The Antonakos Marriage

‘I can give you a lift anywhere you want to go.’

The way he repeated his exact words of just moments before brought Skye’s eyes to his face in a rush. Meeting the glittering darkness of his gaze, seeing the way that the muscles of his jaw were drawn tight, she knew a sinking sense of realisation.

She’d insulted him with her refusal. He was angry too, something that told her how much her rejection had meant to him.

‘I—was trying to be sensible,’ she managed.

‘Isn’t it a little late for that now?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, the situation you got yourself into back there—’ His dark head nodded towards the noisy, smoky bar. ‘That was hardly the action of a sensible person.’

The deliberate emphasis on the repeated word goaded her, as she was sure it was meant to do, sparking her temper and bringing her chin up, eyes flashing angry fire.

‘I didn’t exactly ask for that!’ she snapped. ‘It just happened!’

‘I only offered you a lift in my car.’

The resignation in his tone had a hard edge to it, one that warned her of the way his temper was fraying at the edges.

‘I’m sor—’ she began, but he ignored her and rushed on angrily.

‘I was brought up never to let a woman risk being on her own, if I could do anything to help her.’

‘Then get me a taxi—please.’

She prayed he wouldn’t argue further. She was rapidly losing her grip on her self-control as it was.

‘No.’

It was cold and hard and unyielding, and it chilled her blood just to hear it.

Out of the frying-pan and into the fire. The ominous phrase that had slipped into her head in the first moments they had been outside now pounded round and round inside her skull until she felt as if her mind would explode.

‘You don’t need a taxi. I will take you wherever you want to go.’

Skye’s eyes closed on a shudder of horror as she tried to imagine just how that scenario would play out. She didn’t even want to think of her father’s reaction if she was to arrive home in a strange car—with an unknown man. Even less did she want to imagine the way her prospective fiancé would view that situation.

Oh, why had she ever thought she could do this? Why had she let herself believe that she could fling herself into one night of liberty just to try and put a temporary barrier between herself and the future that lay ahead of her?

Why had she ever imagined that she could have one night in which she lived the same sort of life as her friends, as other young women her age? One night of total freedom, of irresponsibility, of reckless abandon before the walls of restraint and restriction closed round her once and for all?

She had never been able to live that way even when she had had her freedom—the freedom of youth. So why had she ever thought she could do it now, just for tonight? She had been out of her depth from the start—and she was sinking in deeper with every second that passed.

‘I’ll get one myself, then.’

She swung away from him violently, knowing in her heart that she was really running from herself, not from him. But she was closer to the edge of the pavement than she thought. Her heel caught on the kerb, twisted awkwardly and went from beneath her. She would have gone flying off the footpath, falling headlong onto the wet tarmac, into the middle of the road and the path of the oncoming cars, if the man beside her hadn’t reacted with instinctive speed.

‘Skye—look out!’

In the blink of an eye he was beside her, reaching out and catching her before her stumble became a fall. She was held tight, hauled up into arms that felt like tempered steel as they tensed, took her weight and then pulled her back to safety.

Safety? Or right back into the heart of danger?

Skye had no way of knowing and her head was whirling too much in the aftermath of the shock of her near fall to be able to think clearly.

The position she was in didn’t help either. Anton had spun her round as he caught her up so that now she was clamped tight against him, enfolded in his arms, with her body crushed against the hard length of his, her head on his chest, her cheek above the heavy, heated thud of his heart, the sound of his pulse in her ears.

And it was all happening again.

Just as it had when he had come up behind her in the bar, so now her blood was heating in urgent response to his closeness, her heart racing in time with the fierce beat of his. She was surrounded by him, held in the heat and hardness of his grip, the clean, male scent of his body surrounding her, melting her thoughts inside her head.

It felt like coming home.

