by Lynne Graham
‘Wow,’ Rosie said, but she was still trembling and deep down inside she was a stricken bag of nerves. She had been jealous, jealous for the first time in her life! Justine’s familiar advances to Constantine had filled her with rage and she had lost her head. Now the paparazzi had a photo of them having a stand-up fight outside the hotel.
‘Your behaviour was...’ Constantine seemed to be struggling to find the right word in English.
‘Appalling,’ Rosie slotted in heavily. ‘But maybe we should try to look on the bright side of this—’
“Christos...you sound like Anton...the roof has fallen in, let us be joyful that the walls still stand!’ Constantine grated incredulously. ‘What bright side?’
Rosie coiled her trembling hands together. ‘If that picture is published, it’ll accelerate the break-up, won’t it?’
Constantine frowned without comprehension. ‘The break-up?’
‘When our fake marriage ends. I mean, obviously if we’re so badly matched we’re at each other’s throats within days of the wedding and we’ve got the publicity to prove it, we shouldn’t need to wait a whole two months to split up and go for a divorce,’ Rosie pointed out tightly.
‘There is a cloud in every silver lining.’
‘You’ve got that the wrong way round.’ Suddenly Rosie was feeling horribly depressed and wondering if it was that awful loss of temper which was responsible or the decided awareness that she definitely did not hate Constantine the way she had believed she did. What she hated and feared was the extraordinary power he had over her emotions.
‘Have I?’
A strained silence stretched.
‘When I asked how long it was before you became intimately involved with Maurice, I spoke without thought. I was not being as insensitive as I may have sounded,’ Constantine framed in a roughened undertone. ‘I was very disturbed to learn that you had endured a vicious assault at that age but I do not see Maurice as your saviour beyond that one gallant act...in fact I now see him as a yob who took advantage of your hero-worship and gratitude.’
From throwback to yob. Had Maurice risen from rock-bottom in Constantine’s estimation? It was hard to tell. But she herself had definitely sunk and shrunk in stature. Constantine no longer talked as if he thought she was the more dominant partner in the relationship. Now she sounded like a poor little victim.
‘I am not intimately involved with Maurice,’ Rosie muttered, biting hard at her lower lip.
‘Not now, not any longer,’ Constantine stated with grim emphasis, his strong jawline clenching as he shot her a sardonic glance. ‘And when we go our separate ways, if I have anything to do with it, you will not be crawling back to him! He’s a bad influence on you.’
‘I’m twenty, not ten, Constantine.’
‘But you still tell as many lies as a child.’ As the car drew to a halt in the courtyard at Son Fontanal, Constantine murmured drily, ‘Do you really think I could believe that you haven’t slept with either of the men you were living with? Or that Anton forced me to marry you over anything less than his honest belief that you were expecting his child?’
‘Don’t you dare call me a liar!’ Springing out of the limo, Rosie stalked indoors.
‘I console myself with one reflection,’ Constantine drawled as he drew level with her in the stone-flagged hall. ‘Had you been pregnant by Anton or indeed had there been a blood-tie between you—’ a derisive laugh expressed his opinion of that possibility ‘—I would have been trapped in this marriage for the rest of my days.’
Disbelief halted Rosie in her tracks. ‘That’s... that’s a crazy thing to say.’
‘Crazy?’ His winged brows drew together in genuine astonishment at the charge, his black eyes frowning. ‘In either of those circumstances it would have been a matter of honour that I should fully accept the obligation he laid upon me.’
‘But that’s outrageous...’ Rosie condemned unevenly.
‘To you, perhaps,’ Constantine conceded wryly. ‘But Anton brought me up and I had enormous respect for him. I owe him a great deal. He had a very strong sense of duty towards his family. That kind of loyalty should take precedence over personal feelings.’
A jerky little laugh fell from Rosie’s dry lips as she found herself blindly studying her feet. Suddenly she was very grateful that she had not repeated her claim that she was Anton’s daughter. She had a vision of Constantine hog-roped and tied to her out of respect for her father’s last wishes. ‘A matter of honour’, he called it. She winced at the demeaning concept but a tinge of curiosity remained.
