Baby of Shame (18 page)

Nothing more.

The ache came again.
Deeper than ever.
In the very core of her being.

‘The mother of Andromeda,’ answered Alexis.
‘The princess whom
Perseus
rescued from the sea monster.’

‘I thought he slew the Gorgon—Medusa?’

‘That too.’

‘I can’t see it.
The W shape.’

‘There.’

He moved behind her, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders for a moment as he positioned her.

Electricity ran through her. Then it was gone.

She tried to focus on where he was pointing, but the stars just seemed a confused mess. She lowered her head from staring heavenward, feeling her neck
unstiffen
.

Alexis was not looking at the stars.

He was looking at her.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, the electricity was back—prickling through her nerves, her flesh.

She couldn’t move.

Was held like a statue, like a nymph caught by a god.

He reached out a hand to her.
Curved it around the nape of her neck, beneath the fall of her hair.

Her breath stopped. Her lips parted.

He drew her to him, lowering his mouth to hers.

His kiss was slow, and soft, and she could taste the cognac on his lips.

Slowly, very slowly, she felt her body melt.

His free hand slid around her waist, drawing her closer to him.

He went on kissing her.

Over her head the stars wheeled in a slow, dizzying arc. She felt her body sway, weak and boneless. He pressed her closer to him. She clung to him, her arms going around the strong column of his body, feeling its hard, muscled strength beneath her palms.

The kiss went on and on, endless and sweet and melting. His mouth was like velvet against hers, and she felt her lips part to his.

Wonder drenched through her.
Wonder and disbelief.

Alexis was kissing her.
Softly, sweetly, languorously.
Moulding
her body to his, taking her softness to him,
holding
her against the warmth of his broad chest, his narrow hips.

It seemed an eternity of time, and yet when he released her mouth, but not her body, folding her still against him, the stars had not moved at all.

She felt his fingers still cupping her nape, stroking in her hair as he gazed down at her. She gazed back, lips parted, eyes distended, weak and bemused.

‘Alexis…’

She breathed his name. It was a question,
a confusion
, a wonder.

Softly he brushed her lips with his.

‘
Shh
—no words, no words…’

He murmured something in Greek to her, soft and mellifluous. Her eyes were melting into his. She felt herself fall into their depths in a slow, arcing curve, and drown…drown deep within.

He kissed her again and she was lost. Giving
herself
to the sweetness, the wonder of it. Alexis
…kissing
her.

He would not let her speak, hushing her mouth with his. Not even when he had swept her up into his arms and taken her back inside, laid her down on her bed in the deep, concealing darkness of her room.

‘No words,’ he said, and his mouth found hers again.

It was wonder and bliss.
Soft, slow sensuousness.
He eased the tiny straps of her sundress, his mouth gliding over the swell of her breasts, making her lips part with the sweetness of sensation, felt the tips of her breasts bud like ripening flowers under his lips, his slow, circling tongue.

Time ceased.
Ceased to exist.
Nothing existed.
Only the touch of his mouth on her.
Only the soft, slow caresses of his lips.
His gliding, stroking hands as they eased clothes from her, from him.
Only the sweet drowning of her body, the honeyed, sensuous bliss as his body moved on hers.

She felt the strength of his bared shoulders, the leanness of his smooth, muscled flanks, the long, powerful sculpture of his spine, his back, spanned by her hands, caressed so wonderingly by her fingertips in the velvet darkness of the night that cradled them. She felt her body arch and move to his, her face lift to his, her mouth yearn to his. She heard him murmuring to her in soft sibilance, the words unknown but the voice a caress, a kiss. She felt his strong hands smooth her thighs, felt him moving them with his, and all the while the murmuring voice, the velvet mouth. Her arms wound around him, holding him to her. She was cleaving to him, his body to hers, her body to his, becoming one, easing together, fusing with slow, infinite sweetness, a honeyed melting into one flesh, taking him into her, into her very core, her very being.

And then, as he moved within her, she felt the sweetness ripen, swell within her, grow and intensify, distilling into something so wondrous, so miraculous, that her lips parted with a faint, high sound, her eyes closing upon themselves. Her hips were straining against his, her thighs taut against the fusion of their bodies, her hands splayed around his back as she gave herself to her body’s consummation.

And to his.

She felt his body tauten, every muscle fast against her tighten and hold for one long, endless moment. And then release—release with a slow, inexorable power, filling her, completing her, so that the same blood flowed through their veins, the same heart beat in their breasts.

