‘Maybe I overreacted.’ Ella voiced those words as though they were composed in a foreign language she found hard to pronounce. It was an acknowledgement of folly which cost her pride dear. For a moment she was standing outside herself and wondering in horror at the raging mindless jealousy that had consumed her and almost persuaded her to burn every one of her boats. Had she truly been willing to sacrifice Callie in that conflagration as well? She was genuinely appalled.
The silence stretched, drawn tight by her strain.
Ella focused on Ari’s lean, classic profile, her nervous tension at an incredible high. He had set her up to see how she would react to his flirtation, and he would have had to torture her to get an apology out of her. She hated him, not only for doing that to her, but also for appreciating that what he had made her feel scared her. Suddenly she did not want to probe the precise nature and cause of the madness that had overpowered her common sense. ‘The last couple of days—all the changes in my life—have been an incredible strain,’ she said instead, her low voice tight and stilted, because her pride was cringing at the excuse she was using.
‘Of course,’ Aristandros breathed with an almost instantaneous agreement of that explanation that took her aback.
She was standing beside a mirror, and she looked at herself. The illusion of perfection was gone now, replaced by tousled hair, smudged mascara, lipstick and a T-shirt bought at a rock concert.
‘Sometimes I push too hard.’ Aristandros murmured that concession without any expression at all. ‘But don’t ever walk out on me like that again.’
Ella jerked her head in agreement, her throat taut with self-restraint. He had pushed her so hard that he had almost broken her. She was scared that she was going to cry as her jangling emotions continued to surge without any hope of being vented. She was fighting to reinstate intelligence and control. He reached for her before she could seal shut the dangerous gaps in her mental armour. The intoxicating sensuality of his mouth met hers in a hot, melting collision.
She fell into that kiss like a drowning swimmer in search of air. Hunger exploded through her every nerve ending in a chain reaction. Her hands delved deep into his thick, black hair. She could feel the raw passion pent up in his powerful body, and even the clothing between them couldn’t douse her awareness of the bold ridge of his erection. The sure knowledge of his desire made resisting her own need impossible. The taste of him went to her head, and she felt dizzy and breathless. He curved his hands to her hips and settled her on the side of the bed where he proceeded to dispense with the barrier of her jeans.
‘I can’t salsa dance like that,’ Ella heard herself say abruptly. ‘Like that redhead—’
‘I can take care of that,’ Aristandros declared, pushing up the T-shirt and burying his face in the scented valley between her high breasts, impatiently while he peeled her free of the expensive scraps of satin and lace that still separated him from her slender curves.
Her chest rose and fell rapidly with the short, straining breaths she drew. She was hyper-aware of his every move. The abrasive brush of his stubble against the smooth slope of her breasts sent a violent shiver through her. The scent of him that close left her liquid with longing. ‘I want you,’ she admitted in a driven undertone.
Lush black lashes lifted from scorching golden eyes. ‘I have died and gone to heaven,’ Aristandros breathed softly. ‘I thought I was never going to hear those words from your lips.’
‘We’ve only been together two days!’ Ella protested.
‘Since when have I had patience?’ Aristandros traded, long fingers skating over the tormentingly tender flesh between her thighs with a provocative skill that caused a startled gasp to part the swollen contours of her lips.
Her head tipped back against the pillows and her spine incurved. A glorious, heavy lassitude was spreading through her limbs, closely followed by energising darts of erotic sensation. She strained up to him, moaning out loud when he used his sensual mouth to tease and taste her urgently sensitive nipples. There was a sweet, painful tightness gathering in her pelvis as her inner muscles tensed and her hips squirmed in a rhythmic pattern against the sheet. She wanted, needed him. He turned her over on to her stomach and raised her on to her knees.
For a split second Ella didn’t know what he intended but, an instant later he plunged his fully engorged manhood into her yearning flesh. Shock and wild excitement gripped her in an overpowering wave. His every deep thrust sent a hot, primitive charge to electrify her. The erotic pleasure of his virile dominance ravished her sense, and she whimpered her delight, encouraging him with every yielding flex of her hips. The seething tension and disturbed emotions she had stored up were blown away by a spellbinding orgasm that flooded her body with ecstasy and drained her of energy.