‘Are you actually saying that you would have married a stranger and stayed married to her just because that was what Anton asked you to do?’ she prompted.
‘I have married a stranger...only you become more familiar and yet more strange with every minute I spend in your company,’ Constantine confessed with a sudden fierceness that made her shiver. ‘I do not understand you... and I will not be satisfied until I do!’
Rosie moved away a step. She wasn’t even looking at him. Already she had learnt that defence but it wasn’t working now. The darkly passionate rasp of his voice made her feed all hot and sort of quivery and even a foot from him she knew she was still too close for safety.
‘Look at me...’ Constantine invited softly.
Rosie was in retreat. ‘I think I—’
‘I am not a womaniser.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I had a brief and foolish affair with Justine when I was only twenty-one.’
‘Cosh... you must have made some impression!’ Accidentally meeting his intent golden eyes, Rosie became alarmingly short of breath. Without fully appreciating what she was doing, she started up the staircase backwards.
‘My wealth made the deepest impression.’ Constantine spread eloquent and dismissive hands as he strolled towards her with the fluid prowl of a lion tracking a nervous prey. ‘Yet it appears to mean little to you. That is a new experience for me and a most surprising response from you.’
‘Really?’ Rosie’s strained query wobbled as she flipped up two whole steps at once, tightly gripping the worn balustrade for support. ‘Why surprising?’
‘Had you been as avaricious as I believed, you would have played on the attraction between us. You would have been eager to share my bed in the expectation of profiting from that intimacy,’ Constantine responded with a slow, devastating smile. ‘But while the flesh was weak the will was stronger still and you were not tempted by the thought of what surrender might bring you.’
‘Constantine,’ Rosie said slightly shrilly, still heading up and back but utterly powerless to disengage her mesmerised gaze from the dark lure of his. ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that I might be the kind of devious woman who thinks that you could thrive on a challenge?’
‘But you know that truth as if you were born knowing it, pethi mou,’ Constantine savoured with disconcerting amusement, raking her with burnished eyes of appreciative gold. ‘Why else would you fight with me?’
‘Because... because...’ Rosie fumbled wildly for a reason as she reached the landing and tried to step up. She might have lost her balance had Constantine not reached out and swiftly steadied her with strong hands. ‘Because you irritate the hell out of me... that’s why I fight with you!’ she managed in a surge of frantic rebellion.
‘You fight with me,’ Constantine traded in a husky growl of disagreement, ‘to hold me at bay. But you’ve used that ploy once too often, and I may have been a slow learner but, believe me, when I catch on I’m faster than the speed of light and from now on every time you shout at me I will cover your mouth with mine.’
‘It won’t work... I’m naturally argumentative’ Rosie asserted even more tautly.
Golden fire in his molten appraisal, Constantine swept her up into his arms to carry her into the bedroom. ‘Christos... of course it will work. And once we have made love, once you have lain in my arms and tasted the pleasure we can share, you will never mention the
throwback again. I may not be perfect but I’m way beyond him in the reliability stakes.’
Rosie looked up at him, her heart racing so fast, it thundered in her ears. ‘We c-can’t do this,’ she stammered.
‘We can...let me show you how,’ Constantine groaned achingly against the corner of her mouth, his breath fanning her cheek. A hunger she couldn’t fight shot through her with the shattering shock effect of a lightning bolt and, reacting on pure instinct to the almost pleading quality of that deep, dark drawl, she turned her mouth under his... and burned.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rose surfaced from that kiss to find herself on the bed. Her dress started falling off as she pulled herself up on one elbow and she snatched at the wildly dipping neckline which was threatening to expose her breasts. A vaguely exploring hand discovered the reason for that lack of suspension. Her zip was down. In a daze she focused on Constantine.
Already he was half-undressed and he was watching her intently, a curious smile playing about his wide, wickedly sensual mouth. ‘Why do you act so shy? Do you only make love in the dark?’
