The Giannakis Bride(14)

"We wait." His voice grazed her ear. His warm breath drifted over her face. "And pass the time the best way we know how."

Her lungs just about seized up on her. "I don't think we should be doing this, Dimitrios," she protested feebly.

"Why not? If you were telling me the truth earlier, I'm not poaching on another man's territory."

Blink, blink, blink went the hazard lights, regular as a heart monitor.  Except her heart wasn't keeping time. It was leaping around behind her  ribs like a mad thing. And other parts of her, parts well below her  waist, were stirring in ways that left her taut with forbidden delight.

"Perhaps not, but the fact remains, you're my brother-in-law," she  gasped, turning her face aside and pushing him away with one hand. Big  mistake! He was all firm, heated masculine flesh and steely muscle  beneath his shirt.

He placed his forefinger at the side of her jaw and effortlessly turned  her face to his again. "And now I'm a widower. By my reckoning, that  frees both of us to listen to our hearts. I can't speak for yours,  karthula mou, but mine is telling me this is long overdue."                       
       
           



       

His mouth nudged hers, masterful, persuasive, and no amount of frantic  rationalizing on her part could turn it into a brotherly peck. His hands  shaped her face, mapping every curve, every hollow, with the minute  attention to detail of a blind man.

"Why don't we stop pretending we don't know where this is leading?" he murmured.

She wished she could tell him it wasn't going anywhere, but the  inescapable fact remained that what was happening had slipped right off  the friendship scale and veered altogether too close to love of the  man-and-woman, Adam-and-Eve kind. He was blatantly, flagrantly, seducing  her. Sending time spinning backward. Reviving old yearnings and leaving  them screaming for satisfaction.

His fingers stroked down her neck, dipped inside the top of her blouse,  close enough to bring her nipples surging to life, but not enough that  she could actually accuse him of fondling her breasts.

He was stealing her soul. Making her forget she was supposed to hate  him. She should have slapped him. Jumped out of the car and waited on  the road for Spiros to rescue her. Instead she melted. Enthralled past  all reason, she cast off any thought of self-preservation. The kind of  magic he wove was too rare, too blissful, to resist. He reminded her of  things she'd ignored for a very long time; in particular that, beneath  her glossy exterior, she was a very lonely woman who'd been aching and  empty for far too long.

Her hand slid up his chest to his neck. Her fingers tangled in his hair.  She clung to him, her body yearning toward him, a moan of raw need  rising in her throat. If the console separating their two seats hadn't  made it virtually impossible, she'd have climbed into his lap.

The blaze of approaching headlights cut across the scene, a timely  interruption that snapped her back to reality before she made a complete  fool of herself. Oh, she was hopeless, pathetic, to have succumbed so  quickly, so easily, to temptation.

"Thank God!" she breathed, recognizing Spiros at the wheel of the  Mercedes as it made a U-turn in the road and came to a stop behind them.  She groped for her purse lying at her feet and made a grab for the door  handle in her haste to get away from Dimitrios.

But at the last minute he reached over and stopped her. "Run as far and  as fast as you like, Brianna, but what just started here isn't finished,  not by a long shot."

"Nothing started," she panted.

"You think not, karthula mou?" he inquired, his own breathing as ragged as hers. "Then I suggest you think again."





Chapter 6





Dinner turned into an onerous affair. The conversation was stilted, the  atmosphere charged with tension, the superbly presented butterflied  scampi and chilled white wine flavored equally with sexual awareness and  disapproval.

Brianna sat across from Dimitrios with what seemed like an acre of table  separating him from her. A safe enough distance, she'd have thought.  But its glass top unfortunately provided him with an unimpaired view of  every inch of her, from the tip of her black sandals to the top of her  head. If she crossed her ankles, he noticed. If she tugged at her skirt  or scratched her knee, he saw.

"You don't seem to be enjoying your meal, Brianna," he remarked,  watching as she rearranged the food on her plate. "Why not? I know how  much you like shellfish."

"You do?"

"Of course," he said, his lazy gaze traveling the length of her and back again. "I remember everything about you."

No doubt including the fact that she'd been a virgin when she met him and hadn't known an orgasm from an aubergine!

He'd wasted no time teaching her the difference, and if his scrutiny now  was any indication, seemed bent on furthering her education as soon as  possible. His camera eyes captured everything they saw and recorded it  in the steel trap that was his mind. Smoldering eyes that burned through  her clothes and seared her flesh.

At the other end of the spectrum, Erika stood in the corner, vengeful as  a crow in her severe black blouse and ankle-length skirt. Ready to  defend him should he come under attack, she kept her cold, beady gaze  fixed accusingly on Brianna. With good reason, because Brianna hadn't  merely submitted to his overtures in the car, she'd responded to them  willingly. Eagerly. And she knew her cheeks glowed like neon signs  advertising her guilty secret for all the world to see.                       
       
           



       

Not that it was any of Erika's business.

She acts as if she's his mother and I'm some hussy who's set her sights  on him, Brianna thought balefully. What does she think? That I pinned  him down in the back seat of the Mercedes and had my way with him when  Spiros wasn't looking?

Finally even Dimitrios had had enough of his housekeeper's surveillance.  "Efharisto, Erika, that'll be all," he said, after the main course had  been cleared away and coffee served. "We can manage by ourselves now."

With one last inimical glare at Brianna, the woman departed, leaving  behind a silence so fraught with electricity that it was almost worse  than her hovering presence. A minute passed. Stretched to two, then  three. Dimitrios rested his elbow on the upholstered arm of his chair,  stretched out his long legs, and continued his leisurely observation.

Schooling herself not to fidget, Brianna scoured her mind for some pithy  conversational gambit that might distract him, but "Lovely weather  we're having," didn't quite cut it. So, reminding herself of the adage  that it was better to keep her mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to  open it and remove all doubt, she focused her attention on the dancing  candle flames reflected in the table top. And still the silence  stretched, taut as a bow string.

At last, when she was about ready to drain her glass of wine in one  gulp, then do the same to the bottle, he said, "You're upset."

"My goodness," she retorted acidly, "how did you guess?"

"With me?"

The temptation to lie and say "yes" nagged at her, but there'd been  enough untruths in the mess between them, and even if she was willing to  deceive him, she refused to deceive herself. "No. With me."

"Why? Because I kissed you and touched you, and you couldn't deny it's exactly what you wanted me to do?"

That, and a whole lot more than she cared to admit. But the real problem  was less easily defined because he touched her in other ways that had  nothing to do with the physical. "No," she confessed. "Because I'm in  danger of repeating a mistake which cost me dearly the first time  around, and that's something I promised myself I wouldn't let happen a  second time."

"What mistake is that?"

"That once again, I'm on the point of leaping headfirst into an involvement with you, without considering the risks."

"What if I were to tell you there are no risks this time? That all I  want is to put right what went wrong between us before, and pick up  where we left off?"

Desperately trying to shore up her crumbling defenses, she said, "You  didn't give me that impression yesterday. You were openly hostile."

"Perhaps I was, at first. But then … " He didn't exactly sigh; he wasn't  that kind of man. Instead he exhaled and gave a shrug that drew her  attention to his broad shoulders. "Since we're talking truth at all  costs, I admit I was looking to find flaws in you where once I'd seen  only perfection. I hoped you'd changed, that you were beginning to lose  your looks and had nothing underneath. No warmth, no heart, no humanity.  I hoped that the giving, passionate woman I fell in love with really  was nothing more than the cold-blooded tease I had reason to believe  she'd become, and that seeing you again would reinforce what I'd been  telling myself for years: that I was well rid of you."