Kitabı oku: «Greek Mavericks: His Christmas Conquest», sayfa 6
‘You’re joking!’
‘No. No, I am not joking. You might think you know everything because you’re so clever at picking things up along the way, but you obviously don’t know women that well or you would know that they never joke about marriage proposals.’
For some reason, Theo was finding it hard to take in what Sophie had just said. Why, he had no idea. When he approached her revelation logically, he could see that, as solutions went, it didn’t get better. A man wanting to help his woman out of her financial mess because he loved her.
So what if he had been temporarily attracted to the woman? He almost laughed aloud at his crazy overreaction to her news! As if there weren’t a million other fish in the sea! True, he had imagined that the strangeness of his circumstances had been responsible for opening up a chink in his protective armour, but really, thinking about it, that wasn’t the case at all. The change of scenery had been a catalyst. He would never forget Elena—indeed there would never be another woman to match her—but his body was responding once again. It was a bitter truth he would have to swallow. He was still a man with needs that had to be met.
But this woman was not an integral part of that. He had thought that returning to London, getting back to his daily reality, would return him to the brooding workaholic that he had previously been, seeking out dangerous pursuits in an attempt to distract himself from his private pain. Now he considered the possibility of his life returning to some level of normality.
‘And…?’ he prompted. ‘Did you accept his kind offer? I suppose it would have been too much temptation to resist.’
Sophie hesitated, already regretting the impulse that had seen her confess something that should have been a private matter. ‘I’m thinking about it,’ she mumbled.
‘I had no idea your relationship with the man was so serious.’
Nor did I, Sophie thought, wondering how she could entice him away from the topic.
‘And all he wants is your hand in marriage?’ Theo quizzed, his brows knitted in a frown.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’
Theo focused on Sophie’s face and registered the smug expression—just the sort of smug expression that could well and truly get under a man’s skin and try his patience to the limits.
‘Not really, when you think about it. As I said, an insecure kind of boy—your plight is probably the one thing guaranteed to make him feel like a man…’ Okay, so it was an arrogant, incendiary statement, but for some reason Theo was finding it distasteful to think of Sophie and that wet rag having any kind of relationship.
‘Thanks for the compliment!’
‘Probably one of those men who can’t wait for the whole family deal…Well, it sure beats the hell out of playing a field they don’t feel very comfortable in…’
‘Oh, and that’s what every woman fights shy of——a family man! Because we all want a rampant womaniser!’
‘I am usually right when it comes to reading people.’ Theo shrugged.
‘Oh, right. Yet another one of those handy talents you picked up along the way.’
‘Very handy,’ Theo agreed readily, enjoying the way she bristled as he ignored the sarcasm. ‘Life’s a lot easier if you can read people accurately and the way I read it is that his proposal might have set you thinking, but is it enough to overcome the fact that you don’t actually love the man? Because if you loved the guy you certainly wouldn’t tolerate me describing him as a wimp…’
‘Your opinion doesn’t matter to me, actually. And what’s love anyway?’ she scoffed. She had been encouraged to think that it was tumultuous and wonderful. Her parents had had one of those passionate, enduring romances and had misinformed her that she, too, would one day have the same. Well, as far as Sophie was concerned, she was still waiting. So far, she hadn’t even had a broken heart. No one had come close to being that meaningful a presence in her life. Which, she told herself, was obviously good. Who wanted a broken heart? On top of everything else at the moment, that would be absolutely the last straw.
And if there was no love, then why not see marriage as a business arrangement? Robert was proposing a business arrangement. He said that he was attracted to her, which she found extraordinary given the success with which he had managed to camouflage his feelings. She didn’t think he loved her, but he liked her well enough and was it so odd that he would see the whole business of marriage from the same jaded viewpoint as she did?
‘If love was that special, then how come the divorce rate is so high?’
Theo didn’t say anything. ‘Is this your way of talking yourself into marrying someone you don’t care about?’
‘This is my way of answering your question,’ Sophie muttered. ‘Anyway, if you’re such a fan of the whole Love thing, how come you’re not married?’ She would have bet her house that he felt the same way as she was stridently pretending to. He just looked too worldly wise to have a romantic bone in his body.
