‘Why did you do it?’
‘Do what?’
‘Sto Diavolo! You know what.’ He surged forward, thrusting his head towards her, like a bull ready to charge, nostrils flared and eyes gleaming with violent intent. ‘The agreement: why did you do it?’
Deliberately she shrugged, trying to invest the gesture with an insouciance she wished she felt. ‘I signed it. What more do you want?’
Stavros shut his eyes, giving vent to his feelings in a furious torrent of Greek expletives. The fact that his voice never rose above a whisper made the impact somehow more frightening. Despite the thrilling sense of power Tessa felt in standing up to him, caution prevailed and she paced back a couple of steps. She didn’t want those hands reaching out and touching her again.
‘You know what I mean!’ This time his voice was a barely muted roar. ‘Why did you cross out the clause about the payment you’re to receive?’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Yes…that.’
She lifted one eyebrow in mocking imitation of him. ‘Surely a man of your experience and intellect can work that one out for himself.’
‘Don’t play games with me, woman. What are you up to?’
‘What, me? Up to something?’ She shouldn’t enjoy baiting him quite as much as she did. But she was only human and she was so tired of being made to feel guilty, inferior, a problem to be swept under the carpet. ‘What a thing to say about your wife.’
His lips pulled back in a grimace. He looked as if he wanted to take a bite out of her.
‘I’m not up to anything,’ she added quickly. ‘I just don’t want your money. You can keep it.’
‘You know the power you’ve given me,’ he murmured, ‘by excising that clause and initialling the change? I don’t have to give you anything at all to buy your silence.’
‘Well done!’ Despite the tiny trickle of trepidation along the back of her neck, Tessa couldn’t deny herself the satisfaction of a slow, taunting hand clap. ‘I knew you’d catch on eventually.’
With a single stride he obliterated the distance between them and something awfully like apprehension scudded through her. Defiantly she met his stare, refusing to back down.
‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing—’ he began.
‘Oh, I know exactly what I’m doing.’ Tessa’s voice was firm and resolute. ‘I’m going to pack my bag, collect my passport and leave. I don’t give a damn about your suspicions. There’s nothing more to be said between us.’
‘Isn’t there?’ Stavros’ eyes darkened to a charcoal glow, a fiercely burning stare. ‘Then what about this?’
Large hands grabbed her arms and slammed her in against his body. It was hard as stone, searingly hot and pulsing with naked fury. Instinctively Tessa lifted her hands to shove him away but he stymied her, short-circuiting her self-defensive move in the simplest way.
He hauled her up on her toes and kissed her.
It was an invasion, a no-holds-barred assault on her senses. With a single guttural growl of satisfaction he tilted his head over hers, the better to pillage her mouth. One hand cradled her head and the other wrapped round her waist as he bent her back over his arm till she was no longer standing against him but clinging for support.
The bare savagery of his actions, the pure dominance of his big body crushing hers should have been the ultimate insult, a bully’s way of demanding submission.
But the desperate instincts that had prompted Tessa to defy him coalesced into a single driving force. There was no yielding, no acquiescence to his rough domination. Instead the anger, the pain, the impatience morphed inside her into an escalating passion that matched his.
Her hands slid up, pushing through his hair till they grasped his skull and tugged him closer. Held him still while she met his tongue with her own and plunged into the hot, velvety recess of his mouth. She tasted the salt-sweet tang of him, his unique, tantalising flavour, and need swelled inside her. A need for more, so much more.
A moan shuddered through her. His? Hers?
Desperately she pushed up into his embrace, revelling in the hard-muscled strength of his chest against hers, the encompassing power of his arm supporting her.
This must be the most dangerous thing she’d ever done and yet she’d never felt as safe as now in his embrace.
He widened his stance. She felt his thighs surrounding her, straddling her legs, and heat bloomed suddenly, devastatingly, in the very core of her. It radiated out, melting the furious tension that had strung her so tight, till she sagged, boneless and pliable in his hold.
She trembled as he moved and his torso slid against her. Her breasts were so sensitive it felt as if he’d ignited sparks of static electricity inside her. Her nipples hardened to pebbled nubs that throbbed with need.