‘But I don’t want to share a … a bed,’ she protested. How ridiculous that she had to struggle to force herself to say the word bed. She, an interior designer, who in the course of her work was perfectly familiar with those three small letters. Familiar with the letters, but not familiar at all with the way the word bed made her feel when she was in the presence of Ilios Manos.
‘Do you think I do?’ Ilios challenged her, immediately making her feel humiliated. ‘We don’t have any choice. Fortunately it is a very large bed,’ he told her grimly.
She should, of course, be delighted and relieved that her presence in his bed was so unwelcome, Lizzie told herself. She wanted and needed him not to want her—if only to protect her from her own feelings after all. But instead she was filled with an explosive mix of emotions and sensations—heady excitement, tingling suspense, an irrational and rebellious aching longing that defied all her attempts to subdue it, and that was only the start of it. She could have written a list a metre long of all the effects Ilios was having on her as a woman.
She wasn’t immature or unread; she knew that it was perfectly possible for a human being to experience sexual desire without necessarily being in love with the person they desired. However, she had never somehow expected to be one of those human beings who did feel like that. She had assumed that only those women with a high sex drive were likely to have their hormones drooling with longing for a man to whom they had no intention of becoming emotionally attached. But now, of course, she knew better. Much, much better. And what she knew told her very definitely that she could not risk sharing a bed with Ilios. Not under any circumstances. Of course she could and would attempt to control her feelings, but what if she failed? What if she was tempted to—? But, no—she must not, under any circumstances, allow those tormenting images she had viewed before to slip into her head.
It was a large bed, Ilios had said. But far from tamping down the fire running riot inside her, his words had only fed it. A large bed meant more space in which to enjoy the sensuality of all the delights the human body could provide.
Lizzie could feel the prickle of the nervous sweat breaking out on her skin. This couldn’t go on. If it did she might well end up doing something she would not only regret but which would cause her humiliation and shame. She felt sick with anxiety. She could not share a bed with him. She simply didn’t trust herself to be able to do so without giving in to temptation. Even if by some miracle she could control herself whilst she was awake, who knew what might happen whilst she was asleep? It was horribly easy for her to imagine herself moving closer to him, seeking his body in her sleep, wanting him, and then waking to find herself touching him.
She drew in a shuddering breath of despair. ‘I really don’t think that we should share a bed,’ she told Ilios carefully.
She could see immediately that he didn’t like what she was saying.
‘Why not?’ Ilios demanded. Had she somehow guessed that she aroused him, despite his determination not to admit that even to himself? Did she think that she was so desirable, so irresistible, and he so weak that he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from turning that arousal into something more intimate?
‘I just don’t think that it would be a good idea,’ Lizzie responded, wishing desperately that he would stop pressing her.
‘Because you dare to imagine that I might desire you?’ Ilios accused her. ‘Despite what I have already said about there being no intimacy between us?’
‘No,’ Lizzie denied immediately. ‘It isn’t that.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t say.’
‘And I am afraid that you are going to have to—or take the consequences,’ Ilios warned her quietly.
Lizzie exhaled very slowly. What he meant was that she was going to have to share his bed unless she came up with a cast-iron reason why she should not do. Her reason might be solid, but her courage certainly wasn’t. Of all the unwanted situations she could have had to face, this had to be the worst of them. She was now in a position where she had to defend herself from her own desire for a man who didn’t want her by revealing that desire to him. It was her only means of protecting herself from it.
She had never felt more vulnerable or self-conscious, but the truth was that she needed Ilios’s help to stop her from making her situation even worse. Once he was aware how she felt, she knew he would take all the steps necessary to ensure temptation was removed out of her way. Desperate situations called for desperate measures, and there was surely no more desperate measure than the one she was going to have to take now. Rather like firefighters tackling a fire that threatened to destroy everything in its path, she was going to have to create a fire-break by deliberately destroying part of her own defences in the hope that doing so would ultimately protect her from herself.
‘It isn’t your desire that worries me,’ she told him truthfully, deliberately emphasising the word ‘your’.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LIZZIE’S admission was so unexpected, so breathtakingly straightforward and honest, that it took several seconds for Ilios to accept exactly what she had said.
He looked at her, watching the way the colour came and went in her face, seeing the bruised look of misery that shadowed her eyes, and something came to life inside him that he didn’t recognise.
Why didn’t he say something—anything? Lizzie thought anxiously, even if it was just to reject her.
However, when he did speak it was slowly, spacing out the words.
‘Are you trying to tell me that you don’t want to share my bed because you want me?’ he asked in disbelief.
Lizzie’s throat had gone so tight that it ached with her tension.
‘Yes. That is, I think I do. I’m not used to feeling … that is to wanting … I’ve never actually lusted after anyone before,’ she admitted, red-faced.
‘“Lusted after”?’
Now Lizzie could see that she had shocked him.
‘I’m sorry!’ she apologised. ‘I didn’t want it to happen, but now you can see, can’t you, how difficult it would be? I’ve really tried not to … to think about it, but sometimes it just sort of overwhelms me. I’m afraid that if we were to share a bed, then … Well, what I mean is I know that you don’t want anything to happen between us. I didn’t want to have to say anything.’
She gave a small twisted smile, whilst Ilios listened to her with a growing sense of incredulity and disbelief.
‘What woman would?’ Lizzie continued self-deprecatingly. ‘But at least now that you do know, I can rely on you to … to help me … to ensure that—well, that nothing happens.’
Ilios could hardly believe his own ears. Was she really standing there and telling him that she wouldn’t share his bed because she was afraid that the sexual temptation of his proximity would be too much for her self-control? Did she really think that he was the kind of man who would allow a woman to play the role of hunter in the chase between the sexes? Immediately Ilios wished he had not used such a metaphor, because it had somehow or other caused some very sensual images indeed to break loose inside his imagination—images that were having exactly the opposite effect on him he assumed Lizzie had expected her admission to have.
Her head bowed, Lizzie admitted, ‘I know you must be shocked. I was shocked too. That was part of the reason why I didn’t want to agree to marry you.’
‘You knew then?’ Ilios challenged her.
Lizzie swallowed against the painful lump of anguish lodged in