A pulse began to flutter in her throat as his fingers feathered the soft skin of her inner thigh, accelerating as his plundering fingers took more than was honest when they slid a little way beneath the fabric of the tiny triangle which made the bottom half of her bikini. Agonisingly, she felt every muscle and sinew of her body clench in a spasm of purely instinctive rejection, but the thieving fingers moved onwards, towards more legitimate areas, covering the flat plane of her stomach, the soft flare of her hips, the arch of her ribcage.
And to Cleo it suddenly began to feel like nothing she had ever experienced before. Frightening—but obviously not frightening enough! Her mind told her to defend herself against the marauder, but her body had definite ideas of its own, was acquiescent, limpid. And she was drowning in something warm and deep, and not really painlessly because her lungs felt tight, as if she , should be gasping for air, and her heart was pattering wildly... And any self-defensive thoughts she might have had were being subdued by his lean, knowing hands, and she knew that if she allowed herself to relax, by just that necessary fraction, she would be completely and utterly subjugated...
When his fingers found the front fastening of her bra top, moving aside the two small halves to expose the twin rounded peaks to the sun, to his eyes, to his hands, she made an effort to protest, to tell him, acidly, that she was unlikely to get sunburned just there, especially if he could refrain from interfering with her clothing! But the words just wouldn't come out coherently. They emerged thickly, like a moan, a moan of pleasure. And as she felt her nipples harden as a tug of something sweet yet achingly fierce flared to life deep inside her, she knew that the fraction of relaxation had been achieved, that the erotic, wordless lovemaking of his hands had dissolved the very last barrier... He was her man, her mate, and she wanted him as she had never wanted anything before. And without conscious design her body arched sensually beneath his hands, a blatant invitation, and he said, 'That should do it.'
The clipped, disinterested tones came as if from a very great distance and it was several seconds before Cleo realised that the sweet ache inside her, the sensual and unstoppable need he had aroused, was to remain an ache. A sour ache.
He was standing up now, his lithe body taut, a glistening bronze masterpiece in the bright Greek sunlight, to tally imperious and quite unmoved by what had happened to her because, quite obviously, nothing had happened to him.
He began to unzip his shorts and Cleo closed her eyes, her throat tightening as he told her blandly, 'I'm going for a swim. See you.' And when she opened her eyes again he had gone.
She searched the water and found him, cleaving through the deep blue depths in a powerful crawl, and she scrambled to her feet, her fingers shaking as she re- fastened her bra top then gathered her things together, pushing them in her beach bag.
Her face was burning, and it wasn't from the effects of the sun. It was shame.
Shame and humiliation both. He, no doubt bored by this empty charade of a marriage, but bound by his agreement to her stipulation, and irritated to the point of exasperation by the way she had previously skittered nervously away from the slightest physical contact, had taken the opportunity to demonstrate just how he could, if he wished, subdue her.
And he had done so, and to add the final telling insult had walked away, showing her how completely unmoved he was by her obvious arousal. He could take her or leave her—that was the message his actions had transmitted, loud and clear.
She didn't think she would ever forgive him for that. Ever. And the ease with which he had physically dominated her would make her shy away from him in the future more than ever before!
Back at the white one-storey villa Cleo helped herself to a tall glass of fresh lemon juice from the jug in the fridge, gulping it down thirstily, her stormy eyes darting around the cool gleaming kitchen as if she expected someone to leap out of the shadows and attack her.
Someone? Jude, of course! His hands on her body had been a form of attack—insidious, almost unbearably erotic, but an attack all the same!
But gradually she relaxed, her eyes calmer, her hands almost steady as she rinsed her glass. Jude would be back on the beach, or still swimming. Either way, she had again put distance between them. However, a nasty little voice intoned maliciously, deep in her brain, she wouldn't always be able to keep her distance. And he wouldn't always draw back at the moment of capitulation, not if he wanted children, he wouldn't.
And beginning a family had been the reason he had decided to marry, and the Slade Securities shares had meant that she had been the woman he had chosen to bear his children. Suddenly, the idea was mortifying. She had thought she was doing the right and sensible thing when she'd suggested they marry, but now she wasn't so sure. She seemed to be pulling herself out of one mess, only to find herself entangled in one which was worse!
She had always admired Jude for his ability to remain aloof, cool, and for the way he was always in total control. But as she flounced from the kitchen and down a cool corridor to her room she could see the other side of that ability of his—the darker, cruel side.
The way he had shown her how he could bring her to the point of begging for his lovemaking—despite the absence of the love she had always believed to be essential—had left her shaking with unfulfilled need and self-disgust.
A potent mixture, poisonous. And that very ability of his, which she had once so admired, now sickened and frightened her.
Stripping off her bikini, she hurled it into a corner of the spacious, traditionally furnished bedroom she wasusing and padded to the en suite bathroom to stand under the shower, sluicing away every last trace of the sun- cream, as if his fingerprints still lingered in the oily substance. She hoped that their children, when they arrived, would look like her—grey-eyed blondes—with not one trace of their father's dark, cruel beauty. They would be her children, not his! Hers! She would make them so, and that would be the final irony. She hated him at this moment, she really did, she didn't want to give him one damned thing—not even children that resembled him in the slightest!
