Rebecca Winters - Greek Affairs - Claiming His Child

More logic impressed itself upon him impeccably, giving him exactly the answers he wanted to questions he didn’t want to ask in the first place. He spelt it out to himself. It was exactly because Ann Turner was what she was—a woman who would sell her own sister’s baby for cash—that he had fought his attraction to her. Of course he had! She was the very last woman he should sully himself with—however deceptively beautiful her packaging. But it had been precisely because he’d fought his attraction to her that it was now so powerful. He could see it with absolute clarity. Logic carried him forward inexorably. Which therefore meant that his reaction to her on the beach had been so extreme only because he’d been trying to suppress his attraction to her. And so now, if he simply gave free rein to his desire, stopped trying to suppress it, his reaction to her would be nothing more than what he was familiar with, comfortable with. The normal reaction he had to a woman he found sexually enticing …

Satisfaction eased through him. Problem analysed. Problem solved. He wanted Ann Turner. There were very good reasons for permitting himself to do so—and no good reason for denying himself what he wanted.

A highly pleasurable bedding. Followed by an equally satisfying removal of a thorn in his side. Once Ann Turner was his mistress, his mother would not invite her to Sospiris again …

His eyes moved over her. She was all unseeing of him. Beneath his palm the fine material of her top fluttered in the wind. Almost he pressed his hand forward, to feel the warmth of her flesh soft beneath his palm, the heat of her pliant body. For nothing more than an instant unease ghosted through his mind as the dark mass of Sospiris loomed closer and the launch came in under its lee, heading to the quay.

Then it was gone. Stavros cut the throttle, nosing the craft forward until he could reach for the mooring. They were back at Sospiris, and the night—Nikos got easily to his feet to alight, holding down his hand to Ann—the night had scarcely begun.

WITH DEEP RELUCTANCE Ann took the outstretched hand. It was warm, and large, and the strong fingers folded over hers effortlessly, drawing her up on to the stone quay. For a few seconds she felt unsteady, after the rocking of the boat, and yet again she stiffened as his hand moved to her spine again, performing the dual office of steadying her and impelling her forward with smooth pressure.

‘Mind the steps,’ his low voice reminded her. It was not a drawl, precisely, but it was lazily spoken, with a note to it that she was deeply aware of.

His hand was there again, and though with any other man it would not have signified anything other than common courtesy, with Nikos she knew it was quite, quite different. It was his brand on her. A brand that went right through the thin layer of her top.

In deafening silence she walked up the steps, gained the level ground at the top as he guided her through the stone archway that led into the main gardens. She went docilely, as if there was nothing awkward in the slightest about Nikos Theakis walking through the villa’s midnight gardens, with the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle filling the night air so that her breath caught the scent, rich and fragrant.

‘Eupheme planted them there deliberately,’ Nikos remarked.

‘So that you walk, as it were, into a wall of scent at just that point. The night air always gives so much more intense a fragrance, does it not?’

He paused on a little stone concourse, where massed vegetation softened the stone walls, the tiny white flowers of jasmine like miniature stars beneath the sky. Another, wider, shallower flight of stone steps led down from here into the garden spreading away below, and where they stood was a vantage point over the whole expanse. Without realising it, Ann paused as well, automatically taking in the landscaped vista beyond, from the artfully winding pathways, the sculpted vegetation, the little walls festooned in bougainvillea, their brilliant hues dimmed now, and out towards the stand of cypress trees at the garden’s far edge, their narrow forms spearing the night sky.

There was no moon, but starlight gleamed on the sea beyond, and caught, too, the iridescent surface of the swimming pool, nestled into its terrace between the villa and the garden.

Ann gazed out over the vista. ‘It really is beautiful,’ she said. It was impossible not to say so. Impossible not to stand there drinking it in and feel the heady intoxication of the flowers’ fragrance, the even headier intoxication of her blood. She wasn’t sure how much wine she had drunk—she could feel it suffusing her veins, feel it swirling gently through her—but it seemed to have put the world into a strange, seductive blend whereby she seemed both supersensitive to everything around her and yet everything seemed dissociated from her, unreal almost … as if she were drifting through it like a veil.

But she knew she should not go on standing here beside Nikos, gazing out over the starlit garden with the scent of flowers in her nostrils, the soft music of the cicadas playing in the vegetation. She should, in fact, walk briskly away along the stone pathway to the terrace and get inside the villa, go straight to her bedroom. Where, equally briskly, she should take off her make-up, brush out her hair, get into her nightdress, get into bed, and go peacefully, immediately to sleep.

That, she knew, was precisely what she should do. Right now.

Not stand here in the soft Aegean night, feeling the wine whispering in her head, feeling the dark, solid presence of Nikos Theakis standing beside her. His hand was still grazing her back, so close that all she had to do was turn slightly towards him to let that warm, strong hand press her against him, to let her hand splay against the fine cotton of his shirt, feeling the hard wall of his chest beneath as she lifted her gaze to him, to drink in the shadowed planes of his face, the dark sweep of lashes across those eyes that could sear right through her, making her breath catch in her throat, making her sway, as if she were a flower on the breeze. His arm would encircle her pliant body, and his sensual, sculpted mouth would come down on hers—

She jerked forward—a single step. But it was enough to shake her back to reality.

‘I must go in,’ she said. Her voice sounded abrupt. She gazed at the long façade of the villa, brow furrowing slightly. Where, exactly, was she to get inside?

‘This way.’ His voice was smooth, assured.

Automatically she went the way he indicated, walking slightly in front of him until the path converged on the main terrace. Even though she had broken the moment, she still seemed to be in that state of hypersensitivity, feeling his presence behind her in every follicle in her body. Yet to everything else she seemed quite blind. So much so that when he stepped past her, to halt her progress and slide open the French window they were adjacent to, indicating she should step through, she did so.

And stopped. This was not a salon or a hallway, or any room she was familiar with.

It was a bedroom.

She turned. Nikos was smoothly sliding shut the French window again.

And walking towards her.

She stepped backwards. It was automatic, instinctive.

‘What—?’

He gave a low, brief laugh. ‘Don’t be naïve, Ann. What do you think?’ There was amusement in his voice.

He came up to her, looking down at her. There was a single low lamp burning by the bed—a wide double bed, swathed in a dark coverlet, sombre and masculine—dimmed right down. By its light his face seemed more planed than ever, with shadows etching his features. She felt weak suddenly, overcome. Gazing at him, lips parting.