At that moment she couldn’t think about the biography and the work that still needed to be done to finish it.
When Theseus didn’t answer, and simply stared at her with an unfathomable expression on his handsome face, alarm bells began to chime softly, reverberating through her stomach.
‘How long do you envisage us staying on Agon for?’ she asked again, more forcefully.
He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Dimitris and I have been refreshing our memories of Agon laws...’
‘What’s that got to do with how long Toby and I stay?’
‘Everything.’
The alarm bells in her stomach upped their tempo, clanging loudly enough that they seemed to echo through her skin.
The silence thickened, closing in.
‘You’ll be staying on Agon indefinitely.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The only way Toby can be my heir is if we marry.’
Jo felt her jaw go slack. ‘You have got to be joking.’
‘I wish I was.’ Theseus closed his eyes, then snapped them open to focus on her. ‘Agon law states clearly that only legitimate heirs of the royal family can be recognised and allowed to inherit.’
‘I don’t understand...’ she whispered, although the implications were already rushing through her.
‘The law was created two hundred years ago, when the eldest of King Helios the Second’s illegitimate children fought with his lawful heir for the right to take the throne. To prevent such a situation happening again it was explicitly spelt out in the constitution that only legitimate heirs can be recognised.’
‘But Toby wasn’t born in wedlock, so he’ll be illegitimate regardless.’
‘Our marriage will legitimise him. There is nothing in the constitution that states that the child must have been conceived or born in wedlock—only that they must be a child of a lawful marriage.’
Her hands fluttered to her throat. Her head shook slowly from left to right as she tried to take in exactly what he was saying. ‘We can’t marry. The idea is just...stupid.’
‘Do you think I want to marry you?’ he said harshly. ‘It’s the only way I can claim Toby as my own and give him the protection of the Kalliakis name.’
‘He doesn’t need protection. We live in Middle England—not a war zone.’
‘The minute it’s made public that I have a son he’ll be a target for kidnappers the world over. But that’s missing the point, which is that Toby is my son and deserves to be recognised as such. He deserves to be allowed to inherit my personal wealth.’
‘What would you do if you were already married?’ she challenged. ‘Because you surely couldn’t marry me then? Unless bigamy is legal on Agon?’
‘We are not in that situation, so that’s irrelevant. Let me put this in simple terms for you. You and I will marry as soon as we can. If you refuse you will be escorted—alone—off Agon and never allowed to return.’
‘You wouldn’t...’ She shook her head, swallowing back her fury and distress as the full weight of his threat hit her like a brick.
His nostrils flared and he eased himself away from the door. ‘Try me. If you refuse to marry me Toby will be raised on Agon without you. He will know the reason he’s not recognised as a member of his own family and is unable to be my heir is because of his mother’s selfishness.’
The room swam. ‘Would you really stoop so low as to keep us apart and twist his mind against me?’
He raised a strong shoulder and sauntered to stand before her, where she still stood rooted to the spot beside the bed. ‘Whatever I tell him would be nothing compared to the conclusions he would draw on his own. Now, do I have your agreement?’
She backed away lest she give in to her fingers’ need to slap him. She wasn’t being selfish. She wasn’t. What Theseus demanded of her was unconscionable.
A thought raced through her, which she grasped and clung on to. ‘You can’t marry me—you have to marry a princess. Remember? You told me that yourself.’
‘No, I have to marry someone with royal blood—which you have.’
‘But my blood is so diluted it’s weaker than supermarket own-brand blackcurrant squash!’ She clung on to the thought desperately, too scared to let go of this last glimmer of hope. ‘My family don’t have titles or acres of land. There’s not a lord or a viscount in sight!’
‘It’s enough to satisfy the constitution. It would be different if Helios was in my position—he is expected to marry a princess, or someone of equal heritage. Now, for the last time, do I have your agreement?’
With her stomach curdling and her skin feeling so tight she could feel her bones pushing through the flesh, Jo blinked frantically to keep her focus, to maintain some measure of control.
There was no way out. No other avenue to take. Theseus had thought of everything and had an answer to everything.
But she wouldn’t let him have it all his own way.
‘Seeing as I have no choice, I’ll marry you. But only for long enough to satisfy whatever draconian law your ridiculous island insists on before we can divorce.’
He shook his head, his mouth twisting into a rueful grimace. ‘It is illegal for members of the Agon royal family to divorce.’
‘That’s not possible.’ Coldness like nothing she’d experienced before crept through her bones.
‘The constitution—’
But she cut him off before he could say another word. All the fear and anger that had been brewing within her converged to the point of explosion and she launched herself at him, pushing him onto the bed, her fists striking his chest.
‘Your constitution can take a running jump, for all I care, and so can you,’ she raged. ‘I’m not giving up my entire life for you.’
Theseus had her hands pinned and her body trapped beneath him before she could take another breath.
