by Anne Mather
‘Not because of—’
‘No. I never told him about that.’
Jessica jumped in on him before he could say something more about the way he had kissed her that morning—and the way she had kissed him right back. Just to think of it threw her into such a whirlpool of confusion that she felt as if her mind had blown a fuse and she couldn’t even begin to think straight.
‘It might have been easier if I had. But it was worse than that.’
Far worse.
The grip on her arm tightened for a moment, then eased off again. It was as if he sensed that she could cope with so much and no more; one step over an invisible line and she would go to pieces. So he held back, but that hand on her arm told her that he was there.
‘How?’
And now, although she was still looking up into his face, into his eyes, it wasn’t his jet-dark gaze that locked with hers, but Chris’s lighter blue-grey eyes that she could see before her. The cool stare that she had once thought of as soft, even gentle, but which today she had seen grow colder and more distant with every word she had spoken.
In the end they had been the eyes of a stranger.
‘He broke off our engagement …’
She knew she’d said this before and she expected some sort of dry comment on that fact but Angelos simply nodded and waited, his gaze still holding hers. And somehow it was his silence and stillness that gave her the courage to draw a deep breath and go on.
‘He—he said he’d heard rumours that something was up—the village was buzzing with your arrival and he wanted to know who you were and why you were here. You’re the only thing people are talking about, apparently.’
She even managed a laugh and watched as Angelos’s sensual mouth twisted in wry response. But still he didn’t speak, only waited for her to find the words to go on.
‘Of course I had to explain about Marty’s will—and about the gambling—how he’d lost everything and how you’d helped him—bailed him out.’
It was harder to speak now. In her mind she could see how Chris’s face had changed, the way that any light had died from his eyes and his whole body had stiffened, his hand tensing in hers.
‘He wanted to know what this meant for us—for me. And when he found out that I wasn’t going to inherit—that there would be no money, no house … that was when he …’
‘He was only marrying you for your money.’
It was a harsh statement, not a question, but still Jessica found herself nodding, the words suddenly tumbling out unrestrained because now she had to get the story told. Had to have it all out in the open, vile and sordid as it was.
‘His business has been doing badly for some time. I knew he was in trouble but I didn’t know how bad it was. Or how deeply in debt he actually is.’
Another shaky, uneven laugh escaped from her, a sound of bitter disbelief.
‘That seems like the story of my life right now—first Marty, now Chr …’
But saying her ex-fiancé’s name was now beyond her and her voice broke on the word, unable to go on.
‘Now him,’ she managed at last after breathing in deeply and swallowing hard. ‘A—apparently the only real attraction I had for him is that I was Marty’s stepdaughter and that eventually I was going to inherit. And, until that happened, he knew that once we were married Marty would never let my husband’s business go to the wall. So that was why he wanted the wedding as soon as possible—he needed a ring on my finger before his creditors closed in. And I th-thought that he just couldn’t wait to marry me. That he was desperate to get me into his life—into his bed.’
She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t bring herself to voice the final humiliation. But it seemed that Angelos didn’t need to hear it. His cool, clear mind had assessed the situation, taking it through to the bitter conclusion with intuitive accuracy.
‘He had another woman.’
‘Yes.’ It was just a whisper, a thin thread of sound. ‘Those trips to London—the ones he couldn’t possibly get out of—he has a mistress there. He said she was more of a woman than I’ll ever be and he wanted her for sex and me—me for the money.’
The tears she had been fighting all evening—all day, really, she had refused to let them fall—came now, tumbling in a silent stream down her cheeks so that she could taste their salt on her lips.
Angelos swore fluently in savage Greek as her wineglass was taken from nerveless fingers and dumped unceremoniously on the coffee table. His grip tightened on her arm as he swung her round until she was hard up against the strong wall of his chest, her face pressed against his shoulder, her nose in the soft cotton of his shirt.
‘No tears,’ he muttered roughly. ‘No tears. He’s not worth it. He’s not worth a single tear from your eyes.’
‘I know …’ Jessica sighed into his shirt, sniffing inelegantly. ‘I know … but I thought … he didn’t even want me—want me sexually. Not really. He said that his lover was—’
The words snapped off, dying in shock, as Angelos moved again, pulling her away from her hiding place against his chest and holding her so that he could look straight into her face, his hands on her shoulders, his dark gaze intent.
‘The man is a worthless rat—and, even worse, he’s a fool. A lying fool.’
His unexpected vehemence sparked a tiny involuntary smile on to Jessica’s lips, one that wobbled, faded when she saw the blaze of sincerity in his eyes and heard it echoed in his voice.
‘He’s a fool who doesn’t know a beautiful woman when he sees one.’
‘Thank you for the compliment …’ Jessica began but he silenced her with an autocratic shake of his head.
‘No compliment. I never flatter. You know how I feel about you. I told you—you’re no longer a little girl.’
Long fingers brushed away the tracks of the tears, erasing the marks they had made on her skin.
‘So no tears for a man who is not—and never was—worth it.’
‘He betrayed me.’
‘Then get angry.’
