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The Wealthy Greek's Contract Wife(8)

By:Penny Jordan


‘To your lover?' Ilios challenged her.

‘No! I don't have a lover!' Lizzie denied immediately.

The dark eyebrows rose. ‘Such a vehement, almost shocked denial-and yet   surely it is perfectly natural that a woman of your age should have a   man in her life and her bed. You are what? Twenty-four? Twenty-five?   After all, you can hardly still be a virgin.'

‘Of course not. And I'm twenty-seven,' Lizzie told him.

Of course not. But her last sexual relationship-her only sexual   relationship, in fact-had been when she had been at university. And it   had existed more because it was the done thing than because she and the   boy in question had envisaged spending the rest of their lives  together.  Things had been different then. She had been young, and life  had been  fun. Fun had died out of her life with the loss of her  parents.

‘And I wasn't shocked. It's simply that I have more important things to think about than men.'

‘Such as?'

‘My family-my sisters and my nephews. It is actually the boys I need to   text. I promised them I would because I won't be there to read their   bedtime story-it would have been my turn tonight.' Emotion choked   Lizzie's voice. ‘My family are far more important to me than any man   ever could be. I have to put them first. They depend on me, and I can't   let them down. They matter far more to me than some … some fleeting  sexual  pleasure.'

Automatically Ilios wanted to reject, to push away and in fact deny his   awareness of the emotion in Lizzie's voice when she spoke of her  family.  There was no place for that kind of sentiment in his present  life or in  his plans for his future life. Nor would there ever be.

‘If your only experience of sexual pleasure has been fleeting then it is   hardly surprising it doesn't bother you to give it up,' he told Lizzie   coolly instead. ‘A good lover makes it his business to make his   partner's pleasure as enduring as she wishes it to be.'

‘That's easy to say,' Lizzie responded, desperate to try to hold her own   and appear as nonchalant as Ilios himself. The reality was that his   casual observation was having an intense and unwanted effect on her. It   was making her ask questions of herself that she knew she could not   answer. Questions such as what would it be like to be Ilios Manos's   lover?

‘And I assure you easy to do, when one knows how,' Ilios came back   slipping the comment up under Lizzie's guard and drawing a soft gasp of   choked reaction from her.

Of course Ilios Manos would be an experienced lover. Of course he would   know exactly how to please his partner-even if that partner was an   untutored as she was herself.

She was floundering now, going down under the flood of awareness surging   through her, a flood of dangerous sensations, longings, and-heavens,   yes-images as well, of two sensually entwined naked bodies, one   belonging to her and the other to Ilios. Stop it, Lizzie warned herself,   beginning to panic. She could not afford this kind of self-indulgence.   It was far too dangerous.

Determinedly Lizzie concentrated on texting the twins, adding a few   words for her sister, telling her that she was still involved in   discussions about the letter and would be in touch again as soon as she   had something concrete to report to them.

‘I take it that your sisters are aware of the purpose of your journey to Greece?' Ilios asked Lizzie.

‘Yes,'she agreed. ‘They saw your letter.' The thought of how her sisters   would feel if they knew what Ilios had said to her-what he had  demanded  of her-brought a lump to Lizzie's throat. They would be  dreadfully  shocked-and worried too, for their own security.                       
       
           



       

That thought had her turning impetuously towards Ilios to beg him   emotionally, ‘Surely we can come to some kind of sensible arrangement   that would enable me to repay you?'

‘What do you mean by "sensible"?' Ilios asked.

Lizzie shook her head. ‘Perhaps I could work for you as an interior designer?'

‘The constructions in which I am involved are very large-scale   commercial projects-schools, offices, corporate buildings, that kind of   thing. However … ' Ilios paused, turning to give her an assessing look in   the shadowy darkness of his car. ‘There is an alternative means by  which  you could clear the debt between us.'

Lizzie moistened her suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue,   before asking in a voice that was slightly hoarse with tension, ‘And   that is?'

The Bentley picked up speed as Ilios overtook the car in front of them.   The delay in answering her ratcheted up Lizzie's tension.

It seemed an aeon before he turned towards her, his profile outlined by   the moonlight beaming into the car. It was an undeniably handsome and   very sensually male profile, Lizzie admitted, but there was a harshness   in the downward turn of his mouth, that made her shiver inwardly. She   wasn't sure which she feared the most: the effect of his harshness on   her too easily bruised emotions, or the effect of his sensuality on her   equally easily aroused senses.

‘Marriage,' Ilios told her.





Chapter Five



‘MARRIAGE?' Lizzie repeated unsteadily, feeling that she must somehow have misunderstood him.

‘According to my solicitors I am in need of a wife,' Ilios informed her   curtly. ‘And since you claim you cannot repay me in cash, and since I   have no appetite for the kind of woman who so easily shares her body   with any man who has had the price to pay for it, I have decided that   this is best way for me to recoup what I have lost and take payment from   you.'

Lizzie felt as though glue had been poured into her brain, locking it together and jamming her ability to think.

The only words she could summon were the words, Ilios Manos, marriage, and danger-all written large in bright red ink.

‘No,' she told Ilios shakily, before she could do the utterly reckless,   dangerous and unthinkable and say yes. Whatever the reason Ilios might   want her as a wife, it was absolutely not because he wanted her, and  she  had better hang on to that fact, Lizzie told herself, not start   spinning crazily foolish fantasies and daydreams about Mr Right,   Cinderella and happy ever after, filled with nights of sensual delight   and days of blissful joy.

A categorical no was not the answer Ilios wanted, and nor was it the   answer he had expected. He knew of a dozen women at least who would have   been delirious with joy at the thought of becoming his wife, quite   apart from the fact that Lizzie Wareham was in no position to dare to   refuse him anything. She was certainly not going to be allowed to do so.   Didn't she realise the position she was in? A position in which he  held  all the aces and she held none. If not, then perhaps it was time  he  made that position completely clear to her.

‘No?' he challenged her coldly. ‘So it is just as I thought. All that   you have said to me about your desire to protect your sisters-your   family-is nothing more than lies and total fiction.' He paused. A man of   action and powerful determination, Ilios did not waste time analysing   his decisions once he had made them, or asking himself what might have   motivated them-even when they involved the kind of turnaround that had   taken place inside his head since that very morning. He had decided   Lizzie would be his wife.

He also hated not winning; once he had decided upon a course of action   he stuck to it, no matter what obstacles lay in his way. Obstacles could   be crushed and then removed. It was simply a matter of finding the   right method to do so, with speed and efficiency, and Ilios thought he   knew exactly the right method to shift the obstacle to his plans that   was Lizzie's ‘no'.

‘I was about to say-before you were so quick to refuse me-that I am also   prepared to pay you a bonus of one hundred thousand pounds, on the   understanding that for your part you conduct yourself in public at all   times during our enforced relationship as you would were that   relationship real. In other words I expect you, in your role as my   fiancée and then my wife, to behave.'

A bonus? What he meant was a bribe, Lizzie acknowledged, feeling   sickened as much by her awareness of how little she could now afford to   refuse as by her personal feelings swirling through her at the thought   of being married to him.