The Wealthy Greek's Contract Wife(29)

There was no need for Lizzie to act as she turned to her husband and gave him a speaking look of gratitude for his intervention.

‘Love? I thought that was something you'd foresworn.'

Tino was like a dog with its teeth into something it wasn't going to release, Lizzie recognized.

‘So did I,' Ilios agreed. ‘Until I met Lizzie.'

As he spoke he turned towards her, smiling tenderly down into her eyes,   reaching out to take hold of her hand, rubbing his thumb gently over  her  skin in a gesture that both caressed and reassured.

‘And married her with such speed that you didn't even have time to invite anyone to the wedding.'

Tino was suspicious, Lizzie felt sure. Her hand trembled against   Ilios's, and the look she gave him mirrored what she was feeling.

‘I didn't want to risk losing her,' Ilios responded, still smiling down at her. ‘I never want to lose her.'

As he spoke he bent his head and kissed her, his actions taking Lizzie   by surprise. She knew that Ilios was putting on an act for his cousin,   but still she had not expected this. Beneath his, her own lips softened   and clung. Without intending to do so she placed her hand on his arm  and  moved closer to him, her whole body succumbing to her love for him,   yearning toward him. Beneath the silk of her dress she could feel her   nipples firming and aching, desire stirring and then quickening in the   pit of her stomach. Unable to stop herself, she lifted her hand from  his  arm to his face, tracing the line of his jaw with achingly longing   fingertips.

Ilios lifted his mouth from hers, causing Lizzie to open her eyes and   look up at him. Her hand trembled against his skin, betraying her   emotions, and her chest lifted with the demand from her lungs for extra   oxygen. The words I want you so much and Let's go home formed inside  her  head, but had to be denied speech.

‘So, how did the two of you meet?'

Tino's voice was an unwanted intrusion, reminding Lizzie of her real   role, as a paid-for pretend wife. She compared all the pain that that   brought her with the impossible fantasy she longed for. A fantasy in   which Ilios really did love, really had meant what he had just said,   really had meant the way he had just kissed her …

‘Fate brought us together, Tino,' Ilios answered his cousin, continuing, ‘Now, if you'll excuse us … ?'

Ilios was drawing her away, his hand resting against the hollow of her   back as he guided her towards Ariadne Constantin-the woman who had   smiled at her earlier.





Chapter Fourteen



LIZZIE had to wait until she and Ilios were in the car and on their way   home, having arranged to have dinner with the Constantins later in the   week, to tell him, ‘You were right about your cousin. It would be   impossible to entrust the future of your sons to him. Do you think he   believed what you said about us?'

‘I certainly hope so,' Ilios answered.

Because he wanted to get rid of her, of course.

Ilios was annoyed with himself. Lizzie's admission that she had been   wrong about his cousin had reminded him of her earlier warnings about   the vulnerability of his children should anything happen to him. Why   should he be concerned about what she thought? Why should the dangerous   thought that Lizzie would be a good mother find its way into his head?   He knew he had made the right decision with regard to his own life, and   Lizzie could have as many children as she wanted just so long as they   weren't his.

‘I'll say goodnight,' Lizzie told him at the apartment, as she went to   put away her coat. ‘After all, I'm sure you have work you want to do.'

Why had she said that? Ilios wasn't stupid-just the opposite, in fact.   He was very perceptive, and he was bound to hear the acid note in her   voice and guess that she was deliberately needling him. She held her   breath, waiting for him to challenge her, but instead he turned away   from her, leaving her feeling relieved that her reckless behaviour   hadn't provoked any comeback.

In the dressing room of the master bedroom she hung up her coat and   warned herself that if he had demanded an explanation of her comment, he   might easily have worked out that it had been provoked by her longing   for him to take her to bed again, for his love.

It was all because of that kiss he had given her earlier in the   evening-the way it had made her ache with the pain of her unrequited   love for him.


In the living room Ilios opened his laptop. Lizzie was right, he did   have work to do-and, as he had discovered many years ago, for him work   wasn't just the panacea that stopped all his pain, it was also his most   constant and trusted companion, his closest ally in the fight to remain   independent of all human emotional demands. It sustained and supported   him, and he knew that within seconds of studying the screen in front  of  him all thoughts of Lizzie Wareham and the unwanted emotions she  aroused  within him would disappear.                       
       
           



       

Only they didn't. No matter how hard he focussed on the screen, all he could see was Lizzie's image inside his head.

What was going on? Whatever it was, he didn't want it, Ilios thought   savagely. There was no place in his life for it-or for her. But the   harder he clung to that thought, to his denial of what he really wanted,   the more his body ached for Lizzie. His body. That was all. That was   all it was-a physical desire conjured up out of a lack of regular sex   and the fact that he was sharing his living space with a woman. Any   woman would have had the same effect on him. Any woman? Then why was it   her image he could see inside his head, her body he ached to hold, her   love for which he now hungered?

No. He categorically refused to accept the thought that had somehow   slipped into his head. If he wanted anything from her then it was merely   sex. Nothing more.

Prove it, an inner voice challenged him. Go to her now and take her in   your arms, hold her and caress her and prove that when you do those   things all you feel is a clinical sexual response, without anything   emotional to pollute its physical purity.

Ilios looked towards the door. This was ridiculous. He didn't have   anything to prove to anyone-least of all himself. But somehow he was on   his feet and heading towards the master bedroom.

Lizzie was just getting into bed when the door opened and Ilios strode into the room.

‘I thought that tonight I'd have an early night myself,' he told her, before disappearing into the dressing room.

Lying beneath the bedclothes, her stomach quivering with a mixture of   uncertainty and excitement, Lizzie tried to breathe normally and relax,   warning herself that Ilios probably hadn't meant anything other than   exactly what he had said.

There was no need for him to do this, Ilios assured himself, as he stood under the jets of the shower.

Was he afraid that he couldn't prove what he had claimed? that inner voice goaded him.

No! Ilios denied. He stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel.   If she hadn't touched his face and looked at him the way she had  earlier  on this evening, when he'd been forced to put on that display  of newly  married bliss for Tino, then this wouldn't be happening. He  wouldn't be  aching the way he was for her now. No? If that was all that  had made him  ache for her, then what was his excuse for the fact that  he had ached  for her in the same way every night since that first time?

It was sex-that was all. Sex.

He flung down the towel. There was still time to stop this, still time   to walk away and to use his will-power to silence the voice inside him.

There might still be time, but where was the desire? That, Ilios acknowledged as he opened the bedroom door, was all for Lizzie.

She was lying on Ilios's side of the bed. How could she have forgotten?

‘I'm on your side of the bed,' she told him as he came towards her. ‘I'll move over.'

‘Why?' Ilios asked her softly. ‘When we're going to be sharing the same space?'

Lizzie felt her heart give a gigantic thump, and then her body filled   with an anticipatory pleasure that poured through her like melted honey.

That was nothing compared with what she felt when Ilios got into the bed   and drew her close to him. Like her, he was naked, and the feel of his   skin against hers was a sensual caress almost beyond bearing.

This shouldn't be happening. Not now, when she knew that she loved him.   It had been different before, but now … Now she was deceiving him, taking   from him something he would not want to give her. Ilios was touching   her, stroking his fingertips down the sensitive flesh of her inner arm   and making her shudder openly in responsive pleasure. Lizzie lifted her   own hand to his shoulder, intending to tell him they must stop, but   somehow the sensation of the warm, firm ball of male sinew and muscle   beneath her touch overwhelmed her good intentions, seducing away her   will-power to do anything other than give in to her own need.