Her arms linked round his neck and she trembled as he settled his hands below her hips and pulled her closer to stand between her spread thighs. There was a split second when she was aware that he was donning protection and sanity almost came back to her but, an instant later, he drove his rigid shaft into her hot velvety depths and her slim body bucked and writhed in ecstatic response. He pushed her flat and raised her thighs to pound into her tight wet channel with ravishingly forceful thrusts. Sounds she couldn’t control escaping from her throat, she was at the mercy of intense sensation and extraordinary pleasure. She was flung to a height and then the pressure and tightness in her pelvis broke and fireworks exploded inside her in a wild, jerking, totally uncontrolled release.
‘Efharisto…thanks. That took the edge off my temper.’ Alexei lifted her off the desk and deposited her in a bemused heap in a nearby armchair.
Blinking rapidly and still all of a quiver from the raw passion he had unleashed on her, Billie watched blankly as he strode into the washroom. She looked down at her naked breasts and, with a stifled exclamation of shock, reared upright to tie the robe securely closed again. That seeming necessity did, however, make her think of that well-known saying that talked of bolting the stable door after the horse had already bolted. She was so shocked by what had just happened between them that she was trembling.
She had not known that it was possible to make love like that, for everything to be so intense and wild that it overwhelmed every other thought and decent consideration. Nor had she ever suspected that she might have the capacity to enjoy such an encounter and that new knowledge shamed her in her own eyes. Indeed she was devastated by his demonstration of savage sexual power over her, because even though no such intimacies had even been on her mind he had taken her from cool passivity to the hottest orgasm without the slightest hesitation or difficulty. That took the edge off my temper, he had said, as if the taking of her body was on a par with a good gym workout. Her face burned scarlet at the recollection.
Across his desk as well, she recalled in consternation, mortified by the awareness that in spite of the chasm between them she had let him do exactly as he liked. Even so, it was still their wedding night, wasn’t it? Saying no to her highly sexed husband would not be the wisest path to take if she wanted to heal the breach between them. And, of course, anything that could reduce the tension between them was sensible and good, she reasoned, raking her tangled hair back off her damp brow with an unsteady hand. After all, she still had to talk to him, but the prospect of doing so while her body still hummed, tingled and downright ached from the sexual Blitzkrieg of his was a major challenge.
Only the dark shadow of masculine stubble roughening his strong jaw line and sensual mouth marred Alexei’s visual perfection when he rejoined her. His cream linen chinos and sweater were as expensive, tailored and sophisticated in style as any more formal wear. Black hair brushed back from his brow, Alexei looked startlingly handsome but worryingly untouched by the emotional vulnerability threatening her equilibrium. All over again she longed for the detachment and self-control she had once been able to call on around him, for it had protected her from pain.
‘I believe you said that you had something to tell me,’ Alexei drawled cool as ice, as if that episode of hot breathless sex had taken place only in her imagination.
Locking pained green eyes to his angular bronzed face, Billie said quietly, ‘You were with me on the night of your parents’ funeral. After your fall I knew that you’d lost a couple of hours and were actually suffering from concussion, even possibly a form of amnesia, but I couldn’t persuade you to seek medical help.’
Alexei straightened his broad shoulders, his imposing height of over six feet casting a long forceful shadow across the dimly lit room. His entire attitude was detached, even businesslike. ‘I can’t accept any part of your story. I would never have slept with you in such circumstances, and as for that tale you told about sex without contraception? I’m afraid that could only have happened in the fictional realms of your brain because, drunk or sober, I don’t ever take risks in that line.’
In her eagerness to persuade him, Billie leant forward. ‘I’m not lying and maybe you’ll understand that better once I’ve told you everything—’
Dense ebony lashes screening his stunning eyes to a dangerous gleam of gold, his lean dark features were a mask of disdain. ‘Everything?’ Alexei repeated with a saturnine look of mockery that sent the blood drumming heavily into her cheeks. ‘What other strange fantasies have you dreamt up for my amusement?’
