The Cozakis Bride by Lynne Graham

Author:Lynne Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2000-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN stray sounds penetrated Olympia’s slumber, she would have ignored them but for the extra-sensory mental jab that urged her to take heed.

She was so exhausted it took huge will-power just to lift her eyelashes. The curtains were wide, sunlight spilling in. She was tense until she found and focused on Nik. Happiness bubbled up inside her with the force of an unrestrained oil gusher. It didn’t strike her as odd that she should be happy. Every time she had stirred in Nik’s arms during the night she had experienced that feeling and she had become accustomed to it before she had had the chance or the need to question the sensation.

A stray shard of sunlight gleamed over blue-black hair still wet from the shower, curved like a caress over a powerful shoulder and darted down over the long sweep of Nik’s back, gilding his bronzed skin to pure gold. His classic profile was hard, very masculine, until that playful sunshine accentuated black lashes as long and lush as silk fans. And she smiled then, a sleepy, secretive smile, while she watched him haul on his jeans. She just adored those lashes; she always had.

She rolled over to the side of the bed closest to him, lying on her tummy, sleepy face propped on one hand, sea-jade eyes open and unguarded. ‘Nik…what time is it?’

‘Afternoon. Two o’clock. We haven’t eaten since we came on board, nor have we emerged from this state room. I imagine my crew are well satisfied with my virility.’

Olympia didn’t really think that dry comment through, merely interrupting on impulse to say shyly, ‘I certainly am!’

Nik stilled. She dropped her eyes, reddened fiercely. Odd how daylight could banish all sense of intimacy, she recognised too late. She was annoyed that she had made a comment that would make her mother faint dead away in ladylike disbelief. She had sounded so gauche as well. That final awareness plunged her into an agony of embarrassment.

‘It was good,’ Nik conceded, without any expression at all.

Good? she almost shrieked back at him in shock. Good? Like a meal, a nice day out, a satisfactory piece of work? Suddenly she was marvelling at the happy contentment she had woken up with only minutes earlier. Had her brain and her memory gone on holiday while she slept?

‘But then why shouldn’t it have been?’ Nik remarked with a slight dismissive shrug. ‘I knew we would be sexually compatible.’

Her swollen mouth trembled. She compressed her lips hard. A hollow and sick sense of rejection was swallowing her up like a big black hole. The chill in the air raised goose-flesh on her exposed arms. She had to force herself to look directly at Nik again. She discovered that she needed armour cladding to protect herself from the cool distance in those black eyes, and unfortunately she only had flesh.

Pale and taut now, she muttered, ‘I thought we understood each other better now.’

Hadn’t there been a closeness which might not have been spelt out

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