AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘In the process of trying to see inside your pretty head, I am merely stating facts and my suppositions arising from them, since you refuse to tell me why you ran out on our marriage, leaving me trying to make sense of it. You married me. Why? For the life of luxury you knew I could give you? And then, after you experienced it, for the sex?’
Mortified beyond belief, Maddie couldn’t speak—couldn’t say a word in her own defence. Not only a gold-digger but a nymphomaniac, too!
And there was more. A grim cast to his mouth, he queried flatly, ‘Did you make your wedding vows already scheming to sue for divorce after a few months? To secure yourself a slice of alimony that would enable you to lead a life of luxury? And when the time came to carry it out did you realise that you would miss the only other thing you valued in our marriage? The sex.’
‘You are so sick!’ Maddie spat out in immediate and instinctive repudiation, struggling to understand why he was doing this. Shouldn’t he be doing what she had most feared? Sweet-talking her, coaxing her back into the marital bed and trying to convince her that their marriage was viable, instead of accusing her of the most horrible things?
Her throat convulsed, and to her shame she felt hot tears sting the back of her eyes. Was she so inexcusably weak where he was concerned that she actually—in the secret centre of her heart—wanted him to try to coax her, convince her?
Her mind in turmoil, Maddie simply stared at
him as she grappled with a thought that was far too uncomfortable to be lived with. Of course it wasn’t true. Why on earth would she want him to—to coax her?
‘And you still want me,’ Dimitri countered. His brilliant golden gaze rested explicitly on her mouth, making her bones turn to water and her breasts stir in instinctive response so that she just knew the engorged peaks would be plainly visible beneath the thin, sweat-dampened fabric of her top—a sensation so well remembered and now so unwanted that she scrambled for what was left of her wits and threw back at him, ‘If I still wanted to share your bed, as well as enjoy a life of spoiled-rotten luxury, I wouldn’t have left you, would I? You’re talking rubbish!’
‘Am I?’ He moved closer, so close that to her extreme distress Maddie felt her own vastly annoying body strain against her will—strain to close that small distance and melt into the hard, dominating maleness of him. ‘Correct me if for once in my life I’m wrong,’ he asserted, with an arrogance she could have killed him for, ‘but I believe that if you weren’t in two minds, had truly wanted to end our marriage, you would have made sure you weren’t so easy to find. Headed for some place other than the glaringly obvious.’ A sardonic fly-away black brow rose. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’
Floored by his truly incorrect deduction, Maddie quivered helplessly. She hadn’t looked on her flight from their marriage in that light; she simply hadn’t taken his Greek pride into account—the pride that would force him to track her down, demand answers.
All she’d wanted was the comfort of the familiar, the people who really loved her, somewhere sympathetic to lick her raw wounds. She’d been ridiculously easy to track down. He’d even arrived at her destination before her! Made sure she returned with him!
‘That being so,’ he continued, as if she’d humbly agreed with his assessment of the situation, ‘I believe that the larger part of you, deep down, prefers your assured lifestyle as my wife because it has the added bonus of great sex on tap, rather than the insecurity of not knowing how great or small a settlement your lawyer could squeeze out of mine, and the bother of finding some other stud to satisfy your sexual needs.’
‘No!’ Maddie had difficulty finding her voice. She hadn’t a clue which accusation she was denying, and wondered what further character assassination he could come up with next to cover his own vile misdemeanours.
‘Yes,’ he overrode her smoothly. ‘You do still want the pleasure I can give you.’ An assured smile tugged unforgivably at the corners of his wide sensual mouth. ‘Shall I prove it?’
CHAPTER SIX
SHE stared up at him, wide-eyed, dry-mouthed, heart jumping, and pushed out a chokily ambivalent, ‘No—’ But she shuddered helplessly as he closed the gap between them and enfolded her in his arms.
Blood racing in her veins, Maddie raised her hands to push him away, make him keep his distance. Because distance between them meant she was safe from her own deplorable weakness where this one man was concerned. But without conscious effort she found her small fists unfurling, her palms flat against his broad chest, and the heady warmth of him sent rivers of sensation skittering through her body, paralysing her.
‘I think, yes,’ he corrected her, his eyes a golden shaft of confident male mastery in his leanly handsome features, his clean breath feathering her skin as he lowered his dark head and claimed her mouth with breathtaking expertise, teasing her lips apart with no effort at all, meeting no resistance, until she was kissing him back with an aching hunger she was completely unable to disguise or pretend didn’t exist.
Defences shattered out of existence, she gasped raggedly at the wildly erotic sensation that engulfed her as his strong hands lowered to pull her hips in contact with his hard, demanding arousal, the memories of what had happened since he’d dropped everything to fly to the side of the woman he loved expunged in the wild fever of blind, unthinking sexual excitement.
This was how it had always been. His passionate lovemaking allaying the doubts and insecurities that had grown during those three months at his home in Athens, fuelled by Irini’s far-too-frequent presence and Alexandra’s poisoned snobbery.
‘This is how it should be for us, yes?’ Dimitri breathed, his hard thighs pressed against hers as he eased her backwards towards the massive luxurious bed. His mouth invaded hers again with sensual know-how, his voice thick with satisfaction, as if he knew about the burning fire that pooled in the heart of her, that licked the flesh of her inner thighs with liquid, searing heat as he assured her with pure Greek male confidence, ‘You know it is.’
The part of her that murmured feebly about self-preservation, the part that told her to deny it, was woefully weak, and even those semi-formed hazy urgings evaporated beneath the heat of what his clever hands were doing. Lulling her into a false sense of security, as they had always done. She tried to fight it. Her breath caught. It was impossible.
Sliding beneath her T-shirt, curving around the engorged, unbearably sensitised globes of her breasts, his long fingers gently teased the tight crests. He knew what this did to her, he knew it, and he was using her treacherous body against her.
He was using unfair tactics, playing dirty—and that was her last semi-coherent thought as he eased her back on to the bed, removing her flattie sandals in one fluid movement before turning his smouldering attention to divesting her of her T-shirt. And, fingers clumsy in her complete capitulation, in her unthinking eagerness to aid her own downfall, she helped him, writhing in intolerably aroused abandonment as he dealt with the fastenings at her waistband and slid the denim fabric, the sheer silk of her panties, slowly and tantalisingly down over the swell of her curvy hips, exposing her ripe nakedness to his incandescent golden gaze.
‘So beautiful,’ he murmured thickly, lowering his head to trail burning kisses from her throat down to the tangle of curls at the apex of her thighs. Helplessly out of control, Maddie gasped wildly, her fingers clinging to the wide span of his shoulders, writhing mindlessly as one of his hands found the melting core of her, cupping her, teasing unbearably, and her voice was a sob of anguished wanting as she cried his name.
‘And so willing.’
Distant his voice now, drenching her with icy, scarcely believing shock as he moved away from her, looking down at her splayed nakedness with golden eyes suddenly overlaid with ice.
‘You are only with me now for the sex,’ he imparted frigidly. ‘Sorry, pethi mou. But, much as you tempt me, I have to decline the invitation until I know why you left what I believed was a happy marriage and asked for divorce. Until you tell me, you will go unsatisfied. And even then I think I will be strong enough to resist the temptation.’
The stony track petered out beneath her feet and Maddie stared at the top of a cliff fringed with sparse, thorny vegetation, her heart beating wildly, her mind twisting and turning incoherently.
He had left the room. He had said something about fixing lunch, and something else. She hadn’t been listening—hadn’t grasped a thing through those shock waves.
