One-Click Buy: November Harlequin Presents (34 page)

‘Yes, I heard.'

Slowly she turned back to face him, her expression carefully blank.

‘You want me to stay as your nurse or as…?'

She couldn't find a word to express the alternative—lover—partner—mistress—
wife
?—and so she just let the sentence trail off unfinished.

‘As whatever you want.'

Then an arrogant flick of his hand dismissed the question.

‘Definitely not my nurse! You know what I think of that idea. So why don't you just stay—as my guest? Then if you think you need to keep an eye on me you can.'

‘And what would I do the rest of the time?'

‘Oh, I feel sure that we will think of something.'

‘Like what?' Becca demanded, eyeing him warily.

A note in his voice told her that the flirtatious mood of a short time before had not, as she had thought, evaporated when she'd called his bluff by heading for the door. In fact every instinct she had ever had where this man was concerned was screaming at her that the lazy sensuality of his smile was deceptive in its indolence. The black eyes might be hooded and partially hidden under heavy lids but she could see enough of the gleam in them to know that his thoughts were not on the idea of her taking care of him—in the nursing a convalescent meaning of the words, at least.

‘Like this,' Andreas murmured with misleading softness and before she was even aware of the fact that he had anything planned, or could even think of taking any avoidance moves, he took several long, firm strides forward, covering the distance between them in a matter of seconds.

This time she had no warning. This time there was no change in his voice, no hint from the look in his eyes. This time he took her completely by surprise and so instantly had the upper hand, with total control over the situation.

‘Like this,' he said again, low and rough.

His hand came under her chin, holding it tight. He lifted her face towards his and his mouth came down hard on hers, taking it in a burning, searing kiss that made her thought processes stop dead, then shatter into a million tiny fragments.

She couldn't think; she could only feel. And what she felt was heat. The heat of his mouth, his breath on her skin. The heat of his arms coming round her, that long, powerful body so very close to hers. But it wasn't just a physical heat that blazed through her. There was the burning fire of response, the sensation of her blood temperature climbing higher and higher with each accelerated beat of her heart. Her whole system was going into meltdown, her mind seeming to cease to exist, her nerves, her skin, even her bones becoming molten with desire so that she sagged against him, unable to hold herself upright, and it was only the strength of his support around her that kept her from collapsing in a trembling and abandoned heap right at his feet.

‘Andreas—' she began against the pressure of his lips, but the attempt to speak, to try to form some sort of protest that she was incapable of sustaining, gave him the opportunity he was waiting for.

In the moment that her mouth partly opened, Andreas seized his chance and deepened the kiss with sensual deliberation. Her parted lips were crushed even more under the passion of his, his tongue sliding into the exposed warmth, the soft moisture, tangling with hers in an intimate dance that made her senses swoon, had her fingers closing over his arms, clenching tight.

But this time it wasn't the need for support that had her holding him close, as close as she could. This time it was pure physical need that made her clutch at him this way. The need to feel his lean, hard frame against hers, feel the pressure of the strong bones of his chest, his ribcage against her breasts, the curve of his pelvis cradling her hips. And because of that closeness there was no way she could be unaware of the swell of his forceful erection, hot and hard against her, communicating need and passion in a way that no words ever could.

Cold need and heartless passion.

The icy little voice of reason slid into her mind, stopping the heat of her reaction dead, so fast that it made her head spin.

Andreas Petrakos was totally capable of coming on full and hard with his mouth, his tongue, his body, when no part at all of his mind was involved—and least of all his
heart
!

Hadn't he shown that when he had brought her here the first time, just after their marriage? When he had brought her into the house, barely stopping to shut the door as he went through it. When he had kissed her as they mounted the stairs and taken her into the bedroom, his mouth practically welded to hers. And with his hands hotly, hungrily busy on her body, finding the fastenings of her clothing blind, dealing with them with rough haste, discarding them like a Hansel and Gretel trail leading from the hallway to his room.

And in that room he had made the hottest, most ardent, most passionate love in the world to her, waking a matching hunger in every inch of her quivering body, showing her pleasures she had never believed possible, taking her to heights of ecstasy she had never known before.

Before dropping her right down to earth again with a sickening, agonising thud, just a few, devastatingly short hours later. She still had the scars on her heart where his black cruelty had slashed into it.