‘Oh, you have a point,’ Theo said coolly. ‘Why don’t you show me where your computer is and I can start working on this program as soon as power is restored?’
‘Oh.’ Sophie felt a very brief jarring sensation of disappointment at the abrupt change in conversation; then she was hastening to assure him that there was no need for him to involve himself in her situation. In fact, she hurried on to add, she would really rather he didn’t.
‘Why? It would make life a lot easier for you and would also be a far more efficient method of keeping track of all these documents.’
‘I wouldn’t be able to pay you for it…’
For some reason, that objection made Theo savagely angry. ‘I don’t believe I asked for payment,’ he said coldly.
‘I wouldn’t feel happy about you taking time out from your writing to help me.’ Sophie’s chin went up. ‘I’m not a charity case.’
‘No, but you’re a fool.’
‘I beg your pardon!’
‘Why look a gift horse in the mouth?’ Theo said harshly. ‘I’m offering to lend you a hand. Take the offer with good grace.’
‘As you said, though, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. What will your price be?’
Theo’s eyes narrowed on her until Sophie was squirming in her chair. Wrong question, she belatedly realised, but yet again the words had popped out of her mouth before she could sift them over in her head.
‘Consider it a trade-off. Your cottage has done wonders for…my writer’s block, as it happens and one good turn deserves another.’ But he had a sudden image of her paying him back with her body, lying beneath him, writhing with passion, her eyes languorous and heavy with desire.
Not to be. He had always made a point of zero involvement with a woman who was tied up with another man.
‘Where will you…do it?’
Theo looked at her, disoriented for a few seconds by the very graphic nature of the image in his head. ‘Where will I do…what?’
‘The program,’ Sophie explained patiently. ‘You’re welcome to work here with us, but it’s very cramped compared to the cottage. But no problem, of course, if you’d prefer here…I mean, the files are all around…’ Literally. Which in no way could be construed as an advantage as far as she could see. She tried to picture him sitting here in the office with them for hours on end, or however long it took him to install the program, and her stomach did a funny little dip that left her breathless.
‘No. I’ll take it to the cottage with me. Are there any files on it you’d rather I didn’t see?’
‘Like what?’
‘Use your imagination,’ Theo said dryly.
‘No. No! Just work stuff.’
‘Right. Well, no time like the present.’ He stood up and so did Sophie. The way to the upstairs flat was through the back, and she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing up on end as he followed closely behind her.
The flat was small and functional. It contained all the basic requirements to make life palatable, though only for brief periods of time. At the end of the narrow corridor was a kitchen which was really only good for essential cooking and tea and coffee and off the corridor was a bedroom, a bathroom and a spare room which her father had used for his office and which she used for her desk-cum-dressing table.
The computer was on the desk. In his head, Theo had assumed it would be a laptop computer. It wasn’t. It was as big as a television set and, with his recovering foot, he would be unable to carry it.
‘I didn’t think,’ Sophie said quietly and he spun round to look at her. ‘Your foot. This is going to be way too heavy for you to carry.’ She saw a flash of fierce pride in his eyes and felt a moment of real empathy for him. ‘How did it happen?’ she asked curiously.
Theo shrugged and sat down. He tapped his finger idly on the mouse mat, frustrated that a simple task, that he would have thought nothing of once, was now beyond his reach.
‘By me being an idiot,’ Theo told her roughly. She had pulled up a chair and was sitting by him, probably on the verge of pouring some good old-fashioned Christian sympathy all over him. He didn’t want it and he didn’t need it. He felt the inadequacy of his body like a shameful physical blow. ‘I thought I could master a black run and it turned out that nature had a little lesson in store for me. And now,’ he scorned, ‘I suppose I must expect your pity. Spare me. Please.’
‘I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to pity you, Theo,’ she said truthfully. ‘You’re too…dominant.’ She gave him a crooked smile.
‘Is that a good thing, I wonder…’ Theo murmured.
‘It has its…advantages…’ Sophie answered. ‘Ordering drinks at a crowded bar…getting rid of pesky door-to-door salesmen…showing a yapping dog who’s boss…’
Theo smiled and the blast of it nearly took her breath away. In fact, she was sure that her breathing stopped, just for a few seconds. Her heart rate also seemed to have slowed.
