The Marriage Betrayal

Chapter FIVE


TALLY went out to dinner sporting her best jeans teamed with a red top that had a low back.

She refused to agonise over the inadequacies of her under-resourced wardrobe or to get into debt buying a new outfit that she couldn’t afford. Nothing could more keenly illustrate the differences between them than her lack of fancy designer togs, but she was not going to feel embarrassed about it, she told herself firmly. She was less proud of the fact that she rifled through her mother’s make-up drawer to bolster her own meagre collection of cosmetics and had used eyeliner for only the second time in her life.

‘What did you do today?’ Sander enquired lazily, his attention dwelling with pleasure on the natural sway of her pouting breasts below the thin fabric of her top as she sat down. The conviction that she wasn’t wearing anything beneath it sparked a fire of anticipation in his loins. Thoughts of Tally had interfered with his concentration throughout his working day, an unusual enough development for a male used to keeping his sex life safely corralled within his leisure time. But lust had its own impetus and he recognised the fact, convinced that once his desire was satisfied he would recapture his inherent detachment.

‘Work experience with a design firm at Putney,’ she revealed, choosing not to add that so far she had been kept well away from the clients and firmly in the background running messages and sourcing supplies. She was eager for the chance to utilise her creative talents. ‘I have my final exams in a couple of months, so I’m starting to apply for jobs as well.’

‘You’re studying?’ Sander frowned in surprise. ‘Where does your job with Cosima Karydas fit in?’

Tally almost winced at that understandable question and reckoned that she would never make a good liar because her sibling’s fibs about their exact relationship had already slipped her mind. ‘Oh, that was just a temporary sort of one-off thing,’ she muttered uncomfortably. ‘I’m actually studying interior design at college and this is my last year.’

‘I didn’t realise that you were a student.’

‘So, tell me about what you do,’ Tally urged, keen to change the subject.

Sander mentioned interests in property, pharmaceuticals and the hospitality business and confessed that he was always on the lookout for new investment possibilities. While she could only be impressed by the long hours he evidently worked and his ambition, she sensed that he was never satisfied with his achievements and wondered why not.

Accompanying him into an exquisitely renovated Georgian building with a handsome entrance foyer, she comfortably envisaged the exclusive restaurant she assumed they were heading to next, only to find herself lodged in a lift instead. ‘Where’s the restaurant?’ she prompted.

‘There isn’t one.’ Sander stood back for her to precede him out of the lift and then stuck a key in the lock of the door on the other side of the gracious landing. ‘We’re eating in …’

Discomfiture immediately gripped Tally, for she had not bargained on a private meal in the intimate setting of his home and would have preferred dining in a public place. Curiosity, however, about his chosen surroundings took her in silence through the first minutes of entering his apartment. The high-tech finish, wooden floors and understated furniture were very masculine but made the most of the classic proportions of the rooms. A dining table was already set with flickering candles in readiness for their meal and her soft pink mouth compressed.

‘I would’ve preferred to have dined out,’ she told him candidly.

Surprise at that comment made Sander elevate an ebony brow. ‘Why?’

Tally wrinkled her nose and wondered if she dared to be honest a split second before she defied the urge to play dumb for his benefit. ‘This feels like a set-up …’

‘What the hell does that mean?’ Sander frowned as a woman in an apron appeared with a pair of plates and hovered uncertainly. He addressed her in Greek, telling her to go ahead and serve the meal.

Stiff with awkwardness, Tally took a reluctant seat and unfurled her napkin.

‘Explain what you meant,’ Sander prompted drily.

The starter looked very enticing but the tension in the atmosphere had loosed a flock of uneasy butterflies in the pit of Tally’s stomach. She lifted her knife and fork with an appetite that was already on the wane. ‘You staged the meal here because you expect me to sleep with you tonight,’ she framed curtly and she glanced up, eyes as fresh a green as clover leaves after rain and sparkling with condemnation. ‘You’ve got a hell of a nerve!’

