Marriage at His Convenience

His words hurt and angered her, but nothing could stop the storm of desire sweeping through her. He removed her leggings and briefs with enviable ease, while Amber fumbled with the belt of his trousers; quickly he guided her hands and in a second he was almost naked.

She heard the sharp intake of his breath as her fingers slid along his thigh and his mouth ground down on hers with furious greed. Their bodies met with a searing impact that made her shudder with pleasure.

Lucas lifted his head, his black eyes sweeping almost violently over her naked body. His head bent and he suckled the hard, aching peak of her breast as swiftly he parted her legs. Every other time he had enjoyed making love to her long and slow, teasing and tantalizing, drawing out the experience for ages. But this time it was like a dam bursting, sweeping everything before it, as without hesitating he positioned himself between her slender thighs and joined them fiercely together.

Amber gasped and writhed, half mad with wanting him, the hardness of the floor, the anger not love that fuelled the joining—none of it mattered. It was enough he was here with her—in her—and if it was to be the last time, she didn’t care. He wanted her.

Hot and breathless bodies wet with sweat, they moved together in a mind-blowing, consuming passion. The climax when it came was a shuddering ecstatic release that lifted Amber to another universe, where her mind closed down, and the body was everything. The ecstatic shivers went on and on long after Lucas lay heavily on top of her, the rasping sound of his breathing the most wonderful music to Amber’s ears.

She refused to believe he could behave like this with her and yet love someone else, and when he moved to roll off her she followed him around. Sprawled across his wide chest, still joined, she looked into his darkly flushed handsome face, but his eyes were closed.

‘Lucas,’ she tenderly murmured his name, and, reaching up, she brushed the sweat-slicked hair from his brow. Slowly his eyes opened

and he looked at her with such contempt she almost cried out.

‘Amber,’ he grated, mockingly brushing her off him as if he were swatting a fly and jumping to his feet, as though he could not get away from her quickly enough.

She lay where he had left her and watched him. He had not removed his shoes, and he should have looked stupid with his trousers around his ankles, but he didn’t. She let her eyes stray over every perfect inch of his bronzed body, committing every curve and muscle, pore and hair to memory, because she instinctively knew this was the very last time she would ever see him this way.

His dark eyes wandered insolently over her as he pulled up his trousers. The taut line of his mouth gave way to a thin, cruel smile. ‘Christos.’ He laughed harshly, and slipped his sweater over his head. Adjusting the sleeves, he added, ‘I was right about you—as sexy as sin and far too seductive to wed.’

Lucas knew he was being cruel, but it was a pure defence mechanism. He could not believe what he had just done! He had lost control completely, and he hated himself for it. He was strongly puritanical when it came to women, totally monogamous for as long as the relationship lasted, and he had every intention of being totally faithful to his wife. Hell! He almost groaned out loud. Betrothed three days to Christina, and already…

‘You’re no saint,’ Amber’s voice cut into his tortured thoughts.

His black eyes roamed over her lovely face, her cheeks burning with angry colour. She was exquisite, and briefly he closed his eyes, a deep black pit opening up before him, his supreme self-confidence shaken to its core as for a moment he doubted his decision to marry Christina. He opened his eyes. It was too late now. He was Greek, first and foremost, he was engaged to a Greek girl, his father was delighted, Christina’s father was ecstatic. He had made the right decision. It was simply he had been celibate for too long, he told himself, and almost believed it…

‘So much for your moral code, off with the old before the new,’ Amber declared fiercely, breaking the tension-filled silence, and, sitting up, she pulled the shirt that was hanging off her back around her chest.

He smiled down at her mockingly, forcing himself not to weaken. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, get dressed.’ If she didn’t he was in grave danger of falling down on top of her again, eyeing her flustered attempt to pull her shirt around the luscious curve of her breasts. Shame and guilt made him add, ‘You disgust me. I disgust myself.’

Amber bowed her head for a moment, the long curtain of her hair hiding her face from his glittering gaze. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut to hold back the tears. She disgusted him, he had said, and yet she was only what he had made her, and in that instant the new Amber was born.