A flush of pink ran up beneath her skin. Meeting those brilliant black eyes, she found it was so incredibly hard to breathe or to think but oh, so easy to feel the pulse of throbbing excitement that beat in tune with her racing heart. Do I want to do this? Rosie asked herself in sudden turmoil. Oh, yes. Should I? Definitely not. Hitching her dress with an unsteady hand, she snaked a foot slowly towards the edge of the bed.
Constantine strolled forward with immense calm and tugged her shoes off. His mobile phone buzzed. He tensed. Rosie watched him expectantly as he reached for it. The buzz stopped. ‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.
‘Switching it off—’
‘But it might be an important call!’
Beneath Rosie’s deeply shaken gaze, Constantine shrugged. ‘It can wait until morning, pethi mou.’
A whole night in Constantine’s arms, Rosie found herself savouring, and then she stopped herself dead. There was no such thing as a whole night with Constantine. As soon as he had satisfied his lust, he would be off to sleep elsewhere. His lust. Dear heaven, how could she even be thinking of making love with him? That anguished question had little hope of a rational answer when she discovered that she could think of nothing else.
‘You’re very nervous,’ Constantine murmured with a frown as he slid out of his well-cut trousers.
‘I am not nervous,’ Rosie stated with a shrill and desperate stab at dignity as she finally worked up sufficient will-power to scramble off the bed, hotly flushed and contorting herself to struggle with her zip. ‘But I’m afraid you can’t buy me with dinner and a new wardrobe... or even a reasonable pretence of being human for five minutes—’
Constantine intercepted her, confident hands closing over her rigid shoulders. ‘You don’t have to be scared of me. I’m not rough in bed,’ he told her huskily. ‘Not unless you want me to be...’
Finding herself backed up against the bed, Rosie stammered. ‘C-Constantine...’
‘Your heart is going crazy, pethi mou.’
In the act of clamping a guilty hand to the offending organ, Rosie discovered that Constantine had got there first. A warm palm curved against the pouting swell of her breast and she trembled at that light yet possessive touch, her eyes involuntarily closing on a tide of sexual awareness so powerful that her legs threatened to buckle beneath her. ‘Don’t!’ she gasped strickenly.
But he slowly slid the straps of her dress all the way down her arms and simultaneously pressed his mouth to the precise spot where a pulse was flickering wildly at the base of her throat. A faint moan escaped Rosie as he simply lifted her out of her dress and settled her back on the bed again.
‘I’ll be very gentle,’ Constantine promised thickly, with emphasis.
Her lashes flew up to encounter molten gold enquiry. One look and her bones felt as if they were melting beneath her skin. He came down beside her, lithe and dark and naked, and her heart gave a reactive lurch as she ran wondering, curious eyes over his impressive, powerful length. Her startled eyes widened at the bold, hard thrust of his manhood and she ran out of breath all at once, hot colour and alarm seizing her in a twin attack as, curiosity more than satisfied, she made an entirely instinctive move to escape again.
Constantine rolled over so fast to prevent that that she found herself trapped under him instead, a position that made her even more overpoweringly aware of what she had decided she ought to avoid. ‘Theos...’ he grated as he stared down into her anxious, evasive eyes. ‘I wish I had smashed Maurice’s face in... what the hell did he do to you in bed?’
‘Nothing!’
‘I am not going to hurt you...’ Constantine ran a caressing finger along the tense compression of her soft, full mouth, brilliant golden eyes shimmering over her, mesmerically sentencing her to stillness. ‘I bet he’s never heard of foreplay... Even if it takes me all night to prove it, I swear you will enjoy every moment with me, pethi mou.’ With the tip of his finger he pressed apart her lips and gently probed the moist cavern within while she stared up at him, lost in those compelling eyes of his, and her lips curved round that finger, laving it with her tongue.
Constantine smiled. Rosie’s heart flipped. He withdrew his finger, dropped his dark head and traced the fullness of her lower lip with the teasing tip of his tongue. She wanted him to kiss her. It was an instantaneous need and she shifted beneath him, all of a quiver with helpless impatience, her body taut with sudden screaming tension. Her hands flew up of their own volition and her fingers sank into his black hair to try and drag him down to her by force.
