The Innocent's Surrender

If I don’t look at him, she thought as her skirt joined her other garments on the floor, I won’t know that he’s looking at me. I can make that my first line of defence.

And there would be others.

She couldn’t fight him off physically, because she would lose. Every line of his lean, toned body told her that.

Besides, he was probably decadent enough to enjoy subjugating her, and she would do nothing that might give him any kind of pleasure.

It would be far safer to bore him, she thought. To adopt a policy of passive resistance. Obedient, but unresponsive, with never a kiss or a touch given of her own free will. And the complete opposite of the reaction he was expecting.

In spite of this resolution, it took every scrap of courage she possessed to remove her underwear, and bare herself completely to his gaze. She tried to tell herself as she unhooked her bra, and slid down her briefs, that he’d seen her naked before, even if she’d been unaware of it, and therefore, this time, it didn’t matter. It mustn’t be allowed to matter.

Except that somehow it did—quite terribly.

She had to fight, too, not to cover herself with her hands but keep them, in a show of her indifference to his scrutiny, at her sides, as she waited for him to say something. Anything.

But when he spoke, her startled senses reacted as if his hand had touched her quivering flesh.

‘The moonlight did not lie, Natasha mou,’ he said quietly. ‘Your body is indeed exquisite.’ He threw back the sheet, indicating with an imperative gesture that she should go to him.

Natasha crossed slowly to the bed, aware that he was lying on his side, propped on one elbow, waiting for her. She supposed that in some shrinking corner of her mind she’d gone on hoping against hope that he might decide he’d humiliated her enough, and call a halt.

But he was not going to relent, she thought, her heart thudding in panic at the prospect of what awaited her. Her one small consolation was that it would be on her terms, not his. And that one day his own life would lie in ruins too.

However, he’d said he was running out of patience, so it might all be over very quickly. In fact, if he was sufficiently disappointed in her lack of response, this might not be just an initial encounter, but also the last one.

But that made the immediate future no easier to contemplate as she lay beside him, staring rigidly at the ceiling. It shouldn’t be like this, she thought as tension knotted inside her. Not her first time. She should be with someone who’d treat her with tenderness and consideration.

Instead, she was about to be possessed by her family’s enemy, a man who despised her and would make no allowances for an innocence he didn’t believe existed.

She sank her teeth into the inner softness of her lower lip as she remembered the things he’d read to her from that vile letter. Was that what he’d want from her, and, if so, how could she bear it?

Then, just as her taut nerves approached snapping point, Alex Mandrakis touched her at last, his fingers hardly more than a whisper on her skin as he pushed her hair back from her forehead, before winding one silken strand round his hand, and lifting it to his face as if to inhale its fragrance.

It was the last thing she’d anticipated, and, in spite of herself, she turned, startled, to look at him, and saw his smile, crooked, almost rueful.

Then he bent, putting his mouth very precisely on hers and caressing it softly, coaxing her silently and with insidious gentleness to part her lips and allow him the deeper intimacy he sought.

This was not the brutality she’d expected to defy, but deliberate temptation.

And for an instant, as his lips moved on hers, Natasha was aware of an odd, tingling warmth deep in the pit of her stomach, and realised just how much on her guard she would need to be.

She closed her eyes, staying motionless, her mouth tightly compressed against him, forbidding any closer access. At the same time, she was unable to prevent him moving ever closer, so that the warmth of him seemed to be permeating the chill of her own flesh, while the musky scent of his skin filled her consciousness like an intoxicant.

Eventually, the insistent sensuous pressure on her mouth halted and she was aware that he’d lifted his head. He said, ‘Look at me.’

Slowly she raised reluctant lids, staring up into his dark face with cool antagonism.

‘You do not include kissing in your repertoire?’ He sounded little more than mildly curious.

‘Perhaps I merely have no wish to kiss you, Kyrios Mandrakis.’

‘The possibility had crossed my mind,’ he murmured. ‘And are you also unwilling to call me by my given name?’ His hand cupped her breast, his fingertip teasing the nipple, rousing it to a proud, aching life that she realised with horror she could not control. ‘Although such formality in the circumstances is strangely erotic,’ he added with faint amusement.

‘Circumstances that are not of my making.’ To her chagrin, her own voice sounded slightly breathless.

‘And that you are trying to ignore.’ The amusement was open now, his hand still moving on her in devastating purpose. ‘Your mind may have decided you no longer harbour your former overwhelming desire for me, Natasha mou, but your body seems to have other ideas.’ He added softly, ‘Instead of a certainty, you have become an intriguing challenge.’

Natasha turned her head away. She said bitterly, ‘Have you no shame?’

‘I could ask you the same question, my little cheat,’ Alex Mandrakis retorted. ‘After all, you were my would-be wife—the one making all the promises that were supposed to blind me to your family’s real purpose.

‘No doubt they guaranteed you would never have to keep any of them,’ he added scornfully. ‘Well, now you know you are wrong, and they will know it too.’

He altered his position slightly, significantly, making her suddenly, shockingly aware of the heated potency of male arousal against her thigh, then bent his head and put his mouth to the scented mound of her breast, his tongue stroking its taut, rosy peak with lingering appreciation.

Sensation, sudden and unwanted, lanced through her. She pushed at his shoulders. ‘Don’t…’

He raised his head and looked at her, his gaze quizzical. ‘It is not easy to please you, agapi mou.’

‘Then don’t try,’ she flung at him, stormily. ‘Just—let me go.’

‘Having taken all this trouble to acquire you?’ he mocked. ‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’

‘But for how long?’ she asked in a stifled voice. ‘You have to tell me.’

He was silent for a moment. ‘Perhaps—until you no longer wish to leave, Natasha mou. But for now….’

His hand slid down her body with slow, insolent mastery, caressing the flat plane of her stomach, and the delicate inner hollow of her hip, before moving down to the silky triangle at the junction of her thighs.

Natasha set her teeth, her skin burning with embarrassment as he parted her legs, and she felt the glide of his fingers exploring her moist inner heat, setting off another chain of unwanted response that almost verged on excitement.

She was bitterly, angrily aware that her breathing had quickened even more, in spite of herself, and that there was an unfamiliar ache somewhere deep within her.

But she wouldn’t let herself think about that, or its inevitable implications. She would focus instead on disgust. On hating her body’s scalding, slippery reaction to this new intimacy almost as much as she loathed the man who was creating it with such casual expertise.

Then, as if he recognised her mental struggles: ‘Why don’t you stop fighting me, agapi mou?’ Alex Mandrakis whispered. ‘Because the battle is already lost.’

‘Not for me,’ she managed hoarsely. ‘I’ll never forgive you for this. Not as long as I live.’ Or as long as you do…

He shrugged. ‘Then I have nothing to lose,’ he said, half to himself, as he lifted himself over her. ‘But everything to gain,’ he added in husky triumph. And entered her with one smooth, unerring thrust.

Chapter Four

UP TO that moment Natasha had only really thought about the outrage to her feelings, and the nightmare effect on her life of this unbearable, shameful indignity that was being inflicted on her. It had not occurred to her that her first experience of sex might cause her actual physical pain.

Her taut muscles shocked into resistance, she wanted to cry out to him that he was hurting her, and beg him to stop. To give her unaccustomed body at least a little time to adjust to the stark reality of his penetration of her.

Yet she did nothing, said nothing, determined not to grant him the satisfaction of knowing that anything he did could affect her in any way—pleasure or pain.