Swiping back the mass of hair from her face, she rose to her feet. Ignoring Lucas’s looming presence, she picked up her briefs and leggings and, turning her back on him, took her time about putting them on. Then, straightening her shoulders, she turned to face him.

She lifted hard golden eyes to his. ‘What are you waiting for?’ she demanded bluntly. She was furiously angry at the undisguised contempt in his expression. But she refused to show it. ‘I thought a man of your high moral values would be long gone,’ she mocked him. She had learnt her lesson well. Never again in this life, she vowed, would she show any man how she really felt.

‘The floor show is over,’ she said facetiously. ‘If you’re hoping for a repeat performance, forget it—go back to Christina and I wish you both joy. Though I have a suspicion you will not find her quite the pure, malleable little bed partner and wife you imagine. After all, she already knows you have a mistress—’ she wanted to hurt him, dent his arrogant pride ‘—and she doesn’t care, which must tell you something.’

She had gone too far. He stepped towards her, his hand lifted as if to hit her. Involuntarily she flinched and stepped back.

‘No.’ His hand fell to his side, his fingers curling into a fist, his knuckles white with strain. ‘You are a lying little bitch.’ Amber knew he would never believe her or forgive her for her comments. ‘And you will never speak to my fiancée or mention her name again.’

Amber stared at him, her anger dying fast as his glance roamed contemptuously over her. There was sheer hatred in his eyes, and a clear message he would not touch her again if his life depended on it. But then she already knew that, she thought sadly. The last half-hour had been nothing more than animal attraction fuelled by rage on his part. He didn’t want her love, never had… The realisation was the end of everything for Amber. ‘Just go,’ she said wearily, brushing past him towards the door. Good manners decreed she see him out, she thought, and had to choke back hysterical laughter.

She opened the door and held it. Lucas reached out to grasp her arm, but she pulled away. ‘Goodbye, Lucas.’ The finality in her tone was unmistakable.

He went rigid. ‘Not so fast, you still have not given me the promise I asked for. I…I want your word you will not marry Spiro.’

She was sick at heart and halfway to being physically sick. ‘Okay.’

‘I mean it, Amber,’ Lucas said with deadly emphasis. ‘If you marry him your life will not be worth living, and you will find no solace in your work, that I promise.’ The taut line of his mouth gave way to a thin cruel smile as he paused. ‘I will personally make sure no one in the financial world will ever employ you again.’ He had to convince her for his own sanity to break all ties with Spiro. If the last hour had taught him anything it was that there was no way on God’s earth Lucas trusted himself to be in the company of Amber ever again. Not even a simple social occasion, or he was in danger of succumbing to the same sickening addiction to sex his mother had suffered from. The realisation of his own weakness shocked and horrified him, and he reacted with the same icy determination that made him a ruthlessly successful businessman. ‘I will totally destroy the career you love, and, believe me, I can and will do it.’

It was no idle threat, and the really scary part was that Amber had no doubt he could destroy her career with a few chosen words to her most influential clients. ‘Your threat is unnecessary. I have no intention of marrying Spiro.’

Amber’s golden gaze roamed over Lucas as though she were seeing him for the first time. He stood in the entrance door, tall and broad and as still as a statue carved in stone. She registered the soft wool sweater moulding the muscles of his broad chest, the hip-hugging jeans. Raising her gaze, she noted the thick black hair, the broad forehead, the perfectly chiselled features—he was incredibly handsome, but his face was hard, cold, the inner man hidden. One thumb casually hooked his leather jacket over a shoulder, but there was nothing casual about the man. Spiro had called him a shark and Amber finally realised it was true.

It was a revelation to Amber’s bruised heart. Lucas thought he loved Christina, but it was not what Amber considered love to be. It was no great consuming passion on Lucas’s part, he was incapable of the emotion. He had simply planned to fall in love with Christina with the same ruthless efficiency he planned a takeover bid. Christina simply met his criteria for a wife. Amber’s golden eyes met his, black and not a glimmer of human warmth in their depths, just a ruthless determination to succeed be it business or private, family or friend. He was incapable of differentiating between them. How had she ever thought she loved this cold, frighteningly austere man?