Modern Romance - The Best of the Year

CHAPTER NINE

WHEN TABBY WOKE for the fourth time in twelve hours, she was totally disorientated and she blinked in the strong sunlight flooding through the French windows. A split second later, she sat up and checked her watch to discover that it was mid-afternoon.

My goodness, she had slept half the day away! In guilty dismay, she clambered awkwardly out of bed, learning that Acheron had got it right when he had suggested she would feel better in the morning. Her hip still ached like the very devil but the pain in her ankle had become more bearable. Curious to see her surroundings, having arrived in complete darkness the night before, she limped over to the French windows with the aid of her stick and went out onto the sunlit balcony to stand at the rail.

A craggy cove stretched out below her, the towering rocks encircling a stretch of pure white sand lapped by a turquoise sea so clear she could see the ocean bottom. The lush tree-filled gardens ran right to the edge of the beach. It was absolutely idyllic and very beautiful but Tabby’s attention was drawn straight to the couple standing together in the rippling surf. Amber’s pram was parked in the shadow of the rocks and Melinda, clad in a minuscule red bikini that exaggerated her bountiful curves, was talking with apparent urgency to Acheron, whose lean, powerful body was sheathed only in trunks.

It was an unexpectedly intimate and disturbing sight, and Tabby couldn’t take her eyes off the couple, jealousy spearing through her with an immediacy that appalled her. She jerked in dismay and snatched in a startled breath when Melinda rested a hand down on Acheron’s arm. To his credit the contact only lasted for a second because he took an immediate step back from the forward blonde and with a brief final word strode back across the sand towards the house. Tabby hobbled back hurriedly indoors to get dressed, her brain struggling to encompass what she had seen at the same time as she accepted that, yet again, the very foundations of her relationship with the man she had married had been demolished and everything had changed.

Sexual desire had stimulated that change, she conceded, shame slivering through her. No boundaries, Acheron had proclaimed with passion and he was certainly correct on that score: the rules she had tried to impose had been blown right out of the water along with her nonsensical belief that she could resist him. Even more pertinently, seeing Melinda touch Acheron had inflamed her with ferocious possessiveness and the sort of angry jealous feelings she had never before experienced. What did that say about her intelligence? What was she letting him do to her? Where were these violent conflicting emotions coming from? She was behaving like a lovesick idiot! Was that the problem? Had lust first sucked her in and then left her childishly infatuated with him?

Opening her as yet still packed cases, she extracted underwear and a long, loose sundress before stepping into the bathroom to freshen up. The whole process took her much longer than usual having to wash her hair in the sink, which was a challenge, and left the bathroom floor swimming by the time she had finished. When she finally emerged after mopping dry the floor, however, she felt more like herself with clean, tidy hair and a little make-up applied.

Acheron strolled into the bedroom and there Tabby was; captured in a patch of sunlight, long golden hair rippling down to softly frame her delicate features, her tiny body sylphlike in a pale blue dress that reflected her amazing eyes, which were currently pools of anxious troubled violet that evaded his. She was so open, so honest in her reactions, it literally shocked him. Nothing was concealed; nothing was hidden from him. His broad chest tightened as he expelled his breath and gritted his teeth. He could not begin to imagine how frighteningly vulnerable that lack of concealment and reserve made her. If he didn’t act first, she was undoubtedly about to unleash a rash volley of accusations and questions about their renewed intimacy, which threatened to put them both right back where they had started after their car crash wedding night and her proclamation of her unnecessary rules.

‘Tabby,’ he murmured evenly, noting avidly that he could see the little points of her deliciously prominent nipples showing below the fine material of her dress as well as the slender outline of her shapely legs. An overpoweringly strong urge to claim her again assailed him.

‘Ash,’ she said breathlessly, studying his lean, darkly handsome features with a sinking heart because that fast she was out of breath and dizzy just looking at him. ‘We need to talk.’

‘No, we don’t, glyka mou,’ Acheron contradicted with stubborn assurance as he drew closer. ‘Let’s do this my way. We don’t talk, we especially don’t agonise over anything. It is what it is and we just enjoy it for as long as it lasts.’

He had snatched the confused words out of her mouth before she had even collected her thoughts enough to speak. She suspected that his solution was vintage Acheron in the field of relationships—say nothing, do nothing and the problem will go away. ‘I wasn’t about to agonise over anything,’ she protested, swaying slightly because she found it hard to stand still for long and had to grip the walking stick in a tighter hold.

