Greek Bachelors: In Need Of A Wife: Christakis's Rebellious Wife / Greek Tycoon, Waitress Wife / The Mediterranean's Wife by Contract

And then mercifully a voice from outside broke into the smouldering silence. ‘Come back here!’ a man was shouting.

The pitter-patter of rushing paws and an unforgettably familiar bark made Betsy’s eyes fly wide in recognition and she hurtled to the door to peer out. An ecstatic bundle of wriggling, whining terrier dog leapt up into her arms and covered every part of her he could reach with delighted doggy kisses.

‘I’m very sorry, sir. He leapt through the window of the car,’ Nik’s driver confided in breathless pursuit.

Nik was tempted to remark that that had to be the most life Gizmo had shown in the two months since he had retrieved the dog from Betsy. With a nod of dismissal to his driver, he thrust the front door closed with an impatient hand and studied the tableau before him. Betsy was down on her knees on the tiled floor smiling and laughing and the terrier was bouncing and leaping around her, the pair of them enacting a mutually jubilant reconciliation scene that even Nik could not remain untouched by. He knew he had made the right decision.

‘You brought him here to visit me?’ Betsy questioned, glancing up enquiringly, utterly confused by the dog’s sudden appearance.

‘No, he’s here to stay,’ Nik informed her wryly. ‘He’s not happy away from you.’

‘But he’s your dog,’ she framed uncertainly, gathering Gizmo into her arms and stroking him to calm him down.

‘He was only mine until he met you,’ Nik retorted, compressing his mouth into a sardonic line while he noted as she bent over the dog the slight definitive bounce of her small breasts below her sweater, which told him that she was wearing nothing underneath. He became so hard in that split second that he was in literal pain.

Giving Gizmo back to her was an extraordinarily generous gesture and an astonishing move from a male as cold-blooded and unforgiving as Nik, Betsy reflected in bewilderment while she struggled to understand his reasoning. Unfortunately, Nik might be gorgeous but he was also complicated, impossibly so. She had never had much idea what went on inside his handsome head and once again he had taken her very much by surprise.

Gizmo was a stray, who had been knocked over by Nik’s limousine months before Betsy even met Nik. He had taken the dog to a veterinary surgery for treatment and when nobody came forward to claim him he had asked the vet to try and find him a home. When that had failed, Nik had baulked at the prospect of putting the little dog into a council home for strays where he would ultimately be put down if he still failed to attract a new owner. Against all the odds, Nik had taken in Gizmo himself, introducing the little animal to a roof garden and a life of luxury food, dog walkers and groomers.

While Betsy reflected on Gizmo’s humble beginnings as a stray, Nik was wishing he had stayed safe at the office. Watching Betsy shower affection on his dog filled him with conflicting feelings. He wanted to look at her but he didn’t want to be with her or note the way the sunlight flooding through the windows gleamed over her impossibly pale blonde hair, accentuating her porcelain-perfect skin and haunting blue eyes. He especially didn’t want the intensely sexual arousal currently coursing through his big, powerful body like a runaway train.

‘Thank you from the bottom of my heart,’ Betsy told him with tears in her eyes. ‘I’ve missed him so much.’

Restored to his proper home, Gizmo trotted off cheerfully to explore his old haunts.

Nik studied Betsy with smouldering green eyes and her heart gave a sudden jarring thud.

Betsy knew that look of hunger on Nik’s hard, handsome face and it burned through her like a lightning strike, riveting her to the spot. That light in his stunning gaze told her that he wanted her and she couldn’t stop her body reacting to that lure. An unbearable ache stirred at the apex of her slender thighs and she pressed them tightly together as if she could lock it in and deny it. Her breasts swelled beneath her sweater, making her all too aware of their bareness as her nipples were grazed by the wool.

‘Come into the sitting room,’ she urged, scrambling upright to lead the way as if he were a genuine guest visiting an unfamiliar place. ‘Why didn’t Edna tell me it was you?’

‘I asked her not to. I wanted to surprise you.’

‘Well, you’ve certainly done that,’ Betsy admitted truthfully, struggling to credit that he was actually with her in what had once been the home they shared, even if it did cross her mind that Nik had spent more time in hotel rooms round the globe than he had ever spent with her. But that look he had given her—her thoughts raced back to that, worrying at it like a dog at a bone. Why had he looked at her like that? Surely he could not still find her attractive? Nik had been a less than enthusiastic lover in the last months of their marriage, although, now knowing about the vasectomy as she did, she could finally comprehend his loss of interest. Back then she had only thought of sex in terms of getting pregnant and she had no doubt that he had found her attitude a turn-off. No, don’t think about sex, don’t think about sex, she urged herself feverishly.

