Читать книгу The Petrakos Bride - Lynne Graham - Страница 7

GIANNIS woke hot and aching from an erotic dream and cursed with rare savagery. Maddie, the graceless little redhead, had hotwired his libido. What was it about her? The lure of forbidden fruit? The prospect of sex at the office? He had never had it, but had often thought about it.

Over the past decade he could have fulfilled that fantasy time and time again. Yet, in spite of the fact that innumerable female staff had made sexual approaches, he had never responded. He had withstood the ones who’d stripped off just as easily as he had rejected the looks, and the verbal and written invitations. In fact all those workplace come-ons had exasperated him, because he was first and foremost a businessman. He was a firm believer in enforcing the rules that kept his staff keen, disciplined, and motivated to deliver only their very best. By no stretch of the imagination could his shagging the temp do anything but damage that streamlined operational efficiency, Giannis told himself grimly.

On the other hand, he mused over breakfast at six, there was no reason why he should not pursue the temp once she had moved on from Petrakos Industries.

In the act of mulling over that fact, and its possibilities, on his chauffeur-driven journey through the London traffic, Giannis got a distinct cold chill down his spine. Why was he thinking about Maddie Conway so much? Why did he even remember her name? It was weird. He was acting weird. Since when had sex been a big deal to him? All his needs in that department were met by two highly sophisticated beauties, one in London and another in Greece. Both understood his requirements to the letter, and met them with the utmost style and discretion.

He set up a meeting over lunch with his English mistress. Obviously he was suffering from sexual frustration.

At noon, Maddie felt a yawn creeping up on her. She had been given a heap of photocopying to do, and it was so tedious that she could have fallen asleep standing up. Stacy’s moans made the chore no more enjoyable.

‘We always get the jobs nobody else wants to do,’ Stacy complained bitterly. ‘Filing or running messages.’

‘I’m not qualified to do much else,’ Maddie responded

‘I honestly think that uppity cow Annabel sat down last night to work out a list of boring stuff to land us with.’ Stacy restocked the photocopier with paper in a series of vicious movements.

Maddie lifted her head as she heard steps on the stairs outside the door. ‘She’s really okay…’ Her voice lost strength and ebbed without her awareness when she focused on the male coming to a halt just outside the door.

Lowering the mobile phone from his ear, Giannis Petrakos glanced casually into the room on his way past, and then came to a momentary halt.

‘Is there anyone you don’t like?’ Stacy was demanding in a tone of irritation, her back turned to the door. ‘It’s not normal to always be saying nice things about everybody.’

Maddie parted her lips to laugh off that response, but no sound came out—because incisive dark, deep-set eyes were surveying her from the doorway. She couldn’t move, couldn’t break that visual connection. A strange sense of exhilaration gripped her. Her heart was racing so fast it seemed to be pounding in her eardrums. Her skin prickled and tightened round her bones. And then he swung away and strode down the corridor, leaving her limp and drained and in shock again. For goodness’ sake, what was wrong with her? He had only looked in her direction for a couple of seconds and she had stared back at him as if she was paralysed! Couldn’t she have at least smiled and acted as if she had more than one brain cell?

She would have liked to tell him that she would never forget how happy he had made her sister, but her grandmother’s gratitude at the time had made him uncomfortable, and not for worlds would she have repeated that mistake. In any case, she acknowledged ruefully, it was most unlikely that after so many years he would even remember her late sister.

‘Hello? ‘Stacy snapped her fingers loudly right in front of Maddie’s face, to recapture her co-worker’s attention. ‘Anybody home?’

In his office, Giannis was engaged in the unfamiliar task of questioning his own actions. His lean, fiercely handsome features were taut with incomprehension. Emerging from the boardroom, he had shaken off his phalanx of support staff and had traversed the entire top floor of Petrakos Industries. He had looked into rooms he had not even known existed. Why? Why had he done that? For the first time in his life he had done something that he did not remember deciding to do, and he had done it for no good reason.

He was exasperated by the suspicion that he might have been prompted by a subconscious desire to see the red-headed temp again. And he was annoyed that her Titian red hair, smooth alabaster skin and full breasts had stood up so well to a second, more critical scrutiny. In fact, dressed in a simple white shirt and a narrow black skirt that could only showcase her dazzling curves, she had looked more ravishing than ever. That acknowledgement seriously rattled him.