It felt as if she had always been there. As if this was truly where she belonged. Where she most wanted to be in all the world. And with the instinctive cuddling movement of a small creature seeking comfort from the cold, hard world outside, she snuggled closer, burying her face in his shirt front, her hands sliding under his jacket, her arms going round the narrow waist.

She felt his grip tighten even more, and his dark head bent, his face coming so close to hers that the faint roughness of the beginnings of evening growth of beard rubbed lightly against the delicate skin of her cheek. She sensed—unbelievingly—the warm caress of his mouth on her neck, at the base of her ear, and heard his deep sigh as he whispered harshly against the delicate lobe.

‘Skye, don’t go—stay! I want you to stay.’

‘What?’

Had he really said what she thought she had heard? She couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. It had to be her ears deceiving her or the voice of her own hungry longings sounding inside her head, telling her what she most wanted to hear.

But she couldn’t have heard it. Men like this Anton didn’t suddenly beg girls like her to stay with them, not on such brief acquaintance.

Had he really said…?

Tilting her head, she tried to look up into his face, to read the answer there, but even as she moved his dark head came down towards hers. His mouth closed over hers and captured it in a searing, blazing kiss that sent a sensation like a lightning bolt fizzing through her body, right down to the tips of her toes.

This couldn’t be happening, was the one brief thought that Skye managed before her brain short-circuited and thinking became impossible. Before it was replaced only by feeling.

His mouth was pure enticement, pure sinful seduction. His kiss worked a spell on her that had her melting against him, into him, losing herself in the feeling of becoming part of him. Her lips parted, encouraging the heated invasion of his tongue, her sighing moan a sound of pure surrender, all that was female in her responding to the darkly elemental male in him. Something rich and dark and deeply sensual uncoiled way down low in her body and set up a heavy, honeyed pounding between her thighs.

The sounds and the lights of the street became nothing but a blur in the back of her mind as the strength of his hold lifted her up onto her toes, almost off her feet. Powerful hands thrust into the fall of hair, sweeping it back from around her face as hard fingers dug into her skull. The rain came down harder, colder, but she was lost and oblivious to it, adrift in a heated world where nothing else could reach her.

In the distance someone wolf-whistled, and slowly, reluctantly, they drew apart, breath coming heavily, eyes wide, expressions slightly dazed as they met each other’s gaze and acknowledged the primitive fires they had lit between them.

‘I…’ Skye began, but her voice broke in the middle, failing her completely as the reality of what had happened to her hit home like a savage blow to her head.

This was what it was all about. This was what male-female relationships really meant. What those words like desire and passion and hunger had had hidden behind them, unrecognised by her until now.

Now.

The single word sounded like a knell inside her head, deadening her thoughts and bringing the cruel sting of tears to her eyes.

Now, when it was too late. When a malevolent fate had stepped in and decided her future for her.

When she knew that these delights, this sort of happiness, were to be denied to her for ever. She had learned the truth too late, only to have it snatched away from her in the same moment that she discovered it. And with no chance of anything more.

Except for tonight, a tiny voice whispered in her mind, bringing with it dreams and hopes of the sort that she had never allowed into her thoughts before. Dreams that made her shiver just to contemplate them.

Dreams that were here, now, within her reach, and all she had to do was to stretch out a hand and grasp them, make them hers, for tonight; for one night only.

‘Skye?’ the man called Anton questioned softly, making her realise how long she had been standing there, silent, distant, locked in the shadowed, ominous darkness of her thoughts.

The heat of his body still enclosed her, His hold had loosened, but she still pressed up against the powerful length of his body, feeling the hard ridge against her stomach that spoke of the desire that had been in his kiss. The same desire that had been in hers. That still throbbed along every nerve pathway, pulsed in her blood.

He had wanted her every bit as she had wanted him—he still did.

But she had only met him tonight.

‘I won’t hurt you.’ His voice was low and husky with need. So low and husky that it shocked her to think that she could ever have such an effect on any man—least of all this man. This tall, darkly imposing, devastating man.

