“Grey Goose Martini,” he said without so much as a look in the woman’s direction. “And a champagne for …?”
“Elle,” she said