by Lynne Graham
Maribel stepped out of his loosened hold. ‘It’s true. She did tell you!’
Leonidas frowned. ‘You haven’t even given me the chance to answer you.’
Maribel drew herself up to her full height. ‘You don’t need to. Sometimes I can read you like a book.’
Leonidas was anything but reassured by that statement. He had long regarded his famed impassivity as a source of privacy that he could take for granted. Once or twice before, however, she had given him cause to suspect that she did possess a certain rare insight where he was concerned. ‘Imogen might once have mentioned something of that nature,’ he conceded with the utmost casualness.
‘Well, it’s not something you need to worry about,’ Maribel told him firmly.
‘I wasn’t worrying.’
‘Or think about.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about it either.’
‘Because it’s no longer true,’ Maribel informed him doggedly, keen to get any such notion knocked right back out of his handsome head again. ‘I got over you after that night at Imogen’s house.’
His superb bone structure tightened beneath his bronzed skin. ‘Why?’
Over two years of pent-up hostility and hurt were suddenly rising up inside Maribel in an unfettered overflow of feelings. ‘You remember you asked for breakfast? There was no food in the house, so I—fool that I was—I went out to buy some.’
Leonidas, who had long found his recollections of that same morning offensive enough to ensure he simply buried them, dealt her a cool, unimpressed appraisal. ‘Where did you go to shop? Africa?’
‘Somewhere rather more convenient. I only drove down the road, but as I turned into the supermarket a car ran into the back of mine. I ended up in hospital with concussion.’
Leonidas studied her in raw disbelief. ‘Are you saying that you were involved in a car accident that morning?’
Maribel nodded confirmation.
‘Why the hell didn’t you phone me?’
‘By the time I had recovered my wits enough and had access to a phone you had already left Imogen’s house. I took my cue from that fact,’ Maribel retorted tightly, her hands clasped together. ‘And it cured me of my attachment to you, because I might as well have died for all the interest you had in what had happened to me that day! You didn’t even bother to call me.’
Leonidas was still stuck in stunned mode. ‘You were hurt…in hospital?’
‘Yes, until the following morning.’
The smooth olive planes of his darkly handsome features were taut. Ebony brows pleated with concern, he reached for her hands and drew her towards him. His dark golden eyes were welded to her flushed and defensive face. ‘Theos mou, I am very sorry. If I had known, if I had even suspected that you hadn’t returned because something had happened to you, I would have looked for you and I would have been there for you. I thought you had walked out on me.’
Maribel was bewildered. Why would he have thought such a thing? She could not think that he met with rejection of that nature very often. Or was it common for women to behave in such a way after a one-night stand? She didn’t want to ask him. She did not want to linger on the subject. She was afraid that her sensitivity might prove all too revealing to a male as shrewd as he was.
Leonidas finally understood why she had said she didn’t like him. He was shaken that it had not once occurred to him that she might have had an accident, that there might have been a genuine explanation for her vanishing act. He could not understand why his usual clear-sighted logic should have deserted him that day, or why his reaction had been out of all proportion to the event. But he did recognise the consequences. ‘I let you down,’ he said gravely. ‘I very much regret that, mali mou.’
Maribel was taken aback by the sincerity in his lustrous gaze. Her slender fingers smoothed his in a comforting gesture full of all the warmth she would have denied. ‘It’s all right…you didn’t know—’
His wide, sensual mouth twisted. ‘It’s not all right. I should have enquired. I could have been there with you. But I was arrogant—’
‘I know, but you’re not about to change,’ Maribel told him ruefully. ‘Not without an ego transplant.’
Reluctant amusement assailed Leonidas. He lowered his handsome dark head and claimed her soft pink mouth in a passionate onslaught that made the world go into a frantic tailspin around her…
CHAPTER TEN
WHEN the world stopped spinning, Maribel found that Leonidas had propelled her into a bedroom with a soaring ceiling, dimmed lights and a bed the size of a small golf course. ‘Is this where you throw orgies?’ she asked helplessly.