Cleo heard the maid arrive in time to prepare the evening meal, bringing the fresh fish, fruit and vegetables she bought in the village each day.
Edgy, she put aside the book she'd been trying to read and walked from the terrace through the arched doorway that led to her room, pushing the silvery tumble of silky hair back from her face.
Jude was late. It only ever took the middle-aged Greek woman an hour to make their meal, sometimes less. So where was Jude?
Catching sight of the frown-line between her huge grey-eyes, she turned away from the revealing mirror reflection. She couldn't actually be worried about him, could she? A few hours earlier she hadn't cared if she never saw him again!
But she was calmer now and knew she had overreacted. He had made her want him. So? He was her husband, wasn't he? That she was fastidious and had always believed she would have to love a man before she could be sexually aroused was something she had taken for granted. But he had aroused her, revealing a depth of sexuality she hadn't known she possessed.
She was learning things about her character that alarmed her, but that didn't mean she had to go over the top.
And she was learning things about Jude, too. That he was male enough, arrogant enough, to need to lay claim to his ownership, to let her know that he could make her want him whenever he felt like doing so.
Restless now—where was the man?—she riffled through the few garments she'd brought with her and eventually selected a silky amethyst calf-length dress and laid it on the bed, then paced back to the terrace to stare out along the deserted beach.
Since they had been here they had always met on the terrace at this time in the evening. Usually they had spent the daytime hours at separate ends of the island, because he seemed no more anxious for her undiluted company than she was for his. But they always began their evenings here, having a drink or two before dinner, making light, impersonal conversation. And now his absence
was making her nervous.
But that in itself was nothing new. He had been making her nervous ever since he had agreed to marry her! And it had grown progressively worse, aggravated by the way he'd said not a word about Robert Fenton's presence in his home, about what he might have overheard when he'd walked in and found them together. This afternoon's episode on the beach had been the final straw!
She paced the terrace, her feet making rapid patterns of sound on the terracotta tiles, the edges of her lacy robe fluttering in a soundless echo of her own agitation as she thought back to the days—now seeming totally unreal—when she had confidently believed herself to be the only person Jude Mescal couldn't make nervous!
And then he was there, in the archway leading from her room, his body relaxed, like the mean and magnificent cat she had always thought he resembled.He was already dressed for dinner, his narrow black trousers and formal white lightweight jacket fitting him to perfection, making him look suave yet deadly.
'Good book?' His eyes drifted to her discarded novel as he walked, soft-footed, to where she had been sitting earlier, placing the two dry martinis he had brought with him on the low marble-topped table, and Cleo shook with anger, shrugging aside his question with a tight shrug of her shoulders.
It was no use his asking her if the book was a good one; she couldn't remember a word of the few she had read. Mostly she hadn't been reading at all, just sitting here, wondering why he was late, when he would come home.
And all the time he had been here, showering, changing, fixing drinks, not bothering to let her know he was in the house. Dammit, she'd actually been worried about the insouciant swine because the last time she'd seen him he'd been swimming out to sea as if the hounds of hell were following him! The man was intolerable!
And she didn't know why he had this power to make her angry because, as his PA, she had always been able to handle him. And he had gained the terrace by coming through her room. He hadn't set foot inside it before now, and that, coming after what had happened this afternoon, made the palms of her hands go slippery with sweat.
Mentally shaking herself for her own foolishness, for the inner agitation she would have to learn to come to terms with, she took the drink he had fixed for her, carrying it over to the stone balustrading of the terrace and staring blindly out to sea.
If she joined him at the table she would have to look at him. She didn't want to meet those clever eyes because she knew she would be able to see in them the mind pictures of the way she must have looked this afternoon when she'd abandoned her practically naked body to the exploration of his hands.
'Cleo—' Her name on his lips sounded, suddenly, quite unbearably intimate, and she reluctantly made a half-turn towards him, hoping he wouldn't notice the way the hand that held her drink was shaking. 'Come and sit down, I want to talk to you.'
'What about?' A rapid but ostentatious glance at her wristwatch. 'It's time I went to change.' So cool her voice, the small half-smile she angled at nothing in particular. She should be winning Oscars! The last thing she needed right now was to have to sit with him and listen to whatever it was he had to say. The memory of the way she'd felt when his hands had stroked and teased her willing body was still much too close.
'You look fantastic as you are.' A slow drift of long azure eyes over her flushed face, the filmy gown, the length of bare, tanned leg, said it all: sexual interest but overlaid with slight amusement because, after all, he'd seen it all before, and more. He'd touched, and could have taken her had he been so inclined. He hadn't, neither then nor now, it seemed, and for Cleo the sexual embarrassment which the drift of his knowing eyes had engendered became the deeper misery of sheer humiliation as he consulted his own watch. It was as if he had taken stock and mentally dismissed her.
'You've got over half an hour before we need go in to eat.' His mouth tilted with heavy irony. 'Do I have to beg for five minutes of my wife's time?'
