He put her into the passenger seat, then got behind the wheel and started the engine, let it idle as he stared out the windshield.
“Ivy. I have waited all day to tell you this.” He cleared his throat. “I was very angry this morning.”
Ivy sighed. So much for dreams. The day was over. Back to reality.
“I’m sure you were,” she said quietly, “but—”
“Angry is too mild a word, glyka mou. I was furious.”
“Damian. You have to understand that—”
“I have done a terrible thing.”
“You must understand that…” She swung toward him. “What?”
“I brought you to my island so I could take care of you. Instead I’ve terrified you.”
The soft night breeze tossed Ivy’s hair over her cheek. She swept it back as she stared at the man seated beside her.
“I—I behaved badly that first night.” He took a deep, deep breath, then expelled it. “And then, this morning…I had no right to turn my anger on you but I did and because of that, you walked a steep, long road under the hot sun.”
Say something, Ivy told herself, for heaven’s sake, say something!
“Walking is—walking is good for me.”
“Ivy.” His voice was rough. “I’m trying to apologize and—” He looked at her and smiled. “And it’s not something I’m very good at.”
Something in her softened. “Maybe because you don’t do it very often,” she said, smiling a little, too.
He grinned. “There are many people who would agree with you.” He cleared his throat, engaged the gears and the Jeep moved forward. “So we will start over. I will take care of you.”
“Damian. I don’t need you to take care of me. I’ve been taking care of myself for a very long time.”
“It’s what I want.”
Ivy hesitated. “Because of—because of the baby.”
“That is part of it, of course. But I want—I want—”
He hesitated, too. What did he want? Things had seemed so clear this morning. He’d made Ivy his responsibility; that meant buying her whatever she needed.
But somewhere during the course of the day, that had changed. She’d gone from being his responsibility to being his pleasure and joy.
“I want to do the right thing,” he said, hurrying the words because that was safer than trying to figure out where in hell this line of thought might lead. “I should have done that from the start instead of rushing off like a frustrated schoolboy the night I brought you here.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Ivy said quickly. This wasn’t a topic she wanted to discuss. “I understood.”
They had reached the palace. He pulled up in front of it, killed the engine and took her hands in his.
“I know it’s no excuse but I’ve never lost control as I did that night, kardia mou. I’ve never wanted a woman as I wanted you.”
He spoke in the past tense. She understood that, too. He’d gone to Athens. Satisfied his—his needs.
“It was just as well that call came from my office. If I’d remained here, I don’t know—I don’t know what would have happened.”
She stared at him. “You mean, you went to Athens on business?”
“What else would have taken me from you that night?” He gave a halfhearted laugh. “If anyone had ever suggested I would be grateful one of my tankers hit a reef…”
He hadn’t left her for another woman’s bed. Why did that mean so much?
“As for this child…No, don’t look away from me.” He cupped her chin and turned her face toward his. “How can we start over if we keep hiding things from each other? I did not know anything about a child. Do you really think, had I known, I would have abandoned it?”
Ivy shook her head. “Kay said—”
“Kay lied,” he said sharply. “And that is the truth. I may not be a saint but I swear to you, I did not do these things. I did not ask Kay to become pregnant, and I certainly did not ask her to have a stranger become pregnant in her place.”
“Me,” Ivy said in a small, shaky voice.
“You,” Damian said, bringing her hands to his lips. “But you are not a stranger any longer. You are a woman I know and admire.”
“How can you admire me when you think—you think I did this for money? I didn’t, Damian, I swear it. I didn’t want to do it at all but—”
“But?”
But, I owed my stepsister more than I could ever repay.
She couldn’t tell him that. The enormity of her debt. What would become of his admiration if she did? Only Kay knew her secret, and Kay had made her see that she must never tell anyone else.
“But,” she whispered, “Kay took care of me after I—after I left foster care. I would have done anything to make her happy and so I said I’d do this…” Ivy bowed her head. “But I lied to myself. How could I have thought I’d be able to give up my—give up this baby?” Her voice broke. “Even the thought of it tears out my heart.”
Damian took her in his arms, rocked her against him while she wept.
“Don’t cry,” he murmured. “You won’t have to give up the baby, I promise.” He pressed a kiss to her hair. “I am proud you carry my child, Ivy.”
She looked up, eyes bright with tears. “Are you?”
“I only wish—I wish that I had put my seed deep in your womb as I made love to you.” He kissed her; she clung to his shoulders as she kissed him back. “What I said in New York has not changed. I want to marry you.”
“No. I know you want to do the right thing but—” She swallowed. “But I wouldn’t be a good wife.”
He smiled. “Have you been married before?” When she shook her head, his smile broadened. “Then, how can you know that?”
“I just do.”
“We would start out together, kardia mou, I learning to be a good husband, you learning to be a good wife.”
Ivy shook her head. “It would never work.”
“Of course it would.” Impatience roughened his voice. “Look at what we already have in common. A child we both love.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “I want my son,” he said bluntly. “And I intend to have him. You can become my wife and his mother—or I’ll take him from you. I don’t want to hurt you but if I must, I will.”
