The Greek’s Chosen Wife

CHAPTER TWO

A FALLING FEATHER would have sounded like a giant rock in the silence that followed that question.

Shattered, Prudence opened her mouth and shut it again, discovering that Nik’s gaze was welded to her full lips. She flushed, wondering why he was staring. She studied him with a frown because she didn’t trust her own hearing. He could surely not have said what she thought he had just said? And if he had spoken those words, no doubt she had somehow misunderstood his meaning.

Aware that his legendary skills as a negotiator had let him down badly, Nik attempted to recoup. ‘Think about this sensibly. Eight years ago, we were kids. So we did what we had to do and went through the motions and then we parted. We didn’t even try living together. But we’re older and wiser now.’

Prudence felt as if a rocket was about to fire off inside her; containing the shockwaves was almost more than she could handle. She shut her eyes tight. What was the matter with him? Eight years on, eight years after breaking her heart into a million pieces with his essential indifference, he was suggesting trying out marriage like a new pair of shoes. She wanted to scream-but not before she strangled him for daring to offer what she had once most craved, before she had finally got up the strength to break away. She thought of the contents of the wooden chest by the wall behind him and her fast-beating heart steadied and almost stilled as the old anguish tore at her. Not tall enough, not thin enough, not pretty enough for a guy so good-looking he turned male and female heads in the street.

‘No, thanks,’ Prudence said as if he had offered her a drink she didn’t want.

Shock slivered through Nikolos, his golden eyes darkening. He could not credit that instant refusal. She was winding him up, he thought forbiddingly. In the back of his mind he had always known that he would settle down with her. Eventually. He had never doubted it, never really even needed to think about it. He had known she would wait for him, wait with the steady, strong patience of the intelligent woman that she was until he was ready to make that commitment.

‘Think about what you’re saying,’ Nik urged huskily. ‘This is you, this is me and we’re already married-’

‘Only on paper-’

‘But we could make it real,’ Nik drawled softly, the dark timbre of his accented intonation shimmying down her taut spinal cord like a dangerous-weather warning.

Prudence worked very hard at blanking him out. Goodness knew, she had had plenty of practice resisting Nik’s intense charisma. Once a stray smile or even the hint of warmth in his gaze had made her silly heart race. But not any more, she reminded herself fiercely.

‘I don’t want to make it real.’

Nik reached for her with sure, steady hands and she let him ease her closer. Her heart was pounding behind her ribcage. Her brain was telling her to back away, laugh it off and extricate herself with style. There was just one problem: she didn’t want to. A little voice had swum up from her subconscious to tell her that it was all right and perfectly acceptable to be curious about how it would feel if he held her close.

‘I may be no good at the romantic angle…but I excel in other fields,’ Nik purred.

‘You’re very modest.’ She was so tense, so wound up with fizzing expectation that she could hardly breathe. In the grip of intense confusion, she was no longer thinking. In fact she was luxuriating in the touch of the long brown fingers smoothing across her cheek to spear into her hair and tip up her face for the raking inspection of his stunning golden eyes.

‘Humility doesn’t win battles.’ He lowered his arrogant dark head. ‘If you run away this time, I’ll come after you…’

A tight little knot had formed in her tummy. She pressed her thighs tightly together. The peaks of her breasts felt incredibly sensitive, the rosy tips distended and tingling. Warm colour mantled her cheeks. Just when she was on the brink of grabbing him, he brought his marauding masculine mouth down on hers. It felt impossibly intimate and incredibly good. She clutched at his jacket to stay upright. Thud-thud-thud went her heartbeat. The invasion of his tongue beyond the tender fullness of her lips pierced her with a deep, aching longing that made her shiver. She wanted more. Her body was like a spring wound up too tight. She wanted to drown in the sweet, wicked pleasure he offered and forget her pride. But as he pulled her closer she knocked her heel on the wooden chest by the wall and cold shame engulfed her as she recognised her hunger and her weakness for what they were.

Tearing herself free of his hold, she staggered away a couple of steps and struggled to calm herself, while attempting to ignore the shrieking sensation of loss tugging at her nerve-endings.

Breathing heavily, Nik resisted an urge to haul her back to him like a caveman. ‘What’s wrong?’

Mortified by her behaviour, she could not stand to look at him. What was wrong was encapsulated in the contents of the chest by the wall, she reflected painfully. She wondered if he had registered that her response had hit earthquake scale and that her legs were still threatening to buckle. ‘I shouldn’t have let that happen-’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I want a divorce.’

‘Why?’ Nik prompted, swift as a panther about to pounce. ‘Is there another man in your life?’

