by Lynne Graham
Lysander bent down and lifted her and settled her down on the bed. ‘You think too much,’ he told her.
‘Possibly…’ Ophelia watched him remove her dainty bridal shoes. She couldn’t quite believe that she was allowing him to do that. Exhilaration bubbled through her while her mind continued to race. She was wondering if she could allow herself to succumb, if it would be so very wrong to sleep with him. Was it wicked to be curious? In terms of pure physical attraction, he was definitely the one. She wasn’t a romantic like her late mother. She wasn’t going to go falling in love with him or anything stupid like that, she told herself. She knew his limitations and accepted them. He was only suitable as a one-night stand. A week of fidelity would be a long-term commitment for him.
‘Do you mind me asking…?’ Ophelia hesitated.
‘Asking what?’
‘If you’re currently involved with someone else?’ Ophelia almost winced as she spoke.
Engaged in unbuttoning his shirt and casting it aside, Lysander suppressed a groan of disbelief. ‘Theos…you make everything so complicated! No, there is no one else at present.’
Ophelia noticed how careful he was to qualify that declaration with the words ‘at present’. A muscular brown strip of male chest appeared between the parted edges of his monogrammed shirt. Her mouth went dry. He dropped the shirt on the floor and edged her round to unhook her dress. She almost stopped breathing. It was one thing to watch him as though he were a pin-up guy on a poster, but quite another thing to imagine getting naked with him. And the prospect of acquiring an audience for the fancy lingerie she wore was even more disquieting.
‘You’re very tense…’ Lysander unfastened the delicate bra that banded her pale narrow back and stood her up again.
She looked down at her bare breasts and hurriedly away again, only just resisting a prompting to cover her naked flesh with her hands. She considered telling him that he would be her first lover and swiftly discarded the idea. He might not believe her and if he did he might think her lack of experience was funny. Even worse, he might think that no man had ever been that interested in her. Every fear that could occur to her at such a moment up to and including a fear of pregnancy was piling up inside her mind when her dress fell round her ankles and he lifted her out of the puddle of white silk.
‘Oh…’ she gasped, settled back down on the bed, her slender body alternately taut and quivering with nervous energy.
‘Oh…’ Lysander mimicked wickedly, dipping his imperious dark head to slide his tongue in a provocative invasion between her swollen lips.
Her hips jerked in immediate reflex reaction, damp heat surging between her slender thighs. He explored the ripe swell of her rounded breasts and toyed with the tender peaks. A melting, tingling wave of response took hold of her.
‘Luscious,’ he growled with masculine satisfaction.
As Lysander studied her pale curves an enervating mixture of pleasure and self-consciousness battled inside Ophelia. Her face burned. He closed his lips round a pointed pink nipple and she almost cried out in startled response. Her body wouldn’t stay still for her. Her fingers buried themselves into the silky thickness of his close-cropped black hair and her back arched. He lifted his head again and drove her lips apart with devouring hunger. She loved the way he kissed. It was addictive. Her hands dropped to the corded strength of his strong shoulders. Her mind was a blur of half-formed thoughts. She couldn’t credit the strength of what she was feeling or the power of her need to touch him.
Lysander lifted his tousled head to look down at her. Below the black fringe of his lashes, his smouldering dark gaze was intent. He ran long brown fingers through the glossy coils of golden hair spilling across the pillow. He was enjoying his new right to touch. Her bewitching ice-blue eyes shone against skin with the luminous quality of a pearl. ‘You looked incredible in that dress today,’ he told her.
Disconcerted by that comment, Ophelia blinked. Lysander frowned because he had not intended to compliment her. Feeling off balance, he crushed the strawberry ripeness of her voluptuous mouth under his. Her senses swam and proper thought got lost behind a mental fog. A torrent of energising impressions struck her—the rippling power of his muscles beneath her hands, the long, lean, hair-roughened strength of his thighs and the intrinsically wonderful and familiar scent of him. The weight of him against her felt glorious. The feel of his bold erection shocked and pleased her. And the whole time she was learning about him, her blood was drumming in her eardrums and her heartbeat accelerating as the pleasure became more and more intense.
