The Stephanides Pregnancy

'I don't usually have much of a problem getting my own way,' Cristos admitted without an ounce of discomfiture. 'Lecture over yet?'

As Betsy stiffened cool fingers smoothed soothing liquid across the hot skin on her shoulders and a tiny startled moan of sound broke from between her lips. 'Am I hurting you?' Cristos asked lazily.

'No…' If anyone had told Betsy that some day the touch of a man's hand on her shoulder would set her alight like a match dropped on a bale of hay, she would have laughed out loud. But the confident caress of his lean fingers was somehow making her unbearably aware of her own body in a way that made it almost impossible for her to stay still.

'Should I stop?' he husked.

'No…' She could not bear the idea of denying herself that physical contact. A kernel of heat was· unfurling low in her pelvis. She was tempted to lean back into the hard, masculine strength of his powerful body. Shaken by the very thought of such behaviour, she went rigid. Desire was in her like a secret agent programmed to seek out her vulnerability. She looked back in the mirror to see Cristos even though she knew she should not. Her heartbeat thudded heavily inside her tight chest.

She thought of all the safe choices she had made and so many of them had been mistakes. All her life she had erred on the side of caution. She had wanted to train as a mechanic but instead she had spent three years at university studying for a career she had no interest in. For a year after that she had worked endless overtime in an office job she'd loathed and her lucrative salary had been of no comfort. In the same way she had been protecting herself from potential hurt when she'd held back from sleeping with Rory. She had always selected the most sensible and least risky option available… and Cristos was a high-risk heartbreaker.

In her mind's eye she pictured herself swivelling round on the mattress and moulding her lips to that wide, sensual mouth of his. She was shattered by just how fiercely she longed for that image to be true.

Taking her by surprise, Cristos rose upright in a fluid motion. He strolled into the bathroom to rinse his hands and murmured levelly, 'Take a break. I'm a lot more used to this heat than you are.'

But very unused to suppressing his libido around a beautiful woman, he conceded inwardly. He raked long fingers roughly through his cropped black hair but still he could see the slender elegant sweep of her back, the fairness of her colouring against his own and the incredibly feminine silky feel of her soft skin. He was becoming obsessed, he told himself angrily. He fed the fire with fierce concentration and then stacked wood.

Betsy regarded sex as something serious and he had never regarded sex as serious. But in the back of his mind lurked a vague and unsettling recollection of the much more conservative views of his mother, Calliope, who had died when he was eleven years old. To combat the rampant sexism of the male contingent of the Stephanides family, his mother had even then been talking to her son about stuff like respect, fidelity and self-discipline. And love. His lean, handsome face clenched hard. Well, suffice it to say that Calliope, who had married her true love at eighteen, had been very naive on that score.

Betsy was, however, in a class of her own. From the minute she had admitted that she was a virgin Cristos had been forced to reassess his attitude to her. No longer could he stick her in the same category as the countless forgettable women who were pretty much willing to spread their legs for any rich man. But her very exclusivity made her an even more potent symbol of desire to a male who had always regarded the best things in life as being his…

CHAPTER FOUR

WHEN Betsy wakened, she could hardly credit that it was after one in the afternoon. She felt hugely guilty about her sloth. From the window she could see that Cristos was still up on the headland working and what had she been doing? Sleeping!

Hot and sticky, she stripped off the bikini, freshened up and put on the colourful halter-neck beach dress instead. She wouldn't let herself glance in the mirror and get embarrassed about how noticeably tiny her breasts would look shorn of a bra and how very thin and giraffe like her legs appeared in too short a skirt. Instead she washed out the bikini, draped it on the rear terrace to dry and busied herself making lunch.

Were her family climbing the walls with worry about her? She winced. There was no point agonising over what could not be helped. But for how long were they likely to be living on the island? Earlier that day, Cristos had brought her up to speed on the food and fuel levels at the house, which typically he had already cheeked out and considered in depth. They had ample supplies. Although the fresh food would eventually run out, the freezer was packed. There was also plenty of fuel to keep the generator ticking over.

She would have liked to ask Cristos how his grandfather was likely to react to a ransom demand for his grandson's release. So far she had held her tongue on the topic because anything relating to the kidnapping seemed to send Cristos through the roof and awaken all his dark suspicions about her having crime connections. In any case, how could Cristos really know how his elderly grandfather might react?