On and on while she clung to him, neck arched, her body still fused to his, fusing his to hers.

On and on until she felt her body slacken, and his. The fusion ebbed, and the honeyed
sweetness,
and she lay quiescent, spent, within the cage of his arms, blindly gazing up at him in the darkness.

Beyond everything but wonder.

She felt him shift, felt his arm reach and click on the light, then dim its glare to a soft glow.

But his eyes, as they gazed down at her, were dark, dark pinpricks.

‘Proof,’ he said softly.
‘Absolute, incontrovertible proof.
You’ve played right into my hands at last.’

Triumph blazed in his face.

And suddenly
Rhianna
knew exactly what had happened. A cold, icy hand clutched at her heart, squeezing it tight. Oh, yes, she knew exactly what had just happened.

She had just had sex with Alexis Petrakis.

And fallen right into the trap he had set for her.

The test he had set for her.

The test she had just totally, spectacularly failed.

The cold iced through her, freezing her blood, her flesh.

Her mind seemed to have parted from her body. It had cut free, and now she heard it speak to her.
Each word a blow.
Mortal.
Lethal.
Deadly.

It had been another test.
All of it.
Everything.
Just another test.
The flowers, the clothes, the smiles.
All the ‘niceness’ to her, day after day.

Just
bait, that
was all. Bait to set a trap—a trap he’d sprung tonight.

A test.

The last one left to him.

She had left him, she knew, no other option.

So what else had he had to fight her with?

He had gone for her one helpless weakness.

Himself.

And she knew exactly why.

He had just said so.

He’d needed proof.

And she knew exactly what for.

The pain of it crippled her. Lacerated her like talons in her flesh.

She stared up at him.

‘My God,’ she breathed.
‘You bastard!’

She pushed him with her hands—violently, roughly.

But he had jackknifed up, his face contorting as he pulled out from her in a short, sharp movement.

‘
What?’

She rolled sideways instantly, away from him, taking the sheet with her to cover her nakedness.
Her treacherous, betraying nakedness.
He tried to draw her back.

‘Don’t touch me!’

His face changed.

‘Don’t touch you? After what just happened?
Thee
mou
, but I have all the proof I need. Don’t try and deny it.’

Her eyes spat at him. Her throat was being
garrotted
.

‘I don’t care. You’re not getting him. You’re not taking him from me! You can go to your tame judge and tell him about your bloody
proof,
but I don’t care. I’ll fight you. I’ll
fight
you—you’ll never take Nicky from me.
Never, never!’

She could hear the hysteria in her voice but didn’t care. Didn’t care about anything except Nicky—her son, her son—and this vile, hideous man who was still,
still
trying to take him from her. Still trying to test her, trap her, so that he had the
proof
he needed.

Proof she was an unfit mother—

‘Are you insane?’

His words cut right across her. Stunned, disbelieving. For a moment he just stared at her, shock etched in his every feature.

‘
Thee
mou
,
is that what this is about?’

Her face contorted.

‘Don’t give me that—you know it is. You planned it. I know you did. You couldn’t get any other dirt to stick on me so you resorted to this!’

His eyes flashed black fire.

‘To
what?
In God’s name,
Rhianna
—’

‘To
this.
Sex.
Sex!
It’s all the dirt you had left to pin on me. You set this whole thing up because it’s all you had left! You couldn’t nail me any other way! I wasn’t a drug addict, I tore up your filthy
cheque
, and I shot down your attempt to get me to say I wanted to marry you. That left you with one thing and one thing only! To try and prove I was unfit to be a mother because I was a woman who’d roll into bed with any man at the drop of her knickers. You threw that at me the first time you hurled your foul accusations at me, telling me you were going to keep Nicky, and now you’ve gone and proved it. I fell—wham, bam—into bed with you tonight exactly the same way I did five years ago, and you’re boasting to me that you’ve got the proof you wanted! And now…’ She took a choking, shuddering breath. ‘Now you’ll use it to try and take Nicky from me. But I won’t let you—I won’t—’

He seized her shoulders. Hands like steel gripped her.

‘Enough! I will not hear this. I will not even listen. But you—you will listen.
Rhianna
—listen.
Listen
to me. This was not a trap—a test. Yes, I wanted proof—but of something quite, quite different.’

Her face contorted.