Astonishment almost made Prudence laugh out loud at that question. Mentally she was in a total spin: his suggestion that they make their marriage real had already shattered her with its sheer unexpectedness. The kiss, brief as it had been, had been overkill for her sorely taxed nerves. ‘If there was, it would be none of your business-’

‘Theos…of course it would be my business!’ Nik launched at her, dropping the velvet-smooth approach with a vengeance.

It was the provocation Prudence needed. Stalking past him, she wrenched up the lid of the chest and bent down to lift out a haphazard bundle of photograph albums and scrapbooks. She turned round and clumsily dumped them right at his feet. ‘No…the women between those pages are your business…I’m not and I never will be!’

An electrifying silence fell.

‘What is this?’ Nik swept up a scrapbook. He didn’t want to open it. But cowardice was not his way and he did so. His arrested attention was claimed by tabloid cuttings, magazine articles and picture after picture of him with other women. He felt sick. ‘You put this together?’

Prudence folded her arms in a defensive stance. ‘It was wonderful aversion therapy.’

‘But we weren’t living together. We have never lived together as man and wife,’ Nik countered in a fast-footed and healthy recovery that she could only regard as magnificent, surrounded as he was by all the undeniable evidence of his notorious reputation as a womaniser. ‘But if I had you, I wouldn’t need those kinds of amusements any more.’

Amusements? Women as toys, entertaining distractions for the lighter moments of life. Leo had been right and she had been ingloriously wrong: Nik was an old-style Greek tycoon. An unrepentant womaniser with double standards. It was typical that he should think that she would only want a divorce because she had met someone else. Perhaps honesty was the best policy.

With her emotions all over the place and her lips still tingling from the hard heat of his, Prudence was eager to gloss over the animosity in the air and smooth things back to normal. ‘There is nobody else involved in this. I wasn’t going to tell you at this point but I have made certain plans and I can’t go ahead with them until we’re divorced.’

‘What sort of plans?’

‘I want to…’ she hesitated and then pressed doggedly on, ‘…I want to have a baby.’

The tall, dark Greek went as still as a statue. ‘With whom?’

‘By myself. It’s not that unusual…I’ll go to a sperm bank,’ Prudence explained in a small, reluctant voice. ‘And yes, I have thought very deeply about this.’

For a count of thirty seconds Nik stared at her with brooding force, his golden eyes burning hot as the heart of a fire. ‘Over my dead body…and I mean that literally. That has to be the most disgusting idea that I’ve ever heard and I don’t want to hear it again. It’s freaky-’

‘It is not freaky…There’s nothing wrong with me wanting a child! It’s the most normal thing in the world. I’m twenty-seven-’

‘So? You can have one the normal way…but not that way.’ Pale beneath his bronzed skin, his fabulous, sculpted bone structure prominent, Nik could not restrain a shudder. ‘I suppose I could agree to a baby as well. Anything has to be better than a divorce and impregnation of my wife by a test-tube.’

Rigid with mortification and anger at his scornful and dismissive reaction, and outraged at his offer of that grudging concession on the child front, Prudence said tightly, ‘I think you should leave-’

‘Pudding-’

‘I used to think there was something cute about you calling me that…I’ve changed my mind.’

In a sudden movement that caught her unawares, Nik reached for her hands. ‘No, I’m not leaving. I can’t let this happen. This is not how we are together.’

Her throat thickened and closed over. She nodded in vigorous agreement, not trusting herself to speak.

‘This is not how it was meant to be between us,’ Nik intoned, almost crushing the life from her fingers.

Moisture shone in her eyes and slid down her cheeks. Nik groaned out loud. ‘Don’t…’

She gulped. ‘I’m sorry…go!’

‘No…’ Nik lowered his handsome dark head to kiss the tear from her smooth cheek. She had the scent of a peach: warm and ripe and ready to eat. For a fraction of a second he hesitated and then, recognising his moment, he went for it with all the ruthless, single-minded purpose which his business competitors feared.

Astonishment shrilled through Prudence when Nik captured her lips with a hungry urgency that rocked her down to her toes. Bemused, she began to pull away but he wound her hair round his fingers, tipped her head back and traced a path across her face with kisses as light and tantalising as butterflies. She liked it. Without meaning to, she shut her eyes and let her head fall back, extending her throat. He took instant advantage of that new expanse of territory. His mouth probed a tender spot below her ear and her pulses all leapt in concert. She gasped and shivered violently, her legs suddenly behaving like bendy twigs.

‘Still want me to leave?’ Nik asked soft and low.