She walked out to the front of the house to call Cristos but there was no sign of him. Then she saw the heap of clothes on the sand and his seal-wet dark head gleaming as he cleaved through the sunlit waves out in the bay. Even though he was a powerful swimmer, she could not stop thinking about scary stuff like undertow. With considerable relief she watched him heading for shore again and standing up to wade through the last few feet of surf. At that point she received her very first view of a naked adult male.

In dismay, Betsy retreated back into the house. But that sight of Cristos unclothed was stamped in immoveable stone within her memory. He was magnificent: wide bronzed shoulders, powerful pectoral muscles accentuated by damp black curls, a sleek six pack torso and the narrow hips and long, powerful hair roughened thighs of a male in the physical peak of condition. She blacked out any recollection of the more intimate part of him with puritanical thoroughness. After all, she was not a voyeur. She would give him five minutes to get his clothes on.

But when she went back onto the beach, Cristos was showering at the outside faucet and still naked as the day he had been born. Thoroughly fed up with his relaxed attitude to nudity, she backed off well out of view and yelled at the top of her voice, 'Lunch!'

She was standing with folded arm~ under the tree when Cristos finally came strolling towards her bare chested and barefoot, his chinos riding low on his lean hips, his shirt thrown over one shoulder. Dazzling dark eyes sought hers and a slow, lethal smile began to tug at the edges of his beautifully sculpted and highly expressive mouth.

That fast Betsy appreciated that he knew he had been seen and she turned a beetroot colour as far as her hairline. But, outraged as she was by his sheer insouciance, she still couldn't take her eyes off him. When he smiled her heartbeat went haywire and her mouth ran dry.

'You're so shy…it turns me on,' Cristos confided without shame.

'You must be hungry.' Betsy struggled to keep the lid on her responses to him by falling back on the prosaic.

'Right now… my only hunger is for· you…' Smouldering golden eyes met hers with provocative force.

'You shouldn't be saying th-things like that to me,' she stammered, taken aback by his boldness.

Cristos helped himself to a glass of iced water from the table and drank thirstily. 'I want you, pethi mou. There's no shame in the truth.'

Entrapped, Betsy stared back at him and then painfully slowly she enforced her own will and disconnected from his stunning gaze to let her eyes drop. Only then did she notice what the taut fit of fabric straining over his groin could not conceal: he was fiercely aroused. Shock thrilled through her at that visible proof of his desire. Something that had repelled her in other men had a very different effect on her when it was Cristos in the starring role. She discovered that she was indecently fascinated and had to tear her attention from him.

'If you expect me to stop wanting you, go hide under a blanket,' Cristos advised.

'I am b

y no stretch of the imagination that faceable!' Betsy shot back at him in angry embarrassment.

'You're so beautiful that I'm breaking my own rules and chasing a chauffeur,' Cristos informed her drily. 'You stopped me in my tracks and I don't mind admitting that when it comes to gorgeous women, I'm a connoisseur. '

Against her own will, she was captivated and madly

curious. 'Have there been a lot of women in your life?' Cristos nodded in silent confirmation.

'You really think I'm beautiful?'

Cristos read the anxious defensive look on her lovely face and wondered who was responsible for giving her such low self-esteem. 'You take my breath away,' he told her softly.

Her vulnerability touched him. She was so unlike the confident, conceited beauties that provided sexual entertainment in his leisure hours. Polished to the edges of their perfect nails, those women were as tough and cynical as he was. They traded their bodies for thrills, for status and for money. But neither his wealth nor his power had impressed Betsy. She was quite happy to shout at him and slap him and treat him as no other woman had ever dared. Was that why he found her such a distraction? Novelty value? Satisfied with that explanation, he closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms with easy strength and unquestioning assurance.

In contact with the heat and solidarity of his big, powerful frame, Betsy trembled. You take my breath away. No man had ever said anything like that to her and it made her feel like a million dollars. She knew she ought to back off. She knew that she was dicing with danger and, in her mother's time-honoured phrase, asking for trouble. But when she looked up at Cristos and he held her close, she also knew that she would dig ditches and give at least ten years of her life to stay in his arms.