Irresistible Greeks: Defiance and Desire

He looked across at her through narrowed lids. ‘I don’t see how anyone could have reason to object to your having a business dinner with me?’

Gemini accepted that it might have started out as a business dinner—except for the subdued lighting and those candles on the dinner table—but Drakon certainly hadn’t been feeling businesslike a few minutes ago, when she had felt the evidence of his arousal pressing against her. When whether or not they kissed each other had hung so delicately in the balance for several tense and breathlessly expectant moments!

‘Probably not,’ she accepted briskly. ‘But I wouldn’t have felt right about coming here if I was involved with someone.’

Drakon frowned his irritation. ‘I don’t see why not. Or is it your intention, when this “one day” arrives with this as yet imaginary husband and children, to close yourself off from all other social contact?’

‘Of course not.’ Gemini gave him a derisive glance. ‘But going out for the evening to have dinner alone with—well, frankly with another man, who happens to be single and very eligible, really isn’t acceptable when you’re married to someone else.’

He raised dark brows. ‘Even if it is a business dinner?’

‘Even then.’ She shrugged dismissively. ‘I wouldn’t be at all happy knowing my husband was out to dinner with some glamorous blonde or brunette, business or otherwise, so I wouldn’t expect him to like my doing it either. And I really have no idea why we are even talking about someone who doesn’t even exist yet,’ she added wryly. ‘It’s bizarre!’

It was an odd conversation, Drakon acknowledged. One that gave him even more of an insight into the type of woman Gemini Bartholomew was.

At the same time it reiterated his earlier impression that she was not the type of woman to enter lightly into what Drakon already knew, from that brief time of holding her in his arms, would be a highly volatile sexual affair between the two of them. Indeed, she was the type of woman who would need to be in love, rather than just in lust, with any man she went to bed with.

Surely that didn’t mean she might still be a virgin at twenty-seven?

Of course it didn’t; just because Gemini hadn’t married yet it didn’t mean she hadn’t already fallen in—and out—of love, or had sex. Or made love, as she no doubt thought of it!

Drakon’s hands clenched at his sides just at the thought of other men making love to her. Of those men having seen her naked, with that beautiful white-gold hair falling caressingly over them as they touched and kissed all those delectable and willowy curves—

Those regrets at his earlier self-denial had occurred even more quickly than Drakon had imagined they might!

He nodded abruptly. ‘I will ring for the car and have you driven back to your home,’ he said.

‘There’s no need,’ Gemini replied. ‘I can easily get a taxi once I’m outside.’

‘I arranged for your transport here, and as such cannot possibly allow you to go home in a taxi,’ he bit out harshly.

‘You aren’t allowing me to do anything, Drakon.’ Gemini couldn’t help smiling a little at his arrogance. ‘And I want to go now,’ she insisted heavily, that humour quickly fading. ‘Not in ten minutes or so when the car arrives.’

He straightened. ‘Then I will drive you home myself—’

‘That really isn’t necessary.’ She frowned at the mere idea of being confined in a car with him for the fifteen minutes or so it would take to drive her back to her apartment. Drakon had rejected her offer, and now she just wanted to get out of here—not drag this awkwardness out a moment longer. ‘Nor is it a good idea, considering you’ve been drinking wine—the licensing laws over here are pretty strict.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Thank you for dinner—’

‘Which you were too upset to eat.’ A nerve pulsed in the tightness of his jaw.

‘And the lovely wine—which I certainly wasn’t too upset to drink,’ she added pointedly. ‘And for listening to me, at least…’

Drakon scowled his displeasure at the frown that had reappeared between those magnificent eyes. ‘There really is no reason for you to leave so soon—’

‘I’m afraid there’s every reason, Drakon.’ Gemini sighed. ‘You were my last hope, I’m afraid.’

He knew that, and inwardly railed against the fact that he had ultimately proved to be so unhelpful to her. But, apart from his immediate family, business had always come first and last with him—certainly for the ten years since he had taken over as President of Lyonedes Enterprises. The appeal of a beautiful pair of sea-green eyes and the allure of a desirable body simply were not justifiable reasons for him to give even a moment’s consideration to Gemini’s impractical offer to purchase Bartholomew House.

