He’d known the answer to that. And his flesh crawled as he thought of it now.
She was avoiding him. It was a wonder she hadn’t disappeared completely, not just escaped for a day. Not after what he’d done to her.
He spun on his foot and strode the length of the massive room, along the corridor and through the door that led outside. He stood on the stone steps in the warmth of the late sun, breathing hard as if he’d just sprinted a couple of kilometres. He scrubbed his hand over his face and up to tunnel through his hair.
But he couldn’t hide from it. The guilt that had dogged him since last night. Since he’d kissed Sophie. Since he’d almost ravaged her with a hunger more befitting a beast than a civilised man.
He’d deliberately taken advantage of her worry and sympathy, allowing his needy, selfish desires to drive him. When he’d felt her hand on him, her gentle, soothing touch to his shoulder, and when he’d seen the answering pain in her soft eyes as he’d sat beside Eleni’s bed, his control had finally snapped.
In one writhing, overpowering, unstoppable wave, his need had risen and consumed him. Consumed them both. All he’d known was that he had to get her away from his daughter’s room. That they needed some vestige of privacy for what was between them.
But he hadn’t even made it further than the open hallway!
Costas swallowed down the bitter taste of self-loathing and stepped away down the path, striding out as if he could somehow escape the knowledge of his own guilt. But of course that was impossible.
Hell! Even now he could see the distress in her eyes. The horrified recoil as he’d told her exactly what he wanted from her. At every deliberately brutal, cruel word she’d winced, her pupils dilating with pain. He’d taken her charity and thrust it back at her, making it a tainted thing. As tainted as his own lust for her.
No matter that his body had been rock hard with wanting her. And with the effort of control needed to prevent himself from taking her then and there, without preliminaries, in the corridor. No matter that his soul ached for the comfort he knew she alone could give him, for the touch of her soft hands against his flesh. He’d known that touch intimately every night in his turbulent dreams. And in his waking fantasies. He craved the reality of it as the parched earth craved soft, sweet rain at the end of the long summer drought.
No matter that she tasted like an angel. So miraculously sweet that he was addicted after just one kiss. Or that she responded to him so completely, so ferociously that his soul cried out in wonder and delight.
His woman. Those were the crazy, impossible words that had pounded through his numbed, awed brain as he drank in the taste of her, imprinted her soft curves against his rampant body. That was the knowledge that had throbbed through his pulse and made his hands quiver.
His.
Even now the primitive, potent need to possess her lay barely suppressed. He wanted to reach out and take her. Hold her fast. Claim her for his own. It was a certainty that defied logic, but resided bone-deep in his body, soul-deep in his psyche.
He emerged from a thicket onto the bare top of the small headland, came to a stop on the edge of the cliff that dropped down to the shallow curve of the bay. The tang of salt was on his lips. The sound of waves rolling in was heavy and more regular than his own heartbeat.
He strove for cool logic. The fire in his blood, the proprietorial instinct … they’d clouded his brain. It was simply a volatile surge of lust he experienced.
She was no more his woman than he was the man of her dreams.
He owed all his allegiance to his daughter. He had no time for anyone else in his life. Much less a girl with her own life far away in Australia. A girl grieving for her mother, wounded by the memories of family conflict and rejection.
A girl so passionate and independent that he felt more alive just talking with her, arguing and debating and finally finding common ground, than he had in a long time.
He shook his head. He was deluding hi
mself. They were strangers brought together by circumstance. That was all.
That was why he’d been so brutally frank with her last night. Describing his aching need in blatant physical terms, each word designed to shred their growing intimacy and make her shun him. For he knew one thing: he’d lost his own battle to retain his honour.
That was why he’d deliberately provoked her disgust of him.
It was the only barrier left between them. But even as he’d done it, giving her every excuse to hate him, he’d teetered on a knife edge, almost wishing she wouldn’t care. That she’d lead him to her room anyway and take him to paradise.
No decent man would seduce a guest in his house, a young woman already battling her own pain with a grace and inner strength that must draw respect. No honourable man would take advantage of her empathy to force himself on her.
Yet he would have taken her last night, grateful for the solace of her body, the sweet sensuality of her response. Even hating his weakness, he would have had her. Not once but right through the long, aching hours of darkness.
His body hardened at the memory of her against him. He should be grateful that she’d shown the will-power he lacked and removed herself from his vicinity.
Yet he couldn’t stifle his restless unease. Her absence was even worse than the torment of having her close at hand.
‘Not far now,’ Yiorgos said with a quick smile.
The words were like a douche of chill water to Sophie’s spirits. Soon they’d be back at the Palamidis villa and she’d have to face Costas.