The Marriage Betrayal (The Volakis Vow 1)

Accompanying him into an exquisitely renovated Georgian building with a handsome entrance foyer, she comfortably envisaged the exclusive restaurant she assumed they were heading to next, only to find herself lodged in a lift instead. ‘Where’s the restaurant?’ she prompted.

‘There isn’t one.’ Sander stood back for her to precede him out of the lift and then stuck a key in the lock of the door on the other side of the gracious landing. ‘We’re eating in …’

Discomfiture immediately gripped Tally, for she had not bargained on a private meal in the intimate setting of his home and would have preferred dining in a public place. Curiosity, however, about his chosen surroundings took her in silence through the first minutes of entering his apartment. The high-tech finish, wooden floors and understated furniture were very masculine but made the most of the classic proportions of the rooms. A dining table was already set with flickering candles in readiness for their meal and her soft pink mouth compressed.

‘I would’ve preferred to have dined out,’ she told him candidly.

Surprise at that comment made Sander elevate an ebony brow. ‘Why?’

Tally wrinkled her nose and wondered if she dared to be honest a split second before she defied the urge to play dumb for his benefit. ‘This feels like a set-up …’

‘What the hell does that mean?’ Sander frowned as a woman in an apron appeared with a pair of plates and hovered uncertainly. He addressed her in Greek, telling her to go ahead and serve the meal.

Stiff with awkwardness, Tally took a reluctant seat and unfurled her napkin.

‘Explain what you meant,’ Sander prompted drily.

The starter looked very enticing but the tension in the atmosphere had loosed a flock of uneasy butterflies in the pit of Tally’s stomach. She lifted her knife and fork with an appetite that was already on the wane. ‘You staged the meal here because you expect me to sleep with you tonight,’ she framed curtly and she glanced up, eyes as fresh a green as clover leaves after rain and sparkling with condemnation. ‘You’ve got a hell of a nerve!’

Sander had indeed expected exactly that scenario to develop and had chosen the most convenient backdrop for that desired conclusion to the evening. ‘Because I want you? Am I supposed to apologise for that?’

‘No, but …’ Tally hesitated and then pressed on to speak her mind. ‘But I’m more than just a body. I’m a person and I don’t want to be here with you if all you’re interested in is sex!’

His dark golden gaze veiled, Sander could not restrain an instinctive need to wince at her lack of tact and sophistication. He wondered what possible response she was hoping to receive at such an early stage of their acquaintance. ‘I’d like you to stay the night,’ he traded without an ounce of embarrassment. ‘That’s a natural, normal aspiration for me to have.’

Colour ran up below Tally’s creamy skin in a flying banner of embarrassment. She had boxed herself into a corner with her declaration, made it clear that while he might want only her body, she was in the market for something deeper and more meaningful, but that had not been her intention. ‘I just don’t like the way you make assumptions,’ she breathed in a taut undertone.

‘You have the right to say no.’ Sander voiced that reminder in a tone as smooth as silk.

‘Don’t patronise me!’ Tally fired back at him, throwing down her knife and fork and pushing her plate away in an angry gesture.

‘You’re very quick-tempered,’ Sander remarked.

Discomfiture attacking her in receipt of that opinion, Tally tugged her plate back and began doggedly to eat, barely tasting the delicious dish in her determination to appear calm and composed.

‘Always ready and willing to have a fight with me,’ Sander continued.

‘I don’t even know what I’m doing here with you!’ Tally exclaimed helplessly.

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Sander quipped, filling her wine glass. ‘You’re with me for the exact same reason I’m with you. You can’t stay away.’

The truth of that statement hit Tally as hard as a head-on collision. She looked at him and it was as if he had cast a spell on her, for it was a challenge even to look away, never mind walk away. Desire had dug greedy claws into her body, awakening the hormones that inspired craving and stealing her freedom of choice. He infuriated her and he had insulted her, yet she had still agreed to dinner. Suddenly even madder with herself than she was with him, Tally pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘I shouldn’t be here. Don’t worry, I’ll make my own way home.’

Sander slowly rose upright, keen dark golden eyes locked to her hectically flushed face. ‘Are you always as impetuous as this?’

Tally paled, wondering if she shared more with her mother than she had ever appreciated because he seemed to draw out a side of her nature that she was unfamiliar with: an ardent, capricious, insecure side, which made her feel incredibly vulnerable. Suddenly she was acting a world away from the stable, sensible and fairly unemotional young woman she had always assumed that she was. He made her want things she had never wanted, like long straight blonde hair, a body the shape of a pencil and endless legs. He made her want to be irresistible, the sort of woman men fought over and loved to the brink of insanity.

‘You make me impulsive,’ she admitted grudgingly.

‘You have a weird effect on me too,’ Sander confided with an eloquent shift of two lean brown hands. ‘I was convinced that I wanted nothing more to do with you, but the minute I saw you leaving Westgrave Manor I drove after you and asked you out to dinner.’

And Tally’s barrier of apprehension and insecurity tumbled down there and then because those revealing, almost bemused words of his soothed her concern and eased her distrust. It didn’t sound like a male pickup line and she had heard most of them from the smarmy, ‘Did it hurt when you fell out of heaven?’ to the coarse, ‘Fancy a shag?’ It sounded as though he was telling the truth and that he was equally mystified by the way he reacted to her.

Once again she sat down and the main course was served. Finally starting to relax, she ate and asked questions about the flat, for the strikingly effective combination of contemporary décor married to Georgian classic elegance appealed to her creative instincts. Sander told her that he had renovated the entire building before converting it into apartments, keeping the most spacious for his own use. She chattered about her college course and let down her guard to the extent that she had to swallow back an unwise reference to her father, before confiding that one day she wanted to open her own design company.

In the lounge Sander sat back and enjoyed her bubbling animation. He found her surprisingly good company; she had none of the conceit and superficiality he was accustomed to meeting with in women. Tally met his stunning dark golden eyes and felt the intensity there to the extent that her mouth ran dry and her heartbeat accelerated. He reached out a graceful hand and removed her wine glass from her grasp to set it aside. And, without the smallest hesitation, she shifted closer, wanting, needing to connect. Long fingers curving to her slim shoulder, he bent his head to toy with her soft full lips until the heat of anticipation was tingling and burning between her thighs. What shocked her was how very quickly and powerfully she felt the pull of his sexual magnetism.

He kissed her softly and then he kissed her hard, his lips urgent and demanding around the skilled plunge of his tongue into the sensitive interior of her mouth. She clung to him as if he were the only rock in a storm and gasped in startled response when he burrowed below her top to close a hungry hand over the fullness of her breasts. As he massaged the pouting swells and the tender prominence of her nipples with skilled fingers excitement began to hurtle through her in an unstoppable wave.

‘Let’s move this to the bedroom,’ Sander urged thickly, hauling her upright and pausing to kiss her with a passionate dominance that lit up every skin cell in her quivering body.

The yearning hit a high and she wound her arms round him and kissed him back with the same passion, loving the taste of his st

rong sensual mouth and the scent of his skin. With a gruff sound of satisfaction he lifted her up into his arms and strode into the bedroom across the landing.

He settled her down on the bed and suddenly tensed. ‘Something I forgot to say,’ he breathed, beautiful eyes welded to her flushed face. ‘I don’t do exclusivity …’

‘Okay,’ Tally fielded without even having to think about it. ‘You don’t do exclusivity. I don’t do sex.’

Sander froze and slowly dragged his hands from her. ‘You can’t be serious.’