Response
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

SIENNA saw him walk past her office as she paused to fit a new sheet of paper into her typewriter, and even though it was merely his outline she saw through the frosted glass she was interested enough to turn discreetly in her chair and pull open one of the filing cabinet drawers so that she would be facing the door should he decide to walk in. He paused outside, no doubt studying the notice on the door, and Gillian, who owned and ran the agency, crossed her fingers and hissed across at her, ‘Here’s hoping!’

Her wish was granted. The door opened inwards smoothly and Sienna had a handful of seconds to assimilate the powerful combination of a face that was distinctively hard-boned, its sensual impact deeper by far than any mere handsomeness, before amused grey eyes rested with brief comprehension on her half parted lips and dazed expression.

‘Miss Forbes?’

He was addressing Gillian, who smiled and looked equally dazed, leaving Sienna free of his careless scrutiny and at leisure to admire the way the dark wool suit fitted his broad shoulders and to note the leisurely grace with which he folded his tall frame into the chair Gill indicated.

‘Your agency has been recommended to me by an acquaintance,’ Sienna heard him saying as he extracted a small piece of cardboard from his wallet and handed it across to Gillian. ‘I’m in London on business, and unfortunately my secretary’s mother has been taken ill and she has had to fly back to New York. I can’t cancel the business meetings I’ve arranged, and I’m hoping you’re going to be able to supply me with an adequate replacement. I understand you specialise in multi-lingual secretaries with excellent shorthand and typing speeds. I appreciate that it’s short notice, but….’

As she turned back to her typewriter Sienna’s fingers trembled, and she witnessed their betrayal with a certain amount of wry self-mockery. She had been working for Gillian for six months. Before that she had worked at home, translating her father’s books, doing his research, typing his manuscripts…. She sighed. Her father’s death had been a sad but not totally unexpected blow. Gerald King had had a weak heart for years, and as her brother Rob had reminded her at the funeral, he had had a very good innings. ‘Dad was over seventy, Sienna,’ he had told her gently, ‘and this is the way he would have wanted to go—quickly and relatively painlessly.’

Sienna knew that Rob was right, but she still missed her father. She had worked with him since she left university, quite content with the calm flow of life in the sleepy Cotswold village where they lived. Gerald King was an expert on Mediaeval history and had taught at the local university prior to his retirement. His books were always well received in academic circles, and Sienna knew with hindsight that Rob was right when he claimed that her life with their father had been at times an unnatural one for a girl in her early twenties. But now that was all over. There had been sufficient money for her to stay on in Waterford-on-the-Hill had she wished, living in the cottage which was willed to Rob and herself jointly, hut Rob had told her that she was far too young to bury herself away in the sleepy Cotswold backwater, and it was at his suggestion that she had taken the job with Gillian working for her agency as a freelance temporary secretary. It was her private belief that Gillian and Rob were in love, but neither of them seemed prepared to admit it.

Rob was a busy foreign news reporter working for one of the national papers, and he had met Gillian at university. Four years older than she was herself, Rob had always seemed very much the older brother during her teens, but nowadays they met as equals and there was a growing bond between them. Although he scoffed at it, Sienna considered that her brother was more like their father than he realised. In Sienna’s eyes her father had always possessed a quality she could only describe as ‘gentlemanly’—nothing to do with birth, accent, or academic achievements, but something that went much deeper than that, an old-fashioned gallantry and consideration for other people that everyone around him responded to, and Rob possessed it as well. He might prefer to assume the role of the hard-bitten tough journalist, but Sienna had seen him when he thought himself unobserved, helping others with that same quiet, almost self-effacing manner which characterised their father.

Only last night he had challenged her to deny that he had been right when he insisted that she come to London, and she had been forced to admit that he was. He had been on the point of leaving to cover another story and they had met briefly in the hall of his flat where she was staying until she was able to find somewhere for herself. She had often wondered if having her living with him cramped his style. There was no evidence that the flat had ever been shared with anyone else, but Rob was a virile and very attractive man of twenty-eight and she was not naïve enough to assume that as his sister she was the only female in his life, or that he would restrict himself to chaste goodnight kisses outside his dates’ homes.

She came to, with a start, realising that she had been completely lost in her thoughts, flushing to find herself being scrutinised by two pairs of eyes, Gillian’s rather puzzled and her companion’s openly amused. But it was an amusement that was shot through with something else; and a something else that made her blood tingle, a curious heady excitement spiralling through her body. She had experienced sexual chemistry before, for heaven’s sake, Sienna chided herself, but she was forced to admit, rather ruefully, that it had never before been as potent as this. Something she had once read flashed briefly through her mind ‘… she would have followed him to the ends of the earth dressed only in her petticoat….’ Someone had once written that about Mary, Queen of Scots and her love for charismatic and dangerous Bothwell, and in that instant, as her sherry-brown eyes met comprehending mocking grey ones, Sienna knew exactly how Mary had felt.

‘Mr Stefanides needs a multi-lingual secretary to work for him while he’s in London, Sienna,’ Gillian repeated. ‘I’ve just told him you’re the only girl we have free at the moment….’

‘You want me?’

The moment the words left her lips, Sienna flushed pink with mortification. Heavens, did she need to make herself sound even dumber than she most undoubtedly looked?

‘If you are agreeable.’ The grey eyes darkened an unmistakable message in their depths, leaving her more flustered than she had been before. Her pulse started to thud heavily under her skin, her fingers automatically lifting to the hollow at the base of her throat, toying with the gold chain she always wore, the breath leaving her lungs on a stifled gasp as lean brown fingers reached out, touching the chain, examining the gold medallion suspended from it. Just for a second his fingers brushed against her skin and the whole world seemed to tremble. ‘Apollo, the sun god. Did you buy this in Greece?’

It was an idle, almost absent question, and perfectly feasible, because the medallion was exactly the sort of thing a discerning tourist might bring back from a Greek holiday, but as he let the gold drop back against her skin, still warm from his touch, Sienna shook her head, too bemused by the feelings surging up inside her to concentrate properly on what she was saying.

‘It was a gift,’ she managed, wondering if her tongue really had swollen so much that it made it difficult for her totalk, or if there was some other reason for the husky uncertainty of her voice. ‘My brother brought it back for me last year.’

He took a step back and she wondered why she should suddenly feel such a chill, as though the warmth of the sun had suddenly been removed from her body. She glanced out of the window, half expecting to see that the cool April sunshine had given way to cloud and was faintly bemused to see that it hadn’t.

‘Sienna, Mr Stefanides would like you to go with him now,’ Gill was saying, but his smooth, accentless voice cut into her words, his ‘Alexis, please,’ bringing a delicate pink to Gillian’s cheeks as well as her own. ‘My car is on a meter,’ he added, glancing at his watch, the wafer-fine broad gold strap catching Sienna’s eye, and her stomach muscles clenched down against the sudden surge of desire to see more of his body than the few inches of muscles and dark tanned skin exposed beneath the immaculate cuff of his shirt. What on earth had happened to her?

