by Lynne Graham
Indeed, so much did she like that explanation for his remarkable sexual restraint, she actually asked him if he was one evening.
'Don't be bloody stupid!' he launched at her in stunned outrage, springing out of his Ferrari as if she had grievously insulted his masculinity, striding up and down with fists clenched with fury before finally bending down to look back in at her with smouldering golden eyes full of sheer bewilderment. 'Where did you get a weird idea like that?'
Scarlet-faced, she mumbled in a mortified whisper, 'I just wondered...I mean, you don't...well, you know...with me...and I wondered why not—well...now that we're engaged.'
'We will wait until our wedding night because I respect you as my future wife,' Nik countered flatly. 'If you were Greek, I wouldn't have to tell you that.'
She didn't look at him. For the very first time Nik felt and sounded foreign to her, and he was making her feel like a brazen hussy even while her intelligence told her that she had had the right to ask that question.
'I'm starting to wonder what's going on here,' Nik breathed harshly. 'Maybe I've been guilty of making false assumptions... are you a virgin, Olympia?'
'Yes,' she muttered, angry and confused and embarrassed.
Nik had literally held his breath until he got that confirming response, and she realised then for the very first time that her being a virgin was really, really important to him. And that bothered her. She was only seventeen, but just suppose she hadn't been a virgin? Just suppose she had experimented with sex at too young an age? Wouldn't Nik have been able to feel the same way about her? Would he still have asked her to marry him? Suddenly she didn't think so. And it was hard to believe that he could love her and feel like that...
‘This is foolish...' Swinging back into the car, Nik reached for her tensely linked hands. 'Very foolish. But you're so shy I wasn't prepared for you to start talking like that, and for a crazy moment it made me suspicious. I just don't want anyone else ever to have touched you...'
And it was extraordinary how at that moment, even loving him as she did, and in the midst of struggling to understand his outlook, she felt the most powerful resentment stirring within her. What an idiot she had been to think for one moment that he too might be inexperienced! No, the pure and untouched aspect was to be hers alone! He was denying her what he himself had already enjoyed. He expected her to spend the next two years waiting for their wedding night
'Suppose...suppose that we wait, and we get married and we find out we don't like each other that way?' she suddenly found herself demanding.
Nik withdrew his hand from hers with a jerk. He was disconcerted, not only by her return to the same subject but also by her attempt to argue her point when he had decided that the subject was closed. 'Don't be ridiculous!' he groaned, jaguar eyes golden and derisive. 'Christos...what's got into you today?*
And she might have let the matter drop sooner than risk an argument, but the first incendiary seeds of rebellion were springing up inside Olympia. Nik was defining her limits. She didn't like that. She didn't want to be treated like some untouchable vestal virgin kept in suspended animation until Nik finally told her that, yes, now she could have sexual feelings because they were married. He didn't own her. She might love him. But he didn't own her...
Olympia only emerged from her disturbing memories of the past when the helicopter in which she and Nik and Damianos had flown from London began to descend over the water at Southampton.
As the helicopter landed on the helipad on board Nik's yacht, Olympia was stunned by the sheer size of the ship. Indeed, the sleek, futuristic design of Aurora left her speechless. Nik had always been very fond of the sea. Yet ten years ago he had not shared that interest with her. In fact he had never once taken her sailing, she recalled wryly. It had been a surprising but telling oversight which Katerina Pallas had remarked on more than once.
About to clamber out of the helicopter, Olympia attempted to untangle her legs from the skirt of her wedding dress while reckoning that no woman had ever been forced to travel in less appropriate attire. Having already sprung out, Nik simply turned and scooped her up into his arms, ignoring her startled squawk to carry her across the deck.
An older man, clad in a smart uniform, greeted them with a wide smile. Quite unfazed, indeed his black eyes gleaming like a conqueror showing off his prize, Nik introduced Olympia to the Greek captain of his crew without putting her down and then strode on. Crossing an area furnished as the most opulent of sun decks, complete with richly upholstered seating and an overhead shading canopy, Nik entered a magnificent large room surrounded by windows on all sides. Olympia, who had naively expected to see little round portholes everywhere she looked, was quite transfixed by the floor-deep stretches of glass and the superb drapes.
