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‘Make love with me tonight.’
Her heart was thumping, her breathing choppy, her lips felt plumped and tender. ‘It’s crazy,’ she said. Because she couldn’t say no, even though she knew she should. She shook her head, the pain of that night thirteen years ago refusing to be ignored. ‘You had your chance. You threw me out.’
‘A long time ago.’
‘You hate me.’
‘I want you.’
‘And I hate you!’
‘Do you? You didn’t kiss me like you hated me.’
Her teeth found one kiss-swollen lip and she raked them over its unfamiliar plumpness. ‘One night?’
‘Just one night. And then we go our separate ways.’
Trish Morey is an Australian who’s also spent time living and working in New Zealand and England. Now she’s settled with her husband and four young daughters in a special part of South Australia, surrounded by orchards and bushland, and visited by the occasional koala and kangaroo. With a lifelong love of reading, she penned her first book at age eleven, after which life, career and a growing family kept her busy, until once again she could indulge her desire to create characters and stories—this time in romance. Having her work published is a dream come true. Visit Trish at her website, www.trishmorey.com
Recent titles by the same author:
FORCED WIFE, ROYAL LOVE-CHILD
THE ITALIAN BOSS’S MISTRESS OF REVENGE
THE SHEIKH’S CONVENIENT VIRGIN
BY
TRISH MOREY
For darling Kate, whose strength of spirit
and sense of humour knows no bounds and who is
an inspiration to us all (and who demanded from her
sickbed to know why it took me so long to dedicate a
book to her, so I just had to do it again
for Eleni, to whom I am eternally grateful, efharisto,
and for the fabulous Maytoners, whose friendship,
laughter and wisdom are like a lifeline.
Thank you for keeping me sane.
Love you all heaps.
Trish
x
PROLOGUE
Paris
THERE was thunder in his head, a foul taste in his mouth and a naked woman in his bed, the latter almost enough to make him forget everything else. She was smooth, her bare skin like silk and satin under hands that felt too clumsy and unresponsive for his wants. Her small, nimble hands soothed his frustration, firing his anticipation with clever fingers that seemed to track the need under his skin while her mouth set fire to other places—the angle of his jaw, the jut of his collarbone, and below.
He reached for her with leaden arms still heavy with alcohol and sleep, but she just laughed, wicked and low, and slipped out of his grasp, and it was too dark to see, so he collapsed back into the pillows, the blur in his head turning jagged and sharp as he tried to make sense of things. But there was no thinking, not with her attacking from a different direction, her mouth a circle of fire on the inside of one knee, her tongue the brand of a torch on the bare skin of his thigh.
The sensations split cracks in the pain in his head, tiny fissures that memories squeezed through, blowing into life. Memories of arriving in Paris at his father’s command, of his father shouting, of him arguing back, and of the gut-wrenching blow when he’d realised that he had no choice…
His tongue felt thick, his mouth dry, and the unfamiliar taste of stale whisky clung thick on his breath. How much had he drunk?
Blood thundered in his ears, drumming in a skull that seemed to ache more with every beat, a beat that pushed his blood south until another part of him throbbed and kicked. Then her two small hands were around him, and the breath was punched from his lungs. Cool hands. Smooth hands. Bewitching hands.
And then, just when he thought he could take no more, she flicked his very tip with her tongue. Just a graze, and yet still he bucked underneath her as if he’d been hit with a bolt of electricity, swelling even more and forcing her hands to loosen their grip.
He reached a hand to his pounding head, sure his skull must be swelling with each hammer blow. Was this their fathers’ idea? To seal the deal? So that there was no going back?
From the putrid depths of a drink-addled brain, anything seemed possible. They’d both been vehement that the engagement would go ahead. So they’d sent Elena here, naked to his bed, to seduce him and maybe create the child that would mean there was no chance of escape, no chance of avoiding the fate his father had carved out for him.
He rubbed his aching, slick brow with one hand, wishing he could think clearly, wishing away the fog that filled his brain, but sick with the knowledge that it could indeed be true. After tonight he knew their fathers were capable of anything. His fate was sealed. There was no going back.
And then she straddled him, one hand still on him, and he pulled away his arm and opened his eyes again, battling the pain that shot through his brow as his eyes struggled to focus in the dark.