Through her bewilderment she managed to retain enough of a hold on sanity to be wryly amused at her own reaction. Heavens, she hadn’t thought it was possible for her to experience this… this intensely physical desire for a man that went far beyond merely looking at him and finding him attractive. It was all she could do to prevent herself from reaching out and touching him, from telling him her most intimate thoughts and desires. She found herself mentally stripping him as she listened to the arrangements he was making, her scrutiny of him in no way lustful, but a silent adoration of the male beauty she knew with some deep-seated instinct his clothes cloaked. When he left she managed to croak something; some response which she hoped didn’t betray the disorder of her senses, and when he had gone she sank back down into her chair, her brown eyes wide and dazed, her whole body strangely weak.

‘Phew!’ Gillian rolled her eyes and grinned, ‘That’s what I call a man! You know who he is, don’t you?’ she demanded, suddenly practical, too excited to notice Sienna’s lack of response. ‘He’s only Hellas Holidays! Do this job well, Sienna, and the agency could be made! You heard him say we were recommended to him—now if we can get him to recommend us to his millionaire friends. Just think, working on board someone’s huge yacht, flying over to Athens to take half an hour’s dictation…. Hey, dreamer,’ she chided gently, ‘wake up! Where were you?’

Sienna flushed vividly, wondering what on earth her friend and employer would say if she admitted exactly where she had been, which was in bed with Alexis Stefanides. She was still totally bemused by the whole thing. She had never, ever met a man who generated such a reaction inside her. Oh, she had had boy-friends, but none of them had ever been serious and never in a thousand lifetimes had she ever imagined or wanted to imagine the sort of intimacies with them that her body seemed to crave to share with the tall Greek.

‘Pull yourself together, he’ll be back in five minutes. He wants you to go straight to the Savoy with him—he’s got a suite there, apparently. And he’s paying well. Just at the right time too. I haven’t got anything else for you for the rest of the week. Just pray that his business keeps him in London for at least a few days,’ Gill told her. ‘We could do with the money.’

A few days! Sienna shivered, suddenly overwhelmed by the intensity of her reactions. She felt hot and cold, shivery and excited, her brown eyes glittered feverishly in the triangular piquancy of her face, her blonde hair—the only thing she had inherited from her Scandinavian mother—curled softly on to her shoulders, her slender, five-foot-five frame trembling visibly as she tried to control her rioting emotions. It had happened, something she had never dreamed would ever happen. She had fallen in love at first sight.

She shivered again, trying to tell herself she was being stupid; that her reactions were totally ridiculous, reminding herself that she wasn’t a teenager but a woman, but it was no good. Something elemental and deep-rooted inside her had sprung to life and she knew with an instinct that overrode caution and common sense that this feeling which had suddenly overwhelmed her was what she had been born for; pre-ordained in her fate, unavoidable; Nemesis, and on that thought she surrendered herself to it, trying and failing to banish from her mind tantalising thoughts of Alexis Stefanides kissing her, touching her, her flesh quivering deliciously as she remembered the brush of his fingers against her skin. And she was the girl several of her dates had dismissed as cold and frigid! It almost made her want to laugh aloud, but then hadn’t she too half agreed with them, thinking that physical desire and passion were emotions she was incapable of feeling. And now this torrent of feeling and need; this hunger and total abandonment of pride that would take her to his side at the slightest indication that that was where he wanted her to be.

A sudden thought struck her, her lips forming the words almost before she was ready. ‘Is he married?’

Gillian frowned. ‘Where have you been? Don’t you read your papers? No, he isn’t,’ she relented, seeing her face. ‘But, honey, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking—forget it. I know he looks like the archetypal Greek god, but he’s all too human. He also has a reputation for being cruel and arrogant. He’s notorious for his women, Sienna, but when he marries I suspect it will be to a girl of his own race; a dutiful Greek virgin.’ She held up her hand. ‘Okay, I know, or at least I suspect, you qualify on one count, and I can see the effect he’s had on you. I don’t blame you, honey, he is pretty overwhelming, but you’re Rob’s sister, and in many ways a little innocent still….’

‘I’m twenty-four,’ Sienna reminded her dryly, ‘two years younger than you.’ She broke off as she saw Alexis Stefanides returning, picking up her handbag and taking her coat off the stand by the door, hoping she looked more composed than she felt, ready to match his social smile with one of her own, but when he opened the door, he simply stared at her, and there was such hunger and open desire in the unsmiling look he gave her that her insides turned to jelly. It was as though his body spoke to hers and hers replied in a language that was beyond words. ‘I want you,’ he said, and hers replied, ‘I know, and your wanting is mine.’

‘Ready?’ Now he smiled, but at Gill, not her. ‘I’m not sure how long this will take, but you can invoice me at this address when I return Sienna to you.’ He handed her a piece of paper with an address written on it and then held open the door so that Sienna could precede him through it. His hand on the small of her back seemed to burn right through the thin wool suit she was wearing. Rob had insisted on her buying an entire new outfit when she came to London, and this just off-white neat, collarless jacket, cropped short at the waist with its complementary softly pleated skirt had been one of her first buys. It was by Alexon, and although Gillian had directed her towards the Separates Section of the large London stores, Sienna had soon discovered that she had a natural sense of taste and flair for clothes, although she had been careful to bear in mind that hers was the wardrobe of an executive secretary and must reflect that image. At home she had nearly always worn pleated skirts and toning jumpers from Country Casuals, the same sort of clothes her mother had always chosen when she had been a university lecturer’s wife.

Kristal King had died when Sienna was fourteen. She had missed her mother dreadfully at first, but she had already been a boarder at the school her parents had chosen for her and gradually she learned to live with her loss. Now suddenly, following Alexis Stefanides out into the brilliant spring sunshine, she wished very badly that she was alive, wanting someone to talk to about the wholly unexpected emotions she was experiencing.

Did all women feel like this about the right man? The man who had the power to turn their universe upside down? It was a startling discovery that far from being the rather sexually cool person she had always considered herself she was capable of such deep and diverse needs. Just looking at him, studying the way his hair grew thick and dark into the nape of his neck made her shudder in sensual reaction her fingers already imagining the feel of his hair against them, the heavy thud of his heart against hers.

She started to tremble again and was startled by the sound of his voice as he stood up having unlocked the car, and opened the passenger door for her. ‘Please get in….’

The words were said with cool formality, but there was nothing cool nor formal about the way he was looking at her, and suddenly Sienna was reminded of her twenty-first birthday party and the way she had felt after consuming two glasses of champagne, only this time the bubbles of happiness really did seem to explode inside her. She shook her head slightly as she obeyed him and slid into the sleek interior of the waiting Mercedes, as though still half believing she was caught up in some fantasy daydream, but that notion was firmly dispelled when Alexis got in beside her, turning to her with a smile that set her pulses racing.

‘The seat-belt mechanism is automatic,’ he told her softly. ‘Here, let me help you.’

