A Stormy Greek Marriage (2 page)

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Billie framed between gritted teeth because she was mortified by her mother’s rude behaviour. A thousand times and more, when she was younger, Billie had suffered similar squirming
moments when her parent made a spectacle of herself in public. But today of all days was special! Already very conscious of her humble beginnings, Billie had prayed beforehand that, just this once, Lauren would not embarrass her by doing anything to draw attention to herself in polite company. But her mother, it seemed, would always be as irresponsible as a defiant teenager, particularly if there was an attractive man within her radius. In the background Billie saw Hilary rise from the same table and advance on her giggling, swaying sister.

Lauren paid heed to Hilary in a way she wouldn’t have to her daughter. Within the space of a minute the dancing display was over. Lauren returned sulkily to her seat while the man she had been dancing with returned to his at an adjoining table.

‘Thank goodness for Hilary,’ Billie remarked with relief. ‘Who’s the man that Lauren was with?’

‘One of my cousins, who is old enough to know better.’

‘Age doesn’t necessarily make people wiser,’ Billie retorted half quietly; the supposed wisdom of experience and maturity had made little mark on Lauren, who remained as giddy as an adolescent. What was more, Billie thought ruefully, men always seemed to quickly shed their inhibitions and behave badly in her mother’s company.

‘Don’t make yourself responsible for Lauren any more,’ Alexei urged Billie, surprising her with that unwelcome recommendation. ‘She’s not going to change. Just let her live her life.’

Billie thought that it was all very well for him to hand out such advice, but he had never had to cope with the
hard reality of Lauren’s problems when an affair broke up and she was abandoned once again. At such times, her mother would sink into depression and self-pity and use alcohol as a crutch and it was then that she needed her daughter or her sister. Without such support Lauren did not have the resources to pick herself up again.

‘Of course, I will always support her financially,’ Alexei added. ‘You don’t need to worry about that.’

Billie reddened. ‘She’s pretty much fine since I bought her the house. She doesn’t need to hang on your sleeve—’

‘I have plenty of relatives of my own who do,’ Alexei fielded evenly. ‘It makes sense.’

That Alexei was making a point of spelling out his intentions towards her feckless parent surprised Billie and made her smell a rat. ‘What do you know that I don’t know?’ she prompted, wondering if her mother had got into financial trouble again and if it was possible that Lauren had made a direct request to him for his help.

‘I don’t want to talk about this now,’ Alexei answered coolly.

And Billie found herself thinking of all the many occasions when, as an employee, she had had no choice but to respect such arrogant embargos. ‘She’s my mother. I have a right to know what’s going on.’

Alexei dealt her a dark look of exasperation. ‘Do we really have to discuss your mother’s debts on our wedding day?’

Hot colour ran up like a banner below Billie’s fair skin and her slender spine stiffened. It was news to her that Lauren had run up debts again and she was furiously
embarrassed by the revelation. ‘You should’ve told me—’

‘Why?’ Alexei sent her an impatient glance. ‘Your problems are my problems now.’

With effort Billie overcame the sense of humiliation that was threatening to overpower her. She grasped that he’d had no prior intention of telling her and regretted her own persistence. ‘Just one more question—how did you find out that Lauren had such problems?’

‘Speros is a small place.’

That revealing assurance ensured that Billie’s sense of mortification and shame lingered. The awareness that some islander, probably either a tradesman or a shopkeeper, had clearly approached Alexei on the score of an unsettled bill cut her to the quick. For years she had been proud of the fact that the financial help she’d given her mother had prevented such embarrassing situations from arising. She remembered too well how it had felt as a child when Lauren had owed money everywhere in the village.

‘It’s time for us to dance,’ Alexei breathed, closing a hand over Billie’s and raising her from her seat.

Unmercifully conscious of being the cynosure of attention when she was much more accustomed to playing the role of a backroom girl, Billie found it impossible to lean into the strong, hard support of his tall muscular length. Lean fingers splayed across the curve of her hips and sexual heat flared through her in jagged response.

‘Why are you so tense?’ Alexei censured in a roughened undertone. ‘You feel like a little steel girder in my arms.’

Billie had to force her slender body to yield into his. She was quivering with tension and the sudden onslaught
of a sexual awareness that was almost painfully strong. Memories of their short-lived intimacy on the night that Nicky was conceived were sizzling through her and her body was awakening again, shedding the taut suppression of feelings and tight self-discipline that she had practised for so many months.

