So why did she stay exactly where she was? Letting Constantine stroke enchanting little circles over her skin and feeling herself tremble in response?
‘Mmm, Laura?’ he questioned, as he shifted his body a little closer on the bench. ‘Any ideas?’
‘N-no.’
‘Really? How remarkably unimaginative of you, agape mou. Why, I’m quite disappointed that someone whom I have coached so tirelessly in the art of love shouldn’t immediately take advantage of a sweet and final opportunity presenting itself like this.’
His words were in a muddle in her head. Dangerous words—of which final seemed to be the most dangerous of all. You both know it’s over, she told herself desperately—so why are you letting him pull you onto his lap? And why aren’t you stopping him from sliding your panties right down, from putting his fingers between your legs and…
‘Constantine!’ she gasped.
He kissed her to shut her up—but also because he wanted to kiss her. Needed to kiss her. To punish her and to make her hurt as he was hurting. But the kiss didn’t stay that way—infuriatingly, it transformed itself into a terrible aching hunger which could be eased in only one way. He tore his mouth away and shuddered out a harsh entreaty.
‘Undo my jeans.’
Laura didn’t even hesitate before she tremblingly obeyed—indeed, she thought that she might have been scrabbling at his belt even before that terse instruction had been whispered in her ear.
She gasped again as she freed him—marvelling at the sheer power of him. He looked and felt so big and so erect in her tiny hand as she stroked on the condom he gave her. And then he began impatiently to tug at the jeans, until they had slithered down to his ankles. He didn’t even bother to kick them off. Instead, he just lifted her up, as if she were made of cotton wool, bringing her down deep onto his aching shaft and kissing her again with a fierce hunger—sensing that her shuddering little cries of fulfilment were only minutes away. As were his. A few ecstatic movements of her hips and he was groaning into her mouth as he felt himself spasming against her own honeyed contractions.
Afterwards, she collapsed against him, burying her head on his shoulder, willing the tears not to come, and wondering why everything felt so confused. Why had he done this—and why had she let him? Registering that sex had a dark power which managed to distort what had seemed such a straightforward decision, she found herself wondering if she had been wrong to tell him she was leaving.
If he asks me again to stay, then I might just say yes, she thought weakly—but the next thing she knew was Constantine firmly lifting her off him.
‘Straighten your clothes,’ he said abruptly as he began to pull up the zip of his jeans. He hated his weakness around her—the way he couldn’t seem to resist her when every logical pore in his formidable body told him that it should be easy. Would she see this as another little triumph? he wondered bitterly. Another perfect demonstration of how she had the powerful Constantine Karantinos eating out of her hand?
‘I’ll leave you to find your own way back,’ he finished, raking angry fingers back through the tousled waves of his black hair.
And then he was gone, and Laura could hardly believe what had just taken place. How she could have let him arrive and just…do that to her? But she had let him. More than let him—had squirmed with pleasure and enjoyed every erotic second of it—so if Constantine had now lost all respect for her as a woman then she had only herself to blame.
But in a way her orgasm had emptied her of all feeling and all emotion—and at least that made the last preparations for her departure bearable. So that she was able to chat excitedly to Alex about the conkers which would be on the autumn trees in England—ignoring the morose set of his little face in response. Only once did her composure threaten to buckle, and that was when Constantine clasped his son in a hug which went on and on.
Then he ruffled the little boy’s dark curls and smiled. ‘I’ll come and see you soon in England,’ he said.
Alex’s crumpled face was turned upwards, as if he had just seen the first light in a dark sky. ‘When?’
‘How does next month sound?’
‘Oh, it sounds wonderful, Papa.’
The helicopter blades whirred round and round, and Laura glanced out of the window to see Constantine staring up intently at his son. She felt a real pang of remorse. Was she doing a wrong and selfish thing by taking Alex back to England? Yet how many women would willingly trap themselves on an island this size with a man who didn’t love them?
The island retreated as the craft took off, but Constantine stood there long after the black speck had grown smaller and smaller and then finally disappeared, his shoulders bowed with the weight of something too painful to analyse.
Something which made all the Karantinos billions fade into pale insignificance.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AS THE last of Alex’s footsteps died away, Laura closed the front door and let out a long sigh of something which felt like relief. Please let him have a nice day with my sister, she prayed silently. Please remove some of the inevitable disappointment which has clouded my son’s face since returning home from Greece last week. A week which had felt more like a year.
It was strange to be back in England, and even stranger to be back in their small flat which no longer seemed to feel like home. And why was that? she wondered guiltily. Because it was small and poky after the vast Karantinos villa? Or because the powerful presence of Constantine was absent—making the place seem soulless?
‘I miss my papa,’ Alex had told her on more than one occasion—in a way which tore at Laura’s conscience.
And, so do I, she thought. So do I. A decision she had made for all the best reasons was now proving to be unbearable—and it seemed that she had no one in the world to turn to or confide in.
Because even Sarah seemed to have moved on. Her sister had been hurtling up to London at every opportunity to see Matthius—the cousin of the Greek student Constantine had roped in to help while Laura had been away. It seemed that like Demetra, Mattius was also a member of the Constantine Karantinos fan-club, having convinced Sarah that the billionaire was only arrogant and cold to the many people who wanted something from him—but that to friends and family he was loyalty personified.
For Laura, who was trying desperately hard to put the Greek tycoon from her mind, this was the last thing she wanted or needed to hear. Was it her stricken face which had made Sarah offer to take Alex out for the day? Or the fact that she couldn’t seem to settle to anything and was driving everyone mad?