Kitabı oku: «Mistress: Taming the Playboy», sayfa 7

CHAPTER NINE

A CRACK of light slanted across the floor as the door opened, and Laura held her breath as she saw the dark and formidable shape of Constantine standing silhouetted there. If he thought she was sleeping, would he creep away again? she wondered. Would he remember that she had been working and perhaps might need her rest? Spare her this sensual ordeal which she suspected might open the door to a terrible kind of heartache? And yet her heart was pounding so hard that she was certain he must be able to hear its frantic beat.

A low laugh beside the bed put paid to her half-hearted hopes. ‘Surely you don’t expect me to believe you are asleep do you, ghlikos mou?’ he questioned softly.

She heard the rasp of a zip, and then the soft thump of something slithering to the ground—presumably his jeans—before a rush of air to her skin as he peeled the sheet away from her body and climbed into bed. Laura trembled as she felt that first contact with his warm, muscular flesh.

‘You’re … naked,’ she breathed.

‘What did you expect?’ With comfortable assurance he hooked his arms around her and drew her close, the glitter of his eyes discernible in the moonlight, his breath warm on her face. ‘Ah … perhaps you wanted to watch me strip?’

‘I ….’ His easy provocation left her feeling cheated and out of her depth. He does this kind of thing all the time, she reminded herself—and he has no idea that it’s been eight long years since you slept with a man. This man. Had she mistakenly hoped that there might be some kind of wooing, and that he might be gentle with her? Perhaps taking her tenderly in his arms and tossing her a few compliments, before beginning a slow lovemaking? Was she crazy?

‘Meanwhile, you … are most definitely not naked,’ he murmured, as he skated his hand down over one cotton-covered hip, and she heard the faint deprecation in his voice. ‘Shame on you, Laura—I cannot believe you always wear something this unflattering in bed when you make an assignation with your lover.’

She guessed that now was not the time to tell him that this was her first such assignation. But she realised that Constantine hadn’t been expecting a reply—his question had merely been the precursor to skimming the nightie up and over her head, and tossing it over the side of the bed like a flag of surrender. She shivered as her nakedness was revealed.

‘Cold?’ he murmured, as his lips found the line of her jaw and began to whisper along its curve.

‘N-no.’

‘Surely not scared?’

Scared? She was terrified—because didn’t sex play havoc with a woman’s emotions? And weren’t hers already see-sawing their way towards chaos and a terrible feeling of vulnerability? But she shook her head, unwilling to admit to fear or doubt or anything else which might put her at even more of a disadvantage in his arms.

‘Good.’ He lifted his hand to smooth some of the fine mass of pale hair away from her face. ‘You see, you have made me wait too long for this, Laura. Much too long … longer than any other woman would have dared or been able to. You have driven me half mad with temptation—do you realise that?’ His voice was unsteady as he drove his mouth down on hers with a hunger so fierce that it made his body shudder, and her hands reached up to cling to him so that even his taunting words about other women were forgotten beneath the power of his kiss.

Constantine groaned as her lips opened eagerly to welcome him and he felt the softness of her breasts. His fingers skimmed her body, reacquainting themselves with all its curves and secret places, luxuriating in the soft, silken feel of her skin—and he groaned again.

He had found the delay before getting into her bed almost unendurable—their snatched and teasing foreplay something he had not experienced since he was a teenager—and it had been compounded by the fact that she was the mother of his child. For once his feelings were less than straightforward—she had captured his imagination as well as his desire. But in the sweetness of the moment all that was forgotten, and now she was so compliant beneath his embrace that Constantine knew this was all going to happen very quickly. Too quickly.

And perhaps Laura sensed it too, because she suddenly pulled away from him, her eyes huge in her face.

‘Contraception?’ she whispered. ‘You?’

‘I don’t … have anything.’

Swearing softly in Greek, he reached blindly for the jeans he’d left on the floor until he found a condom. Gingerly he slid it on, and then pulled her soft body back into his arms. ‘Let’s hope it’s a little more reliable than last time,’ he drawled.

Laura stiffened as the impact of his words hit home, and half tried to pull away from him. ‘That’s a hateful thing to say.’

‘You want to hide from the truth? Is that it?’

