LYNNE GRAHAM: The Greek Demands His Heir

A slight shiver racked Grace as if, after that kiss, her entire body had become super sensitive to his touch. She badly wanted him to kiss her again and the strength of that craving unsettled her. Never until that moment had she appreciated how powerful sexual hunger could be. Oh, she had read about it, heard about it, talked intellectually about it but all of those stories and assumptions were meaningless when set next to the actual experience. Leo Zikos would be like her personal science project, she told herself soothingly, and in the process of her research she would learn much that she needed to know.

She asked Leo when Rahim had left and for a few minutes they discussed the hotel scheme.

‘You were getting bored,’ Leo commented. ‘I should apologise for that.’

‘Is your business based on nightclubs?’

‘No, this is my only investment in that line. I started out as a corporate trader and built a property empire with my investments. Now I have hotels, mobile phone and transport companies...’ Leo shifted a hand to indicate the breadth of his interests with an elegance of movement that was compelling. ‘I believe very strongly in diversification. My father once went bust because he concentrated all his energies in one field. What are you studying at university?’

‘I’m about to go into my final year.’ Grace responded as if she had misheard his question because she was in no hurry to tell him that she was a medical student. More than one male had backtracked from Grace in the past once they had discovered how clever she was. It was surprising how many men were turned off by her high IQ.

She met his riveting dark eyes and discovered that below the lights they weren’t really dark at all. They were tawny gold and vibrant with power and a tiny shiver of naked awareness snaked down her taut spinal cord.

Leo stared down at her, a brooding quality tightening his lean dark features. He had read about pheromones and he was wondering if it was possible that she put out some strange invisible chemical message that turned him on hard and fast in a way that seemed to make no sense. After all, even if he was reacting like one, he wasn’t a teenager at the mercy of his hormones any more.

He bent his head and the coconut scent of her shampoo filtered appealingly into his nostrils but he wasn’t thinking about that when he looked at her ripe pink mouth. He moved nearer, his breath fanning her cheek. Almost imperceptibly she swayed closer. His arms tautened round her and without the smallest forewarning of what he was about to do he devoured the voluptuous promise of her lips with a passionate intensity that sent arousal roaring through him like an out-of-control fire.

The second kiss was even hotter than the first, Grace acknowledged dizzily, and she’d known it was coming, forewarned by the glitter of his eyes, the tensing of his arms round her and the quickened thump of his heartbeat beneath her palm when she was forced to plant a hand against his shirtfront to retain her balance on the edge of the seat. She had no thought of avoiding that kiss. In fact, excitement was zinging through her as an astonishing surge of awareness travelled through every nerve ending in her body, supersizing her every response.

Leo dragged his mouth from hers with the greatest of difficulty. ‘Let’s go,’ he husked.

She had only been with him a little over an hour, Grace acknowledged in dismay. I’m a slut, I’m a slut, she reflected in mortification. Maybe sometimes sluts have more fun, said another voice inside her head and she almost laughed, registering that she was on a kind of mindless adrenalin high as if she had just reached the top of a ski run. She looked up at him, her gaze skimming over the already familiar lines of his breathtakingly handsome face and her tummy turning over even as heat leapt through her lower body in a disturbing wave of reaction. ‘Go where?’

‘Back to my yacht,’ Leo advanced, urging her to her feet while carefully avoiding the scrutiny of his bodyguards. Making out with an audience was not cool and he had never done it before. What was he? A hot-under-the-collar kid? A dark flush had scored his strong cheekbones.

‘You’re here on a yacht?’ Grace frowned, surprised by the news.

‘I’ve been cruising the Med for the past week.’ Leo walked her down the stairs, but not before one of the men seated at the table across the way cleared their path. When she turned her head she saw the other two falling into step behind them. One of them was talking into one of those security earpieces she had only previously seen worn in films and the men backed into the dancers to impose a barrier around her and Leo and ensure their smooth passage across the crowded dance floor.

‘Are those men bouncers?’ she asked.

‘My security team.’

‘Why do you need a security team?’ Grace enquired nervously.

‘Protection. I’ve had a security presence in my life since childhood,’ Leo confided evenly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. ‘My mother and her sister were Greek heiresses. Sadly, my aunt was kidnapped and held for ransom as a teenager.’

‘Good grief,’ Grace whispered in the comparative quiet of the club foyer. ‘Was she freed? I mean, did she come home again?’

‘Yes, she came home but she never fully recovered from her ordeal,’ Leo replied grimly.

Grace stiffened, registering that something pretty horrible had happened to his aunt while she was being held and she suppressed a shiver.

‘It makes more sense to guard against such risks,’ Leo declared in a lighter tone as a car drew up by the kerb and one of his guards hastened to open the door for them.

Grace was nonplussed, out of her depth and feeling it. He had to be very rich to feel the need to take such precautions. She was with a man who inhabited a totally different world from her own and she breathed in slow and deep while she wondered if she had made a rather foolish decision.

‘This is a little unnerving for me,’ Grace admitted abruptly, watching one man climb in the front with the driver while the others climbed into the second car behind them.

‘Ignore them...I do,’ Leo asserted, recognising that she was not impressed like most women but instead ill at ease with the trappings of his lifestyle.

On the drive to the marina, her breath feathered in her throat while Leo chatted easily about his recent travels and stroked the back of her hand with a lazy forefinger. The car stopped and the passenger door sprang open. In her high heels, his hand cupping her elbow to steady her, she walked a few steps and stopped dead when Leo stepped into a motorboat and extended his hand to her.

‘I... I... Where’s your boat?’ Grace demanded uneasily.

‘There...’

Grace followed his gesture and further out in the bay saw a ship’s silhouette etched against the moonlit sky. ‘It looks like the Titanic !’ she gasped because it was huge.

‘An unfortunate comparison. I can assure you that HellenicLady is seaworthy and safe.’ Leo stepped back onto the marina and bent down to scoop her up into his arms before stepping back into the launch with her.

He had acted so fast Grace hadn’t had a moment to do more than utter a startled squeak of protest. Then he set her down again, settling her into a padded seat by his side. The speedboat was racing across the sea before she could even catch her breath. A night on a yacht, she thought ruefully. Well, that might be fun, she conceded, and fun had been in very short supply since she’d arrived in Marmaris as Jenna’s pretty much unwelcome guest.

‘OK?’ Leo prompted as the launch reached the yacht.

‘I’m fine.’ Grace swallowed back her worries and allowed him to guide her up a gangway.