Читать книгу Modern Romance February Books 1-4 - Линн Грэхем, Maisey Yates - Страница 17

ANOTHER CAR DREW up at the harbour and Winnie waited while the car seat was installed, freezing into stillness as Eros approached her and extended Teddy, who was sleepily snuffling and tear-stained. Her husband’s silence unnerved her as much as the chill in the emerald-green eyes welded to her flushed and discomfited face. Eros turned the sports car and drove off ahead of them, her transport whisking her at a more sedate pace back up to the house on the hill and the reception she had vacated in such a panic. Still half-asleep, Teddy clung to her.

Emerging from the vehicle, Winnie stilled and bit at the soft underside of her lower lip. ‘What now?’ she whispered unevenly as Eros stalked up to her.

Eros’s brilliant gaze flashed like a storm warning between lush black lashes. ‘Now we entertain our guests until their departure. Luckily for us, your grandfather is not known for his company manners. That he left early with your sisters will not surprise anyone. You went down to the harbour merely to say goodbye to your family.’

His icy intonation had scoured every scrap of colour from Winnie’s cheeks. ‘We have to talk.’

‘After the wedding,’ Eros traded with sardonic emphasis. ‘I refuse to parade my mistakes in front of an audience.’

Her teeth clenched so tightly at his ready admission that marrying her had been a mistake that she hurt her gums. Even so, she swallowed hard on an acid retort because, whether she liked it or not, discretion made better sense, particularly when it would protect Teddy from witnessing the conflict between his parents.

What remained of the afternoon and early evening felt unbearably long and was an unimaginable strain for Winnie. Her jaw ached from smiling and with the amount of effort required to keep Teddy entertained and in a good mood. It felt like a relief to pop her son into a bath after a quick supper and then hand him over to the hovering nanny until it occurred to her that she still had to face Eros.

For a bridegroom, Eros had contrived to give her a very wide berth since their return to the reception and when one of the guests had expressed surprise at the newly married couple’s failure to take to the dance floor, Eros had smoothly concocted the excuse that his bride was suffering from a recently sprained ankle that was still tender.

Yes, Winnie was learning all sorts of unwelcome facts about the man she had married, facts that were distinctly unsettling. Eros was outrageously nimble and versatile in a tight corner and a far better dissembler than her grandfather, who had struggled to conceal his hostility throughout the wedding. With Machiavellian cunning, Eros had masked his suspicions yet still contrived to coolly outmanoeuvre the older man. Eros had played them all, she recognised angrily, let her make an absolute fool of herself traipsing down to the harbour while knowing from the outset that as long as he retained physical possession of their son, she was unlikely to leave. Eros had won by using Teddy as a weapon and that infuriated her.

As she hovered in the doorway of the fully furnished nursery, listening to Teddy’s drowsy little snuffles as he drifted off to sleep, Eros materialised by her side. She hadn’t heard his approach and she flinched back a step.

‘Let’s go downstairs,’ he suggested, his tone perfectly pleasant and in no way threatening.

But Winnie wasn’t hoodwinked because she gazed up into that lean, darkly handsome face and collided with green sea-glass eyes as cool and cutting as ice shards and her tummy turned over sickly as if she were falling from a great height.

‘I’ve dismissed the staff for the night,’ Eros volunteered. ‘They’ll clean up tomorrow. The nanny, Agathe, will be staying, however, for Teddy’s benefit.’

‘I am capable of looking after my son on my own,’ Winnie framed curtly.

‘Are you?’ Eros sounded dubious on that score.

Determined to retain her temper, Winnie compressed her generous mouth as she traversed the stairs ahead of him.

‘After all,’ Eros continued, refined as a polished steel rapier in her wake, ‘you were ready to sacrifice my relationship with Teddy, regardless of how losing his father would affect him.’

‘No, I wasn’t. You would still have had access to him whenever you wanted!’ Winnie argued vehemently as she whirled round in the echoing hall, which was far too grand in size and space for comfort.

His beautiful shapely mouth curled in disagreement. ‘Not if your grandfather had anything to do with it. I think we both know that Stam had every intention of writing me back out of Teddy’s life!’