In answer, Prudence gripped the lapels of his suit jacket and stretched up, wanting his mouth on hers again so badly she could taste it. He kissed her with a slow, sensual thoroughness that turned her bones to liquid and yet still filled her with screaming impatience. Her hands swept up over his shoulders, rejoicing in the strength of his powerful frame while her fingertips flirted with the luxuriant black hair brushing his shirt collar. She shifted against him and he caught her to him with a sensual growl low in his throat, his hands splaying across the curve of her hips to press her into energising contact with his bold arousal.

Her initial shock was followed by a giddy mixture of shy satisfaction and sudden triumph: Nik wanted her. Nik could find her attractive and worthy of desire. No man could fake his physical response to a woman. That knowledge filled her with a highly feminine sense of joyful achievement. He hoisted her up into his arms with a brute strength that thrilled her to the marrow. ‘You make me very hot,’ he whispered thickly, letting the tip of his tongue slide between her lips in a single lancing foray that set her every nerve-ending on fire.

Nik carried her into the bedroom and sank down on the bed with her. His lean, bronzed profile intent, he tugged loose the tantalising strings that shaped the neckline of her dress and buried his mouth hungrily in the deep cleavage formed by her lace-edged bra. A stifled sob of pent-up response was wrenched from Prudence. A heavy pulse of need had started to pound in her pelvis. She leant back into the support of his arm, her fingers spearing into the ebony depths of his hair. He flipped loose the hooks holding the satin cups in place, letting her firm, full breasts spill free.

‘You are magnificent,’ Nik told her raggedly, surveying the pouting silken swells with reverent appreciation and capturing the hands that she instinctively raised to cover herself from him. ‘No, don’t you dare try to hide yourself.’

Embarrassment and gratification at his response made her acquiesce. He massaged the stiff, rosy crests that crowned the creamy mounds of her breasts and she ran out of breath all at once. All of a sudden every part of her was taut and deliciously sensitised. Lowering his proud dark head, he used his mouth on the distended buds. A helpless moan broke from her, for the coil of heat unfurling low in her tummy merely intensified the tormenting ache between her thighs.

‘Nik…’ she gasped, amazed by the surging tide of sensation engulfing her inexperienced body.

‘I know. I feel it, too.’ Springing upright, he laid her down on the bed. He peeled off his jacket and let it fall where he stood. Smouldering dark golden eyes fixed to her, he yanked loose his tie and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a muscular, bronzed wedge of chest ornamented with crispy black whorls of hair. ‘We should have done this a long, long time ago.’

Her soft blue gaze was veiled, frantic thoughts consuming her and momentarily pulling her in opposing directions. What on earth was she doing? How could she have let things go so far? But she knew why. Her mind was as clear as a pane of glass on the fact that she wanted him. After all, she had wanted him for what felt like half a lifetime even though she knew it was senseless. She doubted that any other man would ever make her feel as he did. So why should she not finally go to bed with her own husband? Why should she not find out what sex was like before they divorced? She could live out a little harmless fantasy, a little voice whispered seductively in the back of her mind. It would be a risk-free venture that would cost her nothing but a little pride.

‘Prudence…’ Nik murmured huskily, saying it like a guy getting into practice, his Greek accent scissoring carefully round the syllables. ‘Don’t look so worried, pethi mou. There isn’t a problem in the world I can’t sort.’

He leant over her and drove her lips apart in an explosive kiss. It was as if a ball of energy had ignited inside her. Her heart thumped like crazy and she quivered as the sweet flood-tide of desire flared, making her achingly aware of every inch of her body. When he shaped her breasts she arched her spine to press the excruciatingly tender, rosy peaks into his palms. He laved the tortured tips with his tongue and she moaned with impassioned abandon while he proceeded with all the skill in his repertoire to dispose of her remaining garments without her noticing.

When he traced the delicate softness below the nest of curls at the apex of her thighs she trembled, mortified by the moist heat at the heart of her receptive body. The fierce surge of excitement that followed shattered her expectations. Suddenly, thought was no longer possible and she was writhing, her hips shifting on the bed as he tantalised the most sensitive spot of all with expert fingers and explored the slick wet heat of her.

‘Will I be the first?’ Nik husked, coiling back from her to strip off his trousers.

With difficulty she focused on him and she was shaken by her desire to tell him that no, he would not be, even if it would be the most awful lie.

As the silence lengthened, tension screamed through Nik’s big, powerful frame: had she been with someone else?

Her gaze locked to his lean darkly handsome face and her heartbeat raced. She discovered she could not lie to him on that score. ‘Yes…’

Raw relief drenched Nik in a rush of gratitude to the fates. Clad only in his shorts, he came back to her to curve long brown fingers to her cheekbone with an almost clumsy tenderness that was unfamiliar to her. ‘I had no right to expect or even to hope…but that you are a virgin will mean a great deal to me,’ he swore, speaking half in English, half in Greek.

