Unworldly Secretary, Untamed Greek

by Kim Lawrence

  She opened her mouth to deliver one and stopped dead.

  What am I doing?

  She was angry with Theo but the only thing he had been guilty of was kindness; she gave a shamed grimace.

  Why was she still fighting for the house? When there was a chance Gran might come home there had been a reason for battling against the odds to keep it intact. Now there wasn’t. Gran was never coming home, it didn’t matter what happened to the place—it was just a building, bricks and mortar.

  It was no longer, she realized, a question of if she sold but when.

  ‘I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but what I want most now is to be left alone.’

  His expression was dubious as he searched her face. As the silence stretched so did her conviction that he was about to refuse her request. So when he did agree without an argument, but on the strict proviso she use the number he left should she need anything, Beth felt a sense of anticlimax.

  Her perverse response would only have made sense had she wanted him to stay.

  Theo made it as far as the car before he realised he had left the keys in the house.

  He lifted his hand to knock on the door but the defective latch had not caught and pushing it swung it inwards with a Halloween squeak. He grimaced at this fresh evidence of the house’s decay; no insurance firm was going to pay up if there was a break-in with the state of this building’s defences.

  Theo felt his temper mount as he thought of Beth spending nights alone in a place that was an open invitation to any passing low life who would consider her easy prey.

  He was not a man who allowed his imagination to run away with him but Theo was fighting a head full of nightmare images as he closed the door behind him; he would send a locksmith first thing in the morning.

  The instant he walked into the kitchen, he knew his deliberate efforts to be noisy had been wasted. Beth’s sobs would drown out a twenty gun salute, let alone his foot-stomping attempts to let her know he was there.

  She was on her knees in the middle of the room, her face buried in a bundle of blue woollen fabric, sobbing her heart out.

  Watching her, listening to her, Theo felt as though someone had reached into his chest and grabbed his heart. The heart-rending sounds made the skin on his scalp tingle; each successive sob tightened the grip of the icy fingers around his heart.

  Either he made a sound or some sixth sense alerted her to his presence, but Beth turned her head, her hair wafting across her tear-stained red face as she lifted her head.

  Under her dark lashes, her eyes connected with his. Theo watched them widen, not with pleasure but dismay.

  Some perverse part of him wanted her to smile when she saw him.

  She dragged a hand across her damp face and sniffed. Visibly struggling to regain her composure, she got to her feet.

  Theo looked at the crumpled garment she still clutched.

  She caught the direction of his gaze. ‘Gran’s favourite cardie.’ She put the damp woollen bundle on the table. ‘It smelt of her.’

  The muffled explanation set in motion a tidal wave of empathy that totally submerged him as her gold-flecked green eyes, filled with an ineffable sadness, meshed with his.

  ‘I left my car keys.’ The desire to gather her in his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right, even if it wasn’t, was almost overwhelming. A natural human instinct to offer comfort, he told himself, and one that he resisted.

  A hug might start out as comfort but there was enough sexual charge in the air between them that meant it might end up as something else. Normally, he would not have been concerned but his normally reliable restraint had developed a few cracks.

  Feeling more utterly foolish than she ever had in her life, Beth watched through her damp lashes as he retrieved his key ring from the table. She hated that it had been Theo who had witnessed her meltdown.

  ‘Scents are very…evocative,’ he agreed, thinking of the womanly floral scent of her body.

  She looked up into his lean, darkly devastatingly handsome face and smiled before she blew out a gusty breath and said, ‘Right, goodbye again and thanks.’

  Standing there with the plucky smile painted on her face, she looked incredibly fragile. Theo could see her composure was paper-thin; the gutsy act she was putting on was for his benefit.

  Was this display bravery or was it just sheer stubborn independence? Well, either way, it only increased the protectiveness that rose up in him when he looked at her…She was so damned fragile.

  ‘I could call Andreas.’

