by Lynne Graham
By seven, she was ready to go stir-crazy and wondering why she was allowing him to intimidate her into remaining hidden in the suite. What did it matter if anyone saw her downstairs alone? They would hardly be surprised. Her pretend bridegroom was patently a selfish, insensitive workaholic.
An utterly hateful, bad-tempered swine too, Rosie reflected fierily as she freshened up in the bathroom and reached for the sheer tights. The heart-stopping looks of a dark angel crossed with the temperament of a snarling beast. So brutally sarcastic as well. He never missed a chance to put her down.
Lack of physical size had always meant that Rosie’s tongue was her first line of defence. She was furiously conscious that for a few minutes in that room next door Constantine had overpowered her with the smooth, ricocheting speed and force of his derisive attacks. She hadn’t made a single dent in that tough hide of his! No, she had gone into retreat. And yet here she was, doing him a huge favour for free, and what thanks was she getting for it?
Well, tomorrow morning, when she tore up his precious cheque in front of him, she would be the party holding the moral high ground then, wouldn’t she? Rosie tilted her chin as she added a little colour to her lips and experimented with a touch of shadow on her eyelids. When she opened the door a crack, Constantine was talking in cold, quelling tones on the phone.
‘Tomorrow isn’t good enough,’ he was saying with icy precision. ‘When I say move, I expect a sprint, not a soft-shoe shuffle.’
Rosie peeped out, saw him poised with his back to the room, tiptoed along the wall and crept out as quietly as a mouse. In the corridor, she ignored his hovering security men and calmly slipped on her shoes while inwardly wincing at the sound of Taki’s harsh cough. However, when she stepped into the lift, the young security man stepped in behind her. And when she strolled into the low-lit, intimate bar on the ground floor he was still tailing her.
Well, at least his presence would save her from the boredom of having to pretend to read the glossy hotel brochure she had brought down with her, she reflected ruefully. She had planned to look occupied lest some cruising predatory male see her solitary state as some kind of invitation.
Every male head in the bar turned to follow her elegant passage. Titian curls rioted round the perfect oval of her face. Shoestring straps curved over smooth white shoulders, the raspberry silk flowing fluidly against slender curves, the hem caressing surprisingly long and shapely legs. Rosie selected a seat. Taki hailed a waiter and then went off into another choking bout of coughing.
‘You should be in bed.’ Rosie flicked the young Greek a look of grudging sympathy as she noted the feverish flush on his cheekbones. ‘But I bet you’d have to go into convulsions and drop dead before Constantine would notice.’
Shivering, he frowned, his grasp of English clearly of the basic variety, and then he started coughing again and spluttering what sounded like a croaking apology. Rosie groaned, ‘Oh, for goodness sake, sit down! You need a hot whisky with cloves in it. That should clear your head and help you to sleep.’
He slumped hesitantly down on a chair, regarding her with bashful, bemused eyes. Rosie ordered a double for him and urged him to drink it all down. He shook his curly dark head uncertainly.
‘Drink it!’ Rosie commanded with force.
He was much more obedient than Constantine. Indeed after that one drink Taki became astonishingly garrulous, but since he was talking in his own language Rosie couldn’t understand a word. She suspected that might be just as well. A look of intense admiration now glowed in the young Greek’s befuddled stare.
‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ The seething demand penetrated Rosie’s introspection at the same time as a big black shadow fell over the table. Her bright head lifted, her hand jerked and wine slopped out of her glass.
Taki shot upright and fell noisily over a chair. Taking in the situation at a glance, Dmitri surged forward to lift and steady the younger man and urge him towards the exit. His superb bone structure a mask of outrage, Constantine stared at Rosie, his eyes molten gold and as hard as diamonds.
‘I had no idea you’d left the suite. You will return there immediately,’ he ordered in a low-pitched growl of raw intimidation.
There was something about Constantine, something about that outrageous domineering attitude, that brought out the very worst in Rosie even when that same attitude could send an undeniable current of fear shooting through her veins. ‘Or what? I get forty lashes before midnight? I’m just sitting here having a quiet drink—’
‘Upstairs,’ Constantine bit out, pale with rage beneath his olive skin.
