Constantine's Defiant Mistress Read online

  ‘Constantine!’ she gasped.

  He kissed her to shut her up—but also because he wanted to kiss her. Needed to kiss her. To punish her and to make her hurt as he was hurting. But the kiss didn’t stay that way—infuriatingly, it transformed itself into a terrible aching hunger which could be eased in only one way. He tore his mouth away and shuddered out a harsh entreaty.

  ‘Undo my jeans.’

  Laura didn’t even hesitate before she tremblingly obeyed—indeed, she thought that she might have been scrabbling at his belt even before that terse instruction had been whispered in her ear.

  She gasped again as she freed him—marvelling at the sheer power of him. He looked and felt so big and so erect in her tiny hand as she stroked on the condom he gave her. And then he began impatiently to tug at the jeans, until they had slithered down to his ankles. He didn’t even bother to kick them off. Instead, he just lifted her up, as if she were made of cotton wool, bringing her down deep onto his aching shaft and kissing her again with a fierce hunger—sensing that her shuddering little cries of fulfilment were only minutes away. As were his. A few ecstatic movements of her hips and he was groaning into her mouth as he felt himself spasming against her own honeyed contractions.

  Afterwards, she collapsed against him, burying her head on his shoulder, willing the tears not to come, and wondering why everything felt so confused. Why had he done this—and why had she let him? Registering that sex had a dark power which managed to distort what had seemed such a straightforward decision, she found herself wondering if she had been wrong to tell him she was leaving.

  If he asks me again to stay, then I might just say yes, she thought weakly—but the next thing she knew was Constantine firmly lifting her off him.

  ‘Straighten your clothes,’ he said abruptly as he began to pull up the zip of his jeans. He hated his weakness around her—the way he couldn’t seem to resist her when every logical pore in his formidable body told him that it should be easy. Would she see this as another little triumph? he wondered bitterly. Another perfect demonstration of how she had the powerful Constantine Karantinos eating out of her hand?

  ‘I’ll leave you to find your own way back,’ he finished, raking angry fingers back through the tousled waves of his black hair.

  And then he was gone, and Laura could hardly believe what had just taken place. How she could have let him arrive and just…do that to her? But she had let him. More than let him—had squirmed with pleasure and enjoyed every erotic second of it—so if Constantine had now lost all respect for her as a woman then she had only herself to blame.

  But in a way her orgasm had emptied her of all feeling and all emotion—and at least that made the last preparations for her departure bearable. So that she was able to chat excitedly to Alex about the conkers which would be on the autumn trees in England—ignoring the morose set of his little face in response. Only once did her composure threaten to buckle, and that was when Constantine clasped his son in a hug which went on and on.

  Then he ruffled the little boy’s dark curls and smiled. ‘I’ll come and see you soon in England,’ he said.

  Alex’s crumpled face was turned upwards, as if he had just seen the first light in a dark sky. ‘When?’

  ‘How does next month sound?’

  ‘Oh, it sounds wonderful, Papa.’

  The helicopter blades whirred round and round, and Laura glanced out of the window to see Constantine staring up intently at his son. She felt a real pang of remorse. Was she doing a wrong and selfish thing by taking Alex back to England? Yet how many women would willingly trap themselves on an island this size with a man who didn’t love them?

  The island retreated as the craft took off, but Constantine stood there long after the black speck had grown smaller and smaller and then finally disappeared, his shoulders bowed with the weight of something too painful to analyse.

  Something which made all the Karantinos billions fade into pale insignificance.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  AS THE last of Alex’s footsteps died away, Laura closed the front door and let out a long sigh of something which felt like relief. Please let him have a nice day with my sister, she prayed silently. Please remove some of the inevitable disappointment which has clouded my son’s face since returning home from Greece last week. A week which had felt more like a year.

  It was strange to be back in England, and even stranger to be back in their small flat which no longer seemed to feel like home. And why was that? she wondered guiltily. Because it was small and poky after the vast Karantinos villa? Or because the powerful presence of Constantine was absent—making the place seem soulless?

  ‘I miss my papa,’ Alex had told her on more than one occasion—in a way which tore at Laura’s conscience.

  And, so do I, she thought. So do I. A decision she had made for all the best reasons was now proving to be unbearable—and it seemed that she had no one in the world to turn to or confide in.

  Because even Sarah seemed to have moved on. Her sister had been hurtling up to London at every opportunity to see Matthius—the cousin of the Greek student Constantine had roped in to help while Laura had been away. It seemed that like Demetra, Mattius was also a member of the Constantine Karantinos fan-club, having convinced Sarah that the billionaire was only arrogant and cold to the many people who wanted something from him—but that to friends and family he was loyalty personified.

  For Laura, who was trying desperately hard to put the Greek tycoon from her mind, this was the last thing she wanted or needed to hear. Was it her stricken face which had made Sarah offer to take Alex out for the day? Or the fact that she couldn’t seem to settle to anything and was driving everyone mad?

  Whatever the reason, it was very kind of her sister, and Laura knew it was good for Alex to have something to occupy his thoughts other than the life he had left behind on Livinos. But the free day yawned emptily ahead of her, and Laura found herself wondering how she was going to fill the aching hours ahead when she heard a loud banging on the door. She ran back into the hall to throw it open with more than a little relief.

