by Lynne Graham
Why should she be surprised by that? Why should she feel threatened by that acknowledgement? Nik was devastatingly good-looking...sexy, very sexy. He couldn’t help being like that. She had watched him at dinner parties, the effortless cynosure of all female attention. He took it for granted. It had always been that way for Nik, she imagined. His mother and sisters probably worshipped the ground he walked on too. So really it was only natural that she should also be aware of that natural magnetism, should find momentarily that the ground lurched almost dizzily beneath her on receipt of one dazzling smile... Yes, it was only natural wasn’t it? It didn’t mean anything, just that she was female and alive.
‘I’m glad that you are feeling stronger but you look very serious,’ Nik drawled.
Leah took a deep breath. As she glanced up, she caught the dancing remnants of humour in his clear gaze and her mouth ran dry. Nik in charm mode—well, that was a new one to her, wasn’t it? Deliberately she fixed her gaze to one side of him. ‘We need to talk.’
Nik laughed softly. ‘The hour is too late, pethi mou.’
Her husband, the chauvinist pig. Any minute now he’d be telling her not to worry her pretty little head about anything. Nik, she appreciated with a stab of pain, had never taken her seriously. Maybe he never took any woman seriously or maybe it was because she was small and blonde and once she had been crazy about him and he knew it.
But five years ago Nik had put her on ice. He had left her to exist in limbo, neither free nor married. And in that interim it had not occurred to him that her feelings might have changed. He had not been interested in her feelings. He had been far too bound up in seething resentment and bitterness even to spare a thought for what she might be suffering.
It had not occurred to him that she might turn to another man. It had not occurred to him that she might be willing to sacrifice the financially privileged lifestyle that being an Andreakis gave her to gain her freedom. Nik had falsely assumed that the money and the status were very important to her. And those were the barriers she had to breach.
‘Nik, we have to talk, and, if it’s possible, without you getting angry, threatening or sarcastic,’ Leah murmured tightly.
Nik was lounging back against the edge of his desk, surveying her with an air of maddening indulgence, the same way that one might look at a child struggling to be amusingly mature beyond its years. And yet she could sense tension within him on another level.
‘Nik—’
‘Your meal.’ At spectacular speed, Nik strode across the room and whipped a tray from a dumbstruck manservant.
Leah was equally astonished. Had it been anyone else but Nik, who had all the sensitivity of a battering-ram, she would have thought he was being deliberately evasive.
‘Eat.’ The tray was placed on her lap.
‘Nik, I know about you and Eleni Kiriakos.’
He swung back to her, a frown-line pleating his winged ebony brows. ‘Ponia,’ he guessed grimly. ‘What do you know?’
‘I understand that you were engaged to her.’
‘For years,’ Nik conceded with disorientating casualness.
Leah looked at her exquisitely arranged salad with sinking appetite and lifted the cutlery. ‘Well, I can understand how you must have felt when Max put you in a position where you had to break that engagement and lose the woman you loved.’
‘The timing was inconvenient...’
Leah lifted her head. ‘Inconvenient?’ she echoed half an octave higher.
Nik released his breath with impatience. ‘I have known Eleni all my life. We were betrothed in our teens. The decision had nothing to do with us. It was what our fathers wanted, a merger between two shipping lines. Eleni wanted to be a doctor. Her father did not approve but my support brought him round. Both Eleni and I knew that eventually we would have to disappoint our families but in the interim it suited both of us to play along—’
‘Play along?’ Leah questioned.
‘If I had said that I did not wish to marry Eleni her father would have pressured her to marry someone else and she might never have got to study medicine,’ Nik explained, his mouth twisting. ‘You must understand that Eleni is a dedicated doctor who gives virtually one hundred per cent to her vocation. She has time for little else. She is not the wife I would have chosen for myself, nor was I the husband she would have chosen...’
