Australia: Wicked Mistresses(45)

Her mouth was dry, her blood thick and thumping slow. ‘I don’t understand. I told you I wasn’t prepared to sleep with you.’

He looked up at her then. ‘No, you didn’t. You said no sex. I told you there would be times where we would have to share a bed and you made no protest.’ He looked up at her, her feet still stuck to the floor in the doorway. ‘Go on, then, get undressed’

Her mouth went dry. Get undressed. She could be in a doctor’s surgery, awaiting an examination, but then the order would be a request and it would be gently and considerately done, with a curtain provided for her modesty and discretion. Here, she was somehow expected to take off her clothes and climb into bed with Andreas glowering at her, dissatisfied and unrepentant. ‘Andreas, I…’

But he was already leaving the room, striding barefoot through a door to a room she could see brimming with marble and gilt. Seconds later he returned, stopping dead when he saw her still there, rooted to the spot. ‘You’re planning on going to bed fully clothed? At least I won’t have to put up with that flannelette armour.’ The black silk pouch that was his final barrier hit the floor next, leaving him gloriously naked before her. He was beautiful clothed, carrying himself with an authority and presence that turned heads, but naked he was magnificent, broad shoulders that tapered down to a tightly packed waist and lean hips. He was so beautiful, just the sight of him caused her blood to sizzle. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard against a throat filled with cotton wool as he flipped down the covers and slid into the bed.

‘Last night,’ she began. ‘Last night I had my own bed. Why can’t I now?’

‘Last night we were in London. I told you we might have to sleep together, to keep up appearances. Given there is only one bedroom in this suite and the fact my offices are here, it wouldn’t look good if word got out that my latest mistress was sleeping on the sofa, because I certainly don’t intend to. Don’t worry, I’m sure I can resist you.’

She didn’t doubt it. But sharing the same bed as him, lying alongside his naked body when she already knew how his touch turned her flesh alight, she only wished she could be so sure she could resist him.

He pushed himself up on one hand. ‘I’m losing patience, Cleo. Are you going to take your clothes off,’ he growled, with more than a hint of menace in his voice, ‘or am I going to have to come over there and do it for you?’

She shook her head, fear congealing like a ball in her gut. God no, the last thing she wanted was Andreas undressing her. She’d claimed she was experienced. She could do this. But she wasn’t about to do it in front of him. She bolted for the bathroom taking several minutes to calm herself, cooling her burning cheeks with water from the tap. Her luggage had not yet been delivered or if it had, Andreas wasn’t telling, so she stripped herself down to the camisole, bra and knickers and wrapped herself in a voluminous robe she found hanging on the back of the door. It would have to do. This wasn’t about sex, or so he’d claimed. So what she wore to bed shouldn’t matter.

She emerged from the bathroom a good ten minutes or more after she’d entered to find the lights dimmed and Andreas facing away, his eyes closed as if asleep.

Please God he was!

She padded silently to the bed, stood there a second watching him breathe and decided this was it. She’d practically told him she was a woman of the world, claiming she’d had sex loads of times, so just sleeping with a man in the same bed should hardly throw her. She unlaced the tie at her waist and let the robe slip from her shoulders. Andreas didn’t stir and she gained confidence. He wouldn’t even know she was here. She turned off the light and slipped between the covers, hovering so close to the edge there could be no way he would feel her presence, and he gave no sign that he did, his breathing slow and regular, a pattern that calmed her own frantically beating heart.

On tenterhooks she lay there listening to his breathing, feeling foolish and naïve, even as the curtains of sleep descended one by one, closing around her and pulling her into their embrace, until she was surrounded by them, warm and comforting and reassuring.

And if those curtains felt as if they’d grown arms and legs and were fashioned of silken flesh rather than velvet, and breathed as if the mild night air moved through them, the brush of them on her shoulder like the warm brush of a lover’s lips, she could feel no less comforted.

Cleo woke alone in the wide bed to the spill of sunshine through tall narrow windows and a feeling of disbelief suffusing her veins. She was here. She was really here, lying in bed in a centuries-old mansion on a Greek island and last night—last night she’d slept with a real Greek billionaire, a Greek billionaire who’d honoured her condition that sex was no part of this deal!

