by Lynne Graham
And then just as suddenly she was freed, left to find her own support on wildly wobbling legs, dilated green eyes pinned to him in shock. That separation was as painful and as unwelcome as an amputation when every shameless, sensitised inch of her quivering body craved more—so much more that she was in torment.
She focused in appalled fascination on the grimy set of fingerprints which now marred his silk shirt, sweeping up from his waist, glancing across his broad chest in an obviously lingering caress and then indenting clearly across his wide shoulders where she had clung. Those marks were now exhibited for all to see, like a public badge of her shame and surrender.
‘You need to change your shirt,’ she mumbled shakily.
‘I shall wear it with pride,’ Constantine confided with disconcerting amusement. ‘There don’t seem to be many parts of me that you overlooked—’
‘Change it,’ Rosie muttered in a heartfelt plea, hurriedly sidestepping him to head back towards the house. ‘I’m going for a bath.’
‘I’ll see you upstairs,’ Constantine murmured smoothly.
She stiffened and then grasped his meaning. He had to change and half his clothes were in the wardrobe in her room, even though he slept in a bedroom across the landing. Her head was still spinning. One kiss and she had been so far gone, Constantine could have done anything with her! Not a bit of wonder he was laughing! She was his for the taking and he knew it.
A taxi was waiting in the courtyard and as Rosie entered the hall a maid was showing a grey-haired man with a briefcase into the drawing room. Momentarily, the man stilled, shooting Rosie an almost startled glance. Then, just as abruptly, his keen dark eyes veiled and he inclined his head in a polite nod of acknowledgement before disappearing from her view.
Rosie looked curiously at Dmitri where he stood bedow the stairs. ‘Who was that?’
“Theodopoulos Stephanos. Mr Voulos’s lawyer.’
No doubt the man had stared because she looked such a fright in her gardening clothes ... hardly the image he might have expected from Constantine’s wife, temporary or otherwise.
In the bathroom, she stripped off. An agony of self-loathing engulfed her and for long, anguished minutes she simply stood there, tasting the painful reality of her supreme unimportance in Constantine’s life ...
Not a wife, not a girlfriend, not even a mistress. You’re a puddle of self-pity, a little inner voice scolded drily as she washed herself. Maybe he had been telling the truth when he’d said he just hadn’t been ready to answer questions about their relationship. Maybe, in her defensive insecurity, she was her own worst enemy. Angry confusion shrilled through her then. Now she was making excuses for Constantine and blaming herself!
Anchoring a fleecy towel round her in a careless swathe, she walked back into the bedroom...and stopped dead. Her bed was occupied. Constantine was in it, every muscular line of his lithe body fluidly indolent, his bronzed skin startlingly dark against the pale bedlinen. Eyes huge, Rosie gaped at him. A smile of intense amusement curled his wickedly sensual mouth.
‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing here—’
‘Theos ...’ Constantine ran deceptively sleepy eyes of gold over her and her heart took a frantic, convulsive leap against her breastbone. ‘You need me to state my intentions?’
‘I’ve got a very fair idea of your intentions, Constantine,’ Rosie spluttered, stalking over to the door, intending to throw it wide in an invitation for him to leave.
‘It’s locked.’
Rosie spun round. Constantine displayed a large, ornate key for her inspection. ‘We wouldn’t want to startle the staff again.’
‘Give me that key!’ Rosie launched at him furiously.
‘Come and get it ...’
Rosie hesitated.
Constantine dealt her a wolfish grin, white teeth gleaming against golden skin. ‘Didn’t I tell you that you’d learn caution around me?’
That one taunt was sufficient to overcome it. Rosie landed on the bed in a flying leap of temper and made a wild snatch at the key. Constantine flung it across the room and snaked two powerful arms round her slender waist to entrap her. ‘I knew you would rise to the bait.’
Clamped to his hard, lean length in impotent stillness, Rosie flung her fiery head back and glowered down at him. ‘Let go of me!’
