‘Mind the steps,’ his low voice reminded her. It was not a drawl, precisely, but it was lazily spoken, with a note to it that she was deeply aware of.
His hand was there again, and though with any other man it would not have signified anything other than common courtesy, with Nikos she knew it was quite, quite different. It was his brand on her. A brand that went right through the thin layer of her top.
In deafening silence she walked up the steps, gained the level ground at the top as he guided her through the stone archway that led into the main gardens. She went docilely, as if there was nothing awkward in the slightest about Nikos Theakis walking through the villa’s midnight gardens, with the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle filling the night air so that her breath caught the scent, rich and fragrant.
‘Eupheme planted them there deliberately,’ Nikos remarked. ‘So that you walk, as it were, into a wall of scent at just that point. The night air always gives so much more intense a fragrance, does it not?’
He paused on a little stone concourse, where massed vegetation softened the stone walls, the tiny white flowers of jasmine like miniature stars beneath the sky. Another, wider, shallower flight of stone steps led down from here into the garden spreading away below, and where they stood was a vantage point over the whole expanse. Without realising it, Ann paused as well, automatically taking in the landscaped vista beyond, from the artfully winding pathways, the sculpted vegetation, the little walls festooned in bougainvillea, their brilliant hues dimmed now, and out towards the stand of cypress trees at the garden’s far edge, their narrow forms spearing the night sky.
There was no moon, but starlight gleamed on the sea beyond, and caught, too, the iridescent surface of the swimming pool, nestled into its terrace between the villa and the garden.
Ann gazed out over the vista. ‘It really is beautiful,’ she said. It was impossible not to say so. Impossible not to stand there drinking it in and feel the heady intoxication of the flowers’ fragrance, the even headier intoxication of her blood. She wasn’t sure how much wine she had drunk—she could feel it suffusing her veins, feel it swirling gently through her—but it seemed to have put the world into a strange, seductive blend whereby she seemed both supersensitive to everything around her and yet everything seemed dissociated from her, unreal almost…as if she were drifting through it like a veil.
But she knew she should not go on standing here beside Nikos, gazing out over the starlit garden with the scent of flowers in her nostrils, the soft music of the cicadas playing in the vegetation. She should, in fact, walk briskly away along the stone pathway to the terrace and get inside the villa, go straight to her bedroom. Where, equally briskly, she should take off her make-up, brush out her hair, get into her nightdress, get into bed, and go peacefully, immediately to sleep.
That, she knew, was precisely what she should do. Right now.
Not stand here in the soft Aegean night, feeling the wine whispering in her head, feeling the dark, solid presence of Nikos Theakis standing beside her. His hand was still grazing her back, so close that all she had to do was turn slightly towards him to let that warm, strong hand press her against him, to let her hand splay against the fine cotton of his shirt, feeling the hard wall of his chest beneath as she lifted her gaze to him, to drink in the shadowed planes of his face, the dark sweep of lashes across those eyes that could sear right through her, making her breath catch in her throat, making her sway, as if she were a flower on the breeze. His arm would encircle her pliant body, and his sensual, sculpted mouth would come down on hers—
She jerked forward—a single step. But it was enough to shake her back to reality.
‘I must go in,’ she said. Her voice sounded abrupt. She gazed at the long façade of the villa, brow furrowing slightly. Where, exactly, was she to get inside?
‘This way.’ His voice was smooth, assured.
Automatically she went the way he indicated, walking slightly in front of him until the path converged on the main terrace. Even though she had broken the moment, she still seemed to be in that state of hypersensitivity, feeling his presence behind her in every follicle in her body. Yet to everything else she seemed quite blind. So much so that when he stepped past her, to halt her progress and slide open the French window they were adjacent to, indicating she should step through, she did so.
And stopped. This was not a salon or a hallway, or any room she was familiar with.
It was a bedroom.
She turned. Nikos was smoothly sliding shut the French window again.
And walking towards her.
She stepped backwards. It was automatic, instinctive.
‘What—?’
He gave a low, brief laugh. ‘Don’t be naïve, Ann. What do you think?’ There was amusement in his voice.
He came up to her, looking down at her. There was a single low lamp burning by the bed—a wide double bed, swathed in a dark coverlet, sombre and masculine—dimmed right down. By its light his face seemed more planed than ever, with shadows etching his features. She felt weak suddenly, overcome. Gazing at him, lips parting.
Her breath quickened.
He saw it, saw her reaction. Saw how it came even without conscious volition.
‘This has been waiting for us since the beach,’ he said, his voice low, with a timbre that she could feel in her spine. ‘Then was not the time—but now… Now, Ann, we have all the time we need.’
Dark long lashes swept down over her. He reached forward, his hands closing over the loose arms of his sweater, still draped around her shoulders. She had long ceased to be conscious of it, having had so much else to dominate her awareness, but now she was vividly aware of it again, and even more vividly, breathlessly aware of the slight but inexorable pull he exerted through the sleeves, around her neck and shoulders.
Drawing her forward.
For a moment, a balance of time she could not say lasted either a few fleeting seconds or a long, long interval of consciousness, she felt herself resist. Felt her mind fill with the realisation that she must step back again and flee to the door behind her. Flee away from this man on whom her eyes were fixed as he drew her casually towards him, until he was discarding the sweater, sliding his hands along the slender column of her torso, his fingers splaying around her ribs. Sensation rippled down her as her breath caught again, mouth parting yet again, as she felt his thumb grazing the swelling underside of her breasts.
He held her there, in position for him, as his hooded gaze held hers, and he casually, leisurely, let his thumbs glide across the tautening material of her top.
She felt her nipples flower, the delicate tissues of her breasts engorge. And he felt it too, for he gave a smile. Slow and sensual. Watching her reaction.