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His eyes, those beautiful beautiful eyes, lion gold surrounded by spiky black lashes, held hers fast and she literally stopped breathing because the clean designer scent of him was drenching her with every mouthful of air. He looked so good, so irretrievably, undeniably good that his pure impact overwhelmed her. He kissed the corner of her mouth in a tiny teasing caress and she shivered, her thoughts blanking out, her body taking over and she wanted more, wanted more so badly that it hurt. His mouth found hers with a sudden urgency that she welcomed. Her tongue slid against his and the pressure of his lips increased in a deep hot kiss that blew her away. In the midst of it he wrenched free of his jacket and dropped it, yanked at his tie and she trailed it free, her fingers releasing the shirt button at his strong brown throat.
And it took no thought to do any of those things and she was shaken by the instinct driving her at a level she didn’t understand. Her fingers curved to one high cheekbone as she struggled to stay upright with her heart slamming against her breastbone as hard as though she were in race. Her legs felt weak, insufficient to support her and she was fiercely aware of the empty ache in her pelvis and the swelling tightness of her breasts as he spread his big hands over her buttocks and crushed her into his hard erection.
‘I’m burning alive for you,’ Cristo growled almost accusingly, spinning her round to find the zip on her dress and taking care of it with efficiency.
‘Me too,’ Erin admitted with a bitterness she couldn’t hide, her whole body throbbing with uncontrollable desire as deft fingers brushed the straps of her dress off her slight shoulders and the garment pooled in a silky heap round her feet.
Breathing audibly, Cristo spun her back to him and bent to curve his hands round her slim thighs, hitching her up against him and bringing her down on the bed with a sound of satisfaction that started deep in his broad chest. It’s just sex, amazing sex, he adjusted helplessly, but the burn, the burn of excitement was indescribable. He slid a hand beneath her to unclasp her bra and stared down into her amethyst eyes, purple blue like precious gems. Thief, he told himself, liar, cheat but that little mantra of reminders didn’t work its desired magic. He ripped off his shirt, felt her hands sweeping up, up over his chest and honestly wondered if he could hold it together long enough to get inside her.
‘How can you still do this to me?’ he demanded in a fierce undertone, shimmering hot golden eyes pinned to the flushed triangle of her face and then sinking down a level to concentrate on the pale breasts he had uncovered, firm little mounds adorned with large pink nipples that magnetised his attention.
Claiming a straining bud with his mouth, Cristo suckled strongly, using his hands, his lips and the edge of his teeth because he knew how sensitive she was there. As her slim length jackknifed under him, spine arching on a strangled moan, his sense of achievement increased and he let his lips rove hungrily over her dainty breasts, lingering on the swollen straining peaks to torment them with pleasure. His attention glued to her prone body, he backed off the bed again and unzipped his trousers.
Her face hot pink with shame and discomfiture, Erin sat up and clasped her knees. She didn’t want to enjoy anything they did. She wanted to lie there like a stone statue and stay inwardly untouched and detached from him. But Cristo was far too expert a lover to allow her that kind of escape route and he was seducing a response out of her resistant body.
‘I didn’t intend to fall on you like a wild animal the minute I came through the door,’ he volunteered impatiently. ‘I was planning on having dinner first.’
Erin averted her gaze, the victim of unwelcome memories of a passion that had never gone off the boil. ‘You were never very good at waiting. It was always like this for us—’
‘There is no “us” any more.’
Erin lowered her lashes. He was wrong. Lorcan and Nuala were a wonderful combination of their respective genes and unless she was very much mistaken her toddlers had inherited his volatile nature. Lorcan was wilful and hot-tempered and Nuala was sharp as paint and mercurial, neither of them demonstrating an iota of their mother’s quieter, more settled personality. But she was grateful that Cristo didn’t know about them. Lorcan and Nuala would never get the chance to emulate their father’s tough cynical outlook on the world, where what he wanted always came ahead of what was best for other people. He would not get the chance to turn them into spoilt, selfish children and, after the manner in which he had corralled her back into his bed, she refused to feel guilty about the fact.
She glanced up in the silence.
‘You look like you’re plotting,’ Cristo remarked thoughtfully.