‘You need have no concern on that score. I saw enough of that kind of nonsense growing up with Elora,’ Leonidas retorted with derision.
Maribel was transfixed by that frank admission about his late mother. It didn’t seem the right moment to tell him that her comment had simply been a bad joke, voiced without thought.
‘Aside of the staff, you are the only woman ever to cross the threshold of this room,’ Leonidas declared.
Merriment relieved her momentary tension, for she assumed that he was teasing her. ‘As if I’d swallow that fairy story!’
‘But it is the truth. I have never brought a woman in here before. I have always preferred to keep my bedroom private. It is very rare for me to sleep the whole night through with anyone.’
‘You did with me…what was I? An aberration?’
Long brown fingers framed her flushed cheekbones. Her violet-blue eyes subjected him to an unwaveringly direct appraisal. There was no downward and quick upward glance designed to entrap, none of the studied flirtatious moves he was accustomed to receiving from her sex. Instead there was a sincerity he found much more appealing. Slowly a smile began to chase the gravity from his beautifully shaped masculine mouth. ‘I would say that addiction would be a more apt description. Here I am back again and that is not like me, hara mou. So you must have something unique.’
Something unique? Elias, Maribel filled in ruefully for her own benefit. She could hardly fault him for trying to make his bride feel special on their wedding night. In and out of bed he was too experienced not to know what pleased a woman. He kissed her again with a sweet, intoxicating fervour that soon turned hot and sensual with the dart and plunge of his tongue.
All the tensions of the day found exit in the stormy hunger that took her in a burning tide of desire. Her breath came in short quickened gasps. She stretched up to him, pressing her slim, supple body to his to exchange kiss for kiss with an urgency she could not hold back. He stripped off her dress with impatient hands and lifted her clear of its folds.
Tawny eyes smouldering with purpose, Leonidas stepped back a few inches to get a better look at her. The delicate turquoise lace lingerie revealed rather more than it concealed of her tempting curves and his gaze gleamed with appreciation. ‘I like,’ he told her sexily against her reddened lips, curving strong hands to her hips to fold her up against his lean, tough, muscular frame.
Even the expensive tailoring of his trousers could not conceal the hard male heat of his erection. Her breath rasped in her throat. There was an answering tingle of voluptuous response thrumming between her thighs. ‘Leonidas…’ she gasped under the plundering ravishment of his probing mouth.
‘I love your breasts.’ He eased the creamy mounds from their lace cups and coaxed the straining rose-tipped crests into almost unbearably tender points. ‘The little sounds you make turn me on,’ he confided thickly.
Her throat extended as she sucked in oxygen to ease her constricted lungs. But there was no escape from the dark, delirious pleasure that he had taught her to crave with an appetite that could still shock her. Already she was pitched on a high of unquenchable yearning that devoured every sensible thought and destroyed all shame. She was with the man she loved and she liked that very much. He energised her. Insidious heat was whispering through her, every pulse point awakening to the tantalising masculine promise of him, f
or she knew he would deliver and how.
‘Everything about you turns me on, kardoula mou,’ Leonidas growled. ‘You give yourself without pretence.’
He traced the satin wet heat of her beneath the fine material barrier and kneed her legs apart. She shivered violently, every knowing movement of his fingers releasing a cascade of tormenting sensation. She trembled in the high heels she still wore. Every feeling in her body seemed to be concentrated in the tiny sensitive bud at the apex of her thighs. He pushed her unresisting body back against the wall and dropped to his knees to peel off the damp silk. Lean hands cupping the swell of her derrière, he brought her to him and indulged in an intimacy that was shockingly new to her.
‘No…no,’ she mumbled in dismay and dissent.
‘Just close your eyes and enjoy,’ Leonidas instructed thickly. ‘I intend to drive you out of your mind with pleasure.’