He took the belt from her nerveless fingers, quickly slotting it into place, half leaning across her, her body intimately aware of the hard warmth of his, her eyes lifting from the deft, skilled movements of his fingers to the dark planes of his face. A faint stubble darkened his jaw, and her heart lurched spectacularly, her fingers itching to reach out and touch his skin, motivated by an irresistible urge to discover if his jaw felt as tough as it looked. Outwardly he bore all the trappings of wealth and sophistication; all the hallmarks of a man well used to the luxuries that money could buy, but it was the man within that drew Sienna; and she knew that wealthy or not he would still have drawn her in the same way, and not just her, she admitted on another lurching heartbeat; he possessed the sort of sexual magnetism that few women would be able to resist. Suddenly she wanted to know everything there was to know about him, and was close to tears to think of all the years when she hadn’t known him; as a child; an adolescent; a young man, and she shivered fitfully, the tension in her body communicating itself to him as he completed his task and straightened up, his arm brushing briefly across her breasts.

The contact only lasted a matter of seconds, but it was long enough for Sienna to feel the immediate response of her body, and to gauge from Alexis’ sudden tension and inheld breath that he was aware of it too. He turned towards her, his eyes resting on the soft swell of her body concealed by the fine wool of her jacket. His glance lifted to her face his eyes dark and hot, the desire she could feel surging inside herself mirrored in their depths, his attention drawn to linger again on the thrust of her breasts.

Her mouth was as dry as parchment, and Sienna knew that if he chose to he could make love to her here and now and she would glory in his possession of her womanhood. He turned, fastening his own seat-belt, his knuckles gleaming faintly through the tautness of his skin as he set the car in motion, and Sienna knew that there hadn’t been a thought or emotion she had experienced since meeting him that he hadn’t known of and shared.

The knowledge was so unfamiliar and so heady that she sat silent as he manoeuvred the large car through the heavy lunchtime traffic, sending up a mental prayer of gratitude to whoever it was who directed her fate that she had been permitted this glorious enchantment. It was awesome to think of the faint threads of chance from which so much human happiness dangled. If Alexis hadn’t been recommended to try the agency; if she hadn’t been there….

‘We’re here.’ His cool, faintly husky voice broke through her thoughts. A doorman opened the car door and she stepped out, vaguely aware of Alexis saying something to him and the crisp crackle of new notes, and then they were stepping into the foyer, and Alexis was directing her towards the lift, his lazy, long stride covering the thickly carpeted ground so quickly that she almost had to run to catch up with him.

He had a large suite at his disposal and someone had set up a desk with an expensive electronic typewriter and a small computer keyboard and VDU. There was another desk with three telephones and an in-tray stuffed full of papers. Sienna took most of it in in one single glance; after all, apart from the luxurious surroundings it was the sort of background she was now familiar with; the typewriter was a make she knew and had worked on before, and the computer presented no problems if she was required to use it. Mentally blessing Rob’s forethought in insisting on sending her on a three-day computer course when she first arrived in London, she started to slide her coat from her shoulders, tensing when she felt Alexis’ hands on her arms, his warm breath stirring the hair at the nape as he bent to assist her.

She was trembling and she couldn’t stop; one part of her mind still bemused and half inclined to be appalled that she could feel like this; that she could be so ready to turn into his arms and let herself become part of him on such a short acquaintanceship, but the older, eternal womanly core of her urged her to follow her instincts to listen to what her heart was telling her and ignore the restrictions of generations of programming.

Suddenly she was fiercely glad that there had been no one else; no other touch to sully the pleasure she would find in Alexis’ arms; a primaeval and intense need to give herself to this man and this man alone.

He removed her coat and hung it up on the stand by the door, while Sienna watched him, her body as attuned to his as the gazelle’s to the hunter, quivering finely, every nerve ending aware of his presence and the frisson of pleasure it caused against her skin. When he returned to her he took her in his arms, simply holding her, looking down at her for several seconds, while Sienna returned his regard, knowing what he was reading in her face and eyes and making no attempt to hide her love and adoration from him.

‘Tell me that it’s true what your eyes are saying to me so eloquently; tell me that there’s never been any man you’ve felt about the way you feel about me.’ And then before she could respond his lips were brushing hers, lightly and then not so lightly as he felt her immediate response, her mouth parting eagerly, hungry for the hard possession of his.

If it was possible to become intoxicated by sheer happiness then that was what must have happened to her, Sienna thought dizzily as Alexis’ lips left hers, travelling teasingly across her face; touching lightly against her fluttering eyelashes, closing her eyes, exploring the tender curve of her jaw; his fingers pushing aside her hair, his hands tightening their grip as he felt her involuntary response to the caress of his tongue and lips against her ear and the soft column of her throat, her body arching shamelessly against him as she responded with blind instinct to his touch.

At last his mouth returned to hers, touching, taking, possessing. Her hands slid under his jacket and found the hard muscles of his back, her body glorying in the sudden aroused tension of his; in the way he held her against him, his hands moving down to her thighs, pressing her into his body, and then slowly releasing her as he ended the kiss. He took a step away from her and smiled down into her flushed, bemused face, his thumb softly probing the mouth his had just bruised with such devastating hunger. ‘So…’ he said softly, ‘it has begun….’

‘You… you felt it too?’ Sienna asked hesitantly, groping for the right words to describe her feelings and aware that those she had chosen were hopelessly inadequate to describe them. Two hours ago she hadn’t known that he existed, and now… now she was so deeply in love with him that nothing else mattered but him.

‘I felt it too,’ he confirmed, still keeping that small, tantalising distance between them. ‘Together we will make the world rock and feel its hushed tremble, my little virgin. When I make love to you and my body finally possesses yours it will be as though we are immortals, gods, and not mere human beings, but as yet you know nothing of the pleasure that will be ours. No other man has shown you what I shall show you. I shall be the first.’

He said it with such assurance that she held her breath, staring wonderingly into his face. It was as though he had always known her; as though he knew everything there was to know about her, and so all she did was murmur slowly, ‘and the last….’ And then watched his eyes darken, with the same kind of wonder and awe with which she had listened to carols being sung on Christmas Eve as a child, the lump in her throat threatening to render her completely speechless. Alexis saw her reaction and laughed deep in his throat, a husky, satisfied sound, and she knew that the fact that she was still a virgin was pleasing him.

‘Ah, yes, we shall be lovers, you and I,’ he promised her, ‘but not today… not yet. First we shall enjoy the anticipation a little, and I shall try to school myself to playing the suitor rather than the lover. Also there is work to do, because I wasn’t lying about my need for a secretary.’

Work? After this? Sienna stared mutely at him, but as she discovered as the day progressed he hadn’t been joking. Marvelling at his ability to change from lover to employer, she tried to follow his lead and concentrate on the detailed dictation he was giving her, all the time acutely conscious of the maleness of him; the way his trousers moulded the strong muscles of his thighs; the breadth of his shoulders and the depth of his chest in the clinging silk shirt that seemed to mould itself to his body.

In that afternon Sienna gained a brief understanding of how diverse his business interests were: he wasn’t just the Chairman of Hellas Holidays, he also had an interest in an international airline, in villas on the islands, which he owned and let out, in olive groves, and even a vineyard in the Napa Valley in California. That had come to him through his mother, who Sienna deduced from the brief comments that he made had been half Italian and half American, which no doubt accounted for his height, and less swarthy complexion than she might have expected. It also explained the grey eyes which were so totally unexpected and devasting in the pure symmetry of a face which had its beginnings in the very best of the ancient sculptures.