He closed hands round her forearms to steady her and slowly trailed his hands down to her waist. ‘You can’t help yourself.’

As she looked up at him, her lush full lips tingled and she was conscious of a sensation like prickling heat curling low in her pelvis. He angled his mouth down and kissed her with intoxicating urgency.

‘Oh...’ she said in breathless surprise at the development, her body humming into ready awareness with an enthusiasm that disconcerted her.

He lifted her dress slowly, brazen dark golden eyes locked to hers, daring her to object. Anticipation pierced her, sharp as a lance, liquid heat pooling between her thighs. His gaze not once leaving hers, he found her with his fingers, eased below her lace-edged panties and stroked and that fast she was hotter than the fires of hell, leaning up against him for support, making no objection when he gently lowered her back onto the bed. The stick fell forgotten on the floor.

‘I only just got up,’ she exclaimed, her surprise unconcealed.

‘You should’ve waited here for me, glyka mou,’ Acheron told her sibilantly.

‘I can’t believe you want me again already.’ Tabby studied him with confused and wondering eyes.

‘The instant I look at you I want you,’ Acheron admitted in a slightly raw undertone because there was a lack of control and a weakness in such a truth that deeply disturbed him.

‘Not the very first time you saw me,’ she reminded him stubbornly.

‘You swore at me...not your finest hour, glyka mou,’ he mocked. ‘Now that I know you, it wouldn’t bother me at all or make me stop thinking that you’re the hottest woman on the planet.’

Eyes wide with astonishment, Tabby was transfixed by that statement. ‘You really mean that?’

‘You have to ask? Here I am throwing you down on the bed to ravish and you have to ask how much I want you? I can’t wait to get you horizontal and that’s not OK,’ Acheron groaned, yanking off her panties with scant ceremony and splaying her legs with a voracious hiss of all-male satisfaction, fully appreciating the pink glistening femininity he had exposed. ‘No, don’t spoil the view,’ he censured when, hot-cheeked, she tried to scissor her thighs together again. ‘I like to look and I love to appreciate.’

Tabby forced herself to remember that while he peeled off his trunks, revealing his long, thick erection. Heat rolled through her, moisture gathering at the heart of her along with a soul-deep yearning that should have terrified her. She realised that she was acting on instinct, not even pausing to think about what he had said, skipping the agonising as he had phrased it because what woman wished to be viewed in that light?

‘Thee mou, hot, hot, hot,’ Acheron rasped as he came down on top of her, punctuating every word with a passionate kiss and hands that traced every erogenous zone she possessed until her impatience steadily rose to match his.

Only then did he sink into her hard and fast, muttering something in Greek before he paused to press his lips to her brow. ‘Am I hurting you?’ he grated uneasily.

‘Only if you stop,’ she traded helplessly, her whole body clenching round him as possessively as her arms, hands smoothing over his satin-smooth back, clenching there, nails curving inward as he ground into her, and she cried out in helpless delight. Excitement rose in an unstoppable tide, and she lost the self she knew in it, living from one glorious moment of intense sensation to the next until the great gathering storm became too much to contain and the passion swept her off the heights down into the ecstatic rippling aftermath.

‘Well, there wasn’t much finesse about that,’ Acheron remarked, cradling her up against him in a damp tangle of limbs. ‘My apologies.’

‘No need,’ Tabby countered, pressing her mouth softly to his chest, revelling in the hot, musky smell of his skin and the closeness that he was embracing. ‘It was another ten out of ten.’

‘You’re grading me now?’ he demanded in obvious horror.

‘If you drop down to a five or lower, I’ll warn you,’ Tabby teased, smiling because she felt amazingly light-hearted while she was studiously engaged in not agonising. The minute she forgot his maxim though the real world immediately flooded back and, assailed by those whirling doubts, insecurities and unanswered questions, she became tense again and marvelled that she had so easily suppressed what she had seen.

‘I saw you with Melinda on the beach,’ she told him baldly, putting it right out there without holding back and judging her words and their effect.

Acheron’s big powerful frame stiffened and he tilted her head back to study her troubled face. ‘I’m bringing another nanny in to work with Melinda, who will eventually replace her. I’ve already made the arrangements. I don’t want Amber upset by too sudden a change in staff,’ he volunteered.

Tabby was wildly disconcerted by the announcement but relieved to know that Melinda would soon be moving on, while being impressed and touched that he had also been careful to consider Amber’s need for consistent care. ‘You’re planning to sack Melinda?’

