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‘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 t
he 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.
The moment the door had closed behind him she’d lurched off the now hateful bed and dragged on her discarded clothing, flying down the curving staircase and out in to the sun. Running.
Running away from him. Running from her shame, from the deep and shameful humiliation he’d so cruelly dealt her. The self-disgust, wave after wave—so much of it she had no idea how to cope with it.
What sort of creature was she to forget his plans for her? Forget he only wanted to use her? To crave the joy of sex with him so much that she would offer it on a plate the moment he touched her?
A silly creature who had loved him once.
Who still loved him?
Her throat closed convulsively as she shook her head in sharp negation. How could she still love a man who, according to his cynical thought processes, had believed that she was only after a fat slice of his wealth in the first place, then, on reassessment, had decided that she might as well have sex thrown into the mix for good measure—a man who would stoop to blackmail to get her back, to get her to resume her brood mare duties?
Frowning, she wiped the sweat from her forehead with shaky fingers. She hated to admit it, but there was something wrong with that line of reasoning. He could have taken her. Just like that. If using her as a walking womb was his only reason for forcing her to return to him, why had he walked away? A power thing?
To demonstrate that he could have sex with her whenever he liked? To punish her, humiliate her for having had the gross temerity to leave him and say she wanted a divorce? Dimitri Kouvaris was a man who didn’t know what it meant to be rejected, who always expected, as of right, to be master of each and every situation.
What else was she to think?
A smothered sob escaped her. The sun was so hot, burning relentlessly down from the piercing blue vault of the sky, that she couldn’t think straight.