With a husky laugh, Constantine resisted her urging and instead let his tongue dip between her readily parted lips. ‘Foreplay,’ he whispered provocatively.
But, in the grip of hunger, Rosie wasn’t that easily quelled. She reached up until she found his sensual mouth for herself, forcing the pace by wrenching him down to her, not satisfied until he kissed her long and hard and then learning that she still wasn’t satisfied. But he was ahead of her then, shifting down her trembling length and letting knowing fingers glance over her swelling breasts and linger like the kiss of fire on the straining thrust of her taut nipples.
All the breath left her lungs in a strangled moan of tortured pleasure. Gazing down at her, Constantine made a husky soothing sound deep in his throat. It was incredibly sexy. He bent his head, long fingers pressing the pouting mounds together, and licked the rosy peaks gently and then more rapidly until her back arched on a long, sighing gasp. As he toyed with those achingly sensitive buds, Rosie whimpered and jerked, flames of tormented excitement building in an uncontrollable surge. Her hands skimmed with wild indecision over every part of him she could reach, tangling in his hair, smoothing over his blunt cheekbones, clutching at the smooth, muscular expanse of his shoulders.
Constantine rolled over, carrying her with him so that she was lying on top of him, and plundered her soft mouth with a force of passion that splintered through her squirming body at storm force. Meshing a hand into her mane of hair, he tugged her head up to look at her with burning golden eyes. ‘Would you like five minutes to cool down?’ he asked thickly.
‘Cool down?’ Rosie echoed breathlessly as if he were talking in a foreign language, the throbbing tips of her breasts grazed by the rough black curls on his chest, making her eyes slide shut again on a silent shiver of utterly boneless pleasure. She moved so that she could rub herself against him again and moaned.
A thick flood of Greek was wrenched from Constantine, his long, hard frame shuddering beneath hers in enforced response. Hard hands closed round her hips and dragged her up his extended length, parting her thighs so that she straddled him. ‘I need to cool down...no, I need—’ And he closed his mouth hungrily over a rosy nipple, jolting her with such a shock of intense sensation that she cried out, her head falling back.
He splayed long fingers over the ripe curve of her behind to settle her exactly where h
e wanted her and rock her back and forth over the velvet-smooth thrust of his arousal with an earthy groan of satisfaction. Rosie moaned in shivering, startled reaction to that new source of excitement, out of control and irretrievably lost in the violent surge of pleasure he was giving her. She burned and ached and craved more with a hunger that threatened to tear her apart.
‘Please...’ she gasped.
Constantine flipped her back onto the mattress and kissed her again, his tongue delving in electrifying imitation of an infinitely more invasive possession. At the same time he ran a knowing hand down the straining slender expanse of her inner thigh, making every tiny muscle in her entire body jerk, and fleetingly skimmed the moist, throbbing centre of her.
‘You feel like hot satin,’ he groaned against her swollen mouth.
Touched where she had never been touched before, Rosie was incapable of a vocal response. Her whole being was centred on the tormenting exploration of those skilful fingers. She wanted to thrash about and he wouldn’t let her. Her heart slammed like a hammer against her breastbone as she sobbed for breath, driving to such a wild pitch of excitement that she was convinced she was being deliberately tortured.
And then, at the height of that teeth-clenching, agonising pleasure, Constantine pulled her under him and plunged into her with the ravishing force of an invading army. Rosie let out a yelp of pain that would have woken the dead and then sank her teeth vengefully into a hard, muscular shoulder. He cursed and flinched into sudden stillness. As the level of agony subsided to a dulled but still perceptible throb, Rosie unclenched her teeth and looked up at him accusingly.
‘Theos...’ Constantine rasped, black eyes expressively awash with guilty, angry bewilderment as he snatched in a ragged breath. ‘I’m sorry... you excited me so much, I lost control.’
Incredibly touched by the look of bemusement in those magnetic dark eyes, Rosie’s tension gave. ‘I—’