‘That may be true but I’m Teddy’s parent and I wouldn’t have allowed that to happen,’ Winnie claimed with spirit, too overwrought to stand still and walking restively through the huge reception room ahead, which was still littered with glasses. Indeed with all the debris from the wedding reception, it made her think of a ghost ship abandoned by its crew.

‘Thankfully you are no longer Teddy’s sole parent,’ Eros ground out with grim emphasis, watching her cross the ballroom at speed to head through the nearest doors onto the terrace outside. For Eros it was like being brought back to the scene of the crime...an unwelcome reminder of the wedding that hadn’t really been a wedding and the blushing bride, who had never intended to be a bride. His temper was as raw-edged as the sharpest knife. ‘Now you have to share that responsibility with me.’

‘I don’t intend to share anything with you!’ Winnie flung back at him over her shoulder as she reached the fresh air and drank it in deep, struggling to control the nerves flashing through her and the confused emotions bombarding her. She would not allow Eros to make her feel ashamed of what she had done, she swore to herself. Sometimes life enforced unpleasant choices and she had done the best she could with poor prospects.

‘But you’re stuck here now,’ Eros pointed out softly, even while his dark deep drawl vibrated in the smouldering silence. ‘And you will not leave this island or take Teddy from it until I am satisfied that I can trust you.’

So shocked was Winnie by that provocative threat that she spun round to face him again, brown eyes huge with disbelief in her expressive face, her chest heaving.

For an instant, Eros found his concentration slipping. Even in a rage, he was still a man and the heave of Winnie’s luscious lace-covered breasts was as eye-catching as it was arousing. It also brought to mind the lowering awareness that this was not how he had expected to spend his wedding night. But then how would he know what was normal on a wedding night? he asked himself sardonically. He had never had a normal marriage and now it looked as if history was set on cruel repeat, a possibility he absolutely refused to accept a second time around.

Either he was married or he wasn’t. There would be no halfway deal, no unreasonable conditions set between him and Winnie. Yet at the same time he refused to contemplate another divorce. They had to put Teddy first and, as far as he was concerned, putting Teddy first entailed giving their son both parents beneath the same roof.

‘You can’t be serious!’ Winnie exclaimed, challenging that outrageous announcement that he would not allow her to leave the island.

‘You haven’t given me a choice,’ Eros parried with harsh conviction. ‘Do you think I don’t appreciate that your grandfather will be standing by waiting for the opportunity to steal you and Teddy back from me?’

Her lashes flickered up on startled eyes and she turned her head away again, the muscles in her slight shoulders rigid with strain. Something else she hadn’t thought about, she scolded herself in exasperation: Stam Fotakis would not take defeat lying down. Her grandfather would remain determined to get his own way and he would not be fussy about his methods. But it galled her to see herself and her child at the centre of a tug of war between two powerful men.

‘If you somehow contrive to escape and return to Stam, that will be your choice,’ Eros delineated in a driven undertone. ‘But you will not sacrifice my son to his care.’

‘Oh, drop the drama!’ Winnie scoffed. ‘My grandfather would not harm a hair on Teddy’s head and nothing you can say would convince me otherwise!’

‘I only have to look at your family’s history to know that Stam has very poor parenting skills and I won’t subject my son to that experience.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Winnie argued in frustration. ‘Grandad cares about Teddy.’

‘I assume he cared for his own sons at one time, as well,’ Eros countered very drily. ‘But he still flung your father out to sink or swim for defying him when he was only a teenager. As for your uncle, Nicos, he made the mistake of marrying a woman your grandfather disapproved of. She was a divorcee and Stam refused to even meet her. When your uncle died, your grandfather and he were estranged.’

Winnie dropped her head, her eyes troubled, because she hadn’t known that salient fact. Stam had told her only that his elder son had died in an accident, not that father and son had been at daggers drawn at the time of his passing. And rightly or wrongly, it did make her question her innate faith in the older man because evidently her grandfather had made an almighty mess of keeping his own family together.

‘And don’t kid yourself that Stam would give Teddy any easier a ride if he failed his expectations,’ Eros completed grimly.

‘Point taken,’ Winnie conceded stiffly, wanting the subject dropped because it was patently obvious that Eros knew more about her grandfather than she did.

