you dare to imagine that I might desire you?’ Ilios accused her. ‘Despite what I have already said about there being no intimacy between us?’
‘No,’ Lizzie denied immediately. ‘It isn’t that.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t say.’
‘And I am afraid that you are going to have to—or take the consequences,’ Ilios warned her quietly.
Lizzie exhaled very slowly. What he meant was that she was going to have to share his bed unless she came up with a cast-iron reason why she should not do. Her reason might be solid, but her courage certainly wasn’t. Of all the unwanted situations she could have had to face, this had to be the worst of them. She was now in a position where she had to defend herself from her own desire for a man who didn’t want her by revealing that desire to him. It was her only means of protecting herself from it.
She had never felt more vulnerable or self-conscious, but the truth was that she needed Ilios’s help to stop her from making her situation even worse. Once he was aware how she felt, she knew he would take all the steps necessary to ensure temptation was removed out of her way. Desperate situations called for desperate measures, and there was surely no more desperate measure than the one she was going to have to take now. Rather like firefighters tackling a fire that threatened to destroy everything in its path, she was going to have to create a fire-break by deliberately destroying part of her own defences in the hope that doing so would ultimately protect her from herself.
‘It isn’t your desire that worries me,’ she told him truthfully, deliberately emphasising the word ‘your’.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LIZZIE’S admission was so unexpected, so breathtakingly straightforward and honest, that it took several seconds for Ilios to accept exactly what she had said.
He looked at her, watching the way the colour came and went in her face, seeing the bruised look of misery that shadowed her eyes, and something came to life inside him that he didn’t recognise.
Why didn’t he say something—anything? Lizzie thought anxiously, even if it was just to reject her.
However, when he did speak it was slowly, spacing out the words.
‘Are you trying to tell me that you don’t want to share my bed because you want me?’ he asked in disbelief.
Lizzie’s throat had gone so tight that it ached with her tension.
‘Yes. That is, I think I do. I’m not used to feeling … that is to wanting … I’ve never actually lusted after anyone before,’ she admitted, red-faced.
‘“Lusted after”?’
Now Lizzie could see that she had shocked him.
‘I’m sorry!’ she apologised. ‘I didn’t want it to happen, but now you can see, can’t you, how difficult it would be? I’ve really tried not to … to think about it, but sometimes it just sort of overwhelms me. I’m afraid that if we were to share a bed, then … Well, what I mean is I know that you don’t want anything to happen between us. I didn’t want to have to say anything.’
She gave a small twisted smile, whilst Ilios listened to her with a growing sense of incredulity and disbelief.
‘What woman would?’ Lizzie continued self-deprecatingly. ‘But at least now that you do know, I can rely on you to … to help me … to ensure that—well, that nothing happens.’
Ilios could hardly believe his own ears. Was she really standing there and telling him that she wouldn’t share his bed because she was afraid that the sexual temptation of his proximity would be too much for her self-control? Did she really think that he was the kind of man who would allow a woman to play the role of hunter in the chase between the sexes? Immediately Ilios wished he had not used such a metaphor, because it had somehow or other caused some very sensual images indeed to break loose inside his imagination—images that were having exactly the opposite effect on him he assumed Lizzie had expected her admission to have.
Her head bowed, Lizzie admitted, ‘I know you must be shocked. I was shocked too. That was part of the reason why I didn’t want to agree to marry you.’
‘You knew then?’ Ilios challenged her.
Lizzie swallowed against the painful lump of anguish lodged in her throat. I knew the minute I saw you, she could have said. But of course she mustn’t.
‘I knew that there was something …’ she told him carefully. ‘But I thought it would go away.’
‘And it didn’t?’
She shook her head. ‘I thought that I could fight against it, that it would be like fighting the hurdles I had to overcome when our parents died, and I will, only at the moment, after tonight and the champagne, I just don’t think …’
‘So it’s only tonight that you don’t want to spend in my bed?’
‘No, it’s not just tonight.’
‘So it isn’t just the champagne either?’
Lizzie couldn’t speak. She couldn’t look at him, and she couldn’t run from him either. All she could do was simply shake her head.
‘I’d be lying if I said that I’d never been propositioned by a woman before, and I’d be lying even more if I said that I’d either welcomed or enjoyed the experience,’ Ilios told her abruptly. ‘As far as I’m concerned, I’m a man who does his own hunting, who selects the woman he wants and pursues her—not the other way around.’
Lizzie’s head came up. ‘I wasn’t propositioning you,’ she denied fiercely. ‘I was just trying to explain—to warn you.’ When he made no response she continued determinedly, ‘I could sleep in the guest room, and then in the morning …’
Ilios was shaking his head.
‘No. Now that I am aware of the situation you may rest assured that you can safely leave it to me to take the right steps to deal with it. That was what you wanted, after all, wasn’t it? For me to take responsibility for the situation?’
‘Yes,’ Lizzie was forced to agree.
‘Right. I have some work to do—costings to check—and some e-mails to send. So why don’t you make yourself at home in what will now be our bedroom and stop worrying? It is a husband’s duty to protect his wife, is it not?’ Ilios’s whole manner was dismissive, and indicated that he no longer felt the issue worthy of discussion.
‘I’m not your wife—and anyway, a lot of women would take exception to the idea that they might need to be protected,’ Lizzie felt bound to point out.
‘This is Greece,’ Ilios told her firmly. ‘And you are both worrying needlessly and imagining problems where none need exist.’
If she did go to bed now, with any luck she would be asleep before Ilios came to join her. In all probability that was why he was staying up to do some work, Lizzie reflected, as she picked up her coat and nodded
