The Wealthy Greek's Contract Wife (14 page)

The earth had steadied, and so had her heartbeat, slowing to match the sturdy tempo of Ilios’s. In a situation that would normally have filled her with fear for her own safety she had felt completely secure, protected—safe because of him. But here in Ilios’s arms there was no emotional safety for her, only emotional danger, Lizzie reminded herself.

Against her ear Ilios spoke again. ‘That should be it now, but we’d better stay where we are for a few more minutes.’

The warmth of his breath sent small shudders of sensual delight rippling over her nerve-endings, and the knowledge that his lips were so close to her flesh made her want to compel them even closer. Memories of how it had felt to have him caressing her skin with the stroke of his tonguetip broke through the embargo she had placed on them.

‘Will it affect the villa?’ Lizzie asked, genuinely concerned about the villa but equally intent on distracting herself from thinking so intimately about Ilios and how much she loved him.

‘No. The promontory isn’t affected by the fault line.’

Lizzie could hear voices as people called out to one another. Ilios lifted his body from hers. She badly wanted to beg him not to do so—and not because of the earthquake. He stood up, and then reached down to help her to her feet.

‘You’ve got dust on your face.’

Before she could stop him he leaned towards her, brushing her cheek with his hand.

She wanted to stay like this for ever, Lizzie thought achingly. With Ilios’s hand on her skin, his gaze on hers, his arm supporting her—just as though she genuinely did matter to him, just as though he cared about her and wanted to protect her because he loved her. She moved towards him yearningly, only to have him move back.

What was happening to him? Ilios asked himself grimly. Increasingly his own behaviour was so alien to what he knew of himself that witnessing it was like confronting a stranger wearing his skin. A stranger who was challenging him for full possession of himself? A stranger who owed his existence to the arrival of Lizzie Wareham in his life? A stranger whose first thought was to protect Lizzie? Why?

Because it was in his own interests to protect her. He had a vested interest in her safety after all.

No one in the village seemed particularly disturbed by the tremor. Everyone was going about their normal business, and men were working to clear the debris from the hillside from the road as Lizzie got to her feet.

‘Are you okay?’ Ilios asked her.

‘Yes, thanks to you.’

Oh, yes, he was definitely withdrawing from her—rejecting her gratitude, rejecting anything remotely emotional
between them, and of course rejecting her physically.

Ilios stepped back from her physically as well as emotionally with a brisk nod of his head. ‘In ancient times they used to believe that it was the gods’ anger that was responsible for these tremors,’ he commented a few minutes later as he opened the car door for Lizzie. ‘Now we construct buildings especially designed to cope with the movement caused by them.’

R
IDICULOUSLY
, since she had done next to nothing all day other than sightsee and enjoy the rooftop garden of Ilios’s apartment, Lizzie felt incredibly tired. She tried to stifle a yawn and look instead as though she was enjoying the reception she and Ilios were attending as part of an incentive by the Greek government to attract new business to the area. Naturally Ilios, as head of a locally based business which was successful internationally, was in great demand, and he had apologised for having to desert her to talk business with someone who had asked to be introduced to him.

She wasn’t the only wife left to stand alone nursing a drink, Lizzie recognised as she glanced round the elegant hotel ballroom where the reception was being held. But her glass merely contained water. Champagne was something she was determined to avoid for as long as she was married to Ilios.

A smile of recognition from one of the women she had met at the gallery opening had her heading towards her in relief. Now that she was a little wiser about Thessaloniki society she dressed accordingly—overdressed, in fact, by her normal standards. Tonight, in addition to her designer
dress in yellow silk, she was also wearing the jewellery. Ilios had a position to maintain, after all, and not just for the sake of his own personal status. The employees of Manos Construction depended on him, and on the success of the business. An immaculately coiffed and groomed wife said that a man had both good taste and money—re-assuring values where other businessmen were concerned, no matter how much Lizzie might wish for a simpler and more straightforward way of doing business.

Engrossed in her own thoughts as she wove her way through the crowded room, she didn’t see Ilios’s cousin—to whom she had been introduced by Ilios earlier—making a beeline for her, until he was standing in front of her blocking her way.

Lizzie’s heart sank.

When Ilios had warned her that his cousin was likely to be present she had been curious to meet him. Her private view was that Ilios, for perfectly good reasons rooted in their shared childhood, had turned him into a more unpleasant figure than he actually was.

