The Helen Bianchin Collection. Helen Bianchin

on the television.

      She must have dozed, for she came awake at the touch of hands sliding beneath her thighs.

      ‘Nicos?’

      ‘Who were you expecting?’ he drawled musingly.

      ‘I can walk,’ Katrina declared. ‘Put me down.’

      He reached the stairs and began to ascend them. ‘You doubt my ability to carry you?’

      She weighed little more than a child, and he wasn’t even breathing heavily when he reached the landing.

      ‘For heaven’s sake, put me down!’

      He let her slide down to her feet, and she moved a few paces, then turned towards her room.

      ‘Goodnight.’

      ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

      The query was quietly spoken, yet beneath the softness there was a hint of steel, and Katrina looked at him in silent askance.

      ‘My room.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘What do you mean—no?’

      ‘Last night—’

      ‘Was a mistake.’

      ‘The hell it was.’

      ‘We…’ she paused fractionally ‘…got carried away,’ she qualified. Words, they were only words. None of which even began to describe the extent of her emotional involvement or her reaction.

      Nicos’s eyes darkened. ‘Is that how you describe it? Carried away?’

      She met his gaze and held it. ‘What else would you call it?’

      ‘We share the same room, the same bed.’ He stilled her protest by pressing a finger to her lips. ‘It isn’t an option.’

      Her eyes sparked green fire. ‘Since when did you get to call the shots?’

      The palm of his hand slid to cup the edge of her jaw. ‘From the moment we made love last night.’

      She felt her insides begin to liquify. ‘We had sex.’

      ‘So we did, pedhi mou.’

      He sounded amused, and she fought against her body’s response. She didn’t want to succumb to his seduction, didn’t need to do battle for her own self-preservation. It had taken months to build up a resistance to him. Yet in one night he’d managed to tear it down as if that invisible wall had never existed.

      ‘I’m tired.’ Katrina offered the excuse in desperation. ‘All I want to do is slip into bed. My bed. Alone.’

      He smoothed the tip of his thumb over the soft fullness of her lower lip. ‘So you shall,’ he said gently, and let his hand fall to his side. ‘But it won’t be alone.’

      With that, he turned and walked towards his room without a backward glance.

      Dammit, couldn’t he see she needed time to assimilate what had happened between them? That she was at war with herself, and in a constant state of flux at having succumbed to the dictates of her flesh?

      In the light of day, all she could focus on was her own weakness. This man had betrayed her with another woman. Worse, that woman had borne his child.

      At the time she’d dealt with it. But now, the very structure she’d carefully built was falling down around her ears.

      She wanted to hate him, and told herself she did. But she hated herself more.

      Katrina reached her room and closed the door behind her. There was no lock, and unless she dragged heavy furniture to bar the door, there was nothing she could do to keep him out.

      She cast the double bed a pensive glance. She was darned if she’d just slip between the sheets and lie waiting for Nicos to join her.

      There was little doubt that he would.

      She could, however, make a silent statement. There were three other bedrooms upstairs. She’d occupy one of those in the hope it would add emphasis to her intention not to sleep with him.

      Katrina chose a bedroom, selected linen and made up the bed, then slid wearily between the covers.

      She should have been asleep within seconds of her head touching the pillow. Instead she lay staring into the darkness for what seemed an age, her limbs and mind as tense as a tightly stretched wire.

      She told herself she didn’t, couldn’t, want him. Yet her body was a mass of contradictions as memory persisted in providing a vivid replay of what they’d shared the previous night.

      It would be so easy to adopt a rational mindset where she simply enjoyed the intimacy of sex. Why not? a silent voice demanded. Just enjoy the intense pleasure of physical contact throughout the year she was forced to stay with Nicos, then walk away. Heart whole, with no regrets.

      Impossible. She’d gifted him her heart, her soul, almost from the first moment they’d met. For months she’d thought she’d reclaimed them, but last night had proved beyond doubt they were his. Always would be.

      She hated herself for it. Hated him.

      A shaft of light pierced the darkness as the bedroom door opened, and her tense body became rigid as Nicos stood silhouetted in the aperture.

      Katrina’s lashes fanned down. Maybe if she lay perfectly still he’d assume she was asleep.

      She should have known better. Within seconds she felt the bed covers move, followed by the faint depression of the mattress as he slid in beside her.

      How long before he reached for her? Five seconds, ten?

      Minutes later she was still counting, and it took concentration to keep her breathing steady.

      ‘What do you plan?’ Nicos drawled. ‘A game of musical beds?’

      Had he known she was awake? Or was he simply taking a calculated guess?

      ‘Don’t sulk.’

      ‘I’ve never sulked in my life,’ Katrina vented as she turned her head towards him, then wished she hadn’t, for he lay facing her, an elbow propped on the pillow.

      With a fluid movement he reached out and snapped on the bedside lamp.

      The light illuminated his features, and his dark gleaming gaze held a tinge of humour…and something else she didn’t care to define.

      ‘I’m trying to sleep.’

      ‘Without success.’

      ‘You don’t know that.’

      He brushed the back of his hand against her cheek, then let it trail down to the edge of her mouth.

      ‘Don’t do that.’

      Her eyes were dark, the hollows smudged through lack of sleep, and she was pale. He felt her lips quiver beneath his touch, and saw the pulse jump at the base of her throat.

      ‘Tired?’

      Heat began to flare in the region of her stomach, curling in an upward spiral, and she swallowed compulsively. ‘Yes.’

      He leaned towards her and placed his mouth against the soft curve at the edge of her own. ‘Want me to do all the work?’

      His hand trailed a path to her navel, paused, then travelled low to begin an intimate exploration.

      ‘You don’t play fair.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper.

      ‘Is that a yes or a no?’

      He possessed a skilled knowledge that brought forth a strangled gasp as she arched against him.

      Nicos swept his tongue in an erotic dance with her own, nibbled at her lower lip, and absorbed the groan that rose from her throat.

      He