But inside he must remember—inside he must surely still feel…
His face was just inches away from hers now. She could feel his breath on her cheek, sense the sudden change in his heart rate under the worn navy cotton of his tee shirt. As she watched she saw him snatch an uneven breath, saw his tongue sneak out and, very briefly, touch the sensual lips that, she suddenly realised, were surprisingly dry.
So he wasn’t as armoured against her as she had thought! And she most definitely wasn’t immune to him. Sitting this close to him, feeling the warmth of his body, knowing the scent of his skin, she felt the deep, primal hunger beating an erotic pulse through her bloodstream.
And the hunger that he seemed to spark in her just by existing was back, gnawing at her inside, scrambling her thoughts into chaos…
‘Theos! Ochi! Damn you to hell—ochi! No!’
Hard hands clamped around her arms, bruising as they lifted her, wrenched her away from him. She hadn’t realised that she had leaned so close and she was still stumbling mentally through the shocking confusion, not knowing what was happening to her, not understanding, when he stood up abruptly and forcefully.
‘What do you think I am?’
It was a savage roar, one that brought her head up fast—only to drop her gaze just as quickly when she saw the black rage that burned in his face. His height and strength were impressive enough when she was able to face him, standing upright, but now, when his full height towered over her, he was awe-inspiring and more than a little terrifying.
‘Theo…’ she began tentatively, her voice breaking on his name, but she wasn’t sure if he even heard her; and the black blaze of his eyes in the strong-boned face shrivelled any other words in her mouth.
‘What do you think I am?’ he demanded again, low and savage, making her shrink back against the chair, wishing she could become invisible, or disappear. ‘I may not have been on the best of terms with my father over the past years—but do you think I would betray him with you?’
‘No—no—I never meant…’ Skye tried to interject, horrified at the way he had misinterpreted her actions, seeing an attempt at seduction in the way she had been unable to hide her feelings. But he ignored her in his rage and swept on heedlessly.
‘How low do you think I would stoop? How far would you lower yourself to get what you want?’
‘I never—’
‘No?’
A violent, angry gesture dismissed her weak attempt at a protest, almost as if he were throwing her words right out the window.
‘Then what the hell was all that? “Oh, please, Theo…please…’”
Skye could only blink in stunned horror as he suddenly switched to a frighteningly near-accurate copy of her own words, her own voice, and to her shock and distress she caught the note of husky seduction mixed in with the pleading she had aimed for.
‘“I’m begging you, Theo…” Oh, yes—you were begging, all right!’
To her total astonishment he suddenly came forward and held out a hand, clearly intending to help her up. Stunned and bemused, Skye could only take the hand he offered, finding herself wrenched to her feet with a force that almost had her flying to the opposite side of the room.
But Theo caught her, whirled her round back to face him, yanked her close. For a long, long moment he simply stared into her face, but then he reached out his free hand, tracing the side of her face, the contours of her cheek, before he pushed his long, powerful fingers into the fall of her burnished red hair.
‘Oh, I know what you were begging for. What you wanted was this…’
The kiss he dragged her into was hard and rough, cruelly punishing, devastating. It was meant to tell her exactly what he thought of her and it did. It humiliated, angered, shattered her. And it left her shaking in her shoes at just the thought of what was in his mind.
But then just as suddenly that kiss stopped.
It stopped and Theo lifted his head for a moment, drew in a raw, ragged breath. Molten jet eyes blazed down into hers, searing right through to her soul.
‘Oh, yes, my sweet,’ he murmured, soft as a deadly snake. ‘That’s what you want. What you respond to. What you use to try to entice me into doing as you want.’
‘It wasn’t like that…’ Skye tried to whisper, but her tongue seemed to have frozen in her mouth, unable to speak a word, and he either didn’t hear her or ignored her attempt and pushed straight on.
‘And do you know what I hate—what I despise the most? It’s that even now, when I know that everything you are is a lie, that the woman I met, the woman I slept with, was as false as she could be, that she was promised to someone else—to my own father!—you still can’t stop! You still think that you can seduce me round to your way of thinking—to doing what you want me to do. That by offering me your body—’
‘No!’
‘Yes,’ Theo returned harshly. ‘Oh, yes. But it won’t work, agape mou. You don’t catch me that way again. I may have been duped at our first meeting—but I don’t put my head into the noose a second time. Not for anyone—and certainly not for a conniving, scheming little tramp like you’ve proved yourself to be.’
‘No…’ It was all she could manage; all she could think of to say.
But even as she spoke she knew that it was all pointless, that she might just as well have saved herself the effort. Theo wasn’t going to listen to her, and, even if he did, there was no way she could refute the appalling accusations he was throwing at her, not unless she offered him some alternative explanation.
And the only explanation she could offer was the truth. A truth that she was forbidden to tell anyone, that she had sworn to keep to herself. If she let it out, she would ruin so many other lives.
While keeping silent only ruined her own.
‘No?’ Theo scorned. ‘Well, I’m sorry, my angel, but I just don’t believe you.’
His hand came out, slowly, carefully, so that she didn’t have time to react or flinch away.
With the back of one long finger he traced the line of her face, from her temple, down her cheek, along the curve of her jaw. Just for a second, his touch lingered on her mouth, stroking softly, and even though she knew it was impossible, that she was just deceiving herself, in that second, despairingly, Skye would have sworn that the bleak black eyes had been touched with a tiny gleam of regret.
But she had to have been imagining things because the next moment he snatched his hand away, shaking it faintly as if to remove the contamination of her touch. Whatever had been in his eyes vanished completely as his face closed up, harsh and severe, in total rejection of her.
‘You have three days,’ he told her, each word cold and clear and totally obdurate. ‘Three days in which to tell my father the truth. And at the end of that time, if you still haven’t told him—then I promise you I will.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
THREE days.
It hadn’t sounded long when Theo had given Skye the ultimatum. In fact it hadn’t sounded like any time at all.
Three days—just seventy-two hours—in which to find the courage to face Cyril and admit to him what had happened. She didn’t know how she could do it. She only knew that somehow—God knew how—she had to.
But that had been the day before yesterday. Now more than forty-eight hours of the seventy-two had passed—gone. And she was no nearer to bringing herself to do as Theo had ordered.