скачать книгу бесплатно
‘I don’t think you want to know what I think. So why don’t you run along and make yourself comfortable and I’ll give you long enough so that you can pretend to be asleep when I join you?’
Lexi’s face felt hot as she skulked off into the bedroom and climbed in between the Egyptian cotton sheets and for a moment she felt foolish. Had that been deliberate on his part? Was Xenon trying to make her doubt herself? Trying to make her believe that any woman would be insane not to take advantage of the opportunity which was now presenting itself?
Was she? Would it really be the end of the world if she gave in and let him make love to her again?
She knew the answer immediately. Of course it would. It would take her back to that dark place, the one with the unimaginable future and constant heartache. So forget it, she told herself fiercely.
Instead, she lay there doing a crash-course in sheep-counting and listening to the distant swish of the shower. And maybe she was wearier than she’d thought, because her eyelids began to grow heavy. Or maybe Xenon was just keeping to his word and stalling for as long as possible.
All she knew was that by the time he came to bed, she was in that comfortable half-world between waking and sleeping and the dip in the mattress as he got in beside her didn’t alarm her as much as it should have done.
But then he moved and she became aware of just how much space his body took up, even though the bed was vast. It had been a long time since she’d slept with him and her space suddenly seemed to have been invaded by a potent rush of testosterone. She could sense it pulsing in the air around her; she could feel her skin absorbing it, like a dark sensual heat.
She held her breath for what must have been a full minute while they lay there in the darkness, until his drawled voice broke the silence.
‘So are we just going to lie here, pretending to be asleep?’
She let out her breath in a slow rush. ‘I’m not going to ask what your alternative suggestion might be.’
‘You might be surprised by the answer. Come here.’ Snaking out his hand, he pulled her against him so that her bottom was pushed against his belly and his hand was resting lazily over the jut of her hip bone.
Half-heartedly, Lexi wriggled. ‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t make such a big deal out of it, Lex. Relax. I’m just holding you, that’s all.’
She wanted to tell him to roll over to the far side of the bed and leave her alone, but something stopped her. Because wasn’t it delicious to feel his warm breath fanning the back of her neck like that? And didn’t his arm feel so right when it was lying around her waist? She wanted to wriggle closer, to settle herself comfortably in a spoonlike position against him as she’d done so many times before, but in the midst of this forbidden pleasure came confusion. Because this was a first. Xenon lying next to her and just holding her? What was that all about?
She closed her eyes. Her Greek husband had been very definite in his views about what took place in the marital bed and what took place was sex. Lots of it. Consistently amazing sex it had been, too. In fact, lying here with him just a hair’s breadth away from her, it was very hard not to remember just how amazing it had been.
Until after the baby, of course. When Xenon had put himself out of ‘temptation’s way’ by absenting himself from the marital bed and going to sleep in the room next door. He’d told her she needed time to recover, but in her sorrow and her grief Lexi had felt neglected, and lonely. The longer they had been apart, the easier it had been to stay that way. And then she’d had time to think that maybe it was all for the best.
She had never slept with him again.
The taste of memory was bitter in her mouth and again she tried to wriggle away from him, but Xenon was having none of it. ‘Relax,’ he repeated.
‘Trying to lull me into a false state of security isn’t going to work.’
‘How very brutal of you, Lex—to suggest that I might have some kind of ulterior motive.’
‘Haven’t you?’
‘Not right at this moment, no.’ Fractionally, his thumb moved over her satin-covered waist. ‘Tell me, did you enjoy dinner?’
‘Which part? The delicious bourekakia and tiropita—or your astonishing about-face on the subject of married women working?’
The thumb stopped moving. She thought she heard him sigh.
‘I should never have stopped you from following your career,’ he said.
Lexi stared into the nothingness. Now that her eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness, she could make out faint shapes of furniture. ‘Nobody can stop someone from doing something, not if they don’t want to.’
‘But I delivered an ultimatum,’ he said. ‘I told you in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t tolerate my wife working.’
‘And maybe you weren’t entirely wrong,’ she said slowly. ‘Our marriage would never have survived me trying to pursue a solo career which was always doomed. I recognised that eventually. It was just the way that you told me which hurt so much.’
‘How?’
His word seemed to fill the dark room and Lexi’s breathing grew shallow. It was a question he would never normally have asked, though this particular situation hardly qualified as ‘normal’, did it? Not by anyone’s definition of the word. And surely the concealing cloak of darkness meant that she could answer it honestly.