‘That’s better,
khriso mou
,’ Alexei told her thickly, shifting against her so that even through the barrier of their clothing she could feel the unmistakable urgency of his arousal.

And a kind of heavenly satisfaction enveloped Billie at that instant, for she had never truly managed to see herself as a sexually appealing woman in Alexei’s eyes. After all, what they once briefly shared had been unreservedly forgotten by him and she had found it hard to equate that cruel hard fact with the idea that their intimacy had been in any way special on his terms. But now, in the most primitive way of all, she could enjoy the proof that Alexei wanted her as a man wanted a woman and as a husband wanted a wife.
Her
, miraculously; not one of the more beautiful and sophisticated women present who had entertained him most successfully, though if only for a little while. And what if she came to the same end? The thought struck like a dagger in Billie’s vulnerable heart. What if those gossiping exes of his were right and Alexei got bored and swiftly realised that he had made a mistake in marrying her?

Anxious green eyes screened, she luxuriated in his embrace while her mind teemed with rampant, fearful thoughts that dismayed her. Since when had she been so scared? But all too often in recent months Billie had appreciated that loving Alexei and having Nicky had
changed her in a fundamental way: she was much more at the mercy of her emotions than she had once been.

And, of course, she was nervous about the future. After all, Alexei wasn’t in love with her. He had married her on the rebound after breaking off his relationship with Calisto Bethune. That particular taunt, overheard in the cloakroom, had not been without foundation. Alexei had chosen Billie as a wife because he believed he knew her well and considered her to be thoroughly sensible and trustworthy. He had
not
chosen her because she was gorgeous, exciting or fantastic fun. He had picked her with his head, not his heart, deeming her perfect for the role of a conservative, low-maintenance wife. How would he react tomorrow when her revelations forced him to appreciate that she was as flawed and imperfect as any other woman?

They left the floor to circulate among their guests. Later, in the early evening, Hilary, her eyes full of dismay, sped over to her niece and whispered urgently, ‘Lauren’s talking in the room next door. She’s drunk and saying silly stuff. She wouldn’t listen to me—’

‘I’ll come with you.’ Sliding free of Alexei’s hold, Billie hurried in her aunt’s wake.

Lauren was easily spotted. The table in front of her was littered with empty glasses. With a cigarette in one hand and another burning in the ashtray beside her, Lauren was revelling in being the centre of attention.

‘Billie!’ Lauren exclaimed with enthusiasm when she laid eyes on her diminutive daughter. ‘You know that’s not her actual name. That’s what Alexei christened her when she was a kid—her real name is Bliss…’

‘What else can you tell us, Lauren?’ an eager brunette prompted.

‘Obviously, I know where all the bodies are buried!’ Throwing back her shoulders in emphasis and exposing rather too much bosom in her low-cut dress as she did so, Lauren widened suggestive eyes, only to start coughing violently as the smoke from her cigarette wafted up into her face.

‘There are no bodies,’ Billie interposed firmly, finding her way to the bedraggled blonde’s side and slapping her on the back.

‘Don’t listen to her…there’s lots of bodies!’ Lauren carolled rebelliously loudly. ‘And one of them is very little. In fact, I warned my daughter to keep all her secrets until she was safely married. At least that way even if the marriage crashes and burns, she’ll be rich and secure—’

Losing all patience in the wake of that outburst, Hilary grasped one of her sister’s arms and hauled her bodily from her seat. ‘It’s time for us to go home now, Lauren—’

‘I don’t wanna go home,’ the middle-aged blonde slurred as she swayed. ‘I’m enjoying the party.’

A horrible little silence fell and only as she assisted her aunt with her stumbling, angrily muttering mother did Billie register that Alexei had joined them. Her face burning, her tummy twisting with fear, she clashed with blazing golden eyes.

‘I’ve organised a car for you,’ Alexei told Hilary in a gentle undertone as a nanny appeared to pass over Nicky into her care. ‘I’m sorry that you have to leave early.’

Lauren, who, for all her outspokenness, was intimidated by her son-in-law, had turned an ashen colour and was now avoiding both his gaze and her daughter’s.
Billie was wan and uncomfortable as she watched her aunt leave with Nicky and her mother.

‘I think Lauren may well need professional help,’ Alexei breathed with icy cool.

‘Sorry. I know she’s an embarrassment…but professional help?’ Billie echoed, finally working up the courage to look directly at him.