‘Useful, then.’
‘Useful, yes.’
‘But not particularly attractive…’
Sophie, mesmerised, could only stare at the harsh angular beauty of his face, softened by the slight smile playing on his lips. She was barely aware of leaning forward, of her eyes half closing or of the sigh that escaped before she kissed him.
Chapter Six
WITHIN that kiss lay the essence of forbidden passion. It was strong and urgent and shamefully hungry.
Theo’s surprise lasted all of two seconds, then he savoured the sweetness of her mouth and the soft yielding of her body inclined towards his. He hadn’t moved. Instead, Sophie had half risen from her chair so that she could lean into him and she moaned softly as he placed his hand on her naked waist, where her jumper had risen up.
‘I’m sorry…’ She drew back for air, confused and disoriented by the impulse that had overwhelmed her.
‘For what?’ Theo had his hand curled into her hair and, instead of removing it, he pulled her towards him and kissed her along her jawline, which sent hot and cold flushes racing through her body. He had planned to back away from her. She was involved with another man and he was no poacher, but her kiss had put paid to any such noble intentions. Wasn’t all fair in love and war? And she couldn’t be that involved with Robert if she was willing to fling herself at another man. Theo, starved of physical contact for so long, felt himself taking deep breaths to keep his body in some kind of check.
‘This shouldn’t have happened.’ Appalled by her own behaviour, Sophie tried to wriggle back but the hand behind her was like steel. The more she wriggled, the more firmly it remained in place. Eventually, she abandoned the unequal struggle. ‘I’m not comfortable talking to you like this. I’m going to pull a muscle in my back in a minute.’
‘So I let you go and you run away. Then, when we next meet, you tell me that we should pretend that nothing happened.’ He slipped his hand under the jumper and ran his finger along her spine until she thought she might just pass out from the sensation. ‘You don’t have to run away,’ he murmured, ‘and it’s no good pretending that there’s nothing between us…’
‘There is nothing…between us…! And could you please stop doing that…?’
‘Doing what?’ Theo allowed his finger to travel the dangerous route down her spine until he found the gap in the waistband of her trousers, just big enough for his gently exploring finger to linger along the stretchy Lycra band of her underwear. ‘Turning you on?’
Sophie shivered and made one last desperate attempt to make contact with Planet Earth. ‘You mustn’t…we mustn’t…It’s just not…right…’
‘Why? Because there’s a man in your life?’
Sophie, who hadn’t given Robert a moment’s thought, mumbled something that was totally inaudible. Her head was telling her to use any excuse at hand to prise herself out of this compromising position, but her body was singing a different tune, a wickedly seductive tune. Torn between conflicting demands, she could only listen to the velvety purr of his voice and knew, with horror, that she wanted to be persuaded because her body was screaming out to be touched and not just here and there, but everywhere.
‘You’re not serious about him, Sophie,’ Theo murmured softly. ‘Come and sit on my lap and I’ll tell you why…’
Sophie had never sat on a man’s lap before. Well, she guessed, she would have sat on her dad’s when she was a toddler, but never in a situation like this, when the atmosphere was thick with unspoken needs and the innocent act of sitting on his lap took on a whole new meaning.
But, of course, it was still within her grasp to pull away whenever she wanted. That was the thought that feebly ran through her head as she edged towards him and was spared a final decision because he yanked her down, forcing her to hold on to him to save herself from an undignified landing.
‘There. Now, isn’t that better? Warmer too, with the heating off. It’s a known fact that the best way to keep warm is through close proximity to another body. You would be surprised the amount of heat we give off.’
Sophie made a strangled noise and then lost herself in his indecently sexy eyes—the purest and deepest of greens, fringed by lashes that were thick and dark and ridiculously long for a man. She felt her body melt a little and the hands around his neck imperceptibly moved upwards so that she could feel the texture of his black hair.
‘So…I was saying…’ He rested the flat of his hand on her thigh and gently massaged through the denim of her jeans. ‘The boy—Robert—he may have proposed and perhaps, just perhaps, he’s deluded himself into thinking that the two of you would be good for one another, but you know and I know that that wouldn’t be the case, would it?’