‘I promise you, you’ll be safe with me. I swear…’

Her heart slammed against the wall of her ribcage, jerky and uneven, coming close to panic at just the thought of what she was considering. But the ache of need still suffused her own body and wouldn’t let her go.

If only this had happened sooner. If only she had met this Anton before…

But no. That was to wish for the impossible. Her fate had been sealed and she had no alternative but to go down the path that had been chosen for her. The path she had agreed to.

The path she had had no choice but to agree to.

From tomorrow, everything would change. From tomorrow her life would no longer be her own.

Skye’s teeth dug down hard into the softness of her bottom lip, scoring sharp little crescents into the delicate pink flesh.

Tomorrow.

Last week she had prayed that she could run away. She had dreamed of it, longed for it, hoped for a chance. But there was no chance. Too many people depended on her. If she had had any doubts about that, then the latest news only this week of how dangerous her mother’s heart condition really was had destroyed them for ever. She couldn’t run away and leave them all in the lurch.

But there was tonight.

Tonight she could run away—at least temporarily—from everything that was weighing her down. She could escape into a world of fantasy and sensual delight. A world that was so unreal she couldn’t really believe it was happening to her. A world in which, for once in her life—for the one and only time—just for a few short hours, she could experience the full heights of passion and the fierce sensuality that she had tasted so briefly just a few moments before.

One of the hardest things to accept about this marriage to Cyril Antonakos was the fact that her unwanted wedding night would be her first experience of sex. She was still a virgin and had never known any man who could make her feel enough to want to change that situation.

Until now.

Now she couldn’t bear the thought that a man nearing sixty would be her first, her only lover—when there was this man who only had to touch her and she felt as if she were going up in flames.

She could have tonight.

I promise you, you’ll be safe with me. I swear…

He didn’t even have to know her name. And tomorrow, as in some modern-day Cinderella story, reality would close in around her once again.

But she would have had tonight.

If only she could bring herself to answer him. If only she could find the courage to say…

‘Skye?’

Her name was rough on his tongue now, raw impatience and that devastating accent turning it into something new and strange. A sound she didn’t recognise as the name she heard every day.

‘Are you ever going to answer me?’

Skye tried. Swallowing hard to ease the dryness of her throat, she fought for the control, the strength she needed.

But then his long-fingered hand came under her chin, lifting it so that her face came up to meet his, her grey eyes meeting and locking with the deep, deep blackness of his. Drowning in their darkness.

He bent his head slowly and his mouth took hers. This time his kiss had none of the fierce, wild passion of moments before; instead it was soft and slow and heartbreakingly tender. It seemed to draw her soul out of her body, melt her bones, so that she was trembling against him, needing the potent strength of his body to support her so that she didn’t fall to the ground.

‘So tell me, my beauty,’ he whispered in a voice that was as dark and rich as the black velvet night sky above them. ‘Will you go or will you stay?’

My beauty, Skye thought hazily.

No one, not even her mother, had ever called her beautiful. Or made her feel it the way his kiss made her feel right now, here in this cold, rain-spattered street.

And suddenly there was only one answer to give him. Only one answer she could give him.

She had to have tonight. She might regret it in the morning, when reality hit her in the face. But the one thing she was sure of was that she could never regret it as much as she would bitterly regret saying no.

And so she lifted her head and kissed him back, putting her answer into the caress, but knowing she had to speak it too.

‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed softly, confidently. ‘Yes, of course I’ll stay. But on one condition…’

CHAPTER THREE

THEO flicked on the light and surveyed the room before him with a critical eye, frowning as he did so.

‘Are you sure that this is what you want?’

He supposed that the room was all right, as hotel rooms went. It was at least clean and reasonably sized, with a comfortable-looking bed, and the usual furniture and fittings. Through a door off to one side was the tiny en suite bathroom, severely tiled in plain, cold white, with toiletries, towels and bath robes all in the same non-colour.

