Painted the Other Woman

Marisa lifted her head to look at him—and drowned.

Drowned in what she saw in his eyes, unmasked, unveiled …

Her lips parted, the breath stilling in her throat.

Her hand was taken, folded into his. It was the first time he’d touched her so deliberately—only in that first, formal raising of her hand to his lips, that faint, brief grazing of his fingertips against her cheek, had he ever made contact with her. But this—this warm, strong hand-clasp—seemed to envelop her whole being, not just her hand lying there inert, helpless in his grasp.

‘Come with me,’ he said again. ‘Be with me.’

Emotion rushed through her like heady wine in her veins. Like a cloud of butterflies suddenly taking flight inside her. His clasp strengthened and his thumb stroked along the edge of her palm. Intimately. Possessively.

His eyes poured into hers. So dark, so deep, flecked with gold that glinted in the candlelight, that drowned her, sweeping her away.

His thumb indented into the soft flesh of her palm. She could feel its pressure, feel the power of his touch—its persuasion.

‘Say yes—it’s all I ask.’

Hadn’t she always known this must happen? Hadn’t she felt it from the moment she’d set eyes on him? Hadn’t her heart skipped and her blood pulsed, her breath caught? Hadn’t she known every time she’d been with him that this was what she wanted—dreamt of—desired?

He saw her yielding. Saw her features soften, her eyes fill with a lambent lustre that told him everything he wanted to know. Triumph filled him. He had got her—finally. She would not refuse him now. She would not continue to hold him at bay, to treat him as if he were forbidden fruit. Now she would yield to him—taste the fruit he offered her.

And he—oh, he would do likewise. He would take this time with her and make her his own. Put aside, even if only for a brief few weeks, all his worries about his sister and her troubled marriage, put aside all his fears for her, his doubts about her fickle husband.

For now—just for now—he would do what every moment with Marisa had confirmed to him. That what he wanted was her—all to himself.

Away from everything that cast a damning shadow over her.

Just the two of them—together.

Only that.

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHAT do you think? Worth the long-haul flight?’

The familiar note of amusement was in Athan’s voice as he posed his question. He knew what the answer would be. Had known it from the moment they’d landed, stepped out into the balmy, tropical heat seven thousand miles south west from bleak, icy London. Knew it now, as they stood side by side on the little wooden veranda of their beachside cabana.

Marisa turned to gaze at him. ‘How can you ask?’ she breathed. Then she turned back again. Back to look at the scene in front of her.

It was exactly like the photo in the brochure—but real. And she was here—here in the middle of it all! Like a dream—a wonderful, exotic dream.

And the Caribbean beach—silver sanded, backed with palms swaying in the gentle calypso breeze that rustled the scarlet hibiscus and the fragrant frangipani blooms—was not the only dream come true.

So was the man at her side.

She could feel her breath catch as it had caught over and over again during their journey here, cocooned in first class seats. Her eyes had been wide with the excitement not just of travelling abroad for the first time, or because it was first class, with all the pandering and luxury that came with it, but most of all because of the man sitting beside her.

She had made the right decision in accepting his invitation to come here. She knew it—felt it. For how could it be otherwise? How could she possibly have resisted what he’d offered her? The question was rhetorical; her answer was a given. It was impossible to resist Athan Teodarkis! Impossible to resist his invitation—both to this wonderful holiday with him and, she thought, with a shiver of quivering awareness, to what else he was inviting.

There had been, it was true, a momentary pang when she’d thought of Ian—but it had been swiftly quenched. Ian was far away—and if her alternative was to stay languishing in London, without him, what was to hold her there when she might be here … on this palm-fringed tropical beach?

With Athan.

Day after day, every time she met with him, her response to him intensified. She became more and more vividly aware of the effect he could have on her. It might be foolish, it might be rash—but it was so powerful this rush that came whenever she thought of him, whenever she was with him.

I can’t resist him—can’t resist what he’s offering me. I can’t …

And for this brief idyllic time, here in this tropical paradise he’d brought her to, she would resist nothing of what he offered her.