‘This time it will be so good between us, agape mou—’
The touch of her mouth against his tested his self-control to intolerable levels and he pulled away with difficulty, sliding back across the seat with a rueful expression on his face.
‘I have never felt so out of control with a woman,’ he groaned, the admission doing very little for his ego. ‘I want you all the time, everywhere, no matter how inappropriate.’
He watched the colour spill into her cheeks and the shy glance that she cast in his direction.
Anticipation throbbed between them and he gave a wry smile.
‘I hope Kouropoulos isn’t expecting to get much sense out of me. My main objective of going to his wretched island is to spend some time alone with you.’
The realisation that there was a strong degree of truth in that statement shocked him to an uncomfortable degree.
Suddenly something that he’d worked towards for months seemed less important and he struggled to justify such an uncharacteristic shift in his priorities. It was just sexual frustration, he brooded, coming up with the only possible answer. He’d never been this hot for a woman and he’d never had to wait this long for satisfaction.
And maybe there was an element of competition involved, he conceded grimly, his thoughts drifting to Farrer. It gave him considerable satisfaction to contemplate the fact that, after he’d finished with her, she wouldn’t have the energy to crawl from his bed, let alone dream about Farrer.
Satisfied with that perfectly reasonable interpretation of his current state of mind, Zander pushed thoughts of his unsettling and decidedly unusual behaviour away and instead concentrated all his attentions on the woman sitting next to him.
Only she held the key to restoring his normal peace of mind.
She gave a hesitant smile and then reached into her tiny bag for her mobile phone. ‘I’d better call Tom and tell him I won’t be coming back to the office this week—’
‘No.’ Zander stretched out a lean brown hand and grabbed the phone from her, his expression distinctly cool. ‘You can call him from Greece.’
There was no way he was allowing her to talk to Farrer before she climbed into his plane.
Fortunately he was assisted in this plan by their arrival at the airport.
He gestured outside the car. ‘I don’t want to keep my pilot waiting.’
He saw her eyes widen with shock. ‘You were serious about the airport? But I haven’t even packed any clothes—’
He resisted the temptation to point out that she wasn’t going to need clothes for what he had in mind.
‘I’ll arrange something,’ he said tactfully, urging her out of the car and into the plane with a haste that had nothing to do with his travelling schedule and everything to do with his ravenous libido.
He couldn’t believe that he’d actually managed to get her this far and he was absolutely determined that nothing was going to interfere with his plans this time.
* * *
Lauranne stepped out of the car and then stopped dead, staring at the plane in front of her.
It carried the Volakis logo, another blatant reminder of just how staggeringly wealthy this man was.
What was she doing?
When they’d been together five years before she’d somehow managed to shelve the whole question of his wealth. For most of the time they’d just been two people on a beach holiday, and then for the short time they were married. But somehow she’d managed to separate Volakis the billionaire from the man she’d been crazily in love with.
‘What’s the matter?’ He paused beside her, his dark eyes searching. And then he smiled the same smile that had eroded her resistance five years earlier. It was a smile that reassured, seduced and charmed all at the same time. A smile from which there was no escape.
She should be insisting on a divorce and heading back into London to the safety of her flat, instead of which she was willing to follow him to the moon.
He urged her up the steps and onto the plane, nodding briefly to the pretty stewardess who greeted them at the door of the aircraft.
She settled herself into one of the wide leather seats while Zander spoke a few words to his pilot and then strolled back to join her, relaxed and impossibly handsome in evening dress. He’d removed his bow-tie in the car and dark hairs clustered at the open neck of his shirt, offering a tantalising glimpse of the very male body concealed by the suit.
He sprawled in the seat next to her and she was painfully conscious of every inch of him, of the dark stubble hazing his arrogant jaw and the restless energy emanating from his powerful frame.