Loving Nik didn’t make her blind. He was ruthless. He would use anything and anybody for his own ends. And this inconceivable love which should have died a decent death years ago was a weakness which made her vulnerable.
Maybe she was one of those crazy, sad women who associated love with pain, a victim of her own conditioning. How else could she explain how she felt about him? Right now she was so furiously angry with Nik that she wanted to scream and yet she was equally aware that on some twisted level deep down inside her she was enjoying the fact that he was with her, his entire attention focused on her to the exclusion of all else. And that acknowledgement just made her feel ashamed.
‘You don’t love him,’ Nik murmured softly. ‘If you had loved him you would have slept with him the first chance you got.’
Infuriated by his persistence, Leah spun back to him. ‘Believe it or not, some of us are capable of practising self-restraint!’
Nik shifted like a lunging tiger cat on the sofa and angled deceptively slumbrous eyes over her angry face. ‘You don’t practise it around me.’
The awareness that she had walked right into that smooth reminder outraged her.
‘Not that I’m complaining.’ Nik sent her a glittering smile that burned over her sensitive skin like acid. ‘Rampant lust appeals far more to my natural instincts than eyes meeting across a crowded basket of Brussels sprouts. It was the Food Hall, wasn’t it? True romance blossomed among the veg. Cristo, I am riveted by the sheer cliff-edge excitement of such an encounter.’
‘Paul has more romance in his little finger than you have in your entire body!’ Leah slung at him in shuddering rage.
‘Yes, he bought you coffee... I’d have taken you to the nearest hotel and poured champagne over your beautiful breasts and I can assure you that you would have found that far more exciting.’
Leah went white, stabbed by savage pain from an unexpected source. She had no problem envisaging Nik in such a role. Suddenly she wondered how many women had had champagne poured over their breasts by her husband. Her stomach churned. She dealt him a look of icy distaste. ‘Don’t get me mixed up with your bimbos. I’m going to bed!’
And not his bed either, she decided hotly, snatching up a few necessities on her stalking progress through the master bedroom suite and out again.
Fifteen minutes later she was ensconced in a bed at the far end of the corridor behind a securely locked door. They might be stuck with each other but she didn’t need to sleep with him! In fact, she would have had a whole lot more respect for herself had she never slept with him. What was she...some kind of masochist? As she had stood there tonight listening to him ridicule her relationship with Paul, she had found out all over again that hate and love were but two sides of the same coin.
A slight noise made her tense and turn over. She was just in time to see a tall, dark shadow drop fluidly and almost silently over the sill of the lowered window. On the edge of a scream, Leah stared in disbelief as a shaft of moonlight illuminated Nik’s starkly handsome features.
‘Tell me,’ he said conversationally, ‘is this game of musical beds aimed at adding a little romance to our relationship? Was I supposed to climb in with a rose between my teeth and a box of chocolates?’
Leah unglued her tongue from the roof of her dry mouth. ‘There’s a two-hundred-foot drop down to the beach out there!’
A flash of white teeth revealed his amusement. ‘And wouldn’t you have had a lot of explaining to do if I’d fallen?’
Her lashes fluttered. He was quite untouched by the horror which had enclosed her the instant she had registered the risk he had taken. An unthinkable, illogical risk for anyone as prudent as Leah. But not for Nik. Nik thrived on danger. Nik loved to be challenged. ‘You are c-crazy!’ she gasped, feeling quite sick as she thought of what could have happened.
‘Kicking in the door wasn’t an option with Ponia under the same roof. And it would have brought the servants running. I would hate to embarrass you like that.’
‘And kicking in a door wouldn’t embarrass you?’ Leah countered, so taken aback by his behaviour that she couldn’t think straight.
‘Not if it was the door to my wife’s bedroom and it was locked,’ Nik fielded, calmly shedding his clothes in an untidy heap. ‘For a Greek, that is grounds for extreme provocation.’
‘You might have bloody well killed yourself!’ Leah suddenly heard herself scream at him, on the brink of physical attack. ‘And would it have been worth it?’
‘Nik slid into the other side of the bed and angled a feral smile at her, all teeth and macho self-satisfaction. ‘Ask me in the morning,’ he suggested, reaching for her.
‘No!’ Leah shrieked, backing off so fast that she fell out of the bed with a bone-jarring thud. ‘If you’re sleeping here, I’m sleeping somewhere else!’