Sander had indeed expected exactly that scenario to develop and had chosen the most convenient backdrop for that desired conclusion to the evening. ‘Because I want you? Am I supposed to apologise for that?’

‘No, but …’ Tally hesitated and then pressed on to speak her mind. ‘But I’m more than just a body. I’m a person and I don’t want to be here with you if all you’re interested in is sex!’

His dark golden gaze veiled, Sander could not restrain an instinctive need to wince at her lack of tact and sophistication. He wondered what possible response she was hoping to receive at such an early stage of their acquaintance. ‘I’d like you to stay the night,’ he traded without an ounce of embarrassment. ‘That’s a natural, normal aspiration for me to have.’

Colour ran up below Tally’s creamy skin in a flying banner of embarrassment. She had boxed herself into a corner with her declaration, made it clear that while he might want only her body, she was in the market for something deeper and more meaningful, but that had not been her intention. ‘I just don’t like the way you make assumptions,’ she breathed in a taut undertone.

‘You have the right to say no.’ Sander voiced that reminder in a tone as smooth as silk.

‘Don’t patronise me!’ Tally fired back at him, throwing down her knife and fork and pushing her plate away in an angry gesture.

‘You’re very quick-tempered,’ Sander remarked.

Discomfiture attacking her in receipt of that opinion, Tally tugged her plate back and began doggedly to eat, barely tasting the delicious dish in her determination to appear calm and composed.

‘Always ready and willing to have a fight with me,’ Sander continued.

‘I don’t even know what I’m doing here with you!’ Tally exclaimed helplessly.

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Sander quipped, filling her wine glass. ‘You’re with me for the exact same reason I’m with you. You can’t stay away.’

The truth of that statement hit Tally as hard as a head-on collision. She looked at him and it was as if he had cast a spell on her, for it was a challenge even to look away, never mind walk away. Desire had dug greedy claws into her body, awakening the hormones that inspired craving and stealing her freedom of choice. He infuriated her and he had insulted her, yet she had still agreed to dinner. Suddenly even madder with herself than she was with him, Tally pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘I shouldn’t be here. Don’t worry, I’ll make my own way home.’

Sander slowly rose upright, keen dark golden eyes locked to her hectically flushed face. ‘Are you always as impetuous as this?’

Tally paled, wondering if she shared more with her mother than she had ever appreciated because he seemed to draw out a side of her nature that she was unfamiliar with: an ardent, capricious, insecure side, which made her feel incredibly vulnerable. Suddenly she was acting a world away from the stable, sensible and fairly unemotional young woman she had always assumed that she was. He made her want things she had never wanted, like long straight blonde hair, a body the shape of a pencil and endless legs. He made her want to be irresistible, the sort of woman men fought over and loved to the brink of insanity.

‘You make me impulsive,’ she admitted grudgingly.

‘You have a weird effect on me too,’ Sander confided with an eloquent shift of two lean brown hands. ‘I was convinced that I wanted nothing more to do with you, but the minute I saw you leaving Westgrave Manor I drove after you and asked you out to dinner.’

And Tally’s barrier of apprehension and insecurity tumbled down there and then because those revealing, almost bemused words of his soothed her concern and eased her distrust. It didn’t sound like a male pickup line and she had heard most of them from the smarmy, ‘Did it hurt when you fell out of heaven?’ to the coarse, ‘Fancy a shag?’ It sounded as though he was telling the truth and that he was equally mystified by the way he reacted to her.

Once again she sat down and the main course was served. Finally starting to relax, she ate and asked questions about the flat, for the strikingly effective combination of contemporary décor married to Georgian classic elegance appealed to her creative instincts. Sander told her that he had renovated the entire building before converting it into apartments, keeping the most spacious for his own use. She chattered about her college course and let down her guard to the extent that she had to swallow back an unwise reference to her father, before confiding that one day she wanted to open her own design company.

