Authors: Lynne Graham
‘Connor…?’ Lizzie repeated after a startled pause. ‘You want me to talk about Connor…in depth?’
Lean, powerful face taut with determination, Sebasten shifted a broad shoulder in a fluid movement. ‘We should get it out of the way.’
‘Well, excuse me…’ Green eyes wide with annoyance and discomfiture, Lizzie tilted her chin. ‘I wasn’t aware there was anything to get out of the way!’
‘I know next to nothing about your relationship with him,’ Sebasten countered with immovable cool.
‘This is our wedding night and you want me to rehash unpleasant memories of another man…is that right?’ Lizzie demanded, snatching in a sustaining breath in an effort to control the incredulous resentment splintering through her but failing. ‘Go take a hike, Sebasten!’
Sebasten straightened, beautiful dark eyes flaring stormy gold. ‘I might just do that.’
At that threat, fear touched Lizzie deep and that very fear that he might walk out only increased her fury. ‘Wasn’t it bad enough that you spent most of the trip here hardly speaking to me? I put up with that but I can’t stand moody people. You never know where you are with them—’
‘I am not moody,’ Sebasten grated in an electrifying undertone. ‘But when you admitted that you saw a likeness between me and Connor, yes, it did give me pause for thought. It made me wonder just what you first saw in me…’
Understanding came to Lizzie and she studied him with angry, hurt condemnation, for she could not change the reality that she had met his brother first. ‘You have to be the most possessive guy I’ve ever met—’
Sebasten shot her a fulminating look. ‘I’m not and I have never been possessive—’
‘Volatile…possessive…jealous. Pick any one of them and they every one fit! If I’d just popped out of a little locked box somewhere the first night we met, you’d have loved it! How could you ask about Connor tonight of all nights? Do you honestly think I want to talk about how I found him and my stepmother in bed together?’ Lizzie slung at him in furious reproach. ‘You haven’t got a romantic, sensitive bone in your body!’
The bathroom door slammed and locked on Lizzie’s impassioned exit. Sebasten strode out onto the beach, angry with her, angry with himself, angrier still with Connor, now that he finally knew how brutal an awakening she had had to that affair. But he was not volatile. Nobody had ever accused him of that before. He was a very self-controlled guy. As for being possessive, what was wrong with that? Theo mou…she was his wife! A certain amount of possessiveness was a natural male instinct. As for that other tag, he wouldn’t even dignify that suggestion with consideration.
Lizzie’s frustration was overborne by tears of sheer tiredness. Where did Sebasten get the energy to be so volatile? At least though she now understood what had been riding him since the reception. She should never have mentioned that bit about there being a resemblance between him and his half-brother. She sank down on top of the comfortable bed, thinking that in just a moment she would go and track Sebasten down and smooth things over. After all, it was kind of sweet: Connor couldn’t have held a candle to Sebasten in looks, personality or desirability.
When Sebasten strolled back in off the beach half an hour later, Lizzie was sound asleep. Clad in something filmy the colour of rich honey, she was curled up on top of the shot-silk spread. When he saw the faint track of a tear stain on her cheek, he suppressed a groan and raked long brown fingers through his tousled black hair. Why did he go off the rails with Lizzie? Connor had caused her a lot of grief. On the same score, his own conscience was hardly whiter than white and she was carrying his baby…
Lizzie wakened with a start and sat up. The doors on to the beach were still wide but now framed a spectacular crimson and gold sunrise over the bay. The indented pillow beside hers indicated that at some stage of the night Sebasten had joined her and she groaned out loud: she must have slept like a log. Sliding out of bed, she went into the en suite bathroom to freshen up and wondered where the heck Sebasten was.
When she returned to the bedroom, she stilled in relief. Sebasten was sprawled on the floor cushion by the doors watching the sun rise and her mouth ran dry. His strong brown back was bare and his well-worn jeans outlined every line of his narrow hips and long, powerful thighs. When he turned his arrogant dark head to look at her, deceptively sleepy golden eyes accentuated by the darkness of his lashes, he just took her breath away.