She didn’t even notice her remaining garments being removed. All honeyed heat and response, she reacted by instinct to the pulsing ache at the junction of her thighs. He skimmed through the pale curls that crowned her mound and teased the tiny sensitive bud beneath. Her ability to think vanished. In the grip of his sensual expertise she whimpered and angled up her hips. Desire was becoming a burning, irresistible need. He traced the slick wet heat at the heart of her and exquisite sensation engulfed her in wave after wave. Caught up in out-of-control excitement, she craved a completion she had never known before.
‘You’re very small,’ Lysander murmured.
Ophelia looked up at him in bewilderment for an instant before realising what he meant. ‘I’m a virgin…’ And the instant the admission left her she tensed and closed her eyes because ironically, no matter how intimate being in bed with him was, that information felt as if it was much too private to share.
Not for one moment did Lysander credit her claim, but he didn’t argue because at that moment he didn’t care what she was. Her fervent response to him had stoked his hunger for her to a ravenous height. A sheen of sweat on his bronzed skin and with hands that were rather less steady and controlled than usual, he parted her legs and came over her.
When he began entering her, Ophelia tensed and gasped, for he felt impossibly large. Desire and panic took her in equal parts. ‘If it hurts too much you’ll have to stop,’ she warned him and a split second later, ‘You’re hurting!’
His breathing fracturing with the effort that restraint demanded, his big, powerful body trembling over hers, Lysander stilled and stared down at her in shock and growing awe. ‘You were serious. You’re really tiny—’
‘Stop!’ Ophelia recoiled from the sharp stab of pain.
‘A virgin…’ Studying her with laser-beam intensity and potent appreciation, Lysander closed one large hand over hers. ‘I’ll be gentle…I promise, yineka mou.’
Ophelia discovered that being looked at with awe was rather pleasant. And just for once he was doing as he was told while at the same time accepting that she had told him the truth. Her body was adjusting a little to the intrusion of his and the throbbing ache of hunger was stirring again.
‘I’m mad for you,’ Lysander growled, his accent thick and deep as his long brown fingers toyed abstractedly with the wedding ring she wore. ‘Don’t make me stop.’
For the first time Ophelia was conscious of her feminine power and it was as intoxicating as the desire tingling back at every pulse point. ‘All right,’ she framed in a driven whisper.
Lysander shifted in a subtle move and she squeezed her eyes tight shut as he slowly, carefully sank deeper. It hurt and she cried out. He paused and cupped her face with his hands, then kissed her with a honeyed eroticism that somehow made her bite back the next moan. He murmured in Greek, bronze eyes like flames as she looked up at him. A ripple of pleasure rewarded her for her stoicism. When she had taken all of him, the burn of his possession faded and excitement quivered through her taut figure.
‘You feel like velvet,’ he told her with hoarse appreciation.
She had neither the breath nor the concentration to find words to describe what she was feeling. Sensual delight made her strain up to him, desire licking through her in a hot, feverish surge. He sank into her again and again with long, measured strokes. Sensation piled on wonderful sensation, stoking her excitement to incredible hei
ghts. Trembling with need, she cried out, her entire being caught up in the frantic climb to satisfaction. At a spellbinding peak, melting ripples of ecstasy consumed her in an explosive climax. Lost in the sweet drowning pleasure that followed, she lay in his arms in a daze.
A virgin, Lysander savoured with admiration, and pressed a kiss on her smooth brow. He was conscious of a rare sense of well-being and an even greater sense of satisfaction with her. It was the most extraordinary sensual experience he had ever had. He knew virginity shouldn’t count in the balance of her sins but somehow it did. Whatever other faults she might have she didn’t sleep around. All of a sudden marriage felt less like a trap and more like an indulgence. It was quite some time since his sex life had delivered the satisfaction he had once taken for granted. Women had become a faceless interchangeable blur, all too similar in type and behaviour, he acknowledged grudgingly. His bride was, at least, an original. He laughed huskily, thinking how easy it was to turn a negative into a positive. All it took was a creative and innovative mind.
