Her amber eyes flashed with temper, clashing with blazing black, but she was too angry to care. A few minutes ago she’d been congratulating herself on beginning to get over Rion, and now, like some evil genie, he’d popped back into her life.
‘What the hell for?’ She swore. ‘It is almost midnight in Brazil—halfway round the world from where you live, for heaven’s sake—and yet here you are. Are you crazy?’ she demanded furiously.
Rion grabbed her around the waist and hauled her hard against him. For an instant desire flared between them, and savagely she tried to crush it. But too late. She registered his eyes, glittering with an almost manic light.
‘Crazy, maybe—but it is you who have made me this way. And I’ll hunt you down to the ends of the earth if that is what it takes to get you back. Because I can’t stand the thought of you with someone else. Everything in me—everything I am—yearns for you,’ he declared harshly.
This was a Rion she had never seen before. He was like a man possessed. ‘You can’t just hunt—’
But he carried on as though she had not spoken, and being held against his body was making her temperature rise.
‘Do you think I haven’t suffered the torment of the damned since we parted? Knowing the truth almost unmanned me. You were mine first, and I don’t give a damn about any in between as long as you are mine last. As for Antonio Soares—I spoke to him downstairs and he won’t bother you again.’
‘Spoke to him? Bother me?’ She was turning into a parrot. ‘Antonio is a client—a friend, you Neanderthal,’ she shot back furiously, and tried to wriggle free. But he tightened his grip and with one hand stroked up her back, tangling his fingers in her hair and forcing her to look up into his dark face.
‘Where you are concerned I am. I can’t help myself. I lied when I told you I didn’t do jealous. I only need to see you smile at a man to be consumed by the green-eyed monster because I love you. I don’t expect you to believe me but I do.’
Selina blinked. Had she heard right …? No, it was impossible. She glared at him belligerently. ‘If this is another ploy to get me into bed you are wasting your time. Now, let me go.’
‘No. Never again, Selina.’ He lowered his head and kissed her with a possessive, seductive hunger that she fought to resist. But her traitorous body betrayed her and she felt her heart thud, the blood flow thicker in her veins. She raised her hands to push him away, but somehow her fingers involuntarily splayed across his broad chest and crept around his neck as she gave in to the sensual awareness Rion never failed to arouse in her and kissed him back.
Rion groaned and buried his face against her throat, inhaling the delicate scent of her skin. ‘Forgive me.’ He lifted his head. ‘I swore I wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t touch you until we’d talked and I’d explained.’ His anguished expression tore at Selina’s heart. ‘I know I don’t deserve you, but I do love you, Selina.’
Loved her? Was it possible? She raised a hand to feel his brow and brushed back a stray lock of hair. ‘Are you ill? Have you got a fever or something?’ She didn’t dare to believe in a penitent, loving Rion.
‘Only a fever for you. When I think of how brutally I cut you out of my life, divorced you without a word, I’m appalled. Discovering that my own sister was too frightened of me to tell me the truth makes me cringe inside. I never considered myself a vengeful person, and yet I took advantage of your grandfather’s will on the day of his funeral and used your generous heart, your caring for Anna, to get you back in my bed.’
‘You’re a ruthless man when you want something,’ Selina said bluntly. Though her lips throbbed sensuously from his kiss, and his confession was balm to her wounded heart, she was still not prepared to believe the seismic change from outraged macho male to supplicant lover.
‘I know. It is my character, I guess, but I am working to change it.’
A hint of a smile twitched Selina’s lips.
‘I can’t help it—the same way I can’t help wanting you. I love you, but I can’t find the words to describe my feelings. I have never had to try before,’ Rion said with a touch of his usual arrogance, pressing her closer to his long body.
The heat and the strength of him enveloped her.
‘To say I love you sounds so tame in comparison to what I really feel. That last day in my office, when I realised you had never betrayed me and I asked you to marry me again, that was the moment I finally recognised the limitless depths of my feelings for you … that I loved you.’
Five times he had mentioned love, and Selina was beginning to believe him. ‘You don’t have to tell me this,’ she said gently, noticing the lines of tiredness etched about his eyes, his mouth. Lifting a finger, she traced the contours of his lean, harshly handsome face. He was either ill or he did love her, and she knew which she’d prefer.
‘Yes I do. For a few glorious moments I was euphoric. Then in less than a minute I was in hell. When you told me you didn’t like the company I kept and why, and I realised what you did with your money … the Taylor Foundation … I had never been so horrified or ashamed in my whole life. Then I realised from your parting statement that I had in one careless comment made you forever associate me with that monster, Bratchet, and I had to let you walk away.’
‘Oh, no …’ She was shaken by the bleakness of his tone, and wanted to reassure him. ‘You might be arrogant, and look and act like a ruthless tycoon sometimes—well, most of the time—but I would never ever compare you with that horrible man.’
‘Thank you—I think,’ he said wryly, and brushed his lips across hers in the briefest of kisses. ‘That is what Dimitri said a week ago, when he arrived in Athens to visit his parents and we had a drink together. It is thanks to him I am here. He told me I looked a wreck, and asked me what had happened. I’d had a bit to drink and told him the story of our relationship. He told me I was a coward. If I loved you I had to fight for you. Then he mentioned he had seen you leaving an airport in Rio with Antonio Soares as he was dashing to catch a flight to Greece. He also told me there was a picture of you and Soares in some geological magazine, taken in China a month ago, and if I had a grain of sense I wouldn’t waste any more time. Am I too late?’
Selina lifted wide amber eyes to his but his long lashes lowered, shielding his eyes. But they could not quite hide the unfamiliar vulnerability in their black depths.
‘Or can I hope?’
‘Antonio is a nice man.’
‘I know him. He came on a few diving expeditions with Dimitri and I, and I liked him … But I am not such a nice man …’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Antonio is a friend—nothing more. You were my lover.’
‘I don’t like the past tense.’
Should she take a chance and tell Rion the truth? Well, she had nothing to lose. ‘Remember when you suggested extending our cruise, I wanted to say yes.’
Rion tensed, his long fingers digging into her waist as his other hand moved to cup her chin. ‘You did? Then why …?’ There was confusion in the dark eyes that held hers, and something else that made her heart leap in her breast.
Selina took a deep breath. ‘Remember the night I left your bed and told you the next day it was because I had almost fallen out? Well, it wasn’t true. That was the night I realised I had fallen in love with you again. I also realised with our shared past it was hopeless. I saw no point in prolonging the trip for a few more days because that was all it could ever be. Plus I was frightened I’d let slip what Bratchet was really like, and I didn’t trust you not to tell him. Stupid, really. I ended up telling you anyway.’
‘You said you loved me?’ Rion stared fixedly at her and she was struck dumb at the emotion she saw in his eyes. ‘You humble me,’ he rasped. ‘I know I can’t expect you to still love me after the way I have behaved, and I can’t blame you for not trusting