‘Your employees have contrived the most amazing transformation. I’ve been so busy in the garden I haven’t had the chance to keep up with all the improvements.’ Her smooth brow indented. ‘Why did you bring me in here?’

‘This is our room.’

‘Our…room?’

Lysander shot Ophelia a long, lingering appraisal that made her skin prickle. ‘The marital bedroom.’

‘We don’t have a marital bedroom because, well…what would we do with one?’ An uneasy laugh was wrenched from Ophelia, who was recalling his crack about the sort of boots he liked a woman to wear. She really didn’t like his sense of humour.

‘All the usual things, glikia mou,’ Lysander murmured lazily. ‘Not much else to do at this season in the country and at least it would keep us warm.’

‘Let me get this straight…you are expecting me to share a room with you?’ Ophelia gasped.

Grim amusement gripped Lysander. She was amazingly good at acting the naïve country girl while simultaneously contriving to look quite extraordinarily beautiful. ‘Even if our marriage had remained our secret we would still have had to share a room when I was here. How else could we ever have pretended that it was a normal marriage?’

Ophelia was bemused. ‘But I had no idea you were expecting me to share a room with you!’

‘We have an agreement.’

‘Yes, but everything has changed now-’

‘Only the will. You are still my wife and, since that is no longer a secret, we are much more married than I ever expected to be,’ Lysander delineated with cold emphasis.

Discomfited pink winged across her cheeks. ‘Yes, I appreciate that.’

Lifting a lean, elegant hand, Lysander skimmed the troubled pout of her upper lip with a careless fingertip. ‘Do you?’

Her colour fluctuated and her tummy turned a somersault. The deeper note in his rich dark drawl reverberated down her taut spine. It took conscious effort not to lean closer and invite further contact. ‘Other people knowing about us will make a difference.’

‘More than a difference. Marriage has never been on my to-do list. I enjoy my freedom,’ Lysander continued, ‘but for the foreseeable future I have no choice other than to behave like a newly married man.’

Now Ophelia sensed the inner tempest of the emotions that he had previously kept hidden; neither Gladys’s second will nor the paparazzi had provoked him into a loss of temper. Firelight gilded his eyes to pure gold and threw his strong bone structure into prominence. He was a natural born predator, she reflected helplessly, and as dazzling and dangerous as a glossy jungle cat in his prime. Even when every inner alarm bell was urging her to back off she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

‘I’m surprised you have so much respect for the conventions.’

‘Only in that one field, glikia mou.’ Lysander slid long brown fingers into her hair and eased her up against him with a calm belied by the heat of his gaze. He was already fiercely aroused: he wanted her. The angrier she made him, the more he wanted her and the more determined he became to stamp her as his. He didn’t understand the connection but he didn’t waste any time thinking about it either. Any thought and any desire that had a sexual angle was self-explanatory and absolutely natural in Lysander’s opinion.

Her heart was pounding, her breath fluttering in her throat. As her slim body connected with his hard muscular frame a dozen pulse points of desire were ignited. She was so tense her lower limbs felt numb and she had to dig her fingers into his shoulder to stay upright. A battle was being fought inside her. She knew she should retreat but the bold challenge of his bronze eyes and the sweet taunting heaviness low in her pelvis kept her where she was.

He brought his sensual mouth slowly down to hers. Impatience grabbed her and she strained up to him on tiptoe without even thinking about it. A husky laugh sounded low in his throat. In a total change of approach, he plundered her mouth with a passion that left her dizzy. The erotic thrust of his tongue made her tremble and cling, response leaping through her with firecracker energy.

Between driving kisses, Lysander shed his tie and shrugged out of his jacket. He closed his hands over hers and tugged her towards the bed.

Doubtful, Ophelia said anxiously, ‘This can’t be right-’

‘Theos-what could be more right?’ Lysander reasoned. ‘This is our wedding night.’

That truth silenced her for an instant. ‘But I don’t feel married.’

‘You soon will.’ His arrogant dark head bent and he pried her lips apart for another heady taste that made her senses swim.

‘But you think I’m a liar and a ch-cheat,’ she stammered.

Lysander angled a wolfish smile down at her. ‘Nothing’s perfect in this world.’

His smile had a charisma that welded her gaze to his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘Be serious. I don’t even like you!’

Lysander laughed out loud. ‘But you want me the same way I want you. From the first look the first day you saw me, yineka mou.’