A shiver ran down her spine. Four weeks, the contract had stipulated. Four weeks she could be here, sharing Andreas’ bed. After last night the prospect was suddenly more thrilling than threatening. Scattered remnants came to her then, of a warm hand and a silken touch, of the press of thigh and a puff of breath at her neck, and the press of lips…

She must have been dreaming again.

She pulled on the robe she’d left lying on the end of the bed just as the chimes of a clock on a mantelpiece rang out, drawing her eye. Ten in the morning! Even allowing for the two-hour time difference with London, she hadn’t slept in so late for months. No wonder Andreas wasn’t here. He’d probably gone to work hours ago. And no wonder she was so hungry, it was hours since they’d eaten on the plane. She was halfway to the bathroom when it caught her eye, a patch of blue through the whisper-thin gauzy curtains billowing in the soft breeze, so blue that she was compelled to draw the curtain and investigate

What she saw took her breath away. There was a terrace outside the window, whitewashed and dazzling in the morning sun, and then the earth must have fallen away beneath them, for a long way below shimmered a sea of the brightest blue she’d ever seen, a sea that stretched before another island that rose, tall and long and dusted with white buildings. And to the left sat another islet, low and wide and dark.

So this was Santorini? No wonder Kurt had raved about it to her. Even if he had never visited, even if he’d never intended bringing her here, maybe for once he hadn’t been lying. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

And now she had four weeks to enjoy it, to share it with Andreas…

‘You’re up, then.’

She turned with a start to see him standing in the doorway. He looked as fresh as the morning, his hair damp at the ends where it curled over his collar, a white shirt and fitted trousers making the most of his lean shape.

And suddenly she wasn’t sure what to be the more embarrassed about, finding herself staring hungrily at the delicious V of olive skin where his shirt was unbuttoned, or the knowledge that without intimacy they’d slept together and would do again, tonight. Damn it if her nipples hadn’t already tightened under the robe in anticipation, her pulse sending blood to all the places that shouldn’t even know he existed, but seemed to anyway. It was only sleep with him they had to look forward to, but that seemed to make no difference; she tingled all over.

‘I thought you’d gone to work.’

‘There were some things I had to attend to.’ He stopped in front of her and curled a hand under her hair, skimming her neck with his fingertips and drawing her closer, his eyes on her mouth. She sensed he was going to kiss her and she made no move to shift away, her eyelids fluttering closed on a sigh. Why should she when his touch felt so good, and when he’d agreed to her terms? Sex might be out but a kiss was definitely within the bounds of conditions she’d set. She could deal with that. Surely this was the best of all worlds?

‘Good. You didn’t jump,’ he said, abruptly letting her go before their lips had even connected.

She blinked, swaying momentarily until she regained her bearings. ‘I what?’

‘We seem to be curing you of your habit of jumping every time I touch you. This is a good start. Perhaps now you will be more convincing.’

‘Oh, of course.’ She studied her toes, while she pushed her hair back behind her ears, feeling a total fool for thinking he wanted to kiss her, a total fool for being so eager. ‘That is good.’

He was already turning to go when he turned back. ‘Breakfast is being served on the terrace if you’re hungry.’

She nodded, looking to his eyes for a hint, hoping to find a trace of the warmth and comfort she’d felt last night in her sleep, but there was nothing there and she knew what she’d felt had been a dream.

‘I’ll be along as soon as I’m dressed.’

There was nothing to feel disappointed about, she told herself as she took a shower in the luxurious marble bathroom, the spray from the shower more like a downpour, raining down sense on an otherwise wayward brain. What was her problem? She had a job to do for four weeks and then she would return home, a millionaire. Tenderness didn’t come into it.

She stepped out onto the sun-washed terrace and any remaining sense of disappointment evaporated in the wonder of the place he’d brought her to. What she’d glimpsed through the bedroom window had been magical. But outside on the terrace the view was simply breathtaking.