He was right, never mind all her pie-in-the-sky scheming this morning. Damian would win in a custody battle, even if she told the court her secret. He was the prince of a respected royal house. She was nobody.
Worse than nobody.
“What will it be? A courtroom? Or marriage?”
Ivy bowed her head, took a steadying breath, then looked up and met Damian’s eyes.
“I can’t marry you, Damian, even if—even if I wanted to. The thing is—the thing is—”
“For God’s sake, what?”
“I don’t like…” Her voice fell to a shaky whisper. “I don’t like sex.”
She didn’t know what reaction she’d expected. Laughter? Anger? Disbelief? Surely not his sudden stillness. The muscle, knotting in his jaw. The way he looked at her, as if he were seeing her for the first time.
“You don’t like—”
“No.”
“Is that why you stopped me the other night?”
Ivy nodded. She would never tell him everything but he was entitled, at least, to know this.
He nodded, too. Then he got out of the Jeep, opened her door, drew her gently to her feet and into his arms.
“It’s late,” he said gruffly. “Much too late an hour of the night for truths and secrets like this. I’m going to take you to your room and put you to bed.”
He believed her. She was stunned. Men who came on to her, who called her frigid when she turned them away, never did.
He lifted her into his arms and she let him do it, loving the strength of his embrace, the warmth of his body, wishing with all her heart that things were different. That she was different.
And realized, too late, that the door
he shouldered open, the bed he brought her to, was not hers.
It was his.
She began to protest. He silenced her with a kiss that left her breathless.
CHAPTER NINE
MOONLIGHT washed through the French doors and lit Ivy in its creamy spill.
Damian wanted to see her face but when he tried to lift her chin, she shook her head.
Was it true? Did this stunning, sensual woman dislike sex?
Earlier in the day, sitting on a too-small sofa in one of the boutiques, trying not to look as conspicuous as he felt, trying, as well, to figure out how in hell he’d gotten himself into this because he’d never, not once in his life, gone shopping with a woman—sitting there, arms folded, while Ivy changed into a dress in the fitting room, the salesclerk had bent down and whispered how flattered the shop was to have Ivy Madison as a customer.
Damian had frowned. How did the clerk know Ivy? Then he’d happened to glance at a glossy magazine on a table beside him and there was Ivy, smiling seductively from the cover.
In the days since she’d walked into his life, he’d thought of her as a lot of different things, all the way from scam artist to mother of his child. And, yes, gorgeous, too.
What man wouldn’t notice that?
But he’d never thought of her as a woman whose face was known around the world.
He’d picked up the magazine, opened to a spread of Ivy modeling beachwear. She stood facing the camera in a white halter gown that clung to her body. In a crimson bikini that paid homage to her breasts and long legs. In a butter-yellow robe that hung open just enough to make his pulse accelerate.
He thought of other men, faceless strangers looking at those same photos, feeling what he felt, and he wanted to hunt the bastards down and make sure they understood they were wasting their time dreaming about her because she belonged solely to him.
Crazy, he’d told himself.
And then Ivy, his Ivy, had walked out of the dressing room, stepped onto a little platform in a gown he supposed was attractive—except, he hadn’t really noticed.
All he’d noticed was her.
She was beautiful. Not in the way she was in the magazine, gazing in sultry splendor at the camera but as she was right then, a flesh and blood woman looking questioningly at him.
“What do you think?” she’d said.
What he’d thought was that she was so beautiful she stole his breath away.
“Very nice,” he’d said.
The understatement of the year, but how did you tell a woman you were a heartbeat away from taking her in your arms, carrying her into the dressing room, kicking the damned door closed and making love to her? Doing it again and again until she was trembling with passion, until she admitted that she wanted him, that she would always want him.
Now she’d told him she didn’t like sex.
It could be another bit of deceit to tempt him further into her web.
Damian’s jaw tightened.
It could be…but it wasn’t. He remembered what had happened in this same room, three nights ago. How she’d responded to him with dizzying abandon until he’d tried to take things further.
Without question, she’d told him the truth.
“Ivy?”
She didn’t answer. He brushed the knuckles of his hand lightly against her cheek.
“Is that what happened the other night? Is that the reason you stopped me?”
“Yes.”
The word was a sigh. He had to bend his head to hear it. “You should have told me,” he said softly.
“Tell you something like that?” She gave a forlorn little laugh. “When a man’s about to—about to—to try to—” A deep breath. “I don’t want to talk about it. I just thought you should know why I could never—I mean, the idea of marriage is out of the question anyway but—but if—if there were even the most remote possibility—”
“You’re wrong, agapi mou. About everything.”
His voice was so sure. God, he was so arrogant! And yet, right now, that arrogance made her smile. Despite herself, Ivy turned and lifted her eyes to his.
“Doesn’t it ever occur to you,” she said softly, “that there are times it’s you who’s wrong?”
“But you see, sweetheart, I wasn’t going to have sex with you. I was going to make love to you.”
“It’s the same—”
He kissed her. Kissed her without demanding anything but her compliance, his mouth warm and tender against hers. Kissed her until he felt her tremble, though not with fear.