That piece of ridicule made Billie want to slap him hard. Her fingers clenched tightly together on that dangerous impulse. ‘Maybe I was wrong not to tell you the truth months ago, but once you met Calisto the whole situation changed and I didn’t feel I had any choices left. I assumed you were in love with her—you pretty much told me you were going to marry her. I had just discovered that I was pregnant. I was planning to tell you but you couldn’t even remember sleeping with me—’
Black brows pleating together, Alexei cut boldly into that recitation. ‘You were pregnant? By whom?’
Billie flung him a fevered glance of frustration. ‘You’re not that slow on the uptake—I conceived on the night of the funeral; I fell pregnant by you. You may not remember it but we made love twice without precautions.’
Alexei released his breath in a sharp exhalation, his instant dismissal of that possibility clear by his expression.
‘Hilary’s son is actually my son,’ Billie spelt out, refusing to be daunted by that discouraging silence. ‘He’s my baby. I gave birth to him while I was on my career break in London. The only reason I asked for the leave was so that I could conceal my pregnancy.’
His brilliant eyes suddenly shimmered like a firework display, his outrage at what she was saying etched into every harshening angle of his lean darkly handsome features. ‘Hilary’s child is yours? You are telling me that you have actually given birth to a baby? That you deliberately concealed that fact from me and let me go ahead and make you my wife?’ he roared at her in a sudden wrathful attack that made her shrink back momentarily into the shelter of her seat, shaken by his vehemence. ‘And now you dare to try and pass off some other man’s child as mine?’
Rigid with tension and with perspiration dampening her brow, Billie faced him. ‘It’s not like that at all. Nicky is your son. I’ve never been with another man.’
Alexei wasn’t really listening. What he had learned was sufficient for him to make a judgement. A red mist of rage was burning through his brain while he struggled to put together what she had told him. His bride was a mother…she had a child? Appalled by that revelation, he remembered the seam of scar tissue low on her abdomen, which only hours earlier she had passed off as ‘a gynaecological thing’. A Caesarean scar, he guessed, for the first time seeing a solid foundation to what had initially struck him as incredible claims. He could not at first get over his sense of shock that she could have concealed so much from him and even the most cursory appraisal of the past year or so warned him that Billie must have spun him an elaborate ongoing pack of lies in an outrageous attempt to pass off her child as his. Of course, she was anything but stupid. She knew that that was the only circumstance that might give her the hope that he wouldn’t divorce her.
Golden eyes steadily chilling to the temperature of a sunlit iceberg, Alexei surveyed her. ‘What a devious little schemer you are! You have the nerve to sit there looking me in the eye while you confess that you lied and cheated your way to the altar knowing that I would never have married you had I known the truth about you!’
Billie leapt up, her long, thick, wine-red hair rippling like bright ribbons across her shoulders and sliding across her cheekbones to highlight her pallor. ‘That’s not how it was, Alexei. There were lies and I’m sorry for that, but there was no cheating. Nicky is your son. How was I supposed to persuade you of that fact when you couldn’t even recall being with me?’
‘I assume yo
u have heard of DNA testing?’
Hotspots of pink deepened the hue of Billie’s cheeks in reaction to that unexpected taunt.
‘This kid is…what age?’ Alexei queried.
‘He’s four and a half months old. But when he was born you were still with Calisto and thinking about marrying her,’ Billie referred to his ex-girlfriend, Calisto Bethune, with a heavy heart. ‘I didn’t want to cause trouble. I saw no benefit to anyone in doing that. It seemed to me,’ she continued painfully, ‘that you didn’t want to remember being with me, and that probably everyone concerned would be happier if that night remained a secret.’
‘I don’t believe for one moment that your child is mine,’ Alexei declared with icy conviction. ‘I refuse to believe it. I hope you don’t plan to take these insane stories into court with you. You will make a laughing stock of yourself—’
‘Into…court?’ Billie echoed shakily. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Do I really need to spell out the fact that what you’ve just told me is grounds for divorce?’