And with the memory everything inside her froze in an instant. The rush of heat that had flooded her body ebbed away as fast—faster—than it had come, taking all the passion with it.

‘Becca?'

Andreas had sensed her withdrawal, her stillness, and his kisses stopped, adding another terrible sensation to the thousands of whirling feelings in Becca's head and in her heart.

‘No…'

It was all that she could manage and it was just a whisper. A thin thread of sound that did nothing to express what she really felt deep inside: the searing agony of loss, the desperation of knowing that she was so weak—too weak—the bitter despair of knowing that Andreas had only to touch her, to kiss her and she had fallen into his arms, into his control like a foolish child, one that had not yet learned that fire burned—again and again and again.

‘No…' she tried again, managing to make it actually sound like a word this time. But she still couldn't put any real force into it. She still couldn't make it sound like the word that was ringing inside her head, screaming to be heard.

No, no, no,
no
! that voice said. Loud and clear and savagely honest. A voice that no one could doubt she meant.

But that voice was the voice of panic. The voice of pain. The voice of the woman who had once loved this man so desperately that she had rushed into marriage with him without stopping to think. It was the voice of the woman whose heart he had broken. The voice of the woman whose love had turned to hatred in the black, terrible moments as she forced herself to walk away from him—fighting a cruel bitter war with her longing to turn back, to see him just once more.

It was the voice of the woman that she couldn't let Andreas see.

Not now, not ever, at least until he had his memory back and he knew once more who she was. Not until she had had a chance to talk to him, to ask him for help for Daisy. To save the baby's life.

And even then she couldn't—wouldn't ever let him see just what he had done to her. She couldn't let him begin to guess how much he had destroyed her life.

And she most definitely couldn't do it now.

‘No?'

For a moment she thought it was still her own voice screaming inside her head. But then on a jolt of her heart, she realised that it was Andreas and that he had put a darkly questioning note onto the word.

One that meant she had to find an explanation for her sudden change of mood. A reason why she had been a willing, an eager partner one moment and then slammed the brakes on hard the next. And even in her own mind, looking at her actions, she saw with a shiver how her behaviour might be interpreted. How it could seem that she didn't know her own mind or—worse—was some sort of tease who had now decided to call a sudden halt.

‘Y
OU
—upstairs—you said you thought this was a bad idea.'

Looking into his face, she felt her heart skip a beat as she saw the way he frowned, the black, straight brows snapping together over the brilliant eyes. Eyes that she could see were burning with frustration, with refusal to admit the need to stop. For a second she thought that he was going to argue with her but then, slowly, he nodded…

‘It is a bad idea when I don't know who I am or the first thing about our past together. And you're not going to tell me about that, are you?'

That at least was easy to answer, but still Becca couldn't find any words, only managing a silent shake of her head as a reply.

‘I understand. I know the doctors have said that it's better I wait for things to come back by themselves—if they come back. And that does complicate matters.'

He might be agreeing with her but he still wasn't letting her go. And somehow the fact that he wasn't actually kissing her made the way he was holding her so tight, so close, even more intimate than before.

His voice might be calm and civil, his expression controlled, but there was nothing remotely restrained or civilised in the swollen flesh that pressed so hard against her. And equally primitive was the hungry reaction that was raging through her as senses and nerves tantalised awake by the touch of Andreas' hand, the force of his kiss, were forced to adjust to the sudden loss of the heated pleasure, and protested wildly at having to do so.

‘But only in that way.'

Black eyes blazed down into Becca's upturned face, the heat in them seeming to scorch her skin and making her shift uneasily from one foot to another. Andreas' intense gaze flickered for a moment as he watched the small movement, but he didn't release her or adjust his position at all. If anything he held her tighter. So tight that she could hear the heavy, powerful thud of his heart so close to her cheek, echoing her own restless pulse rate that refused to settle down into normal again.

‘In every other way it felt right. So right that I don't want it to stop…'

He was drawing her close again but then, for a moment, his voice hesitated, that intent focus of his eyes seeming to blur and look clouded.

‘Andr…' Becca began then let the rest of his name evaporate in a rush of sheer panic. Her heart seemed to stop, actually stand still and then lurch back into movement at a violent, uneven pace as the reason for his sudden abstraction hit home like a blow to her mind.

