CHAPTER EIGHT
HE WAS down the bank within seconds but the water had already carried her well beyond his reach.
‘Maddison!’ He called to her as he stumbled over the gnarled tree roots along the bank, his feet slipping and sliding in the mud. Her head was above water but only just, her hair swirling about her face as if threatening to choke her if the tumultuous water didn’t succeed in doing so first.
He saw her hand come out of the water searching for a hold but he couldn’t get close enough to offer one. The undergrowth along the bank was dense and mostly impenetrable and, even though instinct warned him against entering the water, regardless of his own safety he plunged into the raging creek.
The water was icy-cold and a whole lot more forceful than he’d expected. He was a good swimmer and his body strong from regular sessions in the hotel gym but it took every ounce of strength to get to her.
He caught her just as her head submerged, the murky brown water trying to swallow her, but he managed to grasp a handful of her hair and haul her upwards.
She coughed and spluttered a full mouthful of water in his face but he hardly noticed.
‘Are you all right?’ he shouted above the roar of water.
She clutched at him frantically, her eyes wide with fear and her lips already turning blue with cold.
He didn’t wait for her to answer; instead he towed her against the current towards the nearest bank, one arm around her as the other reached for an anchor to secure them to safety.
The overhanging branch wasn’t as thick as he’d have liked but it gave him just enough leverage to get her out of the main torrent to the more shallow waters along the muddy bank.
He half lifted, half pushed her out of the water before joining her, his breathing heavy, his earlier fear rapidly being replaced by anger at what might have happened if he hadn’t made it to her in time.
‘You little fool!’ he ground out. ‘You could have been killed.’
Maddison stared at him from behind the curtain of her mud-encrusted debris-cluttered hair.
He towered over her, his white T-shirt now stained brown and one of his arms dripping blood from a nasty scratch near his right wrist.
In any other circumstances she would have thrown a suitably stinging reply his way. However, her stomach was full of muddy water which she could feel from the bubble of nausea in her throat was intent on making a hasty reappearance.
‘I…’ She took a gasping breath but could hold the tide back no longer. She leant sideways and spilled the *******s of her stomach barely six inches from his feet.
He muttered one short sharp expletive before she heard him squat down beside her, his arms coming around her to support her as the rest of the brackish water left her stomach in heaving, rasping gasps that tore at her tender throat.
‘Are you done?’ His voice was as gentle as his fingers as they drew back her hair from her face.
‘I…I think so.’
She closed her eyes as he pressed her head to his chest, her throat raw, and her pride in tatters.
He felt warm even though he too had been in the water. She pressed even closer, trying to stop the shivering of her body but her teeth were already chattering and her hands felt numb as she clutched at his waist for support.
‘Do you think you can walk?’ he asked her after a moment.
She eased herself away from his chest and looked up at him with a slightly shamefaced look.
‘I…I lost a shoe.’
He glanced down at her feet and frowned.
‘You were lucky not to lose your life.’
‘D…don’t lecture me. I didn’t do it on p…purpose.’
‘You put both our lives at risk.’ He helped her to her feet, his voice still full of reproof.
‘You sh…shouldn’t have b…bothered rescuing me.’
‘Of course I had to rescue you, dammit!’
‘I d…don’t see why you had to. I would’ve got out eventually.’
‘Yes, on a stretcher with a blanket over your face,’ he growled at her darkly.
‘And wouldn’t you be happy then,’ she threw back. ‘What perfect revenge for the loss of your boat—my life in exchange for a stupid, overpriced boat.’
‘It wasn’t a boat, it was a yacht.’
‘I don’t care if it was a cruise ship,’ she said. ‘All I know is I had nothing whatsoever to do with sinking it, and I don’t see why I had to be dragged out here to pay the ultimate price.’
‘All you had to do was tell me Kyle’s whereabouts,’ he reminded her. ‘And I’m not asking you to pay any price.’
‘Aren’t you?’ She gave him a disbelieving glance.
