by Lynne Graham
Welded to the spot by such a threat, Maxie gave him an aghast look. ‘Is it your mission in life to torture me?’
Angelos dealt her a smouldering appraisal, his hard, sensual mouth curving in consideration while his black eyes glittered over her with what could only be described as all-male anticipation. ‘Only with pleasure, in my bed, pethi mou.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
WARM colour fingered into Maxie’s pale cheeks.
Thirty yards from them a long, low white villa sprawled in isolated splendour across the promontory. It overlooked a pale sandy beach, and the rugged cliffs and dark blue sea supplied a majestic backdrop for Angelos’s island home.
‘I was born on Chymos. As a child I spent all my vacations here. Although I was an only child, I was never lonely because I had so many cousins. Both my parents came from large families. Since my father died, this island has become my retreat from the rest of the world.’ Dropping an indolent and assured arm round her stationary figure, Angelos guided her towards the villa. ‘You’re honoured. I have never brought a woman here before, pethi mou.’
As they entered the charming hall she saw into the spacious lounge opposite. In one glance she took in the walls covered with pictures, the photographs scattered around, the shelves of books and the comfortable sofas and rugs. It was full of all the character of a family home. ‘It’s not like your apartment at all!’ Maxie surprise was unconcealed.
‘One of my cousins designed my London apartment. I did tell her what I wanted but it didn’t quite turn out the way I had imagined it would.’ Angelos closed his arms round her from behind. ‘We’re alone here. I gave the staff some time off.’
Maxie tensed. He pressed his wickedly expert mouth to the smooth skin just below her ear. Every treacherous pulse jumped in response. Maxie quivered, knees wobbling. With an earthy chuckle of amusement, Angelos scooped her off her feet as if she weighed no more than a doll and strode out of the hall down a long tiled corridor.
It was the end of the line of restraint and Maxie knew it. She parted her dry lips nervously. ‘Angelos?’ she muttered urgently. ‘I know you think I’ve slept with—’
‘I do not want to hear about the other men who have preceded me,’ Angelos interrupted with ruthless precision, glowering down at her in reproof. ‘Why do women rush to make intimate revelations and then lie like mad about the number of lovers they’ve had? Why can’t you just keep quiet?’
Not unnaturally silenced by that unexpected attack, Maxie chewed her lower lip uncertainly as he settled her down on the thick carpet in a beautifully furnished bedroom. Her entire attention immediately lodged on the bed.
Seemingly unable to tolerate an instant of physical separation, Angelos encircled her with his arms again and loosed a husky sigh of slumberous pleasure above her head. Curving her quiescent length into glancing contact with his hard, muscular physique, Angelos tugged down the zip on her dress. As cooler air hit her taut shoulder-blades, followed by the sensual heat of Angelos’s exploring mouth, Maxie braced herself and surged back into speech.
‘Actually,’ she confided in an uneven rush, ‘all I wanted to say is that I’m really not that experienced!’
‘Theos…’ Angelos ground out, abruptly dropping his arms from her and jerking away to stride across the room. Peeling off his jacket and pitching it aside under her bemused gaze, he sent her a look as dark and threatening as black ice under spinning wheels.
‘Sorry, what—?’ Maxie began.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Angelos demanded rawly as he wrenched at his tie with an exasperated hand. ‘Why tell me these foolish lies? Do you think I need to hear them? Do you honestly believe that I could credit such a plea from you for one second?’
Marooned in the centre of the carpet, her dress lurching awkwardly off one bare and extremely taut shoulder, Maxie let her gaze fall from his in a mixture of fierce embarrassment and resentment. If that was his response to the mere admission that she was not a bedroom sophisticate likely to wow him with the unexpected, or possibly even with moves he did expect, she could only cringe from the possibility of what an announcement of complete inexperience would arouse. And she did not want to go to bed with an angry man.
‘No doubt next you will be offending me beyond belief by referring to the man who kept you for three years…don’t do it,’ Angelos told her in emphatic warning. ‘I do not wish to hear one more word about your past. I accept you as you are. I have no choice but to do otherwise.’
