Mistress: Taming the Playboy: Constantine's Defiant Mistress / Androletti's Mistress / Valenti's One-Month Mistress

CHAPTER TEN

‘YOU’VE cut your thumb,’ observed Constantine softly.

‘Oh, it’s nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ he murmured. ‘Come here—let me see.’

Laura squirmed as he took the injured digit in his hand and even that innocent contact sent her senses spiralling. Earlier that day he had flown back, after spending three nights in Athens, and while she was ridiculously pleased to see him she couldn’t dispel her terrible aching insecurity and jealousy at the thought of what he might have been doing there.

They were sitting by the edge of the sea, on a beach more beautiful than any beach she could ever have imagined—just her, Alex and Constantine, who had insisted that she and her son both needed to see more of the island, especially as today was officially her day off.

Alex had spent the morning playing with a magnificent sandcastle which his father had constructed while demonstrating a sweet kind of patience which had made Laura’s heart turn over with an aching wistfulness. Because it was like glimpsing the sun appearing from behind a thick, dark cloud. This was the Constantine who usually lay hidden behind that formidable exterior—the one he rarely allowed people to see. The side he had shown her all those years ago … the side which had made him all to easy to love—and still did.

They had just eaten salads and cheese for lunch, and now their son was lying in the cool shade of a rock, fast asleep—a cute cotton hat shielding his little face from the occasional sand-fly. It felt strange to be out like a normal family—without her floral pinafore dress and the subtle sense of subservience which she adopted whenever she put it on. And strange too to be in the company of the man she had not seen since he had left her room after that passionate night of lovemaking.

When he had left without a word about why or where he was going, she reminded herself.

‘How did you do it?’ questioned Constantine as he continued with his mock-examination of her thumb, which was raising her heart-rate significantly.

‘I … I cut it on a fruit knife.’

‘Clumsy of you, Laura.’

‘Yes.’ She wanted to tell him not to touch her like that—yet she knew that such words would sound like hysterical nonsense, because to the outside world it would look like nothing more than an innocent assessment of her thumb. But to Laura it felt as if he were trailing sizzling fire where he made contact. As if her nerve-endings became instantly raw and clamouring wherever his fingertips brushed against them.

And yet conversely she wanted him to touch her in a far more inappropriate way altogether. To have him pull her into his arms—to at least give some indication that they’d actually been lovers. But of course he did not touch her, and Laura tried to tell herself it was because Alex was nearby.

‘So … what were you doing in Athens?’ she questioned suddenly, even though she had vowed she would not.

For a moment Constantine didn’t answer as he let her hand go, an odd, mocking kind of smile curving the corners of his lips. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business, do you?’

It was the response of her worst nightmares, and it made all her uncertainties bubble to the surface. Heart pounding with fear, she glanced quickly over at Alex, but he was fast asleep, worn out by the morning and oblivious to the low, urgent tones of his parents. ‘Did you go straight from my bed to another’s?’

His black eyes sent her a mocking challenge. ‘Why? Is that the kind of behaviour you normally indulge in yourself?’

She clenched her hands into tiny fists. ‘You know very well that you’re the only person I’ve ever slept with!’

On hearing this for a second time, Constantine felt his heart accelerate into a thundering kind of triumphant beat. He was Greek, and he was pure alpha-male, and he would have been lying if her declaration hadn’t thrilled him to every fibre of his being—but he was damned if he would let it show.

‘Ah, if only I could say the same, agape mou,’ he sighed regretfully.

Tears stung her eyes. ‘Why do you delight in hurting me?’ she demanded, realising too late how vulnerable that made her sound. But Constantine didn’t seem to have noticed.

‘Don’t you think that hurt is an inevitable part of a relationship?’ he returned with a shrug. ‘Of all relationships?’

She disregarded his careless use of the word ‘relationship,’ because the clue was in the emphasised word and Laura seized on it. ‘Is that what happened with you, Constantine? You got hurt?’

‘I’ve seen how women can hurt and manipulate, yes.’

‘Girlfriends, you mean?’

‘No, not girlfriends,’ he answered scornfully.

‘You mean … your mother?’ she guessed, as she remembered the odd, strained look on his face when he’d mentioned her.

He shrugged in affirmation but didn’t bother to reply. Hopefully she might take the hint and quit interrogating him.

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