Читать книгу Baby Out of the Blue - Annie West - Страница 15

‘YOU knew nothing!’

Demetri came up off the desk in one swift, menacing lunge and Jane felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle alarmingly. He was so big, so dark, so powerful. So angry! She couldn’t help herself. She automatically backed away from him.

And found her way blocked by the leather armchair in the window embrasure behind her. It smacked into her calves and, with a little gasp of surprise, she subsided onto the seat. Demetri loomed over her and for a moment she thought he was going to strike her. But he didn’t. What he did was bend towards her, gripping the arms of the chair, effectively imprisoning her in place.

‘OK,’ he said harshly, his breath hot against skin that was still slightly tender from the sun. She was wearing a cropped tank-top and a cream denim skirt and her sudden descent had driven the skirt halfway up her thighs. ‘Here it is for the last time, aghapi. I have slept with Ariadne, I don’t deny it. I have never slept with Ianthe.’

Jane couldn’t deny the twist of pain she felt at hearing him admit that he and Ariadne were lovers, but she managed to say bitterly, ‘Someone did.’

‘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?

Evidently not. His mouth had reached the delta of her thighs and she felt his hands slip beneath her bottom and find the elasticated tape of her thong. Then, with a determination that no amount of resistance on her part could defeat, he pulled the scrap of silk away.

‘That is much better,’ he said thickly, lifting his head to press a hungry kiss to her parted lips. She felt his finger probe the moist curls at the top of her legs. ‘Isn’t it?’

Jane couldn’t speak. She could only move her head in a helpless gesture of admission. And, as if her flushed face and agitated reaction pleased him, Demetri gripped the back of her neck and brought her mouth to his again in a hard, passionate possession.

‘Se thelo,’ he groaned, and she thought it was an indication of how aroused he was that he continued to speak in his own language. ‘I want you,’ he repeated hoarsely. ‘Angikse me!’ Touch me!

Her hands had been twisted together in her lap but now they moved almost of their own accord. With a feeling of inevitability, she clutched his shoulders, pushing his suit jacket to the floor.

Beneath his shirt, his skin was hot. His heat surged up into her fingers, almost burning her, and when he bore her back against the cushions she found he was sweating, too.

He pushed her tank-top up above her breasts, using his tongue and his teeth to bring them to tingling, sensual life. He drew the swollen nubs into his mouth, sucking hungrily, and, because her nipples were already tender, she couldn’t deny the moan of anguish that escaped her.

But he wasn’t hurting her. Indeed, she thought, she had never felt more excited. Her belief that a pregnant woman couldn’t possibly respond in the same way as before simply wasn’t true. Demetri had always been able to drive her crazy with longing and today was no exception.

She was aware of him unbuckling his belt and loosening the button at his waist and she couldn’t resist. Pushing his fingers aside, she pressed his zip down and then caught her breath when his arousal pushed a handful of his silk boxer shorts into her hand. The boxers were made of the finest fabric but, when she peeled them over his erection, she had to admit that his skin was smoother and more satinlike than the richest velvet.

‘Theos,’ he said on a choked breath, and she realised how close to release he was.

‘You like that?’ she asked unsteadily, and he made a sound of pained submission.

‘I like it,’ he told her unevenly, and that was when she acknowledged that she wanted him just as much as he wanted her. Feeling his naked sex against hers, she knew the decision was no longer open to discussion. Even if she might regret it later—and she was fairly sure she would—there was nothing she wanted more.

‘But we—we can’t do it here,’ she protested, aware that they were in full view of anybody walking past the window outside.

Demetri uttered a strangled groan. ‘Don’t you dare move,’ he muttered, pushing her skirt up around her waist. ‘This is good enough for me.’

And when Demetri pushed into her hot, slick sheath, she discovered she wasn’t much interested in objecting again. He lifted her legs and encouraged her to wind them about his waist and then entered her in one smooth, satisfying lunge. He pressed in so deeply that Jane’s body had to expand and stretch to accommodate him, but dear God, she thought, he made her feel whole again.

‘Aghapi mou,’ he whispered and, when she gasped, ‘Am I hurting you?’

‘You asked me that before,’ she reminded him huskily, and he arched an anxious brow.

‘Well?’

‘No! God, no,’ she assured him unsteadily, and, with a groan of satisfaction, Demetri looked down at where their bodies were joined.

‘Telios,’ he breathed. ‘You are perfect. We are perfect together, neh?’

‘Neh. I mean, yes, yes,’ she got out with an effort. Then, half closing her eyes, ‘Please: don’t stop now.’

‘I do not believe I could, pethi mou,’ he confessed, and she was so wet, when he drew back she could hear the audible suction of his flesh against hers. ‘There are limits to even my control, sweet one, and we passed them some minutes ago.’ He pushed into her again and now he began to quicken his pace. ‘Theos, we belong together.’

Jane couldn’t deny it. Not at that moment, not when her body convulsed around his only seconds before his release. She felt him spurting inside her, felt his heat melting all coherent thought, and clamped her thighs around him in a final act of possession.