Betsy hovered awkwardly. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ she asked, because she was eager for the chance to escape to the kitchen for a few minutes and pull herself back together again.

‘No, thanks, but I’ll take a drink,’ Nik declared, long, powerful legs carrying him across the room to the drinks cabinet, where he proceeded to help himself.

Unnerved by the fact that he could still confidently make himself at home while remaining utterly impervious to the discomfiture some men might have felt in the same situation, Betsy breathed in slow and deep to ground herself. ‘I gather you want to talk—’

Nik spun back to her with the liquid grace of movement that always caught her eye and frowned at her, black brows drawing down, wide, sensual mouth twisting in dismissal. ‘No. I don’t want to talk,’ he told her abruptly before he tossed back the finger of Scotch whisky he had poured neat and set down the empty glass again.

‘Then...er...why?’ she began in confusion.

His spectacular green eyes zeroed in on her with penetrating force and a flock of butterflies was unleashed in her tummy while her heartbeat kicked up pace again. ‘I’m only here to return Gizmo.’

‘Oh...’ Betsy framed for want of anything better to say. A few months ago she would have shot accusations at him, demanded answers and would have thoroughly upset herself and him by resurrecting the past, which consumed her. But that time was gone, she acknowledged painfully, well aware that any reference to more personal issues would only send him out of the door faster. Nik had always avoided the personal, the private, the deeper, messier stuff that other people got swamped by. From the minute things went wrong in their marriage she had been on her own.

Nik scrutinised her lovely face, willing himself to find fault, urging himself to discover some imperfection that would switch his body back to safe neutral mode again. And yet on another level he was relieved, even satisfied by his arousal, grateful for the discovery that there was nothing at all amiss with his sex drive. Nor could he think of anything that could quench the swelling fullness of desire holding him rigid, unquestionably not the tantalising awareness that Betsy, all five feet nothing of her and regardless of her lack of experience before their marriage, was absolutely incredible in bed.

‘Se thelo...I want you,’ he heard himself admit before he was even aware that the words were on his tongue.

So Nik, so explosively unpredictable, Betsy reasoned abstractedly, colour rushing into her cheeks as a hot wave of awareness engulfed her. Jewel-bright eyes assailed hers in an almost physical collision and something low and intimate in her body clenched hard. Her legs turned so weak she wasn’t convinced they were still there to hold her up but she was held in stasis by the intensity of his narrowed green gaze.

‘And you want me,’ he told her thickly. It was classic, pure textbook Nik to tell her what she was feeling before she even knew it herself.

And Betsy knew she ought to argue and defend herself while telling him all the many reasons why that could not possibly be true, not least the fact that his deception and his willingness to turn his back on their marriage had made her hate him with the same passion that she had once loved him.

But, inexplicably, in that rushing silence filled only with the accelerated thump of her heart in her own ears, she said nothing, couldn’t find the words, indeed was plunged into so much confusion her mind was a mess of barely formed thoughts and reactions.

CHAPTER THREE (#ue92f2f69-b189-5ea0-a0d7-8cd06b5e655e)

NIK STALKED FORWARD with slow predatory grace, yet for all that there was barely a coherent thought in his handsome dark head. There was no reason, only reaction, no motive other than a desire that gripped him tighter than any vice, in fact a desire so powerful it made him throb and ache.

He reached for Betsy, tugging her arms round his neck, clamping her slim body close, sealing those soft curves to his with a raw exhalation of relief he could not suppress. Backing her to a wall, he raised her high to seize her mouth and claim it, opening his mouth over hers, using pressure to force an entrance and then delving deep with a hungry, devouring passion that stole the breath from her lungs. He tasted of whisky and spice and Betsy drank him in like an addictive drug, head spinning on an intoxicated high. He kissed her as if his life and hers depended on it and his raw urgency fired her up even more, her head falling back to allow him greater access.

Betsy whimpered beneath his lips, holding herself stiff while she fought a rearguard action in the back of her mind in which a voice was screaming that she didn’t want to do what she was doing. Unfortunately, she very much did want to do it at that moment when only passion ruled and reason couldn’t get a look-in. She was no victim either. Her tongue tangled with his and teased back, her small hands kneading his strong arms, rejoicing in the strength of him but frustrated by the barrier of his clothing.

Nik curved his hands to her bottom below her skirt, discovering to his satisfaction that her love of skimpy underthings still reigned supreme, and with one violent wrench the lacy knickers were torn away. Betsy gasped in shock.

‘You want me,’ Nik husked in hoarse excuse against her swollen mouth, his warm breath fanning her skin.

