it hard to think about anything but sex. It was like giving up chocolate: the moment you knew you couldn’t have it, it became impossible to think of anything else.
Kelly opened the door before she could change her mind.
Alekos stood under the shower with his eyes closed, the stream of water running off his broad shoulders onto his washboard-flat abdomen and down his hard thighs.
Kelly gulped and quickly lifted her eyes, but that didn’t help much because then she just found herself looking at the perfect symmetry of his handsome face and the sensual lines of his mouth.
Dropping her robe on the floor, she moved silently across the bathroom, walked under the stream of water and slid her arms around his waist.
‘I wondered how long you were going to stand there just looking,’ he drawled, and Kelly glanced up at him.
‘You had your eyes shut. How did you know I was standing there?’
‘I can sense you.’ His eyes opened and he gave a slow, dangerous smile. ‘That, and I heard the door open. Unless my housekeeper has suddenly developed a desire to see me naked, it had to be you.’
Kelly was fairly sure that every one of his female household-staff harboured a desire to see him naked, but she tried to block out that fact.
She gasped as water trickled over her shoulder. ‘You weren’t kidding about the cold shower. This water is freezing.’
‘You can take that as a compliment.’
Shivering, her teeth chattering and her flesh covered in goose bumps, Kelly giggled. ‘Is it really that bad?’
His answer was to guide her hand to the bold swell of his erection. ‘Bear in mind that this is with the aid of really cold water.’
Kelly closed her hand over him and heard the breath hiss through his teeth. ‘I’d say the cold water isn’t working. Maybe we need to try something else.’ Turning off the flow of water with her hand, she dropped to her knees and took him in her mouth.
She didn’t need to understand Greek to pick up the shock in his tone, shock that quickly turned to a groan of pleasure as her mouth caressed the whole thick, velvet length of him. He was hot and hard, and she heard the harsh rasp of his breathing as she used her lips and tongue, driving him wild.
‘Kelly…’ His voice raw, he lifted her to her feet and looked down at her, his eyes narrow slits of burning desire. ‘You never did that before.’
‘That was before—this is now.’ The heat of his erection brushed against her belly and as his hungry mouth caught hers in a hot, sexy kiss a shudder ran through her.
She wanted to tell him how she was feeling, but the words wouldn’t string themselves together into a coherent sentence.
Alekos pressed her back against the wall of the shower and Kelly gasped as his hand slid between her thighs. She was trying to work out how to breathe and say his name at the same time when his fingers slipped skilfully inside her. As he touched in all the right places, sensation pooled in her pelvis and her eyes drifted shut.
She was on fire, every single part of her was on fire, and she tried to tell Alekos that he needed to turn the cold water on again, but his mouth was devouring hers and she couldn’t catch her breath to speak.
She wanted to tell him that she felt incredible—that he was incredible—but before she could speak, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her through to the bedroom.
‘I’m still wet,’ Kelly mumbled dizzily and he gave a slow, dangerous smile.
‘I know you are, agape mou.’ Gently pushing her legs apart, he slid down her body, proving his point.
Aware of the hot scorch of the late-morning sun shining directly through the open doors, Kelly squirmed in embarrassment, but he ignored her attempts to close her legs, clamping her wrists together with one hand and using the other to do exactly as he wanted.
With each caress, each skilful, intimate stroke of his tongue, he brought her
closer and closer to orgasm. As Kelly wriggled and squirmed in an attempt to relieve the burning sensation in her pelvis, Alekos pinned her hips with his hands, subjecting her to something close to sensual torture.
His tongue was slick and clever, his fingers skilled and knowing, and Kelly felt heat spread through her like a flash fire. Her climax hit with the shattering force, the pleasure pushing her higher and higher as she cried out his name and dug her nails into the smooth muscle of his shoulders. Her pleasure went on and on and he experienced every moment of it with her, his fingers buried deep inside her, his mouth tasting her pleasure.
While she was still shaking in the aftermath, Alekos slid up her body, pushed her thighs still wider and entered her with a smooth, purposeful thrust that joined them completely. Kelly cried out his name as white-hot lightning shot through her, searing her body with sensations so overwhelming that she couldn’t breathe.
He made a rough sound deep in his throat and then his mouth came down on hers, the erotic demands of his kiss sending the excitement spinning higher and higher. Cupping her bottom in his hand, Alekos lifted her and thrust deep, the slow, sensual movement of his hips creating almost unbearable pressure as he filled her.
Kelly locked her arms around his neck, and when he lifted his head and looked into her eyes the connection between them deepened to something so incredibly personal that she felt something unravel inside her.
Alekos slid his hand over her thigh, encouraging her to curl her leg across his back. Kelly did as he urged, feeling the sensations intensify as he drove deep, each skilled thrust propelling them both towards climax. The heat was unbearable; her nerve endings were sizzling and when the explosion finally came it took both of them down together. The power of it shocked her and she dug her nails into his shoulders again, her heart pounding, her body slick against his as he drove into her for a final time.