LITMIR.BIZ

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affair. Or maybe she wasn’t capable of operating on that level.

      Because already her feelings for him were changing. Minute by minute, she could feel it happening. She’d started to care what he thought of her. She’d started searching for emotions in his dark eyes. And it was a waste of time. He’d been completely honest about his reasons for wanting to have sex with her again—so why try to make it into something it wasn’t? Embarking on a quest to make it into something it could never be was only ever going to bring her heartbreak.

      She lay in the water for a long time—long enough for the skin at the ends of her fingers to become white and wrinkled. Long enough for Loukas to have grown bored with waiting, and to have made his escape, perhaps leaving behind a note scribbled on a piece of hotel notepaper. Because he certainly wasn’t knocking at the bathroom door, asking her how long she was going to be.

      Was he aware that a strange kind of shyness had crept over her as they’d stared at one another over the head of little Marco? That in that moment, she had glimpsed the little boy he’d once been and all the sadness he had known. She’d found herself thinking of the children she might have had with him. But Loukas doesn’t want children, she reminded herself. He had been very clear about that.

      Dragging a brush through her damp hair, she put on the massive bathrobe which was hanging on the back of the door and padded barefoot into her room, to find Loukas stretched out in one of the chairs, seemingly fast asleep. His eyes were closed and his face looked curiously relaxed as classical music drifted out from an unseen sound system.

      She stood there, uncertain of whether or not she should wake him, when his lashes flickered apart and she was caught in the gleam of his ebony eyes.

      ‘Hi,’ he said softly. ‘Good bath?’

      She nodded, the lump in her throat making it impossible for her to speak because as he’d asked the innocent question it had sounded so heartbreakingly...domestic. It mocked her and taunted her with its implied intimacy. A real intimacy, which they’d never really shared.

      There was a sudden knock on the door and she looked at him.

      ‘Room Service,’ he said, in answer to the question in her eyes

      ‘I didn’t order anything from Room Service.’

      ‘No, but I did. Why don’t you just get into bed, Jess? You look shattered. And don’t look at me as if I’m the big, bad wolf, koukla mou.’ His voice dipped. ‘I am perfectly capable of being in the same room without leaping on you.’

      She nodded, feeling the see-sawing of her own emotions in response to the things he was saying. She hadn’t wanted sex, but suddenly she was finding that maybe she did. Only he seemed more concerned with getting his dinner!

      But at least his back was turned as he answered the door, so that he wouldn’t see her nakedness as she let the bathrobe slide to the floor before getting quickly into bed. It felt blissful as she sank into the mattress, the sheet cool and smooth beneath her clean skin, the duvet falling on top of her like a big, soft cloud.

      She told herself she wasn’t hungry but she must have been, because when he brought the food over to her—some sort of vegetable broth, followed by a toasted cheese sandwich—she began to devour it with an appetite which felt heightened. Comfort food, that was what they called food like this, and never had a description seemed more apt. After she’d finished she lay back against the feathery bank of pillows as the sound of violins filtered softly through the air.

      ‘Better?’ he questioned.

      ‘Much.’ She yawned. ‘I didn’t know you liked classical music.’

      ‘Too brutish a sound for a rough, tough ex-bodyguard?’ His eyes glittered. ‘You thought I’d be more into heavy metal?’

      Too comfortable to object, Jessica smiled lazily. ‘Something like that.’

      ‘Why don’t you close your eyes, Jess? Stop fighting it. You look exhausted.’

      His deep accent was lulling her. It felt like velvet pressing against her skin. She wanted to ask him what he was planning, but her eyelids were heavy and she thought about his words and wondered what she was trying to fight. She drifted into a sleep which was light enough to feel the mattress dip when he got in beside her. He pulled her against him and the pleasant shock of honed muscle and warm skin told her that he, too, was naked. Did that mean he did want sex?

      ‘Loukas,’ she mumbled.

      ‘Shh,’ he said, his arms tightening around her waist as he pulled her even closer and the room fell into darkness as he clicked off the lamp.

      She must have slept because when she drifted back into consciousness, it was to find her head pillowed comfortably against his shoulder, her lips right next to the burr of his unshaven jaw. She kissed it. She couldn’t help it; her lips seemed programmed to brush over that proud curve. He mumbled something as his hand slid down to cup her bottom while the other reached behind her head and guided her lips towards his.

      That first kiss was lazy. It seemed to happen in slow motion, as if they had all the time in the world. As if she’d never really kissed him properly before. And maybe she hadn’t. Beneath the protective cloak of darkness it seemed that there were a million ways to explore a man’s mouth, and Jessica was about to discover every one of them. She could feel him smile as, slowly, she traced the tip of her tongue over the cushioned surface. He gave a murmur of satisfaction as she pressed kiss after little kiss against him. His body felt warm and comfortable against hers and soon she began to trickle her fingertip over his chest, allowing it to continue its path inexorably downwards. But he stopped her when she reached the dark whorls of hair which lay at the base of his belly, wreathing the sudden hard jerk of his erection.

      ‘No. Not yet,’ he said urgently. ‘I’m so turned on, I hardly dare risk putting on a condom.’

      She swallowed, because something about his words had sent crazy thoughts splintering into her mind. ‘But you will?’

      ‘Yes, I will. Even though I long to feel myself naked inside you. My skin bare against your skin. My seed in your body.’

      His words excited her, but presumably that had been his intention. They reminded her that for Loukas this was all about technique—a bit like tennis, really. It might feel deep and emotional and highly intimate, but that was her stuff. Her stupid desires. And she mustn’t give into them. She mustn’t.

      But it was hard not to be swept away when he was kissing each of her breasts with a thoroughness which felt almost like tenderness. Or when he lifted her up effortlessly to slide her down on top of him, murmuring silky words in Greek which sounded almost loving. Suspecting that he would want to watch her moving up and down on him, she waited for him to reach over and put the light on—but he didn’t. And the lack of a spotlight on her face meant that she could give into what she really wanted to do, and what she wanted to do more than anything was not hold back. So she tangled her fingers in this thick hair and she told him he was beautiful. And if his big body stiffened for a moment and she sensed his sudden suspicion, that was quickly forgotten when she rode him with a determination which suddenly seemed outside her own control.

      ‘Jess,’ he gasped, and she’d never heard him say her name like that before.

      But then her thoughts were blotted out and her body tensed around him.

      And the most stupid thing of all was that she found herself wishing that he hadn’t worn a condom.

       CHAPTER TEN

      ‘THESE ARE AMAZING,’ said Gabe Steel slowly. ‘Probably the most amazing transformation I’ve seen all year. Cinderella doesn’t come close to it.’

      Loukas stared at the mocked-up advert which covered most of the advertising chief’s large desk and drank in the images staring back at him. Jessica Cartwright looking like he’d

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