by Lynne Graham
'No, 1 really get off on it…' Cristos curled his fingers into the wet coil of her bright hair and dragged her down to him with the cool confidence of a male who knew that his attentions were always welcome. He captured her lips, c01Jducted a sensual invasion that reduced her to shivering compliancy. His beautiful dark golden eyes flared over her with sensual intent and then he sat up, carrying her with him. 'I want you again, pethi mou.'
He took her into the cool of the bedroom. He had barely touched her but already her body was ready for him. She wanted him so badly she was trembling. He unclipped her bikini bra, baring her pert breasts. His roughened growl of pleasure broke the buzzing silence and she leant back against him with a low moan of encouragement while he stroked the distended pink nipples straining for his attention.
'You're so quiet with me now,' Cristos censured, pressing her back against the bed where she rested boneless, enslaved by him.
Her lashes lowered in concealment. What was there to say when she had to be careful not to betray herself? There was not a minute in the day when she did not think of him. Initial fascination and attraction had melded into a much more dangerous obsession. She had begun admiring the flip side of his arrogant temperament: his courage, his' uncompromising strength of character and intelligence. Before she knew where she was, she had found herself lying in eager wait for his wonderful smile. In spite of all her proud assurances to the contrary, she had fallen headlong and hopelessly in love with Cristos Stephanides.
'But even your silence excites me,' Cristos confided, tugging up her shapely knees to remove her bikini pants. 'It gives me a high when you cry out with pleasure… '
He parted the damp petals of her womanhood to find the most sensitive spot of all and suddenly she was all heat and desperate need. But where she most ached for him, he touched her not at all. In a process of sensual torment he took her to a peak again and again, always denying her the fulfilment she craved. She writhed in frustration, whimpered in protest. Only when he was satisfied that she had reached the very edge of extreme arousal did he turn her over and plunge into the tender heart of her with a devastating expertise that sent her into an instantaneous and wildly exciting climax.
Afterwards, he curled her slender, exhausted body up against him and surveyed her with immense satisfaction. Sex with her was incredible but he would not have dreamt of telling her that. He could not get enough of her. He would not have told her that even under torture. He lifted her hand and planted a kiss in the centre of her palm. He wrapped his arms round her, submitted with only a very slight wince to being hugged for the first time since his childhood. He knew what she liked. He knew how to keep her happy. In return for unlimited sex, and moreover the best sex he had ever had, he made a very real effort to be affectionate. Why? He had already decided that when they got off the island he would keep her in his life as his mistress. After all, he had moulded her into -exactly what he wanted.
When Betsy emerged from the bathroom towelling her hair dry, she found herself alone again. Cristos would be checking the fire on the headland. He was impossibly energetic from dawn to midnight and she struggled to keep up with him. The old boathouse was piled high with junk and he was using it to keep the signal fire alight. So far, the fire had failed to attract attention. But then, since they had not even seen a fishing boat, it was clear that the island did not lie close to the shipping lanes. With stones they had picked out a giant SOS on the beach that could be seen from the air, but they had yet to see a single small plane of the type that would fly low enough to read their message..
It was very hot but Betsy was determined to do her share of the heavy work. She padded into the shadowy depths of the boathouse and swept up a dusty old cardboard box. Through the tom lid she could see magazines. She would cart it up to feed the fire. It was a steep climb and when she got there Cristos was nowhere to be seen; She espied him down on the beach. The fire was low and she settled the box hurriedly on top of it, reasoning that it would burn slower and last longer as fuel that way.
She had reached the dunes below when a whistling, hissing sound followed by an explosive bang brought her to an astonished halt. The seeming equivalent of a very violent firework torched through the clear blue sky above and her jaw dropped.
'Why didn't you tell me you'd found a flare? Why the hell did you just throw it on the fire?' Cristos shouted at her from about thirty feet away, his lean, darkly handsome face hard with incredulity.