That soft masculine laugh thrust Ophelia rudely back to reality at the same time as Lysander lifted her over him with easy strength and draped her across his chest like a rag doll. Shifting to a cooler spot in the bed, he kicked off the sheet. Oh, my word, what have I done? Ophelia asked herself in guilty horror. A one-night stand, she reminded herself, but the memory of that insane piece of self-justification only made her want to cringe with embarrassed self-loathing. She had surrendered to the enemy and he would never take her seriously again. She could have screamed with vexation.
‘I need a shower…and then…’ Lysander murmured thickly, running an intimate hand down over the curve of her bottom.
Ophelia rolled off him as though she had been assaulted and flipped round. ‘And then…nothing!’ she stressed in a tight undertone. ‘This was a one-off. A colossal mistake. Please don’t ask me to explain myself.’
Lysander regarded her with scientific interest and considerable amusement. He would not have dreamt of asking a woman to explain herself, especially one with as much to say for herself as Ophelia. He had discovered that her Achilles’ heel was her essential lack of sexual experience and being Lysander he was unlikely to overlook that vulnerability. Ebony lashes low over glittering metallic eyes, he murmured wickedly, ‘You were so hot—’
‘Shut up—don’t you dare gloat! I don’t want to talk about this ever!’ Scarlet to the roots of her tumbling golden hair, Ophelia scrambled off the bed and went in frantic search of something to wear.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Back to my own room.’
‘That’s not allowed.’
Clutching his jacket in front of her to shield her naked body, Ophelia flung him an irate glance. ‘None of that stuff counts now. I don’t have to go along with this marriage, if I don’t want to. I’m sorry, but you must see that everything we agreed to is redundant now.’
In a lithe lazy movement, Lysander leant up on one elbow. Sprawled naked in the tangled sheet, he was a magnificent vision of bronzed masculinity. He regarded her with level dark-as-midnight eyes and a curious little chill ran down her spine. ‘We have a deal,’ he reminded her very softly.
Ophelia wrapped both arms round his jacket to hold it in place and couldn’t help wishing she’d picked up something more appropriate. ‘Yes, but that—’
‘No argument, no compromise possible,’ Lysander cut in with ruthless bite. ‘Before the wedding you agreed that if our marriage went public you would act the part of my wife. It’s too late to change your mind.’
The cold implacability of his gaze took Ophelia aback but she refused to back down. ‘I’m sorry things aren’t turning out the way you expected but that can’t be helped. I’m afraid you can’t make me go along with the pretence that our marriage is real if I don’t want to.’
‘We have a deal. If you try to break it, I’ll destroy you. You promised to live up to that ring on your finger and you will,’ Lysander asserted with chilling cool, while he wondered what the hell she was playing at. ‘There is no alternative, glikia mou.’
Ophelia was clutching his jacket so hard her hands were hurting. ‘I don’t react well to threats.’
‘If you cross me, I will go to court over the two wills and keep you tied up there for so long that when you finally sell Madrigal Court you’ll owe all the money you make on legal bills. Complex lawsuits can drag on for years and the expenses of a court battle will bankrupt you. Is that what you want?’
Every scrap of colour had drained from Ophelia’s face by the time he had completed that speech. He had totally shocked her. It had not occurred to her that if she refused to honour their previous agreement he might be prepared to drag her into a courtroom to contest the will. Moreover, the scenario he painted horrified her. The inheritance she hoped to share with her sister would be eaten up within months. Nobody would profit from that denouement.
Lysander was on full alert, reading every nuance and change of expression on her delicate features. He had assumed she had played an active role in ensuring that the paparazzi exposed their marriage because only publicity could gain her full access to his rarefied world of exclusive privilege and luxury. Now he was no longer so sure.
