A Deal at the Altar

by Lynne Graham

  Assured that she had time before dinner, Bee scooped up the wrap she glimpsed in one of her open cases and left the maids to unpack while she went for a bath. She was just in the mood to soak away her stress. Leaving her clothes in an unusually untidy heap and anchoring her hair to the top of her head to keep it dry, she tossed scented bath crystals into the water and climbed in, sinking down into the relaxing warmth with a sigh of appreciation.

  A knock sounded on the door and she frowned, recalling that she had not locked it. She was in the act of sitting up when the door opened without further warning to frame Sergios.

  Bee whipped her arms over her breasts and roared, ‘Get out of here!’

  ‘No, I will not,’ Sergios responded with thunderous bite.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE smouldering gold of anger in Sergios’s stunning eyes dimmed solely because he was enjoying the view.

  There Beatriz was, all pink and wet and bare among the bubbles. Her fair skin was all slippery and his hands tingled with the need to touch. Those breasts he had correctly calculated at more than a handful were topped by buds with the size and lushness of ripe cherries. Erect at that tempting vision within seconds, Sergios was deciding that the need to share facilities might not be quite the serious problem and invasion of privacy that he had gloomily envisaged. In fact it might well pay unexpected dividends of a physical nature.

  Outraged green eyes seethed at him. ‘Go!’ Bee yelled at him.

  Instead, Sergios stepped into the bathroom and closed the door to lean back against the wood with infuriating cool. ‘Don’t raise your voice to me. The maids are unpacking next door and we’re supposed to be on our honeymoon,’ he reminded her huskily. ‘For someone so hung up on good manners you can be very rude. I knocked on the door—you chose not to answer!’

  ‘You didn’t give me the chance.’ Bee said resentfully before she reached for a towel, fed up with huddling like some cowed Victorian maiden in the water and all too well aware that her hands didn’t cover a large enough expanse of flesh to conceal the more sensitive areas. As she got up on her knees she deftly used the towel as cover and slowly stood up, keen not to expose anything more.

  Fully appreciating the rolling violin curve visible between her waist and hip, Sergios treated her to a wolfish grin of amusement. ‘You need a bigger towel, Beatriz.’

  And just like that Beatriz became instantly aware of the fact she was large and clumsy rather than little and dainty. Equally fast she was recalling her size zero sister, Zara, whom Sergios had initially planned to marry, not to mention his equally tiny first wife. That was the shape of woman that was the norm for her Greek husband. On his terms she was a big girl.

  ‘Or you could just drop the towel altogether, yineka mou,’ Sergios continued huskily, his dark deep drawl roughening round the edges at that prospect.

  ‘If I wasn’t so busy trying to knot this stupid towel I would slap you!’ Beatriz countered, assuming that he was teasing her, for by no stretch of the imagination could she even picture circumstances in which she might deliberately stand naked in front of a man, even if he was the one whom she had married.

  Sergios tossed her a much larger towel from the shelf on the wall and she wrapped it round her awkwardly. ‘We have to share this suite,’ he spelt out, suddenly serious.

  Her brow indented. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘My grandfather is staying and I want him to believe that this is a normal marriage. He won’t believe that if we occupy separate rooms and behave like brother and sister,’ he said with a sardonic curl to his wide sensual mouth. ‘We don’t have a choice. We’ll just have to tough it out and hope our acting skills are up to the challenge.’

  ‘You’re expecting me to share that bedroom with you…even the bed?’ Bee gasped. ‘I won’t do it.’

  ‘I didn’t offer you a choice. We have an arrangement and it includes providing cover for each other.’ Eyes dramatised by black spiky lashes raked her truculent face in an unashamed challenge. ‘We do what we have to do. I don’t want to upset Nectarios just as you didn’t want to worry your mother. He needs to believe that this is a real marriage.’

  ‘But I am not willing to agree to share a bed with you,’ Bee repeated with clarity. ‘And that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject apart from the fact that if you sleep out there, I’ll have to sleep somewhere else.’

