Constantine's Defiant Mistress Page 9

  Laura’s mouth opened in an ‘oh’ of protest. ‘Never,’ she breathed fiercely, shaking her head so that her hair flew round it like a cloud. ‘Never, ever.’

  ‘A woman who turns on as quickly as you do? I don’t believe you,’ he said with soft scorn.

  ‘Don’t you? Well, that’s your problem, not mine, Constantine—you can believe what you damned well like!’ Injustice bubbled up in her blood to replace the aching fires of frustration. Why should he apportion blame solely to her? Smoothing her hands down over her heated cheeks, she stared at him. ‘You had nothing to do with what just happened, of course—you were just standing there like an innocent while I threw myself at you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t advise that you go down the accusation path,’ he drawled arrogantly. ‘Because when a woman has sent out the unmistakable message that she wants a man to make love to her then I’m afraid that nature has programmed that man to follow through.’

  Laura stilled as she stared at him in horror. Had she? Her heart began to pound anxiously. Maybe she had—though certainly not consciously—and yet wasn’t his reaction to it about as insulting as it was possible to get? As if kissing her had been nothing more than a conditioned response for him, while for her it had been…

  What? Her betraying body shivered with sweet memory. What had it been? Like being transported straight to paradise without stopping? Or—even worse—a reactivation of that passionate longing he had awoken in her the very first time she’d looked into his eyes all those years ago? When she’d believed in love at first sight and had cried for months after he’d gone.

  But such emotion was completely wasted. He doesn’t like you, she reminded herself bitterly—and he certainly doesn’t respect you. For him you’re just another willing body in a long line of willing bodies who have been welcoming him into their arms all his life.

  Once she had been blinded by youth and inexperience and his sheer charisma, and she had willingly fallen into bed with him. But now things were different. She had too much to lose to risk throwing it all away on some feel-good sex which would leave her physically satisfied but emotionally bereft. Sex which he might use against her to paint a black picture of her morals. Or which might prejudice her attempts to have a reasonable relationship with him for the sake of his son.

  ‘Shall we just put it down to experience and make sure it doesn’t happen again?’ she questioned unsteadily.

  Black eyes mocked her. ‘You think it’s that easy? That desire is like a tap you can just turn on and off at will?’

  ‘I think you can try.’

  ‘But I don’t want to try,’ he said softly. ‘And what is more I don’t intend to.’

  Their eyes met in a silent battle of wills, and Laura felt her mouth dry, hating the fact that his thinly veiled threat thrilled her instead of shocking her. ‘I think that…that you’d better leave now while I freshen up and then help get Alex properly unpacked,’ she said. But she couldn’t help noticing the pulse which beat so frantically at his throat as his gaze continued to rake over her in a look of unashamed sexual hunger.

  Laura swallowed as she turned away and walked over to the window, blind to the beauty of the sapphire sea and cerulean sky outside, suddenly realising how difficult this whole situation was going to be. But you’re here as his employee, she reminded herself. So why not remind him of that? Put some space and some barriers between the two of you. Remind yourself that you are most certainly not equals.

  She turned round and fixed the kind of smile to her lips which she gave to the Milmouth office workers when they came into the shop for their lunchtime sandwich. ‘So…what happens next in terms of me starting work?’

  Constantine gave a slow smile. He knew exactly what she was doing—but he recognised that it was a kind of game she was playing. So let her be confronted by the reality of waiting on him and see how she liked that! ‘Tonight you and Alex will eat with Demetra, and she will familiarise you with our customs. She will tell you what she expects from you and answer any questions you might have,’

  ‘You mean…you…won’t be there?’ questioned Laura tentatively.

  ‘No, agape mou,’ he said softly. ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘Out?’ she echoed, aware that she sounded crestfallen. And possessive?

  ‘Indeed I am.’ His black eyes glittered. ‘As your new husband I should not, of course, have dreamt of abandoning you on your first evening. But this was the choice you made, Laura—and you must live with the consequences even if they are not to your liking.’

