Passion Becomes You

‘My God! You arrogant swine!’ she choked, not for one second missing his meaning. Furiously, she shot to her feet. ‘Well, hear this, Mr Stephanades,’ she flung at him. ‘This lady with a past is just a bit choosy herself!’

‘I know,’ he confirmed, his lazy smile enough to shoot the lid right off her temper.

‘Oh, go to hell,’ she muttered, and turned, her trembling legs barely able to support her as she stalked angrily for the door.

‘Virgin,’ he chanted cruelly after her. ‘And proud of it. Friends call you “one-date Jemma” and lay bets on who will be the first to crack the ice.’ She stopped, her spine stiffening in horror. ‘Speculation has it that you must have suffered a bad experience at some time to make you so unresponsive to men. But I know better, do I not?’

Jemma closed her eyes, appalled that his investigators could dig that deep!

‘I am not a promiscuous man, agape mou,’ he informed her smoothly. ‘The days of passing from one woman to another long ago lost its appeal with the risks it brings with it. I value my good clean bill of health, and am therefore very careful whom I share my body with.’

‘My God,’ she whispered, turning to stare at him. ‘I don’t believe I’m really hearing this!’

‘I want you, but not at any price—you understand?’ he said, a slight hint of apology in his tone as he came to his feet. ‘So I had to have you thoroughly checked out.’

‘So virgins are all you allow yourself these days, are they?’ Jemma threw scathingly at him.

His open-palmed shrug said it all. ‘In general, these days, I steer clear of intimacy with any women,’ he confessed. ‘You, are the exception.’

‘And I suppose you expect me to be honoured by that confession?’

‘No,’ he denied. ‘But I thought you may gain some comfort in knowing that I can offer you the same risk-free pleasure you will be giving me.’

‘Go to hell,’ she said again, her contempt of him only slightly overshadowed by the severe sense of disgust she felt at herself for being so obvious with him that he felt he could do and say all of this to her. ‘I would rather take my chances with Tom MacDonald’s more dubious sexual history than with a cold-blooded, calculating devil like you!’

On that, she spun away again, grabbing up her belongings before storming out of the room, feeling angry enough just maybe to put her words into practice and offer herself to Tom, if only to get back at all of them—both her so-called friends and the man she had just left standing there—for daring to make her personal life their business!

She’d reached the front door before he caught up with her, his hands like manacles as they closed around her upper arms to swing her round to face him. Her coat went one way, her purse the other. She saw the fury leaping in his eyes, the threat of violence, then his mouth was landing punishingly on hers and all hell broke loose inside her.

Her shock, the anger and utter contempt she was feeling, all colluded with her hungry senses to send them wild. Her arms snapped up to push him away, fists thumping at his shoulders and chest while she wriggled and squirmed and kissed him back with a vengeance. Her lips parted, wantonly drawing his tongue into contest with her own, and he made a husky little groan deep in his throat which she answered with an animal growl of her own, elated that she had actually managed to shake him.

‘You think I would let you give all of this to him?’ he grated, thrusting her to arm’s length so that she fell heavily against the hard wood panel of the door behind her.

‘Good, was it?’ she taunted thickly, her eyes spitting her contempt at him, even while her swollen mouth invited more of the same mind-blowing kisses. Breasts heaving, hands shaking, she challenged the harsh rasping of his breath. ‘Want it all? Shame,’ she jeered. ‘Because I’d die before I would let you have me!’

‘Then die!’ he decreed, dragging her back against him, the desire in him flaring up like her own, full of angry passion. ‘For I am the only man who is going to have you!’

And his mouth took hers again, his arms moulding her writhing throbbing body to his with no chance of escape. And it went on and on—a battle that was a crazy one because they were both using the same angry weapons to strike sparks from each other. Jemma’s fingers found his hair and gripped, but not to pull him away. Instead they held his mouth down on hers while his own hands curved into the flesh at the tops of her legs, pushing up the fabric of her skirt and pressing her hard against him so that the mad gyration of their bodies inflamed them to full, throbbing arousal.

It was terrible. Jemma saw in a brief flash of sanity how they must look together like this, and she whimpered in horror, hot tears burning into her eyes and running down her cheeks.

He felt them, tasted them on his tongue, and groaned as he dragged his mouth away from hers. ‘God,’ he choked, ‘what are we doing here?’

Raping each other, Jemma thought wildly as he muttered something in a harsh guttural Greek before burying his face in her hair, holding her tightly against him while the wild storm raged on inside them both.

It was a long while before they began to calm. And by then Jemma was feeling so ashamed of herself that she did not know how she was going to lift her head and face him. She was glad of the solid wall of his pounding chest to hide against. His arms had relaxed their suffocating grip on her body and were gently stroking her now. He, like herself, made no attempt to move, but slowly, as the seconds ticked by, she became conscious that one of them was going to have to break the crazy deadlock.

He did it, as if reading her mind, taking on the responsibility and slowly dropping his arms. She didn’t move, didn’t think she had the strength left to try! He turned his back, a hand going up to grip the back of his neck while he stared grimly at the carpet. The silence was gnawing.

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ he said suddenly and strode off down the hall.

