But filling her consciousness, spreading through it like an ugly stain, was the overpowering emotion of dismay—and shock and disbelief that she could have done what she had just done. Limp with horror at herself, she could only lie there, all limbs exhausted, staring blindly up into the face looking down at her.
For a moment there was no motion. None at all. Then abruptly, roughly, her body was away from the weight bearing on her. Nikos was striding away, across the huge room, thrusting open the door into the en suite bathroom, and closing it sharply behind him.
For a handful of seconds she could only lie there, still, inert, motionless. Then, forcing her frozen mind to act, she clambered up, urgently scrabbling for her clothes, forcing herself into them with unbearable haste and clumsiness, not bothering with underwear, just winding her top and her skirt around her to cover her nakedness. From the bathroom she could hear the sound of a shower starting. Her eyes flew past the door opposite the French window to the terrace, and she saw the door which surely must lead to the rest of the villa.
She hurried to it, half tripping, heart racing, lungs still choking, and yanked it open, finding herself, to her abject relief, in a service corridor. She didn’t know where she was going but it didn’t matter—she simply hurtled along it, desperately hoping that at this late hour she would encounter no one until she came upon part of the villa she recognised and could navigate to her own guest bedroom from there. Minutes later she was shutting the door and collapsing down on her own bed, shaking like a leaf, her arms wrapped around herself, as if stanching a wound. She started to rock.
Words whipped through her, over and over again, more and more cruel.
What have I done? What have I done?
Nikos stood beneath the pounding water of the shower. Its needles should be knives. Knives to carve into his greedy flesh the punishment he deserved.
How the hell could he have been so stupid? Hadn’t he known—hadn’t he told himself, staring into the mirror above the basin in that very bathroom a handful of days ago, that he was playing with fire? And now what had he gone and done? Knowingly, deliberately fooled himself on the way back to the villa with the kind of self-flattering logic that, had it been a dodgy business proposal, he’d have seen through in an instant. But which, because it was his damn male desire—never thwarted before, never not satiated, whenever and with whoever he wanted—he’d seized on it as if it were legal writ!
His mind sheered away. Sheered away from remembering the moment when he’d realised that not only did he have to take her, right there, right then, but worse—far, far worse—the moment when the world had simply whited out.
It’s never been like that before.
The words formed in his mind as the stinging needles pounded down on him.
Never had the moment of sexual fulfilment been like that—so intense, so overpowering, so consuming that he’d cried out, unable to stop himself.
Until the moment when consciousness had knifed back into him and he’d stared down at her and realised, with harsh, pitiless self-condemnation, that he had just walked over the edge of a cliff.
Angrily his hand fisted, and he thumped it against the wall of the shower stall.
I damn well knew I should have left her alone. I damn well knew it!
But even as the words formed, so did others. Others that made him abruptly cut off the
water, grab a towel, and pat himself dry, roughly towelling the moisture out of his hair. Then he cast the towels aside and yanked open the bathroom door.
He knew he should never have touched Ann Turner. He knew he should never have taken her to his bed. Knew he should never have had sex with her.
But he knew something else as well as he strode out of the bathroom.
He wanted her again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE SUN WAS SCARCELY UP, but Ann was lying in bed, wakeful and tormented. She would have to go. Leave Sospiris. There was no other option. She couldn’t stay here now!
I’ll have to think of something—something to tell Ari, Mrs Theakis. Something—anything!
Except the truth. Even as she lay there she felt a semi-hysterical bubble inside her at the thought of Mrs Theakis knowing…
She shuddered in horror, feeling her skin flush.
How am I going to face her? How can I even have breakfast with her—knowing what I did, where I was?
And yet she was going to have to. Going to have to somehow get through the morning, behave normally, then dream up some plausible reason why she had to go back to England.
A spear stabbed her. Ari! Ari would be so upset, so distressed! Wasn’t it bad enough he was about to lose Tina? Now she was proposing to walk out on him as well.
For ever.
Because unless by some miracle Mrs Theakis invited her here again when Nikos was somewhere else—like Australia, or better still Antarctica!—or perhaps herself come to London some time, then how could she possibly ever see Ari again? She could never go anywhere near Nikos Theakis again—never!