His Love-Child. Jacqueline Baird

changed his mind. She was looking at him as if he were something she needed to scrape off her shoe. Any finer feelings that had been induced by visiting his son’s bedside were quickly forgotten.

      Cold fury glittered in his dark eyes. All arrogant Greek male, he allowed no one to disrespect him, man or woman, and certainly not this woman. She had so cruelly deprived him of his child, and yet she dared to question his ability as a father. What chance had she given him? None.

      He wanted to tear her limb from limb. Her full lips that he had tasted not nearly enough were twisted in a contemptuous smile. Angrily he studied her, his eyes raking over her body. The thin white slip she was wearing was almost transparent, moulding her firm high breasts and narrow waist. The fine rounded curves of her hips and the dark shadow of feminine body hair almost visible through the flimsy fabric. Damn it! She was enough to tempt a saint, and he was no saint, as an instant stirring in his groin forcibly reminded him.

      It was then that a scenario worthy of his Greek heritage crossed his mind. His dark eyes narrowed with implacable resolve. In that moment he made his decision for the future of his son and this beautiful scornful creature standing before him.

      ‘What, no response?’ Willow jeered into the lengthening silence. The air between them sizzled with tension and she dragged an angry, if slightly unsteady, breath into her suddenly oxygen-starved lungs. Theo stepped closer, his dark features rigid as he gave her a look of such cynical sexual appraisal she reeled in shock for a breathless, heart-stopping moment. Every self-protective instinct she possessed was urging her to step back, but she refused to be cowed by his intimidating presence.

      ‘You ask what kind of father?’ he prompted scathingly, his eyes like black ice biting accusingly into hers. ‘The kind that has been deprived of his son for years,’ he hissed with sibilant softness, his hand snaking around her, trapping one arm against him and drawing her closer. ‘The kind whose child is eight years old and does not speak one word of his father’s language.’

      She could not deny his words, and the sudden contact with his hard, muscular body sent the blood pounding through her veins and she panicked. She tried to twist from his hold. ‘No,’ she cried but she was too late. His hand slipped right around her waist, and caught her other wrist in his long fingers, melding her to him from chest to thigh. Ignoring her muttered negative, he continued with raw venom.

      ‘The kind who has had to watch his mother cry tears of joy and regret that her husband never lived to see the boy.’ His free hand came up to burrow under the heavy fall of her hair and twist it around his wrist. He pulled back her head, and she knew she was in deep, deep trouble.

      ‘You owe me, Willow, eight long years, and now is my time to collect.’

      She stared up into his eyes and trembled at the fury that glittered in the inky depths. Willow was also aware of a much more basic emotion that she could not fail to recognise. ‘No, Theo. Let go of me, or I will scream the place down.’ Her voice shook with fear as she said it, and her body responded similarly as the heat of him enveloped her. The familiar scent of him tantalised her nostrils, and the imprint of his warm, hard body against her own sent her pulse rate into overdrive.

      ‘Scream all you like, the walls are a foot thick,’ he mocked. His face was a taut mask of rigidly controlled anger. ‘You had the first eight years of Stephen’s life, and I am having the next eight—legally.’ He tilted her head further back, his glittering eyes boring down into hers with implacable determination. ‘We will marry, and at sixteen Stephen will be of an age to choose between us. Then we can divorce.’ His dark head bent, and the air caught in her throat as his warm breath brushed her ear. ‘But first, Willow, I am going to make you burn for denying me,’ he threatened in a deep, sexually explicit drawl.

      She almost admitted that she already was, so overwhelming were the sensations shooting through her, imprisoned in his powerful hold. But she choked back the words; he was the enemy and she hated him. What sort of man discussed a divorce virtually in the same sentence as mentioning marriage? She wriggled against him and tried to lift her hands to push him away, but to no avail.

      ‘Don’t bother trying to escape.’ He gave a husky laugh holding her with ease. ‘You want this as much as me, and you can deny it as much as you like but you will never convince me otherwise. I was the man you chose as a teenager to initiate you in the pleasures of sex, and your lovely body remembers me however much you try to forget. And my body remembers you, Willow,’ he confessed softly. ‘Has painfully done so for years.’

      Stunned, Willow stared at him and saw the faint flush developing across his high cheekbones. What was he saying? That he remembered her, even missed her? No. That couldn’t be true. She might have had a chance of resisting him if she had not been so confused.

      But instead she felt the moist warmth of his tongue trace the delicate whorls of her ear and trail down her throat, where his mouth closed over the madly beating pulse in her neck. ‘No, Theo,’ she choked, and she was stunned again by the incredible hunger that shook her to the depths of her being. Her neck arched helplessly in sensual response to his touch.

      ‘Yes, say my name.’ His hand at her waist diverted to slip beneath the hem of her slip and glide up over her naked thigh, and she gasped in shock at the intimacy. Then he claimed her mouth with a devastating expertise.

      Pressed against the impressive length of him, his tongue delving between her parted lips, she made a weak attempt to struggle free. But his hand splayed intimately across the swell of her hips, urging her into the hard, grinding power of his thighs while his mouth, hard and hungry, impelled her into a more fervent response.

      Willow collapsed like a pack of cards, the white-hot flames of desire consuming her and obliterating any thought of resistance from her mind. Her hands of their own volition stroked up under the lapels of his robe and curved around his broad shoulders. Her intimate action caused his robe to fall open and she felt the rock-hard power of his arousal against her stomach. Her whole body shook with excitement and instinctively she squirmed against him.

      His tongue explored the moist heat of her mouth and stroked across the sensitive roof, creating a thousand tiny electric shocks through every nerve in her body. Willow moaned, her fingers sliding up into his sleek black hair. Greedy for him, she bit down on his bottom lip and he responded in kind. He unfurled her hair from his wrist and raked his long fingers through it, smoothing the silken waves down the length of her back. He lifted his head and she saw the barely controlled passion in the smouldering depths of his eyes; she let her hands stroke down his magnificent chest with tactile delight, her fingers lingering in his soft, curling body hair.

      He said something guttural in Greek, and, suddenly stepping back, he freed her.

      ‘No,’ Willow groaned, not to stop him this time, but quite the reverse. Then in one deft move he wrenched her shirt over her head. Her eyes flew wide open, and clashed with his smouldering black. For a second she questioned what she was doing, standing naked before him, but with a shrug his robe fell from his broad shoulders, and she was spellbound. The sight of his incredible bronzed body caused her to feel an intense awe and a burning desire to touch him. She reached out, but Theo caught her hand, and spun her up into his arms.

      ‘Not yet, my beauty,’ he said and moved to swiftly put her down on the bed. ‘Later you can touch, but first I am going to make you burn.’

      She should have felt afraid, but it had been exactly like this the first time they had made love. He’d only had to kiss her and she had lost all her inhibitions and gone wild in his arms. Looking up at him now, she knew why nothing had changed. He had been her first and only lover, and the same fascination she had felt as a teenager kept her still now. Her glittering blue eyes roamed over his magnificent body with pure female appreciation for what he was—a perfect male. Tall and sleek, muscled with not an ounce of fat, his skin gleamed like oiled teak. He was wide of shoulder, broad of chest, with a washboard stomach. An intriguing pattern of body hair, curling across his chest, guided the eye down his long body like an arrow to frame his now fiercely aroused sex. She had never really had the chance to study his masculine form quite so intently before, youthful embarrassment had played a part, but now she had no such qualms