order breakfast for his disruptive guest. He was in a rage, a rage such as he had not felt since his teenaged years of hormonal turmoil. He was getting nowhere with her. She didn’t listen. She had no respect. She had not even agreed to meet Socrates yet. The temper he always contained was like a wildfire seething inside him, struggling to escape the bonds of his rigid self-discipline.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Rosie demanded unevenly, suddenly breathless at the effect of those stunning liquid mercury eyes beating down on her. ‘I can look after myself, Alex. You don’t need to worry about me.’
‘You can look after yourself so well that you let me into your bed the first night!’ Alexius hurled back at her in a lion’s roar of intimidation.
Unable to argue the truth of that, Rosie didn’t budge an inch or bat a single eyelash. She knew she was annoying him but suspected that anyone who said no to him annoyed him, in which case it was past time someone said no and he was forced to hear and accept it. ‘Everyone makes mistakes … you were mine.’
Alexius strode forward, marvelling that she was standing her ground fearless before him when the rare sound of a raised tone issuing from his mouth sent his staff rushing for cover. How dared she call him a mistake? How dared she turn down his marriage proposal as if it were worth nothing? How dared she not listen?
‘That night wasn’t a mistake, moraki mou,’ Alexius growled low in his throat, his scorching gaze locked to her triangular face, lingering on her emerald-green eyes and succulent pink mouth with an intensity that dismayed her.
Reacting to the simmering buzz of energy he put out, Rosie felt her breasts push against her sweater, her stiff, tender nipples rubbing against the scratchy wool. The hot damp sensation at her feminine core was no longer new to her, for she dreamt about that night almost every night and she was used to it now, accustomed to that nagging pulse, that ache that he had taught her to feel.
‘Of course, it was a mistake,’ she contradicted.
‘No, it was not.’ Alexius locked a big hand round her wrist and pulled her up against his hard muscular body. A spluttered squawk of shock erupted from Rosie before he brought his mouth crashing down on hers with a fire that burned like a naked flame on unprotected skin. He crushed her to him with a rough groan of satisfaction and kissed her with a passion that sang through her senses like a magical spell of entrapment, his tongue stabbing with erotic rhythm into the moist interior of her mouth. One minute she was knotting her hands into his luxuriant black hair to push him away and the next her fingers were delving into those silky depths in exploration and appreciation, before finally moulding to his well-shaped head to hold him close.
Alexius lowered her to the sofa and sent a hand roving up below the sweater to tease the dainty swollen peaks that had so entranced him that night three weeks earlier. Her slender spine arched, a moan of startled pleasure wrenched from her as he played with those responsive buds that were so very sensitive to his touch. Pushing up the sweater, he bent his head to dally there with his mouth instead. A knock sounded on the door and he sprang back from her.
Returned to reality with a mortifying bang, Rosie looked down at her bare chest in horror and, wrenching her sweater back down, she sat up. ‘Don’t touch me like that again!’
Alexius skimmed knowing eyes like silver arrows back to her, a slumberous light in his gaze. ‘Because you like it too much to say no?’ he mocked as he strode to the door to open it.
Rosie’s heart-shaped face was so hot it felt sunburned. He was a taker, a user. He had stolen that kiss as coolly as he had stolen her virginity and she needed more self-control around him. She certainly shouldn’t be noticing that he crossed the room with the grace of a strolling tiger, all fluid rippling muscle and aggressive confidence. The real problem was that he excited her and just being in the same room with him was thrilling and there was something frighteningly seductive about the charge of that excitement. Was that excitement lust? She guessed it had to be.
Alexius settled a heavy tray down on the coffee table. ‘Eat …’ he urged.
There was a chocolate croissant amongst the assorted baked offerings in the bread basket and her mouth watered even as she reached for it. She poured tea and asked him politely if he wanted any, for there was a second cup.
‘I only drink coffee,’ he said.
She discovered that she was still trembling in the aftermath of that passionate embrace. He was so hot he burned her, teaching her that she was a much more physical person than she had ever imagined. It was not a discovery she was grateful to have made because it made her feel vulnerable and weak in a way she had never been before.
‘Why did you get angry when I said that night was a mistake?’ Rosie asked curiously.
‘It was too good to be a mistake. I very much enjoyed it,’ he told her with unselfconscious cool.
Rosie almost choked on her tasty mouthful of chocolate croissant and remained silent until she had swallowed it in a painful rush. ‘I’ll think about meeting my grandfather when my exams are over,’ she conceded.
Alexius dealt her an assessing glance, noting that her belligerent streak was currently at bay. ‘And will you also think then about marrying me?’
Rosie stiffened and raised her eyes as high as his slightly stubbled chin. It was a very determined, very stubborn chin with a cleft and outrageously male. ‘No, that decision was clear as cut glass and I won’t be revisiting it.’
Alexius released his breath in an exasperated hiss of impatience. ‘Why not?’
‘How can you ask me that when you don’t want to get married in the first place?’ Rosie prompted with raised brows signalling her astonishment at his attitude. ‘Have you ever wanted to get married?’
‘No,’ he conceded.
‘Have you ever wanted a child of your own?’
Alexius frowned at that unfortunate question and hesitated.
‘You promised to tell me the truth from now on,’ Rosie reminded him doggedly.
‘No,’ he admitted curtly. ‘I have never wanted a child.’
‘So, why on earth would I want to marry you?’
Evidently, she lacked the greed gene he was used to igniting in all her sex. ‘Security? Support? A father for the child?’
‘If I married you, you’d be off with another woman in five minutes flat,’ Rosie forecast with a grimace at that humiliating likelihood. ‘You don’t strike me as the sort of guy likely to adapt easily to domesticity and parenthood either, particularly if you didn’t choose either of your own free will.’
Alexius, ludicrously unused to being deemed a potential failure at anything he attempted, gritted his teeth. ‘I might surprise you.’
‘And pigs might fly,’ Rosie remarked only half beneath her breath.
Alexius elevated a fine black brow. ‘Is that a challenge?’
‘No, it’s not,’ Rosie hastened to tell him, keen not to start another row. ‘Can’t we be friends, Alex?’
‘I don’t want to be friends with you,’ Alexius shot back at her as she brushed crumbs
