The Wealthy Greek's Contract Wife(18)

Lizzie could feel the prickle of the nervous sweat breaking out on her   skin. This couldn't go on. If it did she might well end up doing   something she would not only regret but which would cause her   humiliation and shame. She felt sick with anxiety. She could not share a   bed with him. She simply didn't trust herself to be able to do so   without giving in to temptation. Even if by some miracle she could   control herself whilst she was awake, who knew what might happen whilst   she was asleep? It was horribly easy for her to imagine herself moving   closer to him, seeking his body in her sleep, wanting him, and then   waking to find herself touching him.

She drew in a shuddering breath of despair. ‘I really don't think that we should share a bed,' she told Ilios carefully.

She could see immediately that he didn't like what she was saying.

‘Why not?' Ilios demanded. Had she somehow guessed that she aroused him,   despite his determination not to admit that even to himself? Did she   think that she was so desirable, so irresistible, and he so weak that he   wouldn't be able to stop himself from turning that arousal into   something more intimate?                       
       
           



       

‘I just don't think that it would be a good idea,' Lizzie responded, wishing desperately that he would stop pressing her.

‘Because you dare to imagine that I might desire you?' Ilios accused   her. ‘Despite what I have already said about there being no intimacy   between us?'

‘No,' Lizzie denied immediately. ‘It isn't that.'

‘Then what is it?'

‘I'm afraid I can't say.'

‘And I am afraid that you are going to have to-or take the consequences,' Ilios warned her quietly.

Lizzie exhaled very slowly. What he meant was that she was going to have   to share his bed unless she came up with a cast-iron reason why she   should not do. Her reason might be solid, but her courage certainly   wasn't. Of all the unwanted situations she could have had to face, this   had to be the worst of them. She was now in a position where she had to   defend herself from her own desire for a man who didn't want her by   revealing that desire to him. It was her only means of protecting   herself from it.

She had never felt more vulnerable or self-conscious, but the truth was   that she needed Ilios's help to stop her from making her situation even   worse. Once he was aware how she felt, she knew he would take all the   steps necessary to ensure temptation was removed out of her way.   Desperate situations called for desperate measures, and there was surely   no more desperate measure than the one she was going to have to take   now. Rather like firefighters tackling a fire that threatened to destroy   everything in its path, she was going to have to create a fire-break  by  deliberately destroying part of her own defences in the hope that  doing  so would ultimately protect her from herself.

‘It isn't your desire that worries me,' she told him truthfully, deliberately emphasising the word ‘your'.





Chapter Eight



LIZZIE'S admission was so unexpected, so breathtakingly straightforward   and honest, that it took several seconds for Ilios to accept exactly   what she had said.

He looked at her, watching the way the colour came and went in her face,   seeing the bruised look of misery that shadowed her eyes, and  something  came to life inside him that he didn't recognise.

Why didn't he say something-anything? Lizzie thought anxiously, even if it was just to reject her.

However, when he did speak it was slowly, spacing out the words.

‘Are you trying to tell me that you don't want to share my bed because you want me?' he asked in disbelief.

Lizzie's throat had gone so tight that it ached with her tension.

‘Yes. That is, I think I do. I'm not used to feeling … that is to   wanting … I've never actually lusted after anyone before,' she admitted,   red-faced.

‘"Lusted after"?'

Now Lizzie could see that she had shocked him.

‘I'm sorry!' she apologised. ‘I didn't want it to happen, but now you   can see, can't you, how difficult it would be? I've really tried not   to … to think about it, but sometimes it just sort of overwhelms me. I'm   afraid that if we were to share a bed, then … Well, what I mean is I know   that you don't want anything to happen between us. I didn't want to  have  to say anything.'

She gave a small twisted smile, whilst Ilios listened to her with a growing sense of incredulity and disbelief.

‘What woman would?' Lizzie continued self-deprecatingly. ‘But at least   now that you do know, I can rely on you to … to help me … to ensure   that-well, that nothing happens.'

Ilios could hardly believe his own ears. Was she really standing there   and telling him that she wouldn't share his bed because she was afraid   that the sexual temptation of his proximity would be too much for her   self-control? Did she really think that he was the kind of man who would   allow a woman to play the role of hunter in the chase between the   sexes? Immediately Ilios wished he had not used such a metaphor, because   it had somehow or other caused some very sensual images indeed to  break  loose inside his imagination-images that were having exactly the   opposite effect on him he assumed Lizzie had expected her admission to   have.

Her head bowed, Lizzie admitted, ‘I know you must be shocked. I was   shocked too. That was part of the reason why I didn't want to agree to   marry you.'

‘You knew then?' Ilios challenged her.

Lizzie swallowed against the painful lump of anguish lodged in her   throat. I knew the minute I saw you, she could have said. But of course   she mustn't.

‘I knew that there was something … ' she told him carefully. ‘But I thought it would go away.'                       
       
           



       

‘And it didn't?'

She shook her head. ‘I thought that I could fight against it, that it   would be like fighting the hurdles I had to overcome when our parents   died, and I will, only at the moment, after tonight and the champagne, I   just don't think … '

‘So it's only tonight that you don't want to spend in my bed?'

‘No, it's not just tonight.'

‘So it isn't just the champagne either?'

Lizzie couldn't speak. She couldn't look at him, and she couldn't run   from him either. All she could do was simply shake her head.

‘I'd be lying if I said that I'd never been propositioned by a woman   before, and I'd be lying even more if I said that I'd either welcomed or   enjoyed the experience,' Ilios told her abruptly. ‘As far as I'm   concerned, I'm a man who does his own hunting, who selects the woman he   wants and pursues her-not the other way around.'

Lizzie's head came up. ‘I wasn't propositioning you,' she denied   fiercely. ‘I was just trying to explain-to warn you.' When he made no   response she continued determinedly, ‘I could sleep in the guest room,   and then in the morning … '

Ilios was shaking his head.

‘No. Now that I am aware of the situation you may rest assured that you   can safely leave it to me to take the right steps to deal with it. That   was what you wanted, after all, wasn't it? For me to take  responsibility  for the situation?'

‘Yes,' Lizzie was forced to agree.

‘Right. I have some work to do-costings to check-and some e-mails to   send. So why don't you make yourself at home in what will now be our   bedroom and stop worrying? It is a husband's duty to protect his wife,   is it not?' Ilios's whole manner was dismissive, and indicated that he   no longer felt the issue worthy of discussion.

‘I'm not your wife-and anyway, a lot of women would take exception to   the idea that they might need to be protected,' Lizzie felt bound to   point out.

‘This is Greece,' Ilios told her firmly. ‘And you are both worrying needlessly and imagining problems where none need exist.'

If she did go to bed now, with any luck she would be asleep before Ilios   came to join her. In all probability that was why he was staying up to   do some work, Lizzie reflected, as she picked up her coat and nodded  in  acknowledgement of what he had said.

Ilios's bedroom was twice the size of the guest suite, with both a   bathroom and a wetroom attached to it. Not that Lizzie allowed herself   to spend any more time than was absolutely necessary in the modern   bathroom, with its limestone floor and walls, and its huge bowl-shaped   bath.