Читать книгу Modern Romance July 2015 Books 1-4 - Кэтти Уильямс, Maisey Yates, Cathy Williams - Страница 17

CHAPTER NINE

‘THAT POOR CHILD,’ said Jessica as she switched on one of the lamps and the room was flooded with a soft golden light. ‘He was absolutely terrified.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Loukas, shutting the door softly behind him. ‘Getting lost in Venice age seven isn’t something to be recommended.’

‘Do you think he’ll be okay?’

‘He’ll be fine.’ He frowned. ‘Are you okay?’

Jessica nodded, hoping her smile would convey a sense of serenity she was far from feeling. They were back in her hotel room where they’d discovered champagne sitting in an ice bucket, delivered by the grateful parents of Marco Pasolini. She and Loukas had bumped into the fraught and terrified couple outside the entrance to the police station, where they had taken the little boy, who had still been tightly holding her hand. A voluble reunion had followed, with Marco’s mother alternately sobbing and scolding her young son, before scooping him into her arms and covering his face with endless kisses. His father, meanwhile—according to the translation which Loukas had provided afterwards—proceeded to offer them the use of his Sicilian villa, his ocean-going yacht or any other part of his extensive estates, any time they cared to use them.

But now that the worry and the drama had died away, Jessica was left feeling exhausted. The experience had shaken her up more than she’d realised and had only increased her growing sense of disassociation. She felt as if she shouldn’t really be here, in this room, with Loukas. As if their passion of the night before had been something unplanned and probably regrettable and now, in the harsh light of day, she wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do next. Would he start peeling off her clothes and expecting another acrobatic performance, like last night? She hoped not. She felt shy and inexperienced, as if she couldn’t possibly live up to his expectations.

She thought about his instinctive reaction when they’d stumbled across the lost child. He had thought it was a scam.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, taking off her jacket and realising that her legs felt a little shaky. She sat down on a chair very suddenly and looked at him. ‘Why did you jump to the conclusion that Marco was a pickpocket? That was a pretty harsh and cynical thing to do, in the circumstances.’

He gave a short and bitter laugh. ‘Because I spent too many years as a bodyguard, and suspicion is something which was drummed into me. Something I learnt to live with. If you work for one of the world’s wealthiest men, threats come from the most unlikely directions—something I learnt to my own cost. You learn never to trust what you see, or to believe what you hear. That nothing is ever as it seems.’

‘That seems a pretty grim way to live your life.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘A cup half empty, rather than half full?’

She nodded. ‘Something like that.’

‘Or you could say that way you stand less chance of disappointment. If you don’t have raised expectations, then they can’t be smashed,’ he said, his ebony gaze locking with hers. ‘You were brilliant with him, by the way,’ he added slowly. ‘A natural.’

She heard a note of surprise in his voice, which he couldn’t quite disguise. ‘Something you weren’t expecting?’

He shrugged. ‘I never had you down as the maternal type.’

Maybe, she thought, because he must find it hard to recognise the ‘maternal type’, if such a thing existed. His own mother had always put the men in her life first, so could she really blame him if his perception of others was warped—if he had no real experience on which to base his judgements? Or maybe because he remembered her as single-minded and focused, letting her tennis dominate her whole life.

‘I don’t know if I was born that way, but it’s something I learnt,’ she said slowly. ‘I had to. I became something of a substitute mother for my half-sister.’

‘The little girl who was always hiding your hairbrush?’ He frowned. ‘Hannah?’

Jessica smiled. Funny he should remember that. ‘That’s the one. When my dad...our dad...and her mum were killed, I stepped in to look after her. Well, I had to really.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ he said suddenly, another frown darkening his face. ‘Presumably you had a choice and you chose to look after her. How old was she?’

‘Ten.’

‘And you were, what—eighteen?’

She nodded, thinking how beautiful he looked, silhouetted against the Venetian skyline. The shutters were still open and the spotlighted dome of the magnificent Salute church, which stood behind the wide band of gleaming water, could be seen in all its splendour.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was eighteen. The authorities wanted to foster her out to a proper family, but I fought very hard to keep her. I didn’t...’ Her words tailed off.

‘Didn’t what?’