‘You spoke to me like I was just...something instead of someone,’ she said. ‘Like I was a person who was simply there to complement your life. As if I didn’t have any feelings of my own. As if my singing career could just be flushed away. It was all about you, Xenon—it was only ever about you.’
As the breath left his lungs in an even heavier sigh Xenon could feel the ripple of her hair. He scowled into the darkness as her body tensed and he felt the bitter pain of regret—the sense that he had been blind to what had been right beneath his nose. Was it too late to tell her that? To tell her that he hadn’t known how to behave any differently?
‘I had certain expectations of marriage,’ he said. ‘Which I expected you, as my wife, to meet.’
‘Yes, I know all that. You wanted a genteel woman. A yes-woman, yet you couldn’t have chosen someone more different if you’d tried. I was from a totally different background. I’d clawed my way up from the bottom. I’d looked after myself—and my brothers—all my life. I didn’t know how to be anything but independent and yet suddenly you expected me to relinquish all that.’
‘I wanted to look after you,’ he said.
‘No. You wanted to keep me in a cage. A highly embellished cage, it’s true—but a cage no less. At first I didn’t even notice. I was so enthralled by you—so happy just to be with you that if you’d suggested we live in a cave at the bottom of the garden I suspect I would have agreed.’
He flinched as he heard the way she said it. As if she couldn’t believe the person she’d been back then. The person who had adored him. Had. ‘I’d never been in love before,’ he said slowly. ‘I’d never been married before. All I knew was that wives were treated with a certain degree of reverence.’
In the darkness, Lexi gave a wry smile. ‘Suppressing someone’s spontaneity and talent isn’t being reverential, Xenon—it’s being controlling. Maybe you should face up to reality and accept that you’re just not the marrying kind—or maybe you should try marrying a more conventional type of woman. One who likes to be manipulated like that.’
He let his mouth sink into her hair and his words were muffled by its silken richness. ‘I’m sorry, Lex,’ he said. ‘Can you believe me when I say that to you?’
Lexi swallowed. The long silence seemed amplified by the darkness and the fact that she sensed he was holding his breath while he waited for an answer. It would be so much easier if she didn’t believe him. If she thought that he was simply saying something because it was convenient for him to do so. But she knew Xenon well enough to recognise his words as genuine—and these were very powerful words indeed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I believe you.’
‘And can you forgive me?’
Lexi closed her eyes. That was a harder question. Because forgiveness was complicated. When you forgave someone you left a vacuum where all the anger had been, and then what did you replace it with?
But she couldn’t carry on fighting him simply because she was scared of her own feelings, could she? ‘Yes,’ she whispered, but she pulled away from him—not wanting him to interpret her clemency as some kind of sexual green light.
Xenon felt her move away and his body stiffened with the hot stab of frustration. His hand was still at her waist but he sensed she had withdrawn from him in more than a physical sense. Where a few minutes ago she had been warm and—he thought—on the verge of compliance, all that had now gone.
It very nearly killed him but he forced himself to drop nothing more than a light kiss onto her silk-covered shoulder and then to turn over. He had never done this in his life—stopped himself from taking what he wanted to take. What deep down he still considered it his right to take.
Scowling into the darkness, he moved over to the other side of the bed.
But sleep was a long time coming.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_e28fae1d-0e0b-5fe3-b938-f182118aa229)
THE SHOWER WAS icy and Xenon stood beneath the punishing jets as he tried to rid his heated body of a desire so fierce that he felt he might explode with it. Tipping his head back, he allowed the impact of the cold water to power onto his face, but nothing could take away the thought that he had just spent an entire night in bed with his wife.
And he hadn’t laid a finger on her.
He had lain awake as he’d felt the slide of her pyjama-clad body occasionally brushing up against him and the temptation to imprison her beneath him had been overpowering. He’d had to resist the urge to bury his fingers into her thick hair and to open his mouth over hers, kissing her until he had melted away every single one of her reservations.
He uttered a growled curse in Greek.
Would he see any signs of change in her this morning? he wondered. Would the frank discussion they’d had last night under cover of darkness have softened Lex’s stance towards him?
She must have used the second bathroom because when he returned to the bedroom with only a white towel wrapped around his hips she was no longer lying in bed where he’d left her. Wise woman, he thought grimly. It was probably safer to stay away from him when he was feeling like this.
