The Wealthy Greek's Contract Wife by Penny Jordan

Author:Penny Jordan [Jordan, Penny]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780263208917
Publisher: Harlequin Mills & Boon, Limited
Published: 2009-12-15T03:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

LIZZIE’S admission was so unexpected, so breathtakingly straightforward and honest, that it took several seconds for Ilios to accept exactly what she had said.

He looked at her, watching the way the colour came and went in her face, seeing the bruised look of misery that shadowed her eyes, and something came to life inside him that he didn’t recognise.

Why didn’t he say something—anything? Lizzie thought anxiously, even if it was just to reject her.

However, when he did speak it was slowly, spacing out the words.

‘Are you trying to tell me that you don’t want to share my bed because you want me?’ he asked in disbelief.

Lizzie’s throat had gone so tight that it ached with her tension.

‘Yes. That is, I think I do. I’m not used to feeling…that is to wanting…I’ve never actually lusted after anyone before,’ she admitted, red-faced.

‘“Lusted after”?’

Now Lizzie could see that she had shocked him.

‘I’m sorry!’ she apologised. ‘I didn’t want it to happen, but now you can see, can’t you, how difficult it would be? I’ve really tried not to…to think about it, but sometimes it just sort of overwhelms me. I’m afraid that if we were to share a bed, then…Well, what I mean is I know that you don’t want anything to happen between us. I didn’t want to have to say anything.’

She gave a small twisted smile, whilst Ilios listened to her with a growing sense of incredulity and disbelief.

‘What woman would?’ Lizzie continued self-deprecatingly. ‘But at least now that you do know, I can rely on you to…to help me…to ensure that—well, that nothing happens.’

Ilios could hardly believe his own ears. Was she really standing there and telling him that she wouldn’t share his bed because she was afraid that the sexual temptation of his proximity would be too much for her self-control? Did she really think that he was the kind of man who would allow a woman to play the role of hunter in the chase between the sexes? Immediately Ilios wished he had not used such a metaphor, because it had somehow or other caused some very sensual images indeed to break loose inside his imagination—images that were having exactly the opposite effect on him he assumed Lizzie had expected her admission to have.

Her head bowed, Lizzie admitted, ‘I know you must be shocked. I was shocked too. That was part of the reason why I didn’t want to agree to marry you.’

‘You knew then?’ Ilios challenged her.

Lizzie swallowed against the painful lump of anguish lodged in her throat. I knew the minute I saw you, she could have said. But of course she mustn’t.

‘I knew that there was something…’ she told him carefully. ‘But I thought it would go away.’

‘And it didn’t?’

She shook her head. ‘I thought that I could fight against it, that it would be like fighting the hurdles I had to overcome when our parents died, and I will, only at the moment, after tonight and the champagne, I just don’t think…’

‘So it’s only tonight that you don’t want to spend in my bed?’

‘No, it’s not just tonight.

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