Jemma watched him go with empty eyes. Empty because he had just managed to drain her of every emotion she possessed. It would be better if she just opened the door and sneaked quietly away, she told herself as she continued to stand there. She was sure she would be able to hail a cruising black cab. Ten minutes and she would be home, safe in her flat with Trina’s mocking presence to keep her safe. A few determined steps, she told herself, and you could end all of this for good. He would not follow. Like herself, he couldn’t want this violent kind of passion.

It wasn’t good. It wasn’t even enjoyable. Just a hostile, bitter slaking of an ugly lust, that was what it was. Lust.

She managed to turn, legs trembling as she made the vital manoeuvre which had her facing the door.

‘Where are you going?’

Gentle as the question was, it froze her in terror. ‘H-home,’ she whispered tremulously. ‘I w-want to go h-home.’

Silence. She didn’t move and she was almost sure he didn’t either. Then she heard his heavy sigh. ‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘But I shall take you.’

He began walking towards her, and the closer he got, the more she trembled until she shook in violent spasms that brought the tears back to her eyes. It was stupid, but when his arms came gently around her to draw her back against him she sobbed with relief, turning to bury her face in his shirt-front. ‘I’ve never felt so ashamed of myself!’ she whispered thickly.

‘You and me both, agape mou,’ he murmured grimly. ‘But I think my shame has to be worse than yours right now. Come.’ He shifted until he held her beneath the crook of his arm. ‘You are in no fit state to go home as yet, and my guilty conscience will not let you go like this.’ Gently he led her back along the hall. ‘We will talk, I think,’ he decided. ‘Of things other than ourselves and what we seem to want or not want.’ His dry tone made her smile, and she glanced up to find him smiling ruefully too.

Then their eyes locked. And even as she felt the upward surge of all that awful tension again, she saw him heave in a harsh breath in an effort to control his own feelings.

Sighing, he leaned back heavily against the wall behind him, his grip loosening on her. ‘This is not going to work, is it?’ he sighed. ‘Talking is the last thing we both need to do right now.’

She lowered her face, shaking her tumbled mass of hair. ‘I don’t even know you,’ she whispered helplessly. That seemed to shame her as much as the emotions running wild inside her.

‘Our bodies seem to know each other well enough.’ Reaching out, he threaded gentle fingers through her hair. Her eyes closed, face lifting on a sigh of such helpless pleasure at his touch that he breathed once, fiercely. ‘Upstairs,’ he murmured, ‘I have a bed. A warm and comfortable, very large bed where, with a bit of trust on your side and a lot of control on mine, I think I could manage to salvage some of our self-respect from this night if you would let me.’

Her stomach muscles contracted, sending a flutter of appeal winging out across her body. ‘Violence is not my way, Jemma,’ he said quietly. ‘What took place here just now was a—a culmination of my bad temper and your angry retaliation to it. But it does not alter the most fundamental reason as to why we are here together like this. We want each other—need would be a better word. Please,’ he murmured huskily, ‘will you let me make love to you as gently and as beautifully as I know how?’

‘No strings attached?’ She heard the words leave her lips in the shape of a surrender, her kiss-swollen mouth twisting wryly as she acknowledged it. ‘No other lovers? No other commitment other than a pledge of loyalty while this thing lasts?’ she quoted his own words back at him drily.

‘Do you want a deeper commitment from me?’ he asked, his expression quite serious.

Jemma thought about it. Thought about the man he was and the power he wielded. She thought about the social circles he moved in and the nice little Greek girl at home somewhere in his own country waiting for him to give in to family pressure and marry well. And she shuddered. ‘No,’ she answered. ‘I want nothing more from you than—this...’

She moved into his arms, unable to stay out of them for a moment longer. Their mouths met and her eyes closed over the helpless need radiating from her dark blue irises. Leon came away from the wall, folding her against him as he deepened the kiss.

The anger had gone, lost in the surrendering of the battle. But what replaced it was far, far more intense. With the aid of his kiss he seemed to absorb her into him, her mind, her body, her every sense opening up and closing hungrily around him.

He whispered something, a stunned expletive, it sounded like, though she barely registered it because whatever it was was groaned against her burning mouth and she was more aware of him picking her up and cradling her in his arms then moving, carrying her in a floaty haze up the stairs.

The kiss broke when he lowered her feet to the ground again, and Jemma lifted heavy lids to find herself gazing into eyes flowing with passion. It startled her, the look of fierce arousal, and her mouth parted on a protest—never uttered because he stopped it with a small shake of his head.

‘Trust me,’ he said, brushing his lips across hers. ‘This is no empty seduction. I am as much a slave to this as you are, agape mou.’

A statement he quickly proved when her fingers flexed in an instinctive response against his shoulders and he shuddered, the breath rushing shakily from his lungs.

Taking hold of her hand, he led her across the room—a room, she realised for the first time, that was a bedroom, big and gracious, its green and grey furnishings softly lit by a bedside lamp.

By the big double bed he turned her to face him, eyes still black with need but gentle now as they gravely explored her face. She blushed, feeling shy suddenly and awkward now that he had given her a moment to realise just what they were doing.