‘You Tarzan, me Jane?’ Rosie fed the flames with a flashing little smile of warning. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘We have an agreement,’ Constantine thundered in a repressive undertone that shimmied down her taut spine like abrasive sand on silk. ‘And you are behaving in an inappropriate manner.’
Rosie tilted her head back, her fiery tresses gleaming as bright as her eyes. ‘Frankly, I think I’m behaving very much in character. I’m playing a bimbo,’ she told him helpfully. ‘Lots of bimbos marry rich older guys who bore the pants off them—’
‘Say that again,’ Constantine invited, a slow rise of dark colour accentuating the taut slant of his high cheekbones.
‘So the neglected little wife gets restless and comes down to the bar to watch life pass her by,’ Rosie continued with a sad, soulful aspect.
‘People are looking at us.’ His expressive mouth hard as iron, eyes blazing, Constantine sank down with controlled animal grace into a seat. But he still reminded her of a ferocious tiger prevented at the very last moment from springing.
‘Of course they are ... and congratulations—you’re adding real veracity to this masquerade. Enter suspicious bridegroom in a seething temper. I shall try to look sufficiently quelled by the display,’ Rosie promised, hanging her head and shrinking her shoulders as if she were withstanding the blast of his righteous wrath with suitable humility. ‘But I am certainly not going back upstairs to vegetate in that bedroom.’
Constantine breathed in very, very slowly and deeply in the rushing silence.
Rosie grinned. ‘You’re shrewd, Constantine, I’ll give you that. You see, if you tried trailing me out of here by force, someone might feel they had to intervene on my behalf.’
‘Tomorrow morning cannot come soon enough for me,’ Constantine swore with a feral flash of gritted white teeth.
‘I know... we’re not exactly a match made in heaven.’
‘You are very brave in public places.’
‘You’re a very big guy.’
‘So is Maurice.’
Rosie smiled. ‘Maurice is as gentle as a lamb. He never loses his temper.’
‘But then you wear the pants in that relationship,’ Constantine interposed with scathing bite, a look of blatant disgust in his gaze.
‘I expect you like women servile and adoring. You were born out of time, Constantine. You should have been an Arab potentate with a harem. Do you know that concubines were trained to crawl across the floor of their master’s bedroom and up under, the covers from the foot of the bed?’ Rosie told him informatively.
Luxuriant black lashes dipped. His sensual mouth twisted. ‘I am in the middle of a takeover bid for a company I have been working to acquire for some months.’ The lashes shot up to reveal savagely impatient dark eyes. ‘I don’t trust you. I am not leaving you down here alone to pick up some man on what is supposed to be our wedding night.’
‘I am not going to pick up a man. I have never picked up a man in my life.’
‘I saw how those men at the bar were watching you, Like drooling, sex-starved sailors on shore leave!’ Constantine grated, a faint flush highlighting his taut cheekbones. ‘You wouldn’t need to flex a fingernail. No decent woman would sit in a bar on her own—’
‘I had Taki in tow.’
‘You got him blind drunk!’
‘He’s got a bad cold an
d he was feeling foul and he must have a very low tolerance level for alcohol.’ Rosie grimaced. ‘But I told him to have a. drink—’
‘And his miscalculation in doing so will cost him his employment.’
Rosie went white with shock. ‘That’s not fair, Constantine. I insisted that he had that drink—’
‘Did you also insist that he made love to you?’
‘What the heck are you trying to imply?’
Black eyes glittered, his nostrils flaring. ‘I heard what he was saying to you... a member of my staff making romantic advances to my wife—’
‘Your wife? I am not your wife!’ Rosie cut in with incredulous heat and vigour. ‘I wouldn’t be your wife for a million pounds!’