  ‘At least I can live with my conscience,’ she said tightly.

  ‘Well, bravo for you!’ he mocked, as he finished tucking in his silk shirt. ‘And tomorrow Alex will join me and my father for lunch. The child will meet his grandfather for the first time.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Laura stared at him, suddenly aware of just how little she really knew about him. ‘And…your mother?’

  There was an infinitesimal pause before he spoke. ‘My mother died many years ago,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Laura, interpreting his flat tone as grief, knowing from her own experience that the dead must always be acknowledged, even if the subject sometimes made you feel miserable. ‘What happened?’ she questioned gently.

  ‘She died of pneumonia a long time ago,’ he said, his face stony. ‘But my family history need not concern you, Laura.’

  ‘It’s Alex’s family history, too,’ she reminded him, taken aback by the sudden venom in his tone.

  ‘Then I will discuss such matters with Alex,’ he said. ‘And it’s pointless looking at me with those wounded grey eyes—because as my wife you could have legitimately shared such discussions. As it is there are plenty of other things to occupy you. So why don’t you run along and speak to Demetra.’

  He paused deliberately, enjoying seeing the flush of colour to her cheeks, wanting to rub in the subservience she had insisted on. Wanting to wound her as she had somehow wounded him, though he couldn’t for the life of him work out how. ‘And then prepare to wait on my table,’ he finished cuttingly.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LAURA awoke to that confusing sensation of being in a strange room and not realising quite where she was—until she saw the stripes of bright sunlight shafting in through the bottom of the shutters and felt unaccustomed warm air wafting her body. She was in Greece—on the Karantinos island—and all night long she’d dreamt of Constantine, remembering the coldness in his voice when she’d tried to ask him about his mother, his dismissing her and her questions with a crisp arrogance clearly intended to drive home her reduced status in his household.

  Some time during the night she must have kicked off the crisp cotton sheet, and now she was lying sprawled and exposed in a little nightdress which had ridden up over her hips during her very restless sleep. Which was surprising, given how tired she’d been following a delicious supper eaten with Demetra and her son in the cosy informality of the large kitchen.

  Afterwards she and Alex had gone for a walk around the vast estate, with Demetra’s son, Stavros, acting as their guide. The young Greek student had pointed out all the bright constellations in the night sky and Alex had had the time of his life as a brand-new world of astronomy had opened up for him.

  And then Laura sat bolt upright in bed. Alex! She hadn’t heard a peep out of him all night—when she’d tucked him and Blue Bear up in bed he’d barely been able to murmur goodnight before he was out for the count. What if he’d had nightmares? Got up and gone looking for her? Or wanted a drink and found himself lost in this vast and unknown house?

  Grabbing her matching wrap, she hurried from her room and burst into Alex’s room—to find it completely empty. ‘Alex!’ she gasped.

  ‘He’s outside,’ came a voice from behind her, and she whirled around to find Constantine standing in the doorway of the room—an unfathomable look on his face as he studied her.

  Aware that her hair was unbrushed and her eyes still full of sleep, Laura
blinked. ‘Outside where?’

  ‘By the pool—with Demetra’s son.’

  ‘You mean you left my son—’

  ‘Our son,’ he corrected.

  ‘With someone who’s virtually a stranger—by a swimming pool when he can’t even swim that well!’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake—do you really think I would have placed him in any danger? I’ve known Stavros all his life, and he swims like an eel!’ he snapped. ‘I’ve been with them all morning, and apparently you all had dinner together last night. They’ve been getting along famously. If you hadn’t overslept you could have seen that for yourself.’ His expression darkened. ‘What I want to know is why he can’t damned well swim in the first place?’

  ‘Because…’

  ‘Because what, Laura?’ he queried archly.

  ‘Because—’ Oh, what was the point in hiding anything from him? ‘Well, the lessons were expensive…’ Her voice tailed away as she realised he was looking at her in disbelief.

  ‘Expensive?’ he repeated incredulously.