  His eyes glittered as bright as stars in the night sky. ‘Not under my roof—’

  Bee felt somewhat foolish and at a disadvantage swaddled in her unflattering towel for if she looked large without it how much larger must she look engulfed within its capacious folds? And had a towel the size of a blanket been a deliberate choice on his part or a coincidence?

  ‘I’ll get dressed for dinner,’ Bee announced, waiting for him to step aside and let her out of the bathroom. Not under my roof? He could be as threatening as a sabre-toothed tiger but she was not about to change her mind: she was entitled to her own bed.

  Eyes narrowed with brooding intensity, Sergios lounged back against the door frame like the lean, powerful predator that he was and the atmosphere was explosive. As she moved past he rested a hand on the bare curve of her shoulder and she came to a halt.

  ‘I want you,’ Sergios declared, using his other hand to ease her back against him and run his fingers lightly up from her waist to her ribcage.

  In the space of a moment Bee froze and stopped breathing, panic gripping her. I want you? Since when?

  ‘That’s not part of our agreement,’ she said prosaically, standing as still as a statue as if movement of any kind might encourage him.

  Above her head, Sergios laughed, the sound full of vitality and amusement. ‘Our agreement is between adults and whatever we choose to make of it—’

  ‘Trust me,’ Bee urged. ‘We don’t want to muddy the water with sex.’

  ‘This is the real world. Desire is an energy, not something you can plan or pin down on paper,’ he intoned, and his hands simply shifted position to cover her towel-clad breasts.

  Even beneath that light pressure, her heartbeat went crazy. Boom-boom-boom it went in her ears as he boldly pushed the fabric down out of his path and closed his hands caressingly round the firm globes, teasing the stiffly prominent nipples between his fingers. A startled gasp escaped from Bee. She looked down at those long fingers stroking the swollen pink peaks, flushed crimson and then shut her eyes tight again, her legs trembling beneath her. She should push him away, she should push him away, tell him to stop, insist that he stop.

  Sergios swept her up off her feet while she was still struggling to reclaim her poise and strode into the bedroom to lay her down on the big wide bed. He hit a button above the headboard and she heard the door lock and she sat up, wrenching the towel back up over her exposed flesh.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere…’ Sergios husked with raw masculine assurance, coming down to the bed on his knees and reaching for her.

  ‘This is not a good idea,’ Bee protested in a voice that without the slightest warning emerged as downright squeaky.

  ‘You sound like a frightened virgin!’ Sergios quipped, using one hand to tip up her chin and kiss her with hard, hungry fervour, his teeth nipping at her full lower lip, his tongue plunging in an erotic raid on her tender mouth. With his other hand he stroked the straining sensitive buds on her breasts and it was as if he had jerked a leash to pull her in, for instead of pushing back from him she discovered that she only wanted to go one way and that was closer.

  ‘Sergios…’ she cried against the demanding onslaught of his sensual mouth.

  ‘Filise me…kiss me,’ he urged, his strong hands roaming. ‘I love your breasts.’

  As sweet tempting sensation executed its sway over her treacherous body, Bee felt her lack of fight travelling through her like
a debilitating disease. In a sudden move of desperation she flung herself sideways off the bed. She fell with a crash that bruised her hip and jolted every bone in her body and Sergios sat up to regard her with a look of bewilderment. He reached down to help her up again. ‘How did you do that?’ he questioned. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No, but I had to stop what we were doing,’ Bee volunteered jerkily, hauling at the towel again and feeling remarkably foolish.

  ‘Why?’ Sergios countered in frank astonishment.

  Bee veiled her eyes and shut her mouth like a steel trap. ‘Because I don’t want to have sex with you.’

  ‘That’s a lie.’ Smouldering eyes came to a screeching halt on her. ‘I can tell when a woman wants me.’

  Sitting on the wooden floor on a rug that did not make the floor any more comfortable, Bee marvelled that she did not simply scream and launch herself at him like a Valkyrie. He was like a dog with a bone; he wasn’t going to give it up without a fight. ‘I forgot myself for a moment…a weak moment. It won’t happen again. You said you didn’t want intimacy—’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Sergios admitted without skipping a beat.