‘Oh, I think you could push yourself for that amount ... indeed a great deal less,’ Constantine asserted with raw, biting cynicism. ‘What price did you put on your body for Anton? He stuck you in a rented house. He didn’t even buy you the roof over your head—’ As the remainder of the wine in her glass splashed his strong, dark face, he broke off and stared at her with charged, thunderous disbelief.
Rosie stood and returned that look with venomous loathing. ‘You make Neanderthal man look like Einstein!’
Constantine made it into the lift before she could get the doors closed on him. Consumed by rage, Rosie kept on stabbing wildly at the button. With a raw growl, he closed his arms round her and the lift doors finally slid shut.
‘Let go of me, you caveman!’ Rosie splintered breathlessly.
Constantine gazed down at her, blazing golden eyes intent, and splayed hard fingers to the curve of her hip and forced her up against him. That close to that lean, muscular male frame, Rosie froze, bright eyes bewildered as the heat and the scent of him washed over her in a heady, disorientatingly pleasurable tide. A tiny little muscle deep down in her stomach jerked, making her legs feel oddly weak and hollow. Her heart started slamming suffocatingly fast against her ribcage.
‘You were trying to flirt with me,’ Constantine murmured with a slight frown, his deep, dark drawl sending the most peculiar little shivers travelling down her taut spinal cord. A faint curl of sardonic amusement suddenly quirked his hard mouth.
‘Flirt?’ Rosie queried in a daze. ‘When I threw the wine in your face?’
‘You weren’t on a winning streak.’
Her bemused gaze connected with molten gold eyes and time seemed to slow down yet move in curious synchronisation with the heavy pounding of the blood in her veins. She struggled to breathe, outrageously conscious of every skin cell in her trembling body, the taut swell of her breasts, the aching sensitivity of her nipples and the straining, melting rush of heat and awareness between her thighs.
No ... ! she told herself in profound shock. I don’t flirt.
As he lowered his arrogant dark head, Constantine smiled lazily, sexily. Rosie was transfixed. His mouth claimed hers with shocking effect. Excitement exploded like a greedy, out-of-control fire inside her, overwhelming her with a voracious passion. She kissed him back in a wild surge of hunger, moaning low in her throat at the stabbing, wickedly erotic inttusion of his tongue. He shifted fluidly against her, making her crave closer contact with a desperation that screamed through every nerve-ending.
He lifted his head to survey her stunned face and drew her out of the lift. Plunged from the breathless heights of unbearable excitement down to the simple business of movement, Rosie met the descent in an agony of disorientation. Inside the suite, he reached for her again with confident hands. The vital energy that flowed from him attracted her like a honey trap. His shimmering golden gaze enveloped her, igniting a floodtide of instinctive heat and response that made her tremble.
‘Tell me that you like to make love over and over again,’ Constantine invited huskily, his accent roughening the explicit invitation. ‘And I will tell you that I will satisfy your every desire.’
Involuntarily, Rosie stiffened and then backed off a shaken step, forcing him to release her again. She-felt hideously out of her depth and the shock of that realisation renewed her grasp on reality again. ‘I can’t sleep with you...’ she began shakily.
‘Who said anything about sleeping?’
‘You said you wouldn’t melt,’ Rosie reminded him almost accusingly.
‘I can melt for one night and repent in the morning...’
‘I’m terribly tired ... and anyway you have your takeover bid to work at,’ Rosie gabbled as it struck her with paralysing force that there was nothing she wanted more, nothing she had ever wanted more than she wanted Constantine at that moment, even though every sane sense rebelled and she loathed him with every brain cell she possessed. That was such a devastating truth to face that Rosie was completely floored by it and incapable of retaliating with her usual fire and aggression.
His ebony brows drew together, his soul-destroyingly sensual mouth compressing as a blaze of derision fired his gaze. ‘Christos...I hate women who play sex games! And one night is the only offer I am likely to make,’ he delivered with cold clarity. ‘I don’t pay for sex—’
‘And you couldn’t talk a zombie into it!’ Rosie slung at him, feelingly, and stalked into the bedroom, but once she got that door shut her hot face crumpled and her throat convulsed. She leant back weakly while she fought the choking, burning rush of tears dammed up behind her eyelids.