He dressed and walked out onto the terrace to find her sitting at the table, wearing a simple cotton dress with her ponytailed hair hanging down her back. In front of her was a pot of coffee, a dish of Greek yoghurt and a platter of fruit. She looked up as he approached and, although her sunglasses concealed the expression in her eyes, he saw the way that her teeth chewed nervously at her bottom lip.
‘What a touchingly domestic scene,’ he drawled.
‘I went over to the main house and got all this stuff from Phyllida,’ she explained a little defensively, in response to the arrogant rise of his eyebrows. ‘I thought it might be nice to have breakfast here, since the gardens are so pretty.’
He sat down and took the cup which she slid towards him. ‘I imagined my mother planned for us to eat in the main house—but if you’re planning to play housewife, that’s fine by me.’
‘I’m planning a little space,’ she said firmly, wishing he wouldn’t do that. Acting as if she had some sort of hidden agenda when she definitely didn’t. Hadn’t she made that clear enough last night? ‘I’m sure Marina doesn’t want me hanging around all the time. But don’t let me stop you from doing your own thing. I’m perfectly happy with my own company.’
He smiled as he poured them both a coffee. ‘I like it,’ he said. ‘Quite like old times.’
For a moment she said nothing because this was nothing like old times. She’d woken this morning feeling disorientated, aware that she’d spent the night in bed with Xenon but that he hadn’t touched her. Or rather, he had. He’d touched her in a way which was completely out of character. He’d held her. Just held her. And it had been tender rather than sexual. More than that, he’d actually listened to her and then had gone out of his way to explain some of his more controlling behaviour.
Didn’t he realise how confused that made her feel?
She shot him a quick glance. ‘Phyllida also said that we can go and see your grandmother after breakfast.’
‘Right.’
She saw the sudden tension which had darkened his face. ‘I hope she’s not in any pain.’
He shook his head. ‘The doctors are very good about managing the pain these days and at least we are able to care for her here at home.’ He put his cup down. ‘It was last time I was here that she began asking about you. You know, she liked you, Lex. She liked you a lot.’
Lexi met his eyes, incredibly touched by his words because she had liked Xenon’s ghiaghia, too. She hadn’t known any of her own grandparents—maternal or paternal—and maybe that was why she’d enjoyed the company of the Greek matriarch so much. She’d loved hearing about her own far-off childhood here on this island and her long and subsequently happy marriage. ‘What did she say?’
He looked at her with the expression of a man weighing up his options. ‘She said that I was a very clever man, but that sometimes I could be a fool. And that I was a fool to let you go.’
‘Xenon.’ Her voice rose with sudden anxiety. ‘I don’t want to lie to her.’
‘I’m not asking you to. But do you think you could manage to do a convincing enough impression of still caring for me?’
She met his gaze. If only he had said it with his habitual arrogance—an attitude which sprang from the certain knowledge that pretty much every woman he met cared about him. But he hadn’t said it in that way. For a minute back then he’d sounded almost vulnerable.
Her untouched peach seemed to stare balefully at her from the plate. Maybe he was feeling vulnerable—or as close to it as someone like him could get to such an emotion. His beloved grandmother was dying and Lexi knew she had to stand by him. She owed him her support at this time because she had loved him and had married him. She would be there for him.
Some impulse made her stand up and reach out her hand to run her fingers through the tangle of his ebony hair. ‘Oh, I think I’m a good enough actress to put on a convincing enough performance of caring for you.’ She smiled.
But something in the air had changed. Something she had said or done had clearly angered him, for he rose to his feet and suddenly he seemed huge as his shadow fell over her.
‘Good enough actress?’ he echoed. ‘Is that a fact?’
Without warning, he pulled her into his arms and started to kiss her and it was as if someone had opened a floodgate. His lips were hard on hers as he explored her mouth with an urgent kind of hunger. The man who had lain so chastely beside her during the night had gone and in his place was the Xenon she remembered best.
He pressed his body closer. She could feel the jut of his hips against hers and the heavy weight of his erection pressing into her belly. She could feel the insistent tug of desire melting insistently at her core—a hot ache which was clamouring to be released. His hand cupped her breast and she groaned, wriggling luxuriously as he played with one peaking nipple. Restlessly, she moved her hips in silent invitation. Wanting him to slide his hand up underneath her dress to where she was wet and waiting. Wondering if she dared touch him. To stroke him as he loved to be stroked. To take the heavy weight of him in her hand and to whisper her fingertips over his silken length until he moaned something guttural in his native tongue in response. Yet something stopped her from initiating that next step towards total intimacy—for wouldn’t he interpret such a move as weakness or reliance on him?