He was on the way to his mistress’s apartment when Krista called him.

‘I’ve decided on an Ancient Greek theme for our wedding,’ his fiancée trilled in high excitement. ‘You said you wanted a traditional wedding. What could be more traditional than the ancient gods?’

‘They were pagans,’ Giannis said drily.

‘Who cares about that? Piety is deeply unfashionable. Our wedding will be the society event of the year. You can play Zeus, the king of the gods, and I can be Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty—’

‘According to Homer, Zeus and Aphrodite were father and daughter.’ As Giannis had not the slightest intention of getting tricked out in a tunic and cloak to make a fashion statement out of what he considered to be a private and serious event, he hoped that nobody told her that Adonis had been one of Aphrodite’s many lovers.

Fifteen minutes later, Giannis greeted his English mistress. Sex, he was convinced, would restore him to the cool rationality of his normal self. Over the past twenty-four hours he had become increasingly aware that he was not himself. Not a male given to solemn self-examination, he found himself furiously intolerant of his undisciplined thoughts, disturbed sleep and edgy behaviour.

Unfortunately, the instant he laid eyes on the beautiful blonde model he realised that he no longer found her attractive. All of a sudden, and for no reason that he could understand, she left him stone-cold. What was more, he found himself making an unwelcome comparison between her and Maddie Conway. For a male who functioned on pure logic, such perverse mental ruminations were deeply disturbing. Duly informed that their arrangement had run its course, the blonde accepted the news with good grace, since she was well aware that she would receive a generous financial settlement.

Giannis got back into his limo, having enjoyed neither the release of sexual tension nor the indulgence of an appetising lunch. Even his impatience felt unfamiliar, for his personal life, like his working day, was highly organised and designed to meet his every expectation. He liked the framework of his existence to be predictable. In his choice of Krista as a bride he had left nothing to chance, because he knew that she would never demand more than he was prepared to give. The sole surviving offspring of selfish and irresponsible parents, he took no risks in his private life. He satisfied his high sex drive with the minimum of fuss and emotion and, while he might specialise in the superficial in his relationships, he had never slept around.

In short, lusting after a sexy little red-headed temp at the office was decidedly not his style. She did not share his background or his place in society. She was not even his type—his usual preference was for leggy blondes. Yet her translucent ivory complexion, verdant green eyes and luscious pink mouth had become imprinted on his brain with the efficiency of a rampantly destructive computer virus, Giannis reflected in angry frustration. He was determined to repress such unruly promptings. It would be an act of crass stupidity to seek intimacy with an employee, however temporary. Even if she had looked at him with a wondering air of reverence that, he had to confess, he found stupendously appealing…

By late afternoon, Maddie appreciated that she had little time left in which to seek out Giannis Petrakos and say her piece about the laptop débâcle. In less than an hour she would be leaving the Petrakos building, and tomorrow she would be working someplace else. Having heard Stacy getting her instructions prior to taking over the switchboard, she knew that the Greek tycoon was in his office and that his calls were being diverted. She wasn’t going to get a better chance to speak to him.

Unfortunately, she was stopped during her passage upstairs and sent to pick up some papers from another floor. She had to wait until they were ready, and by the time she delivered them back there were only twenty minutes of her working day left. In the galley kitchen she hastily took out a cup and saucer and made coffee exactly the way Giannis Petrakos liked it.

She moved down the corridor as fast as she dared. She no longer knew if he was even still in the office, and there was no time to find out. Her stomach felt as though it was lodged somewhere near her throat. Balancing the coffee in one hand, she knocked on the door of his office. There was no answer. Afraid that she would be noticed and intercepted before she could see him, she depressed the door handle with a perspiring palm.

‘Can I help you?’ A man the size of a skyscraper had appeared out of nowhere and materialised at her elbow when she’d least expected it. His accent was foreign, his craggy dark face cold. She shot a nervous glance up at him, wondering who he was.

‘I’ve made some coffee for Mr Petrakos. Who are you?’

‘Nemos. I take care of Mr Petrakos’s security.’ The older man rested his attention on her name-tag, and then surprised her by pressing open the door for her entry. ‘Go ahead, Miss Conway.’