Hours later, Rosie lay awake in the darkness, filled with self-loathing and rampant insecurity. She was still shattered by the sexual response which Constantine had drawn from her. As a teenager she had been subjected to a frightening assault and although she had mercifully emerged from that attack unharmed the encounter had deprived her of any desire to experiment with physical intimacy.
Indeed, growing up, Rosie had developed a deep and abiding distrust of the opposite sex. Furthermore, every time she’d got into a tight corner or felt unhappy she had run away from whatever council home she had been living in. That habit had got her into a lot of trouble until Maurice had convinced her that turning her back on her problems didn’t settle them.
All her energies had gone into building up a viable business which would pay the rent. Her need for independence and security had made her drive herself hard. But Anton had cracked her self-sufficiency by persuading her to come down to London. And that was when she had begun to change, opening herself out to emotions and possibilities she had never allowed herself to explore before.
Anton had even dragged her out shopping, making it painfully obvious that he couldn’t understand her dislike of feminine clothing, and once again she had given way, helplessly hooked on gaining her father’s approval. Tears burned her eyes. Anton had had a struggle to accept her platonic relationship with Maurice. But he had never been able to comprehend the simple fact that most men left her cold. In fact, she would have said that all men left her cold...until Constantine Voulos had appeared in that church.
Constantine—the only male she had ever wanted to rip the clothes off and flatten onto the nearest bed. Her cheeks scorched with embarrassment and she scrubbed furiously at her eyes. So that was the power of sexual desire; well, she didn’t need him or anyone else to spell out the obvious to her, but nothing could have prepared her for the raw, terrifying strength of that hunger. One kiss and she had gone to pieces like a starstruck groupie.
Thank heaven that after tomorrow she would never, ever see him again. That encounter had meant nothing to Constantine. In the heat of male lust and without even an ounce of liking or respect for her he had offered her a one-night stand. You couldn’t get much more sleazy, she thought painfully. He had been tempted but not so tempted that his better judgement hadn’t experienced a certain relief when she had turned him down. She had seen that in those surprisingly expressive eyes of his. She grimaced, exhaustion creeping over her like a heavy fog.
Waking with a start, she found Constantine staring down at her. Blinking in the lamplight, Rosie jerked bolt upright, a cold spasm of fear impelling her.
‘Do you us
ually go to bed with all your clothes on?’ Constantine enquired, studying the jeans and T-shirt she had put back on.
Taking in the short black robe he was wearing, shaken eyes widening at the slice of bare hair-roughened brown chest that was visible, Rosie leapt out of the other side of the bed.
‘Christos ... what do you think I was about to do? Attack you?’ he demanded, openly taken aback by her reaction.
‘The sofa is more my size.’
‘We can share the bed. It’s three in the morning and I have nothing on my mind but an overwhelming desire for sleep,’ Constantine asserted with distinct hauteur.
But Rosie closed the bedroom door without answering, traced her way across the dark room beyond and curled up wearily on the sofa. It felt as if she had only just closed her eyes when a loud, persistent knock started hammering on the door. She pushed her tousled head under a cushion and groaned, snuggling into the warmth of a blanket that hadn’t been there when she’d gone to sleep. Only when an impatient burst of Greek sounded did she lift her head again.
By then Constantine, clad in close-fitting charcoal-grey trousers and a white silk shirt, was yanking open the door. Dmitri surged in, waving a newspaper and showing every sign of a man throwing a fit. Constantine took the newspaper, exploded briefly back into Greek and then fell silent. Both men turned almost simultaneously to study Rosie...
Caught up in the drama, Rosie stared in wide, innocent enquiry back at them. Constantine opened the door again and the bodyguard departed with unconcealed eagerness. Then Constantine swung back to face Rosie.
‘You conniving, cheating little shrew!’ he condemned without warning, crossing the room in one long, powerful stride and raising her off the sofa with an even more powerful hand.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Rosie gasped, shocked by the rage burning in his black, diamond-cutting eyes.