Her smile wavered. Her son would grow up without a father, and although that was increasingly common these days — look at her friend Maggie, promptly abandoned by her waste-of-space boyfriend the moment she'd told him she was pregnant — it was a source of perpetual guilt for her. But what kind of father would Nikos have made, even if he'd lived?
She sighed heavily. What was the point of thinking about that? Nikos was dead. And though she would feel responsible for his death to the end of her days, she must not think about the past. It was gone, over. Nikos was dead. And Leon — Leon might as well be.
Certainly she was dead to him.
Seeing him again like that before Christmas had been traumatic, but she'd gotten over it. She'd gotten over him the first time around. She'd had to — she'd had no choice. And this time — three months ago now, since that brief, awful encounter at the department store that had lasted just a couple of minutes, no more — she'd gotten over that, too. She'd had to. Nothing had changed. Leon Andreakos still hated her.
She felt her heart squeeze the way it used to in those first nightmare months after she'd fled his bed, and went on drying up. She had Nicky. A new life with him. A blessing beyond all grace.
The buzz of the doorbell made her head lift sharply. Who on earth? Not Maggie at this time of night. Ben would be asleep as well. So
who?
Cautiously, because although the small block of flats was in a quiet part of town, you could never be too careful these days, she walked down the narrow hallway to the front door. The buzz came again, impatient. Peremptory. She peered through the fish eye, but all she could make out was a man in a suit, face distorted. He seemed respectable, but for all that she opened the door slowly on the chain.
"Alanna?"
Blackness folded over her eyes.
The voice — deep, accented.
"Alanna, open up."
Not a request. An order. A hand, large, square, long-fingered, pressed insistently against his side of the door.
Like a zombie she opened the door to him. To Leon Andreakos.
She stared at him blankly.
"What are you doing here?"
Her voice was a thread.
His eyes, so dark — condemning — looked down at her. No expression.
But in their depths, something she had not seen for an eternity of lonely nights.
Desire.
He stepped inside. She couldn't stop him. Felt her knees buckling. He saw her reaction and a smile slashed across his face. Cynical. Mocking.
But it was not her he was mocking. It was himself.
He looked down at her, his eyes filled with a dark fire.
She stood there, completely incapable of movement. Silently, saying not a word, he slid his hand around her neck, stroking the nape softly with the tips of his fingers, his other hand drawing her against his long, lean body, his hand hard on her spine.
Sensation, like a hot flood, drenched through her.
"I still want you —" said Leon Andreakos as he lowered his mouth to hers.
For an instant, so brief it scarcely existed, she tried to resist. Then she gave a moan, low in her throat, and was lost.
Arousal surged through Leon. Thee mou, but he wanted her! Wanted the feel of her lissome body pressed against him, wanted the warmth of her mouth opened to him, wanted to knead and stroke those soft, rounded breasts…
He'd tried not to want her. Tried for three months to not think about her — not to remember her. But seeing her again like that, out of the blue, had relit a flame he’d thought he'd doused five long years ago as he lowered his brother into his untimely grave.
And the flame was burning now, searing through him, firing his blood. Alanna Richards had destroyed his brother, but right now he didn't care. He would have her one more time.