Beauty and the Greek (11 page)

Was this display bravery or was it just sheer stubborn independence? Well, either way, it only increased the protectiveness that rose up in him when he looked at her… She was so damned fragile.

‘I could call Andreas.'

The suggestion made her stiffen. Anger coursed through her and Beth embraced it. ‘I actually thought you were being nice.'
First mistake, Beth. The second was starting to feel grateful.
‘Now, how stupid does that make me? Oh, in case you were wondering, that was a rhetorical question.'

She already knew the answer.

While she'd thought he was being kind, that he cared,
he was simply working out how to use this situation to his own advantage.

‘I don't suppose someone like me is even a person to you!' she flung. ‘
My
mistake,' she added bitterly. ‘I forgot what sort of person I'm dealing with; you're a self-centred manipulative pig. Well, for the record, if you want your brother's girlfriend you'll have to get her without my help because I'm not playing any more.' Breathing hard, she made a symbolic gesture of wiping her hands clean of them.

‘It never occurred to me that you would be…
playing
. In my opinion, you should not be alone here. I mentioned Andreas because I thought you might find his company preferable to mine.'

His calm response deflated her bubble of righteous anger.

‘Elizabeth, you shouldn't be alone.' Theo took a step towards her, hand outstretched.

Rejecting the sympathy she saw reflected in his dark eyes, Beth backed away, both hands lifted in a protective barrier as she growled, ‘Just go away and leave me alone.' She stopped and gulped before adding huskily, ‘Please, Theo, just…' She stopped, her eyes clinging to his dark lean face, breathing hard. Then, with a tiny groan, she flung herself across the space separating them.

Theo stood still, barely breathing, his body rigid as she reached up, grabbed his head between her hands and, raising herself on tiptoe, her slim body shaking as she plastered herself up against him to reach her goal and she pressed a hard kiss to his mouth.

She stepped away, feeling almost as shocked as he looked that that she had followed through with the wild, crazy impulse.

She just said one word.
‘Go!'

Without a word, Theo turned, his painful arousal making it hard for him to walk in a straight line. It had taken every ounce of his self-control and some more not to kiss her back, not to gather her in his arms and crush her soft body into his, hunger still roared like an out of control fire in his veins.

Beth watched him walk to the door, the voice in her head screaming—
don't go
. She opened her mouth to call out but nothing came out. He had opened the door when the words came.

‘Don't go!'

T
HE
husky cry made Theo freeze in his tracks. He turned slowly and began to walk back to where she stood, looking small and fragile but wearing an expression of reckless bright-eyed determination.

Her knuckles stood out, bloodless white, as she knitted her hands and begged, ‘Stay with me.'

He gritted his teeth as he fought his primal response to the invitation; it roared in his blood as he kept his expression neutral and said, ‘I'll get Muriel's sister-in-law.'

Beth frowned, tears of sheer frustration standing out in her eyes as she shook her head. ‘That's not what I meant.'

Theo, who knew it was not what she meant, continued to pretend ignorance. Acknowledging what she was saying would make the impossible even harder. The temptation of responding to the beseeching plea in her eyes was so great that Theo had to take several deep breaths before he trusted himself to respond.

‘I can't.'

Her lips trembled and tears spilled from her luminous eyes. ‘You could but you don't want to!'

But he had wanted to, she thought, the muscles low in her pelvis tightening as she recalled the hard imprint of his erection pressing into the softness of her belly. She might
not know much but she knew he had wanted her when she'd kissed him.

‘That is not the point.' Theo could feel the cold sweat standing out in beads across his forehead as he fought to retain control. ‘You are upset and you are vulnerable.'

His burning glance dropped to her provocatively pouting lips and he realised that he had never wanted to possess a woman more in his life—it was consuming him from the inside out.

‘I am trying to do the right thing here,' he told her, clinging on to his principles with his fingernails. ‘And tomorrow you will thank me for it,' he predicted hoarsely.

‘Don't tell me how I feel,' Beth flared angrily. She raised her hand, never sure, in retrospect, if she actually intended to lash out in frustration.

Before she could follow through with anything, he caught her hand tight, his fingers curling around her wrist, pulling it against his heaving chest.

Beth froze. His lean body was racked by tremors; she could feel them rippling through his body in waves.

The leashed strength and controlled power she sensed in him excited her more than she would have imagined possible. Everything about him, from his sheer undiluted raw masculinity to the sinful curve of his marvellous mouth excited her.

She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of him.

‘Elizabeth.'
He slurred her name in a heavily accented growl.

She opened her eyes and stared up at him, longing in her face as he slid a hand into her hair, letting the silky skein fall through his fingers.

Beth watched the muscles in his brown throat work as he swallowed hard. He lifted his head and ran a not quite steady hand back and forth over his hair.

