by Lynne Graham
Olympia's face shuttered, bitterness choking her. No longer did she regret her own failure to defend herself against Katerina's lies. What hope would she have had of being believed with a blood relative lying in the role of a witness?
'Katerina lied, and so did Lukas. They both had their reasons, reasons you don't seem to want to find or examine!'
Untouched by that accusation, Nik regarded her with reflective cool. 'There's only one thing which doesn't add up for me—'
'And what's that?'
'No Greek woman would have failed to defend her own reputation. Why didn't you proclaim the fact that you were still a virgin when I confronted you the next day?'
Olympia studied him with incredulous eyes. 'You're kidding me...do you really think I still cared enough about you to demean myself to that level?'
'So you did see me in the club with that blonde.'
Twin spots of red mantled her cheekbones as she belatedly realised how much she had revealed with that outburst
'And you were out for revenge when you went with Lukas.'
Infuriated, Olympia began to turn away again, but Nik forestalled her by closing a strong hand over her forearm.
'So I wanted to satisfy my curiosity. Why not? I have very little memory of that night.' 'I beg your pardon?'
'Someone spiked my drink. If you saw me with Ramona, it must have been shortly before I passed out.'
Olympia nodded slowly. 'Mr Innocent...Mr Clean. You know, my mother may have fallen for that storybook explanation, but I'm a lot less easy to impress!'
Nik's level dark brows drew together in a frown, a disconcerted light in his brilliant dark eyes. 'Are you saying you don't believe me?'
'Got it in one. Not a nice feeling, is it?' Taking advantage of his loosened grip, Olympia rolled over and stuffed her face in the pillow.
He swore in guttural Greek.
'Oh, you're so sensitive...' Olympia raised her head to comment, tongue-in-cheek.
Hard dark eyes struck hers in a raw collision. 'You are one calculating little witch—'
‘There's the door...use it,' Olympia suggested, her furious eyes glittering like jewels.
Instead, Nik knotted his long brown fingers into the glossy mahogany strands of hair tumbling down onto the pillow beside him, effectively imprisoning her.
'Nik...wh-what?' she stammered, taken aback.
'Nik, yes—but say it in Greek. Ne,' he intoned, smouldering dark golden eyes gazing down into hers. He found her still reddened lips with his mouth and tasted her with hungry, driving intensity. On a scale of one to ten it was an eleven-plus kiss. Her head spun; she could think of no pressing reason why she should breathe if it meant separating from Nik for a single second. Her heart hammering, her pulses racing, she was simply overwhelmed by the explosive excitement channelling through her.
'We don't talk about the past from now on,' Nik instructed thickly as he ripped off his T-shirt and snaked up his lean hips to unzip his jeans beneath her bemused gaze.
Olympia was utterly disconcerted by a danger she had not foreseen. 'No...we shouldn't...we can't,' she stressed, pushing out that more forceful negative, one hand palm down, fingers splayed on the warm, hard muscular wall of his chest. She could feel the steady thump of his heart. Without any prompting from her brain, her fingertips were already flirting with the curling black springy hair hazing his bronzed chest.
'No problem...' Nik murmured silkily, reclining back against the pillows all lithe and dark and dangerous.
She made the mistake of meeting his eyes: a jaguar-gold challenge. Her breath feathered in her dry throat and her breasts tingled, their sensitive peaks pinching into taut little buds. She was shaken to realise that the sort of hunger she had only ever experienced when Nik was actually touching her could now surge through her in a mortifying instantaneous tide even when he wasn't.
Like a sleek jungle predator biding his time while an unwary prey circled round him, Nik began to smile. It was the smile of the male who knew exactly what effect he could have on her sex. It was unashamedly primal. Her mind recoiled and urged her to slap him hard, but it was an incredibly sexy smile which made her agonisingly aware of her own femininity.
'I think...' Olympia began tremulously. 'I think...'
'Yes, what do you think, yineka mou?’ Nik lazily coiled one fine strand of her hair round an indolent forefinger, regarding her with glinting dark eyes semi-screened by spiky black lashes.