‘I think there’s a time and a place for everything—and that remark was wrong on just about every level.’

He gave a brief half-smile. ‘You dare to scold me, ghlikos mou?’ Before she could answer, he tipped her chin upwards and stared down at her with erotic intent. ‘But then you dare to do many things which surprise me, Laura. Now, where was I? Was it here?’ He lowered his head until his mouth found the lobe of her ear and whispered over its plump little oval. ‘Or here?’ His lips moved to hers, felt them tremble, and that involuntary little shudder moved him more than it should have done.

He kissed silent her little cries, his greedy fingers exploring her body with a thoroughness which left her gasping—finding her most vulnerable places and tantalising her until he felt her squirm with impatient longing. And her fervour filled him with a strange kind of disquiet, even while it set his senses on fire. ‘Are you always this eager?’ he murmured.

‘Are you?’ she parried.

No, he thought suddenly. No, he was not—but then this was the only woman who had had his child grow within her body. ‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ he said unevenly.

No, it didn’t—and while Laura knew that there was no earthly reason why she should respond, instinct told her that her answer would please him. And why not please him when he was in her arms and in her bed and soon to be in her body?

‘I am only this eager with you,’ she said, her voice dipping a little with sexual shyness. ‘For you are the only lover I have ever known.’

There was a moment of disbelief while he sucked in a ragged breath, and suddenly the power of that thought made him feel momentarily weak—or as weak as Constantine was ever capable of being. ‘The only one?’ he demanded.

‘Yes. And now will you please shut up about it? Or you’ll give me a complex.’

He groaned as she kissed him back, boldly tracing her soft and seeking lips over every inch of his body, and then he gave a low laugh as he took her soft breast in his hand and stroked it.

He held back until he could hold back no longer, and then he touched her once again between the sweet haven of her thighs and felt her quiver with pleasure. Tearing his lips away from hers, he stared down into her face for an infinitesimal moment before—with one long, delicious stroke—he filled her and let out a long moan of pleasure.

The feel of him inside her again after so long was a sweet shock—but Laura barely had time to accommodate him, or to savour the sensation of Constantine moving within her, thrusting deep into her body and deep into her heart. Because all too quickly she was spiralling once more towards that dizzy destination he’d led her to that very afternoon, when he had brought her to orgasm with his fingers. But this was something else. This was the real thing. He was the real thing. Her heart gave a sudden lurch in time with her limbs.

‘Oh, Constantine,’ she cried, and she felt tears spilling from beneath her eyelids. ‘Constantine!’

Smothering her little gasps with his lips, he felt her bucking uncontrollably beneath him, and the spasming of her body sent his own pleasure hurtling right off the radar. He waited until he could wait no longer—until his orgasm took him under completely, instead of his more usual controlled riding it out, like a wave. And the unexpectedness of that surrender momentarily took his breath away.

Afterwards, he felt as though she had taken something from him, but he wasn’t quite sure what. Abruptly he rolled away from her, and lay beside her on the rumpled sheets, staring at the moon-dappled ceiling, waiting for her words—the words that women always said at moments like these, when they were at their weakest. Praise, adoration and undying love—Constantine had heard them all in his time. Words which were his due and yet words he often scorned because of their transparent predictability. Yet Laura said nothing.

He turned his head to look at her—she was lying perfectly still, with her eyes closed and her pale hair spread out like a fine cloud across the pillow. She was so still she might almost have been sleeping—the fading gleam of tears drying on her heated cheeks the only clue as to what had just taken place. She must have sensed that his gaze was on her, yet still she did not open her eyes and look at him.

Which made the next step easy, didn’t it? An early exit from her bed—which was what he had planned on making all along. Besides, he preferred sleeping on his own once his passion had been spent, and the cloying emotions of waking up with a woman always left him cold. So why the hell was he lying here in a state of indolent bliss, heavy-limbed and unwilling to stir?

For a moment Laura didn’t move, couldn’t think—her equilibrium thrown off kilter by what had just happened between them. She found herself biting back inappropriate words—telling him that sex with him was one of the most glorious things which had ever happened to her, and so was he. Telling him that she had been a rash and stupid fool to have turned down his offer of marriage and please could she reconsider? But as her shattered senses returned to something approaching normality she knew she had to put some distance between them in order to protect herself.