  She thought he sounded as if he were trying out a new and unknown word. But how could he understand what it was like to have to make every penny count when he had spent a life with an abundance of wealth?

  ‘He has football coaching at the weekends instead,’ she justified. ‘And I couldn’t afford everything.’

  ‘So here we have my son, the pauper,’ he said bitterly. ‘A Karantinos heir living on the breadline!’

  Laura swallowed, suddenly realising how exhausted he looked—as if he hadn’t had a wink of sleep all night. His black eyes were hooded and tired, and the dark shadow at his jaw suggested that he might not yet have shaved. The expensively dressed Greek billionaire was a world away from this barefoot and elemental-looking man in faded jeans and T-shirt who stood in front of her.

  It seemed all too disturbingly intimate and familiar—a glimpse of the old Constantine—and Laura shrank back, suddenly and dangerously aware of his proximity and the fact that while he was fully dressed she was wearing very little. Nothing but a very short wrap over an equally short nightdress that barely came to the middle of her bare thigh. And from the sudden tightening of his features the realisation had begun to dawn on him at precisely the same moment.

  Without another word, Laura turned and walked out of the room and back along the corridor to her own—but to her horror and shameful excitement, she realised that Constantine was right behind her.

  ‘No,’ she whispered ineffectively, as he shut the door behind him and she felt his warm breath on her neck.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said grimly, turning her round as if she were a mannequin in a store window. ‘You should not walk around the house half-naked if you don’t want this particular outcome—nor make big eyes at me and allow your body to tremble with such obvious hunger whenever you come near me.’

  Afterwards, she’d try to tell herself that she had done everything to resist him—but that would be a complete lie. She did nothing. Nothing but stare up at him, her parched lips parting with unashamed yearning, a tiny little whimper of desire escaping from them as he moved closer still. And then it was too late. His kiss was like dynamite, his touch the fire which made it combust—and Laura went up in flames.

  ‘Oh,’ she moaned, clawing at his shoulders as he caught her by the waist and brought her up hard against the aroused cradle of his desire, so that she could feel the shockingly unfamiliar hard ridge of him pressing up against her through his jeans.

  With an uncharacteristic disregard for foreplay, he slid up her nightdress and this time found her bare and ready for him, giving a little groan of delight as he tangled his fingers in her hair and then greedily delved inside her honeyed moistness as she gasped out her fevered response. He closed his eyes helplessly as she swayed against him, her hips moving with sudden instinct against his fingers.

  Laura clung to him, her love-starved body hungry for his kiss and for everything else she knew he could give her. His fingers were moving purposefully between her legs now, and he was driving his mouth down on hers in a kiss which quite literally took her breath away—a kiss she never wanted to end.

  And then she felt a change taking place in her body; the rhythm of his fingers was changing pace—quickening against her blossoming heat. She felt the wild beat of her heart—the momentary lull before she tumbled over—her body spasming helplessly against his hand, his kiss silencing her little gasps of fulfilment as she slumped weakly against him until the last of her orgasm died away.

  ‘Constantine,’ she breathed eventually, her cheeks flushed and her heart beating fast. ‘Oh, Constantine.’

  ‘I want you,’ he whispered fiercely into her ear. He guided her hand to lie over the achingly hard ridge in his jeans. ‘Feel how much I want you.’

  And she wanted him, too. But it was broad daylight in the middle of the morning, and she had responsibilities which were far more urgent that the siren call of her body. ‘N-Not now…’ The words stumbled out of her mouth. ‘A-And not here. We can’t. You know we can’t.’

  Through the dark, erotic mists of his desire came her unsteady voice of reason. At first he tried to ignore it—but something at its very heart made Constantine still and pull his lips away from hers, to stare down into the flushed confusion of her face, the tumbled gold of her unbrushed hair.

  His heart was thundering so powerfully he could barely think, let alone speak. ‘You think that it is right to deny me pleasure now that you have taken your own? Is that right?’

  Dumbly, she shook her head.

