She had meant to gasp out her protest, but instead her lips opened beneath his like a sea-anemone, and suddenly her feelings ran away with her. Was it anger or frustration which fuelled her desire, causing her fingers to clutch at his shoulders—finding the butter-soft silk of his shirt and the hard sheath of the muscular flesh beneath? Or was it something infinitely more dangerous—the fierce clamour of her heart for a man who would never grant her access to his?
‘Oh,’ she breathed, as she felt his free hand move down to splay with intimate freedom over the globe of one buttock, and a shudder rocked through her as her body melted into his.
‘Theos mou!’ he ground back in response. Through waves of hunger, which came with a strength he had not been anticipating, Constantine pulled her into a darkened recess at the side of the building and continued to plunder her mouth with kiss upon kiss. The fingers which had been on her bottom now slipped underneath the little sundress, and he slid his hand round until it lay over the cotton-covered warmth of her mound. He felt her gasp out a little cry. Her passion had not abated over the years, he thought grimly. Nor had her eagerness dulled or softened around the edges. He felt himself grow so hard that he thought he would explode.
Should he do it to her here? Unzip his trousers and thrust himself in her sweet, wild wetness? He moved his hand over what felt like a pair of functional cotton panties.
‘If only you weren’t wearing any … then how easy it would be,’ he commented unevenly.
His graphic words broke into the darkly erotic spell which had captivated her, and Laura opened her eyes to see the face of Constantine—taut and tight with sexual hunger. Reality washed over her like a cold shower. What the hell was she doing? Standing there while he put his hand between her legs and incited her to … to …
‘Stop … stop it,’ she whispered.
‘Stop what?’
‘T-touching me.’
‘But you like it. You know you do.’ He moved a finger against her and heard her breathing quicken. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Oh.’
His fingertips continued to tease her moist heat—and even in the dim light he could see the sudden dilation of her eyes before the lids came down to obscure them. She relaxed against him once more and he felt her imminent surrender. Should he carry on? Bring her to an orgasm she would be unable and unwilling to prevent? Kiss away the gasping little sounds as those sweet spasms pulsed through her? It would be a turn-on to watch her, and perhaps she would be more amenable to his plans if he had her glowing and basking in his arms afterwards.
But at that moment he heard the sound of a car approaching, and saw the powerful beam of its headlights snaking up the drive. He realised just what he was doing. He, Constantine Karantinos, was standing by the side of a hotel, making out with a woman, in an aroused state such as he had not been in since his teenage youth!
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ he murmured, his lips soft as they whispered over the long pale line of her neck.
Through the mists of sweet, sensual hunger warning bells sounded like fire alarms in her head, and Laura opened her eyes in confusion. ‘Up-upstairs?’ she echoed blankly.
‘Mmm. Much more comfortable there. Enormous bed. Enormous pleasure.’ He kissed her neck and guided her fingers to where he was hard and aching for her. ‘Enormous everywhere,’ he whispered, on an arrogant boast.
But Laura shrank back, snatching her hand away from his tantalising heat as she looked up at him, aghast. ‘You have a room here?’
‘A suite, actually. Not the best I’ve seen—but not bad.’
‘Let me get this straight.’ Her heart was pounding. ‘You thought … you thought that I’d just meekly go to bed with you?’
He smiled. ‘Meekly is not the word I was hoping for, agape mou—since your response so far tells me that you are a very passionate woman. But then as I recall you always were,’ he added softly.
And it was those last words of his which were almost her undoing—because they gave the situation a faux intimacy, almost as if they had some kind of tender, shared past between them. But they didn’t, she reminded herself painfully. What they had shared had been nothing but a powerful sexual chemistry which had flared out of control. And just because that sexual chemistry was as explosive as ever, it didn’t mean she had to give in to it. To behave in a way which would afterwards have him insulting her as if she were no better than a cheap little tramp.
‘I’m not going upstairs with you,’ she said sharply, pulling herself out of his arms and tugging her dress down defiantly as she moved away from the alcove.
To Constantine’s astonishment, he could see that she meant it. Had he thought that she would capitulate as easily as she had done all those years ago? The way women always did? For a moment frustrated longing pulsed around his veins as he searched her face for a sign that she might be on the verge of changing her mind, but there was none.
With the steely self-control for which he was renowned he forced his own desire to evaporate, like droplets of water sizzling onto a hot Greek street. There would be plenty of time for sex once she had agreed to his other demands—and, banishing the tantalising memory of her heated response to him, Constantine switched to the real reason he was here.
‘Hasn’t that little interlude convinced you that we could make a creditable stab at matrimony?’ he questioned softly as he followed her, his feet crunching over the soft gravel.
‘How delightfully you put it—but the answer is still no.’ Her knees still weak, Laura sank down onto a wooden bench in full view of the main entrance into the hotel, where cars were coming and going. Let him dare try to start touching her here!
Constantine sat down next to her. Was this like a boardroom battle? he wondered. With her supposedly stubborn resistance being used as a lever to increase her demands? He gave a small smile. She would soon learn that he called all the shots. ‘I’d like to know what your main objection to my proposal is?’ he questioned silkily.
‘Why—Alex, of course,’ she shot back. ‘Do you really think I can just announce to him that I’m marrying his father—whom he’s never even met—and that we’re all going off to Greece to live happily ever after?’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? Don’t you know anything about children?’
‘Actually, no, I don’t,’ he snapped. ‘Since I’ve been denied that opportunity up until now!’
Laura swallowed as she stared into the shadowed flint of his features. Be reasonable, she told herself as she worked out what to say. Because if she expected him to come round to her way of thinking then she was going to have to be convincing. And convincing a man like this about anything wasn’t going to be easy. She had to show him how it would look from a little boy’s point of view.
Her voice softened. ‘Alex’s life is here in England—it’s all he’s ever known. Don’t you think that suddenly landing all this in his lap would be overloading him with too much, too soon? Tearing him away from his home and his school? A new father who turns up out of the blue and a new life he has no say in? What if Greece doesn’t work out?’
‘We will make it work out,’ he vowed grimly.
And in a way that stubborn insistence only reinforced her determination. Laura suddenly got an ominous vision of the finality of being trapped in a loveless marriage with a man like Constantine, and a shiver ran down her spine. ‘You can’t make things happen like that,’ she said. ‘Human beings aren’t puppets that you can play with and control. I don’t think you realise the impact of taking a child who’s never even been abroad and plonking him in a foreign land.’
His body tensed as if she had hit him, and