Was he remembering her? Starting to recall anything about his past—and about the part she had played in it?

Upstairs, in the bedroom, in the moment she had known that he wanted to kiss her and before he had run his hand down her cheek in the gesture that had torn at her heart, he had had just this sort of a look on his face. His eyes had seemed to become unfocused then as if his thoughts were not on the present but somewhere else, in the past, in the life he could not remember.

And that was what she wanted—wasn't it?

Wasn't it?

Or was it?

She needed him to know what had happened between them before she could even start to have a hope of asking him for help. Before she could tell him about Daisy and the vital operation the baby needed. And if kissing her—more than kissing her—jolted his memories back into place then why not go along with it, at least for now?

‘That's better,' she heard Andreas murmur and knew that, in spite of herself, the direction of her thoughts had brought her closer to him, made her body soften against his. And when his hand slid under her chin again, lifting her mouth to his once more, she had no strength to fight him.

Or, rather, she had no strength to fight herself. This was what she wanted after all. There was no way she could deny it any longer. This was what her awakened senses demanded, what they yearned for. She needed his mouth on hers, needed the hard, intimate pressure, the warm, slick exploration of his tongue. And as his hands began to move over her she knew she needed that too. Everything inside her that had been folded tightly in on itself, closed off, shut away, now seemed to slowly unfurl, like a flower opening to the sun. And in just the same way that the flower instinctively turned towards the greatest, most glorious, most powerful source of heat and light, so without being able to stop herself she swayed towards Andreas, pressing herself against those caressing hands, writhing under the pleasure of his touch.

Murmurs of delight she couldn't hold back escaped her lips in the brief moments that he allowed her to breathe and his name was a sigh on her lips, breathed into his mouth so that he swallowed down the sound as he took possession of her lips again.

‘You see,' he murmured, husky and soft, letting that tormenting mouth slide along the line of her jaw so that she lifted her chin to tauten the muscles there, feeling it more intensely as he kissed his way to the most sensitive spot just under her ear. ‘This is right. So right.'

One of those caressing hands had moved to her neck now, tangling in the soft hair at the base of her skull, twisting, tugging, pulling her head backwards so that he exposed the whole of her neck and the long, fine line down to her shoulder and the valley between her breasts that lay in the deep V-neckline of her dress. Becca's head swam as she felt the heat of his breath, the soft, tantalising caress of his mouth as it moved down into that warm valley of her cleavage.

‘I want you…'

She felt as well as heard the words. They feathered over her skin, humid as the breath that seemed to slip inside her bra, coil around her nipples, making them tighten into stingingly aroused peaks that yearned for a touch that was harder, more forceful than a whisper of heated air.

‘I want you,' he said again.

And she wanted him. The need was a heavy pulse between her legs, a throbbing demand from every aching nerve end along her body. Who cared if the sensual memories hidden in Andreas' numbed brain took him back into the past they had shared? So what if the touch of her lips, the taste of her skin, woke him to a recollection of exactly who she was and what she had been to him? He had to remember some time, it was inevitable. And surely it was better that he remembered sooner rather than later so that the truth was out in the open and they could renegotiate from there?

But the real truth was that she couldn't stop herself. And as her body rediscovered the pleasures she had thought she had forgotten she knew that she wanted this. She
needed
it. She had been dying inside for almost a year for the loss of it.

This
was
right, her sensual instincts told her. This was what had always been right between them. In Andreas' arms she had always felt that she was where she belonged, that she had come home. This was the one thing that had never gone wrong between them; the thing that had still been there at the end when it seemed that everything else had gone, been destroyed by hatred, distrust and cruel rejection.

Rejection.

The word was a cold, hard, vicious blade that slashed through the heated delirium inside her head, breaking open her sensual fantasies and making the wild, foolish dreams evaporate, once more letting in the icy winds of reality and self-preservation.

What was she doing courting that rejection all over again? Could she go through that pain, that loss, that terrible, terrible devastation a second time? It had almost destroyed her the first time and yet here she was risking her heart, her soul, all over again.

She couldn't do this just for the pleasure, for the physical satisfaction it would bring. It would destroy her if she did. But Andreas could. He had already done so once and she had no doubt that he could do it again. Whether his memory returned or not, he could take her, use her, take all she had to give and then turn and walk away without a backward look.