She moved over him, guiding him past the brush of curls to her entrance, and heat flared again as she brought him to that slick sweet spot, only to have rebellion course through his brain in a vivid flash of pain. Even if there was nothing he could do about this marriage, he would not be taken like some prize of war! If anyone did the pillaging around here, it would be him. And she would know it!
With a roar that thundered in his head like cannon fire, he surged up, catching her in his arms and rolling her beneath him before her cry of surprise had faded away. His head was thumping with the sudden movement, his gut rebelling, but he had more important things on his mind. Still, just for a moment he allowed his hands to sweep up her sweet body. This time, trapped beneath him, she would not get away. He caught her breasts, smaller than he’d expected, but it wouldn’t be the first time the reality had failed to match up with the promotion. Besides, they were firm and peaked, and in the fog of his brain, he wasn’t about to complain. Not when they were the best things he’d felt all night. And if he could feel anything through the war zone that was his head, he’d take it.
Even so, he would make her pay for playing this part in their fathers’ sordid business deal. He dipped his head and took her tightly budded breast into his mouth. Her body arched beneath him, and she shuddered as his hand grasped the other breast and squeezed it tight, his teeth grazing her nipple, nipping at her flesh, each nip feeding his anger.
How dared she try to trap him? He’d agreed to marry her, hadn’t he? A fire burned inside him, flames fuelled by whisky and want and need and a firm-fleshed woman who had strayed where she shouldn’t. He had given their fathers his word. Damn her, he would make her pay!
Through a fog-thick brain and the thump of blood, he heard her cry out, worked out the reason why, and finally released the breast clamped so tightly between his clenched teeth that it was a wonder he hadn’t drawn blood. Instantly she relaxed under him, and he laved the rest of her tension away, nuzzling, sucking, until once again she curled like a kitten around him, her silken legs wound around his in an age-old invitation.
He was done with toying with her. She was ready, he knew, so he drew back, his thumb making lazy circles around the screaming tight 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 across the room, and Marietta knew she’d left it too late. The obsidian eyes she’d been hoping to avoid found their mark as they zeroed in on Rafe, his mouth turning into a smile until those same eyes fell on her, lingering so coldly that she shivered, any semblance of a smile frozen clear away, before they snapped back to Rafe so cleanly and decisively as if even looking at her had been a mistake.
Released from his cold-as-a-grave gaze, Marietta felt as if she’d taken a blow to the gut. She’d known Yannis Markides was not the type of man who would forgive and forget, but it was clear he also had no problems holding a grudge. And from the expression on his face as he’d practically seared her with his gaze, he was as unenthusiastic about seeing her as she was about seeing him.
Fine. The sooner this wedding was over, the sooner they could both go back to never seeing each other again, and the happier they’d both be.
So she was here, just as he’d been warned. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides in time with the thump of his heart, a deep-seated anger turning his vision to red. He’d always believed in the principle that to be forewarned was to be forearmed. The adage had stood him in good stead over the years in both his professional and his private life, and yet now, coming face to face with the woman who’d done more to destroy his family’s financial security than any number of corporate sharks he’d had to deal with in his time, the old adage wasn’t holding up to scrutiny. Because it wasn’t until now that realised the depths of his resentment. It was as if seeing her had rekindled every last spark of anger and bitterness, reigniting old wounds and sending the flames high.
He didn’t want to be here, even if it was his best friend’s wedding—not if it meant seeing her again, and certainly not if it meant being thrust back into those dark days.
He dragged in a lungful of air heavy with the combined scents of garlic, rosemary and spit-roasted game and sensed something else in the mix—duty. For he had no choice but to be here. One thing he’d learned over the years was that life didn’t necessarily serve up what you wanted. He was here, and somehow he was expected to be her opposite number on the bridal party, to be her partner throughout the festivities, even to take her in his arms and dance with her. No amount of forewarning was going to prepare him for that.
He should have brought a woman. He could have had his pick of any number, even after terminating his brief liaison with Susannah, and he cursed the decision that had seen him arrive alone—although he was still sympathetic with the logic of it. Taking a woman to a wedding was fraught with danger. It put ideas in women’s heads, ideas that had no place in his relationships.
‘Yannis!’ She heard her brother’s greeting over the chamber music and hubbub of conversation from the assembled guests as the pair met, shaking hands and pulling each other into a man hug before slapping each other on the back. She watched, unable to move, compelled to watch, waiting for the inevitable moment when Rafe would pull Yannis over to introduce him to his bride-tobe, and for the moment when she would have to look him in the eye and greet him and pretend that what had happened thirteen years ago had never taken place.
