The Balfour Legacy. Кэрол Мортимер

doors in any of his homes except for the locks on main entrances.

      They did not know that he always—always—slept alone. That this beautiful creature sleeping curled around him now was actually receiving a twisted kind of honour, because he had not already shaken her awake and sent her packing back to her own room to sleep.

      As if she could sense what he was thinking she moved against him, a soft sigh escaping her parted lips as she stretched, then relaxed again, the movement so fluid and naturally sensual Nikos had to clench his body to stop it from responding to it. One of her long silken legs lay warm across his, her fingers lay buried in the whorls of dark hair on his chest.

      She murmured something—ti’amo, he thought she said, and felt its emotive impact like a violent crash to his chest. Ti’amo, I love you. Ti’amo, I so belong to you now it’s a done deal, he translated with harsh mocking bitterness.

      And like a man making a dangerous bid for escape, he eased himself free of her clinging shape and gave her a pillow to hug instead of him. She curled around it like some beautiful dark sensual siren clinging on to her latest victim, and with no idea that the cold ruthless side to his nature was busily rearing its awesome head.

      Chapter Eight

      A SOUND awoke Mia as the quiet light of dawn was drifting in through the window. She continued to lie there for a few seconds, grappling to make sense of her unfamiliar surroundings, then she remembered and her heart gave a thump. Twisting her head on the pillow she saw that the place beside her in the bed was empty, and she sat up with a jerk, a hand going up to push her tumbled hair from her face. The sound came again and she focused on Nikos, who was standing with his back to her on the other side of the room.

      He was already dressed in one of the dark business suits he favoured, and was snapping his paper-thin watch to his wrist. He looked so breathtakingly handsome that tender muscles deep in her abdomen responded with a pulse of awareness at the same moment she picked up the clean male scents permeating the room which told her he had recently showered.

      The sheer novel intimacy in their situation suddenly engulfed her in a rosy hue of shyness. Realising she was also very naked beneath the thin sheet had her clutching at its fine linen edge and drawing it up to her chin before she could fight a drowning wash of self-consciousness to speak.

      ‘What—what time is it?’ she asked huskily.

      The way his wide shoulders tensed at the sound of her voice sent her teeth biting down into her soft lower lip. Perhaps he was not quite comfortable with their new situation yet either, she allowed.

      ‘Five o’clock,’ he answered without turning. ‘Go back to sleep—it’s too early for you to get up.’

      ‘You are up,’ Mia pointed out to him.

      He said nothing, his long fingers reaching out to pick up his mobile phone, which he placed in his jacket pocket, followed by some other bits and pieces Mia followed without really registering what they were. Beginning to frown now, it was slowly dawning on her that he did not want to look at her. That the tension gripping his wide shoulders also repeated itself in the sharp movements of his fingers, and from the small amount of his profile she could see, the muscle that angled his strong jaw was clenched.

      ‘I am about to leave,’ he announced suddenly, making Mia blink slowly. ‘I have business to attend to in Rome. My plane is on standby. Enjoy the rest of your day here if you wish. When you are ready to go back to London, let Lukas know and he will have my helicopter come and collect you.’

      Every word, every cool flat businesslike word, arriving like the cold tip of a knife’s blade forced Mia to recognise what he was doing. He had taken her to his bed; now he was distancing himself. In true Nikos Theakis tried-and-tested tradition he was letting her know without needing to say the words that this—this soulless departure in the pale hours of the morning marked the end of what they had shared!

      Beginning to tremble, Mia shut her eyes, struggling with a nauseating sense of hurt that made her burst forth with the shaken words, ‘Don’t do this to me, Nikos.’

      He moved, twisting the long length of his body to lance her a brief shuttered glance. ‘Don’t beg, Mia. It’s unbecoming.’

      Beg—? Her eyes flicked open in time to watch him turn away again, every lean hard elegant inch of him so contained she began to feel dizzy now as well as sick.

      ‘I am not begging,’ she denied on a wounded choke. ‘We—we just slept together!’

      ‘A—mistake. It should not have happened.’

      ‘But it did happen.’

      ‘True.’ He seemed to be inordinately interested in what was inside his wallet now. ‘However, it will not be happening again.’

      ‘Just like that?’ Beginning to squirm with self-loathing for even trying to discuss this with him, Mia folded her arms around her knees and crushed them to her chest. ‘You—you make love to me, then just—just throw me aside as if my feelings do not count?’

      ‘Theos! We did not make love, we had sex!’ He spun on her angrily. ‘We had wild hot amazing sex—Mia!’ he repeated harshly. ‘Where was the love in what we did in that bed last night? I did not bring it there! And if you did, then you were—’

      His nostrils flared as he snapped his lips together, drawing back from what he had been about to say next. His dark eyes blazed at her frozen expression of horror, then with a muttered curse he turned his back to her again.

      ‘I was w-what?’ she prompted sickly, feeling like someone living a nightmare she could not wake up from. She found she could not let him stop there even if the rest was going to break her in two. ‘Naive? Stupid? Ready for it? Begging you for it?’

      His lean profile clenched. ‘I was not going to say any of that.’

      ‘Then what were you going to say!’ she fired out.

      ‘Nothing.’

      The liar, the cruel wicked liar!

      ‘I hate you so much now I will never forgive you for doing this to me,’ she whispered. ‘No doubt you are relieved and pleased to hear me say it!’

      ‘Actually, I’m not—’ his voice remained cool ‘—I…care about you, Mia. But I’m a loner. I always have been. I don’t do the kind of relationship you are going to expect. You will not believe this right now but I’m doing you a big favour calling a halt now—’

      ‘As you do with all the other women who have shared this bed with you?’ she flung out. ‘Take w-what you want from them, then toss them to one side like yesterday’s rubbish?’

      ‘Exactly like that,’ he confirmed.

      Stunned that he had dared to admit it as coolly at he had, Mia stared at him for a second, then pushed her face into her knees and hugged self-loathing to her like it was her closest friend. She’d never felt so cheap, so used and discarded. And whatever it was he had tried not to say, the real truth crucifying her right now was she had been asking for it—begging him for it—for weeks before he gave in!

      Now here she sat in the middle of his rumpled bed consigned to the low ranks of a one-night stand.

      Which was probably her just deserts for being such an easy tramp!

      ‘Why don’t you just go,’ she whispered when she sensed him still hovering.

      ‘I…need to know you are going to be all right.’

      So he wanted reassurance now? ‘I’m all right.’ She gave it to him with the taste of bitterness in her mouth.

      And still he hovered! Why—? Was he going to ask for a litre or two of her blood next?

      ‘Look…’ he said heavily. ‘I’m—sorry I let this happen.’ He actually sounded it too. ‘It was all my fault. I should