She’d been drunk and she’d been furious. Being scorned by Stavros had left her with a gaping hole where her confidence had once been. She’d wanted to be with someone else to diminish Stavros’s power over her. She’d even gone home with … what was his name? Clive? Clyde? But she’d stayed ten minutes and then called a cab, feeling disgusted by the very idea of sleeping with someone just to get revenge on Stavros.
“So?” She jerked her gaze back to his face. “You didn’t want me. What was the harm in finding someone who did?”
His eyes flashed with barely contained fury. “This is what you think of your worth? You wanted to get rid of your virginity and anyone would do?”
She pulled in a breath and for a brief moment of insanity, she wanted to blurt out the truth. She wanted to tell him how wrong he was about her. She wanted to be honest about how much she’d regretted that whole night with whatever-his-name-was.
But she didn’t have the chance. “I should have slept with you that night.” His words shocked her. “I should have taught you what good sex feels like rather than letting you run off with pre-pubescent children.”
“He was nineteen,” she whispered, the words husky, her mouth as arid as the Sahara.
“And was he good in bed?” Stavros demanded, moving closer. “Did he pleasure you?”
She bit down on her lower lip and his eyes dropped to the gesture and then, with a guttural noise of anger, he reached behind her head and tangled his fingers in her hair, pushing her head forward. He mashed his mouth to hers angrily, his tongue colliding with hers.
“This is how a man kisses a woman he wants,” he held her to his mouth, dominating every single one of her senses. He didn’t touch her, beyond the hand in her hair, but she whimpered as desire slicked her body, churning her gut and making her tremble.
His mouth was her reason for being. He rolled his tongue around hers, and she made another noise of surrender. He didn’t stop. He didn’t want her surrender; he wanted all of her. He dragged his mouth lower, to the soft spot beneath her ear lobe and she cried out as he flicked it with his tongue, and then he brought his mouth back to hers, taking her once more, removing any thoughts she had, making this her only imperative in life.
And then he pulled away abruptly, lifting his head, but leaving his hand in place.
“Was it like that, princess?”
Claudia could only stare. Her eyes latched to his and her heart was rabbiting so loudly in her chest she was sure he must have been able to hear it. As if she could barely believe it had happened, she lifted her fingertips to her mouth, and felt the ghost of his touch.
“Well?” He demanded, throatily, his attention dropping back to her lips so that, for a heart-stopping second, she thought he was going to kiss her again.
Claudia’s senses were shooting all over the place, her mind was in absolute disarray. But she knew enough of hurt pride at this man’s hands to rally and retort fiercely. “It was better.” She pulled out of his grip, shaking his hand free from her hair and staring resolutely ahead.
But his laugh was soft and dismissive, as though he knew she was lying. As though he knew she’d never been kissed or touched like that, never been made to feel even a hint of what Stavros had just done to her. He pressed the button above his visor and the gates swung inwards.
There was silence in the car as he moved them onto the road and turned towards nearby Bath. Claudia crossed her arms over her chest and didn’t dare look at him, but she felt his every single movement. She felt when he changed gear and when he moved the indicator stick to overtake a slow-moving van.
CHAPTER SIX
KISSING HER HAD BEEN a mistake. Three hours later, watching with an air of impatience as she tried on jackets, he was fighting an instinct to offer his assistance. Not to put the jackets on her body but to remove them, as well as everything else she wore.
He’d undoubtedly be thrown out of the upmarket department store and he suspected it would be worth it.
He couldn’t have helped that kiss for a billion pounds. The second his mouth touched hers he realized it had been brewing for three long, aching years. Hell, he wanted her, and if her response in the car was anything to go by, she wanted it too. She’d been with enough men. Did it really matter if he added himself to the tally? Maybe it would be the way to finally get her the hell out of his head?
“I can’t decide,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “I’ll just get all three.”
And he was glad for her statement, because it was a timely reminder of just who she was. Of what he despised about her and why he’d brought her to Barnwell. It sure as hell wasn’t to slam his mouth possessively over hers.
It was to teach her to be sensible and low-key.
“Three?” He snapped. “Now I see how easy it is for you throw money away.”
She shrugged again, her eyes huge and innocent as she looked at him. “Just as well I have lots of money then.” There was something though in the dark edges of her eyes that made him wonder if she really felt that way. “And might I point out that if you hadn’t kidnapped me, I wouldn’t need to buy more clothes.”
The sales assistant raised her brows so Stavros had no choice but to smile reassuringly. But he leaned closer to Claudia and whispered, “I still haven’t decided when I’m going to let you go. And you are making it very easy for me to go back to Plan B.”
“What’s plan B?” She murmured with an assumed sense of nonchalance.
“Locking you up and losing the key.”
Was it an accident that he brushed his hips against her as he spoke?