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‘Except when it’s my body on the table,’ Bee replied in a tone of gentle irony. ‘My body is not going to figure as any part of a deal with you or anybody else. We agreed that there would be no sex and I want to stick to that.’
‘That is not the message your body is giving me, latria mou,’ Sergios drawled softly.
‘You’re reading the signals wrong—maybe it’s your healthy ego misleading you,’ Bee suggested thinly as she hit the button he had used to lock the door to unlock it again.
As Bee leant across him Sergios hooked his fingers into the edge of the towel above her breasts. Immobilised, she looked up at him and collided with his dazzling eyes enhanced by ridiculously long lush lashes. Her heart seemed to jump into her throat.
‘It’s not my ego that’s talking,’ Sergios purred like a prowling big cat of the jungle variety.
‘Yes, it is. Even though you don’t really want me and I’m not your type.’
‘I don’t go for a particular type.’
‘Zara? Your first wife? Let me remind you—slim, glamorous?’ Bee stabbed without hesitation, watching his face tauten and pale as though she had struck him. The hand threatening the closure of the towel fell back and Bee was quick to take advantage of his uncharacteristic retreat. ‘That’s your type. I’m not and never could be.’
Sergios dealt her a steely-eyed appraisal. ‘You don’t know what turns me on’
‘Don’t I? Something you’ve been told you can’t have. A challenge—that’s all it takes to turn you on!’ Bee hissed at him, fighting to hide the depth of her outrage. ‘And I accidentally made myself seem like a challenge this evening. You’re so perverse. If I was throwing myself at you, you would hate it.’
‘Not right at this moment, I wouldn’t,’ Sergios purred in silken contradiction, running a hand down over the extended stretch of one long powerful thigh and by doing so drawing her attention to the tented effect of his tailored trousers over his groin. ‘As you can see, I’m not in any condition to say no to a reasonable offer.’
As he directed her gaze to the evidence of his arousal Bee could feel a tide of mortified heat rush up from her throat to her hairline and she did not know where to look even as a kernel of secret heat curled in her pelvis. ‘You’re disgusting,’ she said curtly and knew even as she said it that she didn’t mean it. The knowledge that lust for her had put him in that state was strangely stimulating and there was something even more satisfying in that unsought but graphic affirmation of her femininity.
‘Over dinner, think about what you want most,’ Sergios advised lazily. ‘And remember that there’s nothing I can’t give you.’
Consternation in her eyes, Bee stepped back from the bed, her oval face stiff with angry condemnation. ‘Are you offering me money to sleep with you?’
Sergios winced. ‘You’re so literal, so blunt—’
‘You just can’t accept the word no, can you?’ Bee launched at him in a furious flood. ‘You even sank low enough to try and use a baby as a bargaining chip!’
‘Of course you want a baby—I’ve watched you with my cousin’s kids. Nobody could be that way with them if they didn’t want one of their own,’ Sergios opined with assurance. ‘I’ve had enough experience with women to know that at some point in our marriage you will decide that you want a child of your own.’
‘Right at this very moment,’ Bee told him shakily, ‘I’m wondering how I can possibly stay married to such a conniving and unscrupulous man!’
‘Your mother, the kids, the fact that you don’t like to fail at anything? You’re not a quitter, Beatriz. I admire that in a woman.’ Straightening his tie and finger-combing his black hair back off his brow, Sergios sprang off the bed, his big powerful body suddenly towering over her. ‘But I do have one small word of warning for you,’ he murmured in a tone as cool as ice. ‘I don’t talk about my first wife, Krista…ever, so leave her out of our…discussions.’
Shell-shocked from that spirited encounter and that final chilling warning, Bee got back into her cooling bath and sat there blinking in a daze. When he had touched her, a tide of such longing had gripped her that she had almost surrendered. But she wasn’t stupid, and even though she had never been so strongly affected before by a man she had always accepted that sex and the cravings it awakened could be very powerful and seductive. Why else did the lure of sex persuade so many people to succumb to temptation and get into trouble over it? It might be a sobering discovery but she had only learned that she was as weak as any other human being.
After Krista’s death—she who must not be mentioned—Sergios had become a notorious playboy. He had to be a very experienced lover and he knew exactly how to pull her strings and extract ladies who ought to have known better from towels, she allowed in growing chagrin. Well, he hadn’t got the towel the whole way off, she told herself soothingly. With a male as ferociously determined and untamed as Sergios even the smallest victory ought to be celebrated.
It was silly how it actually hurt her pride that Sergios didn’t really desire her. He was annoyed that his grandfather’s presence in his home would force them to live a lie to conceal the reality that their marriage was a fake. His ego was challenged by the prospect of having to share a bed with a woman he had agreed not to touch, so he was trying to tear up the terms of their agreement by whatever means were within his power.
Even so, she reckoned it had to be a very rare event for a man to try to seduce a woman by offering to get her pregnant.
Sergios could certainly think on his feet. Indeed he was utterly shameless and callous in pursuit of anything he wanted. But he was also, Bee thought painfully, extremely clever and far too shrewd for comfort. He had sensed the softy hiding below her practical surface and made an educated guess that the prospect of having her own child would have more pulling power with her than the offer of money or diamonds. And he had guessed right, so right in fact that she wanted to scream in frustration and embarrassment.
How could he see inside her heart like that? How could he have worked out already what she had only recently learned about herself? Only since she had been in daily contact with Paris, Milo and Eleni had Bee appreciated just how much she enjoyed being a mother. Out on a shopping trip she had bought baby clothes for Eleni and found herself drawn to examining the even tinier garments and the prams, newly afflicted by a broodiness that she had heard friends discuss but until then had never experienced on her own behalf.
But common sense warned her that right now she had to stand her ground with Sergios. If she allowed him to walk over her so early in their marriage she would be the equivalent of a cipher within a few years, enslaved by her master’s voice. He had to respect the boundaries they had set together. After all, he had Melita and other women in his life and she had no wish to join that specific party. The reflection tightened her muscles and made her head begin to ache as she appreciated that she truly was caught between a rock and a hard place with a man who attracted her but whom she could not have. She stretched back against the padded headrest, desperate to shed her tension and troubled thoughts. Sergios was an absolute menace to her peace of mind. He kept on moving the goalposts to suit himself. He was like a pirate on the high seas, always in pursuit of an advantage or a profit. But when it came to fencing with Bee he was just as likely to run aground on the rocks hidden beneath her deceptively calm surface.
When Sergios strolled into the bedroom, Bee was putting the finishing touches to her appearance. Her full-length blue evening dress fitted her like a glove without showing a surplus inch of flesh. His brilliant eyes narrowing, she watched in the mirror as Sergios subjected her to a considering appraisal.
‘Sexy,’ he pronounced approvingly.
Bee stiffened defensively. ‘It’s high at the neck and it doesn’t even show my legs,’ she argued.
Her immediate protest at his comment made amusement curl the corners of his handsome mouth. He scanned the lush swell of breast and derriere so clearly defined by the clinging fabric and said nothing at all. No skin might be on show but the dress hugged her every curve and those she had in abundance.