“You don’t like sex,” he said softly. “But you like my kisses.”
“Damian. I can’t. Really, I just—”
He kissed her again, just as gently, and felt a fierce rush of pleasure when her mouth softened under his.
“Damian.” Her voice shook. “I don’t think—”
“Shh.” His hands spread across her back, applying just a little pressure when he kissed her again, enough to part her lips and touch the tip of her tongue with his.
A whisper of sound rose in her throat. Did she move closer or did he? It took all his self-control not to pull her into his arms.
“Sex is a physical act, glyka mou. It’s part of making love but it’s hardly all of it.”
“I don’t see—”
“No. You don’t. Let me show you, then. Just another kiss,” he added, when she began to shake her head. “I only want to taste you. Will you permit me to do that?”
He didn’t wait for her answer. Instead he put his mouth against hers.
“Open to me,” he said thickly. A second slipped by. Then she moaned, rose on her toes, tipped her head back and let him take the kiss deeper.
Damian kissed her over and over, his tongue in her mouth, his hands buried in the chestnut and gold spill of her hair.
He told himself he would keep his promise. That he would only taste her. But as her skin heated, as she sighed with pleasure, he put his lips against her throat, slipped her blouse from her shoulders, kissed his way to the vee of her silk T-shirt.
“Ivy,” he whispered, his hands spreading over her midriff, the tips of his fingers brushing the undersides of her breasts. “Ivy, kardia mou…”
Her hands lifted, knotted in his shirt. His name sighed from her lips.
The room began to blur.
He told himself to go slowly. To do no more than he’d said he would. But she was leaning into him now, her hands were cool on his nape and he bent his head to her breasts, kissed them through the silky fabric of her shirt.
She made a broken little sound deep in her throat and arched her back. The simple motion made an offering of her beaded nipples, taut and visible beneath her T-shirt.
It would have taken a saint to refuse such a gift.
Damian was no saint.
He kissed the delicate beads of silk-covered flesh. Drew them into his mouth, first one and then the other. Ivy’s cries grew sharper. Hungrier.
So did his need.
He dropped to his knees. Lifted her shirt and found he’d been right about the half-closed zipper.
Slowly he eased the trousers down her hips and legs.
“Damian,” she said unsteadily.
He looked up at her. “I’m just going to undress you,” he whispered. “Then I’ll put you to bed and if you want me to leave, I will. I promise.”
She hesitated. Then she stepped out of the trousers and when he saw her like that, wearing the silk T-shirt, her long legs bare, her feet encased in foolishly high heels, he wondered why in hell he’d made such a promise.
But he would keep it.
He would keep it by stopping now. By standing up. By—all right, by reaching under the T, undoing her bra, only because she wouldn’t want to sleep with it on…
Ivy stumbled back. “Don’t! Please, don’t.”
Her voice was high; her eyes were wide with fear and, in a heartbeat, Damian understood.
She’d said she didn’t like sex. He’d foolishly, arrogantly
assumed she was simply a woman unawakened.
He knew better now.
Ivy, his Ivy, didn’t like sex because she was terrified of it. A man had hurt her. Taught her that sex was painful or evil or ugly.
Damian spat out a sharp, four-letter word. Ivy began to weep.
“I told you,” she sobbed, “I told you how it would be—”
“Who did this to you?”
She didn’t answer. He cursed again, took her in his arms, ignored her attempts to free herself and wrapped her in his embrace.
“Ivy. Agapi mou. Kardia mou. Do not cry. Ivy, my Ivy…”
He’d lost his accent his second year at Yale but it was back now, roughening his words and then he was talking in Greek, not the modern language he’d grown up speaking but the ancient one he’d studied in prep school.
The Greek of the Spartans and Athenians. His warrior ancestors.
He knew what they would have done. It was what he longed to do. Find the man who’d done this to Ivy and kill him.
Her soft, desperate sobs broke his heart.
He held her against him, rocking her, whispering to her, soft, sweet words he had never said to a woman before, never wanted to say and, at last, her tears stopped.
Gently he scooped her into his arms and put her in the center of his bed, stroked her tousled hair back from her damp cheeks.
“It’s all right,” he murmured. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Go to sleep, agapimeni. I’ll stay here and keep you safe.”
He drew the comforter over her. She clutched at it and rolled onto her side, turning her back to him. He wanted to reach for her again, to lie down and hold her, but instinct warned him not to. She was too fragile right now; God only knew what might push her over the edge.
So he sat beside her, watching until her breathing slowed and her lashes drooped against her cheeks.
“Ivy?” he said softly.
She was asleep.
Damian dropped a light kiss on her hair. Then he went into his dressing room, took off his clothes and put on an old, soft pair of Yale sweats. He padded back into the bedroom, drew an armchair next to the bed, sat down, stretched out his long legs and considered all the creative ways a man could deal with a son of a bitch who’d taught his Ivy that sex, the most intimate act a man and woman could share, was a thing to be feared.
The Billionaires' Brides Bundle Page 26