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She stared into the cold, black eyes. ‘Are you saying that I could save these people their jobs—?
?
‘If you agree to marry me? Yes.’
This was preposterous—things like this just didn’t happen in her world! ‘You can’t,’ she protested. ’The unions will—’
‘I can,’ he said implacably. ‘And I will.’
Jade ran her fingers wildly through her mussed hair, closing her eyes as she tried to piece her thoughts together. Could she bear to see people like Arthur and Bill thrown out of a job because of her foolishness, her indiscretion? And if the only way to put a stop to it was by marrying Constantine…
She looked up into the impenetrable black eyes, and perhaps he read the unwilling capitulation in hers, for the corners of his mouth lifted in an arro- gant half-smile of triumph.
‘So you’ll marry me?’ he asked.
‘What choice do I have?’ she answered bitterly. ’Only someone as heartless as yourself would dream of saying no.’
He made a soft laugh, and rose from behind the desk with all the stealth and grace of a jungle cat moving in for the kill, and Jade eyed him with a deep hatred which was nonetheless mixed with a deep longing which she couldn’t seem to shake off. Cornered, she began to back away from him as he approached.
‘I want to get a few things straight,’ she said, and he immediately halted, eyeing her with a calculat- ing interest. ‘You’re marrying me just to keep your word and maintain your honour?’
‘Oh, no,’ he negated mockingly. ‘Not just for that.’
‘It isn’t?’ Jade’s eyes widened as she wondered just what other motivation there could be behind this preposterous marriage.
‘No, indeed,’ he repeated, on a deep, silky note, which made the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up like soldiers. ‘An added incentive is that I desire you with a compulsion which I find pro- foundly disturbing; it disturbed me when I first met you, and making love to you just once seems to have only exacerbated it. By marrying you, it will enable me to have you whenever I like and how often I like, so that inevitably my desire for you will lessen, and—diminish,’ he concluded callously.
Somehow, Jade managed to keep her face poker- straight. ‘And then?’
He shrugged. ‘Then, in a few months’ time—we can divorce, if you wish it.’ His mouth became an implacably hard line. ‘I will probably have grown tired of you by then.’
‘But surely that will heap even more dishonour on your head?’ suggested Jade sarcastically.
He shook the black head emphatically. ‘Not at all. My family and my Greek friends will doubt- lessly expect the marriage to fail from the begin- ning—and they will blame its failure on the cultural differences between the two races. Besides, if we marry in England in a register office, it won’t even be considered a proper marriage, no matter what the law says—because to all my family and friends only a church wedding in Greece will fulfil that function.’
He looked so cold, so hard, as if he were dis- cussing some board-room take over. ‘My God,’ whispered Jade. ‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? Every single ghastly aspect.’
‘But naturally,’ he continued inexorably. ‘It is the way I always operate. So,’ the eyes glittered blackly. ’You agree to my proposal?’
Jade lifted her chin and glared at him. ‘I will consider it.’ But his attention didn’t seem to be on what she was saying, for she saw that he was staring openly at her breasts, and his eyes had darkened into glittering chips of black ice as he began to ap- proach her once more.
She watched as he moved, clasping her hands together to stop them trembling, knowing that she should stray from his relentless path, but some- thing in his face stopped her. Oh, the fascinating planes and shadows of that harsh and ruthless face! It was as though everything which was dark and powerful and savage and masculine—all the primitive qualities which made some men so devas- tatingly attractive—had been bestowed far too lib- erally on Constantine. He made every other man she’d ever met seem like insubstantial shadows by comparison.
‘And now…’ He was so close now: she could smell that soapy fragrance mingled with the hot, salty and aroused male tang of him. ‘A kiss for your husband-to-be…’ His voice sounded like gravel scraping over velvet.
He lowered his mouth with exacting precision over hers, his tongue gently probing her half- protesting lips apart, and she felt it move slowly into her mouth, sliding erotically over her teeth… inexorably seductive… until there was no protest left in her, and she kissed him back. And back… as the intimacy of the kiss grew and grew. And, with each second that passed, the kiss pro- voked a tense excitement which built and built and built, so that her body and her heart cried out for joy when he slowly and deliberately swept his hand down over her breast, her belly, briefly alighting on one thigh before encircling her waist.
She felt the hot, fierce and wet release of desire and she gave a little moan, half-crazy with wanting. In the dimmest recesses of her mind some voice of reason spoke its protest, wondering how she could allow him to do this to her after all that had happened.
But the desires of her body seemed to have oblit- erated everything but its own intense need, and her mind and the voice of reason weren’t getting a look in—not when his hand had moved down to un- button her shirt and she felt the cool air on her skin, immediately closing her eyes with helpless pleasure as he slid his hand inside her bra, so that the exquisitely sensitive nub nudged insistently against his circling palm.
He hadn’t stopped kissing her, and his other hand had begun to move her floaty skirt up, and was caressing its way oh, so slowly all the way up her bare and craving thigh, his fingers stroking feather- light touches over the soft skin there. With a muffled groan he pulled her body tightly into his and Jade’s eyelids fluttered open as she felt the tan- talisingly hard pressure of his arousal which pushed against her, and then, through dazed eyes, saw the familiar yet unexpected sight of her boss’s office. Ex-boss, she corrected herself vaguely. Realised, with Constantine’s hand almost on her panties, that if she didn’t stop him soon, now, that he would take her right here, and with as little care or feeling as he had shown before in his hotel-room.
Her mind struggled for ascendancy over body, and with a strength she hadn’t known she pos- sessed she pushed him away from her, and stood hastily adjusting her clothing, her eyes dark with rage and passion, her breathing heavy and laboured for exactly the same reasons.
‘Don’t—don’t ever do that again!’ she declared, once her breathing had steadied enough to allow her to speak. ‘Because here’s the second of my terms, Constantine. Yes, I’ll damned well marry you—because I couldn’t bear to see you put those poor men out of work—but it’ll be a marriage in name only! And I’m afraid that you’re in for a shock if you think you’re going to rid yourself of your desire for me by making love to me—because I don’t ever want you to touch me like that again!’
His eyes glinted. ‘Liar,’ he taunted softly. ‘Do you really think you could stop me?’