  Bee very nearly did scream then in frustration. ‘But I haven’t—changed my mind, that is.’

  An utterly unexpected grin slanted his beautiful shapely mouth, lending a dazzling charisma to his already handsome features that no woman could have remained impervious to. He lounged fluidly back on the bed and shifted a graceful hand. ‘So, then we deal, yineka mou—’

  ‘Deal?’ Bee parroted in a tone of disbelief.

  ‘You’re so uptight, Beatriz. You need a man like me to loosen you up.’

  Tousled chestnut hair tumbling round her wildly flushed oval face, Bee stood up still clutching the towel. ‘I don’t want to loosen up. I’m quite happy as I am.’

  Sergios released his breath in an impatient hiss. ‘You can get pregnant if you want,’ he proffered with a wry roll of his stunning dark eyes as if he were inviting her to take two pints of his blood. ‘We’re already saddled with three kids—how much difference could another one make?’

  Her eyes wide with consternation at that shockingly unemotional appraisal, Bee backed away several feet. ‘I think you’re crazy.’

  Sergios shook his arrogant dark head. ‘Think outside the box, Beatriz. I’m trying to make a deal with you. As you’re not in business, I’ll explain—I give you what you want so that you give me what I want. It’s that simple.’

  ‘Except when it’s my body on the table,’ Bee replied in a tone of gentle irony. ‘My body is not going to figure as any part of a deal with you or anybody else. We agreed that there would be no sex and I want to stick to that.’

  ‘That is not the message your body is giving me, latria mou,’ Sergios drawled softly.

  ‘You’re reading the signals wrong—maybe it’s your healthy ego misleading you,’ Bee suggested thinly as she hit the button he had used to lock the door to unlock it again.

  As Bee leant across him Sergios hooked his fingers into the edge of the towel above her breasts. Immobilised, she looked up at him and collided with his dazzling eyes enhanced by ridiculously long lush lashes. Her heart seemed to jump into her throat.

  ‘It’s not my ego that’s talking,’ Sergios purred like a prowling big cat of the jungle variety.

  ‘Yes, it is. Even though you don’t really want me and I’m not your type.’

  ‘I don’t go for a particular type.’

  ‘Zara? Your first wife? Let me remind you—slim, glamorous?’ Bee stabbed without hesitation, watching his face tauten and pale as though she had struck him. The hand threatening the closure of the towel fell back and Bee was quick to take advantage of his uncharacteristic retreat. ‘That’s your type. I’m not and never could be.’

  Sergios dealt her a steely-eyed appraisal. ‘You don’t know what turns me on’

  ‘Don’t I? Something you’ve been told you can’t have. A challenge—that’s all it takes to turn you on!’ Bee hissed at him, fighting to hide the depth of her outrage. ‘And I accidentally made myself seem like a challenge this evening. You’re so perverse. If I was throwing myself at you, you would hate it.’

  ‘Not right at this moment, I wouldn’t,’ Sergios purred in silken contradiction, running a hand down over the extended stretch of one long powerful thigh and by doing so drawing her attention to the tented effect of his tailored trousers over his groin. ‘As you can see, I’m not in any condition to say no to a reasonable offer.’

  As he directed her gaze to the evidence of his arousal Bee could feel a tide of mortified heat rush up from her throat to her hairline and she did not know where to look even as a kernel of secret heat curled in her pelvis. ‘You’re disgusting,’ she said curtly and knew even as she said it that she didn’t mean it. The knowledge that lust for her had put him in that state was strangely stimulating and there was something even more satisfying in that unsought but graphic affirmation of her femininity.

  ‘Over dinner, think about what you want most,’ Sergios advised lazily. ‘And remember that there’s nothing I can’t give you.’

  Consternation in her eyes, Bee stepped back from the bed, her oval face stiff with angry condemnation. ‘Are you offering me money to sleep with you?’

