engine growling like a great angry mammoth.
‘It isn’t dead yet.’
It was in Louisa’s opinion! ‘I don’t want to stay married to a man who can’t even trust me when I tell him the truth,’ she said, conveniently forgetting the lie she had tossed at him just before she’d left.
The old truck rolled past. Andreas made no answer, just eased his foot off the brake in the wake of the lorry’s lumbering upheaval and swung them out onto the road.
‘You’re going the wrong way again,’ she told him thickly. ‘I was going to visit Nikos.'
A muscle flicked in his taut jaw, other muscles clenching elsewhere at the same time as he gave the engine more speed. Barely thirty seconds later and he was slowing down again to swing the car onto a narrow track that would take them up the hill behind the luxury villas. Instant recognition as to what exactly lay on the other side of that hill made Louisa tense in her seat.
‘No,’ she gasped out. ‘Andreas, you can’t do this!’
He turned to look at her through those steel-rimmed sunglasses. ‘When are you going to recognise that I can do very much as I please?'
The coolly delivered statement left Louisa gasping. True alarm caused a whole new set of senses to spring into life inside her, most of them circling around the knowledge that he hadn’t just said that to score points.
He was different. From the moment she’d stepped into that hi-tech study in the family villa she’d been looking at and dealing with a completely different man from the one he had let her see while they’d been living in that crazy bubble they’d created around themselves at the other house. Now the bubble had burst it was like dealing with a stranger, a stranger hell-bent on doing what he wished.
‘But I w-want to visit Nikos.’ It broke from her in a tearful, pained plea.
It was as if she’d stuck pins in him the way his muscles flinched, but it didn’t stop him driving them over the peak of the hill. A moment later he turned them off the track and drove through a pair of security gates that swung open by some invisible command.
Louisa found herself staring at the Markonos private heliport complete with hangar tucked neatly into the bowl of the hill. A shiny white helicopter stood idle on the concrete helipad. As they shot to a halt beside it she could see a pilot already ensconced in the cockpit, and over by the hangar several employees were loitering, awaiting their arrival.
‘Wh-when did you arrange all of this?’ she breathed unsteadily.
‘Before I came after you.’
With a long-limbed, lithe grace he climbed out of the car, leaving her sitting there coming to terms with this new view of him. He came round the car and opened her door for her then bent to unfasten her seat belt. An engine started up, rotor blades whirred into life.
‘I’m not getting on that,’ she refused as he drew her to her feet.
He turned to toss the car keys at one of the loitering men. His hand still manacled her wrist. She gave a tug to get free but, like the last time, his fingers tightened. He was playing it tough again, he was playing it ruthless, only this time it wasn’t just a half-empty house on the island he was dragging her off to, it was a helicopter that could be taking her anywhere!
‘Will you listen to me?’ Desperation made her swing round so she was standing in front of him, and pure compulsion made her reach up and snatch the sunglasses from his face. She found herself staring up at his hard, tight, lean golden features with glinting black eyes that offered no hope of a compromise.
‘Y-you’re delusional if you think I’m just meekly going to board that thing without you explaining why the heck I should!’ Desperately she tried to grab back some control here.
‘Delusional?’ he repeated. ‘Well, let us see about that, shall we?'
She saw what was coming. Her breathing feathered. She put both hands to his chest as if to ward him off but the flashing burn in his eyes told her that nothing was going to stop him as he lowered his head and claimed her mouth. The hot sting of desire leapt to life in her bloodstream and her helpless groan vibrated across each separate layer of her skin. He possessed her mouth—all of it. He threw everything into that kiss, every bit of angrily passionate frustration he was feeling. He kissed her until her legs couldn’t support her, until her fingers crushed his glasses into her palm and her other hand crawled up his chest to cling around his neck. He used his hands to keep her pressed up against his body and let her feel what was happening to him. And he did it knowingly, ruthlessly, until her mouth throbbed and her blood pounded and her thighs pulsed and danced.
And he did it right there in full view of his watching pilot and the ground staff. When he lifted his head he waited in silence until she opened her kiss-drugged, man-possessed eyes.
‘Was that real enough?’ he asked then.
‘Yes,’ was the only breathless little answer she had to give him.
‘Sure you don’t want to argue the point some more?’ Pressing her pulsing lips together, she shook her head. ‘Then do you walk onto the helicopter or do I carry you there too?’
‘W-walk,’ she whispered.
He nodded, then, because she looked so beaten, he sighed and said roughly, ‘Don’t look so hopeless. You know I will never harm a single golden hair on your beautiful head.'
Strangely she did know; in fact, it was the only comfort she had to cling to as she let him walk her onto that helicopter without kicking up a screaming fuss.
The Markonos fleet of executive helicopters were not what you could ever call standard issue. The rich cream leather and glossy walnut veneer interior made yet another statement of wealth and of power she had conveniently let herself forget.
‘Jamie,’ she remembered as he saw her settled into one of the seats.
‘Your brother is being well cared for,’ he assured her.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ she asked warily, something in the cool way he had said it making her frown.
He took a mobile phone out of his trouser pocket. ‘Jamie has been watched over by one of my people since I agreed to let him stay at the hotel instead of moving into the villa with us.’
‘Your people? Do you mean like the man you instructed to watch my every movement when you walked away earlier this week?'
The tart stab made his firm mouth flex. ‘I look after my own,’ was all he said.
Then he dropped the mobile phone on her lap and took back the sunglasses she had forgotten she was holding. ‘You have three minutes to assure your brother that everything is fine between us,’ he instructed as he turned away from her. ‘You can tell him we are on our way to Athens and will be back on the island before nightfall—'
‘Athens? I don’t want to go to …’
Louisa found herself protesting to a walnut-veneered bulkhead. He’d just walked through the door and into the pilot’s cabin without giving her a chance to finish what she’d been going to say! Sitting back in her seat, she picked up the mobile. By the time she’d finished assuring