‘She’s on a temporary contract. We can let her go any time we like but I’d prefer to dispense with her services in the usual way. She knows a little too much about our marriage for my comfort.’

Frowning at that admission, Tabby prompted, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Melinda is clearly aware that we were using separate bedrooms at the villa. When we were on the beach she offered to share Amber’s room so that I could take over hers,’ Acheron explained grimly.

Wings of hot pink reddened Tabby’s cheeks. Annoyance and embarrassment that their unconventional sleeping arrangements had evidently attracted the attention of the staff engulfed her. ‘Perhaps she was planning to do a little wandering during the night once you were conveniently close. She was coming on to you, wasn’t she?’

Lean, extravagantly handsome features impassive, stunning dark eyes screened, Acheron nodded. ‘It happens.’

Tabby looked up at him, weak with relief that he had told her the truth without fanfare or fuss. ‘Often?’

Acheron released a rueful chuckle at the innocence of that question. ‘All the time. If I ignore it, it usually dies a natural death but Melinda doesn’t take hints...possibly because she’s already reached the conclusion that ours is not a normal marriage. She could take that information to the press, laying me open to a potential charge that I only married you to circumvent my father’s will.’

Tabby grimaced. ‘We’ll have to work harder at being a more convincing couple. Share a room, spend time together, fake it up to behave more like a honeymoon couple is expected to behave.’

‘But it doesn’t have to be fake now,’ Acheron pointed out with lazy assurance.

But in her heart she would know it was fake, Tabby reflected painfully. He gave her great sex but he wasn’t offering to give her anything more. Maybe that was the only kind of giving he knew—short-term physical stuff with a built-in time limit, she conceded fairly, not wanting to judge him just because he was different. After all, was she any more evolved in the field of relationships? She wanted him so much, wanted his attention as much as Amber did, was willing to do whatever it took to hold that attention. But she was not willing to admit even to herself that he was also stirring up emotions that she was afraid she couldn’t handle.

‘Why did your father write a will that forced you to get married when you didn’t want to?’ Tabby asked quietly, knowing that that was the heart of the matter and the mystery that he had so far avoided explaining.

‘In a nutshell? He wanted me to marry Kasma,’ Acheron told her tersely, his beautiful mouth hardening. ‘And I don’t ever want to talk about that.’

With difficulty, Tabby swallowed an irritated comeback on that omission, knowing such a response would only reinforce his reserve and make him dig his stubborn heels in even harder. She could leave the thorny question of Kasma to one side for the moment and concentrate on other aspects. ‘But surely your father knew how you felt? How close were the two of you?’ Tabby persisted.

A tiny muscle pulled taut at the corner of his unsmiling jaw. ‘I only met him in my late twenties,’ he reminded her drily. ‘I suppose it was more of a business relationship than most. His company was struggling. He asked me for advice. I went in to help and ended up taking over.’

‘Didn’t he resent that?’

‘Not at all. He wasn’t much of a businessman, more of a family man desperate to give his loved ones a secure future.’

‘That was your stepmother and her children?’

Acheron compressed his lips. ‘My father married her when her kids were very young and raised them as his own but I didn’t meet them until about eighteen months before he died.’

‘Why not?’ Tabby asked in surprise.

‘His family weren’t relevant to me or to our relationship. They were strangers. There was no blood tie and I’ve never had a family, so I was very wary about getting involved in that side of his life. As things turned out, I was right to be wary and to have kept my distance for as long as I did,’ he pronounced with dark finality.

A silence full of undertones enclosed them in the aftermath of that assurance, adding to Tabby’s discomfiture. She was trying desperately to work out what his past relationship with his stepsister, Kasma, had entailed. Obviously there had been an affair that left the beautiful brunette with expectations that Acheron was not prepared to fulfil. Presumably the affair had ended badly with bitterness on both sides. Had some tragedy occurred? Had Kasma fallen pregnant or some such thing? Mightn’t that explain why his late father had got such a bee in his bonnet about Acheron marrying his stepdaughter? Certainly the other woman had believed very strongly that she was the only woman who should become Acheron’s wife. Was Kasma in love with him? Or was she more fixated on his money and his status? But regardless of why Kasma wanted Acheron, what did it matter when he didn’t want her? Tabby asked herself irritably, weary of suspicions that were winding up her tension for no good reason. If it was that simple though, why couldn’t he just say so?

‘I wish you didn’t keep secrets. I wish you were more frank and straightforward about things,’ she admitted before she could think better of it.