  The suggestion made her stiffen. Anger coursed through her and Beth embraced it. ‘I actually thought you were being nice.’ First mistake, Beth. The second was starting to feel grateful. ‘Now, how stupid does that make me? Oh, in case you were wondering, that was a rhetorical question.’

  She already knew the answer.

  While she’d thought he was being kind, that he cared, he was simply working out how to use this situation to his own advantage.

  ‘I don’t suppose someone like me is even a person to you!’ she flung. ‘My mistake,’ she added bitterly. ‘I forgot what sort of person I’m dealing with; you’re a self-centred manipulative pig. Well, for the record, if you want your brother’s girlfriend you’ll have to get her without my help because I’m not playing any more.’ Breathing hard, she made a symbolic gesture of wiping her hands clean of them.

  ‘It never occurred to me that you would be…playing. In my opinion, you should not be alone here. I mentioned Andreas because I thought you might find his company preferable to mine.’

  His calm response deflated her bubble of righteous anger.

  ‘Elizabeth, you shouldn’t be alone.’ Theo took a step towards her, hand outstretched.

  Rejecting the sympathy she saw reflected in his dark eyes, Beth backed away, both hands lifted in a protective barrier as she growled, ‘Just go away and leave me alone.’ She stopped and gulped before adding huskily, ‘Please, Theo, just…’ She stopped, her eyes clinging to his dark lean face, breathing hard. Then, with a tiny groan, she flung herself across the space separating them.

  Theo stood still, barely breathing, his body rigid as she reached up, grabbed his head between her hands and, raising herself on tiptoe, her slim body shaking as she plastered herself up against him to reach her goal and she pressed a hard kiss to his mouth.

  She stepped away, feeling almost as shocked as he looked that that she had followed through with the wild, crazy impulse.

  She just said one word. ‘Go!’

  Without a word, Theo turned, his painful arousal making it hard for him to walk in a straight line. It had taken every ounce of his self-control and some more not to kiss her back, not to gather her in his arms and crush her soft body into his, hunger still roared like an out of control fire in his veins.

  Beth watched him walk to the door, the voice in her head screaming—don’t go. She opened her mouth to call out but nothing came out. He had opened the door when the words came.

  ‘Don’t go!’

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE husky cry made Theo freeze in his tracks. He turned slowly and began to walk back to where she stood, looking small and fragile but wearing an expression of reckless bright-eyed determination.

  Her knuckles stood out, bloodless white, as she knitted her hands and begged, ‘Stay with me.’

  He gritted his teeth as he fought his primal response to the invitation; it roared in his blood as he kept his expression neutral and said, ‘I’ll get Muriel’s sister-in-law.’

  Beth frowned, tears of sheer frustration standing out in her eyes as she shook her head. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  Theo, who knew it was not what she meant, continued to pretend ignorance. Acknowledging what she was saying would make the impossible even harder. The temptation of responding to the beseeching plea in her eyes was so great that Theo had to take several deep breaths before he trusted himself to respond.

  ‘I can’t.’<
br />
  Her lips trembled and tears spilled from her luminous eyes. ‘You could but you don’t want to!’

  But he had wanted to, she thought, the muscles low in her pelvis tightening as she recalled the hard imprint of his erection pressing into the softness of her belly. She might not know much but she knew he had wanted her when she’d kissed him.

  ‘That is not the point.’ Theo could feel the cold sweat standing out in beads across his forehead as he fought to retain control. ‘You are upset and you are vulnerable.’

  His burning glance dropped to her provocatively pouting lips and he realised that he had never wanted to possess a woman more in his life—it was consuming him from the inside out.

  ‘I am trying to do the right thing here,’ he told her, clinging on to his principles with his fingernails. ‘And tomorrow you will thank me for it,’ he predicted hoarsely.

  ‘Don’t tell me how I feel,’ Beth flared angrily. She raised her hand, never sure, in retrospect, if she actually intended to lash out in frustration.

  Before she could follow through with anything, he caught her hand tight, his fingers curling around her wrist, pulling it against his heaving chest.