‘Self-denial doesn’t come naturally to me. And I wouldn’t say that you were a rousing success in that department either.’ Constantine surveyed her with thickly lashed eyes screened to a mocking sliver of knowing gold. ‘Ten hours a day with a hoe you use like a machete! I have to confess that no woman has ever gone to that amount of effort to resist me, pethi mou.’
‘I just don’t want to be anywhere near you!’ Rosie snarled, feeling the naked heat of his intimidatingly relaxed length striking her through the thin sheet and the rumpled towel that separated them. Terrifying little shivers of seething sexual awareness were already pulling her skin tight over her bones and strangling her breathing processes.
‘Because you don’t trust yourself,’ Constantine savoured with raw satisfaction. ‘And, watching you bend and stretch in those shorts, I was equally challenged. You have the most provocative heart-shaped derrière, little rag-doll... and when you shake your T-shirt because you’re getting too warm those beautiful little breasts bounce and push against the damp cotton until your nipples—’
‘Stop it!’ Appalled to realise that he had been watching her and noticing such things, Rosie was mortified.
Brilliant dark golden eyes intent, Constantine appraised the hot pink flush on her cheeks. ‘You still blush like an innocent. That turns me on even harder,’ he confided huskily as he fluidly shifted to kick the sheet away and yanked at her towel to detach it.
Taken by surprise, Rosie made a mad grab at her only covering just a second too late and found herself swung over lightning-fast onto her back with Constantine looking down at her instead. ‘No!’
‘Christos...you smell of soap—all clean and scrubbed and sweet. But even when you’re dirty and sweaty and too warm you excite me. The scent of you, the feel of you, the taste of you,’ he growled sexily, a lean, hair-roughened thigh deftly parting hers as he brought his weight down on her and shamelessly acquainted her with the smooth, hard thrust of his erection.
A burst of burning heat ignited low in the pit of Rosie’s stomach. ‘Your lawyer’s waiting to see you downstairs!’ she gasped in sudden recall, fighting her own weakness with all her might.
‘Theo’s already gone.’ A slight frown drew Constantine’s winged brows together. ‘Crazy of him to come all this way only to deliver some papers and then refuse to even stay for lunch.’ Golden eyes smouldered down at her hectically flushed face. ‘But remarkably tactful.’
Transfixed, Rosie stared back up at him, great rolling breakers of excitement making her heart thunder and her limbs quiver. Her breasts felt swollen and tender, the taut peaks aching for his mouth and his hands, and never had she been more agonisingly aware of the moist, throbbing centre of need between her thighs.
‘We don’t need other people around us, pethi mou. They get in the way and I am far too distracted to work. Say something,’ Constantine invited encouragingly.
Rosie parted dry lips and managed only one word, so intense was her arousal. ‘Please...’
Primitive triumph flashed in his glittering gaze. He ran slow, seeking fingers over the pouting mounds he had bared for his pleasure. As his thumbs glanced over the stiff pink buds straining up to him, she gasped and rose against him, every nerve-ending in her body screaming in response. He thrust her flat with a devouringly passionate kiss. She kissed him back with desperate urgency, everything she had held back for long, endless days suddenly betraying her in a stormy flood of possessive need. Her hands ran over him, smoothing over warm golden skin sheathing whipcord muscles, and a hungry moan of impatience escaped her.
‘You are always in a rush ...’
Rosie twisted and squirmed, on fire with want
ing him, not a shred of self-restraint left or even recalled. Clenching her fingers into his thick, silky black hair, she shifted her legs in an aching invitation more blatant than speech.
With an urgent groan, Constantine sank his hands to her hips and hauled her under him. Then he hesitated. ‘I don’t want to hurt you again.’
‘You don’t argue with me in my fantasies...you don’t stop...you don’t make me wait!’ Rosie sobbed in explosive frustration.
The silence thundered. She closed her eyes in horror. Oh, no, I didn’t say that ... did I? she asked herself.
‘What do I do?’ he murmured.
‘What I want,’ Rosie mumbled.
Constantine vented a ragged laugh of appreciation. The velvet-hard thrust of him surged teasingly against her, gently probing the slick, damp welcome awaiting him.
