Сара Крейвен – Greek Affairs: The Virgin's Seduction: The Virgin's Wedding Night / Kyriakis's Innocent Mistress / The Ruthless Greek's Virgin Princess (страница 17)

She gasped. ‘That is—a disgustingly arrogant assumption.’

‘I assume nothing,’ he said softly. ‘I know I shall be the first. And I think the police would be fascinated by your complaint,’ he went on. ‘They might also charge you with wasting their valuable time. And don’t attempt to buy them too, because that might prove truly misguided.’

He paused, allowing her to assimilate that. ‘Also that door is locked, so stop making empty gestures, matia mou, and come here to me.’

‘No.’ Her fingers tightened convulsively on the door handle—the only solid object in a reeling world. ‘I—I take back what I said just now. Everything I’ve said. Because I will pay you—I’ll pay anything—if you’ll just—go away. And leave me in peace.’

‘Harriet,’ he said gently. ‘Today I took you as my wife. Tonight I take you as my woman, as I intended from the first. And, whatever you may think, it was never a question of money.’

‘Then what?’ Her voice was hoarse. ‘Is this your idea of revenge, for my having—insulted your manhood in some way? Because you don’t really want me, and you know it.’

He sighed. ‘If I did not want you, pedhi mou, then, believe me, I would not be here. And maybe I was angry at first,’ he went on grimly. ‘Angry over your assumption that I must be for sale and would meekly accept this sterile bargain of yours at its face value.

‘But I was not angry for long.’ He smiled at her. ‘Because the first time I touched you, I knew there was a body to be desired under those shapeless garments you favour, in public at least.’ His dark gaze lingered on the swell of her breasts, then travelled slowly down to the indentation of her waist and the supple outline of her hips and thighs.

‘And my instinct was correct,’ he added softly. ‘You look enchanting. That is a good colour for you, my sweet one. It adds warmth to your skin, even when you are not blushing.’

‘Kindly keep your dubious compliments to yourself,’ Harriet said raggedly. ‘And, as I’ve already told you, I’m neither sweet nor yours.’

‘Not yet, perhaps,’ Roan agreed. ‘But I am hoping your attitude may soften once we become more intimately acquainted.’

‘Then go on hoping,’ she said fiercely. ‘Because in reality you’re trying to force yourself on someone who doesn’t want you.’

‘Are you so sure that is how you feel?’ Roan questioned softly. ‘I would say the jury is still out.’

‘Then you’d be totally wrong.’ She conjured up the image of the blonde she’d encountered at his studio. ‘For God’s sake, how many women do you need to have?’

He tutted reprovingly, his eyes dancing. ‘What a question for a bride to put to her husband. But, since you ask, I find one at a time suits me perfectly.’ He grinned at her. ‘My tastes are not yet so jaded that they require—additional stimulation.’

He walked to her without hurry, detaching her clutching fingers from the door handle quietly and without force.

She stared up at him, her eyes dilating. ‘Roan.’ She was hardly aware she’d used his name. ‘Roan—please. Don’t do this—I—I beg you.’ Her voice was a whisper.

‘And what is—”this” that scares you so, Harriet mou?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think you even know.’

But you’re wrong, she thought. So very wrong. Because I know from my childhood—from my mother going from man to man, hoping, seeking the impossible. I remember all the soft words in each beginning—the promises ‘Trust me …’ ‘I’ll never leave you …’

The sounds in the night from the other side of the wall that I was too young to understand.

And then the other sounds—the shouting, the crashing, the slamming of doors. The silences that were somehow the loudest of all. And then the weeping, the quiet, terrible sobbing of failure and desolation. Before someone else came along with more sweet talk, more promises, and the whole cycle began again.

And I swore I would never let that happen to me. That I would not be like her—dependent on the sexual whim of some man.

That, instead, I would be my own woman, answering only to myself.

And my body would always be my own.

Thought it, but did not say it as Roan’s hands came down on her at last.

She was trembling openly now, her anger commingled with fear, as he drew her towards him, and she braced her hands against his chest, twisting wildly, striving to break free.

