Page 8 of The Petrakos Bride

‘You can’t mean that.’ Maddie was taken aback by his response, for it was a subject she felt strongly about. ‘Look at all the lies and deception that go hand in hand with infidelity. It causes so much misery. Just imagine what that man’s poor wife and teenage children must be going through right now—’

‘It is regrettable,’ Giannis pronounced flatly.

‘It’s more than regrettable,’ Maddie stressed, jumping to her feet. ‘It’s wrong! My mother cheated on my father with his best friend. It totally destroyed Dad. I would never betray anyone’s trust. Honesty is always the best policy, and loyalty means a great deal to me.’

Lush black lashes screened his brilliant dark eyes to a cool glimmer. ‘I can see that.’

‘If you weren’t single, believe me, I wouldn’t be here,’ Maddie added, keen to draw a stronger response from him.

Hamid was hovering with the first course. Mastering his stark disconcertion at what he had just discovered, Giannis waved the manservant forward and urged Maddie to sit down again. A procession of dishes was brought to the table while Giannis reappraised the situation. Maddie didn’t know he was engaged.

He had simply assumed that the whole world knew he was engaged to Krista Spyridou. His fiancée had certainly gone to extraordinary lengths to publicise their engagement. A Greek television channel had even made a reality documentary about the couple, full of truly cringe-worthy stuff that had been shown round half the world. But Maddie had no idea whatsoever.

Of course he would have to tell her, Giannis acknowledged grimly. Right at that very moment, however, it struck him as a likely case of suicidally bad timing. Just after she got down from her fidelity soapbox was not the perfect opportunity to announce that he was engaged to be married to another woman. Particularly when Maddie had already slept with him. Particularly when he was fully committed to the goal of persuading her that she could have a terrific future as his mistress.

‘Your take on morals is young and idealistic,’ Giannis remarked lazily. ‘My great-grandmother would be in firm agreement with you, but then she’s over ninety years old and her values are etched in solid stone.’

Maddie tilted her chin. ‘I suppose I am a little old-fashioned, but time and experience won’t alter my views,’ she replied. ‘What’s the rest of your family like?’

His lean, strong face shuttered. ‘I have an enormous tribe of relations.’

‘You are so lucky.’ Maddie tucked into her food with an appetite and enthusiasm that brought a reluctant smile to his sardonic mouth. He was accustomed to women who barely ate in his presence. ‘I’ve got nobody close left, and I really miss having a family.’

Giannis watched her thank the serving staff. She was a very beautiful but essentially ordinary girl, with an extraordinary amount of personal warmth and charm. Was it her very ordinariness that attracted him? Was that the novelty that, against all the odds, kept him coming back for more? In bed she was red-hot. That was what made her so essential to his comfort, he decided with a sense of relief. It was just sex—and why not? She might not fit into his world, but he wanted her there, and what he wanted he would have. Whatever it took, whatever it cost.

Coloured glass lanterns glowed as the sun went down in a sky shot with a wonderful rainbow of colours. He entertained her with the story of how he had stumbled on the ruined Casbah when he was a teenager on a mountain-climbing expedition with friends. ‘My every wrong move was making global headlines that year. I thought this would make a great secret location for wild weekend parties.’

Maddie blinked. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Partying was a serious part of my upbringing. My parents never did anything that didn’t amuse them.’ Giannis was amused by her consternation. ‘On my second visit with the architect, the local headman invited me to visit his village across the valley. The people were very poor. They needed the employment I could provide, but the wild parties would have made it impossible for most of them to work for me.’

‘So you decided not to have the parties?’

‘I got into extreme sports instead,’ he murmured, with a casual shrug of dismissal. ‘Much healthier.’

But Maddie gave him a huge smile, because she was finally catching a glimpse of the guy who had made it his mission to ensure that her dying sister’s teenage dream came true. She knew that some day she would tell him about that, and identify herself, but right then she didn’t want to open a sad subject. Nor did she want to figure in his mind as the grateful and admiring adolescent whom he hadn’t even noticed at the time.

A light breeze feathered through the silk kaftan she wore and she shivered, surprised by how much the temperature seemed to have dropped. ‘It’s getting chilly out here.’

‘Desert nights are cold in the spring.’ Giannis closed his hand over hers to urge her back indoors.

One step inside the softly lit bedroom, she decided that she wanted to share the bed with him in every sense of the word. It was too late to be taking fright and trying to turn the clock back, she reasoned frantically, engaged in a last-ditch battle with her misgivings. What was the point of raising such an artificial barrier between them? Was it even honest or fair, when she too longed to experience that intimacy again?

Her bright copper head downbent, she stilled and plucked abstractedly at one of the handmade buttons on his shirt. Sudden shyness almost overpowered her; it was a challenge to ask him to make love to her when he had been so circumspect throughout the evening.

‘I don’t need to wait any more,’ she said finally, wincing at herself even as she spoke.

On a high at that unexpected declaration, Giannis startled her by reaching down and sweeping her right off her feet and up into his strong arms. ‘I will spend the next twenty-four hours in bed with you, pedhi mou!’

‘Go easy,’ she urged in embarrassment. ‘Be careful—’

‘Careful?’ Brilliant golden eyes collided with hers, his luxuriant black lashes lifting in a request for her to expand on her meaning.

‘The accident with the contraception,’ she reminded him uneasily.

‘A once-in-a-lifetime event. Surely you’re not still worrying about that?’ Giannis censured, with the supreme confidence of a male who took it for granted that life always went his way. ‘Are you late?’

‘No…but—’

‘You’ll be okay. Don’t look for trouble.’ He lowered her down onto the bed with a slow-burning smile that convinced her that her worries were quite unnecessary.

  CHAPTER FIVE

GIANNIS threaded his lean brown fingers through Maddie’s tumbling auburn tresses to tug her head back. His hot golden gaze connected with hers on a shaft of pure sensual force.

‘I promise that you won’t regret choosing to be with me,’ he breathed thickly. ‘I will give you a life such as you have never dreamt of.’

‘But I don’t need you to give me anything.’ Even as Maddie declared that she was wondering what he meant, but just then she found that she could not concentrate. Other much more physical responses were taking over.

Giannis began to flip loose the tiny pearl buttons on the bodice of her kaftan. Her breath shortened in her throat. Her breasts ached, the soft pink peaks tensing into protruding points. Between her thighs she felt a tiny pulse flicker and throb into being, and she stiffened, instinctively ashamed of the depth of her wanton craving.

‘I hope you have no objection to the gift of pleasure?’ Giannis teased, fiercely aroused and rejoicing in her explosive effect on his libido.

‘Pleasure’s f-fine,’ she stammered, as he folded back the parted edges of the kaftan fabric and exposed the burgeoning swell of her creamy rose-tipped breasts.

‘As tender as velvet.’ His voice was hoarse as he chafed her sensitive nipples between finger and thumb. With a groan of satisfaction, he cupped her lush, full breasts and lowered his dark head to suckle the swollen crests. Pleasure engulfed her in a drenching wave, extracting whimpers of formless sound from her parted lips.