Irresistible Greeks: Passion and Promises: The Greek's Marriage Bargain / A Royal World Apart / The Theotokis Inheritance. Susanne JamesЧитать онлайн книгу.
her mouth and again she tried to wriggle away from him, but Xenon was having none of it. ‘Relax,’ he repeated.
‘Trying to lull me into a false state of security isn’t going to work.’
‘How very brutal of you, Lex—to suggest that I might have some kind of ulterior motive.’
‘Haven’t you?’
‘Not right at this moment, no.’ Fractionally, his thumb moved over her satin-covered waist. ‘Tell me, did you enjoy dinner?’
‘Which part? The delicious bourekakia and tiropita—or your astonishing about-face on the subject of married women working?’
The thumb stopped moving. She thought she heard him sigh.
‘I should never have stopped you from following your career,’ he said.
Lexi stared into the nothingness. Now that her eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness, she could make out faint shapes of furniture. ‘Nobody can stop someone from doing something, not if they don’t want to.’
‘But I delivered an ultimatum,’ he said. ‘I told you in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t tolerate my wife working.’
‘And maybe you weren’t entirely wrong,’ she said slowly. ‘Our marriage would never have survived me trying to pursue a solo career which was always doomed. I recognised that eventually. It was just the way that you told me which hurt so much.’
‘How?’
His word seemed to fill the dark room and Lexi’s breathing grew shallow. It was a question he would never normally have asked, though this particular situation hardly qualified as ‘normal’, did it? Not by anyone’s definition of the word. And surely the concealing cloak of darkness meant that she could answer it honestly.
‘You spoke to me like I was just...something instead of someone,’ she said. ‘Like I was a person who was simply there to complement your life. As if I didn’t have any feelings of my own. As if my singing career could just be flushed away. It was all about you, Xenon—it was only ever about you.’
As the breath left his lungs in an even heavier sigh Xenon could feel the ripple of her hair. He scowled into the darkness as her body tensed and he felt the bitter pain of regret—the sense that he had been blind to what had been right beneath his nose. Was it too late to tell her that? To tell her that he hadn’t known how to behave any differently?
‘I had certain expectations of marriage,’ he said. ‘Which I expected you, as my wife, to meet.’
‘Yes, I know all that. You wanted a genteel woman. A yes-woman, yet you couldn’t have chosen someone more different if you’d tried. I was from a totally different background. I’d clawed my way up from the bottom. I’d looked after myself—and my brothers—all my life. I didn’t know how to be anything but independent and yet suddenly you expected me to relinquish all that.’
‘I wanted to look after you,’ he said.
‘No. You wanted to keep me in a cage. A highly embellished cage, it’s true—but a cage no less. At first I didn’t even notice. I was so enthralled by you—so happy just to be with you that if you’d suggested we live in a cave at the bottom of the garden I suspect I would have agreed.’
He flinched as he heard the way she said it. As if she couldn’t believe the person she’d been back then. The person who had adored him. Had. ‘I’d never been in love before,’ he said slowly. ‘I’d never been married before. All I knew was that wives were treated with a certain degree of reverence.’
In the darkness, Lexi gave a wry smile. ‘Suppressing someone’s spontaneity and talent isn’t being reverential, Xenon—it’s being controlling. Maybe you should face up to reality and accept that you’re just not the marrying kind—or maybe you should try marrying a more conventional type of woman. One who likes to be manipulated like that.’
He let his mouth sink into her hair and his words were muffled by its silken richness. ‘I’m sorry, Lex,’ he said. ‘Can you believe me when I say that to you?’
Lexi swallowed. The long silence seemed amplified by the darkness and the fact that she sensed he was holding his breath while he waited for an answer. It would be so much easier if she didn’t believe him. If she thought that he was simply saying something because it was convenient for him to do so. But she knew Xenon well enough to recognise his words as genuine—and these were very powerful words indeed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I believe you.’
‘And can you forgive me?’
Lexi closed her eyes. That was a harder question. Because forgiveness was complicated. When you forgave someone you left a vacuum where all the anger had been, and then what did you replace it with?
But she couldn’t carry on fighting him simply because she was scared of her own feelings, could she? ‘Yes,’ she whispered, but she pulled away from him—not wanting him to interpret her clemency as some kind of sexual green light.
Xenon felt her move away and his body stiffened with the hot stab of frustration. His hand was still at her waist but he sensed she had withdrawn from him in more than a physical sense. Where a few minutes ago she had been warm and—he thought—on the verge of compliance, all that had now gone.
It very nearly killed him but he forced himself to drop nothing more than a light kiss onto her silk-covered shoulder and then to turn over. He had never done this in his life—stopped himself from taking what he wanted to take. What deep down he still considered it his right to take.
Scowling into the darkness, he moved over to the other side of the bed.
But sleep was a long time coming.
THE SHOWER WAS icy and Xenon stood beneath the punishing jets as he tried to rid his heated body of a desire so fierce that he felt he might explode with it. Tipping his head back, he allowed the impact of the cold water to power onto his face, but nothing could take away the thought that he had just spent an entire night in bed with his wife.
And he hadn’t laid a finger on her.
He had lain awake as he’d felt the slide of her pyjama-clad body occasionally brushing up against him and the temptation to imprison her beneath him had been overpowering. He’d had to resist the urge to bury his fingers into her thick hair and to open his mouth over hers, kissing her until he had melted away every single one of her reservations.
He uttered a growled curse in Greek.
Would he see any signs of change in her this morning? he wondered. Would the frank discussion they’d had last night under cover of darkness have softened Lex’s stance towards him?
She must have used the second bathroom because when he returned to the bedroom with only a white towel wrapped around his hips she was no longer lying in bed where he’d left her. Wise woman, he thought grimly. It was probably safer to stay away from him when he was feeling like this.
He dressed and walked out onto the terrace to find her sitting at the table, wearing a simple cotton dress with her ponytailed hair hanging down her back. In front of her was a pot of coffee, a dish of Greek yoghurt and a platter of fruit. She looked up as he approached and, although her sunglasses concealed the expression in her eyes, he saw the way that her teeth chewed nervously at her bottom lip.
‘What a touchingly domestic scene,’ he drawled.
‘I went over to the main house and got all this stuff from Phyllida,’ she explained a little defensively, in response to the arrogant rise of his eyebrows. ‘I thought it might be nice to have breakfast here, since the gardens are so pretty.’
He sat down and took the cup which she slid towards him. ‘I imagined my mother planned for us to eat in the main house—but if you’re planning to play