It had taken less than a minute in Tino Manos’s company for her to recognise that she had been wrong. If anything, Ilios’s cousin was even more unpleasant than Ilios had said.

‘So,’ he announced now, with an unpleasant leer, ‘an opportunity to talk to the new bride, my cousin-in-law, without Ilios standing over us.’

As he spoke Tino’s gaze was fixed on her breasts, discreetly covered by the high neckline of the silk dress which wasn’t in the least bit provocative. Nevertheless, the way Ilios’s cousin was looking at her made Lizzie feel like crossing her arms over her chest, to protect her body from his unwanted visual inspection.

It was strange how you could sometimes know the
minute you met a person whether or not you were going to like them, Lizzie reflected, and tried not to show how desperately she wanted to escape.

Short and thickset, with overly familiar sharp dark eyes, Tino Manos was the kind of man Lizzie knew she would have disliked no matter who he was related to. She could understand now all too easily why Ilios had spoken as he had when she had suggested that for the sake of his sons he should try to ‘mend fences’ with his cousin. No sane parent would ever want to entrust his vulnerable children’s emotional wellbeing and future to a man like this.

‘You are to be congratulated on having caught Ilios. You must have something very special indeed to have persuaded him to give up his freedom having always sworn that he would never marry.’

Lizzie fought hard not to show how offensive she found his unsubtle hints as to why Ilios might have married her and to remain detached. The way Tino was looking at her and the tone of his voice repelled her physically and emotionally, and it was with great relief that she heard Ilios answering his cousin in an even tone.

‘Yes, she does, Tino—and that something is my love.’

There was no need for Lizzie to act as she turned to her husband and gave him a speaking look of gratitude for his intervention.

‘Love? I thought that was something you’d foresworn.’

Tino was like a dog with its teeth into something it wasn’t going to release, Lizzie recognized.

‘So did I,’ Ilios agreed. ‘Until I met Lizzie.’

As he spoke he turned towards her, smiling tenderly down into her eyes, reaching out to take hold of her hand, rubbing his thumb gently over her skin in a gesture that both caressed and reassured.

‘And married her with such speed that you didn’t even have time to invite anyone to the wedding.’

Tino was suspicious, Lizzie felt sure. Her hand trembled against Ilios’s, and the look she gave him mirrored what she was feeling.

‘I didn’t want to risk losing her,’ Ilios responded, still smiling down at her. ‘I never want to lose her.’

As he spoke he bent his head and kissed her, his actions taking Lizzie by surprise. She knew that Ilios was putting on an act for his cousin, but still she had not expected this. Beneath his, her own lips softened and clung. Without intending to do so she placed her hand on his arm and moved closer to him, her whole body succumbing to her love for him, yearning toward him. Beneath the silk of her dress she could feel her nipples firming and aching, desire stirring and then quickening in the pit of her stomach. Unable to stop herself, she lifted her hand from his arm to his face, tracing the line of his jaw with achingly longing fingertips.

Ilios lifted his mouth from hers, causing Lizzie to open her eyes and look up at him. Her hand trembled against his skin, betraying her emotions, and her chest lifted with the demand from her lungs for extra oxygen. The words
I want you so much
and
Let’s go home
formed inside her head, but had to be denied speech.

‘So, how did the two of you meet?’

Tino’s voice was an unwanted intrusion, reminding Lizzie of her real role, as a paid-for pretend wife. She compared all the pain that that brought her with the impossible fantasy she longed for. A fantasy in which Ilios really did love, really had meant what he had just said, really had meant the way he had just kissed her…

‘Fate brought us together, Tino,’ Ilios answered his cousin, continuing, ‘Now, if you’ll excuse us…?’

Ilios was drawing her away, his hand resting against the hollow of her back as he guided her towards Ariadne Constantin—the woman who had smiled at her earlier.

L
IZZIE
had to wait until she and Ilios were in the car and on their way home, having arranged to have dinner with the Constantins later in the week, to tell him, ‘You were right about your cousin. It would be impossible to entrust the future of your sons to him. Do you think he believed what you said about us?’

‘I certainly hope so,’ Ilios answered.

Because he wanted to get rid of her, of course.

