by Lynne Graham
In a fluid movement he leant back from her and pulled off his shirt, springing upright to remove his trousers. Her heart racing, a languorous weakness gripping her limbs, she lay back against the pillows, watching him. His chinos hit the rug. She was madly curious, and she couldn’t stop looking. He was as confident in his own naked skin as he was in a business suit. And that sleek self-assurance was as sexy as the appeal of his strong, hard body. He discarded his boxers and strolled back to the bed. The bold length of his virile masculinity made her gulp.
Enjoying the wide-eyed visual appraisal she was trying so hard and unsuccessfully to hide, Giannis dealt her a wolfish grin. ‘Do I meet your expectations?’
‘Who am I supposed to compare you to?’ Maddie riposted, hot-cheeked.
The aggressive strength of will that powered the continual expansion of his massive business empire hardened his lean strong face. ‘No other man. You belong with me now.’
‘Women don’t belong to men in this century.’
‘Would you feel right doing this with someone else?’ Giannis enquired, sliding deft hands below her hips and tugging her kaftan off.
She was caught between dismay at that concept and self-consciousness at her nudity. ‘No, of course not. But—’
‘You take my point so beautifully, glikia mou.’ Giannis leant hungrily over her to taste her luscious mouth.
He used his tongue to make a darting foray between her lips, and a snaking spasm of response clenched low in her pelvis. He buried his expert mouth in the hollow beneath her collarbone before lowering his head to let his teeth graze her distended nipples. A low gasp broke from her. Her skin dampened. A delicious yearning was drumming up the honeyed heat at the secret heart of her. Her fingers curved round a smooth brown shoulder, and when he slid up level with her again she explored the solid muscular wall of his chest, traced the silky furrow of hair that led down to his straining sex.
‘Show me what you like,’ she whispered unevenly.
Giannis told her in the most succinct terms, and took great pleasure in offering guidance. She devoted herself to the new learning experience with an innocent enthusiasm that forced him to conclude the exercise much faster than he had anticipated. Groaning as he fought to reinstate control, he kissed her with devouring hunger. ‘You almost pushed me over the edge, pedhi mou.’
Making love to him had heightened her desire, and her level of frustration. She quivered in the shelter of his arms, madly aware of the tingling burn of emptiness between her slender thighs. When he sought out the damp heat of that tender triangle, she gritted her teeth to hold back a cry. Her longing was so intense she pressed her face into his shoulder, drinking in the achingly familiar scent of his skin. He shifted, parting her legs to stroke the delicate pink softness of her lush femininity. He rubbed the little pearl of sensation and she moaned and shivered. As the tormenting heat rose, her hips shifted back and forth on the mattress. Paying no heed to her protests, he employed his mouth with skilful eroticism on her squirming body.
‘Giannis…please…’
‘If you can still talk, you’re not enjoying yourself enough.’
That intimacy was a sweet torment which drove her out of her mind with delight. Wild waves of desperate hunger controlled her. The pressure in her pelvis built and built. She was so hot she was melting, and at the instant where irresistible sensation became sensual torture a shattering climax convulsed her and she abandoned herself to the ecstasy.
Giannis wasted no time in rearranging her limp body and forging a bold passage into her sensitised flesh. He took her with ruthless precision, and she cried out in feverish response. He deepened his penetration, tipping her back at an angle demanding that she take all of him. Frantic excitement enveloped her. His every powerful movement sent ripples of delirious pleasure coursing through her responsive body. He pounded into her with sure, fast strokes. What she had not known could happen again took her a second time, and the frenzied rise of her passionate response swept her to another electrifying orgasm.
‘You enthral me, pedhi mou.’ Giannis rolled back from her and gently straightened her out. He carried her nerveless fingers to his mouth and kissed them. ‘That was wonderful.’
Every muscle ached. Her body almost hurt in the aftermath of that huge, demanding flood of pleasure. The air-conditioning was chilling the perspiration from her body and she shivered.
‘Cold?’ Giannis questioned
‘Silly, isn’t it?’ Maddie muttered.