Rosie was on a high of such shivering excitement, she couldn’t have vocalised to save her life. What she wanted was even more thrilling in reality. He entered her so slowly that she raked her fingernails down his back. The pleasure was so intoxicatingly intense, she lost herself in the bold feel of him stretching her with delicious force.
‘Open your eyes,’ Constantine ordered.
Rosie lifted lush lashes to see the blazing gold command in his eyes and drowned. She was drugged into silence by sensation, feverish, all-absorbing sensation, as he withdrew and then thrust into her all over again. He was slow and then fast, smooth and then rough. She couldn’t do anything but cling with impassioned hands and moan and sob her incredible pleasure. He went on and on and on, driving her to mindless heights until the pulsing, tormenting heat inside her exploded and unleashed a shattering tidal wave of satisfaction.
As he shuddered in the protective circle of her arms, an aching flood of tenderness consumed Rosie and she pressed her lips lovingly to a smooth brown shoulder. Drinking in the hot, musky scent of his damp skin, she felt utterly at peace.
Constantine released her from his weight and bent over her. ‘Where are you under all that hair?’ he groaned, lean fingers brushing the tangle of bright curls gently off her brow.
Compelling dark eyes probed her dreamy face. His fingertips lightly traced the delicate curve of her jawbone and she turned her cheek slowly into his palm, a wondering light in her gaze as she recalled his eagerness to leave her the first time they had made love. In the heart-stopping silence, he rearranged a straying curl to his own satisfaction and let his thumb lightly caress the reddened pout of her lower lip.
He collided with her fascinated scrutiny and a faint, rueful smile curved his wide mouth. ‘I can’t stop touching you...’
That charismatic smile turned her heart over and inside out.
‘And I want you all over again,’ he confided.
As he pulled her back into his arms, she quivered in helpless response. Her fingers delved into his luxuriant hair. Held fast by his dark golden eyes, she was conscious of an extraordinary surge of happiness.
‘It was a really good idea to give the staff the rest of the day off,’ Rosie mused, seated on the edge of the scrubbed table, watching Constantine struggle to find a tidy way of finishing off the doorstep-sized sandwich she had made. ‘But I didn’t realise you would be so helpless without a chef.’
Constantine looked wary. ‘I thought you could cook.’
‘I know, and look where it got you. I live on salad, fruit and convenience food. Your chef does not use convenience food and he deserves a medal for serving up such wonderful menus on that prehistoric cooker. Still, at least I can make coffee,’ she murmured with dancing eyes, flicking a meaningful glance at the undrinkable tarry brew he had prepared when challenged.
‘You also look very good on a kitchen table,’ Constantine told her.
Rosie swung up her jean-clad legs and lay on her side, posing like a fifties film starlet, her bright head propped on the heel of her hand. A slow smile curved his mouth and he laughed. ‘You like sending me up, don’t you?’
‘You’ve only just realised?’
‘Slow learner,’ he murmured, studying her with appreciative eyes as she slid in one fluid, impulsive movement off the table again. ‘But I hope you’re not heading for a window, pethi mou.’
‘A window?’ And then she reddened and ran her fingers restively through her hair, recalling the manner in which she had left his home in Greece and the quick escape she had made the day she’d gone down the mountain with Maurice.
‘In certain moods you’re like a cat burglar.’
‘I’ve had a lot of practice over the years.’ She laughed uneasily, not liking the turn the conversation had taken.
‘Running away? It’s a waste of time with me,’ Constantine informed her with deep conviction. ‘The more you run, the harder I chase. It’s an elemental response. I can’t seem to beat it.’
‘You just want to catch up with me so that you can tell me what you think of me for doing it in the first place.’
‘You only do it when I have upset you,’ he returned with a perception that shook her. ‘Or got too close. Now I can stop doing the first but I’m definitely not going to stop doing the second.’
‘Is that a threat?’
He tugged her into his arms with insistent hands. ‘I don’t make threats any more,’ he said softly. ‘I make promises. I want to know everything there is to know about you, agape mou.’