And the dread that brought made her stiffen against his stroking hands.

‘Andreas…' she tried but he wasn't listening. His mouth was still caressing her skin, his hands moving down over the soft blue skirt of her dress, over her hips, inching the material upwards as they did so.

‘Andreas—stop!'

Driven by rising panic, she twisted away from him sharply, fear giving her strength she didn't know she possessed. The force of her reaction took her halfway across the room before she came to a halt and was able to face him, eyes wide, her breath coming in raw, uneven gasps.

She couldn't really see him, her gaze was blurred and unfocused, and she was grateful for the way that hid the reality of his expression from her.

‘No,' she said breathlessly, struggling for control. ‘No, it isn't right—it can't be right! This isn't going to happen—I won't let it happen.'

‘
You
won't let it happen?'

Andreas' voice was a cynical drawl and one dark eyebrow lifted in mocking response to her outburst.

‘Lady, you are fooling yourself if you expect me to believe that.'

‘Of course I expect you to believe it! I—'

‘But I don't. I don't believe a word that comes from your lovely mouth.'

‘You—you don't?'

Andreas shook his head in firm response to her shaken question. Her vision had cleared now and she could see his face. Immediately she wished she had the comfort of the protective blur back when she saw his burning eyes fixed on her face in a look of pure scorn.

‘You expect me to believe your cowardly little protest when I know the truth?'

‘Oh, so you're a mind-reader now?'

No—defiance was a bad move. She saw it in his face, in the way that those beautifully shaped lips clamped tightly together over some savage retort that he had hastily caught back.

‘I don't need to read
minds
,' he bit out. ‘But I am pretty good at understanding body language. Unfortunately for you. Because your body was speaking the truth—the truth you're now trying to pretend never happened.'

‘I—No—I'm not pretending!'

‘You're either pretending now or you were then—you can't have it both ways, Becca. So which one is it?'

Oh, how did she answer that? How did she tell him something that explained her behaviour and yet didn't give her away completely? The only thing she knew was that she couldn't let him believe that she had simply been leading him on—that was the course most likely to have Andreas demand that she leave right here and now. And then she would never be able to help Daisy. And saving Daisy's life was uppermost in her mind right now.

‘All right—I'm sorry…'

She actually held out her hand towards him, as if pleading with him, begging him to take it. But the way that he watched the gesture, regarding it coldly with blank and unresponsive eyes, brought her up sharp. Becca felt as if she might just as well have slammed her hand against a hard brick wall and had to struggle to resist the temptation to snatch it back and cradle it against her as if his wintry response had actually hurt her physically.

‘I'm sorry…' she said again, fighting to find something she could say.

‘You said that already,' Andreas flung back, folding his arms across the broad expanse of his chest as his dark head went back, black eyes searing over her in a look of supreme contempt as he looked down his straight slash of a nose at her. ‘Try something else. Sorry for what?'

‘For—for overreacting.'

It was the only thing she could think of. The truth—or at least as close to the truth as she dared to go—seemed to be the only way to handle this. In any case, the partial truth was the only thing she trusted herself to be able to say without making it painfully plain that she was actually lying.

She'd hoped that that would be enough but, from Andreas' set, unyielding expression, it was far from adequate. If anything those folded arms tightened expressively and his upper lip actually curled in an expression of arrogant scorn.

She was going to have to try harder to convince him.

‘I—I do w-want you.'

Really, there was no point in denying that. Her response to him had made it only too plain and she would only incense him further if she tried to pretend otherwise. If there was one thing that Andreas hated it was lies. A miserably cold, sneaking shiver went down her spine as she recalled the one time she had tried to keep the truth from him. She hadn't actually
lied
but she might as well have done. The fallout had been as bad as if she had.

‘Then what are you doing over on the other side of the room while I'm here?'

‘Because—because…'

Desperation brought inspiration and she hurried the words out, needing them to be said so that she could see if they had the effect she hoped for—the effect she prayed they would.

‘Because you were right—it isn't a good idea. It isn't sensible…'

Andreas rolled his eyes in an expression of exasperation.

‘And we must always be sensible, mustn't we?'

‘Well, you've just had a terrible accident.'