Before she knew it she was feeling her way down the dim corridor with her hand trapped securely in his.
‘The city is being hit by lightning strikes due to a pay dispute,’ he explained as they made it to the stairwell. ‘The strikers are working on the principle that, because it is high season here in Athens, if they hit the tourist areas the government will sit up and take more notice, so the main residential areas are being left alone.’
‘For how long, do you think?’ She was feeling her way down the first flights of stairs while Leandros walked a few steps ahead of her.
‘That depends on who is the most stubborn,’ he replied, and turned his dark head to offer his first wide white grin. He was talking about them, she realised, not the strikers or the government.
Opening her mouth to make some tart reply, she missed her footing and let out a frightened gasp as she almost toppled. But he was right there to catch her. His hands closed around her slender waist and her body was suddenly crushed against his. Her stifled expression of fright brushed across his face and, on a soft oath, he trapped her up against the wall then lifted her up until their faces were level.
‘I want you back in my life, my home and in my bed,’ he declared with deep, dark, husky ferocity. ‘I don’t want us to fight or keep hurting each other. I want us to be how we used to be before life got in the way. I want it all back, agape. Every sweet, tight, glorious sensation that tells me that you are my woman. And I want to hear you say that you feel the same way about me.’
With her body crushed between the wall and the wonderful hardness of his body, and their eyes so close it was impossible not to see that he meant every passionate word, offering him anything but the truth seemed utterly futile. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I want the same.’
In many ways it was a frighteningly naked moment. In other ways it was a relief. The truth was now out in the open and the only thing being held back were those three little words that would make exposure complete.
His dark eyes flared with the knowledge of that. She held her breath and refused to be the first one to say the words. ‘Ruthless little witch,’ he muttered thickly then his mouth found hers.
They actually shared, on that dim stairwell, the most honest kiss they had ever exchanged. It contained emotion, real emotion, the kind that rattled at the heart and dug its roots deep into that place where the soul lay hidden—along with those three small words.
When they were disturbed by the sound of someone else coming down the stairs, neither came out of the kiss breathing well. When Leandros levered his body away from her, he did so with a reluctance Isobel shared. She couldn’t look at him, she was too busy trying to deal with the inner spread of those greedy roots of that oh-so-fickle thing called hope, that said yes, I want to take a risk on this. It is what’s been missing for all of these years.
They continued their way downstairs into the foyer. The profusely apologetic manager listened as Leandros issued curt instructions about the packing of possessions and where to send them. The other man tried not to appear curious as to why the wife of Leandros Petronades had been staying in his hotel in the first place.
‘He thinks we are very odd,’ Isobel remarked as they stepped outside into a pink-glow sunlight.
‘I feel very odd,’ he came back drily—and caught hold of her hand.
Life suddenly felt so wonderful. Leandros’s car was parked fifty feet away. It was low and sleek and statement-red and so much the car for a man of his ilk. Opening the door to the Ferrari, he guided her into the passenger seat, watched her coil her long legs inside, watched her tug her skirt down, filled her up with all of those sweet, tight sensations he had been talking about on the stairs, then closed the door to stride round the long bonnet and take the seat at her side.
The air was electric. He turned the key in the ignition and brought the car alive on a low, growling roar. The nerve-ends between her thighs flicked in tingling response to the car’s deep vibration. The man, the car—it was like being bombarded by testosterone from every possible source, she thought breathlessly.
Did he know she was feeling like this?
Yes, he knew it. She could see his own tension in the way his long fingers gripped the squat gear stick, and the way his sensual mouth was parted and his breathing was tense as he looked over his shoulder so he could reverse the car in the few inches available to him to ease them out of the tight parking place. There was a hint of red striking along his cheekbones; his eyes glittered with that strange light that told her she was sitting beside a sexually aroused male. When he turned frontward again, she was showered with static. He changed gear, turned the steering wheel with one of those smooth fingertip flourishes that said the man controlled the car and not the other way around.
With a blaring of car horns he eased them out into the stream of traffic. The low sun shone on her face. She reached up to pull down the sun-visor and found her hand caught by another. The way he lifted it to his mouth and kissed the centre of her palm stifled her ability to breathe for long seconds. As he drove them through the busy streets of Athens, they communicated with their senses. He refused to release her hand, so when it became necessary to change gear it was her hand that felt the machine’s power via the gear stick, with his hand holding it there.
It was exciting. She could feel sparks of excitement shooting from him, could feel the needle-sharp pinpricks attacking her flesh. Beneath the dress her breasts felt tight and heavy, between her thighs it was as if they were already having sex.
When they were forced to stop at a set of traffic lights he turned to look at her. His eyes filtered over her face then down her front. The dress was short, but not as short as she had used to wear three years ago, when glances like this used to be accompanied by a frown. This time her thighs were modestly covered but still he made her feel as if she were sitting there naked. The inner tingling turned into a pulsing. She tried pressing her thighs together in an effort to contain what was happening to her. His eyes flicked up, caught the anxiety in her eyes, the way she was biting down on her soft lower lip.
‘Stop it,’ she protested on a strangled choke of breathless laughter.
‘Why?’ was his devastatingly simplistic reply.
Because I am going to embarrass myself if you don’t stop, she thought helplessly, but suspected that he already knew that.
The lights changed and he turned his glance back to the road again. She managed to win her hand back and tried to ignore what was passin
g between them. But the bright white of his shirt taunted her with what hid beneath it. If she reached out and touched him she knew she would feel the tension of muscles held under fierce control, and she could see a telling pulse beating in his strong brown neck that made her heart thump madly with the urge to lean across the gap separating them and lay her moist tongue against his throat. The way he moved his shoulder said he’d picked up on the thought and was responding to it.
They began to climb out of the city where the mishmash of buildings gave way to greener suburbs and breathtaking views over Athens to the sunkissed waters of the Saronic Gulf. Eventually they began to pass by the larger properties, set in their own extensive grounds and built to emulate classical Greece. Leandros’s mother had a house here, though further up the hill. They drove past the Herakleides estate, where his Uncle Theron lived with his granddaughter Eve, who had been perhaps the only person in the family Isobel felt at ease with.
But then Eve was of a similar age and she was also half-English. She might be the very spoiled and the worshipped grandchild of a staunchly Greek man but she had always determinedly hung on to her British roots.
‘Eve is married now,’ Leandros broke their silence to inform her.
‘Married?’ Isobel turned disbelieving eyes on him. The girl she remembered had been a beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed handful of a creature who’d constantly foiled her grandfather’s attempts to sell her into bondage—as Eve had called it.