by Lynne Graham
‘Later this week, I’ll take you over to Corfu to shop.’
‘I hate shopping—do we have to?’
The silence moved in again.
‘When I married you I believed you were a reasonable, rational woman,’ Sergios volunteered curtly over the dessert course.
‘I believed you when you said you wanted a platonic marriage,’ Bee confided. ‘Just goes to show how wrong you can be about someone.’
‘Do you think your own mother will be fooled by the way we’re behaving into believing that this is a happy marriage?’
Hit on her weakest flank by that question, Bee paled.
‘Don’t wait up for me,’ Sergios told her as he too pushed away his plate, the food barely touched. ‘Last month I took over my grandfather’s seat on the island council and it meets tonight. I’ll stay for a drink afterwards.’
Frustrated by his departure when nothing between them had been resolved, Bee phoned her mother and lied through her teeth about how very happy she was. She then tried very hard to settle down with a book but her nerves continued to zing about like jumping beans and at well after ten that evening she decided that, as she wasn’t the slightest bit tired, vigorous exercise might at least dispel her tension. At her request a pole had been fitted in the house gym and she had politely ignored Sergios’s mocking enquiry as to what she intended to do with it. Like all too many people Sergios evidently assumed that pole dancing was a lewd activity best reserved for exotic dancers in sleazy clubs. Clad in stretchy shorts and a crop top, Bee did her warm-up exercises to loosen up before putting on her music.
Sergios was resolutely counting his blessings as he drove back along the single-track road to his home. Unhappily a couple of drinks and all the jokes with his colleagues on the island council that had recognised his status as a newly married man hadn’t taken the edge off his mood. In fact he was engaged in reminding himself that being married was by its very nature tough. Learning how to live with another person was difficult. Nobody knew that better than him, which was why he had cherished his freedom for so long. Indeed the lesson of having once lost his freedom was engraved on his soul in scorching letters, for Sergios never forgot or forgave his own mistakes. He knew he should be grateful that Beatriz was so very attached to children who were not her own. She was a good woman with a warm heart and strong moral values. He knew he should be appreciative of the fact that if he came home unexpectedly he was highly unlikely to walk into a wild party…
When he walked into the lounge, however, he was vaguely irritated to find that Beatriz had not waited up for him, thereby demonstrating her concern for his state of mind and their marriage. He was hugely taken aback to recognise that he actually wanted her to do wifely things of that nature. That she had just taken herself off to bed was definitely not a compliment. It was hardly surprising, he acknowledged in sudden exasperation, that Beatriz should be confused about what he wanted from her when he no longer knew himself.
The bedroom, though, was also empty and Androula, plump and disapproving in her dressing gown, answered his call and informed him that Beatriz was in the gym. Having dispensed with his tie and his jacket, Sergios followed the sound of the music but what he saw when he glanced through the glass doors of the gymnasium brought him to a sudden stunned halt.
Beatriz was hanging upside down on a pole. By the time he got through the door she was doing a handstand and swirling round the pole, legs splaying in a distinctly graphic movement that he would not have liked her to do in public. He was astonished by how fit she was as she went through an acrobatic series of moves. That stirring display was so unexpected from such a quiet conservative woman that it made it seem all the more exciting and illicit. He watched her kick, toes pointed, slender muscles flexing in a shapely leg and in a rounded, deliciously plump derriere. Around that point he decided simply to enjoy the show. As she undulated sexily against the pole, full breasts thrust out, hips shifting as though on wires, he was hard as a rock and her sinuous roll on the floor at the foot of the pole was frankly overkill.
‘Beatriz?’ Sergios husked.
In consternation at the sound of his voice, Bee flipped straight back upright, wondering anxiously for how long she had had an audience. Brilliant dark eyes welded to her, Sergios was by the door, tall, darkly handsome and overwhelmingly masculine. Lifting her towel to dry the perspiration from her face, she paused only to switch off the music.
‘When did you get back?’