In the lounge Sander sat back and enjoyed her bubbling animation. He found her surprisingly good company; she had none of the conceit and superficiality he was accustomed to meeting with in women. Tally met his stunning dark golden eyes and felt the intensity there to the extent that her mouth ran dry and her heartbeat accelerated. He reached out a graceful hand and removed her wine glass from her grasp to set it aside. And, without the smallest hesitation, she shifted closer, wanting, needing to connect. Long fingers curving to her slim shoulder, he bent his head to toy with her soft full lips until the heat of anticipation was tingling and burning between her thighs. What shocked her was how very quickly and powerfully she felt the pull of his sexual magnetism.

He kissed her softly and then he kissed her hard, his lips urgent and demanding around the skilled plunge of his tongue into the sensitive interior of her mouth. She clung to him as if he were the only rock in a storm and gasped in startled response when he burrowed below her top to close a hungry hand over the fullness of her breasts. As he massaged the pouting swells and the tender prominence of her nipples with skilled fingers excitement began to hurtle through her in an unstoppable wave.

‘Let’s move this to the bedroom,’ Sander urged thickly, hauling her upright and pausing to kiss her with a passionate dominance that lit up every skin cell in her quivering body.

The yearning hit a high and she wound her arms round him and kissed him back with the same passion, loving the taste of his strong sensual mouth and the scent of his skin. With a gruff sound of satisfaction he lifted her up into his arms and strode into the bedroom across the landing.

He settled her down on the bed and suddenly tensed. ‘Something I forgot to say,’ he breathed, beautiful eyes welded to her flushed face. ‘I don’t do exclusivity …’

‘Okay,’ Tally fielded without even having to think about it. ‘You don’t do exclusivity. I don’t do sex.’

Sander froze and slowly dragged his hands from her. ‘You can’t be serious.’

Bright green eyes focused on him. ‘Do other women settle for that, “I don’t do exclusivity” malarkey?’

‘With all the options out there, who wants to be tied down? They settle for it,’ Sander asserted.

Tally sighed and shook her head. ‘I won’t,’ she said almost apologetically, her gaze clinging ruefully to his lean, darkly handsome features.

Sander groaned out loud and fell back a step. She could not have missed the pronounced bulge of his erection below his jeans. ‘You have me over a … barrel …’

‘Or, in this case … a bed?’ Tally suggested, struggling to cool the tingling heat at the centre of her body with will power alone but stubbornly unprepared to compromise. ‘It’s your choice.’

‘This is ridiculous.’ Seething frustration filled Sander when she fired back the same reminder he had used with her only minutes earlier. ‘It’s not as though you’re still a virgin, either.’

‘I am not sharing a bed with you while you continue to sleep with other women.’ Tally planted each word like a solid foot settling into newly poured concrete and then she slid her own feet off the bedspread he had placed her on and began to search for her discarded shoes.

‘That’s like blackmail,’ Sander launched at her grittily, something akin to sheer disbelief momentarily clouding his stunning dark eyes as he stared at her. ‘You are so bloody demanding!’

‘You’re a good teacher.’ Tally almost laughed at his expression, but she had no softness in her on the score of fidelity and it would be a long time before she forgot the ruthless expertise of his seduction of her at Westgrave. Then she had got so carried away that she hadn’t known what she was doing, but this time around she was trying to look out for herself and spot the pitfalls in advance. And the pitfalls of getting involved with Sander Volakis, she sensed ruefully, could be huge if she wasn’t careful.

Sander watched her reach the door and it seemed like a battle of wits between them then because he was constitutionally incapable of surrender. His body rigid with the ache of fierce self-control, his eyes fiery, he watched her gather up her bag and emerge from the lounge to depart.

‘I’ll call a taxi,’ Tally told him breezily.