The office of the CEO of Petrakos Industries was a vast space, with a strikingly contemporary décor, but it was frustratingly empty. At a loss, Maddie hovered until she heard a slight noise through an open door on the other side of the huge room.

A pulse beating suffocatingly fast in her throat, she went through that door and found herself in a connecting hallway. With a frown, she looked to right and left.

‘Who is it?’ a familiar accented drawl enquired with impatience.

Taut with concern at the suspicion that she might once again be acting as an irritation, Maddie turned to the left to answer his query. ‘I’ve made you coffee, Mr Petrakos…’

One step through that door and Maddie appreciated her mistake, coming to a stricken halt as she realised she had entered some sort of dressing area lined with mirrored closets. Her dismayed gaze whipped over a unit on which a monogrammed silver clothesbrush had been abandoned She realised that a bathroom lay through the communicating door a mere instant before Giannis Petrakos himself strode into view, with his black hair still damp and spiky from the shower. His white shirt was hanging open to display a sleek muscular wedge of brown chest. His feet were bare beneath the hems of his immaculately tailored trousers. Obviously she had interrupted him while he was getting dressed.

‘Oh…oh, my goodness. I’m so s-sorry!’ Maddie stammered in intense mortification.

Taken aback by her appearance, because his bodyguards were highly efficient at protecting his privacy, Giannis surveyed her. He was astonished that she could have bypassed his security team. But, as appreciation of her beauty flamed through him and unleashed an instantaneous sexual response, his aggressive hunting instincts took over. He decided that only fate could have set up such an opportunity. After all, she had entered his private quarters without invitation, and they were alone where no one would dare to disturb him.

‘I thought this was another office…I had no idea.’ Too embarrassed to look directly at him, Maddie was engaged in swiftly backing out again. ‘Please excuse my intrusion.’

‘But you brought coffee? For me? ‘ Giannis treated her to a stunning smile and stretched out a lean brown hand to signify a welcome. ‘How very kind.’

The megawatt impact of that unexpected smile curving his wide sculpted mouth dazzled Maddie. Her tummy executed a back-flip without warning, and all the oxygen in her lungs seemed to vanish. She would not let her attention dip below the level of his angular jaw. She knew she had stuff to say to him, but her memory had suddenly become one giant horrendous blank.

‘Mr Petrakos…excuse me,’ she managed breathlessly.

‘No.’ Giannis was studying her, and discovering that her emerald-green eyes had a breathtaking clarity. He found the contrast between her white skin and copper hair exotic and unusual. Every time he saw her he registered something new to savour.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Maddie was amazingly aware of the appraisal of those intense gilded bronze eyes. While it made her feel self-conscious, she very much liked that visual attention. In fact a whole host of alien sensations were striking her all at once. The most basic was that that lean dark countenance of his had a fatal fascination for her. She stared, and she couldn’t help staring, taking in every individual feature with a fervour she couldn’t deny. The sleek tawny planes of his high, hard cheekbones accentuated the dramatic dark brilliance of his gaze, while his arrogant nose and the rougher shadowed skin round his wilful passionate mouth lent a tough, masculine edge to a face at risk of being hauntingly beautiful.

‘I said no—you are not excused,’ Giannis extended lazily, as he eased the cup and saucer from her paralysed grip and set it down on a polished cabinet. ‘I want you to stay and talk to me.’

‘Talk?’ Maddie echoed in confusion, striving valiantly to recover her concentration. ‘Of course, you want to know what I’m doing in here—’

‘Possibly I’ve already worked that one out,’ Giannis murmured, with the husky amusement of a male accustomed to frequent feminine overtures.

Disconcerted by that reply, Maddie blinked and then coloured. ‘I’m sure you appreciate that it was entirely my fault that the presentation couldn’t be held. I wasn’t looking where I was going—’

Giannis closed a hand over hers, unlacing her taut fingers and spreading them within the hold of his in a calming gesture. ‘You’re very nervous.’