‘Ten minutes ago. How long have you been doing that for?’
‘About three years,’ she answered a little breathlessly, drawing level with him. ‘It was more fun than the other exercise classes.’
His gaze smouldering, he bent his dark head and crushed her parted lips hotly beneath his, ravishing her mouth with the staggering impact of a long, drugging kiss. A shiver of sensual shock ran through her as his arms came round her and she felt the hard urgency of his erection against her stomach.
‘Se thelo…I want you,’ he breathed raggedly. ‘Let’s make this a real marriage.’
Taken aback by that proposition, Bee tried to step back but Sergios had a strong arm braced to her spine as he walked her down the corridor. ‘We need to think about this,’ she reasoned, struggling to emerge from that potent kiss, which had made her head swim.
‘No, I believe in gut instinct. We’ve been thinking far too much about things,’ Sergios fired back with strong masculine conviction. ‘You’re not supposed to agonise over everything you do in life and look for all the pitfalls, Beatriz. Some things just happen naturally.’
He thrust open their bedroom door, whirled her round and devoured her mouth hungrily beneath his again, his tongue darting into the tender interior of her mouth, setting up a chain reaction of high voltage response inside her. This, she registered, was the sort of thing he believed should happen naturally, but from Bee’s point of view there was nothing natural about the fact that she was trembling and unable to think straight. The force of his passion knocked her off balance while a raging fire leapt up inside her to answer it. Locked together, they stumbled across the room and down on the bed, his hands smoothing over her Lycra-clad curves with an appreciative sound deep in his throat.
‘I don’t want anyone else seeing you dance like that,’ Sergios spelt out. ‘It’s too sexy—’
‘But that’s how I keep fit—it’s only exercise.’
‘It’s incredibly erotic,’ Sergios contradicted, wrenching off the shorts with impatient hands.
‘We really ought to be discussing this,’ she told him anxiously.
A heart-breaking smile slashed his beautiful mouth. ‘I don’t want to talk about it…we’ve talked it to death.’
That smile made her stretch up to kiss him again, her fingertips smoothing over a hard cheekbone and delving into his silky black hair with a licence she had never allowed herself before. If they made love he would be hers as no other man had ever been and she wanted that with every fibre of her being and a strength of longing she had not known she was capable of feeling. Unbuttoning his shirt, she pulled it off his shoulders and he cast it off, laughing at her impatience. Standing up, he dispensed with the rest of his clothing at efficient speed and a tingling hum of arousal thrummed through her as she looked at his powerfully aroused body. He was ready for her.
Sergios pulled her up and peeled her free of the crop top and the sports bra she wore beneath. With a groan of sensual satisfaction he cupped the creamy swell of her breasts and licked and stroked the swollen pink tips until she shivered. ‘Perfect,’ he husked.
Liquid heat pooled between her legs as he located the damp stretch of fabric between her legs and eased a finger beneath it to trace her delicate centre. She twisted beneath his touch and lifted her hips as he took off her knickers. He kissed a trail down over her writhing length until he found the most trul
y sensitive spot of all. As he lingered there to subject her to the erotic torment of his skilled mouth and hand, she had to fight her innate shyness with all her might.
Had she been in control it would have been wrenched from her by the power of her response. As it was, she was free to abandon herself to sensation and she did, her head moving restively back and forth on the pillow, shallow gasps escaping her throat as her hips rose and fell on the bed. She was at the very height of excitement before he came over her and entered her in one effortless stroke. Even so there was still a stark moment of pain and she cried out as he completed his possession, driving home to the very core of her. The discomfort swiftly ebbed even as his invasive hard male heat awakened and stimulated her need again.
‘Sorry,’ he sighed with intense male pleasure. ‘I was as gentle as I could be.’
‘You’re forgiven,’ she murmured, very much preoccupied as she arched her spine and lifted her hips to accept more of him, desire driving her to obey her own needs.
