Page 29 of Christmas Baby with Her Ultra-Rich Boss

The mattress dipped. She held her breath, squeezed her eyes even tighter, and gripped even harder to her biceps. She didn’t know if she was holding herself so tightly because of the cold or as protection against him... No, she realised painfully, it was protection against herself. She would not act the role of hopeless, lust-riddled adolescent again.

Once he’d made himself comfortable, the silence in the room was complete. The only sounds Lena could hear clearly were the rapid beats of her heart and the short intakes of breath she managed to snatch.

She cocooned herself closer into her sleeping bag and wished she’d remembered to put her scarf on. She’d been in such a flux in the changing room that she’d thoughtlessly added it to the pile of layers she’d stuck in the locker. After her babbled words of advice to Konstantinos, she’d stupidly forgotten to bring a jumper, too. Her nose was cold.

Time passed. Not a single sound or movement came from the body lying beside her. She remembered waking between making love on their night together and watching him sleep through the light that still managed to filter in through the blackout blinds. She’d been fascinated. Her dad’s snoring was so loud he was capable of waking the whole street up but Konstantinos slept without sound, only the deep rise and fall of his chest proving he was actually alive.

The urge to roll over and press herself as close as their individual sleeping bags would allow was unbearable.

Her brain wouldn’t switch off. Her thoughts were spinning like a carousel. She could no longer keep her eyes closed. She wished desperately for Konstantinos to wake up and say something, anything to break the silence closing in on her. The longer the minutes ticked by, the more images of the past flickered in her vision, and the more the impenetrable dark shadowed walls closed in on her, and the deeper the muffled effect of the solid block of ice and snow they were encased in. The beats of her already erratic heart changed to a frighteningly ragged tempo, snatches of breath becoming almost impossible to find.

Despite his best efforts to relax his body so sleep would take him into oblivion, Konstantinos’s best efforts were nowhere near good enough. He was aiming for the impossible. He was just too intensely aware of Lena huddled on the other side of the bed to relax, his senses attuned to her every breath and every tiny body adjustment. It was only now that he was lying within this ice vault that he truly understood what she meant about the silence being a silence like no other. Nothing penetrated the thick walls. It was just the two of them cocooned away from the world. Him and Lena.

It was the sharp gasping turn her breaths took that first alerted him to there being something wrong. If he was a dog his ears would have pricked up. He didn’t need to be any animal other than human to sense the new form the tension that had laced her since she’d accepted they would have to share a bed for the night took.

And then came the faint hum of strained vocal cords. If they were anywhere but here, he wouldn’t have heard it.

‘Lena?’ Alarmed, he rolled over. ‘Are you okay?’

She didn’t answer, just repeated the tune, but this time more clearly, enabling him to define the words of a song that made no sense at all. ‘The big ship sails on the Alley Alley O...’ A swallow. ‘The Alley Alley O, the Alley Alley O.’ Another swallow. ‘The big ship sails on the Alley Alley O, on the last day of September.’

Instinct made him unzip his sleeping bag enough to free his arms so he could wrap them around her and spoon himself around her. She didn’t resist. A hand poked out of the top of her sleeping bag and clawed for his. He caught it and held it tightly, pressing himself closer to her; all the while she sang another refrain of the strange childlike verse.

‘Better?’ he asked when the singing finally petered away.

When her answer came, it was a choked, ‘Thank you.’

He squeezed her hand. She squeezed back.

‘Is it always like that?’ he asked quietly.

Lena shook her head. She hadn’t had a panic attack since the last time she’d slept in The Igloo. That time she’d managed to slam the switch installed at the side of the bed and get some light into the room but the attack had continued for another fifteen minutes. This time its grip on her had lessened the moment Konstantinos spoke her name. The effect of his arms being wrapped around her and the clasp of his strong, comforting hand had soothed her more effectively than even her mother had been able to do when the panic attacks were at their height.

‘Thank you,’ she repeated. His arms tightened, his forehead pressing into the hood of her sleeping bag.

Lena’s heart throbbed and tears filled her eyes. That Konstantinos was putting himself through what was for him personal torture just so she didn’t have to sleep alone in her own version of it meant more than she could ever say. She wished she hadn’t been so angry with his hypocritical sanctimony and then too full of fear that sharing a bed would see her betray her deep yearning for him to recognise it earlier. Having his arms around her and the strength of his body tight against her made her feel like a woman drowning in an ocean storm lifted onto a life boat and gently steered into calm waters.

‘You must be cold,’ she whispered once she’d kept the tears at bay. He’d disentangled himself from his warm cocoon to comfort her, and now her panic had subsided, other, far more dangerous, feelings were creeping through her, the beats of her heart thumping with that weighted raggedy sensation.

‘It’s okay,’ he said, as if potential hypothermia was nothing, and suddenly she was filled with another emotion so powerful it knocked the breath out of her. Konstantinos had put his health at risk for her.

Overtaken by the need to look at him, she shifted just enough to roll onto her back without losing the solid strength of his lean body compressed against her and without releasing his hand. ‘It’s not okay. You’ll get frostbite or something.’

He lifted his head. The dim blue lighting kept so much of his vampiric features hidden in shadows, but what she found in his hooded gaze made her pelvis throb and her heart swell so hard and so fast it crushed her lungs.

Unthinkingly, she let go of his hand and placed her fingers on his smooth neck. The shock of cold she found there melted her insides that little bit more. His skin was cold for her. Because he’d comforted her when she’d needed him. She swallowed hard. She didn’t want to let him go. She wanted him to crawl into her sleeping bag and share the warmth his care had filled her with. ‘Tinos, you’re freezing.’

Konstantinos’s heart clenched at the shortening of his name, the clench twisting painfully to see what was shining in Lena’s eyes and know it was what she must be seeing in his own eyes.

He tried to draw in air.

Who was he trying to fool? The more he tried to fight this combustible mix of emotions and desire that burned in his veins for Lena, the worse it got. The deeper it infected him. The more he wanted her. Wanted her like he’d never wanted anyone or anything.

Did he seriously think he could live his life with Lena Weir in it without waging a constant battle with himself?

Palming her cheek, he stared at her beautiful face, wondering how someone Aphrodite would envy could look at him and not be repulsed. Look at him with desire... No, more than desire. Like he meant something to her. Just as he was coming to see that she meant something to him...

Slowly, he brought his mouth down to hers.

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