It was all totally soulless, functional but impersonal, and therefore unwelcoming. And not at all the sort of place he would have thought that he would end up in tonight.

But then, nothing tonight had gone the way he had expected it.

He had certainly never anticipated ending up in an anonymous hotel room with a woman who stirred every single one of his most primitive senses, but whose first name was the only thing he knew about her.

‘We’re strangers,’ she had said, ‘and I want to keep it that way. You don’t know me and I don’t know you—that’s the way it has to be.’

No way! That was his first response. He actually stiffened, half turned to walk away, but she was still so close to him, he still had his arms around her, and the hot blood racing through his veins, the hungry need that clamoured at his senses, blurred his thoughts.

He couldn’t let her go.

He had known that in the moment that he had seen her turn to hail a taxi to take her away and out of his life. And if she went now, then she would be gone for ever. He would have no way of tracking her down. She would disappear into the night and he would never see her again; never know anything more about her.

‘You ask a lot, lady,’ he managed, his voice husky and rough.

She didn’t show any sign of reconsidering. Her light-coloured gaze held his unwaveringly, and her soft mouth firmed to a determined line.

‘It’s that or nothing,’ she said, reaching up a slim hand to smooth it across the front of his shirt, and the small movement brought a waft of her scent up to his nostrils, tantalising his senses and drying his mouth.

Beneath the caress of her fingers, his skin burned and his heart kicked savagely, making his pulse throb, his senses swim.

‘That or nothing,’ she repeated and he knew that he could never live with ‘nothing’. He would always curse himself if he let this woman get away from him now.

‘Whatever you want, lady,’ he said, knowing it was nothing less than the truth. ‘Whatever you want.’

And what she wanted was this.

For tonight at least.

Well, he would let her get away with it for tonight—after all, she wasn’t the only one who had been a little…economical with the truth. But tomorrow always came.

Tomorrow he would be asking a lot of questions. And he’d want some very definite answers to all of them.

Meanwhile, he’d spend tonight convincing her that it wasn’t ‘that or nothing’ at all.

‘Skye?’ he questioned now when the woman who had come into the room just behind him didn’t answer. ‘What is it? Have you changed your mind about tonight? Do you want to go back on this—renege on what we agreed?’

Did she?

Did she want to back out of the deal? Was that what she wanted?

They were the questions Skye had been asking herself ever since they’d come upstairs. No—before that. The truth was that her courage and conviction had been seeping away from the moment that she had agreed to stay with him.

It was obvious that she’d shocked him to the core with her blunt announcement that if she stayed then he must never ask her her full name, and never give her his.

She’d thought that he was going to walk away when she’d said that. Certainly his expression had seemed to promise that he was going to reject her outrageous proposition out of hand. His whole face had closed off, shutters seeming to come down behind the brilliant black eyes, until every one of his features had appeared to be carved in cold, unyielding marble.

But then he had blinked once, very slowly, and nodded his dark head.

‘No,’ she said now, miserably aware of the way that her own inner tension made her voice sound tight and hard, coldly distant. ‘No, I’m not reneging on anything. It’s just…’

Just that I’m no good at this.

The words were burning on her tongue, but she swallowed them back hastily, closing her eyes against the terrible anxiety she was feeling. She couldn’t say them, not here, not now, not in this situation. Her stomach muscles were tying themselves into tight, painful knots, twisting each nerve harder and harder with every heartbeat.

‘Just what?’

His voice sounded disturbingly close and when her eyes flew open again it was to find that he had taken several long strides forward. He was standing right in front of her, so near that if she just lifted her hand she could touch him without even stretching out her fingers.

And she wanted to touch him. The tips of her fingers tingled with the remembrance of the way his skin, his hair had felt to their touch. Her palms felt again the heat of the muscles beneath his shirt, sensed the thudding of his heart under the strong bones of his chest.