The tenderness in his steady dark appraisal made her heart sing. He was being so open, so honest. A little twinge of shame filled her as she lowered her own gaze. She was the one with the secrets, not him. Soon she would need to tell him all over again that she was Anton’s daughter...but not just at this moment when she was revelling in the awareness that he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
The thunderous slam of a door jolted Rosie awake. Blinking bemusedly in the lamplight, she pulled herself up against the pillows and focused hazily on Constantine where he stood at the foot of the bed, bare-chested, only a pair of faded tight jeans riding low on his lean hips. A tender smile curved her lips. He looked so spectacular, he always looked so spectacular, that she could even forgive him for carelessly wakening her up from the first sound sleep she had enjoyed in days.
Ferocious dark eyes slashed into hers. Rosie stiffened in dismay, her smile dying, her tummy muscles clenching. Seething tension emanated from Constantine in waves.
‘What’s wrong?’ she whispered.
‘I was hungry. I got up to get something to eat and on the way downstairs I began wondering what was so important about those papers that Theo thought it necessary to fly over and personally place them in my hands...and if they were worthy of that importance why didn’t he say so and why was he so keen to make an exit again?’
Rosie’s attention slowly dropped to the bulky brown envelope clasped in one lean brown hand. Her heart jumped into her mouth.
‘But now I understand. Theo was embarrassed,’ Constantine continued in the same murderously quiet drawl. ‘Because when I gave him the licence to empty a certain safety-deposit box held in Anton’s name neither one of us was expecting anything of a confidential nature to emerge...’
He lifted his other hand and something fluttered down onto the bed. Rosie snatched the item up. Her hand trembled. She was looking at a small colour snap of herself as a toddler.
Black eyes blazed condemnation at her, his lean, dark features clenched hard. ‘You wanted revenge, didn’t you? You were going to wait right to the bitter end to throw your paternity in my face!’
CHAPTER TEN
REVENGE? Stunned by the accusation, Rosie reacted on instinct. Sliding out of bed at speed, she made an unwittingly pleading movement towards Constantine.
‘Forget it. The last thing on my mind right now is that deceptively tempting little body of yours!’ Constantine asserted with biting derision.
Swept by abrasive dark eyes, Rosie suddenly felt appallingly naked. She grabbed up the towel lying on the rug by the bed and hurriedly wrapped it around her. ‘Where did you get that photo from?�
�
In answer, Constantine withdrew a whole handful of photos from the envelope and cast them down on the mattress like a thrown gauntlet. ‘Rosie from birth to the age of nine. And not a happy child according to this pictorial account. You’ve got tears in your eyes in half of them and what look like slap marks all down your leg on another.’ His deep, dark drawl wavered slightly and his eloquent mouth compressed hard. ‘I imagine Anton was suitably tortured in receipt of such heartbreaking reminders of your existence. Theos ... your mother must’ve been bitter!’
‘Maybe.’ Her tortured breath caught in her throat. ‘I did try to tell you who I was—’
‘And your mother taught you that same bitterness,’ Constantine stabbed as if she hadn’t spoken, murderously bright golden eyes lancing into her.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You were planning to unveil yourself as Anton’s child only when Thespina was present to enjoy the full effect of your revelation.’
Rosie’s eyes flew wide, shock freezing her facial muscles. ‘I would never have done that! Never!’
‘Well, you certainly weren’t about to waste any time trying to convince me of your true identity, not once you’d had the opportunity to think the idea over,’ Constantine condemned between gritted teeth. ‘Keeping quiet was much more fun, wasn’t it?’
Hopelessly confused by his attacks, Rosie gasped, ‘I still don’t understand—’
In one powerful stride, Constantine reached her and closed two strong hands round her slender forearms to force her closer. ‘Christos... you were waiting for your moment and hoping to cause the maximum damage. You weren’t prepared that day in London when Thespina arrived without warning. But you told me—you just blurted it out like a bad joke and then you never referred to the subject again. OK, I didn’t listen, but you made no real attempt to convince me that you were serious! What was I supposed to think?’