‘I will need to come down in the lift with you, at least, in order to let you out of the building,’ he rasped.

‘By all means come downstairs and see me off the premises,’ she accepted teasingly. ‘Having already been confined by your security man once today, I would hate for it to happen a second time—and maybe this time involve the police because all the alarms go off as I try to leave!’

As the two of them stepped into the lift together Drakon couldn’t help but admire Gemini’s cool dignity only minutes after he had dealt her what must have been a devastating blow. Many women, as he knew from experience, would have resorted to shrieking or crying—or even seduction—in order to try and get their own way, but not Gemini Bartholomew. There was no doubting she looked slightly more emotionally fragile than when she had arrived, but otherwise her calm dignity was still firmly in place.

Not that any of those things would have worked where Drakon was concerned—although the seduction would no doubt have been enjoyable. But Gemini had not even tried to exert any of her feminine wiles on him.

Was that disappointment Drakon felt? Possibly. In the circumstances, he could not in all conscience act upon his own desires, but having Gemini act upon her sexual awareness of him, which he had sensed in her such a short time ago, would have been a different matter entirely!

Gemini was very aware of Drakon standing beside her as they went down in the lift together. And of a return of that sexual tension that had occurred earlier when he had taken her in his arms. If it had ever gone away…

If she were honest with herself, she hadn’t really held out much hope of Drakon being receptive to her unusual offer to buy Bartholomew House from Lyonedes Enterprises when she’d agreed to have dinner with him this evening. She had already realised that from a business point of view it really wasn’t a very practical offer. So having Drakon turn down the offer had come as no real surprise.

The physical awareness that had sprung so readily to life between them earlier and was still so tangibly evident most definitely had…

Oh, Gemini wasn’t surprised that she found Drakon physically attractive—she had realised when she met him this morning that he was a dangerously handsome man!—but that Drakon so obviously found her physically attractive too had come as a total shock. She wouldn’t have thought she was his type at all—too determined and pushy, too impulsive, and definitely far too outspoken.

If she had thought about it at all she would have imagined that the sort of woman he found attractive would be someone undemanding and elegantly beautiful, with a social charm that acted as a foil for his own more taciturn nature. Someone that her stepmother Angela was only too capable of at least pretending to be. As Gemini knew only too well, Angela’s true nature was only revealed after a wedding!

Gemini looked at Drakon from beneath lowered lashes, aware that her breathing had become shallow and her body hot. Her breasts felt full and heavy, the nipples hard and sensitive pebbles, and a telling dampness was flooding her thighs as she wondered what it would be like to make love with such a vitally powerful and ruggedly handsome man. She had absolutely no doubt that Drakon would be a deeply satisfying and accomplished lover—that he would be as accomplished at lovemaking as she had so naively commented he probably was on the piano!

Come to think of it, there were quite a few similarities between making love and playing the piano—surely it was all a question of running your fingers over the right keys in order to achieve the most satisfying result? In fact—

‘What are you doing?’ Gemini gasped as the lights flickered and the lift came to a sudden halt between floors. Drakon had reached out and pressed one of the buttons on the panel before turning to look at her, his expression as dark and unreadable as his eyes as he looked down at her for several tension-filled seconds. ‘Drakon…?’ She looked up at him dazedly.

Drakon reached out and took Gemini in his arms. He moulded the softness of her body against his hardness, aware that she wanted this as much as he did as he heard the shallowness of her breathing, saw the swell of her breasts above her dress, the nipples hard against the softness of that material, and felt the warmth of the rest of her body instinctively curve intimately into his.

‘Drakon…?’ She sounded slightly panicked now, as he studied her intently before moving one of his hands to cup the side of her face, to gently part the softness of her lips. The soft pad of his thumb dipped into the heated moisture of her mouth before slowly spreading that moisture across her lips. ‘Drakon…!’ she gasped weakly, and she allowed her bag to slide to the floor of the lift and her arms to move about his waist beneath his jacket.

