Rags To Riches: Hired For His Satisfaction: A Ring to Secure His Heir / Nanny for the Millionaire's Twins / The Ties that Bind. SUSAN MEIER
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it was not.’ Alexius locked a big hand round her wrist and pulled her up against his hard muscular body. A spluttered squawk of shock erupted from Rosie before he brought his mouth crashing down on hers with a fire that burned like a naked flame on unprotected skin. He crushed her to him with a rough groan of satisfaction and kissed her with a passion that sang through her senses like a magical spell of entrapment, his tongue stabbing with erotic rhythm into the moist interior of her mouth. One minute she was knotting her hands into his luxuriant black hair to push him away and the next her fingers were delving into those silky depths in exploration and appreciation, before finally moulding to his well-shaped head to hold him close.
Alexius lowered her to the sofa and sent a hand roving up below the sweater to tease the dainty swollen peaks that had so entranced him that night three weeks earlier. Her slender spine arched, a moan of startled pleasure wrenched from her as he played with those responsive buds that were so very sensitive to his touch. Pushing up the sweater, he bent his head to dally there with his mouth instead. A knock sounded on the door and he sprang back from her.
Returned to reality with a mortifying bang, Rosie looked down at her bare chest in horror and, wrenching her sweater back down, she sat up. ‘Don’t touch me like that again!’
Alexius skimmed knowing eyes like silver arrows back to her, a slumberous light in his gaze. ‘Because you like it too much to say no?’ he mocked as he strode to the door to open it.
Rosie’s heart-shaped face was so hot it felt sunburned. He was a taker, a user. He had stolen that kiss as coolly as he had stolen her virginity and she needed more self-control around him. She certainly shouldn’t be noticing that he crossed the room with the grace of a strolling tiger, all fluid rippling muscle and aggressive confidence. The real problem was that he excited her and just being in the same room with him was thrilling and there was something frighteningly seductive about the charge of that excitement. Was that excitement lust? She guessed it had to be.
Alexius settled a heavy tray down on the coffee table. ‘Eat …’ he urged.
There was a chocolate croissant amongst the assorted baked offerings in the bread basket and her mouth watered even as she reached for it. She poured tea and asked him politely if he wanted any, for there was a second cup.
‘I only drink coffee,’ he said.
She discovered that she was still trembling in the aftermath of that passionate embrace. He was so hot he burned her, teaching her that she was a much more physical person than she had ever imagined. It was not a discovery she was grateful to have made because it made her feel vulnerable and weak in a way she had never been before.
‘Why did you get angry when I said that night was a mistake?’ Rosie asked curiously.
‘It was too good to be a mistake. I very much enjoyed it,’ he told her with unselfconscious cool.
Rosie almost choked on her tasty mouthful of chocolate croissant and remained silent until she had swallowed it in a painful rush. ‘I’ll think about meeting my grandfather when my exams are over,’ she conceded.
Alexius dealt her an assessing glance, noting that her belligerent streak was currently at bay. ‘And will you also think then about marrying me?’
Rosie stiffened and raised her eyes as high as his slightly stubbled chin. It was a very determined, very stubborn chin with a cleft and outrageously male. ‘No, that decision was clear as cut glass and I won’t be revisiting it.’
Alexius released his breath in an exasperated hiss of impatience. ‘Why not?’
‘How can you ask me that when you don’t want to get married in the first place?’ Rosie prompted with raised brows signalling her astonishment at his attitude. ‘Have you ever wanted to get married?’
‘No,’ he conceded.
‘Have you ever wanted a child of your own?’
Alexius frowned at that unfortunate question and hesitated.
‘You promised to tell me the truth from now on,’ Rosie reminded him doggedly.
‘No,’ he admitted curtly. ‘I have never wanted a child.’
‘So, why on earth would I want to marry you?’
Evidently, she lacked the greed gene he was used to igniting in all her sex. ‘Security? Support? A father for the child?’
‘If I married you, you’d be off with another woman in five minutes flat,’ Rosie forecast with a grimace at that humiliating likelihood. ‘You don’t strike me as the sort of guy likely to adapt easily to domesticity and parenthood either, particularly if you didn’t choose either of your own free will.’
Alexius, ludicrously unused to being deemed a potential failure at anything he attempted, gritted his teeth. ‘I might surprise you.’
‘And pigs might fly,’ Rosie remarked only half beneath her breath.
Alexius elevated a fine black brow. ‘Is that a challenge?’
‘No, it’s not,’ Rosie hastened to tell him, keen not to start another row. ‘Can’t we be friends, Alex?’
‘I don’t want to be friends with you,’ Alexius shot back at her as she brushed crumbs from her lap and stood up. ‘Have you eaten enough?’
‘More than enough,’ she insisted, glancing at her watch. ‘I have a class to get to.’
Alexius lifted the phone. ‘I will organise a car.’
‘That’s not necessary.’
‘A car and driver will be at your disposal for the foreseeable future,’ Alexius delivered as she walked to the door.
Rosie spun back, her eyes wide. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. What would I do with a car and a driver?’
‘Use them,’ Alexius responded without an ounce of humour. ‘Give me your phone number …’
‘Isn’t it ironic that you’re asking for it now only because I’m pregnant?’ Rosie tossed at him before she could think better of it, glancing across at him to see that his handsome features clenched hard at that blunt reminder.
‘We still have a lot to discuss, moraki mou.’
Rosie winced. ‘I think I’ve said all I’ve got to say.’
A satiric smile slashed his sculpted mouth. ‘While I have barely begun.’
Rosie wrote her number on a piece of paper and looked back at him. ‘Don’t tell my grandfather I needed time to think about meeting him, just tell him I have exams on,’ she urged suddenly. ‘I don’t want to hurt his feelings.’
‘What about mine?’ Alexius quipped.
‘I don’t think you’re over-endowed in that department,’ Rosie told him frankly. ‘You’re too aggressive and sure of yourself to be sensitive and too selfish to be caring.’
‘I just fed you,’ he shot back in his own defence, disconcerted by her candour. Was that truly how she saw him?
‘You’re probably investing in the fact that I’m carrying the Stavroulakis heir,’ she surmised, suspicion paramount as she gazed back at him, belatedly noticing the strain etched into his face and surprised by it. Did more go on beneath that smooth, sophisticated surface of his than she had supposed? Or was it the horrendous threat of the marriage he had forced himself to offer that had stressed him out? How could he do that? How could he ask her to marry him when he didn’t want to get married and he didn’t want a child? What had made him go against his own nature like that? Was it her grandfather’s likely response to her condition and Alexius’s part in it that he wished to guard against? Was that his main motivation? Marriage as a cover-up, an olive branch?
The Stavroulakis heir, not, by any stretch of imagination, a joke, Alexius mused grimly after he had instructed Titos to put a discreet bodyguard