‘Your mother always seemed happy.’
‘She was a great wife and mother.’ Alexei downed the contents of his glass in a salute. ‘But she got very little pleasure out of being a Drakos.’
‘You and your father—her family—meant everything to her,’ Billie responded softly, and then she set down her empty glass. ‘I’m going to turn in now.’
‘You have to be the only woman in my life who continually tries to walk out on me,’ Alexei remarked with a wondering shake of his handsome dark head. ‘Any idea why that is?’
And all over again Billie felt the intense charismatic pull of him tugging at her senses. He was gorgeous and she would have had to be bereft of her senses not to appreciate him. His high-voltage sensuality was like a honey trap, she reasoned feverishly, and not one she could afford to fall into again.
‘Working for you is tiring,’ she fielded awkwardly.
‘What a drab description of being in my employment,’ Alexei countered, his Greek accent and possibly the amount of alcohol he had consumed making the words slur together.
Meeting his brilliant golden gaze, Billie felt like a rabbit caught in car headlights: paralysed, trapped and befuddled by the blinding brightness.
‘It’s never boring and I enjoy the travel and all the different people I meet,’ she conceded in a small tense voice. ‘Perhaps you should have allowed Brigitte to stay on today to keep you company.’
‘The French one who screamed abuse at you when you told her she couldn’t stay? You’ve got to be kidding!’ A familiar pulse of arousal was making Alexei uncomfortable. There was something about Billie that turned him on and he had long since given up trying to work out what it was. Yes, she had beautiful green eyes, clear fine skin and a peach of a mouth, but she wasn’t in his class and he knew it. She had nothing in common with his other lovers either—that would be a ridiculous comparison to make. Yet, somehow, he was always aware of the movements of that small, delightfully curvy body when it was in his vicinity. He never failed to notice the luscious curve of her breasts and the firm feminine swell of her bottom below a fitted skirt. And, just at that moment, with his blood running insanely hot and making him hard as steel, he wanted to strip off her clothes and sink hard and long into the silky welcome of her virginal body.
‘You shouldn’t be alone tonight.’
Alexei reached out and closed his lean brown hands over hers to tug her closer. ‘Ah-h-h, that’s sweet, Billie. Do you really think I need emotional support from anyone?’
‘Well, you’re unlikely to find it at the foot of a bottle,’ Billie told him with unhesitating disapproval.
Lounging back on the edge of a stone table with his long, lean, powerful thighs spread wide, Alexei flung back his handsome dark head and laughed with rich appreciation of that reprimand. His hands tightened over hers swiftly when she made a move to break free. ‘Only from your lips, moraki mou. The unblemished truth.’
‘Don’t call me “my little baby”,’ Billie urged with complete seriousness. ‘It’s that sort of talk which gives people the wrong idea about our relationship.’
‘But you are very small,’ Alexei riposted with dark amusement, his rich drawl running the syllables of the words together as he thought it was funny that she never seemed to notice the effect she had on him. ‘I’m not accustomed to little women.’
‘That’s not the point.’ Lifting her head, Billie encountered scorching golden eyes framed by luxuriant black lashes and registered that looking at him directly was seriously unwise. She felt the heat of that appraisal right to the very core of her, setting up a string of little sensual shocks that tightened her nipples and made her uncomfortably conscious of the uniquely sensitive area between her thighs.
‘The point here…’ Alexei breathed silkily as he flexed his strong hands and inexorably drew her closer still ‘…is that I want you and you want me and we’ve been dancing round that fact for far too long.’
Billie was as unyielding as a cliff face being buffeted by a high wind. ‘That’s not true.’
‘Stop being stuffy,’ Alexei urged, his intonation soft and sibilant, black-lashed stormy golden eyes threatening to reel her in like a fish on a line.
‘I’m not being stuffy. I’m just stating a fact,’ Billie told him tartly. ‘Last year I got a bit of a crush on my boss but I got over it—I’m sure you’ve had loads of female staff who over time became attracted to you.’
‘But none who tasted as hot as you,’ Alexei slotted in dangerously. ‘So you got over me?’
Billie nodded vigorously, glad he had made that very basic but crucial connection. ‘Totally.’
Alexei leant forward and slowly, sensually captured her lips, suckling their ripe curves before sliding his tongue moistly into her mouth in an explicit thrust. And she couldn’t breathe for excitement and felt her legs wobble like crumbling supports. He caught her to him with strong arms, hands splaying across her bottom. Trembling she came up for air and gasped, ‘We can’t—’
‘Ne, ne, we can,’ Alexei asserted thickly. ‘No more games.’
Resistance had hitherto been ingrained in Billie, but, although she dug deep, this time she couldn’t find a trace of her usual caution. Games? The very word offended her. Was that what he thought? That saying no had merely been an exercise cynically staged to increase his desire for her? She refused to believe that he could see her in that light because her own feelings were so different. In his arms she ironically felt ridiculously safe. There had been no other man in her life for three years. She loved him and he would never need her more than he needed her now. Like a battery-operated doll able to go in only one direction, she let her swollen mouth brush back across his, her entire body tingling with sexual longing. Being touched by him, even having the right to hold him close, lent a whole new exciting dimension to her feelings for him that went to her head like strong drink.
He carried her past the swimming pool terrace to the guest suite she was occupying until her house was ready for her. Automatic lights flashed on at every step to illuminate their progress.
‘What about tomorrow?’ Billie asked with sudden urgency.
‘Who knows?’ Alexei breathed in a tone of dismissal. ‘Right now I don’t want to think about today or, for that matter, tomorrow, moraki mou.’
Her slim fingers brushed his cheekbone in a soothing gesture of tenderness. ‘Then don’t