Leah swallowed hard, striving to absorb his calm assurance and tie it in with what she had believed she had seen in that hospital. Close friends embracing? Eleni had been so affectionate towards Nik but then people who had known each other all their lives tended to be and possibly it had been some time since they had last met, Leah reasoned uncertainly under the onslaught of Nik’s level scrutiny. His cool candour was impressive, she had to admit.
‘You weren’t in love with her?’
‘I believed I was once.’ Nik smiled with wry recall. ‘But I was only eighteen. Eleni was beautiful. That was all that mattered. But it was not very long before her absorption in her studies made me see that we were incompatible.’
‘You wanted her one hundred per cent vocation to be targeted on you.’
‘You know me so well.’
‘Frankly, it was just an observation,’ Leah said stiffly. ‘Why did you call the timing of our marriage inconvenient?’
‘Eleni’s father blamed my defection on her dedication to her career and she was forced into open conflict with her family before she had won her independence.’
‘And how did your family react?’ Leah heard herself prompt tautly.
‘With shock, horror and shame at my behaviour,’ Nik enumerated flatly. ‘A betrothal is a serious commitment in Greek society, most particularly to a family as steeped in traditional beliefs as mine. I was accused of dishonouring the Andreakis name. It is true that inevitably the betrothal would have been broken but the fact that I immediately married someone else magnified the offence in their eyes.’
Leah studied the carpet and she saw her father like a cold force at the centre of a storm, wielding the elements within his grasp without caring about the damage he inflicted. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed.
‘It’s immaterial now. Last year Eleni married another doctor.’ Nik’s strong features tautened. ‘Both families were placated by that development. If they do not concede that we had a right to choose our own partners, I do believe they both acknowledge that Eleni and I would not have been suited.’
Leah began picking at her salad, a little embarrassed at her dramatic assumption that Eleni Kiriakos was Nik’s mistress. A newly married woman, a lifelong friend. Why should she not have openly demonstrated her fondness for Nik? Perhaps she had misinterpreted what she saw because she had never been in a position to offer anyone that kind of affection. Her father hadn’t wanted it. Nik hadn’t wanted it. By the time Paul came along, she had been inhibited by the habit of concealing her emotions.
The silence lingered. Deep in thought, Leah ate her meal.
‘You close me out as if I’m invisible,’ Nik murmured silkily. ‘When you do that I want to smash things and shout.’
Her silvery head flew up, stark confusion etched in her sapphire eyes. ‘That’s childish.’
Nik shrugged a broad shoulder with magnificent unconcern. ‘There is a child inside every one of us.’
Leah cleared her throat awkwardly, strangely disconcerted by that unexpected admission and the ease with which he’d made it. Living with Nik, she decided, was like camping out on the side of a live volcano. There was always a rumble, a warning quake of suggested disaster in the air.
‘Why won’t you let me go?’ she demanded starkly.
‘You’re my wife.’
‘Not good enough.’
Nik spread beautifully shaped fingers. ‘That certificate is still out there,’ he reminded her drily.
Leah paled. ‘But my father is dead...he probably destroyed it!’
‘He destroyed nothing else,’ Nik pointed out. ‘And Max was very clever. I may have
despised him but even I have to acknowledge that. Who knows what he might have arranged? If we split up, if we part, somebody somewhere may be primed to use that certificate to hurt my family—’
‘That’s being paranoid!’ Leah muttered unevenly, her head beginning to ache.
‘It’s not a risk I am prepared to take. As far as Max was concerned you were content to be my wife right up until the day he died,’ Nik said smoothly. ‘He knew no different. And I believe that he would have taken a special pleasure from ensuring that if I ever attempted to divorce you I would pay.’
The most obvious explanation had evaded her, she conceded dazedly, her hands clenching tightly together. She had let her imagination run riot. She had believed that Nik might well be punishing her for her father’s sins. She had believed that Paul’s very existence so outraged Nik’s pride that he was set on hanging on to her out of sheer dog-in-the-manger bloody-mindedness. She had even begun to believe that on the basis of practical, unemotional reasoning he might indeed consider her to be a suitable wife.