Her hands were warm against his back through the silk of his shirt. It was all the encouragement he needed to lower his head and capture the moistness of her lips with his, groaning low in his throat as those lips parted further and the kiss deepened. Their ragged breathing sounded loud in the still silence of the dimly lit lift as the two of them sucked and bit on each other’s lips as they kissed hungrily, passionately.

Drakon only lifted his lips from hers in order to taste the creaminess of her throat as he pushed her back against the wall of the lift and ground the hard and aching throb of his arousal against her. She tasted of warmth and honey, of arousal, and her skin was hot against his lips as he kissed his way down to the swell of her breasts, tasting and licking her there, muttering his dissatisfaction as the fitted bodice of her dress prevented him from going lower.

Gemini was so aroused, so lost in the pleasure of Drakon’s kisses and caresses, that she wasn’t even aware of his having lowered the zip at the back of her dress and tugged aside the material until she felt his lips against the bareness of her breasts. His tongue was a moist rasp across her nipple before he drew that sensitive peak deep into the heat of his mouth. Her hands grasped his shoulders for support as his fingers cupped her other breast and his thumb moved across it in the same rhythmic caress, causing a warm rush of moisture to pool and dampen between her thighs.

Drakon continued to grind the hardness of his arousal against her and her breath caught in her throat, her arousal tightening to fever pitch as she looked down at him, his lashes long and dark against the olive skin of his hollowed cheeks, those firm and ruthless lips parted over her nipple as he drew on her deeply, hungrily, his teeth biting into the softness of her flesh, his tongue a rough and erotic scrape of pleasure.

She gave a whimper of protest as his lips and tongue reluctantly released that turgid nipple, only to moan low in her throat as he turned their attention to her other breast. Her fingers became entangled in the darkness of his hair as the ache between her thighs intensified to a burn of need that caused her to shift restlessly against the long length of his shaft, crying out softly as she felt his hardness rub against her swollen flesh through the fine fabric of their clothes, groaning, gasping, as she continued to move rhythmically against him, feeling herself spiralling out of control as the intensity, the depth of pleasure, hurtled her towards release.

‘Hello? Mr Lyonedes? Do you need assistance?’

Gemini stiffened dazedly and Drakon stilled against her breast as that intrusive voice pierced the heat of their arousal.

‘Mr Lyonedes? Do you require assistance, sir?’

Gemini recognised the voice as belonging to Max, the Head of Security for Lyonedes Enterprises she had met that morning, even as Drakon released her abruptly before stepping away from her.

His expression was tight and extremely grim as he looked down at her darkly for several seconds, before turning away to lift the receiver beside the lit panel. ‘No assistance needed, Max,’ he barked into the mouthpiece.

‘Are you sure, sir? The lift appears to be stuck between the thirteenth and fourteenth floors…?’

‘Not stuck, Max, just not moving,’ he assured the other man tautly. ‘Miss Bartholomew and I will be descending to the ground floor in a few moments.’

There was a brief, telling silence before the other man spoke again. ‘Very good. Thank you, sir.’

‘Miss Bartholomew’ had quickly pulled up the bodice of her dress while Drakon spoke to his Head of Security, the heat now in her cheeks due to intense embarrassment rather than arousal. Not only had she almost made love with Drakon in a lift—which was surely mortifying enough?—but after that brief conversation with his employer, no doubt Max was also fully aware of exactly why the lift had been stopped between floors!

Good Lord, she had almost made love with Drakon in a lift!

Drakon Lyonedes…

Even more frustratingly, his hair smoothed back into style and his suit jacket and tie now straightened, he now looked just as smoothly self-contained as usual. Whereas she—goodness knew what she must look like, with her dress still unzipped at the back and her hair in a tangle about her shoulders, her cheeks hot and the peach gloss kissed from her lips!

‘Turn around.’

Gemini raised startled lids and looked warily up at Drakon. She moistened her slightly swollen and sensitive lips before speaking. ‘Sorry…?’

His own mouth was a thin, uncompromising line in the arrogant planes of his face, his eyes as hard as the onyx they resembled. ‘If you turn around I will re-zip your dress.’