Billie turned as cold as though he had just plunged her into an ice bath, consternation and shock gripping her hard. ‘I know that you’re shocked by what I’ve told you—’
‘Of course I’m shocked by the image of you, your mother and your aunt plotting against me like Macbeth’s three witches! ‘Alexei derided with ferocious bite.
Billie’s temper flared and she flew upright. ‘It’s ridiculous to talk like that. Nobody plotted against you! When I persuaded Hilary to pretend that Nicky was her child, my only motivation in doing so was to hide Nicky’s parentage and protect you.’
‘You wanted to protect me? ‘Alexei exclaimed harshly, his contempt for that claim unconcealed. ‘Even now in the midst of your attempt to palm off your bastard child on me, you can’t tell me the truth! My proposal of marriage was what motivated your lies and deception—’
‘How could it have been?’ Billie flung back fierily, standing her ground to challenge him. ‘My pretence that Nicky was my aunt’s child began when I first told you that she was pregnant and asked for a career break. And that was months before you even considered marrying me!’
Stumped by that inescapable fact, Alexei studied her with enraged hauteur, his glittering gaze bright against his superb bone structure. ‘You lied to me and you deceived me over a very long period—’
‘But not with any malicious intent!’ Billie rushed to interpose, desperation racking her with a level of fear that did nothing to clarify her state of mind. ‘I admit that I should have told you about Nicky before the wedding but I didn’t have the guts—’
‘Naturally avarice and ambition won out over honesty. Why? Only because you knew there would be no wedding if you told me the truth about yourself.’
‘The very last thing I have ever wanted from you is money!’ Billie launched back at him, angrily objecting to that base accusation. ‘And don’t refer to my son as a bastard ever again. However he was born, whoever he is, I love him and I’m proud of him. If you think so badly of me, how could you make love to me again?’
That emotive demand made Alexei’s jaw square and he sent her a flashing look of scorn. ‘That was just sex, a primitive urge for physical release, nothing more complex.’
Her face flamed and then slowly paled as his response sank in and trampled her pride into the dust. She wished with all her heart that she had said no, pushed him away, stuck to the business of confession and blame. But what was done was done and she could not change it. In spite of that sophisticated façade, Alexei had a primal streak that ran through him like tempered steel and powered his volatility and his ruthlessness. He was a Drakos through and through. His father, Constantine had not hesitated to divorce the blameless third wife who’d adored him, and replace her with his pregnant mistress. Alexei, it seemed, would be equally quick to discard her now that she had disappointed his expectations.
‘Nicky is your son,’ she swore one last time, desperate to convince him of that crucial fact before he could tear their marriage apart.
‘Nothing can excuse your lies and trickery,’ Alexei drawled in a tone of finality. ‘You cheated your way into our marriage and deserve nothing but my contempt. Naturally I’ll order DNA tests, but only to ensure that you can’t continue to allege that I fathered your baby.’
Humiliated by the threat of such testing being carried out on her child, Billie flung him a seething glance of condemnation. ‘That’s an insult! You’re the only man I’ve ever slept with.’
Alexei rested forbidding dark golden eyes on her. ‘I can’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth and whose fault is that?’
He strode out of the room. Billie lingered in the shadowy office and struggled to cope with her unwieldy emotions. Their marriage had barely begun and she had wrecked it by keeping secrets from him, a little voice warned inside her aching head. She had lost his trust and it would not be easily regained. He was angry with her, very angry, but she had known he would be, she reminded herself dully. She heard the racket of rotor blades and unfroze to rush over to the desk and snatch up the phone. Captain McGregor informed her that Alexei had filed a flight plan for Monaco and had taken off in the helicopter with his security team. She thanked him for the information and replaced the receiver with a trembling hand and a heart racing like an overworked piston.
