bud of nerves that had her groaning in pleasure as he positioned himself at her tight entrance.
Another surprise. Elena had struck him as a woman of the world. Four years his elder, she’d had her share of lovers, he knew that beyond doubt. And yet…
He pushed against flesh slick and yet strangely unwilling and felt her tense beneath him, sensed her holding her breath.
She couldn’t be. He was just drunk and clumsy and this time…
And then he heard her cry out, and some familiar but unexpected quality in her voice made his blood run cold. He pulled away, fighting a body screaming for release, a head protesting every jarring movement, his hands scrabbling wildly for a switch he knew was here somewhere. Light erupted in the room and exploded in his head, spears of agony lancing his eyes that he had no choice but to ignore if he were to discover what he feared was true.
And then he turned, and the agony in his head was the least of his worries. Marietta Lombardi, the teenaged sister of his best friend, lay naked in his bed, her eyes wide open and afraid like a rabbit caught in a spotlight, her long blonde hair tangled about her head, her milky-skinned limbs squirming uncomfortably upon the bedlinen.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Each word crashed around his head like a shotgun blast. The effect they had on her was more devastating. She looked mortally wounded as she shrank back against the headboard of the bed, bringing her knees up and clutching her arms about her.
‘I wanted to give you something.’ Her bottom lip quivered, a bottom lip he’d often been tempted to kiss, although he never had, and now never would. ‘I came to give you…me.’
‘No!’ he roared, rising from the bed, dragging the damask cover with him to cover his nakedness until he could reach his robe. She was his best friend’s little sister. She was a virgin. And while he’d thought that maybe one day in the future… But there was no chance of that now. No chance of that ever! Not after tonight. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’
‘I was thinking I wanted to be your birthday present.’
There it was again, the telltale tremble of her bottom lip. And there, on her breast he saw it, the mark of his teeth where he’d bitten her in his anger, and the sight of those red marks on her perfect skin sent pain slicing through him anew. Oh, God, this was wrong, on so many levels. He’d been about to take her, to bury himself into her, to punish her as if she’d done him wrong.
And he’d hurt her.
He raked his hands through his hair.
‘You have to go.’
‘But… Yannis.’
‘You have to go!’
‘You were going to make love to me. You were. Why can’t you. Why did you stop?’
He growled into the room. ‘Because I didn’t know who you were then!’
‘So who did you think I was?’ She had the nerve to look incensed, and he almost laughed. Almost. Because there was nothing funny about it.
‘Just…get out of here.’
‘But I love you.’
‘You’re sixteen. You can’t love me.’
‘But you love me. You told me!’
He stormed away again, his fists hard against his brow, fighting the agony inside, fighting the injustice and the foolishness that comes with recalling a day filled with green fields and daisy chains and blue skies and a girl who had always seemed perfect for him.
He felt her hand on his shoulder and wheeled around. She was naked and trembling, her creamy skin goose-bumped, her rose-pink nipples pebbled and hard. She took his hand and placed it over one breast, so that the hard nipple jutted into his palm and his fingers curled into her firm flesh, making his body jerk once again into life.
‘I want you,’ she said, with a brazenness he’d never seen in her before, twin slashes of red staining her cheeks, a brazenness that had her reaching out for the place where he lay swelling beneath. ‘Please make love to me.’
Sto thiavolo, but he was tempted. She moved herself closer into him, taking his silence for assent, pressing her breasts into his chest, her mouth suckling at his flesh while a new agony played out in his aching mind.
He could take her now, and nobody need ever know. Nobody would be any the wiser. One night of perfection before he married Elena. Was it too much to ask?
He wove his fingers through the curtain of her hair, wound its weight around his thumbs, pressing his lips to her hair, already sinking. And she looked up at him with such a look of adoration in her eyes, such a look of love and trust, that he felt sickened he’d even considered it. How could he do that to Marietta—bed her one night and declare his engagement to another the next?
It couldn’t happen.
It couldn’t be allowed to happen.
Not now.
Not ever!
‘Get out,’ he told her, unwinding her arms from his body and pushing her away. Pushing temptation away. ‘I don’t want you here.’
Confusion lit her features. ‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Cover yourself up and get out!’
‘But I love you. And you love me.’
‘Like a sister!’ he blurted, the lie coming with the knowledge that a clean break might be cruel, but it was the only way. ‘Don’t you understand? I love you like a sister. Nothing more.’
Her beautiful face crumpled, sudden moisture transforming her eyes to liquid, her cheeks sheeting with tears. ‘But you said—’
‘It doesn’t matter what I said! Don’t you understand? I can never love you any other way. Now get out and get back to your room before anyone sees you.’
‘But Yannis—’
‘Go!’
CHAPTER ONE
The Island of Montvelatte—thirteen years later
HE WAS close, she could feel it.
It wasn’t just the prickle at the base of her neck and the catch in her throat that had Marietta Lombardi on full alert. It was the way the air seemed suddenly thinner, tighter, as if the myriad candles in the Castello’s enormous dining room had consumed every last drop of oxygen from the atmosphere, leaving a vacuum that ached to be filled.
And then across the room the ancient timber doors swung open, and even the air in her lungs was sucked out.
Yannis Markides, the man she’d vowed never to see again, was finally here in Montvelatte. Dressed entirely in black, he filled the wide entrance like a dark cloud, his eyes purposefully scanning the throng assembled for the wedding rehearsal dinner while an adrenaline-fuelled wave crashed over her, pinning her to the chair and threatening to free thirteen-year-old memories that had been buried in the deepest recesses of her mind.
Apparently not deeply enough.
Yet even a flood of unwanted memories was no match for seeing him in person. The Yannis of her unbidden and unwanted dreams couldn’t hold a candle to this man, who looked more like a warrior about to go into battle than an old family friend. Had he always been so tall? Had he always been able to fill a space with his mere presence? And, in spite of the war-like stance, had he always looked so damned good?
She swallowed down on a sudden lump in her throat. She didn’t need him to look good. Didn’t want him to. She should go now. Slip out in the confusion of waiters serving a multitude of meals before he saw her, before she had to face him again and relive the humiliation of their last encounter.
And then her brother jumped to his feet beside her, calling