Without hesitation he walked towards her as if he was going to drag the stupid robe from her back! His dark eyes mocked the jerky step she took. They also saw the darkening swirl taking place in her eyes. He knew what that swirl meant. He knew everything about her.
Too much! she acknowledged helplessly as her senses began to clamour and he reached towards her with a hand. Prising her unwilling fingers free of the robe’s collar, he then bent his dark head, buried his face in the soft towelling and inhaled.
‘Wh-what are you doing?’ she jerked out on a strangled breath.
‘I am checking to see if you douse the robe with my aftershave,’ he explained as he lifted his head. ‘But no,’ he sighed. ‘It smells of you.’ He took a step closer. ‘And the promise of what awaits beneath.’
‘I wish you would just stop this and leave,’ she murmured crossly.
‘Liar,’ he drawled. ‘What you want is for me to take the robe from you. You would love me to rip the thing from your body then throw you back on the bed and spend the next few minutes reminding you why I am still here!’
She was beginning to tremble. ‘This is intimidation.’
‘No,’ he denied. ‘It is a case of pandering to your preference for melodrama.’ His fingers moved, releasing the towelling so he could brush a lazy fingertip across her pouting bottom lip. There was contempt in the small action but still her lip pulsed as the finger moved; it heated and quivered. ‘You want me to make you surrender,’ he said huskily. ‘You would love me to use due force to make you come home with me so that you do not have to give up your precious stubbornness.’
Was he right? Yes, he was right, she conceded bleakly. Beneath the robe her body was already alive with anticipation, her breasts were tight, her abdomen making those soft, deep, pulsing movements that said fresh arousal was on its way.
With a toss of her head, she displaced his finger. ‘It isn’t home to me,’ she denounced, utilising that stubbornness he spoke about. Then spoiled it all when her tongue slipped out to moisten the point where his finger had lingered.
Dark lashes lowered over even darker eyes as he watched the revealing little gesture. The power of his sexuality had never been a question for any woman who could witness that look. He was a dark golden figure with a dark, honeyed, sensual promise attached to everything he did.
‘But it will be,’ he assured, dragging her attention back to the argument. ‘Just as soon as you take off that robe and put on the clothes I have laid out for you, then we will drive home, together, as husbands and wives do—and find the nearest bed to finish what we have started here.’
With that, he turned and walked back to the suitcase, leaving her standing there having to deal with a sense of quivering frustration, which converted itself into a spitting cat. ‘Will Diantha be joining us for a cosy little three-some?’ she asked tartly. ‘Or is this the point where I call up Clive and invite him along just in case we need the extra…?’
Her tongue cleaved itself to the roof of her mouth when he looked at her. Like the swinging gauge on a barometer, his mood had turned from tauntingly sexual to a cold contempt.
‘There is no Diantha. There is no Adonis,’ he clipped out with thin incision. ‘This will be the last time either name will be mentioned in the context of our marriage again. Our marriage has just been re-consummated in this bed,’ he added tightly. ‘Here in Greece men still hold some authority over their women. Don’t force me to impress upon you what that means, Isobel.’
He would, too, she realised as she stood staring at him while her mind absorbed his coldly angry expression. His willingness to be ruthless if she forced him into it was scoring lines of grim certainty into the lean cast of his face. Maybe she paled; she was certainly taken aback by his manner. They’d had many fights in their short-lived, highly volatile marriage, but she could not remember another time when he had used an outright threat
.
Frissons sparked from one set of eyes to the other. Her fingers jerked up to clutch the robe again, closing the soft towelling across the pulse working in her throat. He watched it happen while he waited for a response from her. She saw a hard man, a tough man—much tougher than he had been three years ago. It was as if those years had taught him how to hone his strengths and use them to his own advantage. Four years ago he had been coming to terms with the knowledge that he no longer had a father to check every decision he made before it was put into action. Aristotle had been dead for only six months when Leandros and Isobel married. Leandros had been living with the stress of having to walk in a highly revered man’s shoes. Advisors had hung around him like circling vultures, vying for a position of power in the new order of things that would eventually emerge from the melting pot of chaos into which his father’s sudden death had thrown the Petronades empire. Leandros had lived in a permanent preoccupied state in which small things irritated the hell out of him because the big things totally obsessed his mind.
She had been a small thing. She had been a nagging irritant that he did not need during this dangerous crossover period of his life. Oh, he had loved her to begin with. During that two-week sojourn in London, when most of the vultures had been left behind in Athens, he had been able to cast off his cloak of responsibility and become a carefree young man again for a while. So they met, fell in love, almost drowned in their happiness. Then they had come here to Athens, and he’d donned his heavy cloak again and become a stranger to her.
She hadn’t understood then. She had been too young—only twenty-two herself. She had been too demanding, selfish and possessive and resentful of everything he placed higher on his list of priorities than her. Understanding had come slowly during the years they’d been separated, though the resentments had remained and hurts he’d inflicted upon her had refused to heal.
But she was now realising that Leandros had changed also. The circling vultures were no longer in evidence. The stress-packed frown of constant decision-making no longer creased his brow. He had grown into his father’s shoes—had maybe even outgrown them to become a man who answered to no one, and was even prepared to be ruthless to get his own way.
‘Why?’ she breathed shakily. ‘Why have you changed your mind about me?’
He did not even attempt to misunderstand the question. He knew they were back to divorce. ‘I still want you,’ he said. ‘I thought that was obvious. All you need to do now is accept that you still want me and we can move on without all of this tedious arguing.’
‘And if we make each other miserable again?’
He turned abruptly as if the question annoyed him. ‘We will deal with that if or when it happens. Now, can we finish up here? Your mother’s possessions still need to be packed and I would like to get away from here before the next power cut hits.’
He wasn’t joking, she realised only half a second later, when there was a click, the lights went out and the fridge shuddered to a protesting halt. Problem solved, she mused bleakly. Stubborn desire to keep fighting him appeased.
Without another word she collected her clothes and returned to the bathroom, where it was pitch-black because there was no natural source of light in there. By the time she had fumbled into her clothes and knocked different joints against hard ceramic, she was more than ready to leave this hotel. Coming out of the bathroom, she found Leandros waiting for her by the open outer door.
‘We are getting out of here while there is still enough light left to get down the stairs,’ he said impatiently.
‘But the bags—’
‘The hotel will finish it and send your things on,’ he announced with an arrogance that had always been there.