Gemini clutched the material to her breasts and quickly turned away from him, trembling when she felt every cold inch of that zip against her heated skin as Drakon deftly refastened it. She wondered what on earth she was supposed to do now…How was she supposed to behave towards the man she had almost made love with in a lift? Was there a precedent for that sort of thing? Some sort of protocol that she—never having made love in a lift before—didn’t have a clue about?

Of course there wasn’t a protocol for this type of thing! And hysteria really wasn’t an option either—which meant Gemini had to get a grip as quickly as possible and stop behaving like an inexperienced idiot. Even if she was one…

Oh, she had dated often at university—had even thought she might have been in love a couple of times and mildly experimented with lovemaking. But once she’d bought and started to run the shop her time had pretty much been taken up with making it into a success, leaving little opportunity for dating, let alone falling in love. In fact, now that she gave it some thought, dinner this evening with Drakon was as close as she had got to having anything that even resembled a date for well over a year.

Which was absolutely no excuse—and definitely not an explanation—for the explosion of arousal and passion that had just happened between the two of them!

She might be inexperienced, but Drakon certainly wasn’t. And after her behaviour just now she doubted that he would believe she was either…

‘Do you intend to stare at that wall for the rest of our journey down?’

Gemini flinched at the hard amusement she could hear in Drakon’s voice as she felt the lift begin its descent. ‘Not at all,’ she denied briskly, and she turned, bending down to retrieve her clutch bag from the floor of the lift before forcing herself to look up and meet the hardness of his gaze. ‘Well, that was certainly…different,’ she said lamely.

‘Yes.’ Drakon’s mouth twisted in self-derision. ‘Different’ was certainly one way of describing the way in which the situation had totally spiralled out of his control once he had taken Gemini into his arms!

He hadn’t meant to kiss her at all, let alone touch her in that intimate way, but once he had done so and she had responded…! It hadn’t mattered to Drakon at all that at that moment they were in a lift together. Nor had he given any thought to the fact that stopping the lift in between floors in that way would alert whoever was on security duty this evening. He had just wanted to touch her, taste her—damn it, he had wanted to eat her up until he had totally devoured her! He still wanted to do that…

His jaw tightened. ‘I do not fly back to New York until next week. Perhaps we could have dinner together again tomorrow evening?’

Those beautiful sea-green eyes widened incredulously. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?’

Drakon raised dark brows. ‘Why not?’

Gemini shook her head. ‘I’m sure I don’t really have to explain that to you!’ She glanced gratefully out into the hallway as the lift doors opened out onto the ground floor.

‘Nevertheless…’ Drakon stood back to allow her to precede him out into the dimmed hallway, his expression grim. ‘We have already established that neither of us is involved with anyone else.’

That might or might not be true—the fact that Gemini had believed Drakon when he’d claimed not to be involved with Angela didn’t mean that he didn’t have someone else waiting for him in New York! And it certainly didn’t mean that they should see each other again before he left England.

Not when agreeing to see him again would no doubt be seen by him as a tacit agreement from her for a repeat—no, a conclusion of that explosion of passion that had just occurred between them in the lift…

CHAPTER SIX

GEMINI gave a definite shake of her head. ‘I’m sure to be exhausted after working on the wedding flowers all day tomorrow, but thank you for asking.’

Drakon had regretted making the invitation virtually as soon as he’d made it! Regretted it and inwardly berated himself for even thinking of seeing her again.

This woman had a way of slipping beneath his guard. Of totally demolishing the tight rein he always kept over his self-control. Of tempting him to behave in ways he never had before. If Max hadn’t interrupted them when he had then Drakon had no doubt he would actually have made love to Gemini—in a lift, of all places!

It was unacceptable to a man who totally rejected any and all hint of emotional vulnerability, and instead preferred to remain detached and in control at all times. Wanting to push a woman up against a wall and make unbridled love to her couldn’t be called either of those things!

No, it was better by far if Drakon never saw or spoke to her again. And after this evening there was absolutely no reason why he should ever need to do so…

‘Very well.’ He nodded stiffly. ‘But I will come outside with you and see you safely into a taxi.’