They worked without pause until six o’clock. Sienna felt limp and drained when they had finished. Alexis had dictated consistently in English, but she had translations to make into French and German, and she was relieved when he told her that she would have the best part of the following morning to work on what he had just given her.

‘I shall be in meetings for most of the morning.’ He saw her face and smiled, and the dying rays of the sun streaming through the windows lingered against his skin casting shadows that gave him a faintly cynical, predatory air, and one which was totally at odds with the man Sienna thought him to be. She shivered in spite of herself, faintly repelled by the transformation, the cold, almost detached air with which he seemed to be studying her, but then he moved and it was gone, and she laughed inwardly at her own folly. It had been a trick of the sunlight, nothing more, and she forgot that he was a man who came from a land that was more used to harsh sunlight then gentle shadows, she forgot everything as he came towards her, pulling her out of her chair, gently removing her pad and pencil from nerveless fingers, framing her face with his hands as he studied her wildly flushed features.

‘Tomorrow I must work, but we still have tonight. Will you let me take you out to dinner?’

Would she? Sienna moistened her lips and trembled as she saw the flaring reaction of his eyes to the gesture and felt its echo in his body.

‘No, I am not going to take you to my bed tonight,’ he muttered accurately reading her mind… ‘but one night, not so very far from now when you are ready for me, I shall.’

I’m ready now, Sienna wanted to tell him, half appalled by her own immodesty and hunger, but he was already releasing her, putting her away from him, smiling at her as he asked politely, ‘Will you be able to be ready by half past eight? I’ll book a table for nine. Aristotle, my chauffeur, is waiting downstairs to take you home. Unfortunately I am expecting an important call from New York, otherwise I would go with you. Do you live alone?’

With a shock Sienna realised it was the first personal question he had asked her. Somehow exchanging past histories had seemed irrelevant, but now she managed to murmur, ‘No… with my brother, but he’s away at the moment. He’s a reporter. Our parents are dead, and Rob very kindly took me in when our father died. I used to work for him, you see, and when he died I just didn’t know what to do with myself.’

‘You love your brother very deeply?’

Sienna frowned, wondering at the darkness in his eyes and the curt iciness in his voice. Surely he wasn’t jealous of Rob? ‘Yes,’ she replied simply. ‘Everyone likes him. He’s a marvellous person, so kind and thoughtful….’

‘And he has a woman, this kind and thoughtful brother?’

Sienna hesitated, disturbed by the thread of sarcasm she could sense woven into the words. ‘I… I don’t know,’ she finished lamely, feeling it would be wrong to discuss her suspicions about Rob’s feelings for Gillian with anyone else, even Alexis.

‘So…. Then he has never discussed with you a special woman, this wonderful brother of yours whom you so admire?’

He must be jealous, Sienna thought blankly, there could be no other reason for the dislike and, yes, almost hatred embittering his voice. ‘Never,’ she responded resolutely.

‘You had better leave now, Aristotle will be waiting.’ The abrupt change of subject startled her a little at first, but Sienna accepted it, thinking there would be time that evening to question Alexis about his family and background.

She went over to the door and shrugged into her coat, picking up her bag. ‘And, Sienna…’ She paused, wondering if he was going to change his mind and command her to remain with him after all. He smiled, warmth infusing the darkness of his features and making her weak with the need to go to him and touch him. ‘Yes?’

‘Tonight wear something that permits me to see a little more of your body than the clothes you are wearing now. That way I shall have something to warm my lonely bed tonight.’

He saw her face and shook his head. ‘No, this is no brief casual thing between us, and I will not hurry it. When a man finds the food which is to last him for the rest of his life he does not consume it with greed as though it were his final feast. Now go,’ he said softly, ‘before I forget all my lofty ideals and remember only how badly I want to make you mine.’

All the way down in the lift her heart sang. Alexis had put the final seal on her happiness. He wanted her, not just for now, but for always, it had been implicit in his final words to her. She thought of having Alexis as her husband, of bearing his children, and her body shook with the pleasure the thought gave her.

CHAPTER TWO

AS she dressed for her dinner date with Alexis, Sienna found herself going over and over in her mind the circumstances of their meeting; re-living the touch of his hands against her face and the warm, intoxicating pressure of his mouth on hers. It took her half an hour to decide what to wear, delicious tremors shivering across her skin as she remembered his parting words. In the end she opted for a dress she had bought when she had to accompany her father to a dance at the university.

Far more sophisticated than the clothes she usually chose, it was in matt black jersey, cut to reveal the svelte contours of her body, outwardly demure with its high rounded neckline and long close-fitting sleeves, but the way it moulded her body was far from demure. Would Alexis find her attractive in it? It was startling to discover how much she wanted to be alluring for him; in the past she had always been careful to dress in clothes that masked her sexuality rather than revealed it and had even been faintly scornful of those women she knew who dressed mainly to please their men. It was a strange and almost frightening sensation to have fallen so deeply in love so quickly, and Sienna knew that if Alexis hadn’t made it so clear to her that her feelings were reciprocated she would be maintaining as great a distance as she possibly could from him. For the first time in her life she could imagine the desolation of unrequited love; it shivered across her skin chilly as a November wind, until she pulled the reassuring, warming blanket of Alexis’ love back round her.

He arrived to pick her up himself, and her breath caught in her throat as she studied him beneath the hall light. ‘Your heart quivers like a frightened dove’s. What is it that frightens you so? Surely not me?’ His fingers curled round her wrist, his thumb probing for and then stroking the swiftly beating pulse.

How could she explain that the reality of him far exceeded the mental picture she had carried away with her, that falling in love with him was something so totally outside any experience she had ever expected to have that it left her weak and, yes, slightly frightened by the knowledge of her new vulnerability. Yesterday she hadn’t known he existed; today her life would be insupportable without him. He seemed to know what she was thinking, because he lifted her wrist to his lips, their heat sending waves of pleasure beating through her veins, his eyes hot and slumbrous with desire as they slid slowly over her face and body.

‘It is frightening. I have felt it too,’ he assured her. ‘To be so dependent on another person for happiness—for life itself.’

‘And you’ve never felt like this before?’ He was thirty-three, Gill had told her that, and his name had been linked with those of many, many beautiful women. It seemed to Sienna incredible that he could feel this way about her.

‘I have never felt towards any woman what I feel towards you.’ The words had the unmistakable ring of sincerity. She trembled beneath them, the hallway suddenly cramped and infused with the same subtle tension she had sensed the first time she saw him. ‘Ah, Sienna, you must not look at me like that. How can you look at me the way you do and still have remained a virgin? Your eyes tell me that you want me to make love to you.’

‘I do.’ She whispered the words shyly, still amazed that she could feel this way, that there could be this depth and intensity of feeling, something she had never suspected existed. ‘And I am still a virgin because I have never looked at any other man the way I look at you. I have never loved any man before you….’

