The Greek’s Chosen Wife

Dragged from the depths of her disturbing reflections, Prudence blinked. ‘Sorry? What’s wrong?’

‘Wrong?’ Gold fire leaping in his spectacular eyes, Nik released her seat belt and tugged her forward, saying with hungry appreciation, ‘Nothing’s wrong. A wife who can arouse me in a public place just by looking at me is a magnificent gift, not a problem. I got us out of there before I embarrassed you…’

Prudence belatedly appreciated what had prompted their speedy departure from the Donnington’s: lust. She recalled the manner in which she had watched him. Wide-eyed with disconcertion, she blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘You mean, we’re not really racing back to the villa to pack and head for the airport?’

‘We will be racing-only not to the airport. But first let me have a taste of you, pethi mou.’ Nik bent his arrogant dark head. He toyed with the luscious fullness of her lower lip, gently nipping and grazing the tender skin and provoking helpless whimpers of eager response from her. Tilting her head back, she offered him her whole mouth as a playground and he set every pulse in her quivering body aflame with the measured thrust of his tongue.

His strong bone structure taut beneath his bronzed skin, he set her back from him and did up her seat belt again with a lot less cool than he had employed undoing it. Scorching golden eyes melded to hers in a stormy collision. ‘I’m so hot for you I’m in pain but we can’t make love here,’ he pointed out raggedly, directing the powerful car back onto the road.

‘I’m not used to you behaving like this,’ she admitted breathlessly but she was trying so hard not to smile from ear to ear, for she had a wicked sense of achievement. He had just taught her how susceptible he could be and she was a fast learner. She knew that some day she would use that lesson to her advantage.

‘I’m not used to it either.’ Nik vented a rough laugh. ‘Perhaps it’s partly fired by admiration. Most women would have thrown a scene over being confronted by Chantal and co…’

Prudence winced. ‘What would have been the point?’

‘You handled it in a very stylish way. When I saw you talking to Jenna, though, I did wonder what you were talking about,’ he admitted.

His expectant silence stretched. Smiling inside herself, Prudence said nothing. Let him wonder what had been discussed! She eyed her dazzling diamond ring with new complacency. She was amazed that she had been fretting about the state of their relationship only minutes earlier. There she had been, ready to get all worked up when she had nothing to worry about!

When the silence ticked on unbroken, Nik responded to the challenge. ‘There will be no other women in my life now that I have you.’

Prudence felt as if the sun had just risen inside her. These were the promise, the commitment, the words she had needed to hear, but would never have asked him to give her. ‘That’s good. Particularly because I would be very unladylike and very unforgiving in the way I handled infidelity,’ she told him softly.

Disconcerted though he was by that immediate warning, Nik almost laughed in appreciation of her timing. She was so different from every other woman he had ever known. She had no fear of him and she stood up to him. But she was no drama queen. Had it never dawned on Theo Demakis that his granddaughter was as clever as he was? It hadn’t dawned on her stupid husband, Nik acknowledged ruefully, wondering what else he still had to discover about his wife.

At the villa, Nik lifted Prudence out of the car and right up into his arms to kiss her with raw hunger and need. She melted into his lean, hard body, exulting in his strength and burying her fingers in his luxuriant black hair.

‘I want you so bad, thespinis mou,’ he growled against her swollen mouth, moving across the threshold of their room as he backed her towards the bed.

He angled her back against him and dealt summarily with the straps of her dress and the cups of her bra, groaning with satisfaction when her luscious breasts spilled free into his appreciative hold. Her legs trembled. She was hot and shivering and weak all at once. He captured the straining pink peaks between his fingers and she gasped out loud. The sensation of tightness in her pelvis increased to an almost unbearable degree.

‘Nik…please,’ she moaned, utterly helpless in the grip of that pulse beat of desire.