Sophie hoped that he wasn’t expecting an answer to that because she was incapable of doing anything near as coherent as that at the moment, when his hand was managing to send urgent messages to her brain that told her to open her legs just slightly, enough for him to move upwards, while his eyes remained pinned to her face.
‘I mean…’ Theo mused softly, taking his time because his body wanted to race ahead and just take what it had missed for so long. ‘That man’s no good for you, whatever story he spins about being your knight in shining armour.’
‘Every girl needs a knight in shining armour…’ The observation ended on a gasp as his questing hand found the zip of her jeans and tugged it down, exposing her sensible black cotton underwear. Still talking in that lazy silky voice, Theo slipped his hand under her pants and he groaned when she arched back, eyes closed, enjoying his fingers as they played with her.
‘I think we should go somewhere where there’s a bed,’ he said.
Through the blurred mist of her thoughts, Sophie knew that this was her last chance to pull away. At this point, she could use any excuse she wanted. They would both know the truth of the situation and there was no excuse that wouldn’t reek of hypocritical emptiness.
Sophie had never been a risk-taker. She had never rebelled during her teenage years. Her minor disobediences had been along the lines of feigning illness to skip a test or refusing to carry on with piano lessons even though her parents wanted her to continue. She had been a goody two shoes, content to watch from the sidelines while other girls broke the rules.
Going with Theo would constitute the biggest risk she could take.
‘Let’s go,’ she heard herself say, peppering his mouth with kisses.
Two words and she metaphorically jumped off the side of the cliff. It wasn’t just that she was going to sleep with him. No. Deep inside her she knew that it was much more than that. She was going to sleep with a man she barely knew, someone to whom she responded, often antagonistically, on a gut level. There had been no courtship, no dating, no romance and it was a situation that was going nowhere. She was willingly going to go against everything she had always believed in and she was looking forward to it!
That realisation made her walk just that bit more provocatively as they headed to the bedroom. With each step, she could feel her excitement increasing until they were finally in the bedroom and the double bed was staring them in the face, screaming an invitation.
Sophie, released from a lifetime of conformity, moved towards the window and drew the curtains, shutting out the weak, intrusive winter sunlight. When she turned round, it was to find Theo standing by the door, looking at her.
‘It’s basic.’
‘It’s perfect,’ Theo told her roughly. When she began to hitch her jumper over her head, he stopped her and began walking towards her.
‘Body heat. Remember?’
‘Meaning…what?’ It was madness, but for a one-night stand, or rather a one-morning stand that was going nowhere, he was making her feel incredibly sexy and very, very wanton.
‘Meaning we should get naked…when we’re in very close proximity to one another…’
He placed his hands in the hollow of her back and ground her against him so that there was no escaping the reality of his erection and, when she felt as if she was going to faint from what it was doing to her, he began kissing her—long, sweet kisses that left her breathless and weak.
The soft willingness of her body was, for Theo, like a life raft to a drowning man. Had he realised how much he had missed this most basic of human contact? After Elena, he had willed himself to feel nothing and so he had felt nothing. Not a twinge of sexual awareness in the presence of a woman, no matter how beautiful or physically desirable or even available the woman in question had been.
And, even when he had been with Elena, sex had not been on the menu. Her ultra-feminine fragility had not encouraged the more rampantly male side of him and Theo had been content to wait until such time as she dictated.
It had been a very long time since his body had been satisfied. Theo buried his face in her Sophie’s fair, silky hair and breathed in that beautiful fragrance, a mixture of shampoo and hair conditioner, that always struck him as essentially female.
And, miraculously, he felt no sense of betrayal. On no front did this woman constitute a threat to his precious memories. She was a safety valve. He heard her moan softly as he pressed her still harder against him.
‘I’d carry you to the bed myself, but…’
‘But you’d like to spare me the embarrassment of being responsible for you ending up in hospital with a broken back…?’
Theo laughed. She had a sense of humour, which was good. It meant she wasn’t making this into a big deal.