Something like a flock of butterflies had broken loose in Maddie’s tummy. The warmth of his hand on hers, the smooth brush of his fingertips against the sensitive inner skin of her wrist, was making her tingle all over. While surprised by the ease with which he touched her, she was warmed by it as well. Even believing that he meant nothing by that minor intimacy, she found it a challenge to catch her breath. ‘That’s why I tripped yesterday—’

Uninterested in the topic she was striving to follow, and single-minded as always, Giannis shrugged back the cuff of his shirt to reveal his Swiss platinum watch. ‘In ten minutes you will no longer be in my employ,’ he spelt out. ‘Do I have to wait that long to kiss you?’

Her green eyes opened to their widest extent. She was utterly silenced by that question.

‘I would never trouble an employee with unwelcome attention,’ Giannis completed softly.

With a handful of words, spoken with the utmost calm and cool, he had plunged her into shock. Do I have to wait that long to kiss you? He was telling her that he found her attractive, and she was astonished by that concept. He felt the same way she did? A sense of joy followed on that thought, and blew away her usual caution.

‘Madeleine…?’ Giannis prompted, registering his own level of ardour with a faint stab of unease.

Even the way he said her name sent a delicious frisson travelling down Maddie’s taut spinal cord. She was so tense her muscles literally ached. ‘It’s…it’s not unwelcome,’ she heard herself tell him unevenly.

‘I did not think it would be, glikia mou.’

Giannis approached her with the skill of a very experienced male, but beneath the surface he was aware of a pulse of desire that ran much hotter and stronger than he was accustomed to. Off-balance at that suspicion, he saw there was the faintest tremor in the long brown fingers he curved to her narrow shoulder to draw her to him. It was a struggle to master the fierce passion that prompted him to crush her hungrily to his lean, powerful frame. He liked the telling dilation of her pupils and the slight audible catch of breath in her throat when he lifted his hand to undo the clasp at the nape of her neck.

‘My hair…’ she said in surprise as he let the clasp fall. She scarcely knew what she was saying, for she was at such a height of expectation she could barely formulate a single thought, never mind a sensible sentence.

Giannis tugged the silky tangle of long hair round her triangular face, rejoicing in the freedom to do so. The sensual contrast between the wine-red strands and the pearlised perfection of her skin delighted him. ‘It’s magnificent…you should always wear it loose.’

‘It would get in my way,’ she muttered with a nervous laugh.

‘But I want it to get in mine.’ Giannis laced brown fingers into the bright strands and lowered his proud dark head.

Maddie could barely wait for him to kiss her, and her keenness embarrassed her. It did not seem quite nice for her to be so eager, but she couldn’t help it. Deep in her pelvis there was a hard, tight knot of anticipation, and it was a challenge to keep her feet still. Heart racing inside her chest, and barely breathing, she leant almost imperceptibly forward.

When the tip of his tongue traced the full, sultry curve of her lips she shivered. He delved between with a dark, demanding eroticism that flamed through her slim body as efficiently as an arrow hitting a bullseye. Her head swimming, she fought to contain her response. Her slim fingers clenched in on themselves. Her body went rigid even while she was achingly conscious of the stinging heat pinching her nipples tight, of the scratchy and delicious awareness prickling over her entire skin surface. She wanted to grab him but she wouldn’t let herself.

‘I could devour you,’ Giannis growled, his dark golden gaze ablaze as he laced one powerful hand into her tumbling copper hair to tug her head back.

Adrenalin was pounding through her veins like an electric charge. Meeting his eyes, she felt a kind of elation fill her, linked with the charged sense of readiness holding her fast. He buried his hungry, masculine mouth against the delicate skin of her throat, probing and nipping the tender spots with a sure and sensual skill that made her gasp. With his other hand he pressed her into closer connection with his lithe, rock-hard frame. By the time he claimed her ripe pink lips she was on fire for that kiss, craving it. The great wild whoosh of excitement engulfed her like a bonfire.

‘You’re amazing,’ he told her thickly

‘So are you…’ Green eyes bright as stars, Maddie looked up at him, acknowledging the astounding sense of connection she was feeling. It made no sense, but it was there, and her every nerve-ending seemed to be jumping up and down and staging a celebration. She needed his support because she was dizzy, and her legs felt as weak and insubstantial as twigs. Momentarily she recalled the other men who had kissed her. She had never felt anything more than the mildest satisfaction, and more often than not it had been an endurance test in embarrassment.