‘So glad you’re suffering, too…’ Nik let his teeth graze her soft, creamy shoulder while he wrenched her out of the dress with such a lack of finesse that the fabric tore. He ran his tongue down her spine, curved caressing hands to shape the sensual swell of her bottom and dropped to his knees to slowly, carefully, sexily remove her panties.

‘Oh…’ Her teeth chattered together in reaction as he found the most sensitive spot on her entire body with his mouth. She shut her eyes tight, wild pleasure and erotic shock at that sudden intimacy travelling through her shivering length in waves. Hot liquid sensation pulsed through her for long, timeless moments. She was out of control and loving it.

He tumbled her back on the bed. Scorching golden eyes raked her with sensual ferocity. ‘I can’t wait…’

‘Take your shirt off…’

He hauled it off with such violence that buttons went flying.

Prudence feasted her eyes on him, wondered if she could wait until he got the rest of his clothes off and decided that she couldn’t. She opened her arms, arched her spine and shifted her hips in silent invitation.

His burning gaze flared with white-hot desire. ‘You tease…’ he ground out helplessly, coming down to her with flattering impatience, all fire, hunger and aggressive masculine energy.

He plunged into her tender flesh with a sweet force that made her cry out. Nothing had ever been as wild as the passion they generated in that fiery fusion. Her excitement was incredibly intense. He drove her to a shattering peak of passion and the intolerable pleasure took her by storm. The power of the experience left her dazed and full of warmth and emotion.

Nik lifted his damp, dark head, smouldering eyes raking her flushed face. His charismatic smile curved his mobile mouth and he claimed her reddened lips in a tender kiss. ‘You amazing woman…’

She wanted to tell him that she loved him but bit back the revealing words just in time. Even so she felt so happy she wanted to cry and she buried her head in his shoulder, breathing in the scent of his damp, tawny skin with blissful satisfaction. She felt as if he was hers now, wholly, entirely, absolutely hers.

‘I wonder if we made a baby this time,’ Nik murmured huskily.

Consternation tensed Prudence’s small frame. A spasm of pure, naked guilt travelled through her, because she had made no attempt to tell him that she was taking precautions against pregnancy. Of course, she had noticed that he had made no attempt to guard against that risk. She had, she was ashamed to admit, felt a tad superior in her knowledge that she was in full, if secret, control of her own fertility. But that had been right back at the beginning when she didn’t trust him and believed she wanted a divorce. Everything had changed since then. She knew that this was the moment when she should speak up, but it seemed to her that such a confession would make things very complicated and might even damage the new bonds they had formed.

‘You’re very quiet.’ Nik rested back on his elbow, watching her from below sinfully long black eyelashes, his lean, bronzed features achingly handsome. ‘I know how much you want a child.’

Prudence squirmed like a butterfly on a pin, torn by the knowledge of her deception. ‘Yes-er-well, but-’

‘I got used to the idea of having a family very fast. I like it,’ Nik confided, pure devilment gleaming in his clear gaze as he let a seemingly idle hand stray from her waist down to her thigh and linger there. ‘I like working on the project of making you a mother. I intend to devote an enormous amount of time and effort to that challenge…any objections?’

‘None…’ Even in the grip of shame over her craven lack of candour, Prudence could not resist that look and even less could she resist his touch. She would just stop taking the pills and he would never know, she thought weakly, quivering with anticipation and excitement as he shifted fluidly closer.

Prudence assumed lack of sleep was to blame for her low appetite at breakfast the next day. She also felt ever so slightly nauseous. Mid-morning they flew back to London. Prudence was so eager to see how her rescue animals had fared during her absence that she changed into practical clothes on the flight and asked to be delivered straight to the stable yard.

Five minutes later, the limo pulled up outside the abbey. As Nik climbed out he kicked over the handbag that Prudence had left lying on the floor. The soft caramel leather holdall he had bought her in Florence tipped out its contents onto the gravel of the driveway. His gaze arrowed in on the foil-packed strip that lay half-in, half-out of the bag. Bending down, he lifted it and fell very still.