into her life she had not just thrown away the rulebook, she had virtually burned it. Did she mean anything to him? Or was what they had just a casual thing on his terms?
‘Do you think about me when you’re away?’ Hope blurted out.
His shirt hanging loose on his bronzed muscular chest, Andreas came down on the bed and laughed out loud. ‘After two weeks without sex?’ he teased in his dark deep drawl. ‘By this week, I was thinking about you at least once a minute!’
Hope flushed to the roots of her pale hair, hurt and disappointment scything through her that he should be so literal. ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’
Andreas hauled her up against him with strong hands, and golden eyes ablaze with arrogant confidence assailed hers. ‘Don’t ask a Greek trick questions,’ he warned her. ‘You’re my lover. Of course I think about you.’
Without hesitation, he plundered her mouth and her uneasy thoughts blurred. Fire sparked low in her belly and a wave of tormenting hunger consumed her. Two weeks without Andreas felt like half a lifetime. Even as she doubted his commitment, she could not resist her need to take refuge in his passion. Her body was taut with sensitivity, begging for sensation. The expert caress of his hands on her breasts made her moan. The rosy buds crowning her tender flesh tingled and when he utilised his teeth and his tongue on those inflamed peaks, she writhed, control slipping from her as steadily as any form of rational awareness.
Her heart was racing, the breath catching in her dry throat. He was pure bronzed elemental male and he knew exactly what inflamed her. He found the hot, swollen secret at the heart of her and clever fingers drove her to ever more desperate heights of longing. The passion took over, roaring through her twisting, turning length like an explosive fireball.
‘This is how I like to picture you,’ Andreas rasped with raw satisfaction. ‘Out of your mind with the pleasure I give you.’
He sank into her with ravishing force and her body leapt and clenched. The frenzy of excitement mastered her with terrifying immediacy. Delirious with desire, she was way beyond any hope of mastering the tempestuous surge of her responses. Her need for Andreas was almost painfully intense. His passion pushed her to a wild peak of unbearable pleasure and then she fell down and down and down into a state of turbulence that bore no resemblance to her usual languorous sense of peace and happiness. Her body was satisfied but her emotions were raw. Tears lashed her eyes and overflowed before she even knew what was happening to her.
Andreas rolled over onto his back. In the act of rearranging her on top of him, he pushed her hair gently off her face and his fingers lingered on her damp cheekbone. ‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded.
‘Nothing’s wrong.’ Hope gulped. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying. It’s silly.’
Foreboding nudged at Andreas, who excelled at second-guessing those who surrounded him. She buried her head in his shoulder. He smoothed her hair. Handsome mouth taut, he closed his arms round her. If he were patient she would tell him what was wrong. She was quite incapable of keeping anything important from him. Her confiding habits were engrained, he reminded himself.
‘I’m sorry…I suppose I’ve just come over all emotional thinking about our anniversary,’ Hope mumbled in a muffled voice.
Lush black lashes lifted on guarded dark golden eyes. ‘Anniversary?’
‘Don’t you know that in another few days we’ll have been together for two whole years?’ Hope lifted her tousled head, a happy smile of achievement on lips still swollen from his kisses. ‘I want to celebrate it.’
Two years? His gaze narrowed, his lean, darkly handsome face impassive, concealing his stunned reaction to that news. Had she really been in his life that long? He was appalled that he had neglected to notice her staggering longevity. Two years? Marriages didn’t last that long. When had she become the equivalent of a fixture? She had inserted herself into his daily routine with astounding subtlety. She was just…there. She didn’t cling but the tendrils of her existence were as meshed with his as ivy round a tree. That was not an inspiring analogy. But when had he last slept with another woman? He squashed the instant sliver of guilt that even the thought ignited. He had been incredibly faithful to her. Acknowledging that reality set his even white teeth on edge. Inexplicable as it seemed to him, she had infiltrated his freedom like an invisible invading army and conditioned him in ways that were foreign to him. Angry surprise turned him to ice as though he were in the presence of the enemy.
‘I’m not into anniversaries with women,’ Andreas delivered, brilliant eyes dark as coals and diamond-bright. ‘I don’t do the sentimental stuff.’
Hope could hardly breathe. She wanted to put her hand over his beautiful mouth and prevent him from saying anything more. She could not bear that he should fulfil any part of Vanessa’s disparaging forecast, yet she was equally unable to let that laden silence lie. ‘But it’s special to me that you’ve been a part of my life for so long.’
Andreas shrugged a muscular bronzed shoulder and firmly lifted her off him. ‘We have a good time together. I value you. But it would be inappropriate to celebrate an anniversary. That’s not what we’re about.’
Hope felt like someone tied to the railway tracks in front of an express train and the roar of the metal monster was his words crushing the dreams she had cherished and ripping apart her illusions. In one lithe, powerful movement, he sprang off the bed and headed into the bathroom. She lay there cold and shocked and shattered. In her presence he had changed from the guy she loved into an intimidating stranger with cold eyes and a harsh, unfeeling voice and he had pushed her away. She got up to pull on the ice-blue wrap lying on a nearby chair. But she was forced to sink back down onto the bed because her head was swimming. It was that stupid dizziness again, she thought wearily. Perhaps it was an ear infection that was interfering with her sense of balance.
I value you. What sort of a declaration was that? That Andreas knew the exact extent of her worth? In terms of convenience? No, he didn’t do sentimental but, perhaps more tellingly, he had not cared whether or not he wounded her feelings. He had to be very sure of her to put a blanket ban on even a minor celebration. Biting her lip and with a knot of fear forming inside her, Hope tightened the sash on her wrap. But anger was also slowly stirring out of the ashes of the hurt caused by his humiliating response to her perfectly innocent remarks.
Taut with angry, frustrated tension, Andreas leant back against the limestone wall in the power shower and let the water stream down over his magnificent bronzed body. Usually he was still in bed with Hope at this stage of the evening. His chill-out time with her had been wrecked. Taken by surprise, he had been tactless. He wanted to punch something. Their relationship was as near perfect as he had ever hoped to achieve on a casual basis. Hope never made unreasonable demands and appeared to have no greater ambition in life than to make him happy. And she was bloody brilliant at making him happy, Andreas acknowledged grudgingly. He did not want to lose her. But what did he do with a mistress who did not know she was a mistress? A mistress who wanted to celebrate anniversaries as if she were a wife? Theos mou… He winced. What had come over her?
Most probably, Andreas reasoned with a surge of fierce resentment, Hope’s shrewish friend, Vanessa, was responsible. Was it she who had destroyed Hope’s sunny contentment? Who else could it have been? Once or twice Hope had repeated Vanessa’s revealingly acidic remarks about men. Andreas had gained the distinct impression that Hope’s best friend would fry him alive in hot oil if she ever got the chance.
That his association with Hope should be so misjudged and so undervalued outraged Andreas. He was proud of the way he treated Hope. He looked after her. She was a very happy woman. Why? He kept all