‘A stint in rehab might at least cure her of looking forward to our marriage crashing and burning,’ Alexei countered sardonically, brilliant golden eyes cutting as lasers. ‘Clearly she hasn’t read the terms of our pre-nup. But what the hell was she talking about? Buried bodies?
Secrets?’

Pale as milk, Billie trembled as she registered how close her mother had come to exposing Nicky’s parentage in public. ‘She was drunk and getting carried away with all the attention she was getting—that’s all. But I don’t think she needs to be packed off to rehab just yet—’

‘Leave me to deal with Lauren,’ Alexei interrupted with ruthless cool. ‘I understand her better than you do.’

And Billie, accustomed to her mother’s single-minded obstinate egotism, reckoned that he very probably did.

I
T WAS
after midnight. The bride and groom had stayed with their guests until late, then had then taken a motor launch out to Alexei’s yacht,
Sea Queen.
But lights in Billie’s own little house were still twinkling brightly back on shore, Billie registered as she stood on the private deck beyond the incredible luxury of the stateroom suite. Hilary, at the very least, was still awake. Was Lauren still with her sister and behaving badly? Or was Nicky reacting poorly to his disrupted routine and preventing her aunt from getting the rest she needed? Billie’s arms felt horribly empty. Her heart ached at once again having to face the prospect of leaving her infant son.

Only for a week, though, Alexei had sworn. He was no big fan of honeymoons or indeed any enforced break from business, but he was also too astute not to recognise that to neglect any show of intimacy and togetherness after their wedding would attract the kind of comment that might embarrass his bride. And tomorrow Alexei would finally know everything there was to know about her, Billie reminded herself doggedly. The pretences, the lies would mercifully end there. There would be no more secrets. He would understand her attachment
to Nicky, but how would he feel about suddenly and without any preparation at all becoming a father?

Billie shivered in the cool crisp late spring air. A light step sounded behind her and Alexei closed his arms round her from behind, drawing her back into the heat and shelter of his tall, muscular body. ‘That was one very long day,’ he sighed above her head. ‘How the hell did my father manage to go through with marrying four times over?’

‘I suppose the fact that he kept on trying to find the right wife says a lot about his optimistic outlook,’ Billie remarked, her voice wavering as her bridegroom pressed his mouth sensually to the tender skin where her shoulder met her neck. She was not aware that it was a sensitive spot, but it sparked a surprising burst of heat low in her pelvis and she trembled, straining back against him in response.

Alexei laughed softly. ‘Don’t be so naïve. He only married my mother because she was carrying me. He wanted a son and heir more than he ever wanted any woman—’

Cooler air brushed Billie’s spine while he unhooked the back of her gown with the lazy pace of a gourmet contemplating a six-course banquet. ‘You’re so cynical!’ she returned.

‘The marriage might have been a success on your terms, but even my mother knew that he would never have married her had she not conceived. She was a nobody from nowhere…’

‘Like me,’ Billie could not resist commenting in receipt of that arrogant opinion.

‘No. You’re a local girl with a clever brain and a colourful background,’ Alexei teased, sliding his hands
below the loosened bodice of her dress to find the firm thrusting softness of her breasts. ‘And now you’re my wife, my perfect wife,
khriso mou
.’

Her breath caught in her throat as he expertly massaged her swelling nipples between thumb and forefinger, sending sharp arrows of desire darting to the very centre of her restive body. Helpless in the grip of those sensations, she leant back against him and he swept her up into his arms and carried her back into the stateroom. Setting her down he peeled her out of the gown he had undone and lifted her clear of the foaming swathe of petticoats.

‘Full marks for surprising me,’ Alexei quipped, pausing to take in the full effect of her turquoise satin and lace lingerie and the lacy hold-up stockings she sported on her slim legs.

Although rosy colour warmed Billie’s face beneath his lingering appraisal and her breasts shimmied in the turquoise satin cups as her breathing increased in rapidity, she countered, ‘I’m a bride…what did you expect?’

‘White cotton, no frills,’ he told her frankly, resting her down across his long powerful thighs while one strong arm supported her spine.

Billie gazed up into brilliant golden eyes and her heart felt as if it were bouncing up onto a positive high of love. ‘Oh, you’ll see plenty of white cotton on the other three hundred and sixty four days of the year. This is a one-off,’ she warned him deadpan. ‘Enjoy it while you can.’