‘I knew you would be,’ Giannis swore, bending down to push an arm below her hips and haul her up into his arms without any noticeable effort.

Maddie vented her astonishment in a gasp.

When he kissed her again she speared her fingers into his luxuriant black hair and opened her lips to the erotic plunge of his tongue. The world spun in a multi-coloured haze of excitement behind her lowered eyelids. She shivered violently, and his arms tightened round her before he brought her down on a cushioned surface. The surprise of that move made her lashes lift, and she focused in bewilderment on the unfamiliar room and on the bed upon which she lay. Uncertainty and a slight hint of panic made her tense.

Giannis rested fluid tanned fingers along her delicate jawbone to turn her attention to the compelling force of his dark golden gaze instead. ‘I want you, glikia mou.’

‘Yes…’ Although that truth struck her as the most extraordinary thing since time began, she believed him absolutely, and it made her feel incredibly happy and blessed. The hunger etched in every angle of his lean, extravagantly handsome face thrilled her. It unlocked something inside her, blurred all ability to reason, and she acted on instinct when she stretched up and found his beautifully shaped mouth again for herself.

He raised her up and removed her shirt without her even having been aware that it had been unbuttoned. Before she could take fright he locked his urgent mouth to hers again, and unhooked her bra. Unremarked, the garment fell away. An almost inaudible moan was wrenched from low in her throat as the swollen buds of her distended nipples were grazed by the hair-roughened expanse of his hard, muscular chest. With a groan of satisfaction he curved his hands to the voluptuous creamy curves of her breasts.

‘I love your body, glikia mou,’ he growled against her reddened lips.

While she sucked in a panting breath, assailed by a sense of disbelief that such intimacy could possibly be taking place, he cupped the ripe, honey-soft swells and kneaded the lush rose-pink nipples already pouting for his attention. She quivered and gasped in helpless response, her breath rasping in her throat. A pulse of sweet, seductive pleasure began to beat at the heart of her. Such consuming sensuality had never touched her before, and she had no resistance whatsoever.

Giannis looked down into her lovely face with intense appreciation. He liked her lack of guile and affectation. She made sex so simple he was enthralled. Her bemusement, her unhidden surprise at what she was feeling, made him suspect that she might not be anything like as experienced as his usual partners. Unexpectedly he found that conviction the hottest turn-on he’d had in years. He kicked out the little voice at the back of his mind that suggested he should be more circumspect. He had not felt so fiercely aroused since he was a teenager. And she had come to him freely. What harm could there possibly be in taking his pleasure?

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he told her huskily, easing her narrow skirt down below her hips, then casting it aside.

So are you, she longed to tell him, and her face warmed. She trembled, lost in her wondering admiration of him and yet incredibly shy as well. But he brushed her hand away when she made a sudden fumbling attempt to cover the brazen bareness of her breasts. Lest she had any thought of repeating that attempt, he lowered his tousled black head to skilfully entrap a pouting rosy crest between his lips. With a whisk of his tongue he teased the tormented peak to a rigid point of aching need.

Maddie didn’t know what had hit her. Her spine arched up off the bed. Her hips discovered a sinuous beat in tune with the swollen dampness between her legs. He sat up to discard his shirt, and in the midst of the exercise he kissed her fiercely. She was electrified by the erotic feel of his erection against her lower thigh. The barrier of his clothes could not conceal his bold masculine arousal.

‘Feel what you have done to me,’ he rasped, taking her hand and curving her fingers to the blatant bulge of his manhood. ‘I ache for you…’

Surprise and excitement engulfed her as he pushed against her hand with an earthy need that shocked her. But it was a shock that she found insidiously attractive. ‘Giannis…’

He reacted to the sound of his name on her lips by reaching for her again with a savage impatience that thrilled her. ‘I can’t resist you,’ he groaned, pinning her half beneath him to plunder the luscious fullness of her mouth while he scooped up her knees and dexterously skimmed off her panties.

Maddie tensed, suddenly feeling wildly and dangerously naked and vulnerable. What was she doing? What on earth was she doing? A little voice screamed at the back of her head. She might have adored Giannis Petrakos on sight when she was fourteen—but did that mean that the first chance she got she went the whole way with him? Threw away the whole rule book and slept with him?