Dear heaven, she wanted him. The answers came in a flood inside her own head! She wanted to rip his jeans off, she wanted him everywhere at once, she wanted to relive every glorious, greedy minute of the ecstasy he had given her the night before.
‘I'm not thinking...I'm not thinking anything right now,' Olympia swore in feverish haste, her cheeks burning. 'I am...' Pillowing his tousled dark head back on one elbow with a relaxation that shrieked in comparison with her own frantic tension, Nik watched her steadily with a world of intimate knowledge in his slumberous gaze. 'Why fight what you're feeling?'
'Is this like your... er... standard seduction routine?' Olympia enquired, struggling to get her mind and her body back under safe lock and key again, failing miserably in an atmosphere so alive with sexual awareness she was trembling.
'At the risk of sounding like a jerk, I've never needed a routine.'
The awful thing was that she believed him, which in turn drew her attention to all the reasons why Nik had never needed to go to that much effort. Those stunning dark good looks, that high-voltage sexual aura, the charismatic personality which had been noticeably absent with her in recent times but which she recalled from the past with a deep hurting ache of loss. The teasing, the warmth, the easy smiles...
And suddenly out of that memory came an absolutely unbearable longing to be in Nik's arms again, the kind of sharp, desperate craving which she had no hope of resisting that close to him. She lifted her hand almost clumsily and pushed her fingers slowly, almost fearfully into his luxuriant black hair, leaning over him awkwardly, her heart banging against her ribs as if she was about to plunge off a cliff.
Nik was gracious. He didn't laugh. He didn't speak. He reached up and drew her down to him and let the tip of his tongue dart and flicker between her parted lips in an erotic invitation that turned her bones to water and made her shiver as if she was in a force ten gale. He set her back from him then, and peeled off his jeans with the sort of loaded, unhurried cool that somehow excited her even more. He kicked back the duvet she was still sheltering beneath and came down beside her with fluid predatory grace.
'I might have asked what you like...' Nik husked in his accented drawl, burnished eyes blazingly intent on her as he spread her out beneath him with a care that sent tormented little ripples of anticipation down her taut spine. 'But you don't know what you like yet, which means we have so much to discover together, yineka mou.'
Olympia was already boneless, but she was halfway to mindless as well by the time he finished speaking. Breathing took major concentration. Nik teased the corner of her mouth with his own. Unable to bear that teasing, she twisted her eagerly parted lips under his and kissed him with all the untutored eagerness that was flaming through her like an attack force. Fantasy was running riot in her brain. She imagined flattening him to the bed, forcing him to do exactly what she wanted him to do.
'On the other hand, we could race for the finishing line...just this once,' Nik qualified raggedly.
'Please...' was all she said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When stray sounds penetrated Olympia's slumber, she would have ignored them but for the extra-sensory mental jab that urged her to take heed.
She was so exhausted it took huge will-power just to lift her eyelashes. The curtains were wide, sunlight spilling in. She was tense until she found and focused on Nik. Happiness bubbled up inside her with the force of an unrestrained oil gusher. It didn't strike her as odd that she should be happy. Every time she had stirred in Nik's arms d
uring the night she had experienced that feeling and she had become accustomed to it before she had had the chance or the need to question the sensation.
A stray shard of sunlight gleamed over blue-black hair still wet from the shower, curved like a caress over a powerful shoulder and darted down over the long sweep of Nik's back, gilding his bronzed skin to pure gold. His classic profile was hard, very masculine, until that playful sunshine accentuated black lashes as long and lush as silk fans. And she smiled then, a sleepy, secretive smile, while she watched him haul on his jeans. She just adored those lashes; she always had.
She rolled over to the side of the bed closest to him, lying on her tummy, sleepy face propped on one hand, sea-jade eyes open and unguarded. 'Nik...what time is it?'
'Afternoon. Two o'clock. We haven't eaten since we came on board, nor have we emerged from this state room. I imagine my crew are well satisfied with my virility.'
Olympia didn't really think that dry comment through, merely interrupting on impulse to say shyly, 'I certainly am!'
