an interesting proposition. Why don’t you make me...want you.” His voice grated the words. “If you can accomplish that feat, I’ll let you name your price.”
“What price are you talking about?” she cried in absolute shock.
His eyes narrowed to black slits. “One way or another, money is the reason you’re here.”
“You think?”
In spite of his cruelty to her, his dare emboldened Stephanie to take him up on it. Much as she wished she could turn off her desire for this man whose child she was carrying, it didn’t work that way. With her only thought being to get to the bottom of this nightmare, she reached for him and slid her arms around his neck.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered, before pressing her mouth to his, needing to be convincing so he’d listen to her. “You have no idea how much.” After three months deprivation, her longing for him was at full strength, despite her pain at being abandoned. She needed to feel his arms around her and be kissed the way he’d done before, as if he was dying for her.
At first she could wring no response from him, and couldn’t bear it. Then, suddenly, she felt his groan before he pulled her closer, as if he couldn’t help himself. Every remembered memory came flooding back...the rapture, the ecstasy of his mouth and hands doing incredible things to her.
If anything, the flame of heat licked at both of them even more strongly than before. She rejoiced that she’d found him and that he still wanted her. His response couldn’t be feigned. He was definitely covering up something. But right this minute intense desire was the one truth between them, and she’d cling to it with every breath she possessed until she knew what had happened to him.
Their bodies swayed due to the intensity of their passion. He clung to her with surprising strength. Voluptuous warmth enveloped them, bringing her inestimable pleasure that was spiraling, taking her over the edge of coherent thought. “Could we go someplace private?” she begged against his lips. “I’ve needed to feel you like this for so long, but I’m afraid someone will see us.”
After a slight hesitation, he tore his lips from hers and released her. Before he pulled away she thought she saw torment in his eyes. “Come with me.” He sounded out of breath.
“Wait. I dropped my purse.” She retrieved it from the deck floor.
“No luggage?” he asked, falling back into that accusatory tone she hated.
“I only planned to come here for a few hours, so I left it in my hotel room on Chios.”
He studied her through veiled eyes, no doubt assessing the validity of her statement before grasping her hand. “We’ll go below.” Nikos pulled her to the top of the stairs and they descended. He led her down the hallway past the lounge. Beyond it was the galley and a laundry room. The master bedroom was on the end, with its en suite bathroom.
The bed was unmade. Had he slept on board last night? While she stood there, bombarded with questions she needed answers to, he shrugged out of his T-shirt. After throwing it on a chair, he sat on the end of the bed to remove his sandals. She took a quick breath when he stood up to get out of his cargo pants. Despite his weight loss, he was such a striking man her mouth went dry looking at his hard-muscled frame.
“What are you doing?”
He shot her a penetrating glance. “I thought this was what you wanted. I’ll pay your price after we’re finished. Let me help you.” In a lightning move he reached for her purse and tossed it on the chair on top of his shirt, panicking her.
“Wait, Dev—”
But he was beyond listening to her. “Delightful as that blouse is, I’m aching to see you again without any artifice. It’s been a long time since our all-nighter. Kissing you has caused me to remember how delightful you are. Do you want to remove it, or shall I?”
Suddenly apprehensive, she stepped away from him. The challenge she’d initiated, to break him down, had backfired and she started to be afraid. “Please don’t be like this, Dev. We need to talk.” She refused to tell him why she’d come all this way, until she understood the reason he’d changed into someone else. If he made love to her, he’d know what she was hiding.
His smile had a wicked curl. “I don’t remember you being this coy with me before. Come here.” He inched closer and caressed her cheek. “We were lovers. Why pretend to be shy now when you were—shall we say—so accommodating before?”
Heat flooded her face. He was the most irresistible male alive. She couldn’t bear it that there was this awful anger emanating from him. “For one night I slept in your bed, but I wouldn’t call us lovers, not when you took off the next day, never to be seen again.”
She felt his hands circle her neck, where he rubbed his thumbs over the pulse throbbing in the hollow of her throat. “That must have been a shock, eh?” he taunted. “Didn’t you like the flowers I left behind?” he whispered silkily. “You told me gardenias were your favorites.”
Stephanie had promised herself she wouldn’t break down in front of him, but she had to fight the sting of salt against her eyelids. “I loved them, and would have thanked you if you’d left me a forwarding address or phone number.”
His hands slid to her hair, where his fingers curled around the strands of her ponytail. “Since you’ve found me anyway, come to bed and show me just how much you loved them. Don’t worry. You’ll get what you came for.”
She shook her head. “Don’t do this, Dev. Whatever terrible thing you think I’ve done, those ten days we spent together have to account for something to cherish.”
“Cherish?” he mocked, wounding her all over again, before freeing her. His hands went to his hips in a stance of male beauty all its own. “That word connotes fidelity, loyalty. I wonder if an ounce of either quality exists inside that delectable body of yours.” His response dripped like acid from his lips.
Dev would be shocked if he knew what existed inside her and was growing with every passing minute. She pressed her arms to her waist, unable to forget for one second that she was carrying his son or daughter.
“It’s clear you believe I betrayed you in some way. How could I have done that? We were together constantly at the resort. On that first day you asked me to be your diving partner, not the other way around. I spent every waking moment with you instead of the girls who came with me. I never even left the resort to go shopping with them, because you wanted to be with me every second.
“When I read the note left in the flowers, you have no idea what it did to me. I realized I was only a spring fling to you. I—I thought it was more.” Her voice caught. Feeling unexpectedly nauseous, she moved over to the bed and sank down to recover.
He pinned her with those jet-black eyes. “Yet even though you got the message that our interlude was over, you came here, anyway.”
After what they’d shared, for him to say that it had been over since they’d left the Caribbean caused her spirits to plummet to a new low.
“Yes. It was important for me to see you again, to find out why you had to go back to your work so abruptly. What if you needed help? Possible reasons for your sudden disappearance plagued me, until I couldn’t sleep. I feared it might have even been a medical emergency that prompted you to write me that note,