‘I
trusted
you, Alexis, I trusted you. You’d convinced me—you know that? Convinced me you really were genuinely trying to be nice. But all that niceness, all those smiles that you poured over my head like syrup these past days, you didn’t mean any of it, did you?
Did you?
It was all just hogwash!
Worse than hogwash.
You were stringing me along, setting me up—setting me up for this! Weren’t you?
Weren’t you?
You had the whole thing planned, didn’t you?’

She saw the truth of her accusation in his face, and she felt sick—sick to her core.

‘No—it wasn’t like that. Believe me,
Rhianna
. That’s all I ask of you—believe me. You
must
believe me!’ His eyes flashed. ‘You have my word—it is not as you think.’

She reared back, clutching the sheet to her. Her face whitened.

‘Oh, God, you have a nerve. You want me to believe you? Well that’s more than you ever did me.’

Emotions were churning away inside her, a tangled, tumbled mess. But one—one was surfacing.
Powerful and bitter.

‘When did you ever believe
me
?’ she demanded.
‘Never!’

He had thrown so much at her—one vile accusation after another—and when had he ever believed her when she had denied them?

‘You condemned me from the moment you knew I had borne your son—and you never believed a word of
anything
I said in my own
defence
. Not once. You assumed I was after your money the
whole
time, one despicable way after another. Though I told you I didn’t want a penny of it. That all I wanted was Nicky. But you went right on anyway, didn’t you?
Testing me for greed time after time.
You dangled marriage in front of me to see whether I’d snap it up like a grasping little gold-digger. You—’

‘No!’ He seized her hands fiercely. She tried to yank them away, but his strength was too great for her. ‘You thought it was that—but it wasn’t. I swear to God it wasn’t! It was because—’

‘And that obscene offer of twenty million pounds in exchange for Nicky—you admitted it—you admitted that you were testing me out.’

He let go her hands.
Dropped them into her lap.

‘That I cannot deny.’
He drew breath, sharp and hollow. ‘I had to find out—find out if my son had a mother who would sell him for hard cash.’

She looked at him. Her eyes were very clear when she spoke. Her words were very clear.

‘You thought me a drug addict—but addicts can love their children. You thought me no better than a whore—but whores can love their children. You thought me vindictive enough to keep your son from you—but mothers who do that can love their children. My God, murderers can love their children!’ Her voice rose. ‘But what cause had you to think I was lower than any,
any
of those? That I would sell my child for cash?
What mother would do that?’

For one long, endless moment there was silence.

Then, into the silence, he said, ‘My mother.’

T
HE
air in the room froze. She could feel it happening. It was as if something evil had entered.

Then she heard his voice again. There was no emotion in it.
None.

None in his eyes.
His face.

‘My mother sold me. She sold me to my father when I was five years old. It was for ten million pounds.
A large amount in those days.
That was the price of her divorce settlement from him. Had he refused, she would have fought his attempt to get custody of me through every court in Europe. She’d have won, too. Every judge she’d have come up against would have found in her
favour
. You see, she was a doting mother.
Absolutely devoted.
I was her darling, adored baby. She lavished hugs and kisses on me. I was the apple of her eye.
At least when anyone was looking.
Anyone who needed to be impressed, that is.

‘In front of the staff she did not need to be so devoted.
Nor in front of her lovers.
The trouble was it was not just those whom she needed to impress who were fooled by her devotion. I was fooled as well. So when she sold me to my father I did not understand why he would not let me see her again. He told me then that I would never see her again and I didn’t. It made me hate him. So he told me what she had done. Then I hated her, instead, and loved my father. But he didn’t want my love. And he never gave me his. Because the day she took his
cheque
for ten million pounds my mother also informed him that I wasn’t his son, but the child of one of her legion of lovers. He only kept me to save his face, so that he would not be laughed at for having not just a wife who’d walked out on him but one who’d cuckolded him and sold him the resulting bastard for a fortune. He told me so on his deathbed. They were his last words to me.’

He fell silent. The air was too thick to breathe.

And yet she could see—see with crystal clarity.

See everything.
Everything that she had not seen before.

Understand what she had not understood before.

That everything Alexis had done had not been to protect Nicky from her—but from his own mother.

The demon
who
still haunted him.

She looked at him. He had drawn away from her.
Lain back down again, his eyes staring up at the ceiling.
Seeing nothing.
Remembering everything.
Every last drop of pain.

Related with such dispassion.

A dispassion that reached inside her and crushed her heart with horror.

Her hands were pressed to her mouth. Her throat was so tight she could have snapped it like frozen wire. And her breath was hollow in her lungs.

