but failed to suppress a snort. ‘I can count my previous lovers on half a hand. My mother’s had more sex than me. She’s still having more than me.’
He continued to look at her without speaking, his eyes holding hers as if he found her fascinating. But then, maybe a twenty-nine-year-old almost-virgin was something of an enigma to him.
‘She’s a relationships therapist,’ Emily said into the silence. ‘She teaches people how to have better relationships by working on their sex lives. Ironic that her daughter’s sex life is practically non-existent.’
Here you go again. Telling him all your stuff.
So? I need to break the ice a bit. I can’t just tell him he’s going to be a dad without a bit of a lead up.
You are so unsophisticated!
His hands came to settle on her waist, his eyes sexily hooded. ‘Maybe I can help you with that.’
The warmth of his hands seemed to be travelling right through her clothes, through every layer of her skin, sending electric pulses down her nerves until they were twitching in excitement. Her inner core registered his proximity like a scanner recognises a code. It was as though she were micro-chipped for him and him alone. Her intimate muscles were clenching, contracting, wanting.
‘I haven’t had a lot of luck with men,’ Emily said. ‘I had one lover before my ex, but it hardly counts, as it was over before I blinked. I was with Daniel seven years so it’s left me a little out of the game, so to speak.’
Argh! What are you doing? You’re making yourself sound like some sort of relationship tragic.
But I don’t want him to think I’ve been jumping every man I meet.
His hands went from her waist to skim up her arms and rest on her shoulders. His eyes had a lustrous depth to them that reminded her of a bottomless lake. ‘You haven’t had a lover since Daniel? Apart from me, I mean?’
‘No. I dated a few times but it never came to anything. I suspect that was why I was so...so enthusiastic when you kissed me outside my room,’ Emily said. ‘I hope I didn’t shock you.’
Loukas brushed his thumb over her lower lip. ‘You delighted and surprised me.’
That’s me. Full of delightful surprises.
She stretched her lips into a rictus smile. ‘Erm...there’s something we need to discuss...’
‘I’m not in this for the long haul, Emily.’ His mouth had an intractable set to it. ‘I want you to be clear on that right from the outset. I’m only here in London this week, so if we have a fling that’s all it will be. A fling. Nothing else.’
‘I understand that. It’s just there’s some—’
‘I want you.’ His voice hummed in her core as deep as a bass chord.
Emily placed her hands flat against his chest, her hips bumping into his, sending a shockwave of tingly awareness through her body. She couldn’t think when he was this close. Her body went on autopilot. Wanting. Craving. Hungering. Her breasts tingled with the memory of his touch, the heat and fire of his lips and tongue and the sexy scrape of his teeth. He was so magnetic. So irresistible. So tempting her inner core was contracting with little pulses of lust, as if recalling the sexy thrust of his body within hers.
How could she possibly be thinking about sex at a time like this? But it seemed her body could only think about sex when Loukas was within touching distance. His chest was hard and warm under her hands, the clean, laundered scent of his shirt filling her nostrils. The length and strength of his thighs so close to her own reminded her of how those muscle-packed legs had entrapped hers in a tangle of sheets, taking her to a sensual heaven she hadn’t known existed. Her body remembered everything about that encounter. Remembered and begged for it to be repeated. The drumming of her pulse echoed in her core, making her aware of every inch of her body where it was in contact with his, as though all the nerves on those spots had been supercharged.
His mouth came down to hover above hers, his warm, minty breath sending her senses reeling. ‘Tell me you want me.’
‘I want you, but there’s...’ Emily stepped back from him, using what little willpower she had left, but she stumbled over the pedal bin behind her left foot and it tipped over and spilled its contents in front of his Italian-leather-clad feet.
An unpinned grenade would have had a similar effect.
Loukas’s face drained of colour as if he were the one with morning sickness. He stood frozen for a moment. Totally statue-like—as if someone had pressed a pause button on him. Then he swallowed.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each one of them was clearly audible in the pregnant silence—no pun intended. Emily watched as if in slow motion when he bent to pick up not one, but seven test wands. He examined the tell-tale blue lines, the wands clanking against each other like chopsticks.
His eyes finally cut to hers, sharp, flint-hard with query. ‘You’re...pregnant?’
He said the word as though it was the most shocking diagnosis anyone could have. Up until a few hours ago, she had thought so too.
Emily wrung her hands like a distraught heroine from a period drama, wincing when her damaged finger protested. ‘I was trying to tell you but—’
‘Is it mine?’ The question was a verbal slap.
She double blinked. ‘Of course it’s yours. I—’
‘But we used condoms.’ The suspicion in his voice scraped at her already overwrought nerves.
‘I know, but condoms sometimes fail, and this time one must have—’
‘Aren’t you on the pill?’ His brows were so tightly drawn above his eyes it gave him an intimidating air.
‘I—I was taking a break from it.’ Emily could feel tears welling up. The concentrated smell of her spilt perfume was making her feel queasy. Her fingertips were fizzing as if her blood were being filtered through coarse sand. The tingling sensation spread to her arms, travelling all the way up to her neck, making it hard to keep her head steady. The room began to spin, the floor to shift beneath her feet as though she were standing on a pitching boat deck. She reached blindly for the edge of the bathroom counter but it was like a ghost hand reaching through fog. Every one of her limbs folded as if she were a marionette with severed strings. She heard Loukas call out her name through a vacuum and then everything faded to black...
* * *
‘Emily!’ Loukas dropped to his knees in front of her slumped form, his heart banging against his chest wall like a bell struck by a madman. Her face was as white as the basin above her collapsed form, her skin clammy. He brushed the sticky hair back from her forehead, his mind still whirling with the news of her pregnancy.
Pregnant.
The word struck another hammer-like blow to his chest. A baby. His baby. How had it happened? He was always so careful. Paranoid careful. He never had sex without a condom. He never took risks. Never. How
