‘That’s great,’ Billie told him, but she was not convinced enough to risk a second pregnancy on the strength of that declaration. When she lost her figure, he might not find her as attractive, she reasoned uncomfortably. He was and always would be a male to whom a high-voltage sex life meant a great deal and pregnancy would definitely make a difference to their relationship. That was not a chance she wanted to take.
‘You saw far too much of my life as a playboy,’ Alexei groaned, folding her slim, curvy body into his arms. ‘That’s where the problem lies.’
‘I’m not prejudiced—’
‘How can you lie to me like that?’ Alexei censured. ‘You disapproved of my sex life from the day you met me.’
‘I’m not lying,’ she said uncomfortably.
‘You never could hide how you felt either,’ Alexei continued with sardonic cool. ‘You’d get a stony look on your face and go all stiff and prissy, and your voice would go cold.’
Billie was thoroughly disconcerted by that recital of her reactions.
Unexpectedly, Alexei’s lean bronzed features broke into an unholy grin of amusement as he pulled her closer. ‘You really were a jealous little cat from the word go!’
‘That’s not true,’ Billie mumbled, refusing to meet his shrewd gaze, as she had not once mentioned love since her return to France, had wrenched the very word from her thoughts and buried it deep. In Alexei’s radius she could only feel that the less said about love and all such sentiments, the better.
‘And there I was leading a perfectly normal life as a single man,’ Alexei lamented. ‘You were…wild,’ Billie rebutted without an instant of hesitation.
‘But in some dark little corner of your head, you love wild,’ Alexei murmured huskily, shifting against her in a lithe movement to acquaint her with the hard male heat at his groin.
Loving him as much as she thrilled to that wildness, Billie trembled, feeling the surge of heat and moisture between her legs, wishing she had more control over her responses. He pressed her slender length to him and bent his head to kiss her with a raw, urgent hunger that left her struggling to breathe. He had made love to her for half of the night but now he wanted her again and she rejoiced in that knowledge, which made her feel secure and needed. She let him back her into their bedroom on legs that felt as weak as cotton-wool supports. But she was no passive partner, for she dragged his jacket off him and embarked on his shirt buttons while exchanging passionate kisses that made her heartbeat race.
‘I think you should just stay in bed all day,’ Alexei confided, letting his teeth graze a particularly tender place on her neck and suppressing a groan as she wriggled against his long powerful thighs. ‘Getting dressed is hardly worth your while. I can’t get enough of you, yineka mou.’
He was pulling down the straps on her shoulders, accessing the scented hollow between her breasts and the pale upper slopes before he found the zip and the dress fell to her waist. He dealt with the light bra that merely uplifted the ripe swell of her flesh and he caught a straining pink nipple in his mouth to ravish it, even as he pushed up her skirt, ripped her delicate chiffon panties out of his path and found the sweet damp warmth of her silken flesh. A moment later, he braced her back against the wall, hoisted her against him and brought her down on him. She cried out in shivering excitement as he sank deep into her slick wet heat and after only a few strokes he moved her, tumbling her down on the bed and plunging into her tight depths over and over again with an erotic dominance that excited her beyond belief. She hit a shattering high of pleasure and she arched up to him and cried out at the convulsive strength of the climax gripping her. Dizzy satisfaction engulfed her as Alexei reached the same peak and shuddered in her arms.
‘Did I hurt you? Was I too rough?’ Alexei queried, breathing heavily.
‘I’m fine…better than fine…on another planet,’ she mumbled, struggling to find the right words to encompass her wonderful sense of well-being.
Alexei gave her a wicked smile that tilted her heart on its axis and crushed her close to his bare chest. ‘It just gets better and better with you,’ he sighed, dropping a kiss on her parted lips. ‘You’re an amazing find, moraki mou.’
A slew of phone calls disrupted dinner that evening. When Billie asked if there was a crisis of some kind Alexei fended off her questions with a shuttered look on his lean dark features. Bemused by his behaviour, she went to bed alone. In the morning she wakened to the sound of a text reaching her mobile phone and, before she reached for it, noticed to her surprise that the pillow beside hers was untouched. The message was from Hilary. It informed her that Lauren’s story had appeared that morning and Hilary had faxed a copy of the piece to the chateau. It also urged Billie not to pay heed to what her aunt termed ‘spiteful drivel’, but Billie’s apprehension about the unsavoury nature of her mother’s revelations rose to new heights.