‘And Stam will never accept me. He’s too much of a snob,’ Eros added grimly. ‘In his eyes, I’m nouveau riche...and there’re no princess grandmothers in my family tree!’

‘That sort of thing isn’t important to me,’ Winnie muttered uncomfortably.

‘Pedigree is very important to your grandfather. Don’t ever forget that. He wanted a ring on your finger to gloss over the reality that you were an unmarried mother and that’s where my role was supposed to end. I was good enough for you to marry but not good enough to be accepted into the Fotakis family.’

‘Scarcely matters now,’ she mumbled helplessly.

But Eros wasn’t listening. He stalked indoors, his long lithe legs powering him towards the bar in the corner of the ballroom. Momentarily released from tension, Winnie allowed herself to breathe again. She congratulated herself on not losing her temper and leant back against the iron balustrade, letting the strain slowly trickle out of her muscles.

Eros strode back, his entire focus locked to Winnie’s slight figure. With her luxuriant mane of dark hair shifting in the light breeze below the sparkling diamond tiara and her caramel eyes bright in her heart-shaped face, she looked tiny and gorgeous and that reluctant acknowledgement only unleashed a stronger tide of aggression within him. She had betrayed his trust and she wasn’t a fitting mother for a vulnerable child. How could she be? In marrying him and as quickly walking out on him again she had demonstrated that she had very few principles, least of all when it came to reliability and honesty.

Winnie didn’t really want a drink but she accepted the glass of wine Eros extended because she was thirsty and if he was offering a polite olive branch, she was more than willing to grasp it. Taut as a bowstring, she sipped nervously at the wine.

‘When I asked you to marry me, it was the real deal,’ Eros intoned with level diction, his lean, darkly handsome features sombre. ‘There was no deception involved and no lies. I intended to be a husband to you and a father to my son and I planned to fulfil both roles to the very best of my ability.’

Winnie breathed in so deep she felt dizzy when the cool salty air flooded her lungs. She flung her slim shoulders back, brown eyes bright with anger. ‘Don’t you dare try to talk down to me when you threatened to harm my sisters by exposing their secrets!’

‘That doesn’t excuse you for entering that church and speaking vows you had no intention of following through on!’ Eros ground out wrathfully. ‘That was wrong!’

‘Your threats were equally wrong.’ Winnie fought back with a flush rising in her cheeks. ‘I couldn’t risk allowing you to humiliate my sisters any more than I could risk losing my son, so don’t you dare tell me that you were offering me “the real deal” because you didn’t give me any options!’

‘I chose to do what was best for all three of us and I put Teddy first. You’ve never put him first,’ Eros condemned grimly. ‘If you had, you wouldn’t have kept us apart.’

‘Wouldn’t I have?’ Winnie gasped, so furious that she could hardly breathe for the tightness of the corseting built into her grown and squeezing her ribs. ‘You were such a great role model for an innocent little boy, weren’t you? A married man having an affair with an employee behind his wife’s back? Do you really think you were the kind of father I wanted or needed for my son?’

‘Perhaps not but I was his father and I had rights,’ Eros reminded her without remorse. ‘Rights and responsibilities you were happy to ignore and deny.’

Clutching her wine glass, Winnie gave way to her impatience and moved forward to push past him and return indoors. ‘We’ve already been through this argument. There’s no point going there again!’ she proclaimed.

‘I married you in good faith. I didn’t even demand a signature on a prenup. Why? I was fool enough to trust you.’

Breathless and troubled with her cheeks on fire with mortification, Winnie snatched up the bottle of wine on the bar and refilled her glass. ‘More fool you, then!’ she shot back at him defiantly, reasoning that as he had already won the most important battle she had little more to lose from aggravating him.

Eros was outraged. Quiet, trusting, naive little Winnie, it seemed, had only ever existed in his own imagination, a romantic fiction more than a reality. ‘A fool no more,’ he reminded her with dark satisfaction. ‘I have my wife and my child in my home where I wanted them to be.’

‘And much good may it do you!’ Winnie hurled back as she moistened her dry mouth with more wine. ‘I am not your wife in any way that counts.’

