Page 36 of A Diamond Deal
He observed her with an intensity both sharp, and acute. ‘They were what?’
‘Disgusting.’
‘They were,’ he agreed. ‘That’s the point, Poppy. Tonight, we change the narrative and call them all liars.’
‘Everything they said about us…you,’ she said unevenly. ‘I knew the articles wouldn’t be good, but I hadn’t expected them to be so…vile.’
‘It’s nothing you haven’t seen them do before,’ he dismissed. ‘That’s the nature of the press, unless you control them. We will squash the rumours I’ve hidden your suicide from the public. We will call every single one of their articles a lie.Thatis our PR strategy. Simple. Effective.’
She wanted to claw their eyes out. The soulless paparazzi who’d hounded him. She wanted to make sure they could never look through their camera lenses again and hurt him.
‘I don’t want you to talk about it any more,’ he dismissed.
It was a gut punch.
He never had. Not when her body was broken. Not when her soul was shredded. Not when all she’d had was her words. Her heart squeezed. He’d paid someone else to listen for him. But…
‘Youasked me what was wrong,’ she reminded him.
He moved in closer, until his thigh pressed against hers. It was firm. It was warm. It penetrated her. The solidity of him. ‘And now you have told me the problem,’ he said. ‘I am done listening.’
She snatched a breath. There he was. The man she had run from. The man hereallywas.Cold.Before the baby he would have listened to her. Late at night, tangled in the sheets, he would have let her speak. About her mum. Her dad. Her feelings.
Images of every time she’d wanted to talk about the baby growing in her womb—the baby who was in danger inside her—flashed in her mind. The moment they’d been told the baby was at risk if she didn’t have complete rest, he’d diagnosed her physical needs, provided the room, the bed, the nurse and closed his ears to her worry—looked away from her need to talk about it.
To talk about Isaak.
‘You’re a cold-heartedbastard!’
He shrugged. His hand rose. He claimed her chin between his thumb and forefinger. It was not a hold that hurt, but it was firm. He let the heat from his touch penetrate her skin. ‘Do I feel cold to you,poulaki mou?’
Her every nerve—her every synapse—responded to it.His closeness.
He dipped his head.
It was instinct.
A demand of her body she couldn’t deny.
She closed her eyes. ‘Konstantinos…’ she said, and she didn’t know what it meant. His name on her lips. Was she warning him? Or herself?
He pressed his mouth to hers. And she knew she shouldn’t move her lips. She should shut her mouth tightly. But she didn’t. She leaned into the pressure of his mouth. His swiped against the entrance of hers.
And the hands which, somewhere in her consciousness, she knew she should raise to his chest and push him away, didn’t. They left her lap and moulded to the solid wall of his chest. She smoothed her fingers over every rippled indentation.
His fingers released her chin. Feathered across her jaw. ‘Glikia mou,’ he said into her mouth.
His lips moved. Pressed harder. Forced her mouth wider. With the open palm of his hand on the nape of her neck, he pulled her in closer.Nearer.And she felt…enclosed.In heat. In sensation.
She opened for him. Let the tip of his tongue thrust its way inside. It filled her mouth. She caught it with her own. Played with it. Danced with it.
It was a dance her body fell into step with without need of prompting. Without a reminder. She didn’t have to learn his lips, because she knew every dip. And she traced them.
Their kiss hadn’t been like this their last time together.
Months after the funeral,thatkiss had been a battle of unspoken words.
Thiskiss…