Ilios was annoyed with himself. Lizzie’s admission that she had been wrong about his cousin had reminded him of her earlier warnings about the vulnerability of his children should anything happen to him. Why should he be concerned about what she thought? Why should the dangerous thought that Lizzie would be a good mother find its way into his head? He knew he had made the right decision with regard to his own life, and Lizzie could have as many children as she wanted just so long as they weren’t his.

‘I’ll say goodnight,’ Lizzie told him at the apartment, as she went to put away her coat. ‘After all, I’m sure you have work you want to do.’

Why had she said that? Ilios wasn’t stupid—just the opposite, in fact. He was very perceptive, and he was
bound to hear the acid note in her voice and guess that she was deliberately needling him. She held her breath, waiting for him to challenge her, but instead he turned away from her, leaving her feeling relieved that her reckless behaviour hadn’t provoked any comeback.

In the dressing room of the master bedroom she hung up her coat and warned herself that if he
had
demanded an explanation of her comment, he might easily have worked out that it had been provoked by her longing for him to take her to bed again, for his love.

It was all because of that kiss he had given her earlier in the evening—the way it had made her ache with the pain of her unrequited love for him.

In the living room Ilios opened his laptop. Lizzie was right, he did have work to do—and, as he had discovered many years ago, for him work wasn’t just the panacea that stopped all his pain, it was also his most constant and trusted companion, his closest ally in the fight to remain independent of all human emotional demands. It sustained and supported him, and he knew that within seconds of studying the screen in front of him all thoughts of Lizzie Wareham and the unwanted emotions she aroused within him would disappear.

Only they didn’t. No matter how hard he focussed on the screen, all he could see was Lizzie’s image inside his head.

What was going on? Whatever it was, he didn’t want it, Ilios thought savagely. There was no place in his life for it—or for her. But the harder he clung to that thought, to his denial of what he really wanted, the more his body ached for Lizzie. His body. That was all. That was all it was—a physical desire conjured up out of a lack of regular sex and the fact that he was sharing his living space with
a woman. Any woman would have had the same effect on him. Any woman? Then why was it
her
image he could see inside his head,
her
body he ached to hold,
her
love for which he now hungered?

No. He categorically refused to accept the thought that had somehow slipped into his head. If he wanted anything from her then it was merely sex. Nothing more.

Prove it
, an inner voice challenged him. Go to her now and take her in your arms, hold her and caress her and prove that when you do those things all you feel is a clinical sexual response, without anything emotional to pollute its physical purity.

Ilios looked towards the door. This was ridiculous. He didn’t have anything to prove to anyone—least of all himself. But somehow he was on his feet and heading towards the master bedroom.

Lizzie was just getting into bed when the door opened and Ilios strode into the room.

‘I thought that tonight I’d have an early night myself,’ he told her, before disappearing into the dressing room.

Lying beneath the bedclothes, her stomach quivering with a mixture of uncertainty and excitement, Lizzie tried to breathe normally and relax, warning herself that Ilios probably hadn’t meant anything other than exactly what he had said.

There was no need for him to do this, Ilios assured himself, as he stood under the jets of the shower.

Was he afraid that he couldn’t prove what he had claimed? that inner voice goaded him.

No! Ilios denied. He stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel. If she hadn’t touched his face and looked at him the way she had earlier on this evening, when he’d been forced to put on that display of newly
married bliss for Tino, then this wouldn’t be happening. He wouldn’t be aching the way he was for her now. No? If that was all that had made him ache for her, then what was his excuse for the fact that he had ached for her in the same way every night since that first time?

It was sex—that was all. Sex.

He flung down the towel. There was still time to stop this, still time to walk away and to use his will-power to silence the voice inside him.

There might still be time, but where was the desire? That, Ilios acknowledged as he opened the bedroom door, was all for Lizzie.

She was lying on Ilios’s side of the bed. How could she have forgotten?

‘I’m on your side of the bed,’ she told him as he came towards her. ‘I’ll move over.’

‘Why?’ Ilios asked her softly. ‘When we’re going to be sharing the same space?’

Lizzie felt her heart give a gigantic thump, and then her body filled with an anticipatory pleasure that poured through her like melted honey.

That was nothing compared with what she felt when Ilios got into the bed and drew her close to him. Like her, he was naked, and the feel of his skin against hers was a sensual caress almost beyond bearing.

