Nik sounded so strange, his normally deep, rich voice hoarse, as if she was upsetting him... A ridiculous idea, she reflected, sipping at her drink and wondering why her head felt so light. He might have regrets for the way he had treated her in the past but there was absolutely no reason, in the peculiar circumstances of their marriage, for him to be upset.
‘If you don’t have high expectations or enough self-respect,’ she muttered tightly, ‘you accept being kicked in the teeth because somehow you think you’ve asked for it. And I certainly did.’
‘You did not ask for one tenth of what I put you through!’ Nik swore fiercely.
Leah stopped staring into space and stared at him instead. He was driving a set of lean brown fingers through his thick black hair, his strong jawline set like granite, his normally glowing complexion pale. ‘Why should you feel guilty?’ she demanded in open confusion. ‘We weren’t really married.’
‘But we are married now...’ Breathing rapidly, Nik subjected her to a disturbingly intense scrutiny. ‘Your glass is empty. Let me get you another drink.’
Her head was swimming slightly, she noticed. She felt oddly detached. If it hadn’t been ridiculous, she would have suspected that she had had a rather large shot of alcohol but she was only drinking pure orange. Nik knew that she had no head for drink.
‘Have we driven down this road before?’ she enquired, abstractedly noticing a church that looked vaguely familiar.
‘Maybe Giorgios is trying to find a short cut,’ Nik suggested.
‘I feel like we’ve been in this car forever.’
‘Deeply meaningful conversations can have that effect.’
‘I thought they were beneath you.
‘Not when my marriage is at stake.’
Her lashes fluttered. Playing for time, she took another slug of her orange juice before looking up. She just couldn’t believe he had said that. It wasn’t the sort of thing Nik would say. Lustrous dark eyes were nailed to her, a faint flush accentuating the taut angle of his high cheekbones.
‘You know...you’re gorgeous,’ she murmured like someone talking to herself, the words dragging slightly. And it was true—he was, she reflected, scanning his lean, lithe length and striking dark features, a familiar heat surging up inside her.
Nik slid along the leather seat and reached for one of her hands. ‘I want you to forgive me for my unreasonable behaviour yesterday.’
On that strange level where she could sometimes read Nik like an open book she sensed sneaky, slippery, devious insincerity. For some reason he was telling her what he believed she must want to hear but he did not think that his behaviour had been unreasonable. And then the proverbial penny dropped like a brick and she grasped what lay behind his extraordinary conduct. ‘My marriage is at stake’.
How on earth could she have forgotten? As long as that hateful certificate was out there, Nik was determined to stay married. Yesterday, for the first time, she had stood up to him, really stood up to him, and seemingly he was now afraid that she might choose to walk out regardless of the possible consequences to him and his family.
A tight coil of pain snaked up inside her. ‘You don’t have to say that...I over-reacted. I was embarrassed, maybe a little insensitive...’
‘A little?’ Highlights of gold flashed through his expressive eyes and for a split-second he both sounded and looked much more like himself until he screened his gaze and tightened his hold on her slender fingers to grate, ‘No, I was the one who was insensitive.’
Mentally she imagined her ears shooting out on stalks to catch such an un-Nik-like sentiment. ‘But I—’
‘It was my fault,’ he interrupted with more than a hint of aggression.
‘But I should have—’
‘I don’t wish to hear another word,’ he spelt out, with an incredibly forced-looking smile.
But she could feel the anger he could barely suppress thickening the atmosphere. If only it weren’t such an effort to concentrate, she thought, and she was suffering from a peculiar and unbelievably inappropriate urge to giggle like a drain.
‘Nik...I’m not going to walk out again.’ She felt horribly guilty that he should be forced to such lengths to try and placate her when it wasn’t necessary. ‘I know I can’t...unless I find that certificate—’
‘Impossible,’ he broke in with a suppressed violence that she quite understood.
‘But you’d let me go like a shot if it turned up—’
‘That is not quite how I would put it.’ His low-pitched response was uneven.
‘Uncork the champagne and dance?’
‘Now you are talking nonsense,’ he groaned, fan-shaped lashes almost hitting his cheekbones as they swept down.