And Alexei laughed and kissed her, framing her face with spread fingers, delving into the moist tender interior she offered long and deep until her heart was thumping
like a piston and she was kissing him back hard, revelling in the wicked pleasure of being crushed against him. He released the catch on her bra and moulded the lush fullness of a rose-tipped mound with reverent appreciation. ‘You can have no idea how many times I’ve fantasised about your breasts…’

‘In the office?’ Billie gasped, taken aback by that candid admission.

‘You look so shocked.’ Alexei was laughing again, both hands now fully engaged in massaging the swelling bounty of her creamy flesh.

‘Well, it’s not very professional, is it?’ Billie complained, embarrassed for herself in the past.

‘But I only looked and imagined. I didn’t touch,’ he reminded her. ‘
Of course
I looked. I’m a man and the more you covered up, the more I noticed and wondered. Modesty is a great turn-on. If you’d sunbathed topless I’d have satisfied my curiosity long ago.’

As his skilled fingers found the distended tips of her nipples her eyes slid shut in an instant of intense arousal that made heat bloom like a yearning flower between her trembling thighs. But even as her body reacted she was thinking over what he said, registering that her discreet clothing and apparent reluctance had heightened his desire for her and immediately wondering whether constant marital availability would swiftly convert his interest to boredom. He bent her back over his arm and closed his mouth over first one throbbing reddened peak and then the other, laving her sensitised flesh with his tongue and grazing the beaded peaks with his strong white teeth. She gasped out loud, her body catching fire and flaming as fast and hotly as bone-dry
straw. Rational thoughts fled her head like fallen leaves blown by the wind.

‘I never thought I’d be so excited by my wedding night,’ Alexei confided huskily, setting her aside and springing up to begin carelessly shedding his clothes. ‘Congratulations, Billie. Experienced as I am, you make even sex feel fresh and new.’

Awesomely conscious of the stinging sensitivity of her nipples and the lush heat at the heart of her, Billie was dry-mouthed and all of a quiver, while wondering if she would ever be able to match his cool…or, for that matter, his evident expectations. So many women had tried and failed to hold his attention. Why should she be any different? Even to lie there half naked without rushing to cover up her exposed flesh was a challenge for Billie. Impervious to such insecurities, Alexei cast off his shirt, revealing the tightly honed muscular magnificence of a torso sprinkled with dark whorls of hair, a narrow waist and a stomach as flat as a rock slab. Physically he was just pure perfection, she acknowledged, her gaze riveted by his sheer spellbinding masculine impact. He discarded his last garment and the very boldness of his towering erection washed colour over her face, for her memory—unlike his—had no missing gaps and she was recalling the velvet-sheathed-in-steel feel of him beneath her fingers and moving inside her. Something clenched deep in her stomach.

He lay down beside her and pulled her back to him, crushing her mouth hungrily below his with a hot sexual urgency that thrilled her. He slid long fingers in a bold trail below her panties and groaned with earthy satisfaction, ‘You’re so wet and ready for me,
khriso mou.
’

Feverishly aware of that betraying damp heat, she
trembled beneath the confident touch of his hand, raising her knees to assist him as he skimmed off the final barrier between them. ‘I can’t help wanting you,’ she breathed shakily.

‘And isn’t that only as it should be?’ Alexei husked, golden eyes glittering over her with virile approval even as his fingers came into contact with a roughness to the skin of her lower stomach that surprised him. ‘What is this I feel?’

Billie froze, belatedly realising that he had found her Caesarean scar. ‘Just a gynaecological thing—some surgery—I had,’ she answered as casually as she could.

‘You never mentioned it,’ Alexei commented.

‘Some things women like to keep to themselves.’

He shifted his hand back to a more sensitive spot and every skin cell in her quiveringly appreciative body seemed to leap. She was feeling too much to feel comfortable because her responses were already breaching the boundaries of her self-control. The exquisite pleasure of his skilled exploration of the slick folds of tender tissue between her thighs was almost more than she could stand without crying out aloud. She twisted and she turned until he stilled her and then she gritted her teeth together, her slender neck extending while he delicately teased the tiny erect bud of her clitoris and right then her concept of what was unbearable was rewritten from inside out. Her hips shifted and jerked upwards in a pleading motion and he lowered his dark arrogant head to the distended rigidity of her nipples, sucking them into his mouth and toying erotically with her wildly responsive flesh.