Eros dealt her a sizzling all-male smile of one-upmanship, recalling how his bride had melted in his arms a bare hour before she’d walked out on him. Some things Winnie could fake but not that burning chemistry and in retrospect he recalled the signs of disquiet he had noticed in her and misinterpreted as shyness. To a certain degree she had changed. She had toughened up, learned to challenge him and she refused to hang her head and admit regret. But at heart and in the only field that really mattered, he told himself, she was still his Winnie, as red hot for him as he was for her.

That flashing smile made Winnie feel dizzy where she stood and she blinked, her throat convulsing as she acknowledged the strain of trying to defend herself when her own heart and logic also screamed that she had done wrong. Two wrongs would never make a right. Her grandfather’s machinations and desire for revenge had tied her up in knots. But she had put Teddy first when she’d readily agreed to her son having a proper relationship with his father.

Marriage, however, had been a step too far for her, a much too personal and humiliating step that had cost her the independence and pride she had worked so hard to re-establish since Teddy’s birth. Between them, her grandfather and Eros had torn her life apart. Even worse, Eros had hurt her badly once and she wasn’t prepared to risk that happening again. Naturally she could be civil to her son’s father, but she couldn’t treat him as a husband or trust him, not when she was degradingly conscious that he had only married her for Teddy’s benefit.

‘You married me intending to cheat me of both a marriage and a son,’ Eros grated in a tone of raw frustration. ‘What is your answer to that?’

Winnie drained her wine and set the empty glass down with a sharp little snap on the bar before turning on her heel and simply walking away from him.

‘Winnie!’ Eros ground out wrathfully.

Winnie paused. ‘You know, I always hated my name. My parents shortened it from Winifred to Winnie and now I don’t like Winnie either,’ she muttered almost conversationally. ‘It makes me think of a horse—’

‘Thee mou...’ Eros bit out, his strong jaw clenched hard as she turned in a reluctant half circle to look at him again. ‘What nonsense are you speaking?’

‘I’ve got nothing more to say to you.’ With extreme unwillingness, Winnie focused on him again. Eros Nevrakis, her husband, and he was as gorgeous as a lustrous jungle cat, full of energy and predatory drive. He was judging her as she had once judged him because she had lied by omission in agreeing to marry him when she’d had no intention of staying married to him or even of living with him. He had found her out when he’d caught her in the act of leaving him and there was no coming back from a sin that barefaced.

‘I have plenty to say to you.’

Halfway up the sweeping staircase, Winnie stilled and turned back. ‘Really? That must feel very much out of character. A little more than two years ago when it mattered, you had nothing to say to me.’

His stunning bone structure snapped taut, stormy green eyes narrowing with wariness. ‘You vanished. You didn’t give me the chance to say anything.’

‘Be honest for once,’ Winnie challenged. ‘You had nothing of any value to say to me back then. I was just a fling for you.’

Eros gritted his even white teeth. ‘We’ve got enough trouble in the present without digging back into the past!’ he derided without hesitation.

‘But that past formed the present and my opinion of you and, no matter how hard I try to be civilised and gracious and consider Teddy, I can’t get over the fact that I hate you more than any man alive!’ Winnie flung truthfully.

As Winnie raced on up the stairs, Eros froze where he stood, colour ebbing from below his bronzed complexion. She didn’t hate him, she told herself fiercely; she refused to accept that. Why the hell had she brought up the past? That past was better left buried and untouched. He couldn’t go back and change anything about it. He had been married...fact. He had let her down when she had most needed him...fact.

As Winnie pushed through door after door in vain search of her luggage, she finally arrived in front of the double doors at the end of the corridor and thrust the doors wide. Her single suitcase filled with old garments she had been content to leave behind sat still packed by the wall.

Eros leant back against the doors to send them slamming shut. He watched her twist to try to reach the buttons at the back of the gown, the same buttons he had planned to undo one by one as he stripped her bare. His mouth ran dry, the throb at his groin a provocative reminder of his susceptibility to a woman he could not trust. The reaction infuriated him.

‘You lied to me,’ he condemned.

Winnie spun round, her face aflame. ‘I didn’t lie. I went through with the wedding.’

‘You think that’s enough to excuse you?’ he derided.

‘No, but it’s the best you’re going to hear.’

‘You don’t hate me,’ he told her, stalking with fluid, boneless grace across the wooden floor that separated them. ‘A woman doesn’t kiss a man the way you kiss me when she hates him.’