  ‘Now what have you forgotten—?’ she began to say, but the words died on her lips when she saw who was standing there. Not Alex. Nor Sarah. But…

  Constantine?

  Laura swallowed, shaking her head a little, blinking back the stupid sting of disbelieving tears as she stared up at him. She’d been thinking about him non-stop. Dreaming about him constantly. Her thoughts about him had driven her half mad and her heart had been unable to stop aching—so that for a moment it just felt like an extension of all her desires that he would somehow magically appear. As if the man who stood in front of her wasn’t real. As if he couldn’t be real.

  But he was. Laura stared at the formidable physique of Constantine Karantinos—standing on her doorstep, with his dark hair all windswept and a look on his face she had never seen before. Had she forgotten just how gorgeous he was? How strong and how vital? How he could dominate a space simply by existing in it?

  ‘Constantine,’ she breathed, and her heart began to pound with frantic yearning. She wanted to touch him. To throw her arms around him. To whisper her fingertips wonderingly along the hard, proud line of his jaw—as if only touch alone would convince her that he was really here. ‘Wh-what are you doing here?’ she questioned.

  It was then that she realised. Of course! He had come to see his son. Their heartbreaking farewell on the airstrip must have made him vow to come and see Alex earlier than he had intended. And even though she would have liked some warning that he was about to appear, so that she wouldn’t have answered the door in a scruffy old pair of jeans and a T-shirt which had seen better days, she managed a brisk kind of smile.

  Think of Alex, she told herself—he’s the one who matters.

  So she was able to look up at him with genuine regret. ‘Oh, what a pity. Alex has just gone out.’

  ‘I know he has.’

  She looked at him blankly. ‘Yo
u do?’

  ‘Yes. I rang Sarah this morning and asked her if she would take him out for the day.’

  ‘You rang Sarah?’ she repeated. ‘And she…agreed?’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  Laura blinked at him in confusion. It was true that her sister no longer seemed to think that he was the devil incarnate—but agreeing to Constantine’s request behind her back sounded awfully like collusion, and…and…Well, it threw up all kinds of questions. ‘But why?’ she whispered.

  He raised his dark brows in sardonic query. ‘Do you want me to tell you when I’m standing on the doorstep?’

  Registering the faintly reprimanding tone of his question, she pulled the door open wider. ‘No. No, of course not. Come in.’ But as he passed her she had to clutch the door handle to balance herself—his very proximity was producing a terrible wave of weakness and longing which threatened to destabilise her.

  He was standing in their cramped little hallway—making it look even smaller, if that were possible—and Laura shook her head uncomprehendingly. Because if he wasn’t here to see Alex, then…then…

  ‘Please tell me why you’re here,’ she said, her voice a whisper as thready as her erratic heartbeat.

  His black gaze was calculating. ‘No ideas at all, Laura?’

  Numbly, she shook her head, and it was then that Constantine realised that there was no easy way to do this—or she wasn’t going to make it easy for him—and maybe that was the way it should be. Maybe he too needed to experience doubt and uncertainty, as well as the fear that she might reject him again.

  But words describing feelings didn’t come easy when you’d spent a lifetime avoiding them—and for a moment he felt like a man who had found himself on a raft in the middle of the ocean, unsure of which direction to take. He sucked air into lungs which suddenly felt empty.

  ‘I have thought about everything you said that last night. About love and about the past.’ He saw the way she was staring at him, her pale face fierce, chewing on her bottom lip the way she always did when she was concentrating hard. ‘And the impact of both those things on the present and the future.’ There was a pause. ‘They were things I didn’t want to hear,’ he whispered. ‘Things I tried to block my ears to. But somehow—I couldn’t do it. And when my anger had died away, I realised that you were right. That I needed to forgive my father—and in a way I needed to forgive my mother, too.’

  ‘Constantine—’

  ‘So that’s what I’ve come to tell you. That I have. I have had a long talk with my father and told him…’

  Momentarily his voice tailed away, and Laura lifted up her hand. ‘You don’t…have to tell me if you don’t want to,’ she whispered, seeing the pain of memory etched on his hard features and finding that it was hurting her, too.

  ‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong. You see, I do, Laura. I need to tell you plenty of things—just as I did my father.’ He sucked in another breath—because although Constantine was a brave man, opening up his heart to her like this took courage of a different kind. ‘I told him that it was now time for us to be a true father and son to each other—and for him to be a grandfather to Alex.’

  Laura nodded as his sudden appearance at last began to make sense. She guessed what was coming. He was going to ask her to take Alex back to Greece, to help facilitate his relationship with his father—a man too old and infirm to travel great distances. And, although it wasn’t ideal, Laura knew she was going to say yes. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t offering her the dream ticket of love with marriage—she’d settle for whatever she could get. For everyone’s sake. Because she’d had a chance to live the alternative—a life without Constantine—and that life was bleak. Like a vase which was permanently empty of flowers. And didn’t she have more than enough love to go round—for all of them? Couldn’t she perhaps show him how to love—with the hope that one day he might be able to give a little love back to her? Was it pathetic of her to be prepared to settle for that?