‘And will not love any man after me. I shall imprint myself on your heart and body so that you will never forget me. We have not yet made love, but already I know how you will feel in my arms, how you will taste against my lips, how sweetly you will cry my name and abandon yourself to me.’

He bent his head, sliding his fingers into the thickness of her hair, holding her still beneath his mouth, letting her feel the depth and heat of his passion, leaving her shaking and achingly bereft when he eventually lifted his head, his lips curling into a smile as he caught her half-smothered protest.

‘So reserved and English,’ he murmured, probing the parted warmth of her mouth with his thumb, ‘but I promise you I will make you forget your reserve and the politeness of your good manners, and in my arms will remember only that you are a woman.’ He smiled down at her, a dark seriousness in his eyes that stilled the frantic racing of her pulses. ‘I cannot promise you that I will be a tender, gentle lover, Sienna, my need for you does not permit that. If you wish to change your mind, to retreat, then now is the time to do so, while I am still able to let you go.’

He knew! He knew how fear mingled with her love for him, how tremulous she felt about committing herself completely to him, about walking blindfold into waters which she sensed were deep and dangerous and he was offering her the chance to turn back. She returned his smile with one of her own faintly wavering and hesitant, unaware of the shy vulnerability glowing in her eyes as they met his.

‘I don’t want to turn back, Alexis,’ she told him huskily. ‘I fell in love with you the moment you walked into Gill’s office. I….’ She tried to find the words to describe the awe and wonder of that moment, then gave up, knowing that it was a feat beyond her.

‘And if I had not fallen in love with you in return?’

She shivered, despite the warmth of Rob’s centrally heated flat. ‘I don’t know….’ How could she explain to him that she wasn’t the type of girl who had the confidence to go out and get the man she wanted, that if she hadn’t seen the desire, the hunger in his eyes she would have had to dam up her feelings for him?

‘Your silence is its own answer,’ Alexis told her. ‘Without the security of my admission of love you would never have been able to bring yourself to tell me of your feelings. You would have worked for me as my temporary secretary, harbouring impossible dreams, is this is not so?’

It startled her a little that he should so accurately be able to judge her reactions, for that was exactly how she would have behaved, envying the women who shared his life, but totally unable to emulate them.

‘Do not look so chastened.’ His hand caressed her jaw, tilting her face so that he could look into her eyes. ‘I knew the moment I opened the office door how it would be between us, and because you are what you are, the only place I shall hold you in my arms tonight is on the dance floor. I want you to come to me willingly, Sienna—more than willingly,’ he added huskily, ‘knowingly, wantingly, as hungry for me as I am for you.’

She wanted to tell him then that that was already how she felt about him, but because he was right when he said that she was still a little shy and uncertain of herself, she allowed him to escort her to the waiting car, and half an hour later when they were seated at their table in a fashionable nightclub she had only read about in the Society columns, she no longer regretted her silence.

Her arrival with Alexis had caused something of a stir. Heads had turned, and Sienna knew quite well that they had not turned on her behalf. Several eager pairs of female eyes followed their progress to their table. How many of the women dining here with other men were known to Alexis? she wondered as she sat down, and not just here in London, but in all those other cities where he had business interests and offices. It shook her to feel so vulnerable and, yes, jealous. Alexis was nine years older than her and what was past was past.

‘Is something troubling you?’ He leaned across the table, attentive and concerned, and she pushed away her dark thoughts, a little saddened by the knowledge that love brought pain as well as pleasure.

She asked him to order for her. Although she was perfectly used to dining out both with her father and Rob, neither of them had ever taken her to such an openly luxurious place. Most of the other women were wearing rich jewels and couture gowns, and even though she knew it was foolish, Sienna was aware of feeing slightly ill at ease.

The food Alexis chose was delicious, but she discovered that she had little appetite for it. She was too aware of the man seated opposite her, of the movement of his body beneath the covering of expensive clothes, of the lean darkness of his hands, her mind unable to stop picturing them on her body, causing a heated flush to rise up over her skin, and Alexis to break off from what he had been saying, to ask with a frown, ‘Sienna, are you all right?’

‘Yes….’ She sounded flustered. ‘It’s… it’s very warm in here, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’ His eyes narrowed in perceptive amusement. ‘I confess I hadn’t noticed it. Would you like to dance?’

She glanced at the small dimly lit dance floor and then back again to Alexis’ darkly masculine face. There was nowhere she wanted to be more than in his arms, and her eyes must have given her away, because he muttered something thickly under his breath and put down the glass he had been holding, with fingers that were distinctly unsteady, his hoarse, ‘Yes… yes, I know, but I will not take you in hungry greed, however much both of us want to at this moment, and since I cannot make love to you on the dance floor, we are safer there than sitting here, where your eyes tell me with every breath you draw what you are thinking and my body responds to that knowledge.’

Alexis had lied when he said he couldn’t make love to her on the dance floor, Sienna thought minutes later; the firm movement of his thighs against hers turning her bones to water, making her grateful for the dimness of the lights and the seductive tempo of the music which enabled them to move so slowly together, her body registering every movement of Alexis’. She could feel his heart thudding beneath the hand she had slipped inside his jacket. Both his arms were round her, pressing her against him, caressing the vulnerable arc of her spine, his lips feathering, brief, tormenting kisses against her temple.

‘You tremble so in my arms,’ Alexis murmured against her ear. ‘It makes me ache to possess you, do you know that?’ He felt her body’s response and his own hardened against her, his chest expanding as he dragged air into his lungs. ‘No, you don’t know yet what you do to me, how you make me burn and shake with need, but I will teach you, Sienna.’

Teach me now, she wanted to cry out, but the tempo of the music changed and with it the mood he had created around them. In a daze she allowed him to lead her back to their table. They must have talked, but later she could remember nothing of what they had said. All she could think of when she lay alone in her bed in Rob’s flat was that Alexis had wanted her and that for her sake he had denied himself because he didn’t want to rush her. Had denied them both, she acknowledged feverishly, understanding now the deep-seated ache that lay curled in the pit of her stomach, sending stabbing waves of need coursing through the rest of her body. Her total turn-around from a cool, remote young woman to this hungry aching feline creature who now seemed to live inside her skin took some getting used to, and as she lay wanting Alexis she wondered on a sudden dark presentiment if this new part of herself might not have been better left undiscovered.

By morning she had forgotten her night fears, her fingers clumsy in her feverish haste to dress and reach Alexis. She glanced at herself in the mirror, noting the changes that were there already; the flush high along her cheekbones, the brightness of her eyes, one minute sparkling, the next disconcertingly slumbrous. Excitement made it impossible for her to eat, to do anything more than snatch a cup of coffee as she hurried to get ready.

Alexis was waiting for her in his suite, studying a pile of letters. He looked up when she walked in but made no move to touch her. ‘I’m just about to leave.’ He smiled wryly when he saw her face and added softly, ‘Ah, no, I must not kiss you, otherwise I shall never make it to my meetings—never make it any further than the bedroom that lies beyond that door, but tomorrow is Saturday. Would you like to go for a drive? To have lunch somewhere perhaps, and then in the evening we could see a show?’

