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He looked like a man defeated. A man who’d lost all hope. Not at all like the Costas Palamidis she knew.
And she couldn’t bear it.
Softly she took a step towards him, and another. After a bare moment’s hesitation she let her hand fall to his shoulder, m
oulding the hard ridge of wide muscle above the bone. Its rigidity confirmed what she’d seen. He was close to the end of his tether.
His head shot up at her touch, his dark gaze fixed on hers with an intensity that made her throat close, her breath catch. There was such fierce pain in his expression.
She let her hand slide along his broad shoulder to the stiff muscles of his neck, as if she could stroke some of the tension away. The heat of his flesh against hers seemed shockingly intimate.
She opened her mouth to speak but he put his finger to his lips.
She glanced across at Eleni, still sleeping soundly. In that moment he moved, clamping his hand over hers and dragging it to his side as he rose from the seat to tower above her. His hand, hard and unyielding, engulfed hers.
He pulled her out of the room, into the dusky corridor where the shadows lengthened. He didn’t stop till they reached the curve in the hall that turned towards her room. Then he halted abruptly and stood, staring silently down at her.
His eyes glittered dark as night but she couldn’t discern his expression.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked before she had time to think twice. ‘Can I get you anything?’ She took a tiny pace closer, tilting her chin up and trying to read his face, but it gave nothing away. Even his eyes were blank. She could have been looking into chips of pure obsidian for all the emotion she could find there.
What could she get him anyway? How would a cup of coffee or even a shot of alcohol help a man watching his daughter fight for her life?
She was foolish even to try reaching out to him. He’d made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want her understanding. or her presence.
It was time she left.
She tugged at his hand to release his hold. But his fingers didn’t loosen their grip. ‘Forget I—’
‘Yes, there is something,’ he murmured, his voice a low, dark thread of sound that sent a shard of tension through her.
Sophie stared up at him, saw the moment when his eyes lit with a flash of life. Like fire in a frozen wasteland. But the sight of that blaze brought no comfort.
Something very like fear trickled inch by inch down her spine as she watched his expression change, his lips curve up into a wolfish smile.
‘What—’
‘This,’ he hissed as his head plunged down and his lips took hers.
Fire. Flaring need. A maelstrom of sensations assaulted her. His lips so soft yet so demanding. His searing breath, burning like an invader’s bombardment.
And deep within her a quivering awareness that this was what she’d wanted from him. This frightening, glorious passion.
He cupped her face in his big hands, holding it still while he turned his head and slanted his mouth hard over hers. And then he was inside. His tongue boldly seductive, inviting her to respond to his flagrantly erotic invitation.
And of course she did.
Swirling heat roared through her, loosening her muscles and her inhibitions. A sweet, yearning ache began deep in her womb and her skin prickled all over. Her nipples tightened.
She pressed into his kiss, drunk on the taste of him, dark and strong and erotically addictive.
Sophie welcomed him with her lips, her tongue, as if he was no stranger, but the centre of all her yearning, all her secret dreams.
His kiss was bold, unrepentant. Yet there was an underlying tenderness, a sensitivity to her own responses, that lulled her into surrender.
If she’d been thinking straight she would have pushed away from him. Denied the tell-tale excitement she felt at his touch. But Sophie wasn’t thinking. She was drowning in sensations, floating on a tide of glorious passion. Excited by the aura of his severe strength, tightly leashed.
His hands threaded through her hair and his lips trailed down to the corner of her jaw, to the erogenous zone beneath her ear, and she sighed.