  ‘That sounds perfect,’ she agreed.

  Constantine’s eyes narrowed. ‘Does it?’ he questioned, and suddenly his voice sounded harsh. ‘Not to me, it doesn’t.’

  And now a very real fear lanced through her. Perhaps he wasn’t asking her to marry him at all—hadn’t he already asked her twice and she’d turned him down? Would a proud man like this really ask her a third time? Why, she was probably being completely arrogant in not accepting that deep down he’d been delighted to see the back of her. ‘Why not?’ she breathed painfully.

  He stared at her. The bare feet. The shapeless jeans—and a T-shirt which Demetra would probably have used to polish the tiles with. It was inconceivable that such a woman as Laura had captured his heart, but captured it she had—and so tightly that at this moment it was threatening to burst right out of his chest. Her physical ensnarement of him had never been in any doubt—but her purity and loyalty to him as a lover thrilled him to the very core of his being. As did her fierce determination to protect her son, and her admirable refusal to accept his offer of marriage, showing him that she was not a woman who could be bought by his colossal wealth.

  ‘Because I have been a fool,’ he declared hotly. ‘I have failed to see what was right beneath my very nose—that you, Laura, are the woman who makes me laugh, who challenges me. The woman who is not afraid to tell me the truth. Who kisses more sweetly than I ever thought it possible to kiss. Who makes diamonds look dull and starlight seem mediocre.’

  He drew a ragged breath, knowing that he had still not gone far enough—but admitting love for the first time in his life was hard for a man who had only ever seen warped examples of that emotion.

  He stared at her, his heart pounding in his chest, aware as he looked at her that if he said it he had to mean it. Really mean it. And suddenly it was easy.

  ‘You are the woman I love,’ he said softly. ‘I love you, Laura. I love you so much.’

  ‘Oh, Constantine…’ she breathed, scarcely able to believe what he was saying to her. But just one look at the incredible tension on his beautiful face told her that every word was true.

  ‘But the question is do you love me?’ he demanded.

  Was he crazy? ‘Yes—yes!’

  ‘As fiercely as I do you?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’

  ‘Then for the third time of asking—and because I am finally running out of patience—will you please marry me, Laura?’

  Her smile broke out, so wide it felt as if it would split her face in two. ‘Yes! Oh, God, yes. I love you. I love you, Constantine! I’ve loved you for so long that I don’t know any other way—but, oh, I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to actually be able to say it out loud!’

  ‘Promise me you’ll never stop saying it,’ he declared, amazed at his own need to hear it.

  ‘Oh, I won’t—my sweet, darling Constantine.’

  He pulled her into his arms, and this time he really did destabilise her, for her knees gave way—but Constantine was holding onto her as tightly as could be as he began to kiss her. And this kiss was different from any other they had ever shared. It was tender and healing as well as passionate, and it sealed their love properly—ending all twists and turns along the way which had brought them here to this point.

  And if it was a kiss which was mingled with their tears—then didn’t that somehow make it sweeter and more precious still?

  EPILOGUE

  THE wedding took place in Greece—with Sarah as brides-maid and Alex carrying two platinum rings on a little cushion. Knowing the sensibilities of young boys, Laura had told him that he didn’t have to be involved in the ceremony, but Alex had insisted. He was so happy, Laura realised—blissfully contented that his mother and his father were going to be married at last.

  It was a small ceremony, with a big party afterwards, and because it was held on the island it meant that the press could be kept largely in check. Unexpectedly, the message of congratulations which brought most satisfaction to bride and groom was sent by
the supermodel formerly known as Ingrid Johansson, who was now Mrs Ingrid Rockefeller, and living in luxury in the centre of Manhattan. It read:

  You did me a favour, alskling—I have now a man who adores me, and we were married last month.

  Laura had long ago realised that Constantine had already finished with the supermodel when she had burst into his life again, but it gladdened her heart to know that the Swedish beauty was happy.

  Sarah had landed herself a place at art school in London, and was planning a new life for herself there. So they’d sold their bakery shop and the flat for a very respectable sum which had gone towards buying her an apartment near her college. And Sarah—after a little persuasion—had allowed Laura and Constantine to pay off the balance of her new home.

  ‘You’ve helped me for years,’ Laura had told her fiercely. ‘So please let me pay back something for all your time and kindness.’

  It was decided that Alex would go to the school on Livinos until he was old enough to continue his studies on the mainland—just as his father had done. And, as well as taking an intensive course in Greek, Laura was planning to open a bakery on the island. Demetra had moaned about the lack of a bread shop often enough, and Laura recognised that she had a real gift for making a small business work. Two local women had been employed to help her, and if other babies came along—well, then Laura knew there were heaps of people she could call on.

  But for now the shop gave her a role and a purpose on Livinos—it meant that she was more than just Constantine’s new wife, and that was important to her. And, she suspected, to him. One of the reasons he had fallen in love with her—so he told her on their wedding night—was because she was so proud and independent. She was the only woman he’d ever known who hadn’t coveted diamonds.