He towered over her, naked and aroused, gazing down at her with hot golden eyes of appreciation. She was appalled when her body reacted deep down inside, her nipples tingling as dampness formed at the heart of her.
‘What on earth would I be plotting?’
‘I don’t know.’ He stroked the tight set of her sultry mouth with a considering fingertip. ‘But you’re wearing the same face you wore when you found out I’d taken business associates to a lap-dancing club, koukla mou.’
Erin flushed as he came down beside her. ‘Not one of my better memories.’
Cristo unclasped the hands she had tightened round her knees and pulled her back against his warm, hair-roughened torso. ‘Nor mine, but unfortunately that kind of venue is par for the course with certain men.’
Her breath scissored in her throat as he found her breasts again, gently, surely shaping and tugging at the swollen tips. He pressed her back against the pillows, long brown fingers dipping below the waistband of her knickers, moving across bare smooth skin to stroke her clitoris. As the ache between her thighs intensified, she shut her eyes tight. He kissed her with hot driving force, skimmed off that last garment and pressed his lips to the smooth slope of her belly. Her eyes flew wide because she had silvery stretchmarks there from her pregnancy and she quivered as he trailed his expert mouth over her abdomen and then lower, startling her with that move. He found her with his mouth and his fingers, delving into the honeyed heat of her until she moaned, hips squirming as the pleasure built. He tipped her back, drowning her in sweet sensation that sent her out of control. Her breath sounded in audible gasps as she shifted helplessly up to him, wanting, needing and then response took over to send her racing into an explosive climax.
‘I love watching you come … it must be the only time in your life that you let go of control,’ Cristo husked, looking down at her with an unusually reflective light in his keen gaze. ‘You’re so different from me.’
Emerging dizzily from the tremors of ecstasy still rocking her body, Erin looked up into his lean dark face and the stunning eyes engaged in tracking her every change of expression. She felt exposed, vulnerable, shaken that he had already seduced her so thoroughly that she could barely recall what day it was, never mind how they had ended up in a bed at such indecent speed. ‘I don’t want to be here doing this with you,’ she said fiercely.
‘Liar.’ He brought his mouth down on hers and her tongue slid against his again and that single kiss was so passionate she shivered.
Cristo donned a condom and came over her like a one-man invasion force, tipping her legs over his shoulders and driving into her so hard and deep that her head fell back in a curtain of shiny silver blonde hair, neck arching feverishly in reaction. It was good, hell it was amazing, she thought furiously, angry with herself, enraged that she hadn’t found it possible to lie there without responding and destroy his desire for her. She knew him well enough to know that if she had held back and failed to respond he wouldn’t have persisted. He shifted position and ground into her faster with hungry pounding strokes that made her heart race as though she were in a marathon. He groaned with unashamed pleasure as she cried out, bucking up to him, reacting helplessly to the delicious friction of his fluid rhythm. And she felt the heat mushrooming up from her pelvis again until an explosion of light shot through her like a flash of white-hot fire, shooting wild hot tension along every limb. He pulsed inside her and groaned as she came apart at the seams in another shattering orgasm.
By the time she came free of that shattering onslaught of raw pleasure, she was trembling and, surprisingly, he still had his arms round her, one hand splayed across her stomach as he pressed his sensual mouth to her damp cheek. ‘You’re amazing. That was so worth waiting for, koukla mou.’
But she hadn’t made him wait; they had ended up in bed five minutes after his arrival. I’m easy, she decided painfully, marvelling that she was still lying in his arms and revelling in that unbelievable sense of closeness with him again. How could she possibly feel connected to Cristophe Donakis again? It felt as if almost three years had vanished in a time slip to deposit her back to when she had cherished such private and vulnerable moments with the man she loved. Only she didn’t love him any more, she told herself bitterly, and he had never loved her and, what was more, he had ruthlessly blackmailed her back into his bed. As she began to reclaim her wits and pull away Cristo pulled away from her to disappear into the bathroom.
She listened to the shower running and wondered how she would live with the victory she had given him, how she would ever look in the mirror and like herself again. It was all right to tell herself that she had done what she had to do to protect her life and her children’s, but what she had just allowed to happen went against her every principle. It was a punishment to appreciate that she had participated in and enjoyed her own downfall.
