Читать книгу Chosen by the Greek Tycoon - Кэтти Уильямс, Kate Walker, Cathy Williams - Страница 9

‘ME?’

THEO’S response to Skye’s shocked exclamation was as calm and relaxed as he could make it, though any real control was the last thing he felt capable of.

He should never have touched her.

His body still burned at the thought of it; his brain had almost melted in the burn of the fierce, erotic heat that had flooded every inch of his body, making him hard and hungry in a second. He still ached from the sudden ebbing of the blazing tide, the effect of the cold night air that had hit him as soon as they had left the bar.

He should never have touched her, but what he hadn’t anticipated was the way that she had responded to him.

He’d thought she felt it too.

If she hadn’t, then what the hell had she meant by the way she’d reacted—resting her head against his shoulder, leaning back into him?

But now she was behaving as if she thought he was a demon from hell and not at all the person she’d been hoping for

‘You were expecting someone else?’

‘N-no—not exactly,’ she stammered. ‘I—it’s just—I never thought that you’d be the one to come to my rescue. I should thank you,’ she added, too belatedly to smooth his very ruffled feelings.

‘Think nothing of it.’

A wave of his hand dismissed her stumbling thanks. Theo was well aware of the way that the frustrated demands of his aroused body were distorting his mood, making him feel bad-tempered and edgy. And what made a bad mood inflnitely worse was the way that, seeing her face full on now, in the light from the doorway, he found that the promise suggested by her back, her profile, indoors, was more than fulfilled by the reality.

She was gorgeous. A pale, oval face. Stunning light coloured eyes, with incredibly thick, lush lashes. A full, soft mouth seemed just made for kisses, and the thoughts that imagining that mouth on his own skin triggered off were so X-rated that he was glad of the shadows in the street, the darkness of the evening, that hid his response from her.

‘And I should introduce myself.’

Her hand came out, stiffly formal.

‘I’m—Skye…’

The hesitation before her name and the way that she didn’t add a surname told him she didn’t want to trust him with the full details of her identity. Fair enough, that was fine with him.

‘Anton,’ he growled, knowing he was forced to take her hand, but making the contact as brief and brusque as possible before letting it drop.

He didn’t want a repeat of the cruelly demanding sensations he’d experienced before, especially when it seemed that this Skye was determined to be on her way as soon as possible and there was no chance of taking things any further.

‘Anton.’

The way that she echoed the name he had given her made him wonder if she really knew, or suspected, it was not genuine.

He didn’t give a damn one way or another. Even here, in England, the Antonakos name—and, more importantly, the Antonakos fortune—was so well known that the realisation he was a member of that family was enough to create an interest where there wasn’t one, to put a speculative light in the eye of anyone he met.

And, in his experience, women were the worst offenders. Along with the name Antonakos, they saw the prospect of a meal ticket for life; a future of luxury and ease, if they could just play their cards right.

As he was not at all sure what sort of cards this Skye, whoever she was, was about to play; he preferred to keep his own—and the truth of his identity—very close to his chest.

Not that she seemed in the least interested right now. Those pale eyes were scanning the street, looking up and down the road.

‘Are you looking for someone?’

Suspicion made him voice it. Damn it, had he got this all wrong from the start? He cursed under his breath at the way that thought made him feel. He didn’t want her to have been really waiting for anyone. He had assumed that the lover she had claimed was imaginary—had wanted him not to exist.

The truth was that he wanted this woman for himself, and right now he was prepared to do whatever it took to get her.

‘Was that boyfriend you mentioned real after all?’

‘Oh, no.’

The shake of her head sent the red-gold fall of her hair flying around her face, tiny drops of rain shimmering in its depths from the drizzle that was falling.

‘No, I made him up in the hope they would let me go. I wasn’t looking for anyone—just a taxi.’

‘I can give you a lift anywhere you want to go.’

‘A taxi will be fine.’ It was the vocal equivalent of several steps backwards and away from him. No physical action could have put more of a distance between them.

A black cab was approaching and she lifted a hand to hail it, but too late. It swept past in a spray of water from the puddles filling the gutter, spattering her skirt and legs with mud.

‘I can give you a lift anywhere you want to go.’

The way he repeated his exact words of just moments before brought Skye’s eyes to his face in a rush. Meeting the glittering darkness of his gaze, seeing the way that the muscles of his jaw were drawn tight, she knew a sinking sense of realisation.

She’d insulted him with her refusal. He was angry too, something that told her how much her rejection had meant to him.

‘I—was trying to be sensible,’ she managed.

‘Isn’t it a little late for that now?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, the situation you got yourself into back there—’ His dark head nodded towards the noisy, smoky bar. ‘That was hardly the action of a sensible person.’

The deliberate emphasis on the repeated word goaded her, as she was sure it was meant to do, sparking her temper and bringing her chin up, eyes flashing angry fire.

‘I didn’t exactly ask for that!’ she snapped. ‘It just happened!’

‘I only offered you a lift in my car.’

The resignation in his tone had a hard edge to it, one that warned her of the way his temper was fraying at the edges.