‘Oh, God,’ she said.
‘Oh, God.’

Then slowly, very slowly, she lowered her hands from her mouth and reached for his hand, lying inert by his side. She held it very tight, pressed between her hands.

A great wave of compassion and pity and understanding went through her.
And more than that—forgiveness.

Because to understand all was to forgive all.
Understanding just what demons drove him, why he had subjected her to all that he had, allowed her to wash it all away.

‘I understand now.’ She spoke quietly. ‘I understand why you did what you did to me. I understand why you thought the worst of me, why you dared not believe me innocent of what you accused me of, why you had to go on and on trying to show me up, catch me out—test me.’ She paused. ‘But you don’t have to test me any more, Alexis. Truly, truly you don’t. I am not your mother any more than you are my father—or your own. Their cruelty, their callousness, their unspeakable selfishness is not in us. Nicky will never suffer as you suffered. You see—’
Her
throat caught. ‘He has us to love him, keep him safe.’

She took a breath and said what she knew she must say to end, finally, this unbearable war between them.

‘I want to share custody with you. Nicky is your son and mine. Now that I know what drove you to distrust me so much, so that you had to do everything you could to protect him from the woman you feared I was, I can trust you. Trust you not to try and take him from me.’

She looked down at him. Tears were pooling in her eyes.

His eyes, seeing now, were resting on her. There was an expression in them that she had never seen before, but it made the tears pool more.

‘Why?’ he said softly, his voice as strange as his eyes. ‘Why would I want to take my son from the woman who above all else I would choose to be his mother? Yes, I was haunted by what had happened to me—and it made me fearful that you would prove the same as my mother, as cruel and heartless. But you are as different from her as night from day. Your love for Nicky shines like a star in heaven. And you have endured so much for him—at my hands. I cannot bear to think of it. Do you not know how much I regret having done what I did to you?’

His eyes searched her face.

‘And this last most of all.’

The expression in his eyes changed again.

‘I never, never meant to hurt you tonight as I have hurt you.
I beg you to believe me. Yes, it was a test, but—No—do not flinch away from me! Please listen to me,
Rhianna
.’

He raised himself to his elbow, closing his other hand around hers, not letting her draw away.

‘I said I wanted proof, but it was nothing to do with what you thought it was. I wanted to prove something quite, quite different. I wanted to prove that what had happened between us five years ago was still there.’

Cold pooled in her.

‘You mean sex.’ She jerked her hand away, reared backwards. It was as if he had just struck her. ‘I don’t see why. I fail to understand why you felt you had to see whether you could still have me, Alexis. It certainly wasn’t much of a challenge for you the first time around!
From bathroom to bed in minutes.
But then, of course—’ her voice was unsparing ‘—when you’re only intending a one-night stand you don’t want to hang about. The sooner you’re in bed, the sooner you can get out in the morning.
Just like you did five years ago!’

He was staring at her.

‘A one-night stand?
That is what you think I intended?’

She pressed her lips together.

‘It’s what I
know
you intended. I was there, remember? Even before I’d opened my mouth in the morning, to try and talk about the takeover, you were saying goodbye and thanks for all the sex.
The classic exit line after a one-night stand.’

He was looking at her.
Just looking at her.
There was something very strange about his face.

Then he gave a harsh exhalation of breath and sat up. His bare torso glistened like gold in the soft lamplight, but she paid no attention. Something hard was lashing around her heart. Why was he taunting her like this? It seemed so cruel. Hadn’t they just finally made their peace over Nicky? What was the point of rehashing the night he’d been conceived? It was the future they needed to sort out, not the past.

Then Alexis was speaking, his voice vehement.

‘A one-night stand?
A quick, casual fling with a convenient passing female?
You’ve thought that all these years? Dear God,
Rhianna
, don’t you
know
what was happening the night we met? Yes, I behaved
recklessly,
sweeping you off to bed like that—but I could not resist you. I had never in all my life seen a woman I wanted so much, who had such an effect on me. I did not know what it was—I only knew that I could not, could
not
resist you! And you seemed as eager, as ardent as I was—coming with me to my suite. I felt that you must feel the same as I did. And, even though I know now that your reasons for coming with me so eagerly were quite different, once I had you in my arms you gave yourself to me completely, absolutely. You cannot deny it—you cannot! That was real and true—as true for you as it was for me. And I knew, absolutely, completely, that something quite, quite amazing was happening. And it was not,
Thee
mou
, a one-night stand! Not for me and not for you either!’

