AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘But not me.’
‘Then why did she say it was?’ Jane demanded raggedly.
‘Same answer as before: you’d have to ask her,’ replied Demetri tersely. ‘Maybe this time she’ll tell you the truth.’
Jane swallowed, permitting herself a look up into his dark face. ‘What I find hard to understand is how you can even associate with her if she was lying.’
‘To begin with, I couldn’t. But my mother—’
‘Oh, right.’ Jane shook her head. ‘I might have known your mother would have some part in this.’
‘She is fond of Ianthe,’ said Demetri through his teeth. ‘She regards her as family.’
‘The way she never regarded me.’
Demetri sighed. ‘OK. I know it was hard for you. But it would have got easier.’
‘Before or after you’d slept with Ianthe?’
‘I’ve told you—’
‘All right, all right.’ Jane shrugged. ‘I still don’t understand why it should matter to you what I think now.’
Demetri’s breath sharpened. ‘Because it does.’
‘Why?’
‘Why do you think?’
Jane’s lips twisted. ‘Because no one is allowed to contradict the great Demetri Souvakis?’ she suggested scornfully. ‘Or do you just like tormenting me?’
‘Do I do that?’
His voice had thickened and this time, when Jane chanced a glance through her lashes, she surprised an odd humility in his expression.
She shivered. ‘You know you do.’
‘How?’
She spread her hands, indicating his arms and her confinement. ‘Need I say more?’
Demetri’s eyes darkened, but he had to acknowledge that she was right. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Point taken.’ But he didn’t move. ‘Perhaps you ought to ask yourself why.’
‘Why you like tormenting me?’
‘I didn’t say I liked it,’ he corrected her, and now his voice was harsh with emotion. He lifted a hand, which he noticed wasn’t quite steady, and took hold of her chin, turning her face up to his. ‘You still drive me crazy and you know it.’
Jane trembled. He could feel it. Goosepimples appeared on her shoulders, ran down her arms to the hands that were clenched in her lap. A wave of colour swept up from her throat and into her face, warming the flesh beneath his fingers. And Demetri—God help him, he thought grimly—couldn’t stop himself from dropping down onto his haunches in front of her and covering her mouth with his.
A soft moan escaped her lips, her breath filling his lungs with the taste and the smell of her. Demetri came down on one knee then and, cupping her face in his hands, he deepened the kiss until her lips parted on a gasp and he was able to plunge his tongue into her open mouth.
The sensation was exquisite: taut muscle against soft wet flesh, and it was all too easy to remember how hot and tight she’d been when he’d pushed his sex inside her. His senses swam at the memory. A mindless kind of self-destruction was driving him on. And the throbbing pulse of his erection was like a drum beating in his head.
‘Demetri,’ she protested, but it was barely audible. Did she really expect him to stop? When he released her mouth to seek the scented hollow of her throat her breathing quickened. And she didn’t try to pull away.
His mouth and teeth were seducing her, she realised, drawing her inexorably into the web she’d known before. Murmuring to her in his own language, he caressed her arms and the delicate curve of her shoulders, slipping down to probe beneath the hem of her tank-top.
His fingers lingered in the sensitive hollow of her spine, causing another shiver of awareness. Her flesh was filmed with dampness, her scent rising to his nostrils when he bent his head and licked her skin. But the waistband of her skirt was a barrier, and his hands slid along her thighs instead to where her legs were bared and accessible.
‘Aghapita,’ he breathed, bending his head to kiss the inner curve of her thigh. ‘You are so beautiful!’
‘Dear God, Demetri—don’t!’
‘I want to.’
He wouldn’t listen to her protests, and Jane was finding it increasingly hard to hold on to her sanity. Besides, there was something enormously satisfying in hearing the break in his voice when he spoke to her, the raw emotion that no amount of arrogance could hide.
He spread her legs, his lips moving sensuously along her thigh, bestowing a trail of hot wet kisses that made her gulp and come half up out of the chair. ‘Relax,’ he said, pushing her down again. ‘Just let me do this.’
It was insane, she thought. Didn’t he care where he was, what might happen if his mother or Ariadne took it into their heads to come and see what was happening?