  Beth froze. His lean body was racked by tremors; she could feel them rippling through his body in waves.

  The leashed strength and controlled power she sensed in him excited her more than she would have imagined possible. Everything about him, from his sheer undiluted raw masculinity to the sinful curve of his marvellous mouth excited her.

  She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of him.

  ‘Elizabeth.’ He slurred her name in a heavily accented growl.

  She opened her eyes and stared up at him, longing in her face as he slid a hand into her hair, letting the silky skein fall through his fingers.

  Beth watched the muscles in his brown throat work as he swallowed hard. He lifted his head and ran a not quite steady hand back and forth over his hair.

  ‘I’m going to call the vicar’s wife and get her to ask her sister-in-law to stay the night, then—’

  ‘You want me.’ The certainty sent a wave of relief through her.

  ‘Beth…’

  The warning note in his voice had no effect on Beth’s intentions. She tilted her head back to look him in the face, raised herself on tiptoe and linked her fingers behind his neck.

  Theo tried to look anywhere but at her but he was drawn to her face as she fixed her clear gaze on him. ‘You want me,’ she said again very softly.

  The dull thud in his head was like a metronome. ‘Elizabeth, you—’ She laid a hand against his lips and, with a groan that she felt vibrate through his body, Theo opened his mouth and kissed her palm.

  The moist, warm contact sent a deep shiver through her body.

  Again, he shook his head and tried to step back. Beth slid her fingers into his hair. ‘Please, Theo, I just need not to think, not to feel…I want it all to go away for a little while. I know you could do that for me.’ She looked up at him, the light from the lamp giving an alabaster sheen to her pale skin, unable to explain the instincts that drove her.

  He nodded slowly and she felt a quiver run through his lean hard body, but still he held back. ‘I know you want to block out the pain but it will still be there.’

  ‘I know, but give me this one night.’

  He sucked in a breath through flared nostrils and fought to take control of his rampaging hormones. Deep inside, he sensed that the fight was already lost but, conscious that her vulnerability put her out of reach, he held on, if not to his sanity, at least to his principles.

  ‘Look, you’re feeling a lot of things right now that—’

  She lifted her chin and cut across him. ‘Do not patronise me, Theo. I’m not a ch…child.’ She bit her quivering lower lip. When she had asked him to stay she had genuinely not anticipated rejection. ‘You don’t want me—it is no problem.’

  Theo held a groan behind clenched teeth as he watched her give a pathetically unconvincing shrug of unconcern.

  ‘I just wish you’d say so instead of pretending to be noble.’

  Something snapped inside Theo; there was a red mist before his eyes as, with a low growl vibrating in his throat, he lunged forward and reached for her. Grabbing her by both wrists, he turned her round and jerked her into his body.

  The impact with his rock-hard body sent the breath from Beth’s lungs. She tilted her head back and they stood there, both breathing hard as they stared into each other’s eyes.

  ‘I am not noble!’

  But he was, she decided, beautiful. ‘Good,’ she said, unable to hide her relief.

  Theo raised her hands to his lips, kissing the blue-veined inner aspect of her narrow wrists before he freed them.

  He stroked her face with the pad of his thumb before pushing his fingers into her hair. Beth stood, unable to move, simply able to feel sensation coursing through her body as he slowly lowered his mouth to hers.

  She felt her shaking knees give as he kissed her hard, one hand cupping the back of her head, the other framing her face. She grabbed a handful of shirt to hold herself upright as she opened her mouth beneath his.

  She moaned low in her throat as his tongue slid into her mouth. He began to lift his head and Beth panicked. ‘Don’t stop!’

  The plea sent a ripple through his tense, primed body. ‘I can’t.’

  Seeing his face through a haze of dancing heat, the expression of driving urgency stamped on his dark features as his big hands closed around her narrow ribcage made Beth’s control slip several more notches.