Nik stilled. She dropped her eyes, reddened fiercely. Odd how daylight could banish all sense of intimacy, she recognised too late. She was annoyed that she had made a comment that would make her mother faint dead away in ladylike disbelief. She had sounded so gauche as well. That final awareness plunged her into an agony of embarrassment. 'It was good,' Nik conceded, without any expression at all. Good? she almost shrieked back at him in shock. Good? Like a meal, a nice day out, a satisfactory piece of work? Suddenly she was marvelling at the happy contentment she had woken up with only minutes earlier. Had her brain and her memory gone on holiday while she slept?
'But then why shouldn't it have been?' Nik remarked with a slight dismissive shrug. 'I knew we would be sexually compatible.'
Her swollen mouth trembled. She compressed her lips hard. A hollow and sick sense of rejection was swallowing her up like a big black hole. The chill in the air raised goose-flesh on her exposed arms. She had to force herself to look directly at Nile again. She discovered that she needed armour cladding to protect herself from the cool distance in those black eyes, and unfortunately she only had flesh.
Pale and taut now, she muttered, 'I thought we understood each other better now.'
Hadn't there been a closeness which might not have been spelt out in actual words but which had surely been shared, not just in the breathtaking intensity of their lovemaking but in the aftermath too, when he had continued to hold her in his arms?
'Only when we're in the same bed,' Nik delineated with precision.
Olympia felt as if he had slid a knife beneath her ribs and she was fighting not to bleed in front of him. 'I get the message,' she said tightly.
'I'm leaving for a few days,' Nik divulged smoothly, lean, strong features cool as glass. 'Don't ask me when I'll be back. I don't know.'
'I do hope it won't be any time soon,' Olympia told him sincerely, temper beginning to mount in response to the treatment she was receiving.
Nik froze in his path to the door.
'I'll call you if I'm pregnant. With a little bit of luck you won't have to come back at all!' Olympia added for good measure.
In one accelerated movement Nik swung back. Outraged black eyes lanced into her flushed and furious face.
'However, I should warn you that all that flattering effort you expended on me during the early hours may well prove to have been unsuccessful as it's not really the most promising time of the month for me,' Olympia shared in a tone of bitter satisfaction.
'Christos...how can you be so crude?' Nik launched with a flash of white gritted teeth. 'You will not refer to the conception of our child in such offensive terms!'
'Silly me...' Olympia barely recognised herself in the provocative persona which had sprung up inside her own skin. 'I forgot what a feeling and sensitive guy you were. I'm so sorry.'
Nik's big hands coiled into fists: Olympia surveyed that evidence of vulnerability and her heart truly sang a triumphant chorus.
'You are my wife,' Nik growled, not quite levelly.
'No...no...no, I'm not. I'm your partner in this deal, the sleeping partner,' Olympia reminded him gently, but her own rage was as fierce as his own. Fury poured through her like petrol ready to ignite, blaze and burn him up, for he had hurt her, he had humiliated her, and he wasn't allowed to do that. No. Not this time. Not ever again.
Nik studied her with smouldering penetration, jaguar-gold eyes rising to the challenge. 'No doubt you would like me to lose control and turn violent. Then you could divorce me and take off to freedom with millions of banknotes...is that what you think?' Olympia frowned, giving the suggestion serious thought.
Strange how the prospect of freedom, even accompanied by millions of banknotes, failed to tempt her, she conceded worriedly.
'Get down and dirty with good legal counsel,' Nik advised in abrasive continuance. 'As you should have done before you signed our marriage contract.'
Completely in the dark as to his meaning, Olympia muttered, 'Sorry?'
'I can be the biggest bastard on the surface of this earth, but if you choose to walk out you leave our children behind and you leave the marriage as poor as you entered it,' Nik informed her with grim satisfaction. 'My lawyers said you'd never sign so punitive a contract. They said you'd throw hysterics when you read the first clause and that by the time you read the final one you'd be in need of resuscitation. But then, they don't know you the way I know you.'
Olympia was now hanging on his every word. 'Don't they?'
