Her heart? But that would mean … From the shocked thud of her heartbeat its reverberations spread out through her, carrying to every part of her body and mind a warning-a message of anxiety and apprehension laced with disbelief. Surely there was only one reason why her heart might want to log every second of her intimacy with Ilios? If her heart was involved, then so were her emotions. Emotions and Ilios did not and could not mix. They were incompatible. Just as she and Ilios were incompatible.
Lizzie turned to him, but before she could even think of what she might reasonably say to bring an end to something she knew now would put her in emotional danger, Ilios was scooping her up, carrying her over to the bed, and kissing her with such shocking sensuality as he placed her on it that he immediately awakened her previous urgent desire.
In its fierce clamour it was impossible for her to hear any other voice-impossible for her to think of anything other than the growing sensual tension possessing her body.
Leaning over her, Ilios caressed her body, lingering over each touch with a focussed intensity that was all by itself unbearably erotic, driving her to reach for him. His lips brushed hers; his hand brushed her sex. His tonguetip parted her lips whilst his hand parted her thighs.
Lizzie could feel her heart hammering into her ribs. Supporting himself with his other hand on the bed, Ilios watched her face as he touched her slowly and intimately, until she was opening helplessly to him, arching up to him for more.
‘I want you. I want you, Ilios. Now-please.'
Lizzie's words, gasped in eager longing, pierced Ilios's hot desire, chiming a warning within himself that automatically set off his own protective defences. He had no means of ensuring that their intimacy would be safe. From what Lizzie had told him he doubted that she used any form of contraception as an automatic course. The thought of the health of either of them being affected by them having sex was one he dismissed immediately. He had never taken any risks with his sexual health, and he doubted that Lizzie had had enough previous sexual experience to have risked her own. But they were not protected against unwanted pregnancy, and that meant that he should stop-right now. After all, he had his future planned-and the children that would be a part of it. His children-his sons-protected from the pain he had known as a child, protected from any mother who might reject them or subject him to her avaricious financial demands.
His children who, according to Lizzie, having been conceived in the sterile atmosphere of a laboratory and carried by a woman they would never know, would be deprived of love.
‘Ilios?'
Lizzie reached up and touched his face, not understanding why he wasn't responding to her, stroking her fingertips along the length of his sweat-dampened torso, trailing the narrow line of dark hair across his flat belly.
The look of hungry and absorbed need the moonlight revealed in her expression reignited the desire Ilios had been trying to suppress. Like flames devouring dry timber it raced through him, overpowering everything that tried to stand in its way, including his own inner warning voice. His body moved of its own accord, his mind powerless to control its need. And Lizzie reached for him, drawing him down towards her, her lips parting in the same longing he could feel in the way she moved to welcome him between her thighs.
The first hot, slick, sweet taste of her sex against his own brought down what was left of his self-control as effectively as a tidal wave smashing down a sandcastle on the beach.
He was within her, taking her, giving to her as they began the swift surging climb towards immortality. On the journey there were brief seconds of time when the pleasure was so intense, like stars within reach on a journey to the moon, that Lizzie was almost distracted enough to want to reach out to them-but then the drive of Ilios's body within her own reminded her of the greater purpose, their ultimate shared destination.
It came for her with convulsive tightening of her body that quickened into her orgasm, just as she felt Ilios's surrender to its fierce embrace spilling hotly into her.
Into her? Like an annoying fly, intruding on the wonderful peace of a lazy summer afternoon, the two words buzzed agitatedly inside her head, ignoring Lizzie's attempts to brush them away so that she could enjoy the pure heaven of lying fulfilled and sweetly aching in the aftermath of orgasm in Ilios's arms.
They hadn't used any contraception. It might not be true that having sex standing up prevented pregnancy, but perhaps if she got up instead of lying there … She was a responsible adult, after all, and there was no place in her life for an unplanned pregnancy.
So why, instead of doing something, or even saying something, was she instead luxuriating in lying close to Ilios, her hand on his chest, registering the beat of his heart gradually returning to normal? Her fingers played with the soft damp hair on his chest, and she enjoyed the male possessiveness of the leg he had thrown across her own, as though wanting to keep her as close to him as she wanted him to be close to her.
Ilios was leaning over her, his hand on her neck, his fingers stroking her skin.
‘Good?' he asked.
‘Heaven,' Lizzie responded truthfully. ‘Absolutely heaven.'
Ilios gathered her close, ignoring the inner voice that was warning him he had just done something that broke all his rules, and something he was going to regret.
Chapter Twelve
‘I'VE got to go out to the villa today, to meet with one of the contractors, and I wondered if you'd like to come with me?'
The sudden frown that followed Ilios's invitation made Lizzie wonder if he had spoken without thinking and was now regretting having done so. But, faced with the prospect of another day on her own, sightseeing in the city, when she could instead see the house that had such a fascinating history, she was not going to ask Ilios if he would like to withdraw his invitation.
‘I'd love to,' she told him truthfully. After all, it wasn't just Villa Manos she would get to see properly. She would also be with Ilios. Her heart leapt even as her thoughts filled her with guilt.
It had been disquieting to wake in Ilios's arms in the early hours of the morning after they had made love-several days ago now. She'd known that she had crossed a barrier she had never intended to cross. Lying with her head on Ilios's chest, listening to the sound of his breathing, Lizzie had been forced to admit to herself what she had recognised earlier in the evening. Somehow emotion had become entangled in what she had truthfully believed to be merely physical desire. And that emotion was love. An emotion Ilios had already told her he did not want in his life.
But that was all right, she assured herself determinedly now. After all, she was not going to tell him about her love for him. She wasn't going to offer it to him. She wasn't going to do anything different because of it. When the time came she would still pack up her belongings, fold her love in tissue paper in her memory, and take it with her. It was hers, and if she wished to cherish it and protect it, and every now and again remove it from the place where she had hidden it to relive those memories she had made, then that was her business-wasn't it? She was mature enough not to allow it to intrude into what was in reality a business relationship, a business commitment. Ilios had paid her-not to sleep with him of course, but to marry him. In doing so she was providing him a means of outmanoeuvring his cousin, and preventing him from causing him difficulties and delays with regard to their grandfather's will.
What on earth had made him ask Lizzie for her company? Ilios didn't know-or rather he was determined not to know, because of what knowing the answer to his own question might mean.
The night he had taken her to bed had changed everything between them. And it had also changed him. Ilios knew that there were those who came into contact with him who considered him hard and demanding, but the demands he made on others, the expectations he had of them, were nothing compared with those he made on and had for himself.