Could she see his arousal? Was that why her breasts rose and fell so jerkily?
‘What are you doing here?’ She sounded out of breath, genuinely surprised. As if she hadn’t been waiting for him.
Once again Adoni was torn between believing she was the woman she purported to be and the idea she connived at his undoing, as Dawlish warned. Just as his mother had fooled Vassili Petrakis.
Yet more and more he harboured doubts about that scenario. And there was no doubt Alice carried his child.
The idea, which should direct his mind to legalities, instead fired his rampant libido.
His gaze dropped to the fabric covering her abdomen. There was something primal and sexy about the notion Alice was pregnant with his baby. That her svelte body grew ripe with his seed.
Heat flashed, searing away all thoughts except the need he’d repressed too long. The need to touch her. To relive the bliss he’d found in her body. Memories of that night had haunted him ever since, and not merely because of the pregnancy.
‘It’s my house, remember?’ His voice was tight and low, grinding past cramped vocal cords. ‘I came to look at the view.’ And hadn’t he got an eyeful? He couldn’t rip his gaze away. ‘I thought you’d be in bed.’
He imagined her sprawled there, beneath him, as responsive and delectable as she’d been in London.
Adoni took a step forward, then another.
Part of his brain screamed that he’d be crazy to get involved with a woman he didn’t trust. But he didn’t care.
Through all the emotional tangle of discovering he was going to be a father one thing had remained implacably certain—that Alice triggered something more intense, more primitively needy than he’d ever felt. Right now, right here, he gave up fighting it.
‘I had trouble sleeping.’
Adoni moved, close enough to see how she swallowed, her face lifting towards his.
‘Adoni?’ Her voice was sharp but he was damned if he heard fear. It was something else. Something, if he wasn’t mistaken, remarkably close to the urgency that swept him.
Alice stepped back, straight into a chair. It scraped across the balcony, loud in the humming silence.
Abruptly she dropped her arms to her sides, flexing her fingers. ‘What do you want, Adoni? It’s too late to discuss—’
‘Who said anything about talking?’
Her breath hissed. ‘I don’t understand.’ Her head jerked higher, the line of her jaw sharp in the moonlight. ‘You brought me to Greece to discuss our baby’s future. Of course we’re going to talk.’
Adoni lifted his hand to stroke the soft wave of dark hair cascading over her shoulder. It felt like rippling satin. Slowly he lifted her hair to his face, bending so he could inhale the evocative scent of orange blossom.
Instantly his body was in lockdown, each muscle and tendon tense with the force required not to haul her up and plunder her mouth—and more.
‘We’ll talk, tomorrow.’ The words grated out. ‘But now it’s not words I want. It’s you.Se thelo.’