  Sergios winced. ‘You’re so literal, so blunt—’

  ‘You just can’t accept the word no, can you?’ Bee launched at him in a furious flood. ‘You even sank low enough to try and use a baby as a bargaining chip!’

  ‘Of course you want a baby—I’ve watched you with my cousin’s kids. Nobody could be that way with them if they didn’t want one of their own,’ Sergios opined with assurance. ‘I’ve had enough experience with women to know that at some point in our marriage you will decide that you want a child of your own.’

  ‘Right at this very moment,’ Bee told him shakily, ‘I’m wondering how I can possibly stay married to such a conniving and unscrupulous man!’

  ‘Your mother, the kids, the fact that you don’t like to fail at anything? You’re not a quitter, Beatriz. I admire that in a woman.’ Straightening his tie and finger-combing his black hair back off his brow, Sergios sprang off the bed, his big powerful body suddenly towering over her. ‘But I do have one small word of warning for you,’ he murmured in a tone as cool as ice. ‘I don’t talk about my first wife, Krista…ever, so leave her out of our…discussions.’

  Shell-shocked from that spirited encounter and that final chilling warning, Bee got back into her cooling bath and sat there blinking in a daze. When he had touched her, a tide of such longing had gripped her that she had almost surrendered. But she wasn’t stupid, and even though she had never been so strongly affected before by a man she had always accepted that sex and the cravings it awakened could be very powerful and seductive. Why else did the lure of sex persuade so many people to succumb to temptation and get into trouble over it? It might be a sobering discovery but she had only learned that she was as weak as any other human being.

  After Krista’s death—she who must not be mentioned—Sergios had become a notorious playboy. He had to be a very experienced lover and he knew exactly how to pull her strings and extract ladies who ought to have known better from towels, she allowed in growing chagrin. Well, he hadn’t got the towel the whole way off, she told herself soothingly. With a male as ferociously determined and untamed as Sergios even the smallest victory ought to be celebrated.

  It was silly how it actually hurt her pride that Sergios didn’t really desire her. He was annoyed that his grandfather’s presence in his home would force them to live a lie to conceal the reality that their marriage was a fake. His ego was challenged by the prospect of having to share a bed with a woman he had agreed not to touch, so he was trying to tear up the terms of their agreement by whatever means were within his power.
Even so, she reckoned it had to be a very rare event for a man to try to seduce a woman by offering to get her pregnant.

  Sergios could certainly think on his feet. Indeed he was utterly shameless and callous in pursuit of anything he wanted. But he was also, Bee thought painfully, extremely clever and far too shrewd for comfort. He had sensed the softy hiding below her practical surface and made an educated guess that the prospect of having her own child would have more pulling power with her than the offer of money or diamonds. And he had guessed right, so right in fact that she wanted to scream in frustration and embarrassment.

  How could he see inside her heart like that? How could he have worked out already what she had only recently learned about herself? Only since she had been in daily contact with Paris, Milo and Eleni had Bee appreciated just how much she enjoyed being a mother. Out on a shopping trip she had bought baby clothes for Eleni and found herself drawn to examining the even tinier garments and the prams, newly afflicted by a broodiness that she had heard friends discuss but until then had never experienced on her own behalf.

  But common sense warned her that right now she had to stand her ground with Sergios. If she allowed him to walk over her so early in their marriage she would be the equivalent of a cipher within a few years, enslaved by her master’s voice. He had to respect the boundaries they had set together. After all, he had Melita and other women in his life and she had no wish to join that specific party. The reflection tightened her muscles and made her head begin to ache as she appreciated that she truly was caught between a rock and a hard place with a man who attracted her but whom she could not have. She stretched back against the padded headrest, desperate to shed her tension and troubled thoughts. Sergios was an absolute menace to her peace of mind. He kept on moving the goalposts to suit himself. He was like a pirate on the high seas, always in pursuit of an advantage or a profit. But when it came to fencing with Bee he was just as likely to run aground on the rocks hidden beneath her deceptively calm surface.