All I want to do is to be with you, she ached to tell him, but instead she followed the lead he had given her, assuring him that she ought to have finished the dictation he had given her the previous day by the time he got back and that she could find no fault in his plans for the following day.

And so it continued. During the day they worked together in comparative harmony. Sienna grew gradually to learn more about his business empire and to admire his shrewd grasp of all that went on within it, even though at times his hard determination had the power to disturb her. That he could be cruel as Gill had said he was she could now perceive was true, and she shivered sometimes, wondering what she would do if that cruelty was ever directed towards her. At those times he would look up from what he was doing and smile at her as though he guessed her thoughts and wanted to assure her that her fears were groundless.

He often asked her about Rob, and when he did Sienna sensed as she had done on that first day that he resented—and if that could be possible without their having met—even disliked her brother, but when she tried to question him about his own family he always changed the subject.

A week and then ten days went by. She arrived one morning to discover him on the telephone. New York,’ he said crisply when he replaced the receiver. ‘I have to go over there—there’s a problem with the merger.’

Sienna knew that one of his companies was taking over an American rival, but her face fell when Alexis was speaking.

‘How long… how long will you be gone?’ How long will you be away from me, was what she really wanted to know, and yet how long would he be staying in London for anyway? His home was in Greece, on a small island called Micros, he had told her. He had talked about it to her, with love and pride and an assurance that she would share it with him.

‘I don’t know. Three weeks, maybe a month. It will take that long to sort out all the legal tangles.’ He saw her expression and muttered huskily, ‘Sienna, don’t. You know I don’t want to leave you, and we still have this weekend. Would you like to go away somewhere…. Just the two of us?’

‘Oh, Alexis!’ Her eyes and voice betrayed her, and he did something he never did when they were working, he got up from his chair and crossed the room, taking her in his arms and kissing her with the same deep hunger she could feel heating her own blood.

‘Does that mean “yes”? You know if it does that I shall not be able to kiss you chastely goodnight and leave you, Sienna. You know, don’t you,’ he asked roughly, ‘that when you say “yes”, you are saying yes to snaring my bed? Do you still say “yes”?’

She shook her head and he tensed, holding her away from him and staring down at her with dark, almost angry eyes, and Sienna knew that despite all his protestations he wanted her enough to persuade her if she did not agree voluntarily. Not that there was any need. She wanted this weekend with him, needed it with an urgency that still had the power to leave her slightly shocked. ‘Then what do you say?’ he demanded curtly.

She smiled up at him, feeling the tension in the arms that held her, a brief smile curling her mouth as she said softly, ‘I say “yes, please”, Alexis.’

She felt the surge of tension leaving him, and just had time to be surprised by the look of sheer triumph glittering in his eyes as he bent towards her, kissing her more gently this time, merging her body with his, his fingers tangling in her hair as he released her lips to caress the soft skin of her throat, his fingers deftly moving to the buttons of her blouse, releasing them and exposing the pulse thudding at the base of her neck and the beginnings of the soft swell of her breasts, her nipples tautly outlined beneath the fine cotton of her blouse.

Strange, he had not yet touched her intimately, but when he did so, pushing aside the protection of her blouse, stroking over the curves her delicate lace bra did nothing to conceal, her body leapt in immediate response, her low groan of pleasure stifled somewhere at the back of her throat as his head moved downwards and she gasped as she felt the heat and dampness of his mouth through the fine fabric, coupled with an anguished ache to lie naked in his arms and enjoy that same caress with the barrier of clothes removed. The phone rang, disorientating her, her body still awash with hunger. Her mind was too bemused to respond to the abrupt summons of the telephone. Alexis answered it, frowning into the receiver, reminding Sienna where they were. She dressed quickly, with shaking fingers, wondering heatedly what her reaction was likely to be to his full possession if she could be affected so much by a mere caress. She was still lost in a maze of thoughts when he replaced the receiver and came to stand behind her.

‘You look like a child who has suddenly discovered Christmas,’ he told her with amusement, obviously relishing her embarrassment. ‘What a contradiction you are! Outwardly so cool and calm, and inwardly so responsively sensual, and I only have to look at you and I see mirrored in your eyes what will be there when I make love to you. I cannot believe no man has make you feel like this before. Has there, Sienna? Has there been a man who has made the earth shake for you, a man with whom you have shared desire?’

She shook her head and watched his eyes lighten with relief, and wondered if he knew what joy it gave her that he should be the first, that she had waited for the magic of giving herself to him and sharing with him her body’s arousal from innocence to desire.

‘I am going to take you away somewhere where no one will disturb us, where we will be completely alone, where when I want to kiss and touch you I can do so and know that we won’t be interrupted.’ He kissed her briefly then, his mouth hard and warm and the same delirious drunken feeling of disbelief she had experienced on first seeing him surged giddily through her again. ‘You love me?’

‘So much,’ she told him huskily, ‘So very, very much!’

When she got home there was a letter from Rob telling her that his return was likely to be delayed and that it could be several more weeks before he returned. She was disappointed. She would have liked Alexis to meet him before he went to New York. She wanted Alexis to understand why she loved him and why that love was no threat to the way he felt about her, but she didn’t want to spoil their weekend together, so she firmly banished her disappointment and concentrated on what she ought to pack.

Alexis hadn’t told her where they were going apart from the fact that it was in the country and they would be completely alone, and she packed accordingly, jeans and sweaters, one simple dress that would cover eating out, a soft tweed suit to travel in and… she tried not to feel guilty as she added up the cost of the expensive, delicate underwear she had bought on impulse on her way home the previous evening. She had paused outside the shop, admiring as she always did its elegant window, staring at the costly wisps of silk and lace, knowing how far they were outside her reach and yet wanting Alexis to see her dressed in something so essentially feminine, knowing instinctively that such a very male man would find pleasure in the knowledge that it was worn only for him.

And so she had gone in, and come out again half an hour later, carrying the boxes whose contents she was now carefully packing into her case. The silk chiffon nightdress was soft pale peach trimmed with écru lace, handmade and delicate as cobwebs. The underwear she was wearing to travel in was cream silk-satin, and her fingers smoothed it absently as she tried to still the quiver of excitement starting deep inside her.

She was ready and too excited to finish her breakfast, half an hour before Alexis was due to arrive. Incredible to think that this was actually her and that tonight she would sleep in Alexis’ arms, his body next to hers. As always when she thought about touching him, about him making love to her, she was overwhelmed by her reaction to her thoughts. And she wasn’t going to allow herself to think beyond the weekend to the empty weeks when he would be in New York, and she would be here, or about how she was going to endure their separation.

‘We’ll soon be stopping for lunch. Are you hungry?’ Only for him, Sienna thought nervously, turning in her seat to give him a brief smile and shaking her head. Why this sense of nervousness and anxiety now when this was what she had wanted from the very moment she first saw him, for them to be together?