‘Will it?’ She shut her eyes tight because they were prickling with tears.

‘Of course…you are my bride and you will know no other man,’ Nik rasped half under his breath.

As he eased back from her to finish undressing, Prudence did not let her attention stray from him for a second. Her breathing grew quick and shallow. From the steely contours of his shoulders to his long, powerful, hair-roughened thighs he looked spectacular. He had the broad, muscular chest, the sleek, iron-hard torso and the lean hips of a natural athlete. He removed his shorts and she almost stopped breathing altogether. She was shocked by her first glimpse of a fully grown male in a state of rampant arousal.

‘If I had waited another few minutes I wouldn’t have needed to ask whether or not you were a virgin,’ Nik murmured with unholy amusement lighting his eyes to pure golden enticement. ‘Your face says it all.’

Dropping down on the bed beside her, he ravished her reddened mouth with passionate thoroughness. A wave of heat consumed her. The tender flesh between her legs was shamefully moist. With a husky sound of male appreciation he let his teeth graze the achingly stiff bud of a swollen pink nipple and slowly and surely he rediscovered the slick dampness that betrayed her need. Her lips parted on a long-drawn-out moan and she clenched her teeth on a pleasure that came close to pain. Her excitement built up in layer on layer until she could hardly get air into her lungs.

‘I didn’t know I could feel like this…’

His scorching gaze welded to hers. ‘Not everyone can. Your passion matches mine.’

She drowned in the hot, sweet pleasure of his caresses. She could not stay still. Beyond all thought, she surrendered to sensation until it seemed that the torment of such craving would tear her in two. ‘Please…’ she gasped then.

Nik arranged her under him, sliding fluidly between her thighs. ‘I may hurt you,’ he warned her unevenly, his lithe, bronzed length ferociously tense over hers.

‘S’OK,’ she mumbled, dry-mouthed, her entire body thrumming with the intolerable hunger.

‘I want it to be perfect…’ he swore raggedly, stunning golden eyes locked to hers with passionate resolve.

He tipped her back and eased degree by degree into her slick, tight depths. Her eyes widened at the fullness of him. He breached the barrier that would have repelled him with a single thrust. The stab of pain was an unwelcome surprise. ‘Oh, my goodness…Nik-’

‘Shush…it’ll get better. I promise,’ he husked raggedly, sinking his hands beneath her to cup her hips and steadily deepen his penetration.

‘Don’t move…’ she begged, waiting for the discomfort to recede.

‘I hurt you,’ Nik groaned, rigid with the tension of exerting such fierce control over his overeager body. ‘But you’re very small.’

Prudence allowed herself a minor exploratory wriggle and then another. A cat-that-got-the-cream expression crept over her absorbed face as sensation returned in abundance. He felt incredible inside her. The erotic pulse of desire controlled her again and she angled up to him in encouragement until he lifted her to meet his primal thrust. Her heart started to pound, her voice to catch in her throat. His every fluid movement engulfed her in sensual pleasure. He moved in slow provocation at first and then skilfully increased his rhythm. Wild excitement seized her. When she reached a fever pitch of unbearable sensation, he took her higher still into a shattering crescendo of ecstasy. Crying out his name in a frenzy of delight, she lost herself entirely in the blissful aftershocks of sweet pleasure.

In a daze, Nik rolled back against the pillows and held her close. He was trembling, in shock after the longest, hottest release of his life. She shifted in his arms and he tightened his grip on her. Well, she wasn’t going any place now…except home with him. Home where? The apartment really wasn’t suitable. It was a playboy’s pad, not the place for Prudence. They could live in a hotel for a while. He would have to buy a house. What about all the animals? A house in the country within easy reach of London. He pressed a kiss like a benediction to her smooth brow. ‘That was awesome, pethi mou.’

Prudence breathed in the hot, damp, wonderfully familiar scent of his skin. Her head was still swimming, her body languorous from the glorious surfeit of pleasure. In quiet, appreciative silence she revelled in a rare moment of pure, unvarnished happiness. Try as she might, though, she could not shut out her thoughts and just as fast the clouds rolled in. In going to bed with Nik she had been living out a fantasy, she reminded herself. In time-honoured style, he had been fantastic and he had fully justified his wild reputation, she reflected with a pain she refused to acknowledge. But wasn’t it a bit sad of her to be still clinging and pretending he was a real, loving, caring husband after the main event was over? Wasn’t it time for her to get back to the real world?