Winnie tossed her head, lustrous strands of mahogany hair tumbling round her hot face. ‘That’s just sex,’ she told him dismissively. ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with emotions. I believe you taught me that.’

Taut with arousal, Eros surveyed her in frustration and reached for her. ‘Let me undo those buttons for you.’

‘They’re hooks underneath, not buttons,’ she muttered breathlessly, as if she was making a very important point. Eros turned her round, long, lean fingers gentle but firm on her slight shoulders. With just that single touch her treacherous body ran from zero to fifty in awareness and she stiffened, disturbingly conscious of the hooks giving way at her spine and the smooth brush of his fingers across sensitive skin.

‘I can’t be that way again with you... I just can’t!’ she exclaimed in sheer desperation, all too conscious of the melting heat blossoming low in her pelvis, the licking temptation ready and willing to drag her down into sensual oblivion. She supposed that was natural. Eros had taught her to crave him and she had suppressed that side of her nature ever since, refusing to acknowledge it, afraid of falling victim to that weakness again.

Lean hands heavy on her shoulders, Eros nudged her hair out of his path and pressed his mouth passionately to the soft skin at her nape, sending a darting tingle of shivering lust down her taut spinal cord. ‘I haven’t been with any woman since I was last with you,’ he admitted in a charged undertone.

Still quivering from the wickedly provocative assault of his hungry mouth on her skin, Winnie went rigid at those words and then suddenly tore herself free to spin round and look up at him in frank disbelief. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she told him boldly.

Stormy green eyes pierced hers in unashamed challenge. ‘Whether you accept it or not, it happens to be the truth.’

Oxygen bubbled in the back of her throat, scrambling her breathing as she gazed up at him in bewilderment. ‘But why? I mean, you were divorced... Why wouldn’t you have found someone else?’

His proud bone structure pulled taut, his exotic cheekbones prominent, the shadowy hollows beneath adding stark definition. ‘I’ve never been into casual encounters and I didn’t want to rush into anything either. I won’t let sex control me or push me in the wrong direction again.’

Her lashes fluttered, bemusement claiming her. She was barely breathing as she listened because he had never told her that much before and, ironically, he both gave to her and then took away again with those words. First, he implied that what he had shared with her had not been casual and then he suggested that sexual desire had once got him involved with the wrong woman. Did he mean her or his ex-wife? Or some other woman from his past?

What did strike her almost dumb was that Eros, for all his gorgeous vital masculinity and electrifying sexuality, had almost as many quirks, inhibitions and fears as she had. Nothing had ever shaken her as much as that revelation because it simply transformed her view of him, turning him from the ruthless, dishonest sexual predator she had believed him to be into a much more human male with his own secrets and vulnerabilities.

Winnie stared up at him, her heart-shaped face solemn. ‘You’re telling me the truth, aren’t you?’

An ebony brow quirked. ‘Why would I lie about something like that? What man boasts about celibacy in this day and age?’

Winnie closed her eyes because of the scratchy sting prickling at the backs of them, fighting off the threat of tears. Her feathery lashes drifted down onto her cheeks to conceal her expression. With a husky groan, he hauled her into his arms. Passionate urgency sprang from every line and angle of the lean, fit body pressed hard against hers. His hungry mouth crushed hers, his tongue sliding between her lips to delve deep until a shudder racked her slight frame.

‘I don’t want to rip the dress,’ Eros muttered roughly, spinning her round in front of him and addressing his attention to the many buttons still to be undone.

‘Why not? I’ll never wear it again,’ Winnie murmured, already wondering what lay ahead for them now because they were racing fast into unknown territory and, although she knew she ought to step back and demand her own space and resist the intimacy he wanted, she was as still as a statue, her pupils dilated, her body all of a quiver in anticipation of what he would do to her and how that would make her feel.

Eros ran through hook after hook, impatience gripping him in waves, and he too was fighting off second thoughts. He was picturing her as she’d walked down the aisle towards him, reminding himself that that had all been showmanship designed to fool him and lull him into a false sense of security. She had never intended to be his wife, never intended to share his bed and his fury at that reality that was still dug down deep inside him. What was he playing at? Getting entangled with Winnie again was like playing with fire and it would be all the more dangerous because of her connection to Stam Fotakis, who would destroy him if he could.