Later he didn’t remember moving, but he must have done because when time mysteriously moved on he had her lush body pinned up against the back of the front door and he was crushing her sultry, satiny, sexy mouth under his and drinking deep of an ardour that perfectly matched his own. It was glorious.

‘Sander …’ she muttered shakily when he allowed her to breathe again.

‘For as long as I want you, there won’t be anyone else,’ he intoned in a raw undertone. ‘But we mightn’t last five minutes …’

Encountering those wrathful dark golden eyes Tally recognised how much giving way to her rules had cost him and knew that he was saving face. She suppressed a smile born of understanding rather than triumph. Something about his explosive streak of volatility fired a tender rush of feeling inside her and she stretched up to press her mouth to his again in an unwittingly soothing gesture.

In the bedroom he pulled off his shirt, lean, hard muscle flexing below his bronzed hair-roughened skin. She was kicking off her shoes again when he peeled her out of her top and he had to pull her into his arms to prevent her from unbalancing and tumbling backwards. He lowered her down onto the bed, scorching dark golden eyes raking over the upward swell of her full breasts with unashamed appreciation. As he unsnapped her jeans and tugged them off Tally was almost dizzy on a sense of her own daring. The longing to be closer to him and pulse of need in her pelvis were too strong for her to fight and she was trying to give in with grace and fight, the shyness that made it such a challenge for her to lie there nude but for a small pair of knickers.

Air was forced from her lungs in a gasp when he stroked the creamy mounds already taut with desire and caught a tender throbbing pink peak between his lips to lash the swollen tip with his tongue. Her fluttering hands closed into his cropped black hair, holding him to her, dropping to his wide strong shoulders when he reared up and reclaimed her reddened mouth with erotic urgency. He stripped off his jeans and his boxers in an impatient surge of activity.

The sense of liquid warmth between her thighs increased when she felt the urgent thrust of his manhood against her hip. Her body was gearing up for the next step, chemical reactions taking place to ensure that any halt would be a savage disappointment. The memory of her first painful experience did not dim her anticipation or the wild rise of her hunger when he scored an explorative fingertip over the damp crotch of her knickers. She felt so sensitive there, embarrassingly aware of what had always been a private part of her body. Pulling her close, Sander hooked a hand into the waistband of her last garment and removed it.

‘I’ll make it wonderful, glikia mou,’ Sander promised as she lay there momentarily tense, uncertainty alight in her expressive green eyes.

Ready to be convinced and mortified that he could read her so easily, Tally veiled her eyes. His hands glided over her in a light exploration, smoothing her skin, caressing every curve and dimple. His leisurely approach ensured that her apprehension ebbed to be replaced by melting warmth and a ready tingling of awareness in the more erogenous zones. He ran his tongue down the valley between her breasts, paused to toy with her swollen nipples and then moved lower, down over the quivering tightness of her stomach to the delicate pink flesh between her trembling thighs.

‘No,’ she told him in strong embarrassment, locking her ankles together to deny him access.

Sander slid up level with her troubled gaze again and ran a reassuring finger along the taut line of her lower lip. ‘I want to give you the maximum possible pleasure,’ he husked. ‘I want to rewrite our history.’

‘You can’t—what happened, happened,’ Tally protested tightly as he parted her ankles with a twist of his knee and his foot and sent skilled fingers gliding across her taut inner thigh.

‘Trust me.’ At the first intimate touch her eyes slid shut and her hands tightened into fists of restraint, for she had an instinctive fear of losing control. He pressed his mouth to the shallow indentation of her navel and her legs eased apart. There was a waiting greedy hum of arousal at the heart of her, a helpless yearning for the unknown.

With his tongue and his fingers he probed and explored the tender flesh, teaching her about nerve endings that she didn’t know she had until they went downright crazy under the onslaught of his expert caresses. As the hot tingle of excitement rose her hips began to squirm into the mattress and then rise in answer to the long fingers pleasuring her tight inner channel. He reached up to tug at her protuberant nipples and the hot gathering tightness in her pelvis just surged unstoppably to a peak and hot splintering pleasure shot through her like lightning. She cried out in shock as the waves of bliss engulfed her, all control wrested from her.