Maxie tried to shrug her dress back up her arm.
‘And why are you standing there like a child put in the corner? Are you trying to make me feel bad?’
Hot colour burnished her cheeks. ‘You’re in a very volatile mood—’
‘Put it down to frustration…you’ve done nothing but freeze me out since I married you this morning,’ Angelos drawled with raw impatience.
‘And you have done nothing but think about sex.’
Having made that counter-accusation, Maxie collided with scorching black eyes of outrage and tilted her chin. Like a child in a corner, was she? How dare he? Her bright eyes blazed. The silence thundered. She shrugged her slim shoulders forward and extended her slender arms.
Angelos tensed, eyes narrowing. The scarlet dress shimmied down to Maxie’s feet, unveiling her lithe, perfect figure clad in a pair of minuscule white panties and a no more substantial gossamer-fine bra. Angelos looked as if he had stopped breathing. Stepping out of the dress, she slung him a catwalk model’s look of immense boredom and, strolling over to the bed, kicked off her shoes and folded herself down on it.
‘What are you waiting for? A white flag of surrender?’ Maxie enquired drily, pride vindicated by the effect she had achieved.
‘Something rather less choregraphed, a little warmer and more enthusiastic,’ Angelos purred with sudden dangerous cool, strolling over to the side of the bed to stare down at her with slumberous eyes of alarming shrewdness. ‘I’m developing a strong suspicion that to date your bedroom forays have been one big yawn, because you really don’t understand how I feel, do you?’
Face pink, and uneasy now, Maxie levered herself up on one elbow. ‘What are you trying to imply?’
‘You’re about to find out.’ Disorientatingly, his bold black eyes flamed with amusement as he began unbuttoning his shirt.
‘Is that a threat?’ Maxie said breathlessly.
‘Is that fear or hope I hear?’ With a soft, unbearably sexy laugh, Angelos dispensed with his shirt and gazed down mockingly into very wide blue eyes. ‘Your face…the expression is priceless!’
Maxie veiled her scrutiny, her fair complexion reddening.
Angelos strolled across the room, indolent now that he had her exactly where he wanted her, fully in control. ‘As for me thinking about sex all the time…don’t you know men? I’ve been celibate for many weeks. I’ve wanted you for an incredibly long time. I’m not used to waiting and fighting every step of the way for what I want. When you have everything, what you cannot have naturally assumes huge importance—’
‘And when you finally get it, I suppose it means next to nothing?’ Maxie slotted in tightly.
Angelos elevated a slanting ebony brow ‘Lighten up,’ he advised, not even pretending not to comprehend her meaning. ‘Only time will decide that. I live in the present and so should you, pethi mou.’
He undressed with fluid ease. She watched him. Ever since that night at the cottage, his powerful image had been stamped into her brain like a Technicolor movie still. But she was still hopelessly enthralled, shaken by the extent to which she responded to his intensely physical allure. Yet she had never seen beauty in the male body until he came along. But from his wide brown shoulders, slim hips and long, powerful hair-roughened thighs, Angelos made her mouth run dry, her pulses race and her palms perspire.
‘You’ve been so quiet since that ceremony…and now you recline like a very beautiful stone statue on my bed.’ Angelos skimmed off his black briefs in one long,
lazy movement. ‘If it wasn’t so ridiculous, I would think you were scared of me.’
Maxie managed to laugh but her throat was already constricting with nerves. He was so relaxed about his nudity, quite unconcerned that he was hugely aroused. And while common sense was telling her that of course God had fashioned men and women to fit, Maxie just could not begin to imagine how at that moment.
Angelos came down on the wide bed beside her. He scanned the sudden defensive upward tilt of her perfect profile, trailed a slow and appreciative hand through the lush tumble of golden strands of hair cascading off the pillows. He threw himself back and closed his hands round her slender forearms to bring her gently down to him. ‘And now my reward for waiting,’ he breathed with indolent satisfaction. ‘Nothing can disturb or part us here.’
