The Cozakis Bride

Olympia was trembling. Nik was emanating rage in siz­zling waves. '1 don't know what you're talking about—'

'You couldn't make even a polite pretence of forgiving Katerina either! Was that because she once had a crush on me?' Nik demanded. 'I want to know what the problem is. Is it jealousy that makes you act like this?'

Olympia dredged her eyes from his and focused on his caramel silk tie. 'You'd better go downstairs and join our guests again—'

'Markos knows I'm mad with you. Theos mou...I will go nowhere until you tell me what is the matter with you!' Nik swore in a savage undertone, sliding long fingers into the glossy fall of her hair and tipping up her face to his when she would have looked away. 'This morning you were smil­ing, laughing... happy!'

The tension in the atmosphere pulsed like a ticking time bomb. Against her will, she met scorching dark golden eyes and her heartbeat accelerated, her breathing quickening. She read the blunt masculine bewilderment in his angry gaze and something twisted inside her, filling her with wild despair and pain. 'Let...go...of...me,' she framed jerkily.

'I don't think so, yineka mou,' Nik breathed, lowering his arrogant dark head and prying her lips apart with the driving force of his mouth.

It was the very last thing Olympia had expected. She wasn't prepared. She had no time to muster her defences. The fierce turmoil inside her ignited as if he had thrown a match into a bale of hay. Shock flashed through her, and then suddenly she found that her hands were biting into his shoul­ders and she was kissing him back in a devastating melding of fury and hatred and hunger.

Tipping her back on to the bed, Nik pinned her arms to the mattress and plundered the tender interior of her mouth with an erotic urgency that drove her halfway out of her mind. She couldn't think. Her pent-up feelings were finding vent in a primal passion that smashed all boundaries, leaving her at the mercy of what felt like an uncontrollable need.

'You are mine...' Nik rasped, jack-knifing back from her to thrust up the skirt of her dress and hook his fingers to the waistband of her panties. He wrenched her out of them with unashamed impatience.

And she lay there quivering, every nerve-ending crying out for the satisfaction only he could give. Nothing else mattered, nothing but the desperate craving which had tightened her nipples to distended points and set up an agonising throbbing ache between her thighs.

'You understand this OK...' Nik gritted, running his burn­ing, intent gaze over her, his scorching hunger hot as fire licking at her super-sensitive skin.

He came back to her with a driving kiss that consumed her. He was rough, and she had never known him rough before, and he excited her beyond belief. She was out of control, but so was he and she loved that. It answered the wildness leaping through her. He was hard and hot and full, and he sank into her tender welcoming flesh with a forceful maleness that made her sob out his name in ecstasy. Her back arched as the blinding excitement peaked on a shivering storming tide of mindless pleasure.

In the aftermath, she opened her eyes and blinked.

For a split-second, as Nik stared down at her, she saw a shell-shocked look in his stunning dark deep-set eyes that could only have mirrored her own. Rolling off her without a word, he headed for the bathroom. She lay there immobile, struggling to breathe again, feeling ravished, feeling the sweet, heavy satiation of her own body with shattered rec­ognition. She tottered upright and smoothed down her dress with unsteady hands.

Tossing the towel he had dried his face with on the floor, Nik studied her from the bathroom doorway. 'Come here...' he urged raggedly, opening his arms with pure Greek expansiveness.

'You don't need to say sorry...I liked it,' Olympia admitted, half under her breath, her voice wobbling.

He crossed the room, curved an arm round her and bent his dark head to brush his mouth sensually across one fever­ishly flushed cheekbone. 'Sometimes you make me so angry I could self-destruct. I can handle that...but I can't handle what I don't understand,' he murmured in a raw-edged un­dertone, his accent very thick.

'It's OK...' And she meant it, but not in the way she knew he would read it. She loved him more than she had ever loved anything or anybody. But she also knew at that moment that she would never live with him again, never let him touch her again, that there had never been any big decision to make. Only her own weak and fearful reluctance to confront reality had allowed her to spend a few hours in a turmoil of indecision.

'It's not like I...like I don't care about you,' Nik said gruffly, after a long silence which had screeched with his tension, his struggle to find something he could bear to say. 'You're my wife.'

He hovered for a moment, as if he hoped that statement would dredge some response from her. When it didn't, he left the room.

Olympia studied her panties where they lay on the carpet. She wasn't shocked by that wild bout of sex they had just shared. She had wanted him, needed him, and had briefly found an outlet for an agony beyond what she could bear.

And Nik? Nik was terrific at handing out orders and read­ing the riot act, marvellous at sticking to the light and charm­ing in conversation, but when serious communication beck­oned Nik Cozakis was almost as inarticulate as a toddler. So grabbing her and kissing her like Neanderthal man and vent­ing his emotions in a purely physical way had provided a necessary escape route. Odd, she reflected, that he should be so attuned to her that he had seen right through her efforts to behave normally. By rights, Nik should have been easily taken in.

But he didn't hate her anymore. A shaken laugh escaped Olympia as she restored her appearance to one of respecta­bility. She thought of her baby, the baby that Nik had ensured she conceived. She pressed her hand protectively against her stomach. No wonder Nik had spent four whole weeks living with her! Had he marooned her in separate accommodation and only made flying visits to her bed, getting her pregnant might well have taken months. But all that was over now. The deed was done. She would love her baby, she would look after her baby, but she would not give house-room to a husband who had slept with another woman.

Before she went downstairs, she marvelled at the strange tranquillity of acceptance which now enfolded her. She found the housekeeper in the kitchen and gave her clear and concise instructions; Nik would hate her again by the end of the eve­ning.

They drove down to the village taverna, where the wed­ding festivities were in full swing, in a Toyota Landcruiser with Nik at the wheel. Settled at a large table in the seat of honour, Nik found his attention much in demand, and Markos swiftly became involved too, in what was an overwhelmingly male-dominated dialogue.

Beside Olympia, Samantha released a little gurgle of laughter.

Olympia glanced at her.

Samantha's eyes danced with amusement. 'Do you know what I was just thinking? What an awful shame it is that Gisele can't see how Nik acts around you! But then I doubt if she's ever heard your story—'

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; 'My story?' Olympia repeated.

'Yours and Nik's. What you were like together as teen­agers. Markos told me Nik was like...totally overboard in the way he went for you...and I just couldn't imagine Nik like that with a woman. Since I've known him he's always been very cool and casual in the emotion department,' the redhead confessed, shaking her head in apparent wonder­ment. 'But around you he's a different guy...he's really in­tense, locked on to your every move.'

Olympia forced a smile. 'Really, Samantha...'

'No, I'm loving seeing him like this,' Samantha asserted with an only slightly guilty grin. 'Your Nik's broken plenty of hearts in his time. I'm quite transfixed, watching him surge forward to open car doors and pull out chairs for you, and you just take it all as your due.'

Olympia nodded without comprehension or indeed much interest. She liked Samantha, wished she had met her under other circumstances, but reckoned she would never meet her again. The day had been one of interminable strain and she could not wait for its end. Furthermore, Nik had always opened car doors and pulled out chairs for her, and she could not see anything worthy of comment in the fact. 'He has very good manners.'

Samantha sighed. 'Oh, why don't you put him out of his misery and make up with him, Olympia? I've never seen Nik as on edge as he is today.'

Olympia flushed with discomfiture. 'So it was obvious we'd had a row—'

'Oh, it wasn't you who gave it away, it was him.' Saman­tha patted Olympia's hand soothingly. 'Don't worry about it. Markos and I had several major blow-ups the first few months we were married. Getting used to living together takes time. Greek men can be incredibly bossy.'