So why didn’t he make a move instead? Why didn’t he push her back inside the villa and slide her onto the cool marble floor and take her without further ceremony in that hungry macho way of his? If he’d straddled her right there and then, she would have eagerly welcomed him into her body because she wanted him so badly it felt almost like pain.
But he didn’t do that. Instead he drew his head away from hers, although his blue eyes were almost black with lust. And although she could see the faint tremble of his hands, his voice was quite calm when he spoke.
‘I must say, Lex,’ he observed, ‘that you put on a pretty convincing performance of “caring for me”—even without the benefit of an audience. Don’t you think?’
And Lexi knew she’d walked into a trap of her own making. A stupid and cheapening trap. She’d shown him she still wanted him and that was bad enough—but she prayed that he wouldn’t guess the real reason behind her passionate response to him.
That she was still in total thrall to her husband.
‘Fifteen-love,’ she said.
‘I’d say it was closer to set point.’ His voice was dry. ‘Come on, let’s go and see Ghiaghia.’
She asked for five minutes to compose herself, to tidy her hair and smooth down her dress, and was quiet as they walked across the courtyard to the side of the house where they’d eaten dinner last night. Her heart was in her mouth as they walked into the large bedroom whose shutters were half closed and where his grandmother now lay.
Sometimes Lexi was grateful that she hadn’t had a sheltered upbringing and this was one of them. As a child she had seen things no child should ever see—shocking, brutal things—but she found herself thinking that nothing was more shocking than the inevitable approach of death.
Like her daughter, Sofia had once been a great beauty but her exquisite bones were now cruelly defined by the waxy skin stretched tightly over them. Her once-lustrous eyes were dulled by morphine and her body was as insubstantial as a sparrow’s as it lay beneath the white sheet.
Her eyes tried to focus on the couple as they walked into the room and for a moment she frowned, as if she was examining her failing memory for clues. But then came the hint of a smile as she stared at Lexi. The faintest fluttering of bony fingers as she attempted to lift her hand from the bed in greeting.
Lexi went straight over to her, wanting to hug her tightly but, mindful of her frailty, she bent down and took her hand before bending to kiss each shrunken cheek.
‘Ghiaghia,’ she whispered. ‘It’s me, Alexi.’
‘Alexi.’ The Greek matriarch struggled a little and Lexi glanced over at the nurse, who nodded, and the two women helped move the old lady further up the bed, positioning her feeble body against a deep pile of pillows. ‘I am happy to see you.’
‘And I you. Oh, Ghiaghia.’ Lexi’s voice cracked, just a little. ‘I’m...I’m so sorry that you’re sick.’
For a moment, Sofia looked into her eyes and there was a trace of humour on her face as well as sadness. ‘It happens to us all,’ she said gently.
‘Yes.’ Still holding onto the old lady’s hand, Lexi sat down on the chair beside the bed. ‘Can I get you anything? Can I do anything for you?’
There was a pause and then a croak as Sofia sucked in a breath. ‘Love my grandson,’ she said, on the outbreath. ‘As he loves you.’
For a moment Lexi felt scared. She was here because Xenon had wanted her to be and she could see exactly why. Sofia had obviously wanted to say what was on her mind and no words were more powerful than those spoken on the deathbed.
But she was also aware that she could not tell a lie—not even at a time like this. Yet the stupidest thing was that she had no need to lie. That what she was about to say came straight from the heart. She was grateful that Xenon was standing on the other side of the room and could not hear their whispered exchange as she bent her head to speak. ‘I love Xenon more than I have ever loved any man, Ghiaghia,’ she said. ‘Please know that.’
For a moment there was silence and Lexi was left wondering if Sofia had actually heard her, or whether she had fallen asleep. But then the fingers which she was holding gripped hers with a sudden fierce show of strength and Lexi saw her smile.
The old lady’s breathing grew shallow—and then she did fall asleep, though Lexi didn’t move from her place by the bed. For a long time she sat there in silence as thoughts flew through her mind. She thought of Sofia as a young bride, and then a mother. She thought how quickly a life could pass. She was barely aware that Xenon had walked from the far side of the room to stand behind her and had put his hand on her shoulder.
‘Come on,’ he said.