‘I think, in a case like that, we’d both be embarrassed.’ But, actually, he really would have liked to have carried her over to the bed and very gently deposited her on it. It was an amusing notion considering he thought himself the least romantic man on the face of the earth.
But one thing he wouldn’t let her do was take her clothes off. That was something he intended to do himself so that he could savour every second of the experience very slowly.
Sophie found herself luxuriating in the experience, feeling like the cat that had suddenly and unexpectedly landed the jug of cream. In that part of her brain which was still operating—just—she puzzled over the enigma of how she could enjoy, with such perfect blissful abandonment, the touch and feel and scent of a man who was also capable of rousing her to real anger and frustration. Like one of those nasty maths problems she could never work out for exams, Sophie dismissed the niggle and sighed as Theo began tugging down her jeans.
The drawn curtains had managed to block out most of the light but it was still far from dark in the room. Sophie watched, fascinated and turned on, the ripple of muscle along his arms and shoulders as he discarded her jeans and, kneeling at the bottom of the bed, removed his jumper. His body was as lean and as honed as any finely tuned athlete and bronzed—as perfect a male specimen as she had ever set eyes on. It briefly crossed her mind that she was taking on way more than she could handle but, like the insoluble maths problem, she shoved aside the worry.
More pressing was the thought that her underwear was simply not up to scratch. She was pretty sure that the women he had slept with, and Lord knew how many of them there had been in his life, would have worn sexy, lacy underwear. Expensive exquisite silk as opposed to bargain buy cotton.
But that little anxiety lasted all of three seconds and then there were no more thoughts as he pulled down the functional briefs and positioned himself squarely between her thighs.
It was almost painful for Theo not to give in to the overpowering urge to just take her. No more preliminaries, no more foreplay, just desperately needed gratification of his senses, but even though his body was so keyed up that a single touch and he would explode, he still wanted to satisfy her and to feel every inch of her respond to him.
He breathed in deeply to steady himself and then leant over her and began inching her jumper upwards. He must have fantasised about this even without realising it. What else would account for the fact that he could hardly breathe as more smooth skin was revealed to his greedy gaze?
And no bra. His hands itched to touch but when he finally touched he knew that he wanted it to be with his mouth. He wanted all his senses to be satisfied.
He heard her whimper as finally the jumper was off. For a fairly slight woman, her breasts were surprisingly lush, with big well defined nipples that Theo reached forward and touched, first with his thumbs until the peaks were rock-hard and then with his tongue, his mouth, his teeth, enjoying the way she bucked against him.
He couldn’t get enough of that sweet taste, pulling the nipples into his mouth and suckling on them until she whimpered that he had to stop, that she wanted him in her.
‘Not yet,’ Theo said, moving down, trailing his mouth along the flat planes of her stomach, circling her belly button with his tongue. He must be a glutton for punishment, he thought, not to take her at her word and release them both from the sweet torment of their needy bodies, but he was still intent on tasting every inch of her luscious body, knowing that she would respond.
He breathed in her unique smell, filling his nostrils with it, and then gently parted the folds of her womanhood. With his free hand on her stomach, he was aware of her sharp intake of breath and the jagged release of it as his tongue found the protruding sensitive bud of her femininity.
He wouldn’t stay there too long. He knew that she was on the brink. Frankly, so was he. When she began to toss under his exploring tongue, Theo rose up and, with a few sharp thrusts, penetrated her.
He reared up and took them both over the edge and release was glorious, spectacular.
Their bodies were slick with perspiration when he finally lay down next to her.
He wanted to ask her what she was thinking and realised, uncomfortably, that that was just the sort of question women used to ask him, a question which he had always found intensely irritating because his thoughts were not meant for sharing idly after sex. Or at any time, for that matter.
He pulled her so that she was facing him and gently stroked her hair away from her face.
‘Should we have done…what we just did?’ Sophie breathed. She could feel anxiety buzzing around inside her. No, she did not regret abandoning her principles, but, like all principled people, she couldn’t help wondering what happened next in the scenario, where was the logical progression that would make sense of her behaviour. She half hoped that he would tell her that it had all been a crashing mistake because that way she could rebuild her fortress and get back to some healthy dislike.