They were almost in the New Forest; their destination, so Alexis had informed her when he picked her up. He had rented a small cottage for them for the weekend, but first they were to have lunch at a hotel which had been recommended to him.

‘It used to be a private house,’ he told her as he turned into the driveway. They specialise in Nouvelle Cuisine.’

She might as well have been served with the unappetising stodge she remembered from school lunches, Sienna thought guiltily an hour and half later, watching Alexis cut himself a wedge of Stilton. She could watch his hands for ever, they were so very beautiful in a totally male way, lean and brown, his fingers long and filbert-nailed, every movement they made deft and precise and yet somehow sensual, as though they knew secrets which were as yet unknown to her. She had refused a sweet, too full of the tension which had been with her ever since they set out. She was being ridiculous, she chided herself mentally, acting like a teenager who didn’t know the first thing about sex, her movements jerky, her whole body betraying her apprehension, and yet this was what she wanted. If Alexis were to announce that he had changed his mind and they were going back to London she would be bitterly, achingly disappointed.

She glanced quickly up at him. His features were impassive, relaxed, and yet she was aware of something elemental that sent shivers of alarm tingling along her spine. Was it because of her innocence that she felt like this, her ignorance and naïveté, or was it because of his male aura, because of the hunter she sensed lurking beneath the svelte layers of civilisation? This was a man whose heritage was Greek; a man born of a country that put a high price on its women’s virtue, a country where a man could and still did expect to marry a virgin bride. Would she be devaluing herself in his eyes by giving herself to him like this, would he in spite of his claims to love her despise her afterwards?

Where had such dark thoughts sprung from? Hadn’t she always despised women who bartered their bodies for the security of a wedding ring? She loved Alexis, and he loved her, he had told her so. So where had this feeling of insecurity come from? Perhaps the fact that he must leave her? But he would return, he had told her so, he had talked about their future together….

‘Having second thoughts?’ How easily he read her mind, startling her by voicing thoughts she had believed to be secret.

‘Sort of.’ Her eyes pleaded with him for reassurance.

‘And you want me to persuade you into bed with me?’ He stood up, shaking his head, his breath brushing her ear as he leaned forward and murmured softly, ‘No, Sienna, I won’t do it. You must come to me of your own free will. You must give of yourself freely, or not at all.’ He moved back and she could see how his eyes had changed from light to dark with the intensity of his feelings. Tears clogged in her throat. How could she have doubted him? How could she have harboured such thoughts about a man who said openly that he would not put any pressure on her?

‘Well?’ He was guiding her out of the hotel, to where his car waited. ‘Have you changed your mind? Do you want to return to London and your virginal bed?’

The warmth of his arm felt so right against her waist, his hip hard against her softness, and she raised her face to him shaking her head. ‘No.’ Her voice was husky, tremulous with all that she felt and could not say. ‘No, Alexis, I want to go on.’

He smiled and in that smile she saw all his male triumph, all his pleasure in her admission, and yet she could not begrudge it to him. As he opened her car door for her he bent towards her, brushing the softness of her lips with the hardness of his own. ‘You can’t know how much it means to me to hear you say that, Sienna… but later… tonight, I will show you.’

The cottage was perfect, remote, surrounded by the sounds of the forest, intimate and cosily furnished so that she felt at home the moment she stepped down into the small living room and felt its warmth enclose her.

There was a kitchen, beautifully fitted out with warm oak units, a meal had been left prepared for them and merely needed heating up. Although the cottage was centrally heated it was cool enough for her to be tempted when Alexis offered to light the open fire in the living room. The ceiling of the room was so low that when he stood upright his head barely scraped under the ancient beams.

‘I’ll see to the fire while you unpack,’ he told her, getting down on his knees, his back to her. She was sure he had done it deliberately, sensing the panic that had been building up inside her at the thought of going up those narrow stairs with him behind her. The cottage only possessed one bedroom, prettily decorated by someone with a liking for Laura Ashley, and the bathroom adjacent was decorated to match. The room felt warm and homely, so much more intimate than a hotel would have been.

The perfect place for a honeymoon, Sienna thought yearningly, then caught back the thought. She was being so silly behaving like this as though she were the victim of some seduction plan and about to be transformed into a scarlet woman! She was free to leave even now if she wanted to. She was here with Alexis because she wanted to be. She dawdled over unpacking what little she had brought with her. There was no need for her to change, the suit she had travelled down in was a soft heather tweed and was perfectly suitable for spending the evening in.

‘Fire’s lit. Do you fancy a drink?’ Alexis’ voice, so calm, calmed her frenzied nerves, his mundane question taking her to the head of the stairs to give an assent. ‘While you’re up there will you unpack for me?’

Ridiculous to feel so embarrassed about touching his clothes. How many times had she packed for Rob or her father and never given it another thought, but these things belonged to the man who would soon be her lover, and it was different. She noticed that he hadn’t packed any pyjamas, and felt her skin flush even though there was no one there to see it, or to witness the way her eyes darkened at the thought of his body against hers. She felt as though she knew him already, but she didn’t and she hurried over her task, anxious to return downstairs and reassure herself that the whole thing wasn’t just a dream.

‘Tired?’

The Beethoven had come to a close, and there was really nothing to keep them downstairs any longer. The fire had burned down and Alexis’ glass was empty. They had finished dinner three hours ago, and now as she listened to the dying crackle of the last apple log Sienna lifted her head from his shoulder.

‘Mmm… a little….’ She felt the laughter shake his body and tensed, feeling childishly hurt. He must have done this so many times before, while she….

‘Ah, no, you are wrong.’ Again he had read her mind and he turned to her in the light from the fire, cupping her face with his hands, his eyes sombre, brooding almost, reminding her of that ancient heritage she had seen in him earlier. ‘There have been other times, but none before like this… none that have meant as much to me as this does. I shall ask you again, Sienna, do you come to me willingly? Do you?’

‘Yes… yes!’ She said it fiercely, pushing back all her doubts and fears, willing him to help her to sweep them away with the magic of his touch. His mouth brushed hers, gently, slowly, his thumb probing the softness of her lips until they parted and his tongue ran lightly over the fullness of her lower one. Her breath caught in the back of her throat, the faintest sound, but he heard it and responded to it, his hand sliding along her throat, tangling in the thickness of her hair, bending her head back against his arm, the hunger building in him as his mouth closed on hers.

She was melting, dissolving, turning into something that wasn’t flesh and bone, but just feeling, under the heat of his kiss. She was drowning in her response to him, lost beneath the fiery trail of kisses that tormented her skin, shivering beneath a need so great that she was deaf, dumb and blind to anything else.

‘Sienna…. Tell me you love me…. You do love me, don’t you?’ The words were punctuated with kisses that turned her mindless with frenzied hunger, the feel of his hands on her body beneath the silk of her blouse making her arch and mutter his name.

‘Totally, completely,’ she told him breathlessly, responding to the demand of his questions, shivering beneath his touch.

‘Ah, I do not think you have done even this many times before, have you?’ His fingers stroked the racing pulses under her skin, his mouth suddenly gentle.

‘Never,’ Sienna told him.