Another flare shot up over the headland in a fierce bright rocket of flame and a shower of sparks. Paralysed to the spot, and it was a paralysis that Cristos seemed to share, she watched in horror as a pyrotechnic display of flares fired off in all directions. In all six had exploded and of those only one failed to make the ascent into the sky.
'I didn't know there were flares. 1 took the box out of. the boathouse. I thought it was full of magazines… that was all 1 could see!' Betsy admitted in consternation.
Glittering dark eyes pinned to her in angry condemnation, Cristos spread his lean brown hands wide. •
'You put the box on the fire without checking the contents?'
Stiff with guilt, she nodded.
'Those flares would have had a much greater chance I
of being noticed at night. Thanks to your carelessness, j
they've been wasted!' Cristos derided. j
'I thought you'd already searched through everything in the boathouse!' Betsy protested and, sidestepping him, she headed off, eyes stinging at the awful fear that she might have blown their best chance for getting off the island.
When Cristos was annoyed with her, a knot of pain formed inside Betsy and she started feeling as if she had lost a whole layer of protective skin. But in truth, she recognised ruefully, what she had lost was her independence and her peace of mind. She judged herself through his eyes. His opinions mattered. He had imposed his powerful personality on her whether she liked it or not. Her time with him had also taught her a lot about herself. The love she had honestly believed she still cherished for Rory had been composed of nothing more than fondness and her reluctance to let go of her sentimental links to the past.
Late afternoon, Cristos strode into the house and pulled her into his arms, impervious to the ice signals she was handing out. They were both hot-tempered. It was a scene that had occurred between them on several occasions. He would never discuss the argument. He would simply pretend it had not happened and even while she was soothed by the speed with which he always healed a breast that arrogant refusal to acknowledge their differences drove her crazy. But this time she had no opportunity to quibble about the silent terms of reconciliation. He kissed her with hard, hungry urgency.
Taken aback, she had no time even to catch her breath before Cristos, emanating tightly feashed emotions in a force field that she could feel, his dark eyes bright with satisfaction, turned her to the window so that she could see the blue and white fishing boat tied up at the jetty. 'We've been rescued…'
Everything from that point went at supersonic speed. The distress flares had brought the young fisherman to investigate. Within ten minutes, Betsy was being helped into the boat, still colourfully clothed in a sundress and bikini pants, her crumpled uniform stuffed in a carrier bag. While she watched the island recede into the purplish haze of ever greater distance, Cristos was talking in voluble Greek into the radio in the wheelhouse.
'Your family will be informed that you are safe,' Cristos assured her in an aside. when she hovered nearby. 'My grandfather will organise everything.'
For all the fact that they had their freedom back, Betsy felt superfluous to requirements and oddly empty and scared. Even so she did not want to hang round Cristos like a limpet. When they were within sight of land again, she asked him if he had found out the name of the island they had been on.
'Why 'would you be interested?' he asked, his surprise palpable, but he spoke to the fisherman.
'Mos…it's called. We're in the Cyclades,' he added.
; They landed on the island of Sifnos, which was as gloriously green in its spring splendour as Mos had been. Again she was left alone while Cristos went off to make use of the private phone offered to him. She did not like to ask if she could accompany him and it was thirty minutes before he reappeared, his bold bronzed features grave.
'Did the kidnappers ask for a ransom? Did you find out anything about them?' she prompted then, desperate for a little information. She was feeling shut out and excluded. Cristos was back in his own world, she conceded, and already he was acting cool and detached. What they had shared on the island might as well have taken place on another planet, she thought fearfully.
His lean, strong face was expressionless. 'Nothing… but transport to take us back to the mainland should be arriving very soon.'
'I have no passport… how am I going to travel home?'
'Your embassy has been informed. They will take care of that.'