Alexei had just left her, walking out on her and their marriage. That realisation was a body blow that hit Billie very hard. She felt sick with the pain and trauma of that bold move and knew she had seriously underestimated his reaction to the secrets she had kept. It would be virtually impossible to influence a man who was determined to put an ocean between them. Few brides, however, were abandoned within hours of the wedding and Alexei’s activities never passed under the media radar. The press would pick up the story of his unbridegroomlike behaviour and run with it for weeks.
Tears choking her and stinging her heavy eyes, Billie went back to the opulent stateroom in order to get dressed. It might not be dawn yet but the wedding night was well and truly over. She would take the motor launch back to Speros and go home to look after Nicky. What else could she do? Her presence on Sea Queen had driven Alexei off his beloved yacht.
Was this it? Was their marriage over as well? Over even before it got past the beginning? She tried and failed to imagine Alexei giving her a second chance. Why would he do that when he had never loved her? Without love, what hold did she have over him? She had screwed up so badly that she hated herself at that moment. It seemed just then that keeping quiet about her pregnancy had cost her any hope of a happy future.
CHAPTER FOUR
DURING the longest two weeks of her life, Billie followed Alexei’s every move across the globe, for the pursuit of the paparazzi ensured that everything he did was reported in the tabloid press.
So, Billie got to know that Alexei stayed up two nights in succession at a Monaco casino gaming with a bunch of male friends. Then, after he went out to a fashionable nightclub in London she lay awake wondering whether, even though he had arrived and left alone, he had been with other women inside? Or indeed if at some more discreet location a woman had waited patiently for his visit. For the sake of her own sanity she tried not to read any more of the humiliating articles that speculated about the state and nature of the Drakos marriage.
All too many gossip columnists decided that Alexei had married his PA only because he would retain his sexual freedom with a wife who would appreciate her good fortune in marrying him too much to make unreasonable demands; a practical wife who didn’t expect her gorgeous predatory tycoon to become as domesticated as a tabby cat. And, as another columnist quipped, Alexei Drakos was not the sort of guy likely to welcome rules. Alexei had always done what he wanted when he wanted without apology.
Old Drakos history was also dredged up, with Constantine’s worst womanising exploits, even while married, spicily presented to entertain the readers even more. Billie felt doubly humiliated when far from f
lattering wedding photos of her, evidently taken with one of their guest’s phones, appeared in print. Looking mousey and squat as she did in those horrible snaps she had felt that she was being shown up as the bride any self-respecting Greek tycoon and modern-day sex-symbol would desert.
‘I just can’t believe the way you’re behaving!’ Lauren snapped with angry irritation, studying her daughter, who was playing with her son and Skye, the puppy. ‘What were you thinking of when you moved back into this stupid little house? You’re a Drakos now, you belong at the big swanky mansion next door! Of course people are talking when you’re trying to act like the marriage never happened.’
Billie prevented the little black terrier from sinking her teeth into one of Nicky’s toys, setting the item aside to be washed. ‘I have no intention of moving Nicky into Alexei’s house until he acknowledges that he is his son—’
‘Oh, don’t be more stupid than you can help!’ Lauren hissed, her attractive face unattractively lined by her annoyance. As her shrill voice rose in volume the puppy fled behind the sofa. ‘Leave the brat here with us and take possession of what’s yours. You have the right to live in that villa—you’re Alexei’s wife!’
Billie glanced coolly at her mother. ‘Don’t call my son a brat!’
‘You know I didn’t mean it nastily,’ her mother argued. ‘After all, Nicky—bless his little heart—is your golden goose. I mean, good grief, getting yourself pregnant was the only thing you did right! Alexei can do and say what he likes, but at the end of the day you will still be the mother of his son and heir and nothing can change that!’
‘That kind of offensive talk isn’t helping anyone, Lauren,’ Hilary interposed, sending her a sister a reproachful look while she soothed and petted the puppy who had crept over to her feet. ‘Billie is more interested in saving her marriage than in making a profit. I think she’s right to stay here rather than up at the villa, particularly while Alexei believes that Nicky is not his child.’