‘Please…
please now
,’ she framed brokenly, tormented
by the burning heat of an excitement too much to be borne.

He came over her and into her in an almost simultaneous movement. With a sinuous shift of his hips he positioned his long powerful body and sank into her inner warmth with a low, melodious growl of sensual pleasure. For a split second, fear pierced the veil of her excitement and her inner muscles clenched hard round his swollen shaft. His golden eyes caught the momentary look of concern and unease she couldn’t hide and then his hands closed round her hips and he drove into her again with hard, sure sensual force as if he knew the intensity of her need. The feeling of pressure low in her belly increased until all she was conscious of was the remorseless intrusion of his strong body into hers and the ravishing irresistible force of a physical stimulation so extreme it came close to pain. Tingling sparks of her impending release shot through her stomach and she writhed and gasped, her body arching as the most intense orgasm gripped her and sent wild sensation flooding through her in an uncontrollable and explosive tide.

The feeling of release from her earthly body was so powerful that for long moments after that climax Billie was in a daze. Only slowly did she regain awareness again, register the weightiness of her limbs, the heavy cocoon of sweet satisfaction that was reluctant to let her go, and even more slowly did she notice that Alexei had pulled away from her when she most wanted to cling to him. And then there was the silence…thrumming and taut as only a male as volatile as Alexei could make it. Her bright head swivelled on the pillow, green eyes very dark and wide flaring to Alexei.

He looked levelly back at her and a lump of dismay formed in her throat, for she read the challenge in his appraisal. The silence lay like a claustrophobic blanket threatening to stifle her ability to breathe. A whoosh of alarm ran down her spine like a cold warning hand. ‘What’s wrong?’

Thrusting the pillows back against the headboard, Alexei sat up. Brilliant golden eyes rested on her with all the extraordinary force of his fierce temperament. ‘I’m amazed you have the nerve to ask me that. You lied to me, and you know how I feel about lies.’

Fear cut Billie as deep as a knife wound and a kind of panic raced like a wrecking ball through her more usually calm thoughts, creating mental havoc. Her blood ran cold, her skin turned clammy.
‘L-lies?’
she queried, playing desperately for time.

‘That certainly wasn’t the very first time you had sex. You weren’t a virgin before I married you, yet you were determined to make me believe that you were. What is that other than a lie?’

He was disappointed, she assumed, realising just what a pit she had dug for herself to fall into. How could she tell him the truth without telling him the
whole
truth? The few hours of grace she had believed she still had had suddenly vanished, depriving her of any control over the situation.

‘Of course it would be downright hypocrisy for a guy of my experience to expect or demand a virgin bride in this day and age,’ Alexei drawled in glancing continuance. ‘I may have made a false assumption but you lied by omission. Lying by staying silent when you should have contradicted me is
still
a lie.’

‘I didn’t know how to tell you,’ Billie framed uncertainly.
‘When you made that assumption I felt trapped by it—’

‘No, don’t make the mistake of trying to lay your dishonesty at my door,’ Alexei cautioned her, his lean handsome face hardening into grim lines at her response. ‘I also want to know who your first lover was: Damon Marios, your spineless first love?’

The instant he flung that arrogant demand and that name at her she froze, wondering whether she really had to trail out all her secrets there and then, if there was no escape, no other way of deflecting him. And then she marvelled at her own reluctance to speak, her terror of breaking free of the cosy bridal bubble of happy-ever-afters and fantasy. ‘You’re not going to believe me when I do tell you who it was.’

As he stared at her from below the dense dark screen of his luxuriant lashes Alexei’s handsome mouth took on a sardonic quirk. ‘Try me. At least you have the wit not to persist in the lie.’

Billie no longer felt comfortable in the bed. She was no more comfortable under his intent scrutiny when she slid out naked from below the sheet to move a few steps away and reach for the light silk robe draped in readiness for her use over a chair. Enveloped within its concealing folds, the sash tightened round her waist with unsteady hands, she felt curiously more in control again.

‘How did you know? How did you guess?’ she suddenly pressed, unable to resist asking that question.

‘You told me. You betrayed yourself by the expression in your eyes, your face, your very responses. You looked and acted guilty.’

‘Because that’s how I feel and it’s really not fair
because not all of this is my fault,’ Billie reasoned with a defensive edge of defiance. ‘You can’t be so judgemental about lies. Not everything is that black and white.’