Maxie gazed down into smouldering golden eyes full of expectancy. ‘Angelos…’
He reached up to run the tip of his tongue erotically along the tremulous line of her generous mouth. ‘You feel like ice. I’ll melt you,’ he promised huskily, deft fingers already engaged in releasing the catch on her bra.
Maxie trembled, feeling her whole body filled with delicious tension. She closed her eyes. He kissed her, and every time he kissed her it got just that little bit more tormenting, and she would open her lips wider, needing more pressure, more passion, begging for it as the floodtide of unstoppable hunger began to build and race through her veins.
He rolled her over and closed a hand over the pouting swell of one pale breast. Her taut body jumped as he smiled brilliantly down into her shaken eyes. ‘And yet you are so red-hot, responsive when I touch you. Every time that gives me a high,’ Angelos confessed thickly. ‘I love seeing you out of control.’
Threatened by that admission, Maxie shifted uneasily. ‘I don’t like that—’
‘You’ll have to learn to like it.’ Angelos bent his dark, arrogant head over a pink straining nipple and laved that achingly tender tip with his tongue, engulfing her in sensation that she now struggled instinctively to resist.
‘No…’ she gasped.
‘Don’t fight what I can make you feel…’ he urged hoarsely, employing expert fingers on her sensitive flesh, making her squirm in breathless, whimpering excitement.
Her body wasn’t her own any more, but by then she didn’t want it to be. With every atom of her being she craved those caresses. Wild sensation was addictive. She was hooked between one second and the next, her mind wiped clean of all thought. The hot wire of his seduction pulled tight as heat flared between her shifting thighs. She moaned his name low in her throat.
He took her mouth with a hot, sexual dominance then. He sealed her to the abrasively masculine angles of his hard, hungry body. She panted for breath when he released her swollen lips, sensually bemused eyes focusing on the brooding intensity of that darkly handsome face now curiously stilled above hers.
‘Angelos…?’ she mumbled, her fingers rising without her volition to trace the unremittingly harsh compression of his mouth.
He jerked back his head, so that she couldn’t touch him. In pained bewilderment Maxie lowered her hand again and stared up at him.
‘You used to watch me all the time,’ he breathed grimly. ‘But the instant I turned in your direction, you looked away…except that once, seven months ago. Then I knew you were mine, as much mine as if I had a brand on you!’
Stricken by that assurance slung at her out of the blue, Maxie twisted her head away, feeling naked, exposed. Even then Angelos had been able to see inside her, see below the surface which had dazzled other men. And, worst of all, he had immediately recognised the hunger she had refused to recognise within herself.
‘So I waited for you to make your move,’ Angelos admitted in a tone of growing condemnation. ‘I waited and I waited for you to dump him. But you still stayed with him! I began to wonder if you had a single living brain cell inside that gorgeous head!’
He was talking about Leland. Shocked rigid by what he was telling her, Maxie muttered, ‘But I…I didn’t—’
Angelos vented a harsh, cynical laugh. ‘Oh, I know why you stayed with him now! You owed him too much money to walk out. Did you think I hadn’t worked that out yet? But that’s when you reduced yourself to the level of a marketable commodity, and when I think about that it makes me want to smash things! Because, having learnt that wonderful lesson with him, you then sold yourself to me for an even higher price.’
‘How can you—?’
‘What else is this marriage but the price I had to pay for you?’
‘You…swine,’ Maxie whispered brokenly, white as death as the contempt he had concealed from her sank into her sensitive flesh like poison.
‘And I’ll get you out of my system soon if it kills me,’ Angelos swore with ragged force as he gazed broodingly down at her.
‘Start by letting me out of this bed,’ she demanded unevenly.
‘No way…I paid with a wedding ring and millions of pounds for this pleasure.’
‘No!’
‘But you’re no good at saying no to me,’ Angelos murmured with roughened menace against her tremulous lips. ‘Sexually you are one very weak reed where I’m concerned. It’s my one and only consolation while I’m making a bloody fool of myself over a woman like you!’
‘How dare you?’ Maxie gulped.
