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‘I hope not.’
‘Don’t be so glum,’ he cautioned and, without her realising it, he’d crossed the room and was standing right in front of her. His eyes bored into hers and everything in the room seemed to slow down, to stammer to a stop. She stared up at him, her heart racing, her mouth dry, her eyes roaming his face hungrily. ‘You will enjoy certain aspects of being my wife.’
She swallowed in an attempt to bring moisture back to her mouth. ‘You’re wrong.’
He laughed, a dry sound, and swooped his head down, to claim her mouth with his. ‘When it comes to women and sex, Frankie, I’m never wrong.’
Her pulse hammered in her ears and her body went into overdrive, her nerve-endings tingling, her heart throbbing. She wanted to resist him. God, she wanted to make a point. She wanted to push him away. But with her dying breath, with every fibre of her being, she wanted this more. She lifted her hands, burying them in his shirt, her senses noting everything about him—his warmth, his strength, his masculine fragrance, his closeness, his hardness, his very him-ness. Memories of how it had been before flashed through her and she whimpered, low in her throat, when one of his hands moved behind her, cupping her bottom and pulling her forward, pressing her to his arousal until she made a groaning sound, tilting her head back to give him better access to her mouth.
And he dominated her with his kiss, his mouth making a mockery of her objections, his lips showing her how completely he could force her surrender, how quickly he could crumble all her reserves, how quickly he could turn her into trembling putty in his arms.
How little, in that moment, she minded.
He lifted his head, pulling away from her, his breathing roughened by passion, as her own was. ‘I have no intention of making your life difficult or unpleasant, Frankie. Through the days, you’ll barely know I exist.’
Her pulse was still hammering inside her and her body was weak with desire. When she spoke, the words were faint, breathy. ‘And at night?’
‘At night,’ he promised, lifting his hand and stroking his thumb across her cheek, ‘you won’t be able to exist without me.’
* * *
Matthias stared at his child and inside him it felt as if an anvil were colliding with his ribcage.
The little boy was the spitting image of Spiro, just as the painting had made him appear.
‘Hello.’ He crouched down so he could look into Leo’s face. ‘You must be Leo.’
Leo nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes. I am Leo.’
Matthias couldn’t smile. He felt only pain, like acid gushing through his veins. How much of this boy’s life had he missed? How much was there about him he didn’t know?
‘We are going to go on an adventure,’ he said, standing, glaring at Frankie with all the rage he felt in that moment. The night before, he’d wanted to make love to her until she was incoherent, crying his name at the top of her voice. Now? He felt nothing but rage. Rage at what she’d denied him. Rage at what she’d enjoyed while he’d been none the wiser.
‘Come, Leo,’ he said, the words carefully muted of harsh inflection even when his eyes conveyed his mood just fine. ‘We are going on an adventure together.’
CHAPTER FOUR
HER STOMACH SWOOPED as the plane came in low over the Mediterranean, but Frankie knew it had less to do with the private jet’s descent and more to do with the man sitting opposite her. In the incredible luxury of this plane, surrounded by white leather furniture, chandeliers, servants dressed in white and gold uniforms, Matthias still stood out. He was imposing.
Regal.
Grand.
Intimidating.
And he was to be her husband.
Thoughts of their kiss, with her back pressed against a wall literally and metaphorically, flooded her mind and her temperature spiked as remembered pleasures deepened inside her.
The ocean glistened beneath them like a beautiful mirage, dark blue from up here, and dozens of little islands dotted in the middle of it. Each was surrounded by a ring of turquoise water and an edge of crisp white sand.
‘That is Tolmirós,’ he said conversationally, and it was the first he’d spoken to her all flight. The silence had been deafening, but Frankie had been preoccupied enough wondering just how the hell she’d found herself being spirited away to this man’s kingdom—having agreed, at last, to be his wife!
‘Which one?’
He eyed her thoughtfully for a moment and her heart rate notched up a gear. ‘All of them. Tolmirós is made up of forty-two islands. Some are small, some are large. Like Epikanas,’ he said, reaching across and pointing to an island in the distance.
She looked in the direction he was indicating, trying to ignore the fact that he was so close to her now, so close she could breathe in his woody masculine fragrance. When he’d kissed her, it had been as though nothing else mattered. Not the past, not the future—nothing.