Gemini could have argued that she had lived in London all her life and as such was perfectly capable of seeing herself into a taxi, thank you very much! But no doubt Drakon would then argue the point, and delay her departure by doing so. Which she certainly didn’t want when she so desperately needed to get away from him.

It wasn’t in the least apparent from Drakon’s cool and controlled expression as he looked down the length of his arrogant nose at her that only minutes ago he had almost made love to her with a fire and intimacy no other man ever had. But she was only too well aware of it. Her breasts still ached with sensitivity, and she could feel that telltale dampness between her thighs…

As was to be expected, there was no scarcity of available taxis when Drakon Lyonedes needed one, and he had no trouble flagging down one of London’s black cabs almost immediately they stepped to the edge of the pavement; he was the type of man for whom life always ran the way in which he wanted it to.

Unlike Gemini, who had no choice but to accept that Bartholomew House was now totally beyond her reach.

She felt numbed and slightly hollow as she climbed into the back of the taxi, only half listening as Drakon leant in to give the driver the address of her apartment.

‘I can be contacted through my cousin Markos if you ever have need of me.’

Gemini blinked up at Drakon from the back seat of the taxi. Why would he suppose she might ever have need of him? ‘Managing to speak to one of the Lyonedes family didn’t work out too well for me last time,’ she reminded him pointedly, just wanting to be on her way so that she could lick her wounds in private.

All her wounds. Losing Bartholomew House and responding so uninhibitedly to this grim-faced man’s earlier passion. At the moment she wasn’t sure which of those things was going to be the more difficult to understand, let alone accept.

Drakon’s mouth was set firmly. ‘I will leave instructions that you are to be allowed to make an appointment to see either Markos or myself at any time.’

Gemini’s eyes widened. ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’

A good question. And one that he wasn’t sure he had a logical answer to. Except to say that his Greek upbringing did not find it acceptable that Gemini had effectively been left completely alone in the world since her father died.

‘The instruction will be given,’ he reiterated firmly. ‘You may please yourself as to whether or not you ever choose to use the privilege.’

She sat back against the seat. ‘I’m pretty sure that I won’t.’

He had asked for that response, Drakon acknowledged ruefully, knowing that his present attitude was less than gracious. But this young woman had become like a burr under his skin—a discomfort he couldn’t seem to ignore.

‘I hope you do not have to work too hard tomorrow.’ He stepped back and closed the door, leaving a pale-faced Gemini bathed only in moonlight as the taxi drew away from the kerb.

Drakon stood on the pavement and watched the taxi until its tail lights disappeared amongst the other London evening traffic, then turned sharply on his heel and went back into Lyonedes Tower, knowing—well, hoping—he had seen the last of Gemini Bartholomew…

‘We may have a problem.’

Drakon looked up from where he had been packing the last of his papers into his briefcase in preparation for his flight back to New York early this evening, frowning as he saw the unhappy expression on Markos’s face as his cousin came into the study of the penthouse apartment at the top of Lyonedes Tower.

‘What sort of a problem?’ Having spent a quiet weekend in the apartment in preparation for two days of lengthy negotiation with Thompson Oil—which had, of course, been concluded to Lyonedes Enterprises’ advantage—Drakon wasn’t in the mood to deal with any hiccups that might now have occurred in the finalising of that contract. Nothing which could threaten his return to New York today. He had been away from his own office for long enough.

Markos grimaced. ‘Mrs Bartholomew came to see me this afternoon—’

‘Miss Bartholomew,’ Drakon corrected, wondering why, when he hadn’t yet left the country, Gemini had chosen to make an appointment with Markos rather than himself. And for what reason…‘Gemini is not married.’

‘If I’d meant Gemini then I would have said Gemini,’ Markos reasoned impatiently.

Drakon eyed his cousin guardedly as he slowly stepped away from the desk. ‘So it was her stepmother who came to see you today?’

His cousin nodded. ‘Well, I had the distinct impression she would have preferred it to have been you, but as you weren’t available this afternoon she settled for seeing me instead.’