Playing by the Greek's Rules (Puffin Island 0.50)

He smiled. ‘Exactly.’

‘So you talk, you drink expensive wine, you admire the romantic view—then what? You take her home or you take her to bed?’

‘Yes.’ He paused as their waiter delivered a bottle of clear liquid and two glasses and Lily shook her head.

‘Is that raki? Brittany loves it, but it gives me a headache.’

‘We call it tsikoudia. It is a grape liqueur—an important part of Cretan hospitality.’

‘I know. It’s been around since Minoan times. Archaeologists have found the petrified remains of grapes and grape pips inside pithoi, the old clay storage jars, so it’s assumed they knew plenty about distillation. Doesn’t change the fact it gives me a headache.’

‘Then you didn’t drink it with enough water.’ He handed her a small glass. ‘The locals think it promotes a long and healthy life.’

Lily took a sip and felt her throat catch fire as she swallowed. ‘So now finish telling me about your typical date. You don’t fall in love, because you don’t believe in love. So when you take a woman to bed, there are no feelings involved at all?’

‘There are plenty of feelings involved.’ The look he gave her made her heart pump faster.

‘I mean emotions. You have emotionless sex. You don’t say I love you. You don’t feel anything here—’ Lily put her hand on her heart. ‘No feelings. So it’s all about physical satisfaction. This is basically a naked workout, yes? It’s like a bench press for two.’

‘Sex may not be emotional, but it’s intimate,’ he said softly. ‘It requires the ultimate degree of trust.’

‘You can do that and still not be emotionally involved?’

‘When I’m with a woman I care about her enjoyment, her pleasure, her happiness and her comfort. I don’t love her.’

‘You don’t love women?’

‘I do love women.’ The corners of his mouth flickered. ‘I just don’t want to love one specific woman.’

Lily stared at him in fascination.

There was no way, no way, she would ever fall in love with a man like Nik. She didn’t even need to check her list to know he didn’t tick a single one of the boxes.

He was perfect.

‘There’s something I want to say to you and I hope you’re not going to be shocked.’ She put her glass down and took a deep breath. ‘I want to have rebound sex. No emotions involved. Sex without falling in love. Not something I’ve ever done before, so this is all new to me.’

He watched her from under lowered lids, his expression unreadable. There was a dangerous stillness about him. ‘And you’re telling me this because—?’

‘Because you seem to be the expert.’ Her heart started to pound. ‘I want you to take me to bed.’

CHAPTER FOUR

NIK SCANNED HER in silence. The irony was that his original plan had been to do exactly that. Take her to bed. She was fun, sexy and original but the longer he spent in her company the more he realised how different her life goals were from his own. By her own admittance, Lily wasn’t the sort to emotionally disengage in a relationship. In the interests of self-protection, logic took precedence over his libido.

‘It’s time I took you home.’

Far from squashing her, the news appeared to cheer her. ‘That’s what I was hoping you’d say. I promise you won’t regret it. What I lack in experience I make up for in enthusiasm.’

She was as bright as she was pretty and he knew her ‘misunderstanding’ was deliberate.

‘Theé mou, you should not be saying things like that to a man. It could be taken the wrong way.’

She sliced into a tomato. ‘You’re taking it the way I intended you to take it.’

Nik glanced at the bottle of champagne and tried to work out how much she’d had. ‘I’m not taking you to my home, I’m taking you to your home.’

‘You don’t want to do that. My bed is smaller than a cat basket and you’re big. I have a feeling we’re going to