‘I'm going to call the vicar's wife and get her to ask her sister-in-law to stay the night, then—'

‘You want me.' The certainty sent a wave of relief through her.

‘Beth…'

The warning note in his voice had no effect on Beth's intentions. She tilted her head back to look him in the face, raised herself on tiptoe and linked her fingers behind his neck.

Theo tried to look anywhere but at her but he was drawn to her face as she fixed her clear gaze on him. ‘You want me,' she said again very softly.

The dull thud in his head was like a metronome. ‘Elizabeth, you—' She laid a hand against his lips and, with a groan that she felt vibrate through his body, Theo opened his mouth and kissed her palm.

The moist, warm contact sent a deep shiver through her body.

Again, he shook his head and tried to step back. Beth slid her fingers into his hair. ‘Please, Theo, I just need not to think, not to feel…I want it all to go away for a little while. I know you could do that for me.' She looked up at him, the light from the lamp giving an alabaster sheen to her pale skin, unable to explain the instincts that drove her.

He nodded slowly and she felt a quiver run through his lean hard body, but still he held back. ‘I know you want to block out the pain but it will still be there.'

‘I know, but give me this one night.'

He sucked in a breath through flared nostrils and fought to take control of his rampaging hormones. Deep inside, he sensed that the fight was already lost but, conscious that her vulnerability put her out of reach, he held on, if not to his sanity, at least to his principles.

‘Look, you're feeling a lot of things right now that—'

She lifted her chin and cut across him. ‘Do not patronise me, Theo. I'm not a ch…child.' She bit her quivering lower lip. When she had asked him to stay she had genuinely not anticipated rejection. ‘You don't want me—it is no problem.'

Theo held a groan behind clenched teeth as he watched her give a pathetically unconvincing shrug of unconcern.

‘I just wish you'd say so instead of pretending to be noble.'

Something snapped inside Theo; there was a red mist before his eyes as, with a low growl vibrating in his throat, he lunged forward and reached for her. Grabbing her by both wrists, he turned her round and jerked her into his body.

The impact with his rock-hard body sent the breath from Beth's lungs. She tilted her head back and they stood there, both breathing hard as they stared into each other's eyes.

‘I am not noble!'

But he was, she decided, beautiful. ‘Good,' she said, unable to hide her relief.

Theo raised her hands to his lips, kissing the blue-veined inner aspect of her narrow wrists before he freed them.

He stroked her face with the pad of his thumb before pushing his fingers into her hair. Beth stood, unable to move, simply able to feel sensation coursing through her body as he slowly lowered his mouth to hers.

She felt her shaking knees give as he kissed her hard, one hand cupping the back of her head, the other framing her face. She grabbed a handful of shirt to hold herself upright as she opened her mouth beneath his.

She moaned low in her throat as his tongue slid into her mouth. He began to lift his head and Beth panicked. ‘Don't stop!'

The plea sent a ripple through his tense, primed body.
‘I can't.'

Seeing his face through a haze of dancing heat, the expression of driving urgency stamped on his dark features as his big hands closed around her narrow ribcage made Beth's control slip several more notches. She thought
what control?
and gasped as he lifted her with no apparent effort off the ground so that their faces were level.

‘Kiss me!' he commanded.

Beth did and felt him groan low in his throat and she met his tongue with her own. Her hands were wound tight around his neck as they both strained to deepen the pressure, kissing with frenzied feverish hunger.

The heat and hardness of his lean virile body seeped through the layers of clothes that separated them. Beth's starved senses soaked up the impressions like a vacuum sucking in air; it was utterly and totally intoxicating. There was no room for anything else in her mind—just Theo.

Her entire body hummed with excitement. Beth was breathless and shaking with the intensity of it; it pooled, thick and hot, between her thighs. Each fresh stabbing incursion of his tongue sent her deeper into the sensual maelstrom she was suspended in.

‘Oh, God!' she whispered against his mouth. ‘You taste so good.' She ran her fingers over the dark stubble on his jaw, enjoying every single sensation, hungry to discover all of him.

He replied, speaking in his native tongue, the words spilling from his lips with erotic throaty passion that sent electrical tingles shimmering along Beth's nerve endings.

‘Look at me!'

It was a struggle to respond but Beth prised her heavy
eyelids open and the febrile glitter she saw glowing like hot embers in the darkness of his eyes made her senses spin.

‘Say my name, I want to hear you say my name…'

Considering she was in the grip of a newly discovered need to please him and felt almost a compulsion to satisfy any demand he made, she felt strangely shy complying with his modest request.

She slid her hands over his shoulders, exploring and revelling in the rock-hard solidity and strength of the muscles there before framing his face between her hands. ‘Theo,' she said.