Lithe, bronzed and truly magnificent, Cristo reappeared with a towel wrapped round his lean hips just as a knock sounded on the bedroom door. ‘I told Vincenzo to bring up dinner,’ he remarked carelessly.
Erin scrambled out of bed naked and vanished into the bathroom to use the shower. She was on automatic pilot, desperate to escape his presence lest she lose what little distance she had contrived to achieve. Stepping out of the shower again, she saw the black towelling robe hanging on the back of the door and made use of it because she hadn’t packed anything that practical. She rolled up the sleeves, tied the sash tight.
Cristo had donned close-fitting jeans and a black tee. A heated trolley now stood beside the small table in the corner.
‘How did Vincenzo get all that food up here?’ she asked stiffly.
‘There’s a lift. The last owner was an elderly lady with mobility problems.’
‘When did you buy this place?’
‘About a year ago. I wanted somewhere to relax between business trips,’ Cristo said, sounding amazingly calm and distant after what they had just shared. ‘What would you like to eat?’
‘I’ll see to myself.’ Her tummy rumbled as, maintaining a scrupulous distance from his lean, powerful body, she studied the tempting array of dishes. She was surprised that she was so hungry but then nervous tension had pretty much killed her appetite over the previous forty-eight hours while she was forced to pretend to everyone around her that life was normal. She chose meat-stuffed tortelloni and Panzanella salad and lifted a slice of home baked bread.
His lean, darkly handsome face composed, Cristo poured wine for them both and sat down in a fluid movement. His assurance set her teeth on edge. He had blasted her pride and confidence out of existence because all of a sudden she didn’t know who she was any more. She was not the mature, self-contained woman she had believed she was and that acknowledgement hurt.
‘Doesn’t it bother you that you blackmailed me into bed?’ Erin shot at him abruptly.
‘It might have started out that way, but that’s not how it concluded,’ Cristo fielded smooth as glass, his gaze welded to her. Gleaming silvery fair hair tumbled loose round her slight shoulders, accentuating her flawless features. He had burned for her from the first moment he saw her standing wet and tousled beside the swimming pool where they had met. He had burned the same way when he met her again in Sam Morton’s office. He wasn’t happy that she set him on fire. He wasn’t happy that one wildly exciting taste of her had only primed him to want the next. Toxic, he reminded himself grimly.
Erin met cool, measuring, dark golden eyes that contained not an ounce of remorse and gritted her teeth, afraid to utter a word in her own defence, for what exactly could she say? They both knew that she had not played the part of an unwilling victim. ‘I don’t understand why you wanted me here,’ she admitted tightly. ‘After all, when we split up, you made it clear that you were bored with our relationship.’
Cristo became very still. ‘I never said I was bored.’
Barely forgotten frustration invaded Erin afresh. It was a throwback to the bewilderment of the past when she had tormented herself for months in the aftermath of their breakup wondering what she had done or not done to make him want his freedom back. Suddenly that old curiosity was biting into her like a knife point. ‘Then why did you ditch me?’
His lean, strong face was impassive. ‘I doubt that you want the answer to that question.’
Erin stabbed a piece of juicy tomato with her fork. ‘It’s a long time ago, Cristo,’ she said drily.
‘Precisely,’ he slotted in sardonically.
‘But I would still like to know why,’ Erin completed doggedly.
Cristo set down his wine glass, brilliant dark eyes pinned to her and she felt the chill like ice water spilling across her skin. ‘You cheated on me …’
Erin stared back at him in astonishment. ‘No. I didn’t.’
‘I caught the guy in your bed in your hotel room the night after your birthday bash,’ Cristo countered flatly. ‘You cheated on me.’
Erin was frowning. ‘Who did you see in my hotel room?’
Cristo shrugged a broad shoulder and dealt her a satiric glance. ‘I have no idea who he was. I let myself into the room intending to surprise you and instead I got the surprise.’
Erin was stunned. ‘But I wasn’t there—you didn’t see me.’
Cristo dealt her a scornful look. ‘I saw the man, the discarded clothes, the wine glasses and I could hear the shower running in the bathroom. I didn’t need to see you as well.’