The protesting fingers she had dug into his silky black hair lingered to hold him there instead as, all too soon, the sheer seductive delight of what he was doing to her overcame her resistance. She had to lean back against the wall just to stay upright. Her mind was a blank; she was a creature of pure physical response and nothing else mattered. Ripples of wanton pleasure flamed through her in sweet, honeyed waves of rapture. Her blood felt as if it were roaring through her veins. She was gasping, whimpering and out of control when she surged to the point of no return in an explosive climax that shattered her.
Before she had even begun to recover from that erotic onslaught, Leonidas was lifting her to him and bracing her hips back against the wall to tilt her up to receive him. He anchored her knees to his waist. Wildly disconcerted by her position, she looked up at him in confusion. ‘Leonidas?’
‘All day, every time I looked at you this is where I wanted to be,’ he told her with ragged force, plunging his rigid sex deep into the lush, swollen heart of her. ‘Inside you, part of you, hara mou.’
In that one bold plunge of possession, he deprived her of breath and voice. She was still tender, still descending from the peak of ecstasy, and suddenly he was driving her right back to that same brink for a second time. Extreme sensation returned with blinding force. He slammed into her yielding body with a passion as intense as it was ruthless. The melting, fizzing excitement that seized her was primitive and raw. His fierce passion swept her slowly and steadily to yet another glorious summit where she was overpowered by the exquisite waves of pleasure convulsing her.
‘No woman makes me feel as good as you do,’ Leonidas whispered in the aftermath.
He carried her over to the bed and settled her down on the cool white linen. He cast off what remained of his clothes and came down beside her. He eased her back into his arms and smoothed her tumbled chestnut hair back from her face. She drank in the aroma of damp musky male that was uniquely him and let her heavy eyes drift closed. She was astonished by the wildness of his love-making, shocked by the level of her response, but content if he was content. She was also overjoyed that he was still holding her.
‘You’re not going any place, are you?’ Maribel felt she had to check after his admission that he preferred not to share a bed.
‘Where would I be going?’ Leonidas sounded lazily amused.
‘Don’t want to wake up and find you gone.’
Leonidas remembered emerging from the shower and finding her gone over two years earlier. He had searched the house. He still recalled the sound of the silence, the emptiness that had seemed to echo round him, the hollow sensation inside. The entire episode had seriously spooked him.
‘I’ll be here,’ he confirmed.
‘I’m so tired,’ she framed drowsily, for now that all her tension had been banished there was nothing left to hold back her bridal exhaustion.
‘Happy?’ Leonidas prompted.
‘Happy,’ she mumbled, pressing a sleepy kiss against a smooth brown muscular shoulder.
Leonidas decided that it would be unreasonably cruel to wake her up and tell her about the stag cruise. He would tell her in the morning…some time. He wondered if she would be upset. His arms tightened round her because he really didn’t like the idea that any oversight of his might cause her pain.
The third time Maribel woke up the next day, a Greek business channel was playing on the television at the foot of the bed. She flopped back against the pillows with an indolent sigh. It was two in the afternoon. They had breakfasted at seven with Elias and played with him on the shady terrace below the trees. A couple of hours later Leonidas had carried her back to bed. Wakening the second time, she had gone for a shower and he had joined her there. A tender smile curved her reddened mouth. She lifted the television remote and flicked through the channels until she came to a gossipy one about celebrities. She was semi-listening to the entertaining flow of light chatter when Leonidas strolled out of his en suite bathroom.
Maribel gave him a rapt appraisal. In a pair of silk boxers and nothing else, he was a magnificent sight.
‘Is it worth my while getting dressed again?’ Leonidas enquired silkily.
Maribel went pink and gave a little sensual wriggle below the sheet. It would have been true to say that she had not been slow to take advantage of his presence and his amazing stamina.
‘I take it that’s a no?’
Only the sight of herself in her wedding gown on a television screen could have distracted Maribel at that instant. She gaped. ‘My goodness…doesn’t the dress look marvellous?’
‘It wasn’t the dress, it was you, kardoula mou,’ Leonidas asserted. ‘But I can’t believe you’re watching rubbish like that.’