‘You’re not sacrificing your life for me but for Toby,’ he snarled, his breath hot on her face.
She could sense his fury, matching hers in its strength. Her blood was pumping so fast it heated her veins to boiling point.
She bucked beneath him, kicking her legs out wildly. ‘Toby is the happiest child in the world! I’ve sacrificed everything to love and care for him and now you want me to throw our lives away just so you can lay claim to him, as if he’s some possession and not a flesh and blood boy.’
‘He’s a prince of Agon and he deserves the protection and everything else that comes with the title.’
Theseus trapped her kicking legs with a thigh. Theos, the shy wallflower he’d met in Illya had more fight in her than he’d ever imagined. Even though his emotions were as intense as he’d ever known them, his body could not help but react to her.
‘If you’re a reflection of the way a prince of Agon turns out then I’d much rather he stays a commoner,’ she spat back.
He gazed down at her, fully pinned beneath him, and took in the fire shooting at him from her beautiful eyes, the heightened colour of her cheeks.
‘No amount of insults will change anything,’ he said roughly. ‘Accept it, agapi mou. You and I are going to marry.’
After all the lies she’d told, she should repulse him. Yet he was far from being repelled.
He’d spent a whole week with this woman’s scent playing to his senses like an orchestra. A whole week fighting his fantasies, fighting his baser instincts.
Now, with her hair fanned out on the sheets like an autumnal cloud, it was like gazing down at the Venus de Milo. And as he stared the fire blazing from her eyes suddenly burned in a wholly different manner, her look turning from hate to confusion to desire.
She stilled, her body’s only movement her heaving chest.
He ached for her.
They were going to marry. There was nothing
to stop them acting on their desires. There was no need to fight any longer.
He brought his mouth down at the same moment she raised her face to his, bringing them together in a mesh of lips and tongues and merging breath.
Their kisses were hard, almost cruel, all pleasure and pain at once. Everything rushed out of him, leaving behind only the desire that had held him in its tightening grip since she’d walked into the palace.
He had no recollection of releasing her hands, but a groan ripped through him when her fingers found his scalp and dug into it, her nails grazing through his hair and scratching down his neck.
There was no slow burn. Every inch of flesh she touched became scorched, and his hunger for her accelerated in a rush of blood that burned. Everything burned.
He pulled away to stare at her, taking in the dilation of her pupils and the heightened colour of her cheeks.
He wanted to drown in her.
Touching her, holding her... Whatever deceptions there had been between them, this hunger couldn’t be faked.
He straddled her thighs and pulled his shirt over his head, too impatient to bother with the buttons. No sooner had he thrown it to the floor than her hands were flat on his chest, spreading all over him, her touch penetrating through to his veins.
It had been like this on Illya; his desire for her so instantaneous and combustible that one touch had blinded him to everything else. It had turned from nothing to the deepest desire he had ever known.
And that had been nothing compared to the way he felt at this moment.
Had he been naked he would already be buried deep inside her.
From the darkness in Jo’s eyes, her short ragged breaths, the way her hands roamed his chest as if she needed to touch him, he could tell this desire was just as flammable for her too.
Wordlessly she lifted herself, enough for him to bunch her T-shirt up to her waist and slide it off, just as he’d done once before. As he pulled it free her russet hair fell down with the motion, sprawling over her naked shoulders and spilling out over the breasts he’d spent the past week wishing he could remember with the same clarity he remembered everything else. They were better than anything his imagination could have conjured, the nipples a dark, tempting pink.
She lay down, her smouldering eyes never leaving his face. He swooped in to kiss her again, needing to feel the sweetness of her lips merging with his own. Her arms wrapped tightly around him and her legs bucked, this time not to throw him off but in an attempt to part and wrap around him.
He shifted so the weight of his thighs was no longer trapping her and propped himself up on an elbow to gaze at her.
He couldn’t stop himself from staring at her.
He’d never known his heart to beat so hard or so fast.
He ran a hand over the buttery skin of her thigh, which had risen to jut against him, and traced his fingers up over her soft stomach. He spread his hands to cover her breasts, a huge jolt of need coursing through him as he felt the joyous weight of them.
Save for her knickers, she was naked. Her curvaceous figure was every bit as enticing and womanly as the last time he’d lain with her, exuding a soft ripeness begging to be touched and tasted.
Bending his head, he caught a taut nipple in his mouth, felt more jolts bursting through him when he tasted her for himself.
Massaging her with his mouth and fingers, he used his free hand to unbuckle his belt and work off his trousers and underwear. The relief at being released from the confines of their material was immense. All that lay between them now was the cotton of her underwear.
She might not be clad in expensive silky lingerie, but he had never seen a more tempting, beautiful sight.
Joanne...a glorious Venus de Milo that only he knew about...
‘Have there been many others?’ He hauled himself up, the words falling from his tongue too quickly for him to stop them.