‘Tell me where he is and I’ll take you home right now.’
She felt deeply ashamed at just how tempted she was to tell him.
She lowered her gaze from the intensity of his and stared at her shoeless foot for endless seconds, fighting to get her failing resolve back into some sort of shape.
‘Tell me, Maddison.’
She lifted her chin and met his eyes with renewed determination and defiance. ‘I wouldn’t tell you even if I were on my very last breath.’
He held her look for a pulsing pause, his expression hardening slightly. ‘Your loyalty is admirable but entirely misplaced. Your brother is never going to learn the error of his ways with you acting as his scapegoat all the time.’
‘You think I want to spend even a minute longer than necessary with you?’ she asked. ‘I would’ve preferred a year in prison myself instead of this ridiculous arrangement.’
She stomped lopsidedly in what she hoped was the right direction. She heard him behind her but didn’t turn around in case he saw the glitter of tears in her eyes.
She would not cry, damn him!
After a while she realised she needed his directions to make it all the way back to the hut and, much as it needled her pride, she had no choice but to slow her pace and turn to him.
‘I don’t know which way from here.’ She indicated the fork in the path with one hand.
‘You did well to get back this far,’ he said with an ironic glance at her shoeless foot.
She looked down at the wreck of her sock and grimaced. It didn’t bear thinking about what state her foot was in beneath the ragged covering of the mud-soaked cotton; she could already feel the burn of a blister on the ball of her foot as it was.
‘I have a reasonably good sense of direction,’ she said. ‘But out here all the trees look the same.’
‘There are subtle differences,’ he said. ‘But it takes experience to pick them out.’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t had a lot of time available to me to go wandering about like a wild child in the woods.’ She sent him an arid look, her tone deliberately sarcastic. ‘It must be wonderful to be so rich that you can buy your own patch of wilderness and go and play in it whenever you feel like it.’
‘It is,’ he answered, his dark eyes holding hers. ‘And it’s even more fun when I bring someone along to play with me.’
‘I suppose you’ve brought all your lady loves up here,’ she retorted with a curl of her lip. ‘I can just imagine Elena Tsoulis skipping about the bush in her high heels.’
‘Better than no shoes at all,’ he returned smoothly.
She gritted her teeth and forced her eyes away from the magnetising force field of his.
‘At least I still have one shoe and my self-respect.’
‘Your pride does you credit,’ he said. ‘I admire you for it, actually. Not many women would have coped with what you’ve just gone through without a fit of hysterics or worse. But you don’t need to feel as if you’re at risk of losing your self-respect in your dealings with me.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘Of course not. I mean you no harm, no harm at all.’
‘You mean to get me into bed, though. Surely you can’t deny that?’
‘The thought had crossed my mind.’
His indolent look made her feel as if he had flicked a switch inside her body. Heat coursed through her even though the clothes she was wearing were still wet from the cold water of the creek.
‘And if you’re honest with yourself you’d admit the same thought has found its way into yours as well,’ he added, watching her steadily.
‘You’ve got tickets on yourself,’ she said scornfully. ‘Anyway, I wonder there’s room for any woman in your bed with that monumental ego of yours taking up so much room.’
His laughter was just as intoxicating as his smile and she instantly wished she hadn’t triggered it.
She wrenched her gaze away from the dancing light in his eyes but it was no good. The damage was done. She could feel her attraction for him growing with every smile he sent her way. His laughter caused nothing less than a landslide in her heart, tipping her over the edge of reason into a land of dreams that could come to nothing, she was sure.
‘Come on, Maddison,’ he cajoled. ‘Admit it. You’re a little bit tempted by me, aren’t you?’
She gave him a withering look. ‘Chocolate tempts me; you just annoy me.’
He laughed again, which only made things worse. She felt as if he’d just pulled a thin silky ribbon right out of the middle of her heart to coil it around his little finger, pulling her inexorably closer to him.