He rescued her glass before she dropped it, set it aside.
‘Is that that church again...?’ she enquired without great concern, an unfamiliar feeling of insouciance enclosing her. ‘Do you think Giorgios is lost?’
Nik swept up the phone and said something to the chauffeur.
Leah flexed her stiff shoulders and kicked off her shoes and then wondered why she had done something so uncharacteristic. She just felt so incredibly relaxed and yet kind of...excitable at the same time. It was the weirdest sensation.
Nik watched her and then he reached for her other hand and drew her closer. Her breathing was fractured, her heartbeat a magnified thump against her ribcage; the blood in her veins was racing. She could feel her breasts straining against the light silk barrier of her bra, the sudden painful sensitivity of her nipples.
The silence throbbed and then in one sudden startling movement Nik dropped his hands to her hips and brought her down on top of him. But he uttered a stifled imprecation and flung his dark head back a split-second before his mouth met hers in what had seemed like a determined collision. He looked like a male in the throes of anguished conflict.
Leah studied him with out-of-focus eyes, her hands braced on his shoulders.
‘Nik?’
‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ he muttered raggedly.
‘I know what I want to be doing,’ she giggled and, leaning forward, she ran the tip of her tongue teasingly along the compressed line of his mouth.
His hands clamped over her forearms as though he was about to thrust her back from him and then, with a harsh groan, he crushed her against him instead. He kissed her with so much passion that he bruised her lips. She loved it, excitement leaping through her in a rollercoaster wave.
Then abruptly he broke the connection and leant his brow against hers.
‘I am a sneaky, slippery, devious bastard,’ he mumbled thickly, his breath fanning her cheek. ‘I am everything you ever called me and right now I would give ten years of my life to make love to you. I’m in agony...’
‘But?’ She sensed the ‘but’ coming.
‘There was vodka in your drink. You’re plastered, Leah.’
‘Oh.’
‘It was a disgusting thing to do but I was desperate to make you talk...make you relax. Also, the car has been driving round in circles. Please forgive me.’
As she shifted he shuddered, every taut line of his big body betraying not only his tension but also the intensity of his arousal. And Leah laughed because all of a sudden it seemed terribly funny. As swiftly as she grasped what the matter with her was she knew she ought to be outraged by such duplicity but the idea of Nik being reduced to such desperate straits appealed to her far more. You have a conscience.’
‘And right now it is killing me,’ he confided thickly, knotting two unsteady hands slowly into her hair to prevent her from moving. ‘Theos, it is always like this with you! I want you so much, you could make me beg.’
That frank confession told Leah of a power she had not dreamt she possessed. She was knocked sideways by the concept. It had not occurred to her that he might find her that desirable. But Nik was telling her that this wild hunger that could surge up between them without warning was mutual. But then he was a very physical male. It might not be the true love which her adolescent fantasies had centred on but she sensed that she had vastly underrated the extent of her own attraction.
Even so, she argued, ‘I don’t have big boobs.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Or legs that go up to my armpits.’
‘Cristo, I think you’re perfect.’ He brushed his lips sensually back and forth across hers, a husky growl of hunger escaping him. ‘So very perfect, I can’t believe you’re mine.’
‘Tell me more...’ she invited, tilting her head back out of reach with a teasing smile.
Taking abrupt note of the fact that the limousine had drawn to a halt in a courtyard, he swore instead. ‘We have arrived.’
It took a second or two for Leah to dredge herself back to the real world again. Nik slid her back on to the seat and then suddenly cupped her cheekbone in a possessive palm and extracted another long, lingering kiss that did nothing to aid her efforts to pull herself together.
The fresh air made her feel dizzy. Nik curved an arm around her narrow back and steadied her while she smoothed down the short skirt of her raspberry-coloured suit. ‘If I trip over the furniture it’ll be your fault,’ she complained.
He laughed softly and bent his head. ‘You’re still weak from the effects of the flu,’ he told her smoothly. ‘You’ll definitely have to lie down to rest before dinner...and being a caring, concerned husband—’