‘Never?’ His eyes darkened with openly perceptible arousal. ‘How innocently you say the word, not knowing that you are offering me the most potent form of temptation I have ever endured! Do you really not know what it does to me to know that I shall be the first to teach you the meaning of desire, to see passion blaze in your eyes….’

‘You have already taught me,’ Sienna told him shakily, and she was lost amidst billowing clouds of pleasure as he laughed and said softly, ‘You think this is pleasure? You have much to learn, and suddenly I am in a very great hurry to teach you.’

He picked her up, carrying her as lightly as though she weighed nothing, her face buried against the warmth of his shoulder, the scent of his skin filling her senses.

He placed her on the bed, leaning over her, smiling down at her. ‘How you tremble in my arms—with willingness or with fear, my sweet virgin?’

‘Both,’ Sienna admitted honestly, ‘but willingness overrides fear….’

‘As desire shall override both,’ he promised her. ‘I do not want you as a sacrifice, not matter how willing, but as an eager participant, as a woman who wants a man—the man! How you tremble still,’ he muttered, feeling her response to his words, and bent his head to place his lips against the warm hollow between her breasts, his fingers deft on the remaining buttons of her blouse. Against the fine silk of her camisole the burgeoning arousal of her nipples was clearly discernible. ‘But there is nothing to fear but fear, and for the brave the ultimate reward is unquantifiable; there is no price, no limit, no standard that can be placed on the pleasure of giving and receiving love’.

Through the thin silk his thumb probed the thrusting outline of her nipple and fierce pleasure throbbed through her, burning in a hot tide as he slid the silk away and brushed the dark aureole of flesh with his tongue, circling and stroking until she clutched mindlessly at his shoulders, gasping his name and shivering with the awareness of all that passion could be and the paucity of her ability to imagine what it might have been beforehand.

Hours, or was it only minutes later, she really didn’t know because time seemed to be suspended, Alexis was guiding her hands against his body, smiling at her wide-eyed awe at its beauty, as unembarrassed at his nudity as she was shy of hers, his mouth slightly skimming her skin, teasing, tantalising, arousing until she forgot all her anxiety about what she did not know and remembered only that he was the man she loved and that his skin tasted warm and salt against her lips and that her touch had the power to make him tense and shudder as vulnerable to her as she was to him.

His hands framed her face, his mouth hot on hers, compelling her response, sweeping her into the fierce surge of pleasure swirling through her body, the full powerful weight of him against her, the tension uncoiling from her body and a deep aching need taking its place.

She needed no urging to return his caresses when his hands and mouth roved over her body, inciting it to arch and echo the soft pleas mixed with the kisses she scattered against his skin. A voice inside her cried out that this was what she had been made for, and not even the powerful thrust of his body against hers had the power to frighten her.

‘Do you love me?’ He murmured the words against her mouth, moulding her hips with his hands, and then sliding them beneath her as he felt her body’s rhythmic response, and her moaned ‘Yes… Yes….’

His mouth brushed hers again as he lifted her towards him, parting her thighs with his, rasping the softness of her flesh. ‘Then give yourself to me,’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘All of you, Sienna… I want it all.’

The words echoed and resounded through her body and it responded elementally to them, welcoming his penetration, and then recoiling from the pain of it, more intense than she had dreamed possible. Alexis’ curse reaching her from far away, the surging pressure of his possession of her now something alien and to be feared rather than welcomed.

She lay beneath him, still trembling, trying valiantly to remember how much she had wanted him and trying equally valiantly to squash her pain and disillusionment and her fear that after all she had been right and she was not a woman who was ever going to experience great physical pleasure.

‘Did I hurt you?’ He sounded cold, distant, angry almost, and something inside her tensed as he moved away from her. Had she disappointed him? She must have done after all the women he had known….

‘A little,’ she lied, ‘but it will be better… next time….’ Her eyes pleaded with him for confirmation, for the words of reassurance and love to bring balm to her aching body, but he was standing up, shrugging the broad shoulders she had so recently worshipped with her lips, his expression bored and cynical.

‘No doubt it will,’ he agreed, ‘but not with me, Sienna. You will have to find another lover to teach you pleasure.’

She couldn’t take it in at first. She simply stared at him while the words played over and over in her numbed brain. ‘You mean….’

She tried to formulate her thoughts, but he cut across her husky, whisper and said curtly, ‘What I mean is that I have achieved what I set out to do, and I have taken your viginity just as your brother took my sister’s, but with a little more grace. She was brutally raped!’

‘Raped!’ Sienna struggled valiantly to make sense out of what he was saying, unable to comprehend what was happening; where the man she had believed to be her lover had gone, and who this stranger who had taken his place was. ‘But you said you loved me… you….’

‘So naïve! Didn’t your mother ever warn you that that’s what all men tell you when they want you go to bed with them? You were so easy to deceive,’ he told her cruelly. ‘Almost too easy.’

Sienna stole a glance at his dark, taunting face, her eyes drawn with a compulsion it was impossible for her to master to the cold clear outline of his mouth. Sickness and self-contempt welled up inside her. Dear God, what a fool she had been! He was right, she had made it easy for him, easy to steal her heart and destroy her precious daydreams with his words of love which had been nothing more than cruel lies.

‘Drink this.’ A glass of water was thrust in front of her, the liquid faintly cloudy. ‘You should be thankful that I didn’t take you as your brother did my sister; brutally, despoiling her….’

‘Rob wouldn’t do that—I know he wouldn’t! I think I hate you!’ she added vehemently, her voice low and shaken.

‘Hate me?’ His mouth was wry ‘Not half an hour ago you were telling me how much you loved me, that I and I alone held your heart. Sleep now. In the morning….’

In the morning? Did he honestly expect her to stay here with him after what he had just said to her? Shock had robbed her of the ability to feel real pain, but she knew it was there waiting for her and when it began she wanted to be alone. She loved him, and he had just been using her, callously and completely without regard for her feelings. She had loved in ideal, she told herself fiercely, a dream image of a man who didn’t exist. She must not love him, she must force herself to face the truth.

‘I want to leave now,’ she said curtly. ‘I’ll ring for a taxi.’ She saw the surprise he couldn’t quite conceal and said bitterly, ‘What did you expect? That I would plead with you? Break down and beg you to love me? I’ve already made a fool of myself once tonight!’

‘Sienna.’ Incredibly he dared to touch her, frowning when she froze beneath the touch of his fingers on her arm. ‘You must understand that I meant you no personal harm….’

‘No, I was just the means by which you accomplished your revenge,’ she agreed tightly. ‘What would you have done if Rob hadn’t had a sister? If I hadn’t been a virgin? How would you have played God then?’

She had the satisfaction of seeing his face darken in suppressed anger. ‘I made it my business to find out everything I could about your brother and his family. Had you not existed I would have found another way, but this was the most fitting.’

‘An eye for an eye,’ Sienna agreed curtly. Was she really having this conversation? She felt as though she had strayed into some horrendous nightmare and only the terrible fear that she might break down and cry out her pain and anguish in front of this man—her enemy, enabled her to maintain control of her emotions.

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