The Helen Bianchin Collection. Helen Bianchin

her face was hidden from him, otherwise he’d have seen through the fabrication in a heartbeat.

      Then he was there, his hands turning her towards him, and he dealt with her token struggle as easily as if he were restraining a child.

      There was little she could do to prevent him capturing her chin and tilting it so she had little option but to look at him.

      ‘Yes, you do.’

      His voice was a soft drawl, and she fought against swallowing compulsively, afraid the gesture would give hint to her fragile emotions.

      ‘Don’t.’ The single word was a desperate plea as his head lowered down to hers, and she closed her mouth against him, only to have her lips part involuntarily at the first, slow sweep of his tongue.

      It was a kiss to die for, gentle, evocative, pervasive, and she ignored the taunting little voice in her head that warned he was merely embarking on a skilled seduction.

      A faint groan sighed in her throat as he reached for the pins in her hair, slipping them free with practised ease, then he threaded his fingers through its length and held fast her head, angling his own as he deepened the kiss to something that was almost an oral duplication of the sexual act itself.

      Then it was too late, and she was unaware of him removing his clothes, only that he had, and she reached for him, drowning in his touch as he tumbled her down onto the bed, the magic his mouth was able to evoke, and her own unbridled response.

      It was only later, much later that she rolled away from him, angry with herself for her own weakness and with him for what she perceived as his ability to take advantage of it.

      ‘Deny what we share, if you can,’ Nicos said hardily.

      Her eyes assumed a fiery sparkle. ‘And that’s supposed to make me feel okay? You think I don’t hate myself for this…addiction to—’

      ‘Sex?’

      ‘You.’

      ‘Thank you, agape mou,’ he acknowledged silkily, ‘for the distinction.’

      Katrina burst into angry speech. ‘I shouldn’t be able to feel like this. It’s—’ words momentarily failed her ‘—disgusting!’

      His expression hardened, and she glimpsed a muscle tense at the edge of his jaw. ‘I can think of many apt descriptions,’ he said with deceptive quietness. ‘Disgusting isn’t one of them.’

      ‘What would you call it, then?’ she demanded.

      ‘Sensual magic. Primitive passion. Raw desire. Meshing into something unique…for both of us.’

      Dear God. In the beginning it had been all of that, and more. Much more. She closed her eyes, then opened them again. Even now, after everything that had split them apart, the emotional intensity was just as fierce. A primeval force demanding recognition.

      A year ago she would have vowed it was love. But how could she call it that now in the face of his infidelity? It didn’t make sense.

      ‘Yet three months after our marriage…three months,’ she emphasised, ‘your obviously not-so-ex-mistress delights in revealing she’s pregnant and names you the father.’ Her eyes sparked green fire. ‘A fact by anyone’s calculation that lays the proof of infidelity squarely at your door.’

      Anger moved up a notch or two. ‘Hell, you must have gone straight from our nuptial bed to hers within days of returning from our honeymoon!’ It didn’t help to remember the idyllic, carefree few weeks they’d spent on Maui. Lazy days and long, love-filled nights.

      ‘At the time you took Georgia’s word over mine.’ Nicos wanted to shake her. ‘Did you pause to consider how that made me feel?’ His hands fisted, and he controlled the urgent need to smash something. Soon, he would have the proof he needed. But for now all he had was words.

      ‘Did it never at any time occur to you that Georgia deliberately set out to destroy our marriage? You, me?’

      ‘Yes.’ It was an honest admission, one that had been her first thought. A woman scorned could prove a dangerous threat. ‘But she provided dates, places…hotels.’ Receipts as confirmation. The horror of being presented with such proof came flooding back, the memory leaving her features pale, her eyes too large, too dark with remembered pain.

      ‘I wasn’t with her.’

      ‘Dammit, she was pregnant,’ Katrina vented. ‘She had medical proof.’ Her breath hitched, and she sought control. ‘She showed me a copy of the ultrasound.’ A video delivered to her apartment weeks later by special messenger. Vivid, cruel evidence she’d only been able to view for seconds before being physically ill.

      It was too much. To think she’d behaved shamelessly and wantonly in his arms sickened her.

      With a groan that was part despair, part self-loathing, she rolled to the edge of the mattress, only to have any form of escape felled before her feet could touch the carpet.

      ‘Let me go.’

      His grasp was firm, with a hint of steel should she attempt to struggle. ‘No.’

      She turned on him, like an angry, spitting feline. ‘What do you want to prove, Nicos? Superior male strength?’ Her eyes speared his, darkly luminous, and totally without fear. ‘Sensual expertise?’

      Something moved in his eyes, and she banked down the sudden apprehension that clenched in her stomach.

      He didn’t say a word. The silence stretched between them, like a taut wire on the verge of breaking. She could see the tension, feel it, as if it was a throbbing, palpable entity.

      Then he moved, tumbling her down on top of him, anchoring her there with an arm whose hand splayed over her buttocks, while the other fisted in her hair as he dragged her head down to his.

      He ravaged her mouth, conquering it in a manner that left her stunned and unable to breathe. It was a total ravishment that gave no quarter as he used the edge of his teeth, his tongue, and plundered at will.

      She heard someone whimper, and was unaware the sounds came from her own throat.

      It was possession. Absolute, total possession. Savage in its intensity, devouring, devastating. Almost barbaric.

      A man teetering on the edge of controlling his emotions, bent on imprinting his image on her soul.

      Something stirred deep within, an answering, compelling need that rose of its own accord, dispensing her shocked passivity and replacing it with active response.

      Katrina was hardly aware of the change, only that she was meeting and matching his passion, greedily intent on giving what he’d taken, and with equal fervour.

      Hard and fast, with no preliminaries. She wanted, needed the force of it, the intense, animalistic coupling with no holds barred.

      She used her hands to push against his shoulders, her voice little more than a guttural plea as she arched against him, rising to cushion the moist folds of her femininity against the base of his arousal.

      With a deliberate intention to tease, she rocked against him, gently at first, then slowly traversed the length of his shaft and back again, creating a tactile slide that brought a deep, husky groan.

      Heat pulsated fast, heady, magnetising, as it washed in vibrating waves through her body, and she rose up, tantalising him further for several heart-stopping seconds before she took him deep inside in an achingly slow movement that tested his control as much as it did her own.

      Unleashed passion flared, raw and libidinous, as they took a ride that lasted long and left them both breathless and slick with sensual sweat.

      Katrina subsided against him, and sighed as his fingers traced a lazy pattern along the edge of her spine.

      This…this, was everything and more. A special time before problems and doubt could intrude.

      The lingering