Because sex could make you feel too close to a man—it could make you start concocting all kinds of emotional fantasies about that man. And hadn’t she just been doing exactly that? Imagining herself half way in love with him? She should never forget that the man in question had a heart of stone—why, he’d moved as far away from her as possible as soon as their bodies had stilled. And hadn’t he made this ‘assignation’ of theirs sound completely unemotional—mechanical, even? Well, then, pride should make her do the same.

‘I think … I think that perhaps you’d better go now,’ she suggested huskily.

Constantine, who had been mentally preparing himself to do exactly that, stilled. ‘Go?’ he echoed in soft disbelief.

She risked opening her eyes then, and wished she hadn’t—for in the bright moonlight Constantine lay on the bed like a beautiful dark statue, with the rumpled sheet which lay carelessly over one narrow hip only just covering his manhood.

Laura swallowed. ‘Well, yes. I mean … Alex might come in early and I don’t … Well, I don’t want him to find us in bed together.’

‘How very admirable of you, Laura,’ he murmured, but inside his feelings were at war. He felt anger that she—she—should be the one to eject Constantine Karantinos from her bed—and yet this went hand in hand with an undeniable and fierce approval that she should demonstrate such sound morality around his impressionable young son.

He pushed the sheet back from his inconveniently hardening body and watched the way that her nipples were peaking in response. He saw the movement of her throat as she swallowed down her desire, and the way her eyes were now drawn irresistibly to his groin. ‘Though if you continue to lie there looking at me like that, then I might just change my mind,’ he said thickly.

The statement—or was it a question?—hung on the air as she saw the sudden tension return to his body, and Laura’s tongue snaked around her lips, her thighs parting by a fraction as she shifted uncomfortably on the bed.

Constantine rolled over. Kissed her nipple. Heard her gasp as he stroked between her legs and then slicked on a condom. Suddenly she was urging him inside her, and it seemed like only seconds before he felt her spasming helplessly around him and he followed her almost immediately, his mouth pressed against her shoulder as he bit out his fulfilment.

But he withdrew from her as soon as the last sweet wave shuddered away, moving from the bed with an elegant grace as he began to pull on his clothes.

‘Constantine—’

Zipping up his jeans, he looked down at the flushed and startled expression on her face. ‘Mmm?’

‘Maybe …’ Her voice was tentative. ‘Maybe I might change my mind this time. About you staying. As long as you leave early.’

Although he was now on the much more familiar ground of a woman trying to inveigle him back into her bed, Constantine narrowed his eyes with a slowly smouldering anger. Did she really think he was the kind of man who would pander to her whims—the kind of man to be played with as a kitten played with a mouse? Wasn’t she in danger of over-estimating her appeal to him?

His mouth twisted. ‘I don’t think so, agape mou. Alex is asleep down the hall—and until he knows that I am his father, then I don’t think it’s a good idea if he finds me in your bed, do you? Sweet dreams,’ he said softly, and turned and left the room without another word.

For a moment Laura just lay there, watching the door close behind him, her body still glowing with the aftermath of pleasure but her heart aching with a terrible kind of pain. Had she mistakenly thought that sex might bring about some sort of closure? Maybe give her some guidance about how she was going to extricate herself and Alex from this situation while causing the least amount of hurt all round?

If so, then she had been hugely mistaken. Because behind all the passion she had felt Constantine’s bitterness, and the knowledge that it could take her to a dark, dark place.

She must have drifted off to sleep, because when she opened her eyes she was surprised to find it was six o’clock. The house was still silent and for a moment she lay there, reliving the night before and its horribly unsatisfactory ending. She showered and dressed, and spent ten minutes tugging the rumpled bed back into some sort of order before going to the other end of the corridor and poking her head around Alex’s door.

He was fast asleep, his dark lashes feathering down into two sooty arcs, the faint colour to his skin an indication that he had been playing in the sunshine. He looked really contented, she thought with a sudden glow—and her heart felt a little lighter as she went down to the empty kitchen and made herself a coffee.

Taking the cup outside, she went to stand at the top of the stone steps at the end of the garden and stood looking out to sea, where the giant crimson globe of the sun was rising up over the milky horizon. It was such a beautiful place, she thought wistfully—and yet it seemed to have its own shadows and secrets. Though maybe every place on earth did.