He stared down at the subtle line of her smooth back and the violin curve of her shapely hips slowly being exposed, and ferocious need broke through the defensive barriers his brain was trying to resurrect. Suddenly nothing mattered beyond having her again. He pushed the parted edges of the bodice apart and watched the wedding dress fall down to her feet in a silky pool of lace. Underneath she wore white lace panties and pale thigh-high stockings and he took his time appreciating that view of feminine perfection.

Slowly he turned her back to face him and then he dropped to his knees in front of her to smooth lean brown hands very slowly up over her beautiful legs until he reached the delicate skin above the lace stocking tops. Winnie went rigid beneath the caress, staring down at him with almost dazed eyes as he gently nudged her slender thighs apart. She could feel every brush of his fingertips across her inner thighs and it set up a chain reaction in her pelvis, awakening a surge of heat that made her squirm.

‘There’s so much I want to do that I don’t know where to begin,’ Eros said softly as his hands curled into the edges of her panties and slowly peeled them down.

Winnie literally stopped breathing, fierce colour sweeping up her throat to engulf her face. She had never been more conscious of being bare.

‘Am I still the only guy to see you like this?’ Eros growled as he tugged the undergarment free by dint of delicately lifting each stiletto-heeled foot in turn.

Winnie toyed with the idea of lying out of pride but then her innate practicality squashed that idea. ‘When would I have had the time?’ she muttered ruefully. ‘First I was pregnant and then I had Teddy and then I was struggling to look after him and work unsocial hours.’

Smiling with unashamed satisfaction, Eros leant forward and planted a kiss on her lower belly. ‘I’m grateful,’ he confided quietly.

Her tummy muscles tensed. Alarmingly conscious of the stretch marks that were slowly fading into silvery lines there, Winnie swallowed hard, wondering if he had noticed, reckoning he was too smooth to comment on her flaws. And, of course, there were flaws, she scolded herself, because a body that had carried a baby changed and there was nothing to do but live with those changes.

Impervious to her insecurities, Eros vaulted upright and scooped her up to settle her down on the wide bed. As he stood over her, he threw off his jacket, jerked loose his grey silk spotted tie and unbuttoned his crisp white dress shirt. All male purpose blazed in the smouldering green eyes welded to her.

‘I have never wanted anything so much as I want you at this moment,’ he told her rawly, and she recognised the faint hint of anxiety that accompanied that admission as if that level of desire spooked him.

Yet he had always made her feel like that, she acknowledged, as though she was especially sexy and necessary to him, as though he truly needed her on some deep fundamental level. It was hardly surprising that she had fallen in love with him. But all Eros had ever needed from her was sex, she reminded herself ruefully. Quickly, she shrugged the thought away again, possessed as she was by a powerful need of her own to live in the moment and look neither forward to a dim future nor back to a past that still wounded her.

Eros pulled off his shirt, exposing a bronzed torso straight out of her most feverish feminine fantasy, lean muscle rippling with his every movement to define powerful pectorals and a stomach that was a taut flat study of hard, corrugated sinew. She stared, her hands falling back from the curves she had been trying to cover, the foolishness of such reticence with her child’s father sending a tide of self-conscious red up into her cheeks. It was a little late in the day for modesty, she told herself impatiently, particularly when there was nothing modest about what Eros made her feel.

Excitement was already licking up through her like a storm warning, her mouth dry, her heart beating so fast it felt as if it was pounding through her entire body. Eros had always had the ability to make her feel like a very different woman from her quiet and sensible self. He only had to look at her a certain way, touch her a certain way and she was transformed into a wanton creature that wanted, craved, needed...

‘I have no patience, moraki mou,’ Eros breathed as he stripped off his trousers, revealing black boxers that he skimmed off with a similar lack of ceremony.

‘You never had,’ Winnie whispered shakily, striving not to stare at his body, a hot flush surging at the heart of her and a wave of desire she could not suppress.

Eros laughed, assailed by memories he hadn’t examined in years, and acknowledged that when it came to her patience had never been his strong suit. Desire had ridden him hard, frustrating his attempt to keep their affair cool and within bounds, demanding more from him than he had ever wanted to give. He shook off the disturbing memories to concentrate on the pale voluptuous vision of loveliness that was Winnie lying across the bed, her wondrous curves exposed for his appreciation.