‘Hi…’ he said softly, extending a lean hand to her in welcome.
‘You should’ve woken me up last night—’
Sebasten tugged her down beside him and pulled her back against him. ‘Be honest…you were exhausted. A siren wouldn’t have wakened you—’
‘But you could have,’ Lizzie whispered, curving back into the sun-warmed heat of him and tightening his arms round her for herself.
‘Call it the first selfless act of a lifetime pethi mou,’ Sebasten teased huskily, brushing her tumbled hair from one slim shoulder and pressing his expert mouth to her exposed skin in a caress that sent a helpless shiver of response coursing through her.
She twisted round in a sudden movement that took him by surprise and locked her lush lips to his with a hunger she couldn’t hide.
‘And this is the second unselfish act…’ Sebasten shared with a ragged edge to his dark, deep drawl as he lifted her and set her back from him. ‘Breakfast awaits you…’
‘B-breakfast?’ Lizzie stammered in total disconcertion.
‘You can have me for dessert if you want,’ Sebasten promised with husky amusement, vaulting upright with easy grace and pulling her with him to walk her out onto the terrace, where fresh rolls, cereal and fruit were already laid on the table.
‘Are the staff invisible?’ Lizzie asked as he tugged out a seat and tucked her into it.
‘I made it. The staff will be very discreet and only show up when necessary—’
‘And where do they hang out the rest of the time?’
‘In the main house across that hill.’ Sebasten nodded in the direction of the thick pine grove that ran on steep sloping ground right down to the edge of the sea.
‘There’s another house?’
‘This place wasn’t impressive enough to satisfy my father’s wives. I use the main house when I’m entertaining. When I’m on my own, I come here.’
That he had brought her with him made her smile. When she had finished her tea, he peeled a peach for her, fed her with it segment by segment. She collided dizzily with smouldering golden eyes and licked his fingers clean of the peach juice. He closed his hands over hers and tugged her upright.
‘Ready and willing,’ Sebasten husked.
The well-worn denim of his jeans made that so obvious that her cheeks burned with colour but her awareness of his rampant arousal only heightened her own. Driven by the taut sensitivity of her breasts and the ache stirring at the very heart of her, she pushed into connection with every hard, muscular angle of his lean, powerful frame. He knotted his fingers into the tumbling torrent of her hair and claimed her ready mouth with explicit passion.
‘I make a really mean breakfast,’ he teased as he swept her quivering body up into his arms and carried her back to bed.
‘But can you do it…every morning?’ Lizzie mumbled, trying to hold her own in the breathless dialogue while struggling with his zip.
‘Try me…’ Sebasten took care of that problem for her by ripping off his jeans with single-minded purpose and dexterity. ‘You wouldn’t believe how sexy it feels to know that your woman carries your baby inside her.’
‘Honestly?’ Lizzie opened wide, uncertain eyes, met the fiery confirmation in his intent gaze, and relief and appreciation filled her.
‘Honestly,’ Sebasten confirmed with the slashing charismatic smile that always made her heart lurch inside her and he deprived her of her nightdress with smooth expertise.
Empowered by that declaration, Lizzie began, ‘About last night, what you said about Con—’
‘Shut up,’ Sebasten warned without the smallest dip in that blazing smile. ‘I was way out of line—’
‘But—’
‘Close your eyes and pretend we have only just arrived,’ he urged, finding the tender peak of her breast with caressing fingers and depriving her of both breath and concentration.
He took her into a sensual world where all that mattered was the next sweet, drugging high of sensation. He let the heat of his mouth trail over her tender, pouting flesh and a long sigh was driven from her lungs. He lingered over the distended little buds until her sigh had become a moan she wasn’t even aware of making and she was shifting her hips in a restive movement, unable to stay still.
‘Sebasten…’ she gasped as he worked his erotic passage down over the quivering muscles of her tummy. ‘I want you…’
‘Not yet,’ he asserted, parting her slender thighs with ease and embarking on an intimacy that was new to her.