This shouldn’t be happening. Not now, when she knew that she loved him. It had been different before, but now…Now she was deceiving him, taking from him something he would not want to give her. Ilios was touching her, stroking his fingertips down the sensitive flesh of her inner arm and making her shudder openly in responsive pleasure. Lizzie lifted her own hand to his shoulder, intending to tell him they must stop, but somehow the sensation of
the warm, firm ball of male sinew and muscle beneath her touch overwhelmed her good intentions, seducing away her will-power to do anything other than give in to her own need.

Closing her eyes, Lizzie shaped the muscles of his back, her own nerve-endings recording the pleasure of each touch. Was male flesh really different from female flesh—thicker, sleeker, more warm, sensual satin than soft silk, somehow intrinsically male in its construction? Or was it merely her own response to knowing that the flesh she was touching belonged to Ilios that made her feel that?

As he kissed her and held her Ilios’s desire for her ran like ribbons of fire, until it filled his heart and his veins, spilling out into his touch so that it patterned his feelings for her on her flesh.

Cupped within his hand, the soft weight of her breast fitted as perfectly as though it had been created for his hold alone, and the erotic sensitivity of her nipple as it responded to his caress was responsive in that way only to his touch. The arch of her body inviting the possession of his was aroused only by and for him, as though they had been made for one another and only one another.

How could such a delicate touch have the power to drain from him the resistance of a lifetime? How could it seem to offer sanctuary and comfort? How could it possibly have the power to transform him from a man to whom emotions were the enemy to a man who craved…? A man who craved what?

Ilios moved restlessly against his own thoughts, against his own weakness in allowing himself this unfamiliar need to give the essence of himself into the safekeeping of another. He cupped Lizzie’s face so that he could kiss her. Kissing her and feeling her response to him re-established
his role as the one in charge of what was happening. And his was the responsibility for them both, Ilios warned himself—a responsibility he had already neglected once.

Beneath Ilios’s kiss Lizzie breathed a sigh of delight. It was impossible not to let her hand follow its own inclinations and drift down the lean length of his body, past the flat male curve of his hip, and then come to rest at the base of his spine. The pressure of Ilios’s mouth on her own increased, his arms tightening around her as he half rolled her beneath him. Eagerly Lizzie parted her lips, her tongue caressing his, her fingertips stroking the shallow hollow where his spine ended.

Was it her love for Ilios that made the intimacy they were now sharing so heart-achingly intense? Lizzie wondered emotionally. It must be; there could be no other explanation, surely, for the sense of deep intimacy and connection she felt towards him.

She moaned softly with delight as Ilios moved over her, answering the pressure of her growing need. The pleasure from his hands spreading her thighs and his lips tasting her sex took from her both the ability and the will to do anything other than give herself over to him as he moved up her body, his flesh gleaming in the moonlight, erect and taut. Lizzie reached out towards it, encircling the swollen head of his sex, engrossed in the sensation of possessing him.

What had been pleasure had now become a fierce beating urgency—a primeval drive strong enough to crush all obstacles in its way.

How could the pleasure of another’s touch be so intense that it invaded every part of him, making his nerve-endings cry out within him under its onslaught? He wanted Lizzie to go on caressing him as she was for ever. He wanted her
to stroke and know every bit of him. He wanted—As if a sheer drop had appeared out of nowhere in a misty landscape Ilios’s thoughts skidded to a halt as he recognised the danger he was facing. He could not,
would
not allow himself to feel like this. It went against everything he had worked for and planned for. It must not happen. It had to be destroyed.

Abruptly Ilios forced himself to release Lizzie, pulling back from her, leaving her without a backward look or a word of explanation.

Ilios had gone. She was alone in the bed that had so recently been such a wonderful place of intimacy and shared desire but which was now a place of harsh reality and emptiness.

Curled up against her pain, Lizzie tensed her jaw against the agonised cry of despair burning her throat. What had she expected? That the impossible would happen and Ilios would declare his love for her? She was twenty-seven, not seventeen, and surely what had happened to her young sister had shown her the damage that could be done when a woman was foolish enough to believe that her love for a man had the power to change him, somehow conjure from him a reciprocal love for her.

Ilios did not love her. He had made that plain in the way that he had recoiled from her, rejecting her with that look of furious disbelief that had told her more clearly than any words that he not only didn’t love her, but he actively wished she was not there.