She hesitated. She kept things locked inside her because that was what she’d been trained to do, just as she’d been trained to use a double-handed backhand. And when you did something for long enough it became a habit. A bit like Loukas, when he saw only danger around him. If you built a wall around your emotions you were safer—at least, that was the theory. But the rush of emotions she’d experienced today, following the incredible sex of last night, had left her feeling...

She wasn’t sure. She didn’t feel like Jessica Cartwright, that was for sure.

‘I didn’t want to let her go. Not because I loved her.’ She cleared her throat. ‘But probably because I didn’t—at least, not at first. We’d never had an easy relationship. She was the adored child of two people who were very much in love, while I was the cuckoo in the nest—the offspring of the first marriage, a bad marriage, a marriage which should never have happened. At least, that’s what I once heard my dad telling my stepmum. Hannah was always on the inside, in the warmth, while I always seemed to be out in the cold, literally, on the practice courts. And I think Hannah was a bit jealous of my tennis career. She used to hide my hairbrush, and sometimes my tennis racquet. She even threw away this stupid little mascot I carried around, until my father told me that champions didn’t need mascots—they needed technique and determination.’

‘So why did you fight so hard to keep her?’

‘Because she was on her own and hurting,’ she said simply. ‘How could I not reach out to her?’ But it hadn’t been easy, because Jessica had been lost and hurting, too. She had missed her father. She had missed her career. And she’d missed Loukas. She’d missed him more than she could ever have imagined.

She realised she was cold. She was hugging her arms tightly around herself and wishing she hadn’t taken off her jacket, especially now that Loukas’s hard black gaze was sweeping over her.

‘Why don’t you go and take a bath?’ he suggested roughly.

Awkwardly, she got to her feet. ‘Good idea,’ she said and went off into the bathroom, suddenly feeling self-conscious and realising that he hadn’t touched her since they’d got back. Maybe he felt as cautious as she did, she thought as she upended lime and orange oil into the water and slowly lowered her aching body into the tub. Perhaps he’d realised that there was too much history for them to be able to enjoy a casual affair. Or maybe she wasn’t capable of operating on that level.

Because already her feelings for him were changing. Minute by minute, she could feel it happening. She’d started to care what he thought of her. She’d started searching for emotions in his dark eyes. And it was a waste of time. He’d been completely honest about his reasons for wanting to have sex with her again—so why try to make it into something it wasn’t? Embarking on a quest to make it into something it could never be was only ever going to bring her heartbreak.

She lay in the water for a long time—long enough for the skin at the ends of her fingers to become white and wrinkled. Long enough for Loukas to have grown bored with waiting, and to have made his escape, perhaps leaving behind a note scribbled on a piece of hotel notepaper. Because he certainly wasn’t knocking at the bathroom door, asking her how long she was going to be.

Was he aware that a strange kind of shyness had crept over her as they’d stared at one another over the head of little Marco? That in that moment, she had glimpsed the little boy he’d once been and all the sadness he had known. She’d found herself thinking of the children she might have had with him. But Loukas doesn’t want children, she reminded herself. He had been very clear about that.

Dragging a brush through her damp hair, she put on the massive bathrobe which was hanging on the back of the door and padded barefoot into her room, to find Loukas stretched out in one of the chairs, seemingly fast asleep. His eyes were closed and his face looked curiously relaxed as classical music drifted out from an unseen sound system.

She stood there, uncertain of whether or not she should wake him, when his lashes flickered apart and she was caught in the gleam of his ebony eyes.

‘Hi,’ he said softly. ‘Good bath?’

She nodded, the lump in her throat making it impossible for her to speak because as he’d asked the innocent question it had sounded so heartbreakingly...domestic. It mocked her and taunted her with its implied intimacy. A real intimacy, which they’d never really shared.

There was a sudden knock on the door and she looked at him.

‘Room Service,’ he said, in answer to the question in her eyes

‘I didn’t order anything from Room Service.’

‘No, but I did. Why don’t you just get into bed, Jess? You look shattered. And don’t look at me as if I’m the big, bad wolf, koukla mou.’ His voice dipped. ‘I am perfectly capable of being in the same room without leaping on you.’