‘I’m sor—’ she began, but he ignored her and rushed on angrily.

‘I was brought up never to let a woman risk being on her own, if I could do anything to help her.’

‘Then get me a taxi—please.’

She prayed he wouldn’t argue further. She was rapidly losing her grip on her self-control as it was.

‘No.’

It was cold and hard and unyielding, and it chilled her blood just to hear it.

Out of the frying-pan and into the fire. The ominous phrase that had slipped into her head in the first moments they had been outside now pounded round and round inside her skull until she felt as if her mind would explode.

‘You don’t need a taxi. I will take you wherever you want to go.’

Skye’s eyes closed on a shudder of horror as she tried to imagine just how that scenario would play out. She didn’t even want to think of her father’s reaction if she was to arrive home in a strange car—with an unknown man. Even less did she want to imagine the way her prospective fiancé would view that situation.

Oh, why had she ever thought she could do this? Why had she let herself believe that she could fling herself into one night of liberty just to try and put a temporary barrier between herself and the future that lay ahead of her?

Why had she ever imagined that she could have one night in which she lived the same sort of life as her friends, as other young women her age? One night of total freedom, of irresponsibility, of reckless abandon before the walls of restraint and restriction closed round her once and for all?

She had never been able to live that way even when she had had her freedom—the freedom of youth. So why had she ever thought she could do it now, just for tonight? She had been out of her depth from the start—and she was sinking in deeper with every second that passed.

‘I’ll get one myself, then.’

She swung away from him violently, knowing in her heart that she was really running from herself, not from him. But she was closer to the edge of the pavement than she thought. Her heel caught on the kerb, twisted awkwardly and went from beneath her. She would have gone flying off the footpath, falling headlong onto the wet tarmac, into the middle of the road and the path of the oncoming cars, if the man beside her hadn’t reacted with instinctive speed.

‘Skye—look out!’

In the blink of an eye he was beside her, reaching out and catching her before her stumble became a fall. She was held tight, hauled up into arms that felt like tempered steel as they tensed, took her weight and then pulled her back to safety.

Safety? Or right back into the heart of danger?

Skye had no way of knowing and her head was whirling too much in the aftermath of the shock of her near fall to be able to think clearly.

The position she was in didn’t help either. Anton had spun her round as he caught her up so that now she was clamped tight against him, enfolded in his arms, with her body crushed against the hard length of his, her head on his chest, her cheek above the heavy, heated thud of his heart, the sound of his pulse in her ears.

And it was all happening again.

Just as it had when he had come up behind her in the bar, so now her blood was heating in urgent response to his closeness, her heart racing in time with the fierce beat of his. She was surrounded by him, held in the heat and hardness of his grip, the clean, male scent of his body surrounding her, melting her thoughts inside her head.

It felt like coming home.

It felt as if she had always been there. As if this was truly where she belonged. Where she most wanted to be in all the world. And with the instinctive cuddling movement of a small creature seeking comfort from the cold, hard world outside, she snuggled closer, burying her face in his shirt front, her hands sliding under his jacket, her arms going round the narrow waist.

She felt his grip tighten even more, and his dark head bent, his face coming so close to hers that the faint roughness of the beginnings of evening growth of beard rubbed lightly against the delicate skin of her cheek. She sensed—unbelievingly—the warm caress of his mouth on her neck, at the base of her ear, and heard his deep sigh as he whispered harshly against the delicate lobe.

‘Skye, don’t go—stay! I want you to stay.’

‘What?’

Had he really said what she thought she had heard? She couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. It had to be her ears deceiving her or the voice of her own hungry longings sounding inside her head, telling her what she most wanted to hear.

But she couldn’t have heard it. Men like this Anton didn’t suddenly beg girls like her to stay with them, not on such brief acquaintance.

Had he really said…?

Tilting her head, she tried to look up into his face, to read the answer there, but even as she moved his dark head came down towards hers. His mouth closed over hers and captured it in a searing, blazing kiss that sent a sensation like a lightning bolt fizzing through her body, right down to the tips of her toes.

This couldn’t be happening, was the one brief thought that Skye managed before her brain short-circuited and thinking became impossible. Before it was replaced only by feeling.

His mouth was pure enticement, pure sinful seduction. His kiss worked a spell on her that had her melting against him, into him, losing herself in the feeling of becoming part of him. Her lips parted, encouraging the heated invasion of his tongue, her sighing moan a sound of pure surrender, all that was female in her responding to the darkly elemental male in him. Something rich and dark and deeply sensual uncoiled way down low in her body and set up a heavy, honeyed pounding between her thighs.

The sounds and the lights of the street became nothing but a blur in the back of her mind as the strength of his hold lifted her up onto her toes, almost off her feet. Powerful hands thrust into the fall of hair, sweeping it back from around her face as hard fingers dug into her skull. The rain came down harder, colder, but she was lost and oblivious to it, adrift in a heated world where nothing else could reach her.

In the distance someone wolf-whistled, and slowly, reluctantly, they drew apart, breath coming heavily, eyes wide, expressions slightly dazed as they met each other’s gaze and acknowledged the primitive fires they had lit between them.