The awesome truth of that instant contradiction cut through Ophelia’s protests like a knife. The hunger had started in the same second she had first laid eyes on him. An unsettling, embarrassing, maddening hunger that bore no resemblance to anything she had ever felt before. It was a visceral reaction that had nothing to do with conscious consideration. In any case, she registered in belated acknowledgement, he was never absent from her thoughts for longer than a few minutes. Just when had she become so obsessed with him?

Lysander bent down and lifted her and settled her down on the bed. ‘You think too much,’ he told her.

‘Possibly…’ Ophelia watched him remove her dainty bridal shoes. She couldn’t quite believe that she was allowing him to do that. Exhilaration bubbled through her while her mind continued to race. She was wondering if she could allow herself to succumb, if it would be so very wrong to sleep with him. Was it wicked to be curious? In terms of pure physical attraction, he was definitely the one. She wasn’t a romantic like her late mother. She wasn’t going to go falling in love with him or anything stupid like that, she told herself. She knew his limitations and accepted them. He was only suitable as a one-night stand. A week of fidelity would be a long-term commitment for him.

‘Do you mind me asking…?’ Ophelia hesitated.

‘Asking what?’

‘If you’re currently involved with someone else?’ Ophelia almost winced as she spoke.

Engaged in unbuttoning his shirt and casting it aside, Lysander suppressed a groan of disbelief. ‘Theos…you make everything so complicated! No, there is no one else at present.’

Ophelia noticed how careful he was to qualify that declaration with the words ‘at present’. A muscular brown strip of male chest appeared between the parted edges of his monogrammed shirt. Her mouth went dry. He dropped the shirt on the floor and edged her round to unhook her dress. She almost stopped breathing. It was one thing to watch him as though he were a pin-up guy on a poster, but quite another thing to imagine getting naked with him. And the prospect of acquiring an audience for the fancy lingerie she wore was even more disquieting.

‘You’re very tense…’ Lysander unfastened the delicate bra that banded her pale narrow back and stood her up again.

She looked down at her bare breasts and hurriedly away again, only just resisting a prompting to cover her naked flesh with her hands. She considered telling him that he would be her first lover and swiftly discarded the idea. He might not believe her and if he did he might think her lack of experience was funny. Even worse, he might think that no man had ever been that interested in her. Every fear that could occur to her at such a moment up to and including a fear of pregnancy was piling up inside her mind when her dress fell round her ankles and he lifted her out of the puddle of white silk.

‘Oh…’ she gasped, settled back down on the bed, her slender body alternately taut and quivering with nervous energy.

‘Oh…’ Lysander mimicked wickedly, dipping his imperious dark head to slide his tongue in a provocative invasion between her swollen lips.

Her hips jerked in immediate reflex reaction, damp heat surging between her slender thighs. He explored the ripe swell of her rounded breasts and toyed with the tender peaks. A melting, tingling wave of response took hold of her.

‘Luscious,’ he growled with masculine satisfaction.

As Lysander studied her pale curves an enervating mixture of pleasure and self-consciousness battled inside Ophelia. Her face burned. He closed his lips round a pointed pink nipple and she almost cried out in startled response. Her body wouldn’t stay still for her. Her fingers buried themselves into the silky thickness of his close-cropped black hair and her back arched. He lifted his head again and drove her lips apart with devouring hunger. She loved the way he kissed. It was addictive. Her hands dropped to the corded strength of his strong shoulders. Her mind was a blur of half-formed thoughts. She couldn’t credit the strength of what she was feeling or the power of her need to touch him.

Lysander lifted his tousled head to look down at her. Below the black fringe of his lashes, his smouldering dark gaze was intent. He ran long brown fingers through the glossy coils of golden hair spilling across the pillow. He was enjoying his new right to touch. Her bewitching ice-blue eyes shone against skin with the luminous quality of a pearl. ‘You looked incredible in that dress today,’ he told her.

Disconcerted by that comment, Ophelia blinked. Lysander frowned because he had not intended to compliment her. Feeling off balance, he crushed the strawberry ripeness of her voluptuous mouth under his. Her senses swam and proper thought got lost behind a mental fog. A torrent of energising impressions struck her-the rippling power of his muscles beneath her hands, the long, lean, hair-roughened strength of his thighs and the intrinsically wonderful and familiar scent of him. The weight of him against her felt glorious. The feel of his bold erection shocked and pleased her. And the whole time she was learning about him, her blood was drumming in her eardrums and her heartbeat accelerating as the pleasure became more and more intense.