The Secret Wife

‘Because I don’t want to kiss you!’

‘No?’

‘Do I look that dumb?’ Rosie spat.

But then Constantine blocked out the light with the hot, hungry heat of his mouth, and the world spun so violently, she gasped and clutched at him. Electrifying heat engulfed her... or maybe it was him. He seemed to be burning up too. Her fingers framed his hard cheekbones and her head went back as he knotted one hand tightly into her hair and kissed her with bruising, demanding thoroughness until she thought she would pass out from lack of oxygen but didn’t care because nothing had ever felt so good.

In darkness he brought her down on a bed, and as he released her mouth with a stifled groan of frustration she lay there winded and gasping in air like a drowning swimmer. A light went on and she blinked dazedly. Constantine came down on the bed beside her, wrenching at his silk tie, shrugging out of his jacket. Run, a little voice urged her. But she clashed with eyes of searing gold and her whole body turned liquid and unfamiliar, her mind blanking out as an uncontrollable surge of hunger overwhelmed her.

‘Don’t lie there like a sacrifice, you little witch,’ he breathed unevenly. ‘Don’t let me think...I only want to feel—’

His hand wasn’t quite steady as he tugged her up to him again. Intense satisfaction filled her, along with a heady sense of power. She snatched in the husky male scent of him so close and every sense thrilled, a desperate wanting that overpowered inhibition driving her hand up to sink wonderingly into the silky black depths of his hair. A tenderness that was new to her made her heart twist and her fingers tremble and his ebony brows drew together in a frown that might have been surprise.

He leant forward and let the tip of his tongue dip between her lips in a heart-stoppingly erotic foray. She shivered violently and then reached for him because she couldn’t help herself, finding his carnal mouth again, and instantly he took charge with a husky growl of dominance, kissing her until she was a quivering mass

of aching nerve-endings.

A lean hand jerked at the tie on the towelling robe and then closed over one small, pouting breast. The sensation of pleasure was so intense, Rosie almost had a cardiac arrest.

Lifting his dark, tousled head, Constantine smiled sexily down into her shaken face. ‘You like that?’

Rosie didn’t have words to tell him how much. She was lost in another world, a wholly physical place where only sensation ruled. He sent his tongue skimming over a swollen pink nipple and her back arched, her teeth clenching, her nails clawing into the bedspread beneath her. All she knew was that she wanted more, more of that stunning, heart-racing pleasure, and only he could give it. He lowered his head and tasted her supersensitive flesh and she jerked and whimpered, experiencing a pleasure that blew her mind and reduced her to trembling, gasping submission.

‘Christos...you’re hot,’ Constantine groaned, lowering his big, powerful body and shuddering as his hands sank to the swell of her hips, forcing her into contact with the hard, swollen evidence of his arousal and then rolling back from her with a curse of frustration, an impatient hand flying to the belt-buckle of his trousers.

Hot...hot? Rosie tensed, her brain flying back into gear. She squinted down at the shameless thrust of her bare breasts, still glistening damply from his lovemaking. For an instant she was frozen there, at a peak of appalled horror that almost equalled her former pitch of excitement, and then she was off that bed so fast, she could have challenged and outrun an Olympic sprinter.

‘Theos...!’ Incredulity exploded from Constantine and took his fluent English with it as he vented a flood of guttural Greek.

Rosie fled into the dark corridor like a lemming charging suicidally at a cliff. Hot ... cheap, easy, sordid. Dear heaven, how had she let him get that far? One minute she had been shouting at him and the next ... Typical Constantine manoeuvre: hit on her one vulnerability and try to use her to level the score. Turn a pitched battle into a sexual orgy and then smirk with macho male superiority. She shuddered in disgust and then registered in horror that the corridor had come to a dismaying dead end.

Constantine stopped ten feet away in a patch of moonlight. Rosie whipped back against the wall, arms spread in sudden instinctive fear, her slender length braced for attack.

‘What the hell is this?’

‘Don’t you dare t-touch me ...’ Her voice was a sick thread of sound.

Constantine stared, incisive black eyes pinned to her frightened face. ‘I’m not a rapist,’ he said grimly. ‘I can take a refusal without becoming violent.’

Trembling, still not quite trusting him, Rosie let her arms slide heavily down the wall and curved them protectively round herself instead, agonisingly aware that she had exposed more than her body to him now in betraying that fear. And a part of her was already acknowledging that she had behaved badly. Lying all but naked on a bed with him and responding with such wild abandon had given him every reason to react incredulously to her sudden change of heart.

‘Watching a woman cringe from me as if I am about to attack her has to be the equivalent of ten cold showers at once,’ Constantine completed flatly, his nostrils flaring.

‘I didn’t think you were about to—’ she began shakily.

‘You did think that.’

But only at the height of her appalled turmoil about what had so nearly happened between them. When she had seen him poised there against the darkness, that old subconscious fear had rushed to the surface in response to the sheer physical threat of his masculine power and size.

‘I have never had to use force to bed a woman. Nor would I,’ Constantine asserted with raw-edged hauteur.

‘I led you on ... I’m sorry,’ Rosie mumbled, frantically wishing he would just go away and leave her to recover in privacy.

‘Why?’

That one bald question made Rosie squirm. There was only one answer but it was not an answer she wished to give. Swallowing hard on her reluctance, she muttered, ‘I wanted you ...’ And admitting that to him was like drinking a cup of poison.

‘Then ...?’ Constantine prompted without pity.