The expression in her eyes when she said his name dragged like a weight at his heart.

‘Theo, are you going to take me to bed?'

His pupils dilated dramatically as he turned his head, a feral moan leaving his lips as he pressed a kiss to her palm and shook his head. ‘Too far,' he slurred, unable to articulate the depth of urgency in his blood. He kissed her again, bending her head back, exposing the long lovely line of her pale neck.

He was shaking with the need that consumed him as he lifted her into his arms, soft and warm and smelling like the very essence of femininity.

They continued to kiss as he carried her over to the old saggy sofa beside the old-fashioned blacked range, but Beth was oblivious to the broken spring digging into her back as he laid her down.

One foot braced on the floor, his big body curved over her. As she gazed up at this big beautiful man looking down at her, his smoky eyes dark with desire, Beth's senses leapt and things deep inside her shifted and tightened, the heat spreading out from the tight hot core low in her belly until she was burning.

She felt both overwhelmed and excited, wanting him
close, wanting to feel his skin, taste his skin—wanted with a raw urgency that scared and thrilled her.

His fingers shook as they slipped the tie on her robe. Peeling back the fabric to expose her body, he caught his breath.

‘You are beautiful,' he rasped, cupping one small perfect breast in his hand, his thumb rubbing across the peak straining against the lacy covering before pushing it back to reveal the smooth perfection of first one small quivering mound and then the other.

Holding her eyes, he fought his way out of his shirt.

Beth watched as his ribcage rose and fell. Broad of shoulder, the muscles of his upper body were perfectly formed, his skin glowed a deep Mediterranean gold—he was utterly gorgeous. Beth gasped as he lowered himself onto her, flattening her sensitised breasts against his bare chest.

He kissed her as though he'd drain her, until she barely knew where he ended and she began.

The heat in her blood hummed as he groaned, ‘I want to taste all of you.'

Beth closed her eyes tight as he kissed his way down her body, caressing her with his hands. She gasped as he pushed back the lacy covering to reveal all of her; when he took her into his mouth she thought she would die from the sheer pleasure of it.

Her control snapped totally as she reached for him. Her teeth clenched, her flushed face a mask of fierce need, she was almost sobbing with frustration as her fingers fumbled frantically at the buckle of his belt.

‘It's all right,' he soothed.

‘I need this…you…now…I want…I don't want to feel anything…just you…' She shook her head back and forth in frustration at her inability to express the instincts that drove her.

‘I know,' he told her thickly, catching her face between his thumb and finger. ‘I really do know.' He took her hand, fed her fingers onto the straining ridge along his zip and groaned as her fingers tightened over the pulsing outline of his erection.

The heat pulsing between her legs drew a feral moan from Beth but, before her exploring fingers could satisfy the carnal curiosity coursing in her veins or shred Theo's control any further, he levered himself slightly off her and finished the job she had begun.

The metallic sound of his zip introduced a tiny flicker of sanity into Beth's passion but it vanished the moment he joined her again, hard and solid, his weight pressing down onto her deliciously. The sheen of sweat that glistened on his golden skin and clung to the drift of dark body hair on his chest delineated every ridge of hard muscle.

She reached for him, her eyes widening, as he took her wrists and closed her fingers around the wooden backrest of the sofa. Being exposed to his hot gaze made her feel—
liberated
? Before she could even begin to ponder this development, she got totally sucked into the hot passion seething in the air; she was so aroused she could barely breathe.

His stillness had an explosive quality as he looked into her painfully expressive eyes before allowing his glance to slide slowly over the naked curves of her pale slender body.

As he gazed at her lying there, exposed and open for him, so soft and warm, so totally
her
, he thought—
you belong with me
, a primal truth for the complicated feelings seething inside him, and a truth without the benefit of logic, but Theo realised he believed it to his core and to recognise it was almost a relief.

He kissed her hard, nipping into the soft lushness of her
lips as he spread her legs and insinuated his hair-roughened muscular thighs between them.

Beth's hands tightened on the wooden arm rest for a second before she let go and grabbed for him. Her hands glided over the satiny skin stretched damply across the bunched muscles of his shoulders, searching for purchase. She turned her face into his neck, kissing his salty skin as she closed her eyes, feeling the unbelievable mind-numbing excitement of having him, thick and throbbing, between her thighs.

They were both breathing hard and fast as he whispered her name, his sweat-slick body shaking as he slid into her in one smooth thrust.

Beth's body arched under him, her eyes flying wide as she released a shocked cry. ‘Oh, God, you're…' The searing sweetness of the sensation coursed through her body.

Above her, Theo froze, shock etched into every plane and angle of his taut features. She was tight and hot around him—very tight. ‘It's fine,' he soothed.