‘When I left you, you weren’t having my baby.’
Ella turned her head, struggling for control. ‘If you didn’t want me before I was pregnant, why would you want me now that I am?’
‘The answer to that is self-evident.’
She swallowed back the hurt. ‘A baby isn’t a reason to get married. A child is not a good enough reason to get married, Nikos! Marriage is about love and trust and feelings—’ She broke off, feeling a flash of despair because here he was proposing and she was turning him down. ‘Two people shouldn’t marry just because they’ve made a baby. It isn’t enough.’
‘What are you saying?’ He raised an eyebrow, a sardonic smile touching his sexy mouth. ‘The diamond isn’t big enough?’
She gritted her teeth. ‘I’m saying that a ring can’t fix what’s wrong between us. All this ring does is remind me that you’re a billionaire and that you kept that fact from me.’ She began to slide out of the bed but he hauled her back down, rolled her onto her back and covered her body with his.
‘We are talking. Don’t walk away.’
‘Let me go, Nikos!’ She tried to wriggle away from him but the slide of her thigh against his sent a tremor of sexual awareness through her body. She went still. ‘This is crazy! You’re a billionaire and I made you cheese on toast.’
Amusement shimmered in his dark gaze. ‘I love your cheese on toast.’
‘We slept in my single bed—’
‘Which was extremely cosy,’ he murmured, bringing his mouth close to hers.
‘I don’t even know you!’
For a highly charged moment he just looked at her and she was desperately conscious of his weight pressing her into the mattress. ‘You don’t know me?’ He shifted deliberately, and she gave a soft gasp as she felt his body come into intimate contact with hers. ‘Tell me something, pethi mou—just how much more of me do you want to know?’
‘Nikos—’
‘I love the way you say my name.’ His smile was lazily possessive and he lowered his mouth to hers with the confidence of a man who had never known rejection.
His kiss made her tremble in the way that it always had and probably always would. And all the time his mouth feasted on hers, his fingers skimmed her body until Ella’s skin was so sensitised that she felt as though she was on fire.
He shifted slightly in order to allow himself better access and her body thrilled with excitement at his skilled touch.
It was the possessive stroke of his hand over her softly rounded abdomen that brought her to her senses.
‘No.’ For him, this was all about the baby. ‘No, Nikos. I’m not going to let you do this to me again.’ Ignoring the wild crazy pulse of sexual attraction that drew them together, she pushed him away and slid out of the bed before the maddening ache in her body drove all resistance from her. ‘We get into bed and we don’t think about anything else! We don’t think about what’s right or sensible. We don’t have a proper relationship! We’re not doing this again.’ She licked her lips—tried to shut her reaction down. ‘And stop looking at me like that!’
His hooded gaze was fixed on her semi-naked body in pure masculine appraisal and she gave a murmur of exasperation that was directed entirely at herself, before grabbing a large T-shirt from the bag that she still hadn’t unpacked. She dragged it over her head with such haste that it took her a moment of struggling to find the armholes. Then she scooped her hair free and walked down the narrow corridor that led to the kitchen area and the living room, her body screaming a protest.
Every part of her was aroused, warm and ready.
She wanted him. Every single part of her wanted him.
Her hand shook as she filled the kettle, reminding herself that just because you could, it didn’t mean you should. If she was ever interested in a man again it was going to be a calm, sensible Englishman, she promised herself as she turned on the gas and put the kettle on to boil. Not a volatile Greek with superior seduction skills.
For twenty-four years she’d been careful around men. She’d been cautious and wary. Then she’d met Nikos and all that caution had been burnt up in a rush of explosive sexual chemistry.
What was it about the man that made it so hard to do the sensible thing?
Her eyes slid to the diamond on her finger. The diamond she was still wearing.