But Angelos skimmed an assured hand down the taut length of one quivering thigh and kissed her with fierce, angry hunger. And it was like instantaneous combustion. She went up in flames. He didn’t hold her down. He didn’t pin her to the mattress. He kissed her into submission, tormented her with every erotic trick in his extensive repertoire and the most overpowering physical passion. He swept away her defences with terrifying ease.
Stroking apart her slender thighs, Angelos traced the swollen, moist sensitivity at the very heart of her with knowing fingers. With a strangled moan, Maxie clutched at him in desperation. He controlled her with the hunger she could not deny and made her ache for him. That ache for satisfaction tortured her. He groaned something in Greek, pushing her tumbled hair back off her brow with an unsteady hand, circling her mouth caressingly with his one more time.
As Angelos shifted over her she couldn’t get him there fast enough. Her own urgency was as screamingly intense as his. And then she felt him, hot and hard and gloriously male, seeking entrance, and she shivered convulsively, on a high of such anticipation and excitement she was mindless.
So when he thrust hungrily into her willing body she was quite unprepared for the jagged pain of that forceful intrusion. Pain ripped apart the fog of sensual sensation and made her jerk and cry out in shock as she instinctively strove to push him away from her. But Angelos had already stilled to frown down at her with stunned, disbelieving black eyes. ‘Maxie—?’
‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ Maxie whispered in stricken embarrassment, utterly appalled and outraged that her own body could have betrayed her to such an extent.
With a sudden shift of his hips, Angelos withdrew from her again. But he kept on staring down at her in the most mortifying way, his bewilderment blatant. A damp sheen accentuated the tautness of the bronzed skin stretched over his hard cheekbones and the pallor spreading beneath. ‘Cristo…a virgin…’ he breathed, not quite levelly.
Maxie lay there, feeling horribly rejected and inadequate and wishing she could vanish.
‘And I really hurt you,’ Angelos groaned even more raggedly, abruptly levering his weight from her, black eyes holding hers with the same transfixed incredulity with which he might have regarded the sudden descent of an alien spaceship in his bedroom. ‘Are you in a lot of pain?’
In one driven movement Maxie rolled off the bed and fled in the direction of the bathroom. Dear heaven, he had been so repulsed he had just abandoned their lovemaking.
‘Maxie?’ Angelos murmured grimly. ‘I think this is something we definitely need to talk about—’
Maxie slammed the bathroom door so loudly it rocked
on its hinges and then she depressed the lock double-quick. Bang went the image of the cool sophisticate! And without that glossy image she felt naked and exposed. The last thing she could’ve faced right then was awkward questions. And as she turned on the bath taps she recalled his swinging verbal attack on her before they made love and she burst into gulping tears.
Angelos banged on the door. ‘Maxie? Come out of there!’
‘Go to hell!’ she shouted, cramming her hand to her wobbling mouth before a sob could escape and betray her.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m having a bath, Angelos…not drowning myself! Although with that technique of yours, I understand your concern!’
But no sooner had Maxie hurled those nasty words than she was thoroughly ashamed of herself. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, he hadn’t known, and lashing out in retaliation because she felt horribly humiliated was unjust and mean. Silence fell. Slowly, miserably, Maxie climbed into the bath.
Only then did it occur to her that it was foolish to be distressed by what Angelos had said in temper earlier. After all, he had now discovered that she could not possibly have been Leland’s mistress. So that had to make a difference to the light in which he saw her, surely? Only what she had been given with one hand had seemingly been taken with the other. Angelos had been repulsed by her inexperience.
Devastated by that awareness, Maxie thought back seven months to that single exchanged glance with Angelos across that long table in the Petronides boardroom, that charged clash of mutual awareness which seemed to have changed her entire life. Angelos had actually been waiting for her to ditch Leland on his behalf and he had been furious when she hadn’t.
Furthermore, Angelos could not now bring himself to speak Leland Coulter’s name out loud. In fact he had said she would offend him beyond belief with any reference to Leland before they’d even got into bed. Yet Angelos had been in no way that sensitive to that former relationship when he’d first come to announce his intentions at Liz’s house… Men were strange, Maxie decided limply, and none more strange than Angelos.