Erin was so tense she was barely breathing. In a sudden movement she pushed back her chair and stood upright, her amethyst eyes bright with anger. ‘Well, actually you did because that wasn’t me in the bathroom! I didn’t even stay in London that night.’
Cristo gave her an unimpressed look. ‘It was your room and he was in your bed—’
Anger coursed through her in a torrent of incredulous rage. ‘And you’re only telling me this now, nearly three years later? Why didn’t you mention it at the time?’
‘I didn’t see any point in staging a messy confrontation. I had seen all I needed to see,’ Cristo derided with harsh assurance.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_d073ebbb-0c12-5cee-9687-bdf0019ed619)
ERIN genuinely wanted to strangle Cristo at that moment. In the space of seconds she was reviewing the misery she had endured after their parting and finally grasping why he had dumped her with so little fanfare. Hostility at his latest misjudgement roared through her, her facial bones drawing taut below her fine skin. ‘You had seen all you needed to see—is that a fact?’ she snapped back furiously.
An ebony brow elevated with sardonic cool. ‘What more evidence would I have required?’
‘Proper evidence!’ Erin fired back at him quick as a flash with more than a hint of his own intensity. ‘Because that wasn’t me in that bathroom. I didn’t stay in London that night. I got a call from the hospital to tell me that my mother had been rushed to Casualty with a suspected heart attack. Tom and his girlfriend offered to run me home—Tom’s kid brother, Dennis, asked if he could use my hotel room to stay in town with his girlfriend. I said yes, why wouldn’t I have? I wasn’t expecting you to turn up. When you told me you couldn’t make it home to my party, you also said that you probably wouldn’t make it back to London for at least another twenty-four hours.’
His darkly handsome features set like stone, Cristo gave her an unyielding look. ‘I don’t believe your explanation.’
At that inflammatory admission, Erin simply grabbed up the bottle of wine and poured it over his head, watching with satisfaction as the golden liquid cascaded down over his black hair and granite-hard masculine features. Startled by the assault, he leapt up with an irate Greek curse and wrenched the bottle from her grasp. ‘Have you gone insane?’ he raked back at her in ringing disbelief.
Untouched by any form of guilt, Erin grimly watched him dry his face with a napkin. ‘I must’ve been when I got involved with you. How dare you assume that I slept with some other guy? How dare you just accept that and judge me for it? After the amount of time I was with you, I deserved more respect. How could you condemn me without a hearing?’
‘I’m not having this conversation with you—I’m going for a second shower,’ Cristo declared, striding towards the bathroom door.
Erin moved liked lightning to get there ahead of him and leant back in the doorway, daring him to shift her out of his path. ‘You are so stubborn. But I could put my hand on a bible and swear that I wasn’t in the Mobila hotel that night.’
‘You were there!’ Cristo breathed rawly, wrathful challenge scored into every hard angle and hollow of his breathtakingly handsome face.
‘No, I wasn’t!’ Erin snapped back at him angrily. ‘How could you even credit that I’d spent the night with another man?’
‘Why not? I couldn’t make it back in time for your birthday party and I knew you had to be furious with me—’
‘Not so furious that I would have got into bed with someone else! I can’t believe that you thought that of me and just walked away from it.’
His eyes hostile, his hard jaw line squared and he said nothing.
‘Of course, I understand why now,’ Erin continued thinly. ‘You are so full of ego and pride. Walking away was the easiest thing to do—’
‘That’s not why I said nothing,’ Cristo argued, his Greek accent roughening every vowel sound, anger glittering in the golden blaze of his eyes. ‘I had had doubts about you for a while. There had been other … things that made me suspicious—’
‘Name them,’ she challenged.
‘I will not discuss them with you—’
‘You unreasonable, arrogant …’ she slammed back, so enraged with him that she was trembling. ‘In all the time we were together I never so much as looked at another man but that wasn’t good enough for you, was it? You’re jealous and possessive to the bone—you couldn’t even stand me spending time with Tom!’
Eyes glowing like the heart of a fire between black spiky lashes, Cristo closed his hands to her waist and lifted her off her feet to set her to one side. ‘I’ve told you. We’re not having this discussion.’