Nik let long brown fingers slide through the tumbling mass of chestnut hair spilling across his chest. ‘You’re very quiet.’

A sparkling smile fixed like glue to her reddened lips, Prudence lifted her tousled head. ‘I was just thinking how good you are at all this stuff…now I finally know what all the fuss is about-’

Dazzling golden eyes zeroed in on her, bright as hot sunlight in his lean, darkly handsome face. He frowned, wondering if she was trying to make him laugh to cover her awkwardness. ‘I’m not quite sure those are the sentiments I want to hear from my wife…’

Anger tensed Prudence, for that label always hit her like a cruel taunt, a reminder of what their relationship had not been. She had never felt married and sleeping with Nik didn’t change that. Suddenly she was feeling very much like a woman who had made a major mistake. In a sudden movement she scrambled free of him.

‘What is the matter with you?’ Nik demanded, hoisting himself up against the tumbled pillows, bronzed skin startlingly dark against the delicate white and pink bedlinen.

Snatching up her wrap, Prudence dug her arms into it, desperate to cover up her voluptuous curves. ‘Sharing a bed with me doesn’t make me your wife. It just makes me one more in a long line of women!’ she heard herself toss in furious rebuttal. ‘And you’re not exactly exclusive, are you?’

Nik was poleaxed by that response. He vaulted out of bed but she had already stalked out of the room. In the act of following her, he registered that it was still daylight and that there were no curtains drawn. Quietly cursing up a storm, he began to hurriedly pull on his clothes again.

Her face tight with suppressed emotion, Prudence sidled back into the doorway. ‘I’m sorry I was rude like that. There’s never any excuse for bad manners,’ she said stiffly, refusing to meet his lancing dark golden gaze. ‘But I do still want a divorce-’

Nik was insulted beyond belief by that announcement. ‘Why the hell did you let me take you to bed?’

Prudence almost cringed. ‘I’d really rather not discuss that-’

‘No flannel…you owe me the truth!’ Nik raked back at her rawly.

Wild horses could not have forced Prudence to look at him. Her cheeks scarlet, she compressed her ripe mouth and breathed in very deep. ‘I just wanted to know what it would be like with you. I didn’t think it would be any big deal on your terms.’

In such a rage that he could hardly vocalise, Nik studied her. There she was, all five feet two of her and she was confessing to using him like some stud on trial. ‘I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you still want a divorce either. You still care about me. I think that’s why you gave me your virginity.’

That bold, challenging statement sliced like a sharp knife through every layer of her tender skin. That Nik should confront her with her feelings for him was her worst nightmare come true and she knew she would never forgive him for it. Pride brought up her head, blue eyes defiant and bright. ‘Maybe I was just tired of being a virgin. I don’t still care about you in that way, Nik,’ she asserted. ‘I was infatuated with you when we married but it didn’t last the course. I got over you a very long time ago.’

‘Those scrapbooks sing a different song,’ Nik delivered with a cruel edge he had never used around her before.

Shock at that immediate, unhesitating retaliation made Prudence turn white as snow, nausea stirring in her stomach. ‘I want you to leave. You’re not welcome here any more!’ she told him jerkily. ‘I’m going for a divorce and I don’t need your permission for it!’

‘I forgot to give you your birthday present.’ Nik extended a slim jewellery case as if she hadn’t spoken.

Prudence sucked in a sustaining breath. Curiosity warred with the need to keep him at a distance. Curiosity won. She stared down at the incredibly pretty diamond-studded pendant in the shape of a…? He had the neck to give her a heart when he had smashed her own into a thousand pieces? Eyes burning with boiling tears, she snapped the case shut again and forced it back into his hand. ‘Thanks, but I don’t want it or you…Now go away!’

Slamming the door shut on his exit, she leant back against it and listened to the helicopter taking off again. Anger and pain and despair coalesced inside her. She would probably never see him again. She had insulted him. Everything she had valued about their relationship had been destroyed by a reckless bout of sex. The trust, the respect, the affection were gone. How could she even blame Nik for coming on to her? In her opinion he knew no other way to relate to a woman. But what madness had possessed her? The dull, intimate ache between her thighs made her shamed face burn. The besotted teenager whom she believed she had outgrown had had her swansong after all. But the aftermath of regret was hurting her much more than she could have believed.

It was, she sensed painfully, the end of an era. Eight years ago she had flown out to Greece and her life had been driven off course. Taking back the initiative meant moving on from that past. Swallowing back the dark thickness of tears clogging her throat, she reminded herself why she wanted her freedom back. In a couple of years she might have a child of her own to love and care for but she had to start divorce proceedings first and inform her grandfather of her intentions…