‘You don’t sleep with me, you sleep on the floor.’
‘Like hell I will!’ she blazed back at him. ‘What do you think I am?’
‘No bimbo ever gave me this amount of aggro,’ Nik sighed, lazing back against the pillows. ‘You’re holding out for an apology for what I said this afternoon—’
‘I’m what?’
‘But what you took as an insult I see as a compliment,’ he drawled smoothly. ‘Find me a married man who doesn’t want a passionate wife and I’ll show you a liar.’
Leah shuddered. His innate deviousness only further inflamed her. ‘You called me a whore.’
‘I did not. I said you were welcome to behave like one in my bed...any time,’ he completed huskily.
‘No, thanks!’
‘Although you would need a few lessons to make the grade,’ he murmured with naked provocation. ‘And I can hardly wait to give them to you. What more can I say in my own defence?’
Leah drew in a shaky breath. On a level she did not want to examine, Nik fascinated her even when she was furious with him. But then no natural born womaniser with his looks had ever won notoriety without an equally natural flair for the field. He had tremendous charisma when he chose to exert it. But she fought the awareness as she fought him.
‘We can’t live together like this—’
Nik sprang back out of bed. ‘But we’ve only just begun. Come here...’ He reached for her and caught her up in his strong arms before she could retreat.
‘No—’ The raw force of his mouth silenced her, the strength of his hunger catching her unawares. Her hands balled into fists and struck out at him and then the hunger caught her too. It was like being swept up by a tidal wave. His tongue prised her lips apart and probed within, sending waves of instant excitement flooding through her taut body. The blood raced in her veins, heat exploding like a sunburst deep in the very heart of her.
The percale sheet was cool on her back as he laid her down on it. A convulsive shiver racked her. She looked up at him, a kind of desperation in her beautiful eyes even as he smoothed a possessive hand over the pouting swell of her breasts and her heart lurched violently against her ribcage, the sensation tearing a response from her which she couldn’t hide.
‘This isn’t what I want...’ she whispered fiercely, fighting the drowning desire which threatened her.
‘But you want me.’ Smouldering dark eyes struck hers on an almost physical collision course, denying her concealment, holding her gaze entrapped.
‘No!’
‘Yes.’ The hard, vibrant contours of his face were uncompromising. He played with her lips and she tasted the tang of whisky on his breath as she accepted the sudden thrust of his tongue, sudden pliancy, sweet as honey, flooding her susceptible body as he held her on the heights of anticipation with the skill of an expert lover. ‘You want me...you want this as much as I do...’
A stifled moan was wrung from her as he dropped his dark head and covered a taut nipple w
ith his mouth, making every muscle she possessed jerk tight in instant, terrifying reaction.
‘Admit it,’ Nik demanded, sinking his hands below her hips and pulling her to him.
‘Yes...yes!’ It was a cry of defeat as she surrendered to the hot enticement of his mouth and his sure hands but deep down inside her she feared that she had just given up something vitally important to her own survival...
CHAPTER EIGHT
LEAH SAT on the beach with her arms wrapped around her raised knees, watching the surf whisper up on to the shore. The eternal rhythm of the waves was soothing. Heat beat down on her, filling her with languor. In a matter of days her skin had turned a pale gold under the kiss of the sun. How many days...ten, eleven? She didn’t know. She had stopped watching clocks and studying calendars. Nik was here, not about to arrive, not about to depart, not about to leave her alone for endless weeks, and that knowledge filled her with an increasing sense of security.
She was happy, and sometimes, as now, when she was briefly free of the spell cast by Nik’s vibrant proximity, being so happy frightened her. Looking back down through her life, she could never recall feeling like this. And if she allowed herself to think of the ruthless practicality which had motivated Nik into making their marriage a real marriage she marvelled at her own contentment.
But then she loved Nik Andreakis. If she kept her pride and her fear of the future out of the balance, it was natural that she should be happy when he spent practically every hour of the day with her, when he made love to her over and over again with an insatiable hunger which made her feel like the most desirable woman in the world. So, she had compromised her own ideals; so what? she asked herself.
Nothing was perfect; nothing was without flaw. When you got down to basics, she had what she had always wanted. She had Nik. She was his wife. She probably had more of him than any other woman had ever had. And he was behaving like a husband. He was starting to talk in terms of ‘we...us...ours’, no longer separate in thought and deed but patently rearranging his thinking to see them as a couple. And that was a big stride for him.