‘You’re so cute when you’re all fired up.’ He smiled down at her outraged features.
‘And why wouldn’t I be all fired up?’ She glared back. ‘I’m cold and wet from my baptism in the creek and there’s not even a hot shower at that disreputable structure you loosely describe as a wilderness retreat! Why wouldn’t I be angry with you? I’m so angry with you I could…I could…’ She hunted for a suitable punishment but couldn’t think of anything with him smiling at her so disarmingly.
‘I’ll boil you some water on the fire so you can have a bath,’ he offered.
‘Funny—’ her tone was desert dry ‘—but I didn’t happen to notice a bathtub alongside the cold tapped shower, cracked basin and mottled mirror in your luxuriously appointed bathroom.’
‘I have a big basin you could use.’
She stared at him incredulously. ‘You expect me to bathe in a mixing bowl?’
‘It’s big enough for two.’
‘Two what? Goldfish?’
‘Two people,’ he said. ‘No point in wasting water.’
‘I’m not sharing a bath with you.’
‘It could be fun.’
‘For you maybe, not for me.’
‘You are very definitely underestimating my ability,’ he chided her gently with a seductive light in his eyes.
‘I’m very sure your ability, as you call it, has left a legion of very satisfied women in its wake, but I’m determined not to be one of them.’
‘Determined, but tempted all the same,’ he observed.
‘Right now I would happily sleep with an axe murderer for a hot shower and a meal that didn’t come out of a packet with instructions to just add water.’
‘You don’t like my cooking?’
‘I don’t like anything about you,’ she shot back. ‘I hate you.’
He gave her a long, contemplative look. ‘You bandy that hate word around a lot. It kind of makes me wonder if the lady is protesting rather too much.’
She gave him her best fulminating look. ‘Would you kindly point me in the direction of your little lean-to so I can get out of these sodden clothes? I’m tired and wet and in no mood to continue this pointless discussion.’
He led the way without another word but all the way back to the hut Maddison felt as if he’d somehow yet again had the last word.
The fire was burning low in the hearth and while Demetrius attended to it Maddison went to the bathroom and removed her wet clothes.
She gritted her teeth under the dripping spray of the cold shower, determined to wash off the mud of the creek in private. She could just imagine the little fireside seduction scene he was probably planning for her but, as tempting as the thought of hot water was in her current state of borderline hypothermia, she was going to do everything within her power not to give in to it.
Demetrius looked up from the water he was bringing to the boil when she came back in. He’d stripped off his wet T-shirt but his jeans were still damp and she was sure she could see steam coming off them as he stood with his back to the fire to face her.
He gave her an assessing look for a long moment before observing with a frown, ‘You’re still shivering.’
‘N…no I’m n…not,’ she denied through chattering teeth.
He gave her a you-can’t-fool-me sort of look before taking the two strides that separated them. He took both of her cold hands into the warmth of his, his fingers closing over her trembling flesh until she could feel the life coming back into them.
‘I’ll leave the hut so you can bathe in peace,’ he offered.
‘I’ve had a shower,’ she said. ‘I’ll just sit by the fire and thaw out a bit more.’
‘Your lips are blue.’
She ran her tongue over them as if to see for herself, but then wished she hadn’t when his dark gaze followed the movement with a burning intensity that sent an arrow of awareness straight to her core.
Her desire for him was suddenly like a presence in the room.
She could feel it seeping through the cold layers of her skin as if to reach out to his pulsing heat; there was nothing she could do to stop it from leaking out from each and every pore of her body. She felt as if it were written in big letters all over her: I want you, Demetrius Papasakis—only you.
She could tell he knew what she was feeling, for she saw the answering gleam of fiery hot desire leap in his eyes as they meshed with hers in the deep timeless silence that throbbed between them.
Maddison felt her breath hitch in her throat when he drew her closer to his warm frame. His body heat began coursing through her, igniting the fire in her veins, sending arrows of need to every nerve and cell. She could feel the imprint of his arousal against her, the steamy dampness of his jeans against her a heady reminder of her own moistening response to him between her thighs.