Long fingers flirted with the feathery Titian curls that covered her feminine mound and she froze, all thought and debate instantly suspended. Her entire body clenched taut with seething anticipation.

‘Take it easy, pedhi mou,’ Giannis urged raggedly, struggling to rein back a hunger that he still found unnervingly strong. But he had a stronger need to live up to the expectant wondering look he had seen in her gaze the day before.

He found the tantalising triangle between her thighs and she shivered helplessly, crazily aware of the tenderness of that secret place. So hot, so damp, so tense she almost physically hurt with longing. Her intense response made her jerk and squirm as he explored the swollen pink folds and stroked the tiny hidden bud, releasing a storm of sensation that made her cry out and gasp. An erotic flood of feeling sent her out of control and took her to the edge of a desperation she had not known existed.

‘I can’t stand it…’ she framed, twisting her head back and forth on the pillow, barely knowing what she was saying while she was entrapped in this world of sensual torment.

Hotter than he had ever been for the ultimate completion, Giannis needed no second invitation. He slid with hard, fluid grace between her slender thighs. With an urgent groan of satisfaction his bold shaft forged a passage into her tight, honeyed channel. At the same instant as he plunged through the fragile barrier of her resisting flesh a startled whimper of pain was dragged from her. Bemused by that slight obstruction, he stilled, uncertain and incredulous, to stare down into her darkened green eyes in question.

‘Theos mou…Madeleine—this cannot be.’

For an instant the real world intruded, and she recoiled from the thoughts threatening at the back of her mind. A dark pulse of voluptuous yearning was still pounding through her unbearably tense body. The simmering heat created by his passionate invasion was firing up again now that the initial discomfort had ebbed. He felt astonishing. She shut her eyes tight, told herself it was far too late to be worrying, and wrapped her arms round him in silent encouragement.

A shudder racked his lithe, powerful body and then he gave way, withdrawing from her only to surge back into her again in even more powerful possession. Excitement electrified her in a seductive wave, and she tilted up to him in sinuous welcome. Control fell away, shattered by the tight coil of pressure in her pelvis that made her crave him like a drug. He slammed back into her, hot and hard. She cried out in delight. Once begun, the delirious pleasure surged higher and higher, and time lost all meaning until finally she reached an explosive physical crescendo. Glorious waves of ecstasy racked her trembling body in ultimate release and she sank into a shell-shocked reverie.

Giannis stroked the vibrant coppery hair back from her smooth white brow. He pressed his mouth there very softly, and then wondered what he was playing at—because he had never been into all that fake, lovey-dovey cuddling stuff. Stung by that awareness, he lifted his handsome dark head again as if he had been burnt. The instant she shifted away from him, however, he automatically pinned her back beneath a hair-roughened powerful thigh. He wanted more of her. More and more and more, he acknowledged in a sensual daze of anticipation.

He had never had sex that amazing. Something that had become a rather boring routine, like a morning shower, had suddenly become full of exciting erotic possibilities again. She was a magnificent discovery. With subtle movements he shifted her across the mattress and covertly kicked aside the sheet so that he could examine it. There was a bloodstain on the linen. She had been a virgin. A one hundred per-cent-genuine virgin.

On one level he was sincerely shocked that he had taken advantage of so inexperienced a girl. On another, he’d hit a total erotic high and felt very smug about the fact that she had surrendered her innocence to him. Not much given to pointless regrets, Giannis suppressed the rare guilt factor and revelled in the erotic high instead. He had found her, he had awakened her…she was all his. He decided not to comment. Why make a big deal of it if she didn’t?

The phone by the bed lit up and vibrated. Giannis answered it. It was Nemos, reminding him that the jet was on standby for his flight to Berlin.

Listening to the swift exchange in Greek, Maddie was depth-charged out of her stasis and fully and fatally restored to awareness again. Consternation gripped her. She was genuinely appalled and confused by what she had allowed to happen between them. Raised by a grandmother who had taught her to believe that it was a woman’s job to set the moral boundaries with a man, she immediately felt that most of the blame had to be hers.

Only as Giannis cast aside the phone did he register a reality that shook him out of his complacency. His ebony brows pleated in displeasure. ‘The condom split.’