Giannis didn’t like this constraint. It wasn’t what he had anticipated from her. He had thought that she might well fall in love with him. He had half expected her to cling to him with naïve affection, and he had braced himself to tolerate being hugged. But not only had she made no such move, she was also disturbingly quiet. Perhaps she felt unappreciated? he reasoned. As it was his experience that his lovers always expected gifts, he thought that it was now time to show her the designer wardrobe he had ordered for her.
‘I’ll get you something to put on.’ Giannis sprang off the bed.
‘I didn’t bring a wrap.’ Maddie wished she dared suggest that greater proximity would soon warm her up again—he put out sufficient body heat to power an apartment block. In truth, a terrible uncertainty was threatening to claim her again. Now that their one-night stand had turned into an affair, she realised that she didn’t know how to go about conducting one. She wanted reassurance that what they had wasn’t a casual thing, on his terms, but she knew she was being too needy, looking for too much too soon. There was no way she could risk such questions.
Giannis strolled into the dressing room and rolled back the doors. ‘Come here…I want to show you something.’
Maddie lifted his discarded shirt and held it against her in an effort to cover the expanse of her own bare skin. Wondering what the heck he could want to show her, she came to an awkward halt in the doorway.
‘All the clothes in here are yours.’
Her delicate brows pleated in confusion. ‘How can they be mine?’
Giannis shrugged. ‘This is my gift to you. Staff will be standing by tomorrow, to alter anything that doesn’t fit.’
Stunned by what he was telling her, Maddie tugged open a drawer and skated a doubtful fingertip over silk and lace lingerie. How dared he buy her underwear? Her small white teeth gritted. She stared at the garments hanging in the closet, noting a very famous designer label and sliding the items along the rail to examine another couple, before drawing back her hands as though she had been stung by a wasp. Mortified colour had washed into her cheeks.
‘I can’t believe that you think it’s okay to do something like this,’ she told him tightly, threading her arms into the sleeves of his shirt, because she now felt foolish naked. ‘I may not own any fancy clothes, but that doesn’t mean I want you to buy them for me!’
‘My only motivation was to please you.’
‘Did you pick them out personally?’ she asked abruptly.
In the act of pulling out a pair of jeans from the other side of the dressing room, Giannis tensed, recalling another débâcle when he had sent Nemos to her door to organise lunch. ‘No.’
‘Did you describe what you wanted?’
‘I may have mentioned a favourite colour or two.’
‘Mine or yours?’
‘I don’t know yours,’ he was forced to admit, his handsome mouth taut with impatience. He zipped the jeans. What was her problem? Why couldn’t she be grateful, as so many other women had been before her? Why was she so outrageously difficult to please?
‘Which really says it all, doesn’t it?’ Maddie snapped. ‘You don’t know my favourite colours and you don’t really care either. You want to dress me up like a fashion doll for your benefit, not mine.’
His dark golden eyes simmered. ‘That is untrue.’
‘If you don’t like me as I am, tough!’ Maddie flung at him, her generous mouth curling with pained defiance. ‘And at least have the sensitivity to appreciate that spe
That concluding crack made Giannis furious. Slashing his hands through the air in a striking gesture of exasperation, he strode back into the bedroom. ‘So we’re back to the missing sensitivity gene?’
‘I do not need to be reminded that you’re richer than sin.’
‘Stop talking as though my wealth is a serious flaw,’ Giannis sliced back with sardonic bite.
‘But it is…can’t you see that? It’s a barrier between us. I’m not a hooker you need to pay—but that’s how you’re making me feel! ‘
‘Theos mou… You’re such a diva!’ Giannis condemned, colder than ice. ‘A gift is not an insult, and it should be accepted with grace. I’m a generous man and your attitude is offensive. You have no idea of how to behave. And, by the way, no hooker would make as little effort to please as you do!’