  She thought what control? and gasped as he lifted her with no apparent effort off the ground so that their faces were level.

  ‘Kiss me!’ he commanded.

  Beth did and felt him groan low in his throat and she met his tongue with her own. Her hands were wound tight around his neck as they both strained to deepen the pressure, kissing with frenzied feverish hunger.

  The heat and hardness of his lean virile body seeped through the layers of clothes that separated them. Beth’s starved senses soaked up the impressions like a vacuum sucking in air; it was utterly and totally intoxicating. There was no room for anything else in her mind—just Theo.

  Her entire body hummed with excitement. Beth was breathless and shaking with the intensity of it; it pooled, thick and hot, between her thighs. Each fresh stabbing incursion of his tongue sent her deeper into the sensual maelstrom she was suspended in.

  ‘Oh, God!’ she whispered against his mouth. ‘You taste so good.’ She ran her fingers over the dark stubble on his jaw, enjoying every single sensation, hungry to discover all of him.

  He replied, speaking in his native tongue, the words spilling from his lips with erotic throaty passion that sent electrical tingles shimmering along Beth’s nerve endings.

  ‘Look at me!’

  It was a struggle to respond but Beth prised her heavy eyelids open and the febrile glitter she saw glowing like hot embers in the darkness of his eyes made her senses spin.

  ‘Say my name, I want to hear you say my name…’

  Considering she was in the grip of a newly discovered need to please him and felt almost a compulsion to satisfy any demand he made, she felt strangely shy complying with his modest request.

  She slid her hands over his shoulders, exploring and revelling in the rock-hard solidity and strength of the muscles there before framing his face between her hands. ‘Theo,’ she said.

  The expression in her eyes when she said his name dragged like a weight at his heart.

  ‘Theo, are you going to take me to bed?’

  His pupils dilated dramatically as he turned his head, a feral moan leaving his lips as he pressed a kiss to her palm and shook his head. ‘Too far,’ he slurred, unable to articulate the depth of urgency in his blood. He kissed her again, bending her head back, exposing the long lovely line of her pale neck.

  He was shaking with the need that consumed him as he lifted her into his arms, sof
t and warm and smelling like the very essence of femininity.

  They continued to kiss as he carried her over to the old saggy sofa beside the old-fashioned blacked range, but Beth was oblivious to the broken spring digging into her back as he laid her down.

  One foot braced on the floor, his big body curved over her. As she gazed up at this big beautiful man looking down at her, his smoky eyes dark with desire, Beth’s senses leapt and things deep inside her shifted and tightened, the heat spreading out from the tight hot core low in her belly until she was burning.

  She felt both overwhelmed and excited, wanting him close, wanting to feel his skin, taste his skin—wanted with a raw urgency that scared and thrilled her.

  His fingers shook as they slipped the tie on her robe. Peeling back the fabric to expose her body, he caught his breath.

  ‘You are beautiful,’ he rasped, cupping one small perfect breast in his hand, his thumb rubbing across the peak straining against the lacy covering before pushing it back to reveal the smooth perfection of first one small quivering mound and then the other.

  Holding her eyes, he fought his way out of his shirt.

  Beth watched as his ribcage rose and fell. Broad of shoulder, the muscles of his upper body were perfectly formed, his skin glowed a deep Mediterranean gold—he was utterly gorgeous. Beth gasped as he lowered himself onto her, flattening her sensitised breasts against his bare chest.

  He kissed her as though he’d drain her, until she barely knew where he ended and she began.

  The heat in her blood hummed as he groaned, ‘I want to taste all of you.’

  Beth closed her eyes tight as he kissed his way down her body, caressing her with his hands. She gasped as he pushed back the lacy covering to reveal all of her; when he took her into his mouth she thought she would die from the sheer pleasure of it.

  Her control snapped totally as she reached for him. Her teeth clenched, her flushed face a mask of fierce need, she was almost sobbing with frustration as her fingers fumbled frantically at the buckle of his belt.