And the terrible reality was that every one of those motivations had been considerably kinder to her ego than the awful truth she had finally been forced to acknowledge: Nik thought he was stuck with her for eternity. Like an albatross. And if he hadn’t been so accustomed to being in that position he might well have been wondering whether a suitably choreographed accident might not best meet his requirements.
‘You’ve turned a little...pale,’ he mused.
‘I’ve got a headache,’ Leah mumbled.
She was remembering the fury which had brought him to her hotel, a fury which she now saw had been entirely divorced from any personal feelings on his side. After all, Nik couldn’t allow her to leave him. Even if he really wanted to throw the door wide and encourage her to leave, he couldn’t risk doing it. Marrying her had indeed been the life sentence he had called it.
For the first time she understood how furiously helpless he must have felt in the grip of that awareness early on in their marriage...and how desperately he must have hoped that she would meet and fall for someone else while her father was still alive, thereby releasing him from the union. After all, had that been her choice, Max could scarcely have blamed Nik. No wonder he had left her alone for five years...and no wonder he had accused her in Paris of being obscenely faithful and loyal. Why had she chosen not to examine that condemnation more closely? Why had she buried it?
The tray was removed. Nik bent down and began to lift her. ‘I can manage!’ she gasped strickenly, but he ignored her.
Settled back on the bed, Leah snatched at the sheet and turned over on her stomach, unable even to look at him. She felt stripped of every ounce of pride, every inch of dignity. She was drowning in humiliation. In the space of minutes Nik had changed everything. What right did she have to demand her freedom now? Whether she liked it or not, it had been her infatuation with Nik which had trapped him into this situation. Even Max wouldn’t have tried to push her into marriage with a man she neither wanted nor loved.
‘You’d feel more comfortable without that robe.’
Leah tensed, having been unaware that he was still in the room.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You need a good night’s sleep.’
She felt the sheet move, hands at her waist, gently tugging loose the sash and then sliding the robe down off her shoulders to remove it. The sheet was smoothed back into place.
Nik sighed softly. ‘You know this is my bedroom. Would you mind very much if I moved back in?’
Leah went rigid and then quivered. ‘I’ll move now,’ she managed, beginning to lift her head.
‘I want you to stay,’ he breathed in a curiously stifled tone.
‘Oh...’ Leah froze, violently disturbed by the announcement.
‘We are married,’ he murmured.
The silence stretched, gnawing at her every nerve-ending.
‘Yes.’ It was a whisper so faint that the sound of a pin dropping would have been louder. But it was an acknowledgement which Leah had avoided, protested and denied for years. Now it had been forced on her.
She lay there in shock. There was no other word to describe her condition. The sturdy foundations of her resentment and bitterness and her determination to leave him had been blown to smithereens and right now she was still lying in the bomb crater, fumbling feebly to find some reasonable excuse for denying him the right to sleep in his own bed and the expectation that she share that same bed. And the truth was that there wasn’t any reasonable excuse available to her.
Nik had come to terms with their future that day in Paris. She saw that now. He had got to the bottom of that safety-deposit box and emerged without the ticket to freedom he had vainly sought. For a little while he had hoped that she had it—that wretched certificate that she had never even heard of before that day! And when he had realised that unpleasant reality he had known simultaneously that their marriage was indeed a life sentence. Hence his sudden change of attitude towards her. If escape was out of the question, he had to make the best of imprisonment. If he could not free himself to marry another woman, he had to make the best of the one he had got...
All of a sudden Leah was shorn of defences. Hadn’t she brought all of this on them both? Hadn’t she, in her complete and utter stupidity, agreed to marry a man who had looked like death warmed up on the day he had proposed? And she had asked him if he was ill. Ill? Three weeks had passed before the wedding and she had only seen him twice in company and he had been so cool and so distant, he had been like a stranger. But had she smelt a rat? No way! She had been head over heels in love and had told herself he was preoccupied with business.
