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He shrugged. But he was stung by her evaluation of him. ‘That is why you will be my perfect temporary wife,omorfiá mou. You won’t harbour hopes that I will fall in love with you.’
‘No, I won’t make that mistake again, Jace.’ Eleanor’s voice was as dry as a desert. She sighed. ‘During dinner, when you went to your study to take a business call, your mother told me how hard life was for both of you after your father died. She said you had to leave school early and get a job.’ Eleanor hesitated. ‘Your mother also mentioned that you deserved to be lucky after something terrible happened to you.’
Jace stiffened. This was an opportunity to tell Eleanor that he had served a prison sentence. But he balked at trying to explain that his conviction for assault had been unjust and he had acted in self-defence. A judge hadn’t believed his version of what had happened, so why would Eleanor? Grimly, he acknowledged that he had done nothing to earn her trust.
‘Ah,’ he murmured, as if he’d just realised what his mother had meant. ‘I believed I was in love once, but my girlfriend dumped me for a richer man. I suppose it seemed terrible at the time, but I had the last laugh when I won a million euros on a lottery game.’
Eleanor looked startled. ‘Did you try to persuade your girlfriend back with your winnings?’
‘No, I used the money to establish a property development business. It was a safer bet than Katerina, who had shown that she was a gold-digger,’ Jace said sardonically. ‘It was the first ticket I’d ever bought and, unlike your brother, I knew that the odds of another big win if I gambled again were minuscule. The money gave me the opportunity to do something with my life. I worked hard, and within five years my business portfolio was worth twenty times my original win.’
He had clawed his way to the top. Kostas’s betrayal of his father had taught him never to trust anyone, Jace brooded. He was proud of everything he had achieved.
‘Now you are reputed to be one of the wealthiest men in Greece,’ Eleanor murmured. ‘But I have the one thing you want but cannot buy.’
She released a shaky breath. ‘Your mother told me that she would be overjoyed to see you married before she dies. My brother talked of ending his life because he is worried about his debts. So I’ll marry you, and you will gain fifty per cent of the Pangalos. More importantly, we will be able to help the people we care about. But our marriage will be a business arrangement, as you suggested. For your mother’s sake I will pretend to be your loving wife in public, but in private we will lead separate lives. Discreetly, of course,’ she added coolly.
It was exactly what Jace had wanted. A marriage that would make his mother happy in the last months of her life and secure him half-ownership of the Pangalos. He should feel exultant, but he was infuriated to hear Eleanor state in a prim voice, so at odds with her sex siren looks, that she wanted an open marriage.
Did she have some guy in the background? Jace wondered furiously. He gritted his teeth at the idea that once Eleanor was his wife she might plan to slip out of the marital home to spend nights or maybe weekends with a lover. Yes, such an arrangement could work in his favour too. But he had not slept with a woman since before he’d met Eleanor fifteen months ago. The realisation made him frown. He did not want a mistress. He wanted his eager bride of a year ago.
Jace remembered how his body had been taut with anticipation at the prospect of taking Eleanor to bed in Paris. He had been turned on by her beguiling mix of innocence and sensuality. The way she was looking at him now, with a hungry desire that turned her hazel eyes green, shook his resolve to keep his hands off her.
‘You can forget about us having an open marriage,’ he told her bluntly. ‘I won’t stand for you flaunting your affairs with other men while you are my wife.’
She looked confused and then angry. ‘It was your idea. You said we would both have freedom within the marriage.’
Jace was irritated that she quoted him, and he tried to recall what other crass things he might have said. ‘I am a well-known figure in Greece, and the media take excessive interest in my personal life. It would be deeply upsetting for my mother if she heard rumours that we were not committed to our marriage.’
He stared down at Eleanor and felt a curious tug in his chest as he roamed his gaze over the delicate contours of her face. It amazed him that he had overlooked her English rose beauty initially. Her eyes darkened, the pupils dilating so they were fathomless black pools ringed by irises that had turned as green as a stormy sea. He knew she felt the simmering awareness between them, and when her tongue darted across her bottom lip it took all Jace’s willpower not to sweep her into his arms and crush her mouth beneath his.
‘You have a reputation as a playboy. Do you expect me to believe that you will remain celibate during our marriage?’ Her hair swirled in a fragrant cloud around her shoulders when she shook her head. She gave him a belligerent look as she placed her hands on her hips.
The action drew Jace’s attention to her breasts rising and falling quickly beneath the shirt he’d lent her. The outline of her nipples through the thin cotton answered the question that had plagued him throughout dinner. She wasn’t wearing a bra and he felt his body respond to the invitation she was throwing out.
‘I have no intention of living like a monk,’ he drawled. Her indignant expression brought a mocking smile to his lips. ‘Don’t go there,omorfiá mou,’ he warned softly. ‘I certainly won’t force you to have sex with me, if that was the accusation you were about to make. But I guarantee that at some point our marriage will include a sexual relationship.’
She took a deep breath that made her breasts swell so that the buttons down the front of the shirt appeared to be in danger of pinging open. ‘You aresoarrogant.’
‘And you are a pretty little liar if you deny that you want this,’ Jace said roughly. He could no longer fight his desire for Eleanor that pumped powerfully through his veins. When he slipped his hand beneath her chin and tilted her face to his he saw the same urgent excitement in her eyes that consumed him. But he forced himself to hold back.
‘I am not restraining you in any way,’ he murmured. ‘You are free to leave. But if you don’t move in the next ten seconds, I give you fair warning that I am going to kiss you.’
‘Go on then.’
The words slipped out of Eleanor’s mouth before she could stop them. She felt herself blush, but she stared at Jace’s heartbreakingly handsome face as he lowered his head towards her and her feet refused to budge. There was no chance she would fall in love with him again, she assured herself. He was a lying toad and she hated him, but she craved his kiss.
Who was she kidding? She wanted more than his kisses. She had been startled by his accusation that she might want affairs with other men. Jace was the only man she wanted. A year ago he had given her a glimpse of her own sensuality and her body felt cheated that she had not experienced the sexual fulfilment his caresses had promised.
He moved his hand up and cupped her cheek, brushing his thumb lightly over her sensitised skin. The oddly tender gesture caused her heart to slam headlong into her ribcage. She snatched a breath seconds before he grazed his mouth across hers. The effect was electrifying. Every cell in her body quivered with acute awareness of him and with a need she did not fully understand but it made her tremble and shift closer to him.
Jace groaned and lashed his arm around her waist, pulling her against the muscled hardness of his thighs. And Eleanor melted. Any lingering thoughts of resistance disappeared as she responded to Jace’s demands with a helplessness that would have appalled her if she had been capable of rational logic. There would be time for self-recrimination later. Now there was simply fire and flame as Jace licked his way into her mouth and tangled his tongue with hers.
He tasted of smoky whisky and Eleanor felt as if she had come home. His mouth fitted hers perfectly and his fierce passion eased a little the hurt he had inflicted on her heart a year ago. He slid his hand into her hair and angled her head while he deepened the kiss and it became an erotic feast.
With a soft moan, Eleanor wound her arms around his neck and pressed herself against his whipcord body. This was what she had dreamed of night after night since she had fled from him in Paris. Jace was her master and she became alive beneath his magician’s touch.
Compelled by feminine instinct and a desperation to be even closer to him, she slipped her hands beneath the hem of his sweater and discovered the tantalising warmth of his bare skin. Her fingertips explored the ridges of his abdominal muscles before moving up to skim across the whorls of hair that grew on his chest.