This is the main saloon,' Nik informed her as he lowered her down to stand on the soft deep carpet.
'It's just like a drawing room...' Olympia's annoyance with him was momentarily forgotten as she succumbed to a wide-eyed appraisal of the luxurious furniture, paintings and beautiful flower arrangements.
'Aurora was designed to offer all the comforts of home, so that I can work and live on board for long periods.'
Olympia walked over to a window. 'She's enormous... what length is she?'
'Three hundred and eighty-five feet. I'll be glad to give you the official inspection tour tomorrow,' Nik drawled lazily.
Tomorrow, Olympia reflected, her mouth running dry. His raincheck on the timing of any such tour had a significance she was in no hurry to examine. With reluctance, she turned back to face him, shoulders very straight, chin high.
Nik was looking at her. Lush ebony lashes semi-screened his gleaming dark gaze as he let it slowly, sensually roam over her steadily tautening figure. 'You make a beautiful bride, yineka mou—'
'Oh, please! Save it for the dummies who cling and beg!' Beneath that earthy all-male visual assessment, a surge of angry pink mantled Olympia's cheeks. She didn't like the way he looked at her; she didn't like it at all. It set every inch of her bristling and filled her with discomfiting heat. But even less did she appreciate the cruel mockery of such compliments. Maybe Nik thought he could talk her into bed to make his precious son and heir! No doubt he imagined she would be the same push-over she had been ten years back, still foolish enough to be taken in by his flattering pretence that he found her amazingly attractive! 'I beg your pardon?' Nik countered dryly. 'You heard me.' Sea-jade eyes bright as jewels, Olympia stared back at him with a defiance boom of growing desperation. Trying to sidestep the issue that this was their wedding night was foolish, she told herself urgently. Once again she needed to make her position clear. Nik was Greek, and bone-deep stubborn. She didn't want him turning up in her bed room tonight with expectations. The further she allowed his mistaken assumption of supremacy to progress, the tougher it would be to disabuse him of that notion.
'Today you became my wife,' Nik breathed with dangerous softness.
Olympia clashed head-on with eyes that now smouldered like golden flames. She tried and failed to swallow. It was as if all the oxygen around her had been sucked up by the fire of his anger. She couldn't get air into her lungs. Her knees wobbled together and then locked. 'Yes, but there’s no need for me to share a bed with you,' she extended in a breathless rush. 'No reasonable decent need, that is.'
'Very well,' Nik murmured without inflection, his lean, dark, handsome face .taut with controlled power, and he turned on his heel to walk away from her.
Released from the terrifyingly intimidating hold of his charged gaze, Olympia slumped as if he had stolen the very backbone from her body. Her head whirled with the onslaught of sheer dizzy disbelief. She had won! For a split second she couldn't credit that reality, but then her common sense took charge to convince her of it. Naturally she had won. Nik was a civilised contemporary male. Sleeping with her and demanding that she give him a child would only have been a vengeful power play. All she had needed to do was stand
fast and show him that she would not be bulldozed by his forceful personality into doing anything she did not choose to do.
'Are you coming?'
Intoxicated by the sense of triumph filling her, Olympia emerged from her thoughts to notice that Nik had paused to glance back at her in expectant enquiry.
'Oh...' So they were to go somewhere else now, she grasped. The farce of a honeymoon-style trip was no longer required from her. Nik would leave her in some discreet location and no doubt go off sailing instead with one of the clinging, begging little tarts he seemed to require to stoke his rapacious ego. He was going to let them lead the separate
lives she had suggested from the outset. A strange hollowness formed inside Olympia at that prospect even as her steps quickened in his wake.
You won't be able to change your mind again,' Nik delivered as she drew level with him. 'I hope you appreciate that.'