Later, she was busy constructing a giant plate of fruit for breakfast, while Demetra pounded away at some dough and bemoaned the fact that the village no longer had a bakery, when Laura heard a rapid clicking sound and looked up.

‘What’s that?’ she questioned.

Demetra paused. ‘Oh, the helicopter.’ She shrugged. ‘It will be Kyrios Constantine, going to Athens.’

‘To … to Athens?’ questioned Laura shakily, her heart crashing uncomfortably against her ribcage. She told herself that it was unreasonable of her to expect him to inform her of his movements. But didn’t last night’s lovemaking entitle her to the common courtesy of him at least coming to say goodbye? She could see Demetra looking at her curiously, and found herself struggling to say something suitably conventional. What would a casual servant say at such a time? ‘Er … the pilot lives on the island, does he?’

‘Oh, he needs no pilot,’ answered Demetra. ‘Kyrios Constantine flies the helicopter himself!’

‘And is he … working in Athens?’ questioned Laura

‘Work, yes—and probably women, too.’ Demetra’s eyes crinkled conspiratorially. ‘Always the women—they flock to Kyrios Constantine like ants around the honeypot.’

The housekeeper’s words made her hand jerk, and the fruit knife she was holding inadvertently nicked her thumb. Laura quickly put it down as a small spot of crimson blood welled up and began to drip onto the wooden table.

CHAPTER TEN

‘YOU’VE cut your thumb,’ observed Constantine softly.

‘Oh, it’s nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ he murmured. ‘Come here—let me see.’

Laura squirmed as he took the injured digit in his hand and even that innocent contact sent her senses spiralling. Earlier that day he had flown back, after spending three nights in Athens, and while she was ridiculously pleased to see him she couldn’t dispel her terrible aching insecurity and jealousy at the thought of what he might have been doing there.

They were sitting by the edge of the sea, on a beach more beautiful than any beach she could ever have imagined—just her, Alex and Constantine, who had insisted that she and her son both needed to see more of the island, especially as today was officially her day off.

Alex had spent the morning playing with a magnificent sandcastle which his father had constructed while demonstrating a sweet kind of patience which had made Laura’s heart turn over with an aching wistfulness. Because it was like glimpsing the sun appearing from behind a thick, dark cloud. This was the Constantine who usually lay hidden behind that formidable exterior—the one he rarely allowed people to see. The side he had shown her all those years ago … the side which had made him all to easy to love—and still did.

They had just eaten salads and cheese for lunch, and now their son was lying in the cool shade of a rock, fast asleep—a cute cotton hat shielding his little face from the occasional sand-fly. It felt strange to be out like a normal family—without her floral pinafore dress and the subtle sense of subservience which she adopted whenever she put it on. And strange too to be in the company of the man she had not seen since he had left her room after that passionate night of lovemaking.

When he had left without a word about why or where he was going, she reminded herself.

‘How did you do it?’ questioned Constantine as he continued with his mock-examination of her thumb, which was raising her heart-rate significantly.

‘I … I cut it on a fruit knife.’

‘Clumsy of you, Laura.’

‘Yes.’ She wanted to tell him not to touch her like that—yet she knew that such words would sound like hysterical nonsense, because to the outside world it would look like nothing more than an innocent assessment of her thumb. But to Laura it felt as if he were trailing sizzling fire where he made contact. As if her nerve-endings became instantly raw and clamouring wherever his fingertips brushed against them.

And yet conversely she wanted him to touch her in a far more inappropriate way altogether. To have him pull her into his arms—to at least give some indication that they’d actually been lovers. But of course he did not touch her, and Laura tried to tell herself it was because Alex was nearby.

‘So … what were you doing in Athens?’ she questioned suddenly, even though she had vowed she would not.

For a moment Constantine didn’t answer as he let her hand go, an odd, mocking kind of smile curving the corners of his lips. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business, do you?’

It was the response of her worst nightmares, and it made all her uncertainties bubble to the surface. Heart pounding with fear, she glanced quickly over at Alex, but he was fast asleep, worn out by the morning and oblivious to the low, urgent tones of his parents. ‘Did you go straight from my bed to another’s?’