  Fuelled by a savage wave of frustration, he felt the slow flare of anger begin to burn. ‘You think you can keep tantalising me and that I will be like a tame puppy who will just keep trotting behind you and taking whatever it is that you dish out to me? Letting you turn me down, time and time again—so that I can’t sleep at night for thinking about your pale, curved body? Taking me so far with your sweet, soft promise and then acting outraged? Is that what men usually let you do, Laura?’

  She was too busy catching her breath to rise to the taunt.

  ‘Have you become a tease, Laura?’ he persisted.

  Her lips were trembling, ‘No. No.’

  ‘Just a woman who promises so much, who lets a man touch her so intimately and then freezes up? If that isn’t your definition of a tease, then I’d like to know what is.’

  Frustratedly, she shook her head—knowing that he spoke nothing but the truth. She was acting like a naïve little virgin around him, when they both knew she was anything but. The kind of woman who would let a man only go so far…Was that because she thought that her continued resistance to full-on sex might make him respect her? When just one look at the contemptuous mask of his features proved that respect was the very last thing he was feeling?

  And what of her own desires? Hadn’t she been living like a nun for the past eight years? Though it had not felt like denial because no one had moved her to passion. But Constantine had. Constantine still did. It was all there for the taking if only she could accept that it would just be no-strings sex.

  ‘I’m not saying I don’t want you—how could I when I’ve just proved the very opposite?’ she whispered. ‘Just not now and not here—when Alex might come back from the pool and start looking for me.’

  His unyielding expression did not alter. ‘So, when?’

  Laura could have wept. How matter-of-fact he sounded. It had taken a lot for her to say that, and yet it was as if the significance of her declaration was irrelevant and all he wanted was to pin her down to a time and a place. Her breath came out in a shuddering sigh, but she knew that she couldn’t back out of it now, even if she wanted to.

  ‘Come to me tonight,’ she whispered. ‘Late. When the house is quiet and when I know for sure that Alex is asleep.’

  He felt the urgent leap of anticipation at his groin and he stared deep into the storm clouds of her eyes. Taking her slender waist between his hands, he bent his head to graze his lips over hers,
feeling her tremble as he did so. Had she learnt somewhere along the way that a woman’s most effective weapon was resistance? Was that why she had applied it so effectively, making him desire her with a power which set his blood on fire for her?

  And yet with Laura it did not feel like a game she was playing with him in an attempt to ensnare him. This felt real—as if she was fighting herself as well as fighting him.

  ‘I shall spend the whole day thinking about it, agape mou,’ he murmured. ‘Imagining you naked in my arms. Pinned beneath my body as I drive into you over and over again. Yes, I will come to you tonight.’ He smiled as he brushed an indolent finger over her trembling lips. ‘Now, hurry up and get dressed before I change my mind about waiting.’

  With a mounting feeling of disbelief, Laura watched as he left the room, hugging her flimsy little wrap closer to her still flushed and trembling body.

  She felt calmer after she’d showered and dressed and pulled on the floral pinafore Demetra had given her to wear. Not the most flattering garment in the world—but that wasn’t supposed to be its function, was it?

  She stared at her rather drab image in the mirror. It was stupid to feel ashamed of waitressing when it was a job she had done with pride and efficiency during many periods of her adult life. But this felt different, and maybe that was because it was. She was going to have to wait on the father of her child and pretend that he meant nothing to her.

  Shutting the door quietly behind her, Laura went outside to find Alex splashing around with Stavros in the shallow end of an enormous swimming pool.

  ‘Mum!’ he yelled. ‘Look! Stavros is teaching me breaststroke!’

  Laura smiled as the seal-dark wet head of the student emerged from the water. ‘Thank you, Stavros.’

  The student grinned as he gestured for Alex to come forward. ‘I like to teach, and he shows promise. Young children learn quickly. Come, Alex, show your mama what you can do.’

  Alex doggy-paddled over to the edge of the pool and stared up at her, and Laura’s heart turned over as she saw the look of pure joy on his little face. ‘Don’t get tired, will you, darling?’ she said.