Mr Irresistible, Olympia christened him inwardly, while her lace burned with the heat of her offended pride. Nothing like spelling out just how special he thought he was! Did he fondly imagine that she might have secretly craved an excuse to share his bed? Did he think she was one of those dithering women who said no and didn't really mean it? Well, she had sot by for twenty-seven years without sex, and where he was concerned a hundred years would not be sufficient to change her view of him!
'I know exactly what I'm doing,'. Olympia stated with ringing satisfaction.
Nik signalled to the trio of men working in and around the helicopter, where it sat parked about fifty feet away. They all stopped what they were doing. The one she recognised as the pilot approached, and Nik instructed him in Greek. Not quite quickly enough to conceal his surprise, the man dipped his head in agreement, and strode back to the helicopter to issue his own instructions.
'How brave you are...' Nik drawled, smooth as honey.
Inexplicably that tone shimmied down her stiff spine like the spectral hand of foreboding, but Olympia squashed the sensation and lifted her head high.
'You'll be a laughing stock,' Nik remarked with formidable cool.
Frowning in bewilderment, Olympia twisted her head back round to look at him again. 'What are you talking about? A laughing stock?'
'If I fly you back to London and dump you back at your grandfather's feet, many of our wedding guests will be shocked, but an equal number will simply be amused.'
For an electrified instant Olympia just stared and stared up into those dark, deep-set challenging eyes while her lips slowly parted company.
'Although I contrived to keep the media away from our wedding by various stratagems, such an unusual development will make headlines all round the world. Your mother and your grandfather will be aghast, but they will also appreciate that I am quite within my rights to return a bride who refuses to consummate our marriage.'
Olympia could not credit the evidence of her own ears Her wide-eyed stare expanded to take in the hard, clean line of his sculpted mouth. He had not raised his voice and he revealed not one atom of anger. He simply spoke as a malt describing an inevitable event.
'You c-can't be serious,' she stammered, in incredulous denial of the picture such a threat imposed on her. Their guests would still be partying late into the evening, and as host, Spyros would naturally remain to the end of the festivities.
'Why shouldn't I be?' Nik enquired with supreme calm 'You're trying to take me for a fool within hours of our wedding. We made a deal and you're trying to back out on it. You picked the wrong guy.'
That assurance rang like a death knell over Olympia. Freedom yawned in the guise of the helicopter now being readied for take-off again. But freedom at what price?
'I wouldn't allow you to humiliate me like that,' she stated between clenched teeth of fury.
'I would carry you in kicking and screaming—'
'You're out of your mind...it would be medieval to stage a scene like that in front of our guests!' Olympia countered outraged condemnation. 'You wouldn't dare! What would I have to lose? If you break the terms of our deal, all bets are off for me as well. I'm Greek. I'm better at winning than losing,' Nik shared gently.
A band of tension was tightening like a vice round Olympia's pounding temples. Her imagination, never so active until Nik had come back into her life again, was currently summoning up the barbaric image of Nik delivering her back to her family like a reject while a transfixed and titillated audience looked on. He wouldn't dare, she repeated inwardly, but, meeting the ruthless challenge of his hard dark eyes, she is no longer so sure.
‘This is all crazy,' Olympia protested, abandoning fury in favour of a last-ditch appeal for rational, reasonable behaviour. 'So I stay on board this yacht and we pretend everything is normal in our marriage. Who is to know any different?'
'I don't have much time for cheats,' Nik murmured with measured derision.
Olympia paled. 'You're not being fair—' 'When did I say I'd play fair?' '
'You forced me into agreeing to your terms for this marriage,' she reminded him tautly. 'You blackmailed me by threatening to tell my mother about—'
'I know...' His stunning eyes shimmered, giving him a coolly reflective aspect. 'But count your own sins first. You came to me and you begged me to marry you.'
'I didn't beg!'
'You begged,' Nik repeated dryly.
An enormous tide of pain and frustration welled up inside Olympia. 'It doesn't have to be like this between us!'