She watched in silence as his lips came down towards hers, the soft bow of her mouth trembling not with cold now, but in anticipation of the calefaction of his.
As soon as his lips settled on hers Maddison knew her fight to resist him was more or less over; she had no way of resisting the all-consuming heat of his mouth, no way to escape the tantalizing rasp of his tongue as it searched for hers as a hungry flame went in search for fuel, and no way to stop her heart from beating as if she’d just run the race of her life.
Her response to him both shamed and thrilled her. She didn’t understand how she could hate and need him at the same time. It made her feel as if she no longer knew herself, as if she’d turned into someone else with the first brush of his mouth on hers.
She’d felt it the very first time he came to her apartment in search of Kyle. His dark, compelling gaze had ignited something within her, a tiny seed of need had sprouted and grown, spreading like wildfire through her and now she had no hope of containing it.
His kiss deepened as he pressed her backwards to the floor in front of the leaping flames of the fire, his weight coming over her, his body pinning her intimately as her thighs shifted to accommodate him.
Their clothes were a barrier but Maddison couldn’t help feeling as if they added to the intensity of desire.
‘Oh, God!’ He sucked in a breath as her hand shaped him shyly.
His harsh response gave her courage.
Her tentative touch tightened, her fingers lingering where she felt his need was intensified the most. She felt his chest rise and fall against hers as he fought for control, the features of his face contorted with pleasure as she gazed up at him.
Demetrius took charge by removing her hand and securing it above her head, his eyes pinning hers as much as his body.
She knew this was the time to call a halt, but something in her resisted it. Why not? she thought instead. I want him, he obviously wants me, so what’s the problem?
The problem was he didn’t love her.
She was just a smokescreen for the relationship he valued the most—his affair with Elena Tsoulis.
‘You know what’s going to happen if you don’t tell me to stop, don’t you, Maddison?’ His words caressed the surface of her lips as he spoke softly above her mouth.
She nodded her head once without speaking.
His black-brown gaze consumed her sapphire-blue one like a flame licking its way through spilled petrol, lapping her up, drawing her further into the furnace of his blazing passion.
‘This wasn’t part of the arrangement,’ he reminded her .
‘I don’t care,’ she whispered .
‘This is supposed to be a marriage on paper.’ He spoke just above the swell of her lips. ‘I shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘Doing what?’ She drew in a snagging breath .
She felt his eyes on her feminine form, their heat burning through the layers of her skin as if he’d held a blowtorch to her quivering flesh.
‘This…’ He pressed a soft open-mouthed kiss .
She dragged in some much needed air as his tongue moved over her, separating her delicately, tantalisingly, slowly.
She couldn’t hold back her response; it rolled over her in waves of delight that lifted her out of herself on to another plane of feeling. She was floating, then free falling and plunging into a spiral of ecstasy that she hadn’t known existed.
He felt her flinch and stilled his movement.
‘Is something wrong?’ He looked down at her, his brow creasing into a frown at the sight of her biting her bottom lip.
She let her lip go and smiled a tremulous smile.
‘No…I’m fine…you’re just so…’ Her words trailed off as her face flamed.
He waited for a moment before moving within her, but as soon as he did so she bit down on her lip once more and to his horror the sparkle of tears sprouted in her blue eyes.
He froze as realisation suddenly dawned.
‘Oh, my God,’ he groaned and withdrew from her as gently as he could.
She clamped her eyes shut to stem the tears but still they came, trickling down her cheeks as fast as she could brush at them with a shaky hand.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said as he got to his feet, reaching for his jeans.
She heard the slide of his zip and squeezed her eyes even tighter.
‘Maddison.’
His voice commanded her to look at him but she was too embarrassed. Instead she averted her gaze as she struggled back into her track pants, her hands shaking uncontrollably as she tried to restore whatever dignity she could under the circumstances.