Shaken as she was, her eyes flew wide. ‘No…’
But he transformed her negative into a helpless positive within seconds and drove her crazy with a pleasure that came close to torment. She was out of control, abandoned to the urgent need he had driven to an ever greater height. At the instant that her heart was a hammering thunder-beat in her ears and her whole quivering body was sensitised to an almost unbearable degree, he came over her and entered her in a single smooth-driving thrust. Excitement flung her so high, she couldn’t catch her breath. She lifted herself up to him, moved against him in a helpless frenzy of need and then cried out as the shock waves of climax took her to an ecstatic peak and then released her again.
She felt soft with love, weak with fulfilment. Revelling in the peaceful aftermath of passion, she rubbed her cheek against a satin-smooth muscular brown shoulder. Happiness cocooned her as he hugged her close. He might not love her but he was very affectionate, she acknowledged, suppressing the inner sense of loss that that first acknowledgement threatened.
‘Just to think, pethi mou,’ Sebasten murmured with raw satisfaction as he gazed down into her warm green eyes, ‘nobody but me is ever going to know how fantastic you really are.’
‘Trust you to find a new slant on marriage,’ Lizzie whispered with amusement.
Dark golden eyes welded to her, he brushed a kiss across her lush reddened mouth and breathed rather like a guy steeling himself to make a major statement. ‘What we have is special…really special.’
‘Is it?’ she muttered, wanting more, striving to silence that need inside her and be happy with what they had.
‘Yes.’ Sebasten was just a little annoyed that she seemed so indifferent to his attempt to impress on her how much he valued her. ‘We’re so close, I can feel it.’
‘Oh…’ Lizzie snuggled into him.
‘I’ve never been that great at getting close to women,’ Sebasten confided, soothed by the fact that she was now wrapped round him like a vine. ‘But you’re different. You’re very open.’
‘Have you ever been in love?’ she muttered in as casual a tone as she could muster.
Sebasten tensed. ‘No…’
And with that Lizzie had to be content.
Two weeks later, Lizzie shimmied into a dress the shade of copper and noted how well it became the very slight tan she had acquired in the heat of the Greek sun.
Emerald drop earrings dangled from her ears and an emerald and diamond necklace encircled her throat. Sebasten had given her the earrings at the end of the first week and the necklace just the night before. Lizzie smiled. She had never been so happy. Even the reality that her beautiful dress was just a tinge too neat in fit over breasts that had made an inconvenient gain in size as her body changed with early pregnancy couldn’t cloud her good mood.
They had had lazy golden days on the beach, eating when they felt like it, swimming when they felt like it, staying in bed when they felt like it and talking long into the night over the exquisite dinners the staff served on the terrace in the evening. On a couple of occasions they had walked down to the sleepy little village at the harbour and dined in each of the two taverns, where they had been treated like guests of honour. Other days they had flown over to the bigger, busier islands like Corfu to shop or dine or dance.
She had learnt a lot about the male she married. She had also been both disconcerted and touched when he had said he would be cutting back on his trips abroad so that he would be able to spend more time with her and the baby.
‘It’ll be difficult for you,’ she had remarked.
‘It’s my choice, just as it was my father’s choice to be a stranger to me throughout my childhood. He was never there,’ Sebasten had admitted, his strong jawline squaring as he voiced a truth that his sense of family loyalty had always forced him to repress. ‘He expected his wives to do his job for him but they didn’t. It was much easier to leave me in the care of the staff or pack me off to boarding school.’
For the first time, Lizzie had recognised the strength of his sense of responsibility towards their unborn baby and her heart had gone out to him as she understood that his own experiences had made him all the more determined to ensure that his own child would receive very different treatment. But for the early loss of her mother, her own childhood had been secure and loving and she began to grasp the source of Sebasten’s innate complexity. He had been forced to depend on his own inner resources at too early an age.