Instead, he gave her a lopsided grin and raised his eyebrows. ‘What kind of question is that?’ He kissed the corner of her mouth, which in itself provided her with the answer she was looking for. Yes…no mistake had been made. Making love with him had felt right.
‘Are you afraid that as your lover I might start asking you to knock something off my rent?’ He kissed her a little bit harder and was ridiculously gratified when she responded.
‘Are you afraid that as my lover I might start asking you to pay a bit more towards the rent?’
‘I would, you know…’
‘Would what? I was joking.’
‘Would pay more—enough to bail you out of your financial mess, in other words.’
Sophie stiffened. ‘I would never, never ask you to do that.’
‘I know you wouldn’t. I’m offering.’
‘Thanks but no thanks.’ She began pulling away but he kept his hands firmly clamped on her shoulders, preventing her from going anywhere.
‘I don’t intend to open up an argument over this, Sophie,’ Theo grated. ‘It was an offer. You rejected it. That’s fine. I won’t broach the subject again.’ He was tempted to draw her attention to that fine line between pride and stupidity but it wouldn’t have gone down well, even though it enraged him to think that she would consider Robert—nondescript background Robert—as someone she might turn to in her hour of need. Still. Her life and her prerogative to run it as she saw fit. It wasn’t his concern at the end of the day.
‘I’m not a charity case.’ Sophie was not mollified by his retreat. There could be no power play between them and no suggestion that he might rescue her from her debts. Whatever they had had to be free from all constraints, free, in a way, from the ugliness of reality—something passing to be enjoyed. It might be that their enjoyment lasted only this one time or maybe once more, but it couldn’t be marred by the grinding nuts and bolts of everyday life. And talk of lending her money was everyday life at its worst.
‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to help me with this computer program of yours.’ Well, was lending money any different from lending time and energy? She would still feel indebted in some way and indebtedness would be the clarion call for guilt to set in. Guilt that she was doing something she shouldn’t be doing, guilt that she was being used, guilt that she shouldn’t be enjoying herself, not when her beloved father had died and there were so many problems to be dealt with in the wake of his death.
Theo felt that he could read this woman’s mind like a book. Or maybe her face was just so transparent that her thoughts flitted across it without the benefit of concealment. He was momentarily enchanted by the concept of someone so inept at hiding what they were feeling. ‘If you say so,’ he murmured, taking a gamble on her response. She might not behave in a predictable fashion, but he knew enough about women to realise that certain things were predictable, and having her self-righteous tirade chopped off before it had a chance to begin would, he reckoned, be too much for her to handle.
‘Well, I do. As a matter of fact.’
‘Okay.’
Sophie frowned and smoothed her ruffled feathers by telling herself that at least they weren’t going to have an argument because he refused to listen to her. She didn’t want to argue with him. She wanted to enjoy him. It was perverse and made no sense but she wasn’t going to question it. She had jumped off the side of the cliff and was free-falling, but in a wonderful way, and she wasn’t going to alter its brief course.
‘Good,’ she told him firmly. She pressed herself against him, loving the feel of his hard masculine body against her soft feminine one. And she obviously wasn’t the only one with a responsive body. She reached down and circled his arousal with her hand and gently massaged it, then she pressed it against her own moist arousal and moaned softly as his eyes darkened and his breathing became jerky.
Theo, not foreseeing the end of the conversation just yet and pretty convinced that he could swing her round to accepting his help if not his money, found himself unable to do anything but respond to what his body was doing. Although he made love with the finesse of a master, there had always been a part of him that could stand outside what was happening and remain detached, some little part of his brain that could take control of the proceedings at any given moment should the need arise. The same part of his brain which should easily have been able to resist her exploring hand and terminate the conversation when it had reached a satisfactory conclusion for him. Not so now. He was powerless to do anything but touch and feel as the motion of her hand got quicker until he felt himself on the verge of doing the unthinkable and ejaculating like a teenager unable to control himself.
He grasped her hand and groaned.
‘You witch.’ He laughed softly and spun her so that she was on top of him. ‘Like it like this?’ He pulled her face towards his and kissed her and, while he kissed her, she manoeuvred herself so that he was deep inside her, filling her with such intense pleasure that she felt breathless.
