the car, accompanied by two doormen who were weighed down with armfuls of packages. His arm brushed over her back with proprietary courtesy as he held open the car door for her and she stiffened, because just that brief touch felt as if he’d branded her with the heat of his flesh. Was that why he stiffened, too? Why his eyes narrowed and a nerve began to work at his temple? She thought he might be about to touch her again—and wasn’t she longing for him to do just that?—but some car had begun sounding its horn and the noise seemed to snap him out of his uncharacteristic hesitation.
He didn’t say much as they drove to Bond Street, not until they were standing in front of a jeweller’s window which was ablaze with the glitter of a thousand gems. And suddenly he turned to her and his face had that expression she’d seen once before, when all the cool arrogance which defined him had been replaced by a raw and naked hunger.
His finger wasn’t quite steady as it drifted a slow path down over her cheek and he must have felt her shiver in response, because his eyes narrowed.
‘You look...different,’ he said.
‘I thought that was the whole point of the exercise?’ she said, more archly than she had intended. ‘I have to look credible, don’t I, as the future Mrs Sarantos?’
‘But you don’t, Ellie—that’s the thing.’ He gave her an odd kind of smile. ‘You don’t look credible at all. Not with that uptight expression on your face. It’s not the look one might expect from a woman who is just about to marry one of the world’s most eligible bachelors. There’s no real joy or pleasure there, and I think we might have to remedy that. Shall we make a statement to the world about our relationship, poulaki mou? To show them we really do mean business?’
And before Ellie realised what was happening, he was kissing her. Kissing her in full view of the traffic and the security guard and all the upmarket shoppers who were passing them on the pavement. He had wrapped his arms tightly around her and was making her feel as if he owned her. The man who was so famously private was making a very public declaration. And even though her heart was pounding with joy, suddenly she felt like a possession. A woman he was putting his stamp on. His woman; his property.
She tried keeping her lips clamped shut to prevent his tongue from entering her mouth—to let him know that she was not a possession. That he couldn’t just pick her up and put her down when he felt like it. But there was only so much resistance she could put up when he was this determined. When he was splaying his fingers over the bare skin of her back and making it tingle. His hard body was so close that a cigarette paper couldn’t have come between them, and, beneath her delicate new bra, her breasts were growing heavy.
His lips were still brushing against hers and her eyelids fluttered to a close. She thought how crazy it was that so many emotions could be stimulated by a single kiss. Did he realise that she found being in his arms satisfying in all kinds of ways? Ways which were about so much more than sex? She felt safe and secure. Like nothing could ever hurt her while Alek was around. And it was his strength rather than his sensuality which finally melted the last of her reservations. She kissed him back with fervour and passion and, in the process, completely forgot where she was. Her hands reached up to frame his head and she moaned softly as she circled her hips against him, so that in the end it was Alek who pulled back—his eyes smouldering with blue fire.
‘Oh, my,’ he said softly, and a distinctive twang of North Atlantic entered his gravelly Greek accent. ‘Maybe I should have kissed you back at the apartment, if I’d known that this was the reaction I was going to get.’
His words broke the spell and Ellie jerked away with a bitter feeling of self-recrimination. She had allowed herself to be seduced again when this was nothing but a game to him. A stupid, meaningless game. He had kissed her to make a point and she wasn’t sure if it had been a demonstration of power, or just payback time for her expensive new wardrobe. But either way, she was going to get hurt if she wasn’t careful. Badly hurt. She rose up on tiptoe in her new leather pumps, placing her lips to his ear.
‘What was that all about?’ she hissed.
‘Want me to draw a diagram for you?’ he murmured back.
‘That won’t be necessary.’ She moved her mouth closer to his ear, tempted to take a nip at its perfect lobe. ‘Sex just complicates matters. That was the deal— remember?’
‘I think I might be prepared to overlook the deal in view of the response I just got.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t—and there’s something you’d better understand, Alek.’ She swallowed, trying to inject conviction into her voice. ‘Which is that I wouldn’t go to bed with you if you were the last man standing.’
He tipped his head back so that she was caught in the crossfire of his eyes, the darkened blue hue backlit by the definite glitter of amusement. He lifted his fingertip to her mouth and traced it thoughtfully along the line of her lips. ‘I don’t think that’s entirely true, do you, Ellie?’
‘Yes,’ she said fiercely, resisting the urge to bite his finger, afraid that if she did she might just start sucking it. ‘It’s true.’
He took her hand in his and she wanted to snatch it away like a sulky child. But the doorman was still watching them and she knew that if she was to play the part of fiancée convincingly, then she had no choice other than to let him carry on stroking her fingers like that and pretend it wasn’t turning her on.
‘Let’s go and buy your wedding ring,’ he said.
THE RING WAS a glittering band of diamonds and the silvery shoes which matched her wedding dress had racy scarlet soles. Ellie touched her fingertips to her professionally styled hair, which had been snipped and blow-dried. She looked like a bride, all right, but a magazine version of a bride—untraditional and slightly edgy. The silver dress and scarlet pashmina gave her a sophisticated patina she wasn’t used to and projected an image which wasn’t really her. But the unfamiliar sleekness of her appearance did nothing to subdue the butterflies which were swarming in her stomach. They’d been building in numbers ever since she and Alek had said their vows earlier, with Vasos and another Sarantos employee standing as their only witnesses.
Strange to believe they were now man and wife—and that fifty of Alek’s closest friends were assembling at the upmarket restaurant they’d chosen to stage their wedding party. And if it felt like a sham, that’s because it was.
And yet...
Yet...
She stared down at her sparkling wedding band. When he’d kissed her so passionately in Bond Street—hadn’t that felt like something? Even though she’d tried telling herself that he’d only done it to make a point, that hadn’t been enough to dull her reaction to him. She had nearly gone up in flames as sexual hunger had overpowered her and a wave of emotion had crashed over her with such force that she’d felt positively weak afterwards. It was as if the rest of the world hadn’t existed in those few minutes afterwards, and wasn’t that...dangerous?
The peremptory knock on her bedroom door broke into her thoughts and she opened it to find Alek standing there—broodingly handsome in his beautifully cut wedding suit, with a tie the colour of storm clouds.
‘Ready?’ he questioned.
She told herself she wasn’t waiting for him to comment on her appearance—but what else would account for the sudden plummeting of her heart? She’d blamed pre-wedding jitters for his failure to compliment her the first time he’d seen her in her wedding dress. But now that they were man and wife, surely he could have said something. Had she secretly been longing for his eyes to light up and him to tell her that she made a halfway passable bride? Or was she hoping he’d make another pass at her, only this time she might not get so angry with him? She might just let him carry on...and they could consummate their marriage and satisfy the law, as well as their hungry bodies.