She wasn’t sure how long she lay there with Demetri cradled between her thighs. In the beginning, she couldn’t have moved, and then she found she didn’t want to. Their bodies were still joined and she knew it would take very little to arouse him again. His sex lay, still semi-aroused, in her, and she knew she had only to put down her hand and touch him to have him harden into desire.

But, eventually, she forced herself to raise her arm and look at her watch and saw to her horror that they’d been in the library for over an hour. Someone—probably his mother—was going to start wondering what was taking so long, and Jane could just imagine how she would react if she opened the door and found her precious son half-naked in his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s arms.

It was that awareness as much as anything that made her struggle to get free. She couldn’t bear the thought that Maria Souvakis might witness her humiliation. For, however she tried to interpret it, the fact remained that once again she’d allowed Demetri to take advantage of her. Heavens, hadn’t she learned her lesson the first time? She was pregnant, for goodness’ sake. And she hadn’t got that way by any immaculate conception.

‘Komatia, what are you doing?’

Demetri’s lazy protest caused her to quicken her actions. And because he was still semi-comatose, she was able to push him aside and scramble off the chair.

‘I’m leaving,’ she said unsteadily, tugging her tank down over her breasts and snatching up her underwear, which she stuffed into the pocket of her skirt. She averted her eyes from his shameless nakedness. ‘If I were you, I’d put your clothes on. I doubt if Ariadne would appreciate seeing you in your present state of undress.’

Demetri swore, but she noticed he did as she suggested, tugging up his trousers and fastening his zip. But when she thought it was safe to leave, he pushed himself up from the chair and regarded her through narrowed eyes.

‘We’re not through, you know,’ he said harshly, and, although she only glanced in his direction, she knew she would never forget the sight of him with his shirt unfastened and his zip in definite danger of slipping open again.

‘I think we are,’ she retorted, and this time when she headed for the door he didn’t try to stop her.

‘I’ll see you at dinner,’ he said, and, although Jane badly wanted to deny this, she was a guest in his father’s house and the decision wasn’t hers to make.

Shaking her head, she let herself out of the door, praying that she’d be allowed to go to her room without meeting either Ariadne or Ianthe or some member of Demetri’s family. She wanted to be alone, she wanted time to think, and most of all she wanted to escape this awful predicament she’d created for herself.

But that wasn’t going to happen. And the idea of not having the baby was as painful to her as leaving the island was going to be. But she had to leave. And soon. Before she did something totally outrageous like telling Demetri she was going to have his baby. Ironically enough, it would have been easier to tell him she still loved him than that.

She caught her breath. Was that true? Could she have been foolish enough to fall in love with him all over again? Because whatever happened, Demetri was never going to believe she hadn’t got pregnant deliberately, and did she really want a relationship based on that suspicion?

No, she had to leave here. Even if Demetri was prepared to believe her, there would always be the spectre of Ianthe’s baby in the background. And he had a new relationship now, with Ariadne. She didn’t have the right to disrupt his life again.

Even if he had disrupted hers…

She had reached the stairs when someone called her name. At first she thought it might be Demetri and she continued on her way. But then she realised that once again the voice had been too mild to be her husband’s and, glancing back, she saw Leo leaning heavily on the banister below.

She halted immediately, supremely conscious that she was flushed and out of breath. But then, with a gesture of defeat, she came down the stairs again, hoping that the lowering sun would cast her face in shadow.

‘I was just going to change,’ she said when he didn’t speak again, and Leo inclined his head.

‘Ariadne told me that Demetri was with you,’ he said at last. ‘I hope he hasn’t upset you again.’

Upset!

Jane felt a sob of hysteria rise in her throat and quickly fought it down. ‘It—he just wanted to ask me if I’d received the divorce papers,’ she said, which was true. Then, moistening her lips, she added, ‘I’m glad I’ve got this opportunity to speak to you, actually, Leo. I think it’s time I went back to England.’

Demetri’s father frowned. ‘You do?’

‘Yes.’ Jane swallowed. ‘Now that Demetri’s back—’

‘So he has been intimidating you—’

‘No.’ Jane couldn’t allow him to think that. ‘It’s just—well, I’m in the way here.’

‘You’re not in my way, Jane.’

‘No, but you know what I’m saying.’ Jane sighed. ‘It’s been wonderful seeing you again, Leo, but I don’t belong here any more.’

Leo sighed. ‘Well, if that’s your decision…’

‘It is.’ And then, seeing his disappointment, Jane came right down the stairs to give him an impulsive hug. ‘You know I don’t want to leave you—’

‘Then why do so?’

‘I just have to,’ she insisted, drawing back. ‘Please say you understand.’

Leo shook his head. ‘I assume you’ve told Demetri.’

‘Um—not yet, no.’

‘Don’t you think he’ll have something to say about it?’

‘Perhaps.’ Jane sighed. And then, because telling Demetri was something she couldn’t face right now, she added, ‘Would you do that, Leo? Tell him, I mean? But not—not before dinner, if you don’t mind.’

Leo looked troubled. ‘Are you afraid of him, Jane?’

‘No.’ Jane stifled a groan. ‘I just—don’t want any fuss,’ she murmured awkwardly. ‘And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go and have a shower before we eat.’