‘I…’ Skye began, but her voice broke in the middle, failing her completely as the reality of what had happened to her hit home like a savage blow to her head.

This was what it was all about. This was what malefemale relationships really meant. What those words like desire and passion and hunger had had hidden behind them, unrecognised by her until now.

Now.

The single word sounded like a knell inside her head, deadening her thoughts and bringing the cruel sting of tears to her eyes.

Now, when it was too late. When a malevolent fate had stepped in and decided her future for her.

When she knew that these delights, this sort of happiness, were to be denied to her for ever. She had learned the truth too late, only to have it snatched away from her in the same moment that she discovered it. And with no chance of anything more.

Except for tonight, a tiny voice whispered in her mind, bringing with it dreams and hopes of the sort that she had never allowed into her thoughts before. Dreams that made her shiver just to contemplate them.

Dreams that were here, now, within her reach, and all she had to do was to stretch out a hand and grasp them, make them hers, for tonight; for one night only.

‘Skye?’ the man called Anton questioned softly, making her realise how long she had been standing there, silent, distant, locked in the shadowed, ominous darkness of her thoughts.

The heat of his body still enclosed her, His hold had loosened, but she still pressed up against the powerful length of his body, feeling the hard ridge against her stomach that spoke of the desire that had been in his kiss. The same desire that had been in hers. That still throbbed along every nerve pathway, pulsed in her blood.

He had wanted her every bit as she had wanted him—he still did.

But she had only met him tonight.

‘I won’t hurt you.’ His voice was low and husky with need. So low and husky that it shocked her to think that she could ever have such an effect on any man—least of all this man. This tall, darkly imposing, devastating man.

‘I promise you, you’ll be safe with me. I swear…’

Her heart slammed against the wall of her ribcage, jerky and uneven, coming close to panic at just the thought of what she was considering. But the ache of need still suffused her own body and wouldn’t let her go.

If only this had happened sooner. If only she had met this Anton before…

But no. That was to wish for the impossible. Her fate had been sealed and she had no alternative but to go down the path that had been chosen for her. The path she had agreed to.

The path she had had no choice but to agree to.

From tomorrow, everything would change. From tomorrow her life would no longer be her own.

Skye’s teeth dug down hard into the softness of her bottom lip, scoring sharp little crescents into the delicate pink flesh.

Tomorrow.

Last week she had prayed that she could run away. She had dreamed of it, longed for it, hoped for a chance. But there was no chance. Too many people depended on her. If she had had any doubts about that, then the latest news only this week of how dangerous her mother’s heart condition really was had destroyed them for ever. She couldn’t run away and leave them all in the lurch.

But there was tonight.

Tonight she could run away—at least temporarily—from everything that was weighing her down. She could escape into a world of fantasy and sensual delight. A world that was so unreal she couldn’t really believe it was happening to her. A world in which, for once in her life—for the one and only time—just for a few short hours, she could experience the full heights of passion and the fierce sensuality that she had tasted so briefly just a few moments before.

One of the hardest things to accept about this marriage to Cyril Antonakos was the fact that her unwanted wedding night would be her first experience of sex. She was still a virgin and had never known any man who could make her feel enough to want to change that situation.

Until now.

Now she couldn’t bear the thought that a man nearing sixty would be her first, her only lover—when there was this man who only had to touch her and she felt as if she were going up in flames.

She could have tonight.

I promise you, you’ll be safe with me. I swear…

He didn’t even have to know her name. And tomorrow, as in some modern-day Cinderella story, reality would close in around her once again.

But she would have had tonight.

If only she could bring herself to answer him. If only she could find the courage to say…

‘Skye?’

Her name was rough on his tongue now, raw impatience and that devastating accent turning it into something new and strange. A sound she didn’t recognise as the name she heard every day.

‘Are you ever going to answer me?’

Skye tried. Swallowing hard to ease the dryness of her throat, she fought for the control, the strength she needed.

But then his long-fingered hand came under her chin, lifting it so that her face came up to meet his, her grey eyes meeting and locking with the deep, deep blackness of his. Drowning in their darkness.

He bent his head slowly and his mouth took hers. This time his kiss had none of the fierce, wild passion of moments before; instead it was soft and slow and heartbreakingly tender. It seemed to draw her soul out of her body, melt her bones, so that she was trembling against him, needing the potent strength of his body to support her so that she didn’t fall to the ground.

‘So tell me, my beauty,’ he whispered in a voice that was as dark and rich as the black velvet night sky above them. ‘Will you go or will you stay?’

My beauty, Skye thought hazily.

No one, not even her mother, had ever called her beautiful. Or made her feel it the way his kiss made her feel right now, here in this cold, rain-spattered street.

And suddenly there was only one answer to give him. Only one answer she could give him.

She had to have tonight. She might regret it in the morning, when reality hit her in the face. But the one thing she was sure of was that she could never regret it as much as she would bitterly regret saying no.

And so she lifted her head and kissed him back, putting her answer into the caress, but knowing she had to speak it too.

‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed softly, confidently. ‘Yes, of course I’ll stay. But on one condition…’