Angelos’s thumb smoothed a line over her left cheekbone, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. She felt as if she were drowning in the pools of his eyes, losing her self and all sense of her surroundings. The silence of the evening beyond the windows, the fact that there was only the two of them in the house, isolated, alone, made it feel as if they were suspended in some little bubble of time, away from all the rest of the world.
‘What is it they say? That living well is the best revenge?’
‘You’re right.’
‘Then live well—and forget him.’
She tried another smile, slightly more successful this time.
‘Thank you …’
Impulsively she leaned forward, pressed a swift kiss against the lean plane of his cheek, inhaling that citrusy scent again, the warm, slightly musky aroma of his skin. Under her lips the faint rasp of beard was rough against her skin and she welcomed the essential maleness of it, her heart kicking slightly against her ribcage.
Chris had never made her feel this way, she realised with a sense of stunned shock. He had never been able to make her feel so intensely aware of the fact that she was a woman with just a look, just one touch.
But Angelos had done it that morning. He had kissed her and she had gone into meltdown, discovering a whole new sensuality that she had never experienced before. She had felt only that he was male and that everything about him called to everything that was most female in her.
It was as if she had been sleeping all this time, like Snow White, and Angelos had woken her with his kiss.
This morning she had told herself that she had been caught off balance. Angelos had made a move when she had least expected it, when still raw and disoriented from all that had happened. A series of blows to her mood and her equanimity had knocked all sense of reality out of her head, and she had responded in a way that would never have happened at any other time. In any other circumstances.
But here she was in anot
her time, other circumstances, and it was happening all over again.
And the really disturbing thing was that she knew from Angelos’s sudden total stillness, the way his breathing had changed, deepening and taking on a ragged edge that matched the uneven throb of her pulse inside her veins, that he was feeling it too. He was every bit as aware of her as a woman as she was of him as a man.
She only had to turn her head to face him and she would read it in his eyes.
The question was—did she have the nerve to do so? Because, if she did, she would then have to answer another deeper, darker question.
Just what the hell was she going to do about it?
CHAPTER SIX
‘JESSICA …’
If she had had any doubt that Angelos was feeling the same way as she was, then the way that he spoke her name would have driven any such thoughts right out of her mind. His voice had deepened, roughened until the sound seemed to be forced from a desperately sore throat. It was so husky that it sounded as if it was fraying at the edges.
On his tongue, her name was a blend of emotions, a sound of sensual response, of encouragement and interest, but it also held a note of warning, a hint of the need for care. Never before had she been so aware of his very personal way of speaking her name and the unusual lilt that his accent gave to the sound.
And if she had felt that they were isolated and alone before, now it was as if the world had closed in on them until they were the only people in existence, in an environment that had been stripped right down to its basics.
To a man and a woman and the most primitive, most basic—most essential—connection there could be between them.
The connection of need. Of hunger.
Of sex.
Lust swirled in the atmosphere like the heat from a smouldering fire, needing only an extra bit of kindling, a breath of air to burst into a blazing inferno of need.
‘Jessica—be sure that you know what you are doing. What you are inviting. Only do this if you want …’
Angelos broke off abruptly as, unable to resist the temptation, she kissed him again. She had only had such a small knowledge of the taste of his skin, the scent of his body, and yet it was as if she was already seriously addicted to them. She needed the tang of his flesh on her lips, on her tongue. The intensely personal fragrance of it was making her heart thud heavily, sending her blood pulsing and heating every one of her senses. This time the feel of him against her lips was not enough. She let her tongue slide out to touch his cheek, revelling in the faint abrasion of bristles against its sensitive tip.
And suddenly, in a rush of understanding so profound that it made her head reel, her heart lurch, she knew that he had been right—so very, very right—when he had quoted the line about living well being the best revenge. She had arrived back at the house feeling low and desolate, seeing no light in her future at all. And yet, from the moment that Angelos had taken her in his arms and held her, everything had changed. It was as if she had been wearing blinkers and had suddenly ripped them off, seeing life in a whole new way, in fresher, clearer focus.
And what she saw was so exciting and stimulating, it made her want to reach for it. She had been engaged to Chris for six months and never once in all that time had he ever made her feel like this.
‘What am I inviting?’ she questioned, murmuring the words against his jaw.
‘You know …’ It was a low, husky growl.
‘Do I?
If she had been about to say anything more, then it was cut off, crushed back down her throat as he turned his head and captured her teasing mouth, crushing it under his own with a force that obliterated thought and sent her senses soaring.
The world swung around her, almost knocking her off balance so that she grabbed at his powerful shoulders for support. An action that just brought her closer to him, pressed against the hard length of his body at breast and hip and thigh as Angelos plundered her mouth, bruising her lips with the force of his passion.
‘That …’ he said at last when the need to breathe forced him to lift his head. ‘That is what you were inviting and you damn well know it.’
That and a whole lot more, Jessica had to admit, even if only in the privacy of her thoughts. Because the truth was that, held close this way, she could be in no doubt as to what else she had been inviting. The heated evidence of the arousal she had sparked in Angelos was hard against her stomach, making her nerves quiver in apprehensive response.