Dark eyes sardonic, he sprang off the bed and straightened to his full intimidating height. ‘You have to respect ground rules with me,’ he spelt out. ‘Keep your word and you will have nothing to fear. You’re my wife and I will treat my wife like a princess. But if you choose to step out of that charmed circle, beware because it’s a cruel world out there.’
‘You can’t do this to me!’ Ophelia snapped with a vehement shake of her head.
‘I’m going for a shower. When I return, I still expect you to be in this room as befits a bride on her wedding night,’ Lysander informed her lazily. ‘And tomorrow we’re leaving on our honeymoon.’
Ophelia glowered at him in frank disbelief. ‘A honeymoon…you’ve got to be joking! This is my home. I’m not going anywhere. And what about my plants? Who’s going to take care of them? The busiest season of the year is coming up for me. You can’t expect me to leave.’
‘You’re creasing my jacket,’ Lysander told her gently.
CHAPTER SIX
WRAPPED in Lysander’s discarded shirt, Ophelia discovered her new wardrobe stored in the room next door, which was furnished as a dressing room.
Lysander had switched from passion and seeming tenderness to threat at a speed that had shaken Ophelia to her conservative core. She hated him, she truly hated him. She didn’t know what had made her behave so stupidly with him when all her life to date she had been strong and sensible. So why had she slept with a guy who cared nothing for her? Didn’t she know any better than that? What had happened to her self-respect? Hadn’t she known all along what a rotten reputation he had?
Angry tears stung her shamed eyes while she freshened up in a freezing cold shallow bath in a bathroom along the corridor. How dared he threaten her with the full weight of the law? How dared he use his wealth and power as a weapon against her? As she slid into faded cotton pyjamas she pondered her predicament and struggled to ignore the dulled ache of discomfort that reminded her of the intimacy she was determined to forget.
The idea that she could turn Madrigal Court into a paying proposition on her current income was a total fantasy, she admitted with pained honesty. The house was in need of extensive restoration work, which she could not afford. Besides, she was already in debt to the tune of many thousands of pounds to Lysander, who had paid all her outstanding bills, not to mention the current emergency repairs being done. Unhappily, selling up was her only option. If she conceded that point surely he would drop the demand that she continue acting as his wife? Was he using that to put pressure on her into agreeing to sell?
Lysander was on the phone when Ophelia reappeared. Clad in a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, he was reclining on the bed while one manservant built up the fire and another hovered with a trolley of food. Self-con
scious in the face of that invasion, Ophelia fled back into the dressing room to find a wrap. When she emerged again, he was alone.
Tossing aside the phone, Lysander extended a lean brown hand to her. ‘Join me,’ he urged.
Ophelia froze like a dieter offered a pile of chocolate bars. ‘No, I’m not getting into that bed again.’
Stunning heavily lashed metallic eyes rested on her. ‘It’s your bed. A wedding present from me to you, yineka mou.’
‘Are you trying to say that you always planned to sleep with me?’ That idea filled Ophelia with so much rage that she could barely voice the question.
‘I wanted you…I still want you,’ Lysander stated without a shred of discomfiture. ‘That is a separate issue.’
Ophelia shuddered. A separate issue? Who did he think he was kidding? He had set her up for seduction and she had been too stupid to recognise his intentions. It took massive will-power but she managed to ignore his provocative admission. ‘Right now we have to concentrate our energy on our differences.’
‘In bed.’
‘No, not in bed!’ Ophelia contradicted between gritted teeth of restraint.
‘If I agree to sell you the house now, will you sign over the walled garden to me? And forget about us continuing the charade that we are a normal married couple?’
Suddenly serious again, Lysander slid off the bed in a fluid movement. ‘No. That’s not possible.’
‘You could at least consider the idea. It’s a fair offer. For goodness’ sake, why do we have to go on with this stupid pretence? It doesn’t make sense.’
His handsome bone structure was taut below his bronzed skin. ‘I have excellent reasons that I do not choose to share with you.’
‘So that’s put me in my place again, has it?’ Sizzling with temper and frustration at that snub, Ophelia folded her arms with a jerk.