He was using unfair tactics, playing dirty—and that was her last semi-coherent thought as he eased her back on to the bed, removing her flattie sandals in one fluid movement before turning his smouldering attention to divesting her of her T-shirt. And, fingers clumsy in her complete capitulation, in her unthinking eagerness to aid her own downfall, she helped him, writhing in intolerably aroused abandonment as he dealt with the fastenings at her waistband and slid the denim fabric, the sheer silk of her panties, slowly and tantalisingly down over the swell of her curvy hips, exposing her ripe nakedness to his incandescent golden gaze.
‘So beautiful,’ he murmured thickly, lowering his head to trail burning kisses from her throat down to the tangle of curls at the apex of her thighs. Helplessly out of control, Maddie gasped wildly, her fingers clinging to the wide span of his shoulders, writhing mindlessly as one of his hands found the melting core of her, cupping her, teasing unbearably, and her voice was a sob of anguished wanting as she cried his name.
‘And so willing.’
Distant his voice now, drenching her with icy, scarcely believing shock as he moved away from her, looking down at her splayed nakedness with golden eyes suddenly overlaid with ice.
‘You are only with me now for the sex,’ he imparted frigidly. ‘Sorry, pethi mou. But, much as you tempt me, I have to decline the invitation until I know why you left what I believed was a happy marriage and asked for divorce. Until you tell me, you will go unsatisfied. And even then I think I will be strong enough to resist the temptation.’
The stony track petered out beneath her feet and Maddie stared at the top of a cliff fringed with sparse, thorny vegetation, her heart beating wildly, her mind twisting and turning incoherently.
He had left the room. He had said something about fixing lunch, and something else. She hadn’t been listening—hadn’t grasped a thing through those shock waves.
The moment the door had closed behind him she’d lurched off the now hateful bed and dragged on her discarded clothing, flying down the curving staircase and out in to the sun. Running.
Running away from him. Running from her shame, from the deep and shameful humiliation he’d so cruelly dealt her. The self-disgust, wave after wave—so much of it she had no idea how to cope with it.
What sort of creature was she to forget his plans for her? Forget he only wanted to use her? To crave the joy of sex with him so much that she would offer it on a plate the moment he touched her?
A silly creature who had loved him once.
Who still loved him?
Her throat closed convulsively as she shook her head in sharp negation. How could she still love a man who, according to his cynical thought processes, had believed that she was only after a fat slice of his wealth in the first place, then, on reassessment, had decided that she might as well have sex thrown into the mix for good measure—a man who would stoop to blackmail to get her back, to get her to resume her brood mare duties?
Frowning, she wiped the sweat from her forehead with shaky fingers. She hated to admit it, but there was something wrong with that line of reasoning. He could have taken her. Just like that. If using her as a walking womb was his only reason for forcing her to return to him, why had he walked away? A power thing?
To demonstrate that he could have sex with her whenever he liked? To punish her, humiliate her for having had the gross temerity to leave him and say she wanted a divorce? Dimitri Kouvaris was a man who didn’t know what it meant to be rejected, who always expected, as of right, to be master of each and every situation.
What else was she to think?
A smothered sob escaped her. The sun was so hot, burning relentlessly down from the piercing blue vault of the sky, that she couldn’t think straight.
Below, the blue-green seawater, crinkling onto the shimmering white sand, looked irresistible. The thought of sinking into blissfully cool waters filled her head.
A paved path from the villa led to low cliffs, where shallow stone steps had been cut into the rock for ease of access. She’d ignored it. Too close. She’d needed somewhere to hide, some place where she could get her head straight, escape the awful humiliation of what had happened. Try to forgive herself where her fatal weakness for him was concerned.
During the three short months of their marriage she had lost herself. Lost the independant young woman she’d been before he had swept her off her feet, meeting his passion with her own because only then had her insecurites seemed ridiculous. Now it was time she found herself again.
Heading away, her breath shortening with exertion, she’d cut through a grove of ancient gnarled olive trees and had come out onto parched grassland, scattering a herd of goats. And here, on another clifftop, possibly at least a mile from the villa—and him—she was safe. Safe until she’d pulled herself together and decided to return. To him.
To tell him in exact detail why she’d left him. To grit her teeth and put her pride—the only thing she had left—aside. And end the farce that their marriage had become.
Countless times during those three months it had been on the tip of her tongue to repeat what Irini had said, to ignore Amanda’s advice. But something apart from Amanda’s sensible advice had always stopped her. The fear that Irini hadn’t been lying?
But she had to tell him now. And do her damnedest to hide the hurt that was still so raw it flayed her. Pride at least demanded that much. If she could manage it.
She had to.
In the meantime the cool waters called her. Feeling fresh and clean again would help clear her mind, wash away the still-burning memories that his hands had imprinted on her skin. Unsteadily, she walked closer to the edge of the clifftop. No convenient steps here. Nothing but the rock face, which seemed to shimmer and shift beneath her eyes. But she could do it—climb down, strip off, and walk into the cool, whispering, welcoming sea.
How he’d resisted the temptation of her he would never know. Even as he assembled the makings of a light lunch his body ached for her—for the only woman, the first woman, ever to separate his mind from his body, to take him to paradise and far, far beyond. But that way lay madness.
She had left him; she wanted a divorce. Lust he could control. But not the need to know the truth. Until he knew why he would have no peace. Money? The idea sickened him. He’d been the target of too many greedy little gold-diggers in the past to welcome the thought that he’d been well and truly suckered. But, in the absence of any other sensible explanation from her, it was the only viable answer he could think of.
When he’d given her no option but to comply with his demands she’d come back to him decided she would avail herself of the material advantages she could still claim as his wife, plus the thing she had become hooked on, the thing he gave freely. Fantastic sex. He’d just proved it, hadn’t he? And he didn’t like the feeling.
Carrying the loaded tray, his mouth curling with distaste, Dimitri told himself he’d get a truthful answer if it killed him. Only to discover that she wasn’t waiting on the balcony outside the master bedroom, as he’d instructed her to. Leaving the tray on the delicate white-painted cast-iron table, he took in the bathroom. No sign of her having had that shower.
Sulking somewhere because he’d denied her what her eager body had been begging for? With a hiss of impatience he set off to systematically search the empty villa, the grounds behind, the swimming pool and the area around the vine-shaded arbour.
Nothing.
Standing at the head of the steps down to the nearest beach, he scanned the empty sands. Nothing.
Anxiety made a furrow on his brow. She couldn’t go far. The island was a mere five miles by three at its widest point. But the midday sun was ferocious.
His stride,