His black eyes sent her a mocking challenge. ‘Why? Is that the kind of behaviour you normally indulge in yourself?’

She clenched her hands into tiny fists. ‘You know very well that you’re the only person I’ve ever slept with!’

On hearing this for a second time, Constantine felt his heart accelerate into a thundering kind of triumphant beat. He was Greek, and he was pure alpha-male, and he would have been lying if her declaration hadn’t thrilled him to every fibre of his being—but he was damned if he would let it show.

‘Ah, if only I could say the same, agape mou,’ he sighed regretfully.

Tears stung her eyes. ‘Why do you delight in hurting me?’ she demanded, realising too late how vulnerable that made her sound. But Constantine didn’t seem to have noticed.

‘Don’t you think that hurt is an inevitable part of a relationship?’ he returned with a shrug. ‘Of all relationships?’

She disregarded his careless use of the word ‘relationship,’ because the clue was in the emphasised word and Laura seized on it. ‘Is that what happened with you, Constantine? You got hurt?’

‘I’ve seen how women can hurt and manipulate, yes.’

‘Girlfriends, you mean?’

‘No, not girlfriends,’ he answered scornfully.

‘You mean … your mother?’ she guessed, as she remembered the odd, strained look on his face when he’d mentioned her.

He shrugged in affirmation but didn’t bother to reply. Hopefully she might take the hint and quit interrogating him.

‘What happened?’

Did she never learn when to leave well enough alone—that her probing questions were unwelcome? ‘What happened happened a long time ago,’ he snapped. ‘So forget it.’

Laura leaned a little closer. ‘But I don’t want to forget it. This is Alex’s grandmother we’re talking about, and one day he may want to know. Won’t you tell me, Constantine? Please?’

What was it about her softly spoken question that sparked a need to reply—to confide about things he had never told another? he wondered, raking his dark hair back from his brow in frustration. He was a man who never confided, who was strong for everyone. The buck stopped with Constantine and it had done for many years, but now words came spilling from his lips like a stream of dark poison.

‘She was years younger than my father—decades, in fact. A beautiful, fragile beauty who bewitched him—and because he was almost fifty when they married her youth and her beauty hit him like a hurricane. When a man has never known passion until late in life it can take him over like a fever.’ He shrugged. ‘He neglected everything in pursuit of a love she was ill-equipped to return—but then she was incapable of loving anyone but herself.’

‘Even you?’ said Laura slowly.

Her question broke into the tumult of his thoughts, but Constantine was in too far to stop now. ‘Even me,’ he answered, and the admission was like a hammer blow—for was there not something almost shameful about admitting that the most fundamental bond of all, between mother and child, had simply not existed in their case? But the precise side of Constantine’s nature meant that he needed to attempt to define it.

‘She was one of those people who did not seem to be of this earth—she was too fey and too delicate, and she did not look after herself,’ he continued. ‘She partied and drank wine instead of eating—smoked cigarettes instead of breathing in the pure Greek air. And when she died her enchantment still did not end—for my father went to pieces. He became one of those men who are obsessed by a ghost and who live in a past which only really exists in their own imagination. It was only when I took over the business properly that I was able to see just how badly he had let things go.’

Laura stared at his hard and beautiful features, transformed now into a mask hardened by pain and memory. So even his father had not been there for him—which explained the lack of closeness between the two men. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said simply.

He turned, angry with her, but far angrier with himself for having unleashed some of the dark secrets of his soul. ‘I do not want your sympathy,’ he snapped.

‘But I think that—’

‘And neither do I want your advice—no matter how well intentioned! You are a woman from humble circumstances who knows nothing of this life of privilege which you have entered solely because you are the mother of my son! And you would do well to remember your place here!’

Laura reached for her sunglasses and rammed them down over her eyes before he could see the tears which were brimming up behind her lids. Remember your place here. How cheap did that make her feel? His words were barely any different from her own thoughts about them occupying different worlds—but, oh, how it hurt to hear them flung at her with such venom. He didn’t like women, she realised—and, while it was easy to see why, it wasn’t going to change, was it? Nothing she said would ever change it.