Oh, how she had wanted, night after night, day after day, craving what she had lost, missing the passion and the closeness and the intimacy that had once been so much a part of her life while wondering if she would ever trust anyone enough to let them touch her again. Every screaming skin cell was conscious of the proximity of Nik’s hand to the hottest, neediest place in her body and she couldn’t vocalise, couldn’t think of anything but the deep-down, all-encompassing hunger for his touch.

Bracing her to the wall, he thrust her sweater out of his path with an impatient hand to enable him to close his mouth hungrily round a plump pink nipple while his palm cupped the firm pouting curve. Betsy moaned, eyes tight shut, sensation darting down to the hot, liquid heart of her. A wild pulse of need was mounting there while he teased that tender swollen tip with the edges of his teeth and his tongue. Clinging to his shoulders, she spread her thighs and clamped them to his waist. Finally she could feel him even through his clothing, learn the hard, urgent thrust of his erection as he ground his hips into the apex of her slender thighs, provoking an impatient cry from her lips. Arching her pelvis into him, she shuddered and moaned.

They were acting like horny teenagers, she registered suddenly, in a short-lived burst of mental clarity and embarrassment. This is not me, this is not me. And it was her last chance to shout stop and her lips actually parted and then he found her with his hand, a long, knowing finger sliding into the hot, wet sheath of her body. In reaction, an explosion of fiery heat shot through her and she jerked against him, overwhelmingly eager for his touch, for anything that would assuage the intolerable scream of need building up so fast inside her that she could not contain it.

Nik struggled to support her at the same time as he unfastened his trousers. Betsy emitted a breathy moan when she felt him push against her. She was on a high of uncontrollable excitement, her hands biting into his shoulders, urging him on. He aligned their bodies, spreading her open before bringing her down on him. He sank into her slowly, stretching the sensitive tissue with his length and girth to the burning edge of pain. But it was so much a pleasurable pain that she almost wept at the thrill of his invasion because for the first time in many months she felt like a living, breathing woman again.

‘Nik...?’ she whispered shakily.

‘No talk, hara mou,’ he gritted, tilting her back at an angle, using the wall to partially support her as he slammed back into her again with sensual, dominant force. ‘Thee mou, what you do to me! Don’t tell me to stop!’

At that moment Betsy wasn’t capable of such a feat. She was already at fever pitch. An agony of desire and helpless need controlled her. Gripping her slender thighs, ebony-lashed green eyes blazing with emerald fire, Nik surged and retreated, keeping up the erotic pace with perfect timing. Her excitement rose with every driving thrust, pushing her higher and higher until finally she reached the crest and it shattered her, making her writhe and sob and cry out.

‘That was spectacular...’ Nik breathed raggedly as he lowered Betsy’s legs slowly back to the floor. She was weak, dizzy, unsteady on her feet, and even he was trembling. What had he done? Diavelos, what had he done? Yet in spite of that rational voice inside his head, Nik shed his jacket, yanked free his tie, contriving both instinctive actions without once letting go of Betsy. He tugged her by the wrist across the floor to the rug by the dying fire and drew her down on it to face him on her knees. He laced both hands into her tumbled hair, palms framing her cheekbones, and kissed her again, sliding his tongue between her lips, skating it over the sensitive roof of her mouth until she quivered and her hands curved over his arms again to support herself.

She couldn’t think, could barely breathe and could hardly believe that that single kiss had sent the heat surging again like a gushing river of liquid fire in her belly. Satiation was washed away by a renewed tingling and prickling of potent awareness that covered her entire skin surface with heat. He pulled her down, rearranging her legs to cradle him, pinning her beneath the weight and bulk of his lean, muscular body.

‘I’m not done yet, hara mou,’ he confessed thickly, luxuriant black lashes low over scorching emerald eyes, lean, strong face taut, cheekbones flushed.

Her hand rose of its own volition and she ran her fingertips along the mobile line of his often hard-set mouth. It had a softer, more flexible cast now. She thought of him bringing Gizmo home and she gazed up at him, curiously at peace with what had happened, her heart full to overflowing. After all, she never had been able to second-guess Nik’s next move and she guessed she never would have that power because he was very much a law unto himself.

He shifted against her, lithe and dynamic as a jungle cat, and she felt him hard and ready again against her stomach. ‘Don’t ask me to stop,’ he groaned.

‘Take off your shirt,’ she whispered, amazingly relaxed in his arms, marvelling at how right it felt to be there again although even in that instant, in a part of her brain, she wouldn’t acknowledge she knew she would never be able to justify what she had done.