'I'm sorry.' Flustered, Cleo sat. Put that way, she could hardly refuse, and she sipped her drink, waiting, and he said,
'I think we should consider buying a house in the country. Somewhere close enough to use at weekends. It would be particularly useful after the children arrive.'
His eyes slid over her, making her skin burn. 'What do you think?'
That it was a pity he had to keep harping on about children! That was what she thought! But she could hardly tell him as much. Holding her glass by the stem, twisting it, she stared into the swirling contents unable to meet those knowing, faintly amused eyes.
There's time for that,' she answered stiffly, 'After all--' she made a concession to his mention of all those children she would be expected to bear '—I expect to continue with my job for some time to come. I enjoy it.'
She couldn't imagine him as a family man, making swings in apple trees, playing football or snakes and ladders in front of a log fire while she busied herself darning endless tiny socks in between baking and preserving in some farmhouse-type kitchen. And how many children did he expect her to have, for goodness' sake? And would she be expected to start producing them right away? One litter after another, like a rabbit? Her throat tightened with what she recognised as incipient hysteria, and if she hadn't been so busy trying to control that disgraceful and, up until becoming entangled with him, alien state, she might have taken his ambiguous reply as fair warning.
'The expected sometimes doesn't happen, Cleo--'
She finished her drink in a gulp, her eyes flicking to his and away again because the message contained there was unreadable—or perhaps she wasn't ready to read it. She didn't know. She got to her feet, trying for poise, 'I really must go and change,' she tossed over her shoulder, her smile brittle. 'By all means we can cast our eyes over a few properties, get to know the market for when we seriously want to buy—some time in the future.'
If he had decided to charm her he was certainly succeeding, Cleo thought, rising from the table where they had lingered in lamplit intimacy over the delicious meal the Greek maid had prepared.
The trouble was, he could so easily disarm her, she < realised as he followed her out on to the moonlit terrace, bringing the brandy decanter and two glasses with him.
And to allow herself to be disarmed would be fatal. She didn't want her emotions involved, it would only lead to pain, because he would never become emotionally involved with her, with anyone, as far as she could tell.
And she was no masochist. She would keep to the letter of their bargain, but that was as far as it would go.
But as she went to the balustrade to look out over the silvery night, he followed her, placing a hand on her shoulder where the halter neckline of her dress left it bare. And this time she didn't shy away from his touch, even though that touch felt like needles of excitement pricking her skin.
'Cold?' he said. 'Shall I fetch you a wrap?'
She turned, simply to deny any feeling of coldness because for some reason she had never felt warmer in her life. He was close, so close, and even in the shadowy light of the moon she could see he was not quite as implacably cool as he pretended to be.
'No—I'm fine, thanks.' She moved back to the upholstered bamboo loungers, angled around the table, and sat cradling the drink he'd poured for her.
Something was coming to life between them, a vital new growth, but not something known. Not really known, although she could make a fairly accurate guess. But she had to remember, always remember, that this was a marriage of convenience. And then a thought passed through her mind, leaving an annoying foot-print, that maybe her motives had been suspect all along the line.
Solving her problem had depended on finding a husband her uncle and aunt, as her guardians, could approve of. But would she have asked Jude to marry her if he'd been fat and bald with a face like a pug and a mind like a geriatric slug? It was a question she wouldn't like to be forced to answer.
The sea was blessedly cool, lapping against her feet as she walked slowly along the water-line, the soft black night hiding he
r. Not that there would be anyone about at this time of night to see her. The thought comforted her a little, and a small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as the breeze moulded the almost transparent lawn of her nightdress to the shape of her body.
She hadn't been able to sleep; the night was too hot, her thoughts jumping this way and that, making her mind ache.
That tension between them, that awareness, had been growing throughout the long evening, muddling her. And her 'goodnight' to him had been abrupt, far more terse than usual as she'd left the terrace, making for the solitude of her room.
But if she'd been looking for safe haven she hadn't found it there, and at last she'd slipped down to the beach, noticing the light coming from his room and wondering if he, too, found it impossible to sleep, if he found this marriage, entered into so coolly and objectively, had strange and rather terrifying facets that were only now beginning to reveal themselves.
She had never been drawn to the idea of marriage, the total commitment of love. Love was something she'd learned to do without since she'd lost her parents. Her mind, she supposed, was closed to the concept of it. She had imagined, for a brief span, that she was in love with Robert Fenton—and that had turned out to be an all- time disaster. And she'd emerged from the short period of infatuation recognising that what she'd felt had been a natural reaction to the years of dedicated study, the absence of close family love, the absence of fun and frivolity in her life. It had been a necessary, if unpleasant, part of growing up.
But if she had been looking for love, for a man she could respect, share the rest of her life with, then Jude could have been everything she could want in a man. He had a brilliant mind, was even-tempered—well, mostly—and he was strong, yet capable of tenderness, of deep humanity. He also respected her as an equal, and that counted for much—for more than the sum of his undoubted sex appeal, his wealth and position.
A Secure Marriage Page 6