‘Better?’ Aristandros muttered thickly, curving her into his arms in the dizzy, dreamy aftermath when she honestly felt that she would never move again.
‘Still floating,’ she whispered before she could think better of it.
He leant over her, keen dark eyes lustrous as polished jet beneath the fringe of his black lashes. ‘So why do you fight me?’
Ella rested her head against a brown muscular shoulder, revelling in the intimate connection of their bodies and the gloriously familiar scent of his skin. ‘I like a challenge?’
His incredibly handsome features taut, Aristandros closed his arms round her and studied her with sardonic force. ‘Stop it now, hara mou. Making me angry is a bad idea.’
Ella let her fingers trail along the line of his ruthless but aesthetically beautiful mouth. ‘It makes you more human, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t ever be all giggly and flattering and submissive.’
‘That’s not what I want, either. Be natural, be yourself…the way you used to be without even trying,’ Aristandros urged.
Ella lost colour and turned her head away, knowing there was no going back to the young woman he was remembering. Was that what he wanted from her—the impossible? The turning back of time? How could she be twenty-one years old again and in love for the first time in her life? Even thinking about being that vulnerable again turned her stone-cold with fear inside. Loving Ari again would be a one-way ticket to hell.
‘If you stop looking for problems, you’ll soon find that you can enjoy what we have,’ Aristandros intoned with blistering conviction. ‘We’re sailing back to Greece tomorrow.’
But Ella was already recalling the crazy weeks when she had been twenty-one and madly in love with him. Everybody who was anybody had spent those weeks warning her that Ari Xenakis would quickly lose interest in her. That was his track record, and his appetite for beautiful women ensured that he had an intimidating reputation as a heartbreaker. Ella, however, remembered feeling ridiculously happy during that period. Cool reflection hadn’t got a look-in. She had not continually rehashed their dates in her mind looking for hints that he might be considering a future with her, either, for that possibility had not even occurred to her. She had simply adored being with him and had lived for the moment.
He had taken her out sailing a lot, for long drives and lengthy meals, rarely inviting others to join them. They hadn’t gone to many parties or clubs, and when they had they hadn’t stayed long. They had talked constantly and she had been herself, for she had not known how to be anything else in those days. Hard as it was to credit now, she had believed she had met her soulmate in Ari. The second time she’d called a halt to their love-making he had just laughed and made no further attempt to persuade her into bed. When he’d invited her to his grandfather’s seventy-fifth birthday celebrations, she’d been overjoyed, because she had known how close Drakon was to his grandson and had felt honoured to be invited to meet him.
Now, a good deal older and wiser, she lay in the darkness, dully, painfully, reliving that final evening.
‘I love you,’ Aristandros had told her squarely, and she had responded with the same words. And, although he had afterwards accused her of insincerity, she had really meant what she said.
‘I want to be with you. Will you marry me?’ he had asked.
And her heart had bounced as high as a rubber ball, since it had not occurred to her then that he might have made the offer with sacrificial restrictions attached, a sort of trick question which was likely to come back and haunt her and leave her heartbroken. She had dimly assumed that they would get engaged and that Ari would visit her in London and marry her once she had completed her training. When he had got up to make a speech in honour of his grandfather’s birthday, he had announced their engagement—along with the news that she would be giving up medicine.
Reality had swiftly burst her bubble of happiness. After a ferocious argument he had dumped her, and minutes later retracted the announcement he had made. Her family had taken her home in disgrace, unable to believe or come to terms with the startling idea that she could possibly have refused to marry a Xenakis.
Aristandros catapulted her back into the present by hauling her up against his lithe, muscular frame. Blue eyes very wide, she clashed with his heavily lidded, smouldering, dark-golden gaze. This man, she acknowledged with a fast-beating heart, already had the power to make her feel bitterly jealous and act in an irrational way. He was dangerous, was a very dangerous threat in every way to her peace of mind.