LITMIR.BIZ

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lives. They knew that Andreas never came to the island when Louisa was visiting.

      In quiet words of Greek he instructed Yannis to help Jamie with the luggage. Andreas waited until they’d disappeared inside the hotel before he closed the car boot then turned to Louisa, who was still standing by the rear passenger door.

      ‘By tomorrow we will be the talk of the island,’ he drily predicted.

      ‘So what’s new there?’ Louisa responded, only to instantly regret the acid in her tone. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured.

      ‘Why be sorry for speaking the truth?’ He came to lean against the car beside her, side-on so he was facing her, hands in his pockets—too close for comfort and placing her senses on full alert. ‘I don’t give a damn about what others wish to say about me.'

      ‘You never did.’ Folding her arms across her body, Louisa fixed her eyes on her flat shoes and tried not to notice how tall he seemed standing this close beside her, how big and so skin-tinglingly masculine he—

      ‘No,’ he agreed. Then he really shattered her comfort zone by lifting up a set of fingers to gently stroke her cheek. ‘I was shocked out of my senses when I saw you walk off the ferry,’ he confided softly. ‘For a moment I thought I was dreaming.'

      ‘Stuff nightmares are made of.’ Lifting her chin up, she winged him a brief, tense smile then looked away again, dislodging his fingers at the same time.

      All he did was to move the fingers to hook a stray lock of hair behind her ear. ‘Not from where I was standing, agape mou.’

      This time Louisa stiffened right away from him. ‘Don’t toy with me, Andreas,’ she said tensely. ‘I was touching, not toying.’ ‘You have no right to do either.’ ‘I feel like I do …’

      That was some blunt confession to utter! ‘How dare you say that?’ She swung on him furiously.

      He grimaced, the hand going back in his pocket. ‘Because you are still my wife?'

      Stark, cold images of what he had been doing the last time she’d seen him in their apartment in Athens sprang like a burning blister into her head. Louisa tensed away from him then used up every single one of the next ten seconds to struggle with what was now crawling around inside her, while he dared—dared to lean against the side of the car and watch her with that lazily mocking challenge on his too handsome face!

      She lost the battle. On a seething short breath she stabbed her left hand out. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘no gold wedding ring on my finger. No sign that I ever belonged to you at all! I use the name Jonson now—Miss Jonson! I do not think of myself as a Markonos any more!'

      ‘Washed me right out of your life?’ he quizzed idly.

      ‘Yes!’ she confirmed it.

      He grabbed her and kissed her.

      It was so unexpected that before she’d even realized what was happening he’d crushed her hard up against him and was in full, burning possession of her mouth. Lights switched on all over her body. It was that quick, that explosive, like being dragged into a seething cauldron of remembered intimacy that felt crazily as though she had never lost it at all!

      Her breath caught in her throat as her lips responded, parting to his warm, moist invasion like hungry traitors to greedily invite him to do his worst. She didn’t want to believe this was happening—in some wildly shocked part of her brain she was horrified that he could still do this to her, yet at the same time she was drowning in the sheer pleasure of it, lost without a shred of control. His hands had control of her body, long fingers, passionately restless, moving on her hips and her spine. He was pressing her close; she could feel stirring evidence of his passion and felt her senses stir in response.

      And through it all their mouths moved on each other, hot, hungry, deeply intimate. Oh, so dreadfully intimate it came as a terrible shock when he just as suddenly pushed her back from him, making the air between them splinter with the sound of their mutual thick groans.

      Holding her at arm’s length, he let his fingers bite into her shoulders, eyes like glinting black lasers locked onto the swirling, shocked passion darkening her own.

      Then he spoke, hard, tight, cruelly mocking. ‘Not quite washed me away, agape mou, hm?'

      The unforgivable taunt crowned her tumbling sense of degradation. She began to tremble violently. Tears stung hotly in her throat.

      ‘Me and the thousand others,’ she hit back in thick and shaking, seething disgust then pulled free of him and ran into the hotel.

      Andreas watched her go and struggled to believe he’d actually said and done that.

      Why had he done it? What the hell was the matter with him?

      A string of tight curses raked from his tense lips as he spun around to face the car, because he knew the answer. It lay in the million dark forces running riot inside him—not one of them fit to justify him grabbing her like that.

      Her and the thousand others.

      What a damn great joke, he thought bitterly, and another set of curses leapt from him as he tugged the car door open and slammed himself inside.

      Still cursing, he took off from the hotel with a cruel spin of tyres.

      Leaning back against the hotel doors listening to the tyres spit up gravel as the car took off, Louisa was trembling so badly she felt ready to sink into a weak, limbless huddle on the floor.

      And her lips were throbbing, the hot, bitter tears that burned her eyes threatening to spill. How could he do that? How could he have just grabbed her and kissed her like that?

      A shimmer of something horrendously desperate went riddling right through her. It settled like a sting between her thighs and on the tips of her breasts.

      ‘You OK?’

      The sound of Jamie’s uncertain tone dragged her gaze to her brother. ‘I’m f-fine,’ she lied, fighting to pull herself together.

      He did not look convinced. ‘Did he say something to upset you?'

      ‘No,’ she lied yet again. ‘We—we’re both suffering from shock, that’s all.'

      But there was a lot more than shock rattling around inside her, Louisa had to admit hours later when she was still pacing her bedroom too shaken up to think beyond the whole face-to-face meeting with Andreas followed by that kiss and the humiliating way she’d fallen into it without a fight.

      ‘Oh, give me strength,’ she groaned as a flood of heat pooled low down in her abdomen, taunting her with her own wildly uncontrolled response.

      How could she have done that? She couldn’t still want him. She didn’t want to still want him! Wrapping her arms around her body, she paced over to the window to stare out at the velvet-dark night. It was late and the old-fashioned double bed standing behind her should have been inviting, but each time she so much as glanced at it her stupid imagination conjured up an image of him lying there naked and waiting for her like a terrible guilty wish and—

      With a jerk she took herself off to the tiny bathroom and switched the shower on. Ten minutes later, shivering with cold and grim determination, she dived between the cool linen sheets and told herself to get over that stupid kiss and go to sleep.

      Andreas lounged on a chair on the terrace, the glittering darkness of his gaze fixed on the silk dark night. In front of him on a table stood the decanter of brandy and a large pot of strong coffee keeping warm on a burner.

      He had changed his mind about getting drunk tonight.

      His recent conversation with his parents had been short and pithy, his father’s only saving grace being that he had not known Louisa was on the ferry when they’d had their after-dinner chat.

      His mother had been a different matter. Her lack of apology in the face of his anger had been nothing short of defiant. ‘I have to admit

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