Her throat moved, hate suddenly flashing in her eyes. ‘You have no right to ask.’
‘You’re going to be my wife. I have every right.’ The thought of another man’s eyes seeing her like this, another man’s hands touching her...
‘And I have every right not to answer.’
Her hand brushed down his stomach to his freed erection, encircling it. Her breaths deepened.
Theseus closed his eyes and counted to three. All thoughts of her with other men disappeared as he gritted his teeth at the delight of her gentle touch. The pressure was light—too light. Torturously light.
He swooped down to claim her mouth for his own. Whatever men there might have been in the intervening years, he would drive them from her mind. He would mark her. He would make her understand with more than words that from this moment on she would be his and only his.
For the rest of her life.
In a swarm of kisses and touches he explored her, trailing his lips over her breasts and stomach, finding a strawberry birthmark as he tugged her underwear down and threw it onto the heap of clothes piled on the floor beside them, discovering a small mole at the top of her thigh... It was all for him. All for his eyes only.
Jo thrashed beneath him, her own hands reaching out and grasping, her nails digging into his back, her hips bucking upwards, inviting his possession. She gasped and cried out when he dipped his head between her legs.
He shuddered with need.
Five years without a woman...
Was it any wonder he felt so desperately on the edge?
But he had felt like this before. Once. With Jo...
He drove the thought from his mind.
He pressed his tongue against her.
Theos, she tasted divine.
She pushed her pelvis into him, her back arching. Her little moans of pleasure were like music to his ears and he increased the friction just a little, enough so that when she grabbed at his head she caught his hair in her hands and clasped it tightly. She was on the brink.
But he didn’t want her to come yet. Not this time. He wanted to read her eyes as she cried out with the pleasure of him being inside her. Selfishly, he wanted it all, and he wanted it now, before the craven need in him burst.
Trailing his tongue all the way back up her body, helpless to resist nuzzling into her gorgeous breasts once more, he lay between her parted legs and kissed her, possessing her with his mouth before guiding his erection to the heart of her and sliding into the tight, welcoming heat.
She cried out and stiffened.
‘Okay?’ he asked, only just able to get the word out.
Her answer was to nip at his cheek with her teeth and wrap her legs around him.
He thrust as deep as he could go, the sensations spreading through him at being fully sheathed inside her making him groan out loud.
Forget savouring the moment—he was long past that point. If he’d ever been there. All he wanted was to lose himself in the incredible feelings rushing through him, to listen to the wanton moans escaping her delicious mouth, and to find the release clamouring inside him.
As he pushed feverishly into her all he knew was that she must have some magical quality he reacted to. That she cast a spell that turned his body into a slave for pleasure.
Her response was as fevered as his own, her arms clasping him so tightly that he lay fully locked inside her, on her, fused with her into one being. Nothing mattered but this heady hunger that had to be satisfied or else they would both fall off the precipice.
Then she broke away from his kisses, pressing her cheek tightly to his own, and her moans deepened as her nails dug painfully—but oh, so pleasurably—into his back. He felt her climax swell within her, thickening around him and then pulling him into the headiness of release. Of surrender.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JO’S EYES FLEW OPEN. Instant wakefulness.
The room was dusky, the early-morning sun making its first peeks through the heavy drapes. The only sound to be heard was the deep, heavy breathing of Theseus in sleep.
She’d awoken to the same sounds on Illya. To the same weight of his arm slung around her waist, the same body pressed into her back, encircling her almost protectively.
It had been nothing but an illusion. However protectively he’d behaved in his sleep he’d sailed away the next morning and never given her another thought...
Everything came back in a flood.
Theseus learning about Toby. His demands of marriage. Making love.
Oh, Lord, what had possessed her?
Where was her pride? Her self-control?
The only crumb of comfort she could take was that whatever mad fever she’d fallen into, Theseus had fallen into it as well.
Flames licked her cheeks as she remembered how willingly she had given herself to him. His caresses and kisses had lit the touch-paper to her desperate, emotion-ridden body.
A tear trickled down her cheek and landed on her pillow. Blinking furiously, she tried her hardest to stop any more from forming but they fell through her lashes, soaking the fabric.
Helpless to stop them, she let the tears fall, wishing with all her heart that she could turn the clock back a week and tell him about Toby the minute they’d been alone in his office for the first time. The outcome wouldn’t be any different—Theseus would still be insisting on marriage, of that she was certain—but they would be different. This loathing wouldn’t be there.
Making love wouldn’t have felt like waging war with their bodies.
She’d never imagined sex could be like that—angry, yet tender, with shining highlights of bliss that had taken her to a place she’d never known existed.
It had been beautiful.
But how could she do it? How could she spend her life with a man who despised her?
Lust was transient. When desire was spent, and without a deeper bond to glue them together, hate and resentment would fill the space, and there was already enough loathing between them to fill a room.
Theseus Discovers His Heir Page 9