‘It’s more fun than the business news…’ Her teasing voice tailed away to a dying whisper because she was listening to the presenter.
“Predictably Leonidas Pallis enjoyed his final days of freedom with a wild stag party on the Torrente yacht, Diva Queen.”
A party attended by a bunch of naked women, Maribel registered in horror. Although the presenter didn’t specifically mention naked women, Maribel’s eyes were glued to the screen and she saw a bare-breasted female dancing on deck and another diving off the yacht in what appeared to be her birthday suit…
‘Shut up!’ she shouted at Leonidas when his attempted vocal intervention threatened to prevent her from hearing the rest of the item. There was a disturbing reference to the existence of more intimate photos which, it was hinted, were unsuitable for general viewing.
‘Give me that…’ Leonidas lunged for the remote, but Maribel got there first, throwing herself bodily over the top of it. Unfortunately while she won that potential struggle she also accidentally hit the off button.
‘You rat!’ she exclaimed sickly as she pushed herself back up onto her knees. ‘So you don’t do orgies? What were you doing on that yacht?’
‘Not what you obviously think,’ Leonidas countered with a composure that she felt could only add insult to injury. ‘Every move I make is sensationalised.’
‘A naked woman is a naked woman, and as sensational as things need to get to offend me!’ Maribel launched back at him.
‘You have to stop believing implicitly in what you see and what you read. Photos and stories can be fabricated.’
‘What about the pictures unsuitable for general viewing?’
‘If you really want to push this to the limits, I can show you them as well.’ Classic profile forbidding and taut, Leonidas hauled on a pair of faded jeans.
‘I want to see them.’
That news spelt out in clear defiance of his wishes, which only made her all the more suspicious, Maribel went into the dressing room to rifle cupboards and drawers for clothing. She was acting on automatic pilot. She was trying to build up the strength to deal with the situation, praying that a momentary respite would rescue her brain and her common sense from the feverish emotional grip of anger, fear and pain.
Leonidas wasn’t acting as though he had done something wrong. But then, had she ever seen Leonidas act in a guilty manner? And why should
he even feel guilty? Why was it only now that she was remembering that he had still not given her an answer to the choice she had given him a month earlier? A platonic marriage in which he would retain his freedom or marital monogamy. Was this his answer? Or just another attention-grabbing paparazzi spread that a sensible woman would rise above and disbelieve as Tilda had suggested? Although Maribel couldn’t help feeling that it was rather easier for Tilda to have taken that stance when her own husband was not involved.
Clad in white linen trousers and a fitted white waistcoat top, Maribel emerged again. Her eyes were a very bright blue against her pallor. Across the depth of the room Leonidas slung her a charged look. The atmosphere was electric with aggressive undertones. He tossed a newspaper down like a statement on the tumbled bed. ‘Looking at those pictures is only going to annoy you and give you the wrong impression.’
The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten her full pink lower lip. ‘But I’ll always wonder if I don’t look at them now.’
‘It’s a question of trust,’ he breathed tautly. ‘Who do you believe?’
At that, Maribel lifted her chin. ‘I would have believed you if you’d told me about this before I heard about it on television.’
‘Was that how you would have preferred our wedding day to begin? With a load of tabloid sleaze aimed at selling a few more papers?’
Discomfiture made Maribel redden and shake her head. ‘But when were you going to tell me?’
‘I foresaw this scenario, glikia mou. I have to admit that I wasn’t in a hurry.’ Golden eyes semi-screened by lush black lashes to gleaming blades challenged her.
‘So…er…what are you asking me to believe? That you were kidnapped and forced aboard your friend’s yacht where you were subjected to the unwelcome attentions of loose women?’
‘Sergio happens to be very into partying right now…he’s a friend, a good one. It was a stag do. So, it wasn’t to my taste!’ Leonidas proclaimed in a raw undertone, lean, strong face set into hard, angular lines of hostility. ‘Theos mou…that ring on my finger doesn’t mean that you own me or that you can tell me what I can and can’t do!’