‘So that’s Yannis Markides,’ Sienna said, leaning across Rafe’s empty chair between them, her head still angled towards the reunion between the two men. ‘He’s very good-looking, isn’t he? Almost as good-looking as Rafe.’
Better.
The rogue thought came unbidden and unwelcome, but as much as she tried to clamp down on it, the truth would not be denied. Having inherited the best of their father’s genes, her brother was beyond handsome, and in his dress uniform of maroon jacket and ceremonial sash, even more so. But Yannis, with his unique mix of his Montvelattian mother and Greek-Cypriot father, was something else again. It was as if he’d been blessed with the best genes the Mediterranean had to offer, a combination of dark hair, bottomless eyes and chiselled features. As a twenty-one-year-old, he’d been the best-looking man she’d ever seen. Thirteen years on, as a man in his prime, he was utterly arresting.
‘I guess so,’ she replied at last as she reached for her glass, looking for something tactile and solid and real to cling onto, telling herself he was only a man, a mere mortal like everyone else.
And then she looked up again.
Under the ballroom lighting, his black hair gleamed thick and healthy, his strong features complemented by the play of light and shadow as he moved, with even the angles and planes of his face speaking of nobility.
Mortal? Then why did he have to look so much like a god? Was it any wonder she’d once imagined herself in love with him? What girl wouldn’t be naïve enough to let herself imagine, to think that maybe there was something more to it when this man was your brother’s best friend and you saw him practically every day of your life, and when he treated you as if you were something special, the way he always had…
What girl wouldn’t have made the same mistake she had? She took a deep breath, her fingers locked tight around the stem of her wine glass. Back then she’d been just a teenager, and clearly impressionable at that. Thank God she wasn’t so naïve, so easily driven by her hormones any more. And thank God this ordeal would soon be over. A day, maybe two, and the wedding and the associated formalities would be done with, and they would both be gone from the island.
She could hardly wait.
‘I can see why he’s so popular with the women,’ Sienna continued, ‘although I can’t believe he’s alone now. I expected he’d bring a partner.’
Marietta didn’t care. Yannis had a reputation as a playboy, the same label her brother had boasted until his world had connected with Sienna’s. If Yannis was by himself, she had no doubt it would only be a temporary situation. ‘Maybe she saw sense,’ she muttered, not quietly enough.
The other woman’s head swung around, ‘You don’t like him? I thought you guys grew up together, one big happy family. At least, that’s how Rafe makes it sound.’
Marietta shrugged and forced a smile to her face. ‘You know how it is, two’s company, three’s a crowd. They’ve always been best friends and I’ve always been Rafe’s little sister.’
Whether she’d placed too much emphasis on the last two words, or whether they’d contained a hint of bitterness that she’d never quite dispelled, Sienna studied her for a second, as if weighing up her answer. Then she nodded and reached over to squeeze her free hand. ‘I think I understand.’ And Marietta felt a surge of affection for the Australian woman who would soon be her sister-in-law.
The two men turned then, Rafe gesturing towards the women, and something twisted in her gut, pulling her lower into the chair. She let go the glass she was still holding in a rush, lest she tip it over and spill its contents, and battled to dredge up a plastic smile to affix to her face as they came closer.
‘You remember Marietta, of course,’ her brother said as he led the way, and the dark cloud hovered before her, brooding dangerously over her before she’d had a chance to find her feet, even if she’d been able to remember how to do so, standing so close to her that she dared not attempt the feat now. Not when the look in his eyes damned her to the core, without the merest shred of warmth at meeting her again.
She’d done that, she realised in a rush. She’d banished every good memory he might have of their years together with one foolish and reckless act. And now, just as he had done thirteen years ago, he was still making her pay the price.
So many years later. She’d been a teenager back then. Made just one foolish mistake. Had what she’d done been so unforgivable?
‘Yannis,’ she said, needing to do something to break the silence that stretched taut like piano wire between them, ‘it’s been a long time.’
The searing look he sent her in reply told her he thought it nowhere near long enough, before he dipped his head in the barest nod. ‘Princess,’ he said, and Marietta swallowed. The way he said it made it sound like an insult, but before she could force her tight vocal cords to relax enough to tell him that he could call her Marietta, as he had always done, Rafe had already turned away to introduce his fiancée, and Yannis had severed contact.