Apprehensive because the power of his assault on her mouth revealed the force of the passion she had unleashed and the recognition of that force made her mind split in two with contrasting feelings.
One part of her welcomed it, something vital and female in her soaring and singing at the thought that here was a man who wanted her—-for her. A man who wanted her as a woman and with no thought at all at this moment for what she could give him or bring to him in inheritance. Angelos Rousakis had no need of anyone to give him anything. He was complete in himself, rich and powerful beyond any of her imaginings—and yet, right at this moment, this man wanted her.
But at the same moment there was a fearful tremor that knotted her insides with the recognition of the fact that she had never ever encountered anything or anyone like this before. The few casual relationships she had had while growing up had been relaxed and uninvolved. Even her engagement to Chris, she saw now, had been a low-key affair with no real passion between them. The reasons for which she now knew.
But this, she recognised as Angelos took her mouth again, this was another thing entirely. This made her tremble all over, made her legs weaken beneath her. She was adrift on a storm-tossed ocean, lifted high on foaming waves that could just as easily drop her down with sickening speed, into the darkest, deepest abyss. And, if that happened, then those waves would close over her, drowning her completely. She was totally unprepared for the force of those feelings, as naïve and innocent before them as she had been when she had first seen Angelos all those years before, tumbling headlong into a wild and foolish crush that had turned her world upside down and inside out.
And the truth was that she didn’t care. For the first time in a long, long while she felt wonderfully, truly alive. Alive in a way that her relationship with Chris and everything about it had never been able to make her feel. And the most important thing was that she felt like a woman, fizzing with the real excitement that being female could bring, burning with the real heat of a woman’s sensual need.
And so she let her mouth open further under Angelos’s. She let her tongue tangle with the play of his as she gave herself up to the need that was throbbing in her veins. And she let her body melt against the lean, toned lines of his, loving the way that his arms held her, the brush of a strand of hair against her forehead, the heat and scent of him that enfolded her totally.
‘Yes,’ she whispered when at last she snatched a chance to speak. ‘You’re right. That is what I was inviting. This …’
She took his mouth in a slow, sensual kiss, slicking her tongue along his lips and nibbling lightly with sharp white teeth on the fullness of the lower one, making his breath catch in his throat in response.
‘And this …’ The words were spoken against his neck as she trailed her kisses down over his jaw, the strong lines of his throat and into the hollow revealed by the open neck of his shirt where his pulse jumped and throbbed, betraying the effect she was having on him.
‘Jessica …’
His hands tightened round her, then abruptly released her again. But, just as she was struggling with a sense of bitter disappointment, she realised that the release was only so that he could touch her in more places, stroking over her arms, down her back, big hands, long-fingered, warm-palmed, splaying out across her buttocks, easing her even closer to the heat of his hunger for her.
A hunger that she felt too, pooling deep between her legs. A hunger that made her impatient for more so that when he tugged at her shirt, pulling it free from the waistband of her trousers, s
he made no move to pull away, instead nestling closer and pressing swift, encouraging kisses along his exposed collarbone.
The touch of his hands on her bare skin made her draw in her breath on a sharp, gasping cry, combining her delight and her disbelief that this was happening all in one sound.
Was it possible that this devastating man really wanted her? She could hardly believe it, but it was what she needed so much. She needed to feel his touch, know his possession. She wanted this, even if just for one night. One night that would wipe away the wounds left by Chris’s callous rejection. After that, let the future take care of itself.
‘I think we could be a bit more comfortable …’
Angelos swung her off her feet as he spoke and carried her over to the big velvet-covered settee that stood against the wall. As he deposited her on the cushions, he came down with her, his hands already busy with the buttons on her shirt, tugging them open, peeling the material away so that it exposed the soft flesh of her breasts in the pale pink bra.
The sensation of his mouth on her skin was almost shocking in the delight it gave. Jessica felt as if this was what she had been waiting for for so long—all her life, it seemed. Certainly ever since the moment she had first set eyes on him in the Manorfield stables all those years before. Her head fell back and she closed her eyes, the better to feel the tantalising sensations that trailed over her skin from that wickedly knowing mouth as he kissed his way down from her throat and over the soft curves below. For a moment he didn’t trouble to remove her bra, but kissed her through the fine silk, swirling his tongue over a straining nipple, moistening the material so that it clung to her sensitised skin. The next moment she was choking on a cry of delight as his mouth closed fully over her, teasing at first, then suckling hard. He even let his teeth scrape lightly over the silk-covered nipple, making her arch against him in heated delight.
‘Angelos …’
Her hands were in his hair, wildly clutching, holding his head close to her, keeping his mouth where she needed it. She only eased her hold on him when, having flicked open the front fastening of her bra, he used his teeth to move the loosened cups to one side, allowing his lips and tongue and teeth unrestricted access to her bare skin. And if she had thought that the sensations of his caress through her clothing were intense, now she felt close to swooning in delight as he gave the same attention to the exposed skin, creating stinging pleasure waves that seared their way down from this tiny focus point to the most intimate spot between her legs, where now she burned for his possession.