The Secret Wife

Constantine dealt her a wolfish grin, white teeth gleaming against golden skin. ‘Didn’t I tell you that you’d learn caution around me?’

That one taunt was sufficient to overcome it. Rosie landed on the bed in a flying leap of temper and made a wild snatch at the key. Constantine flung it across the room and snaked two powerful arms round her slender waist to entrap her. ‘I knew you would rise to the bait.’

Clamped to his hard, lean length in impotent stillness, Rosie flung her fiery head back and glowered down at him. ‘Let go of me!’

‘Self-denial doesn’t come naturally to me. And I wouldn’t say that you were a rousing success in that department either.’ Constantine surveyed her with thickly lashed eyes screened to a mocking sliver of knowing gold. ‘Ten hours a day with a hoe you use like a machete! I have to confess that no woman has ever gone to that amount of effort to resist me, pethi mou.’

‘I just don’t want to be anywhere near you!’ Rosie snarled, feeling the naked heat of his intimidatingly relaxed length striking her through the thin sheet and the rumpled towel that separated them. Terrifying little shivers of seething sexual awareness were already pulling her skin tight over her bones and strangling her breathing processes.

‘Because you don’t trust yourself,’ Constantine savoured with raw satisfaction. ‘And, watching you bend and stretch in those shorts, I was equally challenged. You have the most provocative heart-shaped derrière, little rag-doll... and when you shake your T-shirt because you’re getting too warm those beautiful little breasts bounce and push against the damp cotton until your nipples—’

‘Stop it!’ Appalled to realise that he had been watching her and noticing such things, Rosie was mortified.

Brilliant dark golden eyes intent, Constantine appraised the hot pink flush on her cheeks. ‘You still blush like an innocent. That turns me on even harder,’ he confided huskily as he fluidly shifted to kick the sheet away and yanked at her towel to detach it.

Taken by surprise, Rosie made a mad grab at her only covering just a second too late and found herself swung over lightning-fast onto her back with Constantine looking down at her instead. ‘No!’

‘Christos...you smell of soap—all clean and scrubbed and sweet. But even when you’re dirty and sweaty and too warm you excite me. The scent of you, the feel of you, the taste of you,’ he growled sexily, a lean, hair-roughened thigh deftly parting hers as he brought his weight down on her and shamelessly acquainted her with the smooth, hard thrust of his erection.

A burst of burning heat ignited low in the pit of Rosie’s stomach. ‘Your lawyer’s waiting to see you downstairs!’ she gasped in sudden recall, fighting her own weakness with all her might.

‘Theo’s already gone.’ A slight frown drew Constantine’s winged brows together. ‘Crazy of him to come all this way only to deliver some papers and then refuse to even stay for lunch.’ Golden eyes smouldered down at her hectically flushed face. ‘But remarkably tactful.’

Transfixed, Rosie stared back up at him, great rolling breakers of excitement making her heart thunder and her limbs quiver. Her breasts felt swollen and tender, the taut peaks aching for his mouth and his hands, and never had she been more agonisingly aware of the moist, throbbing centre of need between her thighs.

‘We don’t need other people around us, pethi mou. They get in the way and I am far too distracted to work. Say something,’ Constantine invited encouragingly.

Rosie parted dry lips and managed only one word, so intense was her arousal. ‘Please...’

Primitive triumph flashed in his glittering gaze. He ran slow, seeking fingers over the pouting mounds he had bared for his pleasure. As his thumbs glanced over the stiff pink buds straining up to him, she gasped and rose against him, every nerve-ending in her body screaming in response. He thrust her flat with a devouringly passionate kiss. She kissed him back with desperate urgency, everything she had held back for long, endless days suddenly betraying her in a stormy flood of possessive need. Her hands ran over him, smoothing over warm golden skin sheathing whipcord muscles, and a hungry moan of impatience escaped her.

‘You are always in a rush ...’

Rosie twisted and squirmed, on fire with want

ing him, not a shred of self-restraint left or even recalled. Clenching her fingers into his thick, silky black hair, she shifted her legs in an aching invitation more blatant than speech.

With an urgent groan, Constantine sank his hands to her hips and hauled her under him. Then he hesitated. ‘I don’t want to hurt you again.’

‘You don’t argue with me in my fantasies...you don’t stop...you don’t make me wait!’ Rosie sobbed in explosive frustration.

The silence thundered. She closed her eyes in horror. Oh, no, I didn’t say that ... did I? she asked herself.

‘What do I do?’ he murmured.

‘What I want,’ Rosie mumbled.

Constantine vented a ragged laugh of appreciation. The velvet-hard thrust of him surged teasingly against her, gently probing the slick, damp welcome awaiting him.

Rosie was on a high of such shivering excitement, she couldn’t have vocalised to save her life. What she wanted was even more thrilling in reality. He entered her so slowly that she raked her fingernails down his back. The pleasure was so intoxicatingly intense, she lost herself in the bold feel of him stretching her with delicious force.

‘Open your eyes,’ Constantine ordered.

Rosie lifted lush lashes to see the blazing gold command in his eyes and drowned. She was drugged into silence by sensation, feverish, all-absorbing sensation, as he withdrew and then thrust into her all over again. He was slow and then fast, smooth and then rough. She couldn’t do anything but cling with impassioned hands and moan and sob her incredible pleasure. He went on and on and on, driving her to mindless heights until the pulsing, tormenting heat inside her exploded and unleashed a shattering tidal wave of satisfaction.

As he shuddered in the protective circle of her arms, an aching flood of tenderness consumed Rosie and she pressed her lips lovingly to a smooth brown shoulder. Drinking in the hot, musky scent of his damp skin, she felt utterly at peace.

Constantine released her from his weight and bent over her. ‘Where are you under all that hair?’ he groaned, lean fingers brushing the tangle of bright curls gently off her brow.