His censure cut deep. Tears prickled and stung the backs of her eyes, for she was not in the habit of staging violent arguments—nor had she ever been told before that she lacked manners. She shrank inside his shirt. But she still felt it would be wrong to accept that vast collection of shockingly expensive clothes. She wasn’t a hired entertainer. Wearing garments purchased by him would only serve to increase her sense of inequality. But maybe if she wore his gifts to mask that big financial difference he would feel more comfortable with her? a little inner voice suggested. So who was right…and who was wrong?
Her head buzzing with conflicting thoughts, she walked out on to the roof terrace. Chilled by the night air, she curled up in a heap on a couch. A few minutes later a maid came out, to offer her an opulent cashmere rug.
Giannis watched from the bedroom while Maddie wrapped herself up in the rug he’d had sent out to her. His strong jawline clenched. Nobody else argued with him—and never, ever a woman. What made her so feisty? So critical of him? She was annoying the hell out of him.
In one of the lightning-fast decisions that made him so formidable an opponent in the business world, Giannis rammed the French windows back from his path and went outside. In the light from the coloured glass lanterns her green eyes shone with the clarity of jewels. Without hesitation—for he was determined to overcome any objections—Giannis bent down, scooped her up, complete with rug, and went back indoors with her again.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Maddie squealed in disconcertion.
Settling her back on the bed, Giannis followed her down in one lithe movement. Bare-chested, long powerful legs clad only in well-worn faded jeans, he stared down at her in mocking challenge. ‘What do you think?’
‘You said I’d no manners—’
Long brown fingers shaped her high cheekbones. Fierce dark golden eyes assailed hers. ‘I thought you’d be thrilled with a new wardrobe.’
Her soft mouth down-curved; her long brown lashes dipped. ‘I’m sorry…I didn’t think of it from your point of view.’
‘Or I from yours. You’re different from other women. But that’s why I want you so much. ‘ Giannis let his wide sensual mouth drift down on hers like a caress.
As the kiss deepened the hot, hungry taste of his urgency intoxicated her. The feverish thoughts tugging her in different directions subsided. Liquid warmth uncoiled in her belly. His long, powerful body came down on hers, acquainting her with the deliciously aggressive thrust of his erection. A helpless frisson of response rippled through her and centred on the ache stirring in her pelvis. Suddenly she wanted him again, with the most shocking ferocity…
The following day, Maddie stirred drowsily and sent a seeking hand across the bed for Giannis. Finding only empty space, she opened her eyes. The bathroom door wasn’t quite closed, and she could hear the thump of water on tiles: he was in the shower. She peered at her watch with a softened smile. It was four in the afternoon.
Earlier that day Giannis had flown her to Marrakech, for breakfast in a fabulous old hotel, before taking her for a visit to the souks. Momentarily her face clouded. She’d had to struggle to hide the fact that the strong, aromatic scents of the spice market had made her feel nauseous. She suppressed the lingering stab of concern, since she could not help but be influenced by Giannis’s sublime conviction that their contraceptive mishap would have no consequences. They had returned to his mountain hideaway for lunch on the almond terrace, where they had sat beneath trees weighed down with exquisite clouds of spring blossom. Long before the final course arrived they had left the table to make love again.
His mobile phone buzzed on the bedside cabinet. She had noticed that he never missed a call. After a moment’s hesitation she reached out and answered it. A flood of words in another language made her appreciate the pointlessness of her attempt to be helpful.
‘I’m sorry…can I help you?’ she asked in apologetic English.
‘Who are you? Some little secretary bird?’ the female demanded haughtily. ‘Put me on to my fiancé.’
Maddie frowned in confusion. ‘Your fiancé? Who do I say is calling?’
‘Krista. Who else?’ the woman responded with withering scorn. ‘Hurry up…I haven’t got all day!’
Maddie set the phone down with a weak hand. She discovered that she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She was as winded as though she had been punched in the gut. It had to be some misunderstanding. Or perhaps the woman had been joking, or lying for some reason best known to her? What the heck was she imagining? That Giannis would deceive her to that extent? That she could be so foolish? She realised with a sinking heart that she had never actually asked him if there was anyone else in his life. But he knew that she believed he was single, she reminded herself frantically, thinking back to their conversation the night before.