A slight sound dredged her from her frantic lashings of self-loathing. She turned her head. Her lowered lashes swept up, revealing startled blue eyes. Nik was undressing. Tension thrumming through every tautened muscle, Leah closed her eyes again. But she listened, just as she listened minutes later to the sound of the shower running. Ordinary, everyday sounds for most married women...only not for her. And she found herself envisaging the state of the bathroom: a heap of discarded wet towels and nothing used returned to its proper place.
She had a stark memory of having once invaded Nik’s wing of the London house after he had departed one morning. She remembered the wet towels, the disorder and the disturbing, frightening realisation that no two people could have been more separate or less intimate than they were in their marriage that was not a marriage.
After that she had felt like a lodger in his beautiful house. She had never stamped her personality anywhere, never moved a single piece of furniture. That day had been the beginning of her detachment from him...just as this day had forever shattered that same protective device.
Her ears pricked up in disbelief at the sound of Nik humming a brief snatch from a famous operatic aria out of tune. He sounded so...buoyant? Her lashes lifted. She clashed unexpectedly with gleaming jet. Nik was standing by the bed gazing down at her. Instantly his gaze veiled, the curve of his expressive mouth straightening out.
‘Go to sleep,’ he instructed almost soothingly.
She closed her eyes, heard him discard the towel which was all that had interrupted her view of that lean, lithe golden body. The mattress gave ever so slightly, the sheet slid and then the light went out.
Silence fell. Leah lay as still as a corpse but considerably more wide awake, knowing that she could not possibly sleep with Nik lying naked within a foot of her, his every restive movement filling her with instinctive alarm and rocketing tension.
* * *
Wonderfully warm and relaxed, Leah gave a sinuous little wriggle and the hard heat of the body next to hers tautened. Her lashes lifted. She looked up into smouldering black eyes, fringed by ebony lashes. The impact of those eyes was mesmerising. Her blood leapt in her veins and her heat raced. She felt dizzy, breathless and utterly dispossessed of all rational thought.
A fingertip stroked along the lush ripeness of her lower
lip. ‘Open your mouth for me. I want to taste you,’ Nik urged huskily.
Held fast by his searing gaze, she instinctively obeyed and with a stifled groan of satisfaction he crushed her slender form to him, his hands sweeping over her hips and her back as his hard, demanding mouth took hers with savage intensity.
A sweet, twisting ache stirred in her belly. The tip of his tongue snaked between her readily parted lips, erotically probing the tender inner reaches to make her quiver with helpless excitement beneath him.
With insistent hands Nik tugged the thin straps of her nightdress down from her shoulders, baring the pouting swell of her breasts. His sure fingers cupped and explored the straining mounds and caressed her nipples until they were throbbing and stiff. Uncontrollably her hips arched up to his, her thighs trembling in response as her hands rose and tangled in his thick black hair.
Her heart hammered wildly in her chest as he released her reddened lips. He teased her sensitised breasts, his tongue skimming down the valley between them while his hands toyed with the rigid peaks he had created. Heat was surging through her in waves of violent response and when he employed his mouth on her tender flesh instead she moaned low in her throat, subjected to a storm of exquisite sensation that tantalised and tormented.
She was intoxicated, enslaved by passion, lost in a world of intense and drugging pleasure. With a soft growl of anticipation, Nik took her mouth again with compulsive hunger and pulled her against him, his hand sliding through the silvery curls at the apex of her thighs, searching out the silken softness beneath with intimate expertise, each sensual invasion calculated to heighten the fevered and mindless response he was receiving.
It was a sweet agony of delight that made Leah sob and pant for breath. Her hips jerked and lifted of their own volition, the demanding ache of desire rising to an unbearable pitch. A whimper of frustration was torn from her. His hands sank beneath her as he slid between her thighs. He threw back his head and raised her to meet the powerful thrust of his hard body. With an earthy groan of unashamed pleasure, he drove his rigid, swollen length into her yielding depths.