Greek Affairs: Claiming His Child: The Greek's Million-Dollar Baby Bargain / The Greek Millionaire's Secret Child / The Greek's Long-Lost Son. Rebecca Winters
wandered onto the stone terrace of a tiny beach hut which Ann had not even noticed on their arrival. It was set back on the shady side of the beach, above the pebbles, and was pleasantly cool now that the sun was high. Given the Theakis wealth, Ann half expected servants to jump out of nowhere and lay on a four-course luncheon for their lord and master, but their meal in fact came out of a cold bag Nikos had brought with him. It was very simple. A round, flattish loaf of fresh-baked Greek bread, sweet sun-ripe tomatoes, salty, oil-drenched feta cheese, some dry cured ham and a bottle of chilled white wine, with fruit to follow. Ari had a can of cola.
‘It’s a treat,’ he announced smugly to Ann. ‘Tina says it rots my teeth so I only have it for treats. Will you be looking after me when Tina marries Dr Sam, Auntie Annie?’
The question slipped out so suddenly that Ann had no time to think up a good answer. Ari’s uncle supplied one instead.
‘Your aunt isn’t used to children, Ari,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t know how to look after you.’
For a second Ann’s expression flickered. She was aware that Nikos was looking at her, a cynical glint in his eye. She ignored it.
‘Your uncle is right, Ari,’ she said gently. ‘I’m sure Ya-ya will find another lovely nanny to look after you. And you’ll see Tina still, won’t you? She’ll only be living on Maxos, and you can visit her in the motor boat.’
‘It won’t be the same.’ His little lip quivered.
‘Everything changes, Ari,’ said his uncle. ‘Some are sad changes, some are happy ones.’ There was a strained note in his voice just for a moment.
The boy looked across at Ann. ‘You’re a happy change, coming to see me,’ he said. ‘Isn’t she, Uncle Nikki?’
Get out of that one, thought Ann silently.
‘It has its compensations,’ he replied, and his glance flickered over her deliberately. Abruptly, Ann reached for another tomato and bit into it. Her bite was too vicious, and tomato juice and seeds spurted all over her T-shirt.
‘Shame,’ murmured Nikos Theakis insincerely. ‘Now you’ll have to take it off after all.’
In the end, she did. The afternoon simply got too hot, and before long Ari was clamouring to go into the sea again. Ann peeled off to her swimming suit, taking advantage of the fact that Nikos was now laying out his fabulous gold-hued body face down on a brilliant white towel for the sun to worship it.
‘If you go in the water,’ he advised lazily, not bothering to lift his head from the folded towel beneath it, ‘don’t go out of your depth. No further than that crooked rock to the left. Ari knows which one.’
‘Or the sharks will get you,’ contributed his nephew knowledgeably, if inaccurately, clearly having been told this to keep him close to shore. ‘They lie in wait in deep water.’
Hurriedly she raced Ari down to the sea, welcoming the chill embrace of the water. Playing with Ari took her mind off Nikos, and she entered into his games with enthusiasm, whilst taking care to stay, as instructed, in her depth. Eventually Ari tired, and as they waded out of the sea Ann immediately became aware that she was under professional surveillance.
Nikos Theakis must have seen a multitude of female bodies, but he obviously liked to study each one as a connoisseur. Now he was studying hers, his arms folded behind his neck, using the casual strength of his own perfectly toned, sun-kissed abdominal muscles to hold his head sufficiently off the ground to survey her properly.
Ann attempted to adopt an air of indifference to his scrutiny, and failed. But she did manage to avoid looking at Nikos, instead taking Ari’s armbands off and mopping him dry, letting him chatter away in Greek to his uncle before heading back to his sandcastle. Patting herself dry with Ari’s towel, Ann knelt down, rummaging in her bag for a comb. Finding it, she straightened, squeezed out the worst of the moisture, and started to comb out her dripping wet hair.
Nikos sat up with an effortless jack-knife of his stomach muscles, hooking his hands loosely around wide splayed knees and looking at her with narrowed eyes, while she tried to look completely indifferent to his regard—and to him. But it was impossible. He’s even got beautiful feet, Ann thought absently, trying not to look. Narrow, with sculpted arches. She looked away, but he had seen her. He limbered up, and crossed to where she was kneeling. Before she knew what he was doing he’d hunkered down, removed the large-toothed comb from her hand and taken over her task.
‘Hold still,’ he commanded, as she instinctively tried to get away. A large hand closed over her upper arm. She flinched.
With a frown, he scooped away the wet tangle of hair covering it, revealing the ugly bruise that had formed.
‘What the hell?’
‘Blame the driver,’ she said briefly. ‘I got a walloping against the door frame of the Jeep.’
He muttered something in Greek that was probably impolite. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said tersely. ‘I didn’t realise.’
She shrugged. ‘I’ll live,’ she answered. ‘Give me my comb back.’
He ignored her. Instead, his fingers gently skimmed the smooth skin of her shoulder.
‘Your skin is like silk.’ His voice was low, intimate. His touch made her shiver. But she didn’t feel cold. Heat started to coil in every tensing muscle in her body. For a long moment their eyes met and held—night-dark speculative brown to startled, questioning blue-grey—then, as if in slow motion, Nikos lowered his mouth.
His kiss, on the cusp of her shoulder, was as soft as velvet. Ann’s heart stopped beating. Somewhere, in some small, shrinking space, she knew she should jerk away, shout, scream—anything at all to stop what Nikos was so outrageously, unthinkably doing.
But it was impossible. Simply impossible. All she could do, as the world turned inside out, was to stay kneeling, frozen, weak in every limb, feeling the softness of his mouth on her flesh. She felt his lips part, so the soft, liquid warmth of the inside of his mouth was against her tender skin, moving over it, back and forth, moistening and caressing it. Slow bliss filled her. Then gently, very gently, he lifted his head and drew her around so that she was positioned in the vee of his open thighs as he knelt behind her, caging her. With long, even strokes he started to comb out her hair.
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t move to save her life. Every nerve in her body quivered with awareness. Around her the air hung like silk, shimmering in the heat. As he worked down from her scalp to the still dripping ends of her waist-length hair, gently teasing out every last tangle, she felt a drowsy languor steal over her as the sun beat down. With half closed eyes she could still see little Ari quit his sandcastle to go clambering over the rocks, examining the sea life. Behind her, another Theakis male was seducing her.
She had no doubt that that was what he was doing. Long after the last tangle was gone he went on combing down the length of her hair—soothingly, rhythmically, murmuring soft words in his own native language. It might have been a shopping list for all she knew. She knew it wasn’t. He was telling her how much he wanted her, how much his body yearned for hers. How even now—had it not been for the child playing there on the rocks, for the interfering presence of the silky fabric of their bathing clothes—he would have lifted her back on to the hard muscle of his splayed thighs, thigh against thigh, cradling his hips against hers so that she could feel the hardening of his body against her contours.
He would take her soft breasts in the palms of his hands and caress them until her nipples hardened like peaks, and then he would roll them in his long fingers until she cried out, tiny moans in her throat that told him she was ready. Then his hand would splay down over the soft swell of her belly to ease her firm thighs apart, exposing the very heart of her, and he would let his clever, skilful fingers explore her secret folds until they found the pathway to delight. They would rouse her to such a point of glistening ecstasy that her back would arch away from him, her head would drop back, exposing the long line of her tender throat, which he would kiss and bite