The Volakis Vows: The Marriage Betrayal / Bride for Real. LYNNE GRAHAM

Tally gasped, becoming suddenly ludicrously aware that her hair was probably standing on end and her make-up smeared all over her face. Her most pressing desire then was to leap under the bed and hide but she was forced to sit there, the squirming focus of his uncomfortably steady scrutiny. ‘What doctor?’

      ‘Eleni and I thought it best to have the local GP check you out in case it was necessary for you to go to hospital. Cosima swore that she only put a sleeping pill—which she got from a friend, not the boyfriend according to her,’ Sander explained drily. ‘The GP asked for the bottle, consulted a colleague by phone and decided you were unlikely to suffer any lasting harm. He then gave Cosima a lecture about the risks of giving unprescribed drugs to third parties that left her in hysterics.’

      ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Tally groaned, cringing at the amount of fuss and drama her passing out had caused. But she was genuinely disturbed that her sibling had subjected her to such a dangerous experiment and resolved to have a serious talk with the younger woman. However, at that moment she had a more pressing cause for concern: the presence of her underwear suggested that nothing intimate had occurred between her and Sander but she wanted to be sure. ‘I gather that … er … we didn’t do anything last night?’ she prompted, her cheeks reddening fierily.

      ‘I like my women awake,’ Sander asserted. ‘Awake, lively and consenting. I would never take advantage of a woman while she was helpless.’

      ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you but I still don’t understand why I seem to have spent the night in your room …’

      ‘Cosima didn’t volunteer to assist you and I chose not to leave you in the hands of the staff. None of them knew you. I wanted to be sure you were all right.’

      ‘Thanks.’ Unable to sit there any longer when she needed to use the bathroom, Tally wriggled out from below the sheet, hurried round the foot of the bed and sped for the bathroom like a runner sprinting for the finishing line.

      Happily engaged in enjoying the view of her lush breasts and bottom bouncing in the inadequate support of a skimpy black bra and knickers, Sander just laughed as the door shut behind her. He loved her small but wonderfully curvaceous body and she was shy, which he was even less accustomed to. Shy, possibly even a little prudish, which would be an even more unfamiliar female trait for him, he acknowledged wryly, since the women he usually shared a bed with thought nothing of nudity. He’d had to have a very cold shower in the middle of the night to douse the flames of arousal caused by Tally cuddling her half-naked curves up against him.

      Tally loosed a moan of horror at her tousled reflection in the many mirrors surrounding her. It was the bathroom from hell, she decided, unnerved by the number of reflections hitting her from every angle. Grabbing up a masculine comb, she began to enforce order on her curls while striving to discourage the frizz factor. After washing her face and making use of one of the new toothbrushes on offer, she stepped into the shower. She was still embarrassed by the gauche manner in which she had fled from the bedroom.

      After all, in the circumstances, Sander Volakis had behaved surprisingly well for a male with the reputation of a rich, spoilt womaniser. Although he hardly knew her and their relationship only encompassed a passionate kiss or two, last night when it mattered he had looked out for her and looked after her. A lot of blokes would just have turned their backs and walked away from so awkward a scenario. That he hadn’t taken the easy way out really impressed her.

      Donning the white towelling robe on the back of the door, Tally pushed her underwear into the pocket and returned to the bedroom.

      ‘Breakfast?’ Sander asked lightly, straightening from the table by the window, which was spread with a selection of food. Clad only in a pair of soft blue denim jeans that moulded his narrow hips and long powerful thighs and a white tee, he was a heartstoppingly attractive figure.

      ‘No, thanks, I’d better get back to my room.’

      ‘Why do you always want to run away from me?’ Sander enquired, ebony brows drawing together above his stunning eyes in a frown.

      Tally recognised in a thought that was not for sharing that the more he made her feel, the more he scared her, and the more her native caution urged her to keep her distance. Sander Volakis was dangerous to her peace of mind, to everything she had ever known about herself, because with him she wanted to throw away the rule book and stop playing safe. She only had to look at him to want to walk into his arms and touch him, so retreat struck her as the wiser part of valour.

      ‘I’m not running away,’ she proclaimed with a taut smile.

      As poised as a lion ready to spring, Sander paced several steps closer. ‘You feel the same vibe that I do.’

      It was true, because when he was that close she was so tense she could hardly breathe, and when he reached for her and drew her close by dint of closing his hands round the ends of the sash tied round her waist she made no objection; indeed she laughed with a playful sense of freedom that was new to her.

      ‘I want you, moli mou,’ he growled soft and low, the roughened edges of his fracturing accent purring sexily along the vowel sounds.

      ‘You can’t have me,’ she told him daringly.

      ‘Just one little taste before you go,’ Sander husked, holding her against him and then lowering his arrogant dark head to toy with her full pink lips in a slow sensual assault.

      As he suckled at her full lower lip his breath fanned her cheek and she shivered. A split second later as he deepened the pressure her pulses leapt like trapeze artists on a high wire, her mouth opening for the plundering pillage of his tongue, excitement hurtling through her in a shower of energising sexual sparks. It was more than a taste, it was a feast, as a sure masculine hand closed round the swelling softness of a rounded breast, his thumb grazing the swollen tender tip so that she gasped below his mouth, every sense greedily scrambling to get the most out of every new sensation. Go, her mind echoed in a curious refrain. Go … where? Just then she didn’t want to go anywhere if it meant separating from him.

      Sander hauled her right off her feet and up into his arms and kissed her with stimulating thoroughness. The arm he banded across her hips pressed her into revealing contact with his potent arousal. By the time that he brought her down on the bed with him excitement was racing through Tally at the speed of a runaway train. She had an out-of-control sensation that should have scared her but instead she felt elated as she revelled in the heightened responses of her body and the sense of rightness between them. He felt like the guy she had long been secretly hoping to meet and, while a little voice at the back of her mind warned her that she had only just met him, he had already won her trust by taking care of her the night before. And trust was everything to Tally.

      ‘You have gorgeous breasts, glikia mou,’ Sander husked, the robe pushed apart to reveal the pouting globes he was shaping in his palms, long brown fingers tugging at her protuberant nipples in a tantalising caress. ‘I’ve been fantasising about them since we first met …’

      Colour washed up over her face, her green eyes very bright, for she did not know what to say and she was hugely uncomfortable with the sight of her bare flesh in the daylight flooding through the windows. But before she could react, Sander bent his proud head to catch a tender rose-coloured tip between his lips and lave it with his tongue and a ball of heat burst in her pelvis, spreading aftershocks of stimulation through her entire lower body. For the first time in Tally’s life, desire was rippling through her in mindless waves and she could not believe how powerful and tenacious a hold it had on her. He kissed her again hard and fast and she stopped thinking altogether, her hands smoothing restively over the satin skin of his broad shoulders and her fingers spreading against the hair-roughened breadth of his chest. The husky soapy scent of him fresh from the shower was an aphrodisiac.

      ‘Are you staying?’ Sander prompted thickly, his accent scissoring sexily along the syllables.

      For an instant, breathless and with her body on a high of burning desire, she could not fathom why he should be asking her such a question.

      Sander ran a teasing fingertip