‘Let me go,’ she gasped. ‘Let me go, damn you. Oh, God, I’ll never forgive you for this. Never!’

‘Never is a very long time, agapi mou,’ he told her softly. ‘When all you have to endure is one night. Now, be still.’

Just as she’d feared, he controlled her frantic struggles with effortless ease, pinioning her slender wrists behind her with one hand, while with the other he cupped her chin, raising her face so that her tightly clamped, rebellious mouth was his for the taking.

And not just her mouth, she realised with agonised humiliation. Her vain attempts to release herself had resulted instead in freeing some of the silk buttons on her pyjama jacket, so that her rounded breasts were now bare to the smouldering heat of his dark gaze.

He said in a harsh whisper, ‘You are—so beautiful.’

The hand clamping her wrists in the small of her back propelled her forward, bringing her into sudden, intimate contact with the hard wall of his chest, so that the dark springing hair grazed the dusky rose of her nipples, making them lift and harden in a swift, shamed pleasure she was unable to control or deny.

And then he kissed her.

But if the last time had been punishment, this was entirely different. And, she realised, infinitely more dangerous.

Because Roan’s lips were warm and ineffably gentle as they caressed hers, his mission, this time, to persuade—and arouse. Which was the last thing she’d expected, or wanted.

She needed him to be rough—even brutal—she thought feverishly, so that she could feed her resistance to him—her loathing and contempt for this—unbelievable treachery.

So that she could teach him, in one icy lesson, that he would get nothing from her but her bleak and unswerving indifference—the only weapon now left in her admittedly futile armoury—forcing him to leave, disappointed with his hollow victory, and never come back.

But she knew now, in this first moment, how right it was to be afraid of him. And not because she feared the violence of a forced surrender. Instead it was the coaxing insistence of his mouth as it moved on hers that scared her. The way her traitorous senses were reacting to the texture of his skin, the warmth of his body penetrating the little clothing she had left, and the unbelievable intoxication of his unique male scent as his arms tightened round her.

And, worst of all, the hardness of him against her thighs, the stark proof that he did indeed want her. Because this explicit power of his arousal was somehow triggering an instant and shaming response from her—the kind of meltdown in her most intimate self that she’d never envisaged in her whole life. The scalding, physical rush of what could only be animal desire.

Except it couldn’t be true, because she was immune—wasn’t she? Had based her whole life on her iron resolve to remain celibate. But it was simple to claim immunity when there was no temptation. She could see that now when it was—almost too late.

When the firewall she’d built around herself was crumbling, engulfed by a flame she hadn’t known existed, but which she had to fight—and extinguish before it became a fire.

Battling, she realised, for self-respect, as well as self-preservation, and the safe, solitary future which she could not—would not relinquish.

But, in that same instant, she realised that her hands were no longer imprisoned in his grasp, and that Roan was taking his mouth from hers and looking down at her, the dark gaze not arrogant in triumph, as she might have expected, but hooded, questioning.

Harriet stared back, some female instinct telling her urgently that it was still not too late. That somehow—for some inexplicable reason—she was being offered a choice. That if she said no this time, he would listen, and, in spite of everything that had gone before, he would not force the issue. And that he would let her go.

And all she had to do was speak.

No was such a small word, she thought, and so simple to use that even very young children could manage it. And it was a lifeline. The only one …

She drew a deep breath, framing the negative clearly and concisely in her head, but no sound emerged except the faintest of sighs.

Not even when he began to touch her, his fingers light as they stroked her cheek and moved slowly downwards, teasing the lobe of her ear, then lingering on the leap and quiver of her pulse, before slipping under her collar to explore the angles and hollows of her throat and shoulder.

Nor when she realised his other hand was resting, without force, on the curve of her hip, and she would only have to step backwards to detach herself—even move out of range altogether.

So why was she was simply standing there—mute, unmoving and half undressed? Looking at him, oh, God, as if she was—waiting …

And in that moment Roan bent his head, his mouth finding her parted lips with renewed and sensuous urgency, his tongue gliding against hers in deliberate demand.