She nodded, feeling the see-sawing of her own emotions in response to the things he was saying. She hadn’t wanted sex, but suddenly she was finding that maybe she did. Only he seemed more concerned with getting his dinner!

But at least his back was turned as he answered the door, so that he wouldn’t see her nakedness as she let the bathrobe slide to the floor before getting quickly into bed. It felt blissful as she sank into the mattress, the sheet cool and smooth beneath her clean skin, the duvet falling on top of her like a big, soft cloud.

She told herself she wasn’t hungry but she must have been, because when he brought the food over to her—some sort of vegetable broth, followed by a toasted cheese sandwich—she began to devour it with an appetite which felt heightened. Comfort food, that was what they called food like this, and never had a description seemed more apt. After she’d finished she lay back against the feathery bank of pillows as the sound of violins filtered softly through the air.

‘Better?’ he questioned.

‘Much.’ She yawned. ‘I didn’t know you liked classical music.’

‘Too brutish a sound for a rough, tough ex-bodyguard?’ His eyes glittered. ‘You thought I’d be more into heavy metal?’

Too comfortable to object, Jessica smiled lazily. ‘Something like that.’

‘Why don’t you close your eyes, Jess? Stop fighting it. You look exhausted.’

His deep accent was lulling her. It felt like velvet pressing against her skin. She wanted to ask him what he was planning, but her eyelids were heavy and she thought about his words and wondered what she was trying to fight. She drifted into a sleep which was light enough to feel the mattress dip when he got in beside her. He pulled her against him and the pleasant shock of honed muscle and warm skin told her that he, too, was naked. Did that mean he did want sex?

‘Loukas,’ she mumbled.

‘Shh,’ he said, his arms tightening around her waist as he pulled her even closer and the room fell into darkness as he clicked off the lamp.

She must have slept because when she drifted back into consciousness, it was to find her head pillowed comfortably against his shoulder, her lips right next to the burr of his unshaven jaw. She kissed it. She couldn’t help it; her lips seemed programmed to brush over that proud curve. He mumbled something as his hand slid down to cup her bottom while the other reached behind her head and guided her lips towards his.

That first kiss was lazy. It seemed to happen in slow motion, as if they had all the time in the world. As if she’d never really kissed him properly before. And maybe she hadn’t. Beneath the protective cloak of darkness it seemed that there were a million ways to explore a man’s mouth, and Jessica was about to discover every one of them. She could feel him smile as, slowly, she traced the tip of her tongue over the cushioned surface. He gave a murmur of satisfaction as she pressed kiss after little kiss against him. His body felt warm and comfortable against hers and soon she began to trickle her fingertip over his chest, allowing it to continue its path inexorably downwards. But he stopped her when she reached the dark whorls of hair which lay at the base of his belly, wreathing the sudden hard jerk of his erection.

‘No. Not yet,’ he said urgently. ‘I’m so turned on, I hardly dare risk putting on a condom.’

She swallowed, because something about his words had sent crazy thoughts splintering into her mind. ‘But you will?’

‘Yes, I will. Even though I long to feel myself naked inside you. My skin bare against your skin. My seed in your body.’

His words excited her, but presumably that had been his intention. They reminded her that for Loukas this was all about technique—a bit like tennis, really. It might feel deep and emotional and highly intimate, but that was her stuff. Her stupid desires. And she mustn’t give into them. She mustn’t.

But it was hard not to be swept away when he was kissing each of her breasts with a thoroughness which felt almost like tenderness. Or when he lifted her up effortlessly to slide her down on top of him, murmuring silky words in Greek which sounded almost loving. Suspecting that he would want to watch her moving up and down on him, she waited for him to reach over and put the light on—but he didn’t. And the lack of a spotlight on her face meant that she could give into what she really wanted to do, and what she wanted to do more than anything was not hold back. So she tangled her fingers in this thick hair and she told him he was beautiful. And if his big body stiffened for a moment and she sensed his sudden suspicion, that was quickly forgotten when she rode him with a determination which suddenly seemed outside her own control.

‘Jess,’ he gasped, and she’d never heard him say her name like that before.

But then her thoughts were blotted out and her body tensed around him.

And the most stupid thing of all was that she found herself wishing that he hadn’t worn a condom.