Erin followed him into the bathroom. ‘We definitely are, Cristo. You can’t accuse me of infidelity and expect me to accept it in silence! What’s wrong with you? You think I’m a thief as well but you said nothing about that either at the time. In retrospect don’t you find all this muck being flung at me a little strange?’
Cristo was engaged in stripping off his wine-stained clothing. ‘In what way strange?’ he queried curtly.
‘It’s beginning to look to me like someone set out to deliberately discredit me in your eyes.’
His handsome mouth took on a sardonic curve as he peeled off his jeans and left them in a heap. ‘That sounds like paranoia.’
Erin averted her attention as he stripped off his boxers and discovered that she was studying his long, powerful, hair-roughened thighs instead. The colour in her cheeks heightened as she lifted her head again, struggling to blot out the sight of the lean ropes of muscle banding his powerful torso. ‘There’s nothing paranoid about my suspicions—’
‘You cheated on me and I found out … get over it,’ Cristo advised witheringly as he switched on the shower and stepped in, utterly unconcerned by the nudity of his lean bronzed body. But then he had never been shy. ‘It’s ancient history. Don’t try to resurrect it.’
‘I wish I’d hit you with that bottle.’
Cristo rammed back the shower door and rested cold dark eyes of warning on her angry, defiant face. ‘Don’t you ever do anything like that again or I won’t be responsible for what I do.’
Erin clashed with scorching golden eyes and her tummy lurched. Rage washed over her again because butterflies were leaping in her pelvis. Infuriatingly her body was reacting to him with all the control of an infatuated adolescent. ‘I wish I had cheated on you … the way you treated me, I might as well have done!’
She stalked out of the bathroom. He had knocked her for six with that accusation. He had also taught her that she didn’t know him as well as she had always believed she did. Although she had recognised his reserve she had never dreamt that he might have the capacity to keep such big secrets from her. What else didn’t she know about Cristo? And what else had happened that had caused him to doubt her loyalty? What were those other ‘things’ he had grudgingly mentioned? Yanking the bedspread off the bed, and lifting a pillow, she made up the sofa on the far side of the room for her occupation.
‘You’re not sleeping over there,’ Cristo told her tautly.
‘I’m certainly not getting back into a bed with a man who thinks I’m a slut as well as a thief!’ Erin replied with spirit, pale hair bouncing on her shoulders as she spun round to face him.
Stark naked, Cristo was hauling fresh clothing from drawers. He shot her a censorious appraisal from brilliant dark eyes. ‘We have a deal—’
‘But I intend to add my own conditions,’ Erin declared thinly. ‘I’ll keep to our agreement if—’
‘Too late—we already have a deal.’
‘If that’s your attitude I’m sleeping on the sofa.’
His thick sooty lashes lowered on stunning golden eyes while he surveyed her. ‘Do you cheat at cards too?’
‘You ought to know—you taught me to play,’ she reminded him.
The silence buzzed like an angry wasp. Cristo continued to watch her, his attention locked to the sultry pink pout of her mouth. He wished he had kept his own shut and could not think why he had admitted that he knew of her betrayal. Everything had been going so well until she decided that honour demanded she now prove that she was pure as the driven snow. In exasperation he scored long brown fingers through his damp black hair. ‘What conditions?’ he demanded impatiently.
‘I’ll get back into that bed if—and only if—you agree to talk to Tom, who will verify that he passed the key card for the room to his brother and later dropped me off at the hospital a hundred miles away to be with my mother.’
Cristo looked pained. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
Erin tilted her chin. ‘No, it’s the least of what you owe me.’
‘I owe you nothing.’ He was poised there insolently, still half naked but for the jeans he had pulled on. Just looking at Cristo made her heartbeat pick up speed and her breathing quicken: he was so physically gorgeous. White-hot sex appeal was bred into his very bones. Even more disturbingly, the wilful line of his beautiful mouth was remarkably like her son, Lorcan’s, she registered in dismay, rushing to suppress that unnerving sense of familiarity. Inside himself Cristo was seething with anger, she did know that, but Cristo rarely revealed anger on the surface, deeming that a weakness. And one thing Cristophe Donakis did not do was weakness.
‘I deserve that you check out my side of the story,’ Erin proclaimed as regally as a queen. ‘You didn’t give me the opportunity three years ago, so the least you can do is take care of the omission now.’