If she slicked her tongue along her lips, she could still taste him, clean, musky, intensely masculine, making her heart skip a beat. And she wanted that taste, those sensations all over again. She wanted to lose herself in that wonderful, sizzling feeling that flooded her senses, swamping her mind and leaving her incapable of thought, knowing only need.

She wanted this man.

‘Just what?’ he prompted again, more roughly this time.

I want you to hold me—to make me forget…

‘Just that I wish you would kiss me again.’

‘Oh, that!’

It was edged with laughter, threaded through with a knowing triumph.

‘You only had to ask.’

He was already moving forward, taking her in his arms, drawing her close to him with the confidence of a man who was sure of his appeal; who had no doubt that he was wanted.

‘So tell me, sweetheart…’

A caressing hand slid under her chin, lifting her face to his, and his glittering black eyes locked with her cloudy grey ones, holding her gaze, keeping her so still that even her heartbeat seemed to freeze.

‘Where shall I kiss you? Here?’

The warm pressure of his mouth on her forehead was like a butterfly landing, light, delicate, there and gone again so swiftly that she barely even noticed it was there until she felt its loss. And when she did, her lips parted on a sigh of melancholy delight.

‘Or here…?’

This time he caressed her cheek, dropping a kiss just below her temple, on the left and then again on the right, making her breathing deepen, her senses start to stir.

‘Or perhaps here…?’

Softly, deliberately, he kissed her eyes shut, his lips lingering on the lids just long enough to seal them closed. At least, that was the way it felt to Skye, who found herself locked into a world of sensual darkness where every other sense seemed heightened and sharply sensitised to everything about him.

She could hear each breath he took, low and steady, matching the beat of his heart. His scent was on the air around her, that warm, clean, male essence, subtly blended with the tang of lime and spice in his cologne. When he took her hands in his, the heat seared across her skin like an electric current making her fingers curl in instant response, her breath catch sharply in her throat.

And it was all happening again.

She was melting inside, all the tension seeping out of her body so that she almost expected to see it pool on the floor at her feet. The honeyed pulse of desire was starting through her veins once more, sending the waves of yearning along the path of every nerve and setting them alight with need.

‘That will do for a start,’ she managed, amazed at her own boldness. A daring that was bolstered by the darkness behind her closed lids.

She couldn’t see the man who held her, couldn’t look into the darkness of his eyes and read anything—or nothing—from them. She could only feel, enclosed in her own private, secret world of sensations she had never known before, but now wanted to experience so much more.

She wanted to plunge into them like a swimmer diving straight into the deepest pool, letting the waters crash over her head and submerge her completely. Wanted to know it all. Wanted to snatch at things greedily and hungrily, grabbing them to her and swallowing them whole.

But Anton seemed determined to take things slowly. When she made a tiny movement of impatience he hushed her softly, smoothing the sound from her lips with a gentle finger.

‘Not so fast, my lovely. We have all night.’

All night…

It had a wonderful sound. A sound that seemed to promise hours that would stretch out and out in a never-ending way, delivering pleasure for as long as she could stand it. But at the same time, Skye knew just how quickly those hours would fly by. How soon they would be over.

She had this one chance to know the sensuous delights that instinct told her were ahead of her. She couldn’t waste them.

She wouldn’t waste them. Already her body was on fire with anticipation and longing and she was trembling in his arms, grateful for the security of his hold that was all that kept her upright.

‘Anton…’

His name was a moan of need on her lips and she felt as well as heard the soft laughter that shook his powerful frame.

‘I know, sweetheart,’ he told her and the new thickness in his voice revealed only too clearly just how much he did know. ‘I know the way you’re feeling—but, believe me, this will be worth taking slowly. It will be worth waiting for. Just go with me on this—let me show you…’

He was kissing her again now, his mouth taking a burning trail from her temple, down to her jaw before it captured her lips again. The touch of his mouth on her skin, the magic it could work, was threatening her ability to think. But there was one vital, practical matter she had to think of because the possible consequences if she didn’t were too horrific even to consider.