He came down to her in one lithe movement, all controlled grace and masculine heat, claiming her mouth with demanding, shattering force and for several long moments Winnie was in heaven because nobody could kiss like Eros. Big hands cupped her full breasts, pushing them together to enable him to hungrily tease her straining nipples to lush prominence. Darting arrows of erotic need raced to her core. He worked his sensual path down over her writhing length. He made her hot as hell, her hips rising involuntarily as he ground down on her, letting her feel the full force of his arousal against the most tender spot on her entire body.

‘Thee mou... You drive me insane,’ Eros husked, his hands lifting to pinch at her already swollen and sensitive nipples, wrenching a long, sobbing breath from her parted lips as her back arched in helpless response.

He forced her still before tugging her thighs apart and burying his mouth there to feast on her sensitive flesh with a passionate carnality that made her jerk and moan. Long fingers traced her tender folds and glided between, probing her honeyed depths with precision while his thumb delicately strummed against her, and then he employed his tongue. She shook and gasped as the slow tormenting rise of an explosive climax ached unbearably in her pelvis.

Eros watched her rise beneath him with a breathless little scream at the intensity of the pleasure flooding her, and then fall back, limp and drained against the tumbled pillows. The look of bliss on her face sent a zinging throb of lust straight to his groin, leaving him hard as steel.

‘Let me touch you,’ she mumbled breathlessly as he lifted back from her and she sat up, taking him by surprise as she tugged him back down onto the bed beside her. ‘I have my own agenda.’

‘You...do?’ Eros prompted, taken aback by her sudden boldness for she had always been a shy lover, content to let him take charge.

Winnie nodded feverishly, her heart-shaped face a curious study of self-consciousness and determination. Her small hands spread across his pectoral muscles and then slowly traced down over his tautly muscled stomach, feeling him flex and tense beneath her ministrations even while she recognised his surprise in some dismay.

In the past with Eros, she had been passive, far too afraid of making a clumsy wrong move and either making him laugh or turning him off. But the news that there had not been another woman in his bed since he had last been with her had thrilled Winnie as much as it had startled her and now all the fantasies she had once suppressed, all the desires she had been afraid to express, were powering her. A little voice in the back of her head was also reminding her that Eros could hardly keep his hands off her and that it was past time that she was woman enough to explore her own hunger for him.

She lowered her head, mahogany hair trailing softly across his stomach as she traced the little furrow of dark hair usually visible above his waistband with the tip of her tongue. As she simultaneously stroked his long, thick, urgent length with her hand, his hips lifted and she heard his breathing hitch in surprise. He was so smooth and hard and warm and, as she soon learned, incredibly responsive to her smallest touch. His hand dug into her thick hair and he arched up to her with an uninhibited moan of pleasure as she laved him with her tongue. For the first time ever with Eros, Winnie felt truly powerful and sexy.

He withstood her attentions for only a few moments before he dragged her back up to him with a kind of wildness that excited her and rasped, ‘I can’t take any more of that. I want to come inside you...’

Flushed and breathless, Winnie grinned at him. ‘To be continued, then,’ she mumbled.

With a wildly impatient hand, Eros grabbed protection from beside the bed and yanked her slight body under him with decisive force. Delighted giggles at his unashamed urgency tumbled from Winnie’s lips. Crushing her reddened mouth beneath his, he extracted a hungry kiss of retribution.

‘Silence, mikri magissa mou,’ Eros urged roughly as he pushed back her thighs with hard hands.

Mikri magissa mou... My little witch. Winnie savoured the label with pleasure, satisfied that her more daring approach had passed muster.

Almost at the same moment, Eros plunged with a savage growl of satisfaction between her thighs and the ability to think clearly was stolen from her. Her body lurched and shivered with the sweet piercing delight of giving way to his, sensations that she had forced herself to forget racking her with waves of delirious pleasure. Every stroke set her on fire, her excitement climbing with every slick move of his hips as he picked up speed, and then there was nothing but the breathless surging exhilaration of his dominance pushing her to the summit again. Heart racing, body writhing, she burned up in the fiery blaze of release that consumed her from the inside out. Electrifying ripples of excitement convulsed her and held her suspended until she tumbled back in a daze to the real world again.