Demetrius stood watching her uncertainly, his brow still deeply furrowed.
‘You should have told me,’ he said after an agonising silence.
She sniffed and brushed her sleeve across her face in a gesture that totally undid him.
‘I had no idea you were…’ He let the sentence trail away, still unable to come to terms with his actions.
He pushed a hand through the rough disorder of his hair, fighting for some sort of control.
This was totally out of his field of experience.
He’d been with countless women over the years and not one of them had affected him quite the way Maddison had. It wasn’t just the fact of her innocence, which on reflection he knew he should have picked up on earlier, but her whole personality, her fierce loyalty to her brother and her courageous defiance in the face of overwhelming odds.
Guilt assailed him as he looked down at her slim body hunched over her up-bent knees, her eyes avoiding his with all the determination of her nature. For the very first time in his life he knew he was in deep trouble, the sort of trouble he’d so cleverly avoided all his adult life.
Love trouble.
‘I don’t know how to go about apologising,’ he began uncomfortably. ‘I must have hurt you.’
She lifted her tear-stained face to his momentarily. ‘Only a bit…I’m fine now.’
‘I would have taken things more slowly had I known.’
‘It’s all right.’ She bent her head once more.
‘No, Maddison,’ he said gruffly. ‘It’s not all right. Do you have any idea how bad I feel?’
She got to her feet with such awkwardness that another shaft of gut-wrenching guilt darted through him.
‘Please don’t beat yourself up about it,’ she said. ‘I’m sure there are worse things to feel bad about.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Why didn’t you ask?’ she returned with a spark of her usual spirit.
He considered her question for a moment or two.
‘You’re right, of course,’ he finally admitted with a touch of wryness in his tone. ‘I shouldn’t have assumed anything about you. You are, after all, exactly as you said—not like other women, or at least not like the ones I’m most familiar with.’
‘Well, no doubt this will be a rather special tick to put in your little black book,’ she said.
‘You have an appalling view of my character.’
‘That’s because you have an appalling character,’ she tossed back. ‘Anyone who resorts to blackmail has to be somewhat deficient in the character stakes, don’t you think?’
She’d recovered well, he thought. Her fighting spirit was back with a vengeance, and it seemed she wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to get in a couple of well-aimed and no doubt well-deserved king hits.
‘You didn’t have to marry me,’ he pointed out. ‘You could have told me of your brother’s whereabouts and left it at that.’
‘And watch you destroy him as you did my father?’ she flared at him. ‘Over my dead body!’
‘The sacrificial virgin, no less.’ One dark brow quirked at her.
She was tempted to hit him, he could tell. He saw the tightening of her fists by her sides and prepared himself for a swinging arc but she must have changed her mind for she simply ground her teeth and turned away.
He was surprised at how disappointed he felt.
A part of him wanted her to hit out so that he could take her in his arms and subdue her. A very big part of him wanted her back in his arms and not just temporarily. He wanted her to reach up to him with love in her flashing blue eyes, not hate. He wanted her to love him the way she’d taught him to love her in the space of days…
‘Maddison…’ He paused when he saw her back stiffen as he spoke, but then, coming to a decision, continued roughly. ‘Pack your things; we’re going back to the city immediately.’
She swung back around to look at him, a flicker of relief crossing her face as she saw him begin to damp down the fire.
‘We’re…leaving?’
‘Yes.’
‘But…’
‘Don’t argue with me.’ Impatience crept into his tone as he kicked at a piece of charcoal that had slipped from the grate. ‘Just get your things and let’s get going.’
He brushed past her and left the room without another word.
She stood for a moment or two, staring at the space he’d occupied, the dying fire sending up thin curls of grey smoke into the old chimney in its last choking breaths.
What a time to realise you’re in love, she thought.
The fire of his desire was squashed, just like the fire before her, while the embers of her love were glowing inside her, spreading the heat of aching need to every secret place in her body.
She loved him.
12-11-07, 06:23 PM
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