'I like it this way,' Nik contradicted without hesitation, lean, hard-boned face set in implacable lines.
Olympia studied the helicopter, knowing it might as well be a thousand miles out of her reach. Slowly she turned away from that view and moved back into the main saloon. She parted her lips to speak again, and the words she had to say threatened to choke her. 'I'd like to see my room,' she framed woodenly.
Nik pressed a service button. A steward answered the call Her thoughts in turmoil, Olympia followed in the steward's wake.
Her first impressions of the level of luxury on board Aurora were upgraded with every step she took. She saw a gymnasium and a library and a gleaming swimming pool The state room she was shown into was exquisitely deco-rated. Two other doors connected with it. Dismissing the steward, she glanced at the gorgeous flower arrangement and the champagne bucket and grimaced.
She checked out the dressing room and was relieved to discover that only her own clothes hung in the wardrobes At least Nik wasn't expecting to share the room with her! She walked through to. the bathroom. Initially awed by the marble fittings, it took her a second or two to notice that there appeared to be something written on the mirror above. the double vanity unit.
With a frown she drew closer.
'COMPETE IF YOU CAN!' was printed in crude letters across the highly polished reflective surface.
Compete with what! What on earth...?
Her bemused gaze fell on the glossy magazine spread open to one side. A full-page photograph of a gorgeous blonde in a provocative pose met her bemused eyes. 'Gisele Bonner' ran the scribe beneath. Olympia jerked in actual physical shock. Her brain gave her one brief message: wipe the mirror, put the magazine in the bin unread. She ignored the message
Stomach flipping a sick somersault, Olympia focused on the picture. In a strappy, very short dress that barely covered her behind, never mind much else, Gisele's lithe, golden and perfect body showed to full advantage. She had incredibly long legs, huge baby-blue eyes set above exotically slanted cheekbones, and the sort of mouth cosmetic firms used to sell very expensive lipstick. Her straight strawberry-blonde hair fell like a sheet of polished silk to her elegant bony shoulders.
Olympia backed away from the magazine as if she had been burnt. Don't look, don't read, screeched her brain, but she couldn't control her overwhelming need to know what was written on the opposite page. It was an article on Gisele Bonner, famous catwalk model and long-term 'companion' of Greek tycoon Nik Cozakis. She was thirty-two years old and had sworn that sh
e would never marry because she loved her freedom and couldn't stand children.
With a shaking Hand, Olympia reached out and turned the page. Faced with a photo of Gisele curved round Nik like a boa constrictor at the Cannes Film Festival, Olympia wished she hadn't both An audible gasp sounded behind her. Startled, she whirled round. A youthful maid stood in the doorway, her attention welded to what was written on the mirror, her hand flying up to her mouth in apparent dismay. She started to speak in a flood of anxious, apologetic Greek, afraid, it seemed, that she was to receive the blame for. that taunting message.
Hurrying forward, she swiped at the mirror with a towel, smearing the printed words, rubbing fiercely to clear them from view. With a soothing but stilted phrase of very basic Greek, Olympia retreated back into the state room. Why did she feel so sick? She could not understand why she felt so sick, so savaged!
As the maid scurried out, clutching the magazine, Olympia sighed. So Gisele had connections on board Aurora. Some member of the crew must have been bribed to plant the magazine and the message. Olympia frowned then, as she recalled Katerina's crack about Gisele earlier that day. Was it possible that it could have been Katerina, rather than Gisele, who had wanted to taunt Nik's bride on her wedding night?
Compete if you can! Only what normal flesh and blood woman would even try to compete with a female that gorgeous?
Thankfully, Olympia was not the competitive type. Her tremulous mouth compressed; Nik's former mistress was no business of hers. Refusing to waste any more time wondering who might have been responsible for that petty but nasty message, Olympia sat down jerkily in front of the dressing table. Her head ached from the weight of her hair. With impatient hands she began yanking out the pins which anchored the upswept style she had fixed it in earlier that day. Lifting a silver brush, she straightened out the tangles with a force that left her eyes watering.