Eros freed her from his weight and then pulled her into his arms, which startled her because once Eros had been chary of touching her after sex, his innate reserve kicking in immediately afterwards, making her drown in discomfiture at a moment when she had craved something less ephemeral than physical satisfaction. Now he took the time to stroke her damp hair back from her brow, gazing down at her with glittering emerald-green eyes while he traced the voluptuous line of her lower lip with a thoughtful fingertip.

‘I’d like to ditch the protection and have another child,’ he admitted huskily, disconcerting her even more with that confession. ‘I missed out on all that the first time around and I’d enjoy the chance to experience it with you.’

‘Are you insane?’ Winnie was startled enough to demand before she could even consider the meaning of such an unexpected proposition. ‘Teddy is only eighteen months old. We don’t even know if we have a future together.’

‘I might trust you a little more if I could see you commit to that future with me by conceiving another child,’ Eros confessed with measured cool. ‘The future is there for us to grab and we’ve got nothing to lose by going for it straight away and ignoring your grandfather’s feelings about us staying married. Of course, if you prefer to keep your options open...’

‘I’m not ready to have another child yet,’ Winnie muttered flatly, still struggling to master her shock at such a suggestion from him. ‘Particularly not with a man who once chose not to tell me that he was married and who broke my heart. You may not trust me but I don’t trust you either! Only couples who are happy and secure together should bring babies into the world.’

At that unhesitating rejection, dark colour sprang up in a feverish line across his high cheekbones, accentuating his shimmering sea-glass eyes. ‘We could be happy.’

‘Could!’ Winnie scorned as she snaked free of him and wriggled off the edge of the bed to head into the bathroom, needing space and privacy from him. ‘That’s not enough!’

His sheer high-voltage sexuality sent her brain careening into the realms of fantasy. But way before that acknowledgement, she had been knocked emotionally sideways by his insistence that he had not slept with another woman since he had last been with her two years earlier. And that had shocked her, but what had shocked her even more was that she had believed him and, rightly or wrongly, it had brought her barriers crashing down, making her vulnerable. It had also encouraged her to do what she had sworn never to do again and that was sleep with Eros. But at the same time, she was currently married to Eros Nevrakis, which had to change her outlook.

Or did it? she reasoned frantically. Did being married to the man she had once loved change anything? According to him, she would be a virtual prisoner on Trilis until he felt that he could trust her again. And when was that likely to be? Particularly when she was not prepared to risk having another child with him. And yet with that suggestion he had ignited the strangest secret yearning inside her. Why? Second time round with Eros, pregnancy would be a very different experience for her because she wouldn’t be going it alone as she had been forced to do while carrying Teddy. And wouldn’t it be wonderful to have that support and to feel valued while bringing a much-wanted second child into the world?

As soon as she recognised that dangerous thought, she stood on it hard and loathed herself for being so weak, so susceptible to Eros’s smallest suggestion. He was asking her to prove her commitment to their marriage but was she committed? Or simply playing for time while she decided what to do next? And how was he planning to demonstrate his commitment? Did he really think that suggesting that she have another child with him was sufficient?

* * *

As she vanished into the bathroom, Eros lay there for long minutes, seething with angry exasperation and an unfamiliar sense of rejection. Winnie could be such a plodder, proceeding directly and without deviation from one milestone to the next, no cutting corners, no shortcuts, no risks that could be avoided taken. Their affair had probably been the most dangerous impulse she had ever given way to and it would be a very long time, if ever, before she forgave him for not telling her that he was on paper, at least, a married man. Perhaps it was past time he explained exactly why he had never mentioned it, perhaps she would then begin to accept that the future was what they alone could make or break.

The bathroom door stood ajar and he pressed it back. Fresh from the shower, Winnie was already towelling herself dry, a glorious vision of tumbled dark hair and damp pink sensuality, chocolate-brown eyes anxious as they zeroed in on him.

‘Er...what?’ she muttered awkwardly.

‘Entaxei... Okay, you win,’ Eros breathed tautly, his bone structure rigid. ‘I’ll tell you about my marriage.’