'When are the police going to question us?' Cristos shrugged. He did not know what to say to her. He had been shattered by what he had just learned from his grandfather and he was still in shock. Spyros, his own cousin, had had him kidnapped. Cristos was outraged but also ashamed that one of his own kin could have sunk so low with only greed as an excuse. And if Patras Stephanides had anything to do with it, there would be no further investigation of his grandson’s brief disappearance for it was not as though charges could be brought against those responsible.
Five days ago, Spyros and his partners in crime, Joe Tyler and two other men, had all been killed when the helicopter that Spyros had been piloting had crashed in the Aegean sea on the way back from Mos. Nothing would be gained from revealing the truth to Betsy or to anybody else. Indeed the honour of the Stephanides name and Spyros' grieving family required the protection of silence.
As the silence stretched Betsy stiffened.
Dark eyes grim, Cristos breathed in deep. 'There is something I should tell you… I'm engaged. My fiancée will be waiting to greet me in Athens, so we will be travelling separately.'
His words, for in no way could she have described that statement as either apologetic or confessional, hit her like a brick smashing through a window. In that moment everything changed and everything she had shared with him took on a far different aspect. She walked away a few steps to stare blindly out at the picturesque harbour. For long, timeless minutes she struggled to deal with the greatest pain she had ever known.
'You lied to me,' she said. 'I did not.'
'I asked you if anyone in your life would be hurt by us being together and you said no,' she reminded him in a shaking undertone while she fought not to lose her temper or cry or indeed do anything that might reveal to him just how badly she was hurting.
'I answered truthfully. Petrina does not interfere. She is not concerned by my fidelity but I respect her position and I am always discreet.'
Hatred and bitterness threatened to spread like a pool of poison inside Betsy. She hugged her arms round herself, striving to contain her tempestuous emotions.
'I want you to remain part of my life…'
An incredulous laugh empty of humour was wrenched from her and she moved away another step, terrified that she might break down into tears. 'You've got to be joking.'
'I won't give you up, pethi mou,' Cristos breathed, pale with tension beneath his olive skin, glittering dark eyes intently pinned to her every change of expression. 'Nothing is perfect. But you can still be with me.'
'You think I want you so much that I'd be prepared to share you?' Eyes witch-green with rampant loathing, Betsy rounded on him like a tigress. 'Go take a running jump, Cristos!'
CHAPTER FIVE
BETSY lifted the phone and heard the broken dialling tone that let her know that she had messages to collect on the answering service.
She listened to her messages. Cristos three times over: Cristos angry, angrier and even more angry. Cristos, who could not believe or accept that she would not speak to him. He was amazingly persistent and unbelievably stubborn in the face of repeated rejection. The guy whom she had believed was so special. The guy who had taken gross advantage of her naive trust. She blamed herself more than she blamed him, though. Had ever a woman contributed more to her own downfall?
Cristos had only been interested in sex. Cristos had not even pretended that he was interested in anything else. A small example of that reality was that, in spite of spending virtually every waking hour with her for the best part of a week, Cristos had still never got around to asking her what sort of a business she hoped to start up. He had been careful to keep things unemotional and impersonal on his side of the fence, but she had got far, far too personal when she'd fallen in love with him.
It was only three weeks since she had returned from Greece. Her life had been turned upside down. She couldn't sleep, had lost interest in eating and had to drag herself out of bed in the morning. She felt like a fake person running round behind a plastic smile.
Inside herself she was hollow with misery and aloneness. But on the face of it, her life was virtually the same as it had ever been.
The kidnapping had been hushed up. Why, she had no idea, but she suspected that there might be a lot of truth in that phrase, 'money talks.' A Stephanides lawyer had met her when she'd landed in Athens. He had assisted her through the process of proving her identity and getting herself home. He had also informed her of the helicopter crash, which had taken the life of Joe Tyler and the men with him. She had returned to work to discover that the limo she had crashed had already been repaired. Her boss had been advised to keep the matter quiet and inform the curious that she had gone off on a last-minute holiday. The Stephanides family had gone to considerable lengths to cover up the evidence that a crime had been committed.