The orgasmic quivers were still travelling through her when Sander hauled her under him and surged with a hungry groan of appreciation into her slick, tight body. In the aftermath of that earth-shattering climax, Tally was still so sensitive that she cried out again—not with pain, but with a pleasure that was almost agonising as Sander flexed his hips and sank into her slow and deep, stretching her to full capacity. Hunger gripped her afresh as he began to move faster. The ripples of pleasure began to build again with the delicious friction and she bucked beneath him in wild excitement. He pushed her legs back to rise higher over her, his lean dark face fevered and urgent. The intensity of sensation sent spasms of delight through her. Her inner contractions made her tighten round him and he groaned in appreciation just seconds before her excitement hit an unbearable peak and flung her headlong back into the red hot mists of pleasure.

Filled with wonderment at what she had just experienced, Tally was shy and she lay still while the sweet waves of ecstasy slowly receded to leave her earthbound again. It shook her that she had been so ignorant of what her own body was capable of and it scared her as well, for she knew that such physical pleasure could only prove addictive.

Sander had never experienced such intense excitement with a woman. She was even more responsive than he had hoped. He held her close, his heart still pounding from his exertions, his lean, powerful length hot and damp and potent with masculinity. He was already getting aroused again. ‘You were amazing,’ he murmured thickly. ‘I knew we would be pure magic together, glikia mou.’

‘I’ve got so much to learn,’ she muttered in a daze.

‘I know and I’m very much looking forward to expanding your experience.’ A wicked smile lodged on his wide sensual mouth, Sander closed a hand over a full firm breast, rubbing a still tender pink peak between thumb and forefinger.

‘So this isn’t a one-night stand,’ Tally gathered with a little shiver of hunger, heat rising in the pit of her stomach like a hot pool of melting honey.

‘I left those behind when I was a teenager.’ Sander turned her round and brought her fingers down to his throbbing erection, luxuriant black lashes screening his eyes in a sensual expression as he silently showed her how to please him.

A new and startling sense of power assailed Tally while she noted how susceptible he was to her touch, but she also discovered that arousing him aroused her equally and, just minutes later, he flipped her over, pulled her back against him and sank into her again. There was no limit, she discovered, to her pleasure, for once again the world disintegrated around her and her body soared to heights she had not even dreamt of. Afterwards she was more tired than she had ever been in her life.

‘I think it’s time that I took you home,’ Sander suggested, throwing back the sheet to stride into the bathroom and switching on the shower.

On the drive back through the quiet streets, he said softly, ‘Can I give you a piece of advice without you taking offence?’

‘Depends on what the advice is,’ Tally told him sleepily.

‘Don’t get serious about me. We had great sex and I like your company but I’m not looking for a live-in partner, a wife or even a serious girlfriend.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Tally exclaimed, losing colour in receipt of such candour.

‘Now that that is said, we won’t misunderstand each other,’ Sander returned unapologetically. ‘It might also be a good idea for you to consider some form of reliable contraception.’

Tally rolled her eyes and sighed. ‘That’s my business—’

‘No, it’s our mutual business while we’re sharing a bed,’ Sander riposted.

‘I’m not going to fall pregnant on you,’ Tally declared very drily, guessing the source of his concern. Although he had taken precautions when they had made love she had already decided to visit her doctor and take measures on her own behalf.

‘I’ve seen friends dragged through that experience and no matter how they deal with the problem, it always seems to turn nasty,’ Sander remarked grimly. ‘Don’t ever put me through that, Tally.’

Tally startled him by laughing spontaneously. ‘Do you always focus on the worst-case scenario?’

Sander rested magnetic dark eyes on her, his expression grave and unamused. ‘In that field, yes …’