But if she married Draco to save her father from financial destruction she would be exposing herself to the sort of sensual danger she could well do without. For years she’d kept her distance from him. After that mortifying encounter when she was sixteen, it was her only way of protecting herself. But how would she keep her distance if she were married to him? ‘This marriage you’re...erm...proposing...’ It was lowering to find her voice sounding so scratchy. ‘What do you get out of it?’
His eyes shone with a devilish gleam that made her inner thighs tingle as if he had stroked her intimately. No one else could do that to her. Turn her on with a look. Make her so hungry for him she had trouble keeping her hands off him. She would like nothing more than to run her hands all over that strong male body to see if it was as deliciously hard and virile as it looked. When had she not burned with lust for him? Ever since she’d been a teenager with newly awakened hormones he’d been her go-to fantasy guy. No one else came close. He had all but ruined her for anyone else and he hadn’t so much as touched her, other than incidentally, since that kiss. ‘I get a wife who’s hot for me. What more could a man want?’
Allegra kept her expression under tight control. ‘If you want a trophy wife then why not select one from your crowd of sexy little sycophants?’
‘I want a wife with a brain between her ears.’
‘Any woman with half a brain would steer clear of a man like you.’
Her insult only made his smile tilt further, as if he was enjoying himself at her expense. ‘And if you were to provide me with an heir...’
‘A...what?’ Allegra’s voice came out like a mouse’s squeak. ‘You’re expecting me to have...?’
‘Now that I think about it...’ He rose from the sofa with leonine agility. ‘An heir and a spare might be a good thing, ne?’
Was he teasing or was he serious? It was so hard to tell behind the sardonic screen of his gaze. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something? I don’t want children. I have a career I’m not prepared to sacrifice for a family.’
‘Lots of women say that but in most cases it’s not true. They say it as an insurance policy in case no one asks them to marry them.’
Allegra’s mouth dropped open so far, she thought her toenails would be bruised. ‘Are you for real? What jungle vine did you just swing down from? Women are not breeding machines. Nor are we waiting around with bated breath for some man to stick a ring on our finger and carry us off to be their domestic slave. We have just as much ambition and drive as men, sometimes even more so.’
‘I’m all for your drive.’ His eyes did that glinting thing again. ‘That’s another thing we have in common, ne?’
The less she thought about his sex drive, the better. No one oozed it more potently than him. He was the poster boy for pick-up sex. He moved from relationship to relationship faster than a driver late for an important appointment changed lanes. What had brought about this sudden desire to play family man? He was only thirty-four—three years older than her. Or was it his way of twisting her arm? The arm that was attached to her hormone-charged body that strangely—since that night six months ago in London—kept reminding her every time she had a period she was over thirty and childless. ‘I don’t know where you got the idea I would agree to this farcical plan. Did my father suggest it?’
‘No, it was entirely my idea.’
His idea? Allegra frowned. ‘But you don’t even like me.’
He came and stood in front of her, his superior height making her feel like a child’s rocking horse standing up to a Clydesdale stallion. He didn’t touch her but she could feel the magnetic pull of his body making every cell in hers gravitate towards him. She raised her eyes to his, momentarily losing herself in those bottomless pools of black with their fringe of thick lashes.
Why did he have to be so wickedly attractive? Why did her hormones jump up and down in ecstatic glee when he was close? Her gaze went to his mouth, drinking in the way his lips were both firm yet sensually supple, the lower one generous, the top one slimmer, but not enough to be considered cruel. It was a mouth always on the verge of a smile, as if he found life amusing rather than sad. Had she ever seen a more kissable male mouth?
‘We could be good together, agape mou. Very good.’
Allegra suppressed the shiver his provocative words evoked. His voice was deep and mellifluous and his Greek accent—so much stronger than the faint trace of it in her voice—never failed to make her skin prickle in delight.
He always spoke English to her because she had let her Greek slip after living so long in England. She understood it more than she could speak it but she could hardly describe herself as fluent. She had always spoken English to her Yorkshire-born mother and she suspected her neglect of her father’s language was a subconscious way to punish him for not being the father she longed for. ‘Look, Draco, this has to stop. All this talk of a marriage between us is pointless. I’m not—’
He took one of her hands and enfolded it in the cage of his. His fingers were warm and dry, the tensile strength in them making something in her stomach drop like a book falling from a shelf. Make that a dozen legal textbooks. Who knew her hand was so sensitive? It was as if every nerve was on the outside of her skin, tingling, making her aware of every pore of his. ‘Why are you so frightened of getting close to me?’
Allegra had to swallow a couple of times to find her voice. ‘I—I’m not frightened of you.’ I’m frightened of me. Of how you make me feel.
His thumb began a slow stroke of the fleshy base of hers. It was as light as a sable brush on a priceless canvas but it triggered an explosion of sensations that ricocheted through her body. Her heart picked up its pace as though she’d been given a shot of adrenalin with a crack chaser. Her brain was scrambled by his closeness, her resolve to keep her distance gone missing without leave.
His eyes searched hers for a long, pulsing moment. It was as if he was committing every one of her features to memory: the shape of her eyes, her nose, her cheeks, her mouth and the tiny beauty spot just above the right side of her top lip.
Allegra licked her lips, then realised what a blatant giveaway that was—the primary signal of attraction. It was as if her body was acting of its own accord. Her will, her determination to resist him, was overridden by a primal need to touch him, to have him touch her. To have him kiss her until she forgot about everything but how those firm, male lips felt on hers.
What are you doing?
The alarm bell of her conscience shattered the moment and she pushed against his chest and stepped back to create some distance between them. ‘Don’t even think about it, buddy.’
His mouth tilted in a knowing smile. ‘I’m a patient man. The longer I wait, the better the satisfaction.’
Allegra had a feeling there would be a heck of a lot of satisfaction going on if she were to submit to his passion. The sort of satisfaction that had mostly eluded her in her previous encounters. She wasn’t good at sex, or at least not with a partner. She could get things working fairly well on her own, but with a partner she found it too distracting to orgasm. Dead embarrassing, but at least she had been able to fudge her way through it. So far.
But she suspected Draco wouldn’t be fooled.
Not for a minute.
Allegra refilled her glass for something to do with her hands. She was conscious of him watching her every move, his dark gaze resting on her like a caress. Her skin tingled, her pulse raced,