to savour the sweetness of the grape combined with the intensely personal taste of Nikos’s lips.
She was still fighting the sensual need, her fingers gripping her glass tightly, when Nikos spoke again.
‘I will see to that.’
In the face of his cold confidence the rush of physical response faded as rapidly as it had come, leaving her feeling shivery and unsure, as if in the grip of a sudden fever. For a moment she had let herself forget how icily controlling and ruthless Nikos could be. And forgetting that was not a good idea.
‘And you think that everything you do is so perfect? That you can never make a mistake?’
‘Not perfect, no.’
Nikos pulled out one of the chairs and lowered himself into it, stretching out long legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankle. The change of position should have made him look more relaxed, at ease, but strangely it had exactly the opposite effect. He looked like nothing so much as a hunting tiger, lazily settling down to keep a watch on its prey before it decided whether it was worth the effort to pounce or not. The glass in her hand shook with the tremor of her grip and she hastily banged it down on the table, so as to avoid spilling some of the juice on to the stones of the balcony.
‘And as to making mistakes, well, if I was immune to them then I would never have had anything to do with you.’
‘But you can’t take control of someone else’s life like this. I would never let you get away with it…What?’ she questioned in surprise as Nikos’s low laughter broke into her outburst.
‘I am only too well aware of that, agapiti mou.’ The cynical emphasis on that my dear turned it into the exact opposite of any term of affection and the gleam in the golden eyes as he laughed up at her was totally lacking in any sort of warmth. ‘Why do you think that I would prefer I kept you to myself while we work on plans for the wedding?’
‘If you intend to go ahead and marry this girl this time.’
No sooner had the words escaped her than she wished them back. Too sharp, too bitter, they revealed far more of her personal thoughts than she had ever wanted. The last thing she wanted was for Nikos to feel there was any lingering bitterness about the fact that their marriage had never taken place. She was free of that—wasn’t she?
‘Do you doubt it?’
‘What do you think? I have personal experience of just how much you mean your marriage proposals, remember?’
Nikos’s mouth twisted slightly, his penetrating stare seeming to burn right into her soul.
‘But I always intended to go ahead and marry you.’
‘You did?’
Nikos swallowed some of his coffee, then grimaced in distaste.
‘This stuff is cold. But no matter.’ Pushing back his chair, he got to his feet again. ‘We should be heading out anyway.’
‘Heading out? Why? Where are we going?’
‘You said that you wanted to know more about the wedding. What better way to start than with the place I have in mind for the ceremony? Go and collect whatever you will need. We leave in ten minutes.’
It was going to be a long day, Nikos reflected as he watched Sadie’s retreating back, the sensual sway of her hips, as she made her way into the house. The morning sun beat down on his head and down below, at the bottom of the cliffs, the roar of the surf pounding against the shore was a constant background sound to everything.
A sound that fitted the restless hammering of his thoughts as he fought a constant battle to keep his more primitive male impulses under control. He was beginning to wonder just how long he could keep up this pretence of wanting to work with her on the wedding. The truth was that work had nothing at all to do with what he wanted to do with Sadie Carteret.
When he had walked out on to the balcony and seen her standing there, it had been all that he could do not to march across and grab her, pulling her hard against him and bringing his mouth down roughly on top of hers, kissing her until they were both reeling with hunger, their thoughts obliterated in the need that he knew would flare between them.
The sun had gleamed on the dark gloss of her hair, gilding the pale shoulders in the sleeveless red sundress. A red sundress that had big black buttons all the way from the dipping neckline right to where the hem swirled around her slender shapely calves. Those buttons had put the devil’s torment into his mind, tempting him almost beyond endurance with images of closing his fingers over each one, sliding it carefully, slowly from its fastening, and then moving down. Exposing first the soft creamy curves of her breasts, the shadowed valley between them. A valley that he knew from experience—all too short an experience—would be warm and slightly moist, the intimate scent of her skin heightened by the heat of her body, reaching out to him and then falling away with each hasty, unevenly snatched breath she took.
And then moving lower, down to her waist, letting the folds of the soft material part over her hips, where the shadow of her sex showed beneath the delicate covering of her underwear. Lower still, until it fell away from her body, leaving her exposed and revealed to the hunger of his eyes, the touch of his hands.
No! With a rough jerk of his head, he pulled his mind away from the sensual thoughts that plagued him and forced them back on to the here and now.
Because here and now he had to concentrate on other things. But it was damn near impossible to concentrate on anything when all he wanted to do was to take Sadie to bed and spend the rest of the day sating himself in the soft warmth of her body.
She would let him too. Or at least she wouldn’t put up much of a fight. He had seen it in her eyes when they had been on the balcony. The sensual awareness that she hadn’t been able to hide. The way her head had gone back, her lips parting slightly, softly. The way that the dark pupils of her eyes had enlarged until her eyes were almost all black, only the faintest trace of mossy green at their edges.
If he had walked across to her then, taken the glass from her hand and replaced it against her lips with his own mouth, then she would not have protested. Or not much.
It would be that moment in his office all over again. The response that neither of them could hide. That he was damn sure he didn’t want to hide. And that he knew Sadie was fighting to conceal from him now because she believed he was going to marry someone else.
A faint smile crossed his mouth as he followed Sadie inside. He was enjoying watching her struggle with the flames that flared between them and the feeling that she could not, must not act on them. He would keep her on that particular rack for a while longer. The end result, when he finally let her off, would be well worth waiting for.
‘We’re here.’
Sadie had to struggle to bite back the exclamation of relief when Nikos made his announcement perhaps fifty minutes later. Helicopter flights were not her favourite form of travel, and from the moment Nikos had led her from the house to his private helipad, where a gleaming machine that looked like nothing so much as a giant black dragonfly had waited for them, her stomach had been twisting tight with tension. And that sensation had been made all the worse by the way the limited space inside had forced her into close confinement with Nikos for the length of the flight.
He’d piloted the helicopter himself, and every movement