In an effort to distract herself from her unhappiness, Betsy had decided it was time she took the plunge and focused her energies on opening up a garage specialising in classic car restoration. It was two years now since her grandfather had died and his estate had been divided between Betsy and Gemma. With a healthy savings account, Bet~ knew the chances were good that the bank would give her a loan.
Yet she had still not made that all-important appointment at the bank. Why? Her period was a few days late and she was terrified that Cristos might have got her pregnant. Yet she had still not worked up the courage to go and buy a pregnancy test because she was praying that fear was making her fanciful. After all, Cristos had been reasonably careful. She blinked out an uneasy recollection of the passion that had led to one or two oversights. Furthermore, Cristos had checked on the dates of her menstrual cycle and, while freely admitting that he had never made such calculations in his life, he had been of the opinion that they were really safe from repercussions…
Betsy was in the anxious act of wondering whether her vanished appetite might relate to more than a broken heart when a knock sounded on the door of her bedsit. It was Rory and she was really surprised: in all the years since they had broken up and he had set up home with her sister, he had never come to visit her. His blue eyes were red-rimmed with tiredness and his smart suit was crumpled. Once she had believed he was pretty attractive. Now, she registered that to her he just looked ordinary.
'What's up?' she asked. 'Is Gemma ill?' 'We've split up…'
Eyes rounding in disbelief, Betsy stilled. 'You're not serious?'
'I thought you'd be the last to know.' Rory grimaced. 'But I don't have anything to hide. I moved out yesterday.'
Betsy was shocked and could not think of how best to greet such an announcement from Rory. In truth, she just wanted him to disappear into thin air. His very presence on her doorstep meant trouble. Gemma would throw a fit if she found out that her boyfriend had gone to visit her sister and Betsy had no desire to get involved in the fallout. 'That's awful. I’m sorry,' she said stiltedly. 'But hopefully it's just a temporary blip--'
'It's no blip,' Rory informed her heavily. 'Your sister has another man. Aren't you going to invite me in?'
<
br /> Trying to look more welcoming, Betsy stood back. 'There's got to have been a misunderstanding, Rory.'
'No, he's her boss and he's married. All the evenings that Gemma was supposed to be going to her fitness class she was actually with him. Do you know how I found out?' Rory prompted bitterly. 'The night your parents were told you'd been kidnapped they came round to our apartment and I rushed out to the college to fetch Gemma home early. The teacher hadn't seen her since last term!'
Betsy tried not to wince. 'Gemma would hate you telling me this stuff-' Her doorbell buzzed and, highly relieved by the interruption, she went to answer it, praying that Rory would take the hint and leave.
It was Cristos. The unexpected sight of him welded her to the spot. Sheathed in a caramel-coloured suit that shrieked designer tailoring, he was taller, broader, darker, and altogether more gorgeous than she had allowed herself to remember and, like a foodaholic on the edge of starvation, she couldn't stop staring. His stunning dark golden eyes met hers in an almost physical collision.
'I must talk to you… who's that behind you?' Cristos suddenly shot at her rawly, striding forward and setting her bodily out of his path to confront Rory. 'Who are you?'
Totally unprepared for his hostile behaviour, Betsy spun round in bewilderment. 'This is my sister's boyfriend, Rory.'
'What the hell are you doing here?' Cristos growled, hands clenching into fists, rage rolling up through him like volcanic lava seeking a vent. Rory, the guy, she said she loved, here alone with her. While he was being treated like the plague for being engaged, Betsy was entertaining-in a room with a bed in it-the louse who had cheated on her with her own sister. Where was the justice in that?
Dwarfed by Cristos in size and never having been the physical type, Rory backed up against the wall. 'Betsy and I are good friends.'
Without the slightest warning of the aggression to come, Cristos closed two powerful hands into Rory's jacket and lifted him right off his feet. 'You're no friend. I saw the way you look at her and I'm a possessive man. I don't want you near her. Is that understood?'