She saw Alex begin to stir—had their low but angry words wakened him? she wondered guiltily. But her primary feeling was of relief that she would no longer have to endure any more hurt provoked by Constantine’s cruel comments. And she would protect herself from further heartache by staying as far away from him as possible.

‘I think in view of what’s just been said that we should try to avoid each other as much as possible while I’m still here,’ she whispered.

Constantine’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you crazy?’ he questioned silkily, and without warning he splayed his hand over the sun-warmed expanse of her thigh, watching with triumph as her lips parted involuntarily in a soundless little gasp of pleasure. He lowered his voice. ‘We may as well enjoy the one good, satisfactory thing which men and women do give each other. And—just for the record—I’ve done nothing but work in Athens; there have been no other women.’ His black eyes gleamed with predatory anticipation. ‘To be perfectly frank, your passion has left me unable to think of any other woman but you, agape mou.’

‘And should I be flattered by that?’ she questioned bitterly.

‘I think perhaps you should,’ he murmured.

But Laura was already scrambling to her feet and packing up the picnic basket.

‘Oh, and Laura?’ he said softly.

She looked up, some new steely quality in his voice warning her that what he was about to say would be more than another remark about their sexual chemistry. ‘What?’

‘I think it’s about time we told Alex who I really am, don’t you?’

Laura bit her lip. She had known this would happen, and it was happening sooner than she had hoped. But what was the point in delaying any more? Wouldn’t that look as if they were hiding something shameful rather than giving them the opportunity to bond? Just because change was disrupting—and just because Laura was afraid of how telling Alex might affect their lives—it didn’t mean that she could keep putting it off because it suited her.

‘And your father?’ she said softly. ‘He’ll need to know, too. Alex shouldn’t be expected to keep the news to himself.’

In the end, the moment for telling Alex came quite naturally later that afternoon, when the three of them were sitting in the main town square of Livinos. Alex was eating ice-cream—an elaborate concoction of lemon and chocolate curls—and it seemed that every island resident stopped to ruffle his dark curls as they passed by.

‘Why does everyone keep patting my head?’ he questioned, not unhappily. ‘And what do they keep saying to you?’

‘By and large, the Greek people love having children around,’ said Constantine, and Laura felt her heart lurch as she thought about his own mother. But he’s told you quite emphatically that he doesn’t want your sympathy, she reminded herself.

‘Some of the older ones say that you look very much as I did at the same age,’ added Constantine carefully.

‘Do I?’

There was a pause. ‘Very much so,’ said Constantine gruffly, and then he looked across the table at Laura. She nodded. ‘Do you have any idea why that might be?’

To Laura’s surprise, Alex didn’t answer straight away—just glanced from Constantine, to her, and then back to Constantine again. His dark eyes fixed on his father’s face, a look of hope and longing tightening his boyish little features.

‘Are you my daddy?’ he asked.

Had it been the spoonful of ice-cream Alex had insisted on giving him which had caused this damned lump in his throat, making him momentarily incapable of words? Constantine swallowed. ‘Yes, I am,’ he said eventually.

There was no Hollywood movie scene of the son flinging himself onto his father’s lap—that would have been too much in the circumstances. As they began to walk back towards the villa, Laura noticed Alex’s fingers creep up towards the hand of the man by his side. And that Constantine took his son’s little hand and was clasping it firmly, while looking fixedly ahead and blinking furiously, as if some piece of grit had just flown into his eye.

That evening, Constantine—with Laura standing nervously by his side—told his father that the Karantinos family did indeed have an heir, and that he had a grandson.

The old man stared at his son for a long moment and then gave a short laugh. ‘You think I haven’t already guessed that?’ he questioned quietly. ‘That you could bring a young child into this house out of the blue, with some flimsy excuse about him and his mother needing a holiday, a child who is the mirror-image of you at the same age, and that I would not realise that he was yours?’

Laura tried not to stare as she felt emotion build up like a gathering storm. She saw the old man take one tentative step forward, and silently willed the two men to embrace—to try to wipe out some of the heartache and bitterness which had built up between them. But Constantine took a corresponding step backwards—a step so subtle that many people would not have noticed. But Laura noticed. Damn you, Constantine, she thought furiously. Damn you and your hard and unforgiving soul. And his father noticed, too—for the lined face momentarily crumpled before he turned to look at her and nodded.