Sliding out of bed, she reached for the turquoise kaftan she had been using as a dressing gown. As she pulled it on with clumsy hands she heard an angry burst of speech from the phone she had laid down.
Giannis appeared with a towel twisted round his lean brown hips. She pointed at the receiver. ‘Krista’s on the phone.’
He was still only for a fraction of a second, and his lean, darkly handsome features betrayed nothing. Yet Maddie knew in that same instant that there was no misunderstanding, no joke, and no lie: the guy she had allowed herself to fall madly in love with was engaged to another woman. Her skin felt cold and clammy. Shock was setting like pointed shards of ice in her stomach. He was speaking Greek on the phone, but somehow his dark-timbred drawl sounded to her as though it was coming from the other end of a long dark tunnel. Through him she had learned to recognise the sound of his language. Did Krista speak Greek as well? Hastily she tried to shut out that thought. Because she wasn’t ready to think about the unfortunate woman whom she had inadvertently wronged.
Giannis raked a keen-eyed glance at Maddie. She was as pale as death, her Titian hair like a burning firebrand against the pallor of her alabaster skin. He could not concentrate on the conversation with Krista, which related, as usual, to her latest selection of extravagantly inappropriate wedding themes. His lean, powerful face set with purpose, he brought the call to a swift close and swung back to Maddie.
‘This is not the way you should have found out about Krista,’ Giannis conceded. ‘But until you came to Morocco I believed that you already knew of her existence. My engagement is common knowledge.’
‘But you should have told me.’ Her voice almost failed her, because with every word he spoke the nightmare became more real, and more agonising for her to bear.
‘I intended to tell you when you got back to London.’
Maddie parted near bloodless lips. ‘After you’d had your fun?’ she slotted in tightly, a deep sense of humiliation creeping over her. ‘How long have you been engaged?’
‘A couple of months. I see no reason why it should come between us.’
Maddie was too shattered by what she had found out to do more than shake her head in incomprehension at that bold statement. The conversation had already knocked her off balance, since he was not reacting as she had assumed he would. He was not apologising, he was not making excuses. Indeed, he was not even owning up to his fault.
‘I want you to take the time to consider the fact that what I have with Krista is quite separate from what I have with you.’
A mortified laugh that carried no humour fell jarringly from Maddie’s dry lips. ‘I hardly need to be told that. I may not be very sophisticated, but even I can tell the difference between an engagement ring and the equivalent of a dirty weekend!’
His big powerful body tensed. ‘That is not how it has been between us.’
‘How would I know how it’s been when I’ve been in the dark ever since the first day?’ Maddie demanded feverishly. ‘Why did you involve me in this horrible situation? And why did you bother getting engaged if you don’t intend to be faithful?’
‘Perhaps fidelity is not as important to some people as it is to you,’ Giannis delivered. ‘I will only say that my conscience is clear as far as my engagement is concerned.’
‘Well, bully for you…so your fiancée was desperate enough to take you on those terms? Presumably she made that choice.’ Maddie watched his lean strong face tighten with hauteur and marvelled at his self-assurance, his stubborn refusal to acknowledge that he had done wrong. ‘But I didn’t get that opportunity. You lied to me—’
‘I have told no lies,’ Giannis asserted.
‘You lied to me by omission.’ Angry patches of colour had blossomed in Maddie’s cheeks. ‘Last night you knew I didn’t know you were engaged when I said I wouldn’t be with you if you weren’t single. But you chose not to tell me the truth.’
‘We had already slept together. I didn’t see the point of upsetting you when you were away from home.’
That was the precise point at which Maddie lost her temper, for it seemed to her that he had the hide of a rhinoceros. ‘In other words, you put your own comfort first and decided that it was fine to leave me in ignorance. It didn’t matter to you that I was betraying my values in getting involved with a man who’s planning to marry another woman. Or that the knowledge that our relationship is not an exclusive one makes me feel physically sick!’
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