'All you were thinking about was the money,' Nik completed with derision.
'No...not that,' she muttered.
Nik reached the door.
Her blood ran cold as she recognised the amount of control Nik wanted over her; he was even willing to use any children they might have as a weapon against her. He might be fond of calling their marriage a deal, but it was not a term she should take literally. Nik had no plans to treat her as a partner, even of the junior variety. Nik was more into ownership than partnership.
In genuine shock at that realisation, Olympia whispered shakily, 'How can you still hate me this much?'
Teach me, she was thinking crazily, teach me how to hate as hard and for as long as you have hated. It was a lesson she seemed in dire need of learning.
Nik turned back his arrogant dark head. Black eyes without a single softening shade of liquid gold met hers with a coldness that frightened the life out of her. 'I really loved you once. Or is that too deep and sensitive a connection for you to understand?'
Three days later, Olympia congratulated herself: she wasn't crying any more.
'I really loved you once. An admission made with the darkest, deepest and most bitter sincerity. A statement she could not dismiss, protest or doubt. And, not to put too fine a point on it, that confession had slaughtered Olympia where she sat. It had ruined her appetite and destroyed her ability to sleep. It had ripped apart the entire fabric of her view of the past and in so doing had sunk her into deep emotional turmoil.
She slid from the extreme of wanting to kill Nik for telling her ten years too late to the extreme of wanting to kill Nik for telling her and then taking off in his wretched helicopter, leaving neither forwarding address nor phone number. Why had he left her? Where had he gone?
Meanwhile Aurora kept on sailing, without ever putting into port. Olympia became acquainted with the gym, the sauna, the swimming pool, the library, the fantastic meals and the level of luxury and personal care now available to her at any hour of the day and night. If she wanted her hair done her maid was a hairdresser, with two dozen styles at her fingertips. If she wanted to listen to music the yacht had two bars, a dance floor and a state-of-the-art sound system. And if she wanted to phone her mother the satellite communications systems could handle anything.
Unfortunately talking to Irini Manoulis entailed skilled diplomacy as Olympia bent over backwards not to actually tell a lie. Yes, she was having a wonde
rful, stupendous time on her honeymoon. Just one problem—and that she did not choose to share with her mother. She was enjoying it solo.
So Nik had loved her. Never mentioned it though, never brought himself to the dangerous brink of saying the words which might have kept them together and encouraged her to fight Katerina's lies. The fiancé’ who had never held hands with her, who had backed off fast when she threatened to get slushy, who had never given her flowers, cute gifts, cards, anything that might have spoke for him! Nik had been such a cool guy at nineteen. Except when he'd proposed...
And she put her head down and wept again, because at twenty-seven, armed with the knowledge of the love she had doubted at seventeen, she found that clumsy, unromantic marriage proposal of Nik's back then especially poignant, especially painful. She remembered his intense relief when she'd just said yes and then proceeded to do all his talking for him.
And now, in the present, she agonised over why Nik had left her alone on Aurora. After the night they had shared, she hadn't expected that. Maybe getting her to bed had just been a challenge for Nik. Or maybe he had simply got bored with her, bored with the whole set-up. She hadn't been much of a challenge. Nor could she had been an exciting partner for so experienced a lover. What had been so special for her had not necessarily been remotely special for Nik, and she was ashamed of her own naivety. She had been so happy when she'd wakened, but Nik had been stone-cold and remote.
Out of bed, he truly did hate her. Why? Once he had loved her and she had hurt him. Forgiving and forgetting wasn't on his agenda. Nik was ready to fight to the last ditch to hang on to his bitter desire for revenge. She had compromised his sense of honour, shamed him in front of others. Too late did she recognise the intensity with which her Greek husband still felt those wounds on his masculinity. What a number Katerina and Lukas had worked on them both that night! Only now did Olympia find that she could accept Nik's side of the story. Lukas must have spiked Nik's drink and invited Nik's ex-girlfriend to join them at that club. It was all so far in the past, yet that night was still poisoning the present and causing her unimaginable pain.