He took another ragged breath.

‘Can you really think that was all I wanted? You say I was taking my leave of you, but all I was doing was telling you when I woke you with a kiss that I
had
to go to a meeting I could not get out of because it was important to other people.
Even though to me it was the most pernicious and accursed thing in the world because it was going to keep me from you for two
agonisingly
long hours.
After which time—’ his eyes burned into hers ‘—I was coming back for you.’ He looked at her, lips pressing together.

‘I was going to ask you to come back to Greece with me. What had happened that night was so magical, so extraordinary,
so
precious
that I could not bear to be parted from you! I wanted to take you away with me, make you mine. Discover what this magical, extraordinary thing was that had turned me upside down and inside out in a single night! Discover, with all the hope my heart could hold, whether the night we had shared had been as magical, extraordinary and precious to you as well.’

His eyes
shuttered,
that impenetrable veil she knew so well closing over them. Then they cleared, looked at her again. Pain was in them.

‘And that,
that
is what I sought to prove tonight.
That we had not lost what we had that night—before I drove you away with my cruel words, with my arrogant distrust, my wounded anger, thinking you had made a fool of me, thinking you were someone you
never
were, thinking that all you had given me was hatred of you for being someone I would have given everything for you not to have been. To prove that it had survived—somewhere, somehow—through all these years, while you raised my son, alone and unprotected, in the grinding poverty my unjust accusations had condemned you to. That it had survived even while I let my tormented childhood make me a brute to you.’

He took a breath, ragged and uneven.

‘I was looking for a miracle. Trying to win you back to me after everything I’d done to you. I threw you away,
Rhianna
—but I’ve been trying to win you back.
Day by day by day.
I knew I’d made you flinch away from me, made you repulsed by my touch, and I knew how much cause I’d given you to hate me. But I truly, truly thought you had accepted that I no longer thought such ill of you—had
realised
how very, very wrong I had been about you. I thought I was showing you that, day after day. But what I did not dare show you was how, with every day, I wanted you more and more.’

He looked at her.

‘I have made so many, many mistakes with you,
Rhianna
. I could not afford to make one more. Not a single one. I’d already
realised
I’d made a crass mistake in proposing to you like that. But I acted on impulse—overwhelming impulse—as I
realised
, all over again, just how incredibly beautiful you are. It was a stupid, insensitive thing to do, and it made me
realise
that I had to tread on eggshells with you. I couldn’t risk you rejecting me, flinching away from me if I showed the slightest sign of finding you desirable. And yesterday,
Thee
mou
,
I did not dare kiss you because I was terrified I would not be able to stop. But knowing that you were finally responding to me gave me such hope, such determination, that I knew I had to risk all tonight. I had to take you completely, utterly by surprise—sweep you away, overwhelm you, give you no chance to resist, no chance to flinch away, no chance to feel repulsed by me. I had to storm your
defences
and prove
,
prove
to you that what we had between us we have still.
And more—so much, much more.’

His eyes held hers, lambent, flecked deep with gold.

‘And I did prove it. You cannot deny it. You gave yourself to me tonight as sweetly, as beautifully, as ardently and as passionately as you did that very first night.
Proof,
Rhianna
.
Proof that what was started that night five years ago is still there.
Will always be there.
All our lives.’

He paused. Then softly, very softly, he spoke to her.

‘It’s love,
Rhianna
. Do you not know it? Can you not feel it? It started five years ago, on our first, miraculous night together, but I blighted its flowering. Let it grow now, bringing us together after so long, so much.’

He was reaching out to her. She should pull away. She should not let him touch her. She should not let him cup her shoulders with his strong, warm hands. She should not let him draw her to him. Should not let him fold her against her body, wrap his arms around her, rest her head against his heart.

But she did.

And she should not let the hard lashing around her heart loosen to the softest, silken thread. Nor let the tears that had pooled in pity for him now pool in an emotion quite, quite different.

But she did.

She should not let the memory of that night so long ago come to her again. Nor let the shame she had felt at her own weakness in succumbing to her irresistible desire for him turn to wonder and gratitude—the wonder and gratitude that was pouring through her now.

And more—more than wonder and gratitude.
An emotion far, far more powerful, more miraculous than those poured through her, overwhelming her with its intensity. An emotion she could not any longer deny.
An emotion that she could only let swell
through her, fill her completely, absolutely.

She could feel his heart beating, his arms around her, holding her so close, so close. Feel the tears damp on her cheeks.