‘You’re so tight,’ he breathed with earthy satisfaction, rising up on his elbows and withdrawing only to thrust back deeper into her receptive body in a movement that was almost unbearably exhilarating.
Her breath catching in her throat, her heart thundering with growing fervour she shut her eyes, revelling in the feel of him inside her. She writhed beneath him as he drove deeper with every compelling thrust and his fluid rhythm increased, plunging her into an intoxicating world of erotic and timeless delight. The excitement took over until all she was aware of was him and the hot, sweet pleasure gathering stormily at the heart of her. She reached an explosive climax and plunged over the edge into ecstasy, gasping and writhing in voluptuous abandon.
Shuddering over her, Sergios cried out with uninhibited fulfilment gripped by the longest, hottest climax of his life. As her arms came round him to hold him he pulled back, however, releasing her from his weight. He threw himself back against the pillows next to her, enforcing a separation she was not prepared for at that most intimate of moments.
‘That was unbelievably good, yineka mou,’ Sergios savoured, breathing in a lungful of much-needed air. ‘Thank you.’
Thank you? Bee blinked in bewilderment at that polite salutation and reached for his hand, closing her fingers round his and turning over to snuggle into his big powerful body, spreading her fingers across a stretch of his warm muscular torso. He stiffened at the contact.
‘I don’t do the cuddling thing, glikia mou.’
‘You’re not too old to learn,’ Bee told him dreamily, dazed by what they had just shared but also happy at the greater closeness she sensed between them. ‘You just persuaded me to do something spontaneous and that’s not usually my style.’
Recognising the truth that Beatriz almost always had a smart answer for everything, Sergios made no comment. Instead he settled curious dark golden eyes on her flushed face. ‘I hurt you. Are you sore?’
Bee gave a little experimental shift of her hips and winced. ‘A little.’
‘Shame,’ he pronounced with regret, a sensual curve to his firm mouth. ‘Right now, I would love to do it all over again but I’ll wait until tomorrow.’
‘You didn’t use a condom,’ Bee remarked, her surprise at that oversight patent.
‘I’m clean. I have regular health checks. Hopefully we’ll get away with it this once on the contraception front. I don’t keep condoms here,’ he admitted bluntly. ‘I don’t bring women to my home. I never have done.’
There were so many questions brimming on her lips but she wouldn’t let herself ask them. She liked the fact that the room and bed had not been used by other women. But she did want to know about his first wife—there was not even a photo of Krista on display in the house. Then there was his mistress, and where Bee and Sergios were to go from here, but that thorny question would be a case of too much too soon for a guy who had fought so hard to retain his freedom and keep his secrets. He wasn’t going to change overnight, she told herself ruefully.
Let’s make this a real marriage, he had said in the gym. Had he truly meant it? Or had a desire for sex momentarily clouded his judgement when her dancing awakened his libido? Could he simply have told her what he thought she wanted to hear? Uneasy at that suspicion, Bee tensed but refused to lower herself to the level of asking him if he was genuinely committed to their marriage. Expressing doubt, after all, might just as easily encourage what she most feared to come about.
‘We’ll put a pole up in the bedroom so that you can exercise in here where nobody else can see you,’ Sergios informed her lazily.
Bee could not believe her ears. His persistence on that subject was a revelation. He had not been joking in the gym when he said he didn’t want anyone else to see her dancing. ‘I didn’t think you would be such a prude.’
‘You’re my wife,’ Sergios reminded her, but his face was taut, as if giving her that label pained him.
Looking up into those darkly handsome features, Bee could already see the wheels of intellect turning as he questioned their new intimacy. How did he really feel about that? She lowered her lashes, refusing to agonise over something she had no control over. Living with Sergios would be a roller-coaster ride and as he did not suffer anything in silence she had no doubt that she would soon know exactly how he felt.
* * *
‘I’ll be late back tonight,’ Sergios told her, sinking down on the side of the bed. He hesitated for a split second before he grasped the hand that she had instinctively extended to stop him leaving the room.
