No. This time she would not play his game. He wanted her to literally eat from his hand, and she would not do it. She knew how this ended—had experienced it before—with him thrusting her away.
She wasn’t going to give herself the chance to be rejected. Again.
‘Thank you.’ She took the baklava from his hand and took a bite.
Lukas watched, one hip braced against the counter-top, his eyes following her movements as she self-consciously tried to eat the dessert.
Baklava was not an easy thing to eat at the best of times, and it was incredibly difficult when you had a spectator. Rhiannon was conscious of the flakes of pastry on her lips, the drip of honey on her chin.
Lukas reached out, touched the drip on her chin and licked his thumb. ‘Sweet.’
‘Don’t.’
He raised his eyebrows, his gaze still heavy lidded, and waited.
‘Don’t,’ she repeated, her voice a raw whisper. She set the baklava on the counter, wiped the honey from her mouth. ‘You don’t even want to. You don’t even like me …’
Lukas’s eyes flared with startled awareness. ‘Why do you think I don’t like you?’ he murmured, and before Rhiannon could protest he was drawing her to him, his hands cupping her face, her head tilted back to meet his own regretful gaze. ‘I fight with myself every day,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to want you because of me, not because of you. Never because of you.’ His lips were inches from hers. ‘You drive me wild, Rhiannon. When I’m near you I can’t think. I can only …’ his voice came out in a jagged rasping of sound ‘… want.’
Rhiannon swayed towards him. She could feel the heat from his body, the desire pulsing through him, drawing her dangerously nearer.
No one had ever wanted her because of who she was, and yet here was Lukas wanting her. Wanting her.
Even if he didn’t want to. Suddenly that didn’t matter. All that she could get her head—her heart—around was that Lukas wanted her. And for that moment, with their bodies so close, yet not touching, his hands gentle on her face, it was enough.
She closed that last tempting inch, brushed her lips against his. His hands slipped up to tangle in her hair, to bring her even closer. Her arms went around him, revelling in the hardness of his chest, his shoulders, as he moulded her to him.
‘Rhiannon …’ he breathed against her lips. ‘Rhiannon … I want you …’
She smiled against his mouth. ‘You don’t want anything.’
‘I want you,’ he repeated, almost savagely, and deepened the kiss. Rhiannon knew there was regret in his voice, and there was self-condemnation, but she didn’t care. It was all too sweet, too wonderful, too consuming.
Her head fell back as she surrendered to the ministrations of his mouth, his tongue, his hands.
‘You taste sweet,’ he murmured against her skin, and she smiled.
‘I was eating honey.’
‘No, sweeter.’ He was trailing kisses down her throat, his hands reaching under her tee-shirt to skim over her breasts, his thumbs teasing the sensitive nipples to aching peaks.
Rhiannon arched, moaned. She couldn’t help it. She’d never felt so alive—every sense, every nerve ending humming, throbbing to life.
Lukas took her buttocks in his hands and hoisted her easily onto the counter-top. Her legs wrapped around him as a matter of instinct, pulled him closer, felt his hardness at the joining of her legs, and gasped at the contact. Gasped with pleasure.
Somehow they were on top of the counter, tangled legs, bodies pressed together, his hand creeping up her thigh, nudging her old pyjama shorts aside to tease the damp curls at her femininity.
Rhiannon gasped at the intimate intrusion, the novel feeling of someone touching her where she’d never been touched before.
‘All right?’ Lukas murmured, looking down at her, his pupils dilated with desire, his face flushed with heat, his finger still teasing, nudging her knowingly, turning her to liquid heat.
Rhiannon opened her mouth to reply. She was about to say yes, of course she was all right. She was more than all right. Then, quite suddenly, she wasn’t.
Suddenly she was aware of her rucked-up clothes, of the metal counter pressing coldly into her back, of the fact that she was lying splayed out on a chopping block like a piece of meat … And, really, wasn’t she being treated like one?
Wasn’t she letting herself be treated like one?
Lukas didn’t love her. He didn’t even want to be here with her. She was like a craving he had to satisfy, an itch he had to scratch, and he didn’t even want to.
She closed her eyes briefly, unwilling to continue, unable to stop. She’d brought herself to this humiliating moment. She’d allowed herself to fall so far, stoop so low, simply because she wanted a little—a little—love.
And yet love had nothing to do with this.
Her eyes still closed, she felt Lukas pulling her shirt down. He kissed her navel, making her shiver. He tugged gently on her hand and Rhiannon slipped from the hard metal surface, her eyes open but averted.
‘Look what giving in to desire does,’ Lukas said, and Rhiannon heard the derision. ‘Rutting like animals in the kitchen,’ he continued flatly. ‘No self-control at all.’
‘I’ll go,’ Rhiannon whispered, her throat raw and tight.
Lukas had turned away from her, one hand fisted in his hair. Could he not even bear to look at her? Was he that disgusted?
‘Perhaps it’s best,’ he said quietly, and Rhiannon fled.
Lukas waited till he’d heard Rhiannon’s soft, scared footsteps on the stairs, heard the relieved click of her door. Then he swore.
He strode from the kitchen, found the lounge, and sat down at the piano—his usual source of comfort. His refuge.
Except tonight there was no escape from the torment. His body throbbed with unfulfilled desire even as his mind ached with the knowledge of what he’d stooped to … what he’d almost done.
All because of desire.
He shook his head, his fingers splaying over the piano keys without making a sound.
Desire. He’d seen it ruin lives—his mother’s, his three sisters’, his nephew’s. All of them had given away their self-respect, their dignity, for a few moments of grasped pleasure, a mistaken belief in love.
He’d spent his life witnessing their mistakes … paying for them. He’d promised his father, and more importantly himself, that he would never give in to base cravings, no matter how strong or urgent, and watch need wreck his life.
For a brief moment he remembered his own need—a boy begging for love. Clinging, grasping, pleading … a weak, pathetic fool.
Never again.
Of course he’d had women. He was neither a monk nor a saint. But the affairs had been brief, a matter of expediency on both sides, and each time the woman he’d used—he couldn’t give it a better word—had understood what she was getting.
And what she wasn’t.
But Rhiannon … Rhiannon was off-limits. He knew that. She was innocent, vulnerable. Dangerous. An affair with her would lead to complications he didn’t need, couldn’t afford. He closed his eyes, imagining the tabloid headlines, the smearing of the Petrakides name.
And Rhiannon would be hurt.
He