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‘I’d already got a loan and Alexei gave me just enough to subsidise it. That’s all. The only thing I regret is that my shares obviously weren’t enough to help him turn the business around. If they had been, we mightn’t be here now.’
Her words rang with bitterness and Alexandros felt something move in his chest. He couldn’t analyse it. One of the biggest accusations he’d made in his own head about her was crumbling. He didn’t even question the fact that he believed her. All he knew was that he wanted them to stop fighting, sniping…and do something else.
He pulled her into his arms. She stayed stiff against him. He tipped her chin up with one hand. ‘Whatever has happened between us, that was uncalled for. I had no right to assume to know what you did with those shares. And I had no right to assume that you were some vacuous limpet on the social circuit.’
She searched his face, sure he was laughing at her somehow and shocked at this abrupt turnaround. How could he believe her about this but not that? He had to be doing it for some reason…she didn’t think he meant it for a second.
‘Are you making fun of me?’
He shifted his hips slightly and her eyes widened in silent eloquence when she felt what he was feeling. He shook his head. ‘I’ve never been more serious in my life. Can we call a truce, Kallie? Make a pact not to talk about the past, just focus on this. And now.’
He was offering her a truce. A space to make things easier. For him? For her, too, she knew, if she accepted it. Although his ruthlessness could not be forgotten. He still had the power to ruin her family if he so wished. He’d keep her until she stopped pleasing him in bed. Bed. She felt weak. She’d tasted heaven now. The heaven she had longed for all those years ago. How could she go back? And she knew she wasn’t strong enough to give it up. Just yet.
She nodded her head, saw the flare of something in his eyes and closed hers in mute supplication as he bent his head and all that did exist was now.
After that tacit agreement to a truce of sorts, the next days of their so-called honeymoon fled. Kallie and Alexandros circled each other warily. Careful of what they said. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that all they had to focus on was the physical connection. And they couldn’t get enough of one another.
The villa became a place outside reality. Kallie knew she was in danger of indulging in a fantasy that somehow this was real. That this existed. As if in some bizarre stroke of fate, her dreams as a seventeen-year-old had come true and she’d got her prince.
But that dream was quashed over and over again as it became all too clear that for Alexandros this was purely physical. Kallie had tried to start countless conversations, trying to get to know him better. Last night, Thea had served dinner on the terrace again. While Kallie had tried to find things to talk about, Alexandros had remained largely monosyllabic. In desperation at her own increasing sense of humiliation and futility, she’d jumped up in agitation.
‘This is crazy…why can’t you just talk to me? Why can’t we have a conversation? Am I so boring—?’
Alexandros had jumped up, too, frightening Kallie with his barely leashed anger and the intensity on his face. He’d taken two quick steps, lifted her into his arms and brought her straight to bed, throwing her down. She’d scrambled backwards.
‘You’re…an animal,’ she’d spluttered in indignation, and had watched with a traitorous and increasing excitement as he’d calmly proceeded to strip off. Completely.
He’d come down beside her, holding her an easy captive with his leanly muscled body, with the desires that made her quiver in his arms, even as she tried to pull away.
‘Yes, Kallie. But you want me. That’s all. We’re not here to talk, or to get to know one another. I know all I need to know.’
And he’d subjected her to such an erotic attack that she’d been hard pushed to remember her own name afterwards, never mind hold a conversation. He’d made his point.
Kallie woke early, her head resting on Alexandros’s chest, her leg thrown over his. She just lay there. Immediately awake. Emotion swirled around her head, in her chest, making it tight. She tried to keep her breathing even, closed her eyes tight. The ache built in her throat. She couldn’t believe she’d done it again. Or rather, she had to acknowledge, things had never changed. She was still in love with Alexandros. The only thing different to when she’d been a child and a teenager was that back then she hadn’t known the depth of that love, how all-permeating it was and how sleeping with him would crack her open and let her taste the extreme despair that would come from loving a man like him. A man beholden to none, least of all her.
The past few days he’d been looking at her with that heated gaze, stopping her in her tracks again and again. He’d brutally ignored her wish to talk last night, had effortlessly made her acquiesce to what he wanted…How could she be so weak? She could see very well what he was doing. It was tantamount to a kidnapper not calling their victim by their name so they wouldn’t identify with the captive.
How could she be in love with someone who was doing that to her?
Because she knew him. It was that simple. He was her soul mate. The part of him that she had once known, that he kept from her now, would never be hers. She might be his, but he was not hers. And never would be.
A large hand cupped her jaw, taking her by surprise. She hadn’t noticed that he’d woken up. Her eyes stayed shut, the ache clogging her throat. Still no words, not even now…and yet her body was already humming, opening, moistening for his touch. The gratification that only he could bring her.
His hand smoothed its way down her collar-bone to the space between her breasts where her heart was beating steadily, and speeding up when he shifted them subtly and a leg came over hers, nudging them apart. The frisson of awareness, the hunger and need after a night of love-making scared her with its intensity. Today they were going back to Paris. Back to reality, back to the cruel, harsh world of media and photographers and reminders that all was not what it seemed.
She turned her head and opened her eyes. Her pain was buried deep and hidden inside her. He pressed a kiss to her lips, long and lingering, drew her up on top of him so that her breasts were crushed to his chest. His hands spanned her waist and moved her up and then down slightly where she could feel the powerful thrust of his erection.
She was already wet, ready for him. She slid her legs on either side of his hips and rocked back gently, coming up slightly, and sucked in a deep breath when she felt him thrust up and into her. Looking deep into his eyes, Kallie could feel the need rise up, the need to speak, to say something. The monumental realisation that she still loved him utterly was clawing at her insides to get out, even as he took them both on an ever-increasing spiral towards oblivion.
Approaching her climax, Kallie could feel the words tremble on her lips…She felt desperate but couldn’t control it. Not when they were joined, literally. In desperation to avoid the ultimate act of self-destruction, she bent down and pressed her feverish lips against Alexandros’s mouth, and her words were stifled as the wave broke over her, as he ruthlessly held her hips and his own release spilled into her body.
With Kallie resting on his chest, their bodies still joined, Alexandros couldn’t believe the strength of his climax, every time, with this woman. She gave so freely, so generously. She was so responsive. With one touch…hell, without even a touch, with a look, she’d be his. He’d see her whole body start to quiver, like a bow, waiting for his touch. Those huge eyes would follow him, widen as he got closer, pupils dilating, making them look darker. And as he’d bend to kiss her, her mouth would open, soft lips waiting…
But last night…every night…ever since that day in the park, when she’d want to talk, he just couldn’t. Something shut down inside him. He didn’t want to. He wasn’t interested. But even as he told himself that, he knew it was a lie. He knew it and hated it.
When he’d carried Kallie up to the bedroom last night, thrown her on the bed like some Neanderthal, he’d felt like a complete bastard. The truth was, he did want to talk to her. He did want to get to know her better. And that was not a part of the plan. Bed her, get her out of his system. She’d betrayed him before, she could do it again. It had taken a stronger will than he cared to admit to avoid talking to her.
She lifted her head at that moment and something in her eyes caught him. Something he didn’t know, didn’t recognise. Something he’d never seen in a woman’s eyes. And he didn’t want to know. He shifted his hips slightly and saw the flare of colour come into her cheeks when she could feel him still inside her, growing hard again. With the same ruthlessness as last night he watched with relief as whatever had been in Kallie’s eyes faded, to be replaced by desire…as he took her with him again.