A knock on the bedroom door heralded the arrival of a breakfast tray that could only have been ordered for her by Alexei. Striving to remain calm but, for once, impervious to the stunning view, Billie sat out at a table on the wrought-iron girded balcony and ate fresh fruit. She shredded her croissant and then lost interest in eating it while she wondered what tales her mother might have shared with the press. Who would dare to disbelieve stories told by her own flesh and blood? And the answer to that was: anyone who had ever enjoyed a personal acquaintance with Lauren, who was always willing to stretch the boundaries of the truth to make a good story.
The sound of the bedroom door snapping shut made her turn her head. Alexei strolled out onto the stone balcony, a lean powerful figure sheathed in close-fitting beige chino pants and a black T-shirt. Luxuriant black hair glinting in the sunlight, stunning golden eyes semi-screened by spiky dark lashes, he looked jaw-droppingly beautiful to her attentive gaze. Her heart seemed to jump behind her breastbone and her mouth ran dry, but neither appreciative response prevented her from noting that he was pale and tense with just the suggestion of gritted teeth behind the set of his stubborn, passionate mouth.
‘You’ve been reading Lauren’s interview with the Sunday Globe,’ Billie guessed in a hot-cheeked rush. While Hilary had assumed that their location abroad would make it difficult for them to gain easy access to that article, Billie knew that Alexei had the British newspapers flown in every day.
Alexei sent her a questioning glance.
‘Hilary texted me and then faxed a copy here—’
‘It came through but I chucked it in the bin,’ Alexei admitted. ‘It’ll only upset you.’
‘She’s my mother. I have every intention of reading it.’
His brilliant eyes veiled as if he had been prepared for that response. ‘Then you might as well know the worst now. Lauren has accused me of having an affair with Calisto…’
The numbness of shock possessed Billie’s lower limbs and the colour bled from her cheeks. For several deeply unpleasant seconds she felt physically sick and in the act of rising from the chair she dropped down again and gripped the arms with clenched fingers. ‘That may be my fault,’ she muttered with a sudden groan. ‘Before the DNA results arrived and I saw you at Hazlehurst, I saw a photo of you with Calisto in Paris and I have to admit that I was suspicious…’
‘If I had still wanted Calisto, I would never have dumped her in the first place or moved on to marry you,’ Alexei spelt out, his arrogant head held high, his jaw line at an uncompromising angle. ‘You have to learn to trust me, Billie. There will always be allegations of that nature made against me. Like my father, I’ll often be a target and I won’t have that kind of nonsense causing trouble between us. I’ve already called in my lawyers. I intend to sue on this occasion.’
It was at that point that Billie realised that Alexei had sought her out quite deliberately to tell her what was in that article before she could read it. A pre-emptive strike and very much in the bold, buccaneering Drakos style, she reflected painfully. How did she trust a male so clever and manipulative that he even knew how bes
t to sidestep claims of infidelity?
Billie pushed away her plate and got up. Alexei was regarding her with expectancy. Was he expecting an apologetic hug and the assurance that of course she believed him? It hurt that her mother could have plunged them into such a confrontation, but at the back of her mind she couldn’t help thinking that had Alexei been willing to be more frank with her she would never have cherished such qualms about Calisto.
‘I’ll get dressed,’ she said without any expression at all.
‘If you go outside, stay away from the front gates—a bunch of paps are conducting a stake-out.’
‘Oh…’ Biting her lip, Billie looked away, finally registering that Lauren had clearly managed to create quite a splash with her revelations. Her mother, she thought sadly, would be revelling in the limelight. She only hoped that the story Lauren had already sold would be the one and only time she talked about her daughter’s marriage in public. And that when the dust finally settled there would still be a marriage to conserve, she thought painfully.
When she finally held the relevant newspaper in her hand, she felt as if a cold hand were trailing down her spine. ‘I don’t need you hovering!’ she told Alexei, who was poised by a tall window with Nicky clasped in his arms. ‘Certainly not with Nicky in tow. I don’t want him to hear us arguing.’
Level dark golden eyes held hers with fierce determination. ‘Then don’t read it…’