Still half asleep, for it was very early, Bee studied him drowsily, noting the brooding tension etched into his face while loving the warmth of his hand in hers and the golden intensity of his gaze. ‘Why?’
‘It’s the anniversary of Krista’s death today. I usually attend a memorial service with her parents and dine with them afterwards,’ Sergios explained, his intonation cool and unemotional.
Taken aback, for although they had been married for six weeks he still never ever mentioned his first wife, Bee nodded and belatedly noticed the sombre black suit that he wore.
‘It’s an annual event,’ he said with an uneasy shrug. ‘Not something I look forward to.’
She bit back the comment that some people regarded a memorial service as an opportunity to celebrate the life of the departed. ‘Would you like me to go with you?’ she asked uncertainly.
‘That’s a generous offer but I don’t think Krista’s parents would appreciate it. She was their only child. I get the impression that they don’t want to be reminded that my life has moved on,’ Sergios commented, compressing his handsome mouth with the stubborn self-discipline that was so much a part of his character.
Her ignorance of what he was feeling troubled Bee for the rest of the day. But then she was madly, hopelessly in love with Sergios and prone to worrying about what was on his mind. Although the sexual chemistry they shared was indisputably fantastic, that wasn’t what had awakened more tender feelings in her heart. It was while Bee was busily working out what made Sergios tick that she had fallen head over heels in love with him.
When he was away on business she felt as though she were only half alive. Deprived of his powerful and often unsettling charismatic presence, she would watch her phone like a lovesick adolescent desperate for his call, count the hours until he came home and then lavish attention on him in bed until he purred like a big jungle cat. He was in her heart as though he had always been there, strong and stubborn and infuriatingly unpredictable.
In learning to love him she had also recognised his vulnerabilities. He was unsure how to behave with the children because his mother’s ill health had deprived him of a carefree childhood. Although Bee had come from a similar background the burden of caring had been lightened in her case by her mother’s deep affection. Sergios’s mother, however, had been ver
y young and immature and might possibly have resented the adverse impact of a child on her life and health. For whatever reasons, Sergios had not received the love and support he had needed to thrive during his formative years.
Within days of being removed to their grandfather’s home on the other side of the bay Paris, Milo and Eleni had made it clear how much they were missing Bee and Sergios had swiftly accepted the inevitable and agreed to their return. With Bee’s support since then Sergios had gradually spent more time with his cousin’s kids, getting to know them so that he no longer froze when Milo hurled himself at him or looked uneasily away when Eleni opened her arms to him. Bridges were being built. Paris turned to Sergios for advice, Milo brought his ball and Eleni smiled at him when he risked getting close. Sergios was slowly learning how to accept affection and how to respond to it.
Bee had been relieved when she received the proof that their unprotected lovemaking on the first night they had spent together had not led to her conceiving a child. In her opinion an unplanned pregnancy would have been a disaster for their marriage. Sergios was very much a man who needed to make the decision that he wanted to be a father for himself. Yet when she had told him that he need not worry on that score, he had shrugged.
‘I wasn’t worrying about that,’ he had insisted. ‘If you had conceived we would have coped.’
But Bee would not have been happy while he merely ‘coped’. She only wanted to have a baby with a man who was actively keen for her to have his baby. She did not want Sergios to make the best of an accidental conception or to offer her the option of a pregnancy because she was broody: she wanted him to make a choice that he wanted a child with her, a child of his own.
The weeks they had shared on the island had not been only about the children. Bee had stopped fretting about the future and had lived for the moment and Sergios had made many of those moments surprisingly special. He had proudly given her a tour of the wheelchair-friendly cottage in the grounds where her mother was to live. A carer whom Emilia would choose for herself from a list that had already been drawn up would come in every day to help her cope. Bee could hardly wait to see the older woman’s face when she enjoyed her first cup of tea on the sunny terrace with its beautiful view of the bay.