Sitting up, desperate to make an escape and already measuring the distance to the door, Maddie froze at that information. She had still to look anywhere near him.

‘Are you using anything that might prevent conception?’ Giannis enquired without expression, picturing the potential impact of such a calamity and barely managing to repress a shudder.

In no fit state to deal with the risk of an accidental pregnancy, Maddie had turned pale as parchment paper. It seemed to her that the punishments for her wanton misconduct were already piling up thick and fast, threatening to bury her alive. What was shame and humiliation in comparison to a life-changing event like conceiving a child?

‘No,’ she muttered tightly.

Giannis noticed that she was as far away from him as she could get and still be in the same bed. ‘I’m sure we’ll be okay. Accidents do happen, but there’s no reason why this one should lead to a disaster.’

‘I’m sure,’ she agreed hastily, but her mortified sense of hurt had deepened. No, she didn’t want to be pregnant either, but his response underscored her cringing belief that she had made the biggest ever fool of herself and acted like a slut. Naturally it would be a disaster if someone like her got into the family way because of someone like him. She reached down to snatch up her shirt, which was lying on the floor, and dug her arms jerkily into it. Her only thought was of flight.

‘Madeleine—’

In frantic haste she was gathering up her discarded apparel, a glow of shamed pink illuminating her downbent face. ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ she muttered in apologetic interruption, eager to forestall the threatening intimacy of discussing anything with him and to make good her escape. ‘I’ll be totally fine.’

Unaccustomed to being interrupted, Giannis sprang out of bed just as Maddie vanished into the bathroom. The door closed. Elegant brows lifted in surprise, he heard the lock turn.

Behind the door, Maddie was engaged in the act of feverishly reclothing her shivering body. Her hands were all fingers and thumbs and her mind was throwing up distressing images and unwelcome realities. She had just gone to bed with a man she barely knew. And whose fault was that? She had made one mistake after another, right from the moment she had failed to conceal the fact that she found him incredibly attractive. Naturally he had registered that, and was it any wonder that he had got the wrong impression of her? When she’d had the effrontery to enter his inner sanctum with the offer of a coffee he hadn’t asked for, he had interpreted her approach as an invitation. A sexual invitation, she conceded sickly. How could she have been so utterly stupid? An arrestingly handsome and wealthy male must often receive such physical advances—and what young, single guy said no to such an opportunity?

As silently as she could, she released the lock, opened the door and crept out.

Giannis collided with wide green eyes full of dismay, and registered that his continuing presence appeared to be unwelcome to her. As no woman had ever looked at him in that way, he assumed that the impression was misleading. ‘I have a flight to catch.’

‘Of course,’ Maddie mumbled, striving to edge past him.

‘We’ll talk when I get back to London,’ Giannis declared, even while knowing he had not the slightest intention of breaking his lifetime rule of never, ever discussing anything in the way of relationships with a woman.

‘I—’ Before she even knew what she planned to say, long brown fingers framed her flushed cheekbones.

His black hair still enticingly tousled by her clutching fingers, he bent his arrogant dark head and claimed a brief, devouring kiss that momentarily silenced her. ‘I’ll call you,’ he told her with customary casualness.

‘No…no, don’t,’ Maddie countered tightly, her lips tingling and her cheeks burning with colour. She was furious with herself for standing still and accepting that final kiss without so much as an attempt to turn her head away.

Halfway into the bathroom, Giannis paused, frowned, and turned his bold profile back to her, wondering if he had misunderstood.

‘I know you must want to forget this happened,’ Maddie added in an uneasy rush.

‘Not in this case. I’ll be in touch, glikia mou.’ And with that indolent reply, Giannis dealt her a wolfish smile of amusement and headed back into the shower.

His confidence was unshakeable: women always responded to him with eager encouragement. She’d hardly been able to meet his eyes, but her soft mouth had surrendered beneath his in an indisputable response. Had she thought he needed an excuse not to see her again? He almost laughed out loud while he marvelled at her naivety. Possibly she was feeling a little overwhelmed by him, and the swift passage of events. She would get over that sensitive streak soon enough, he reflected with innate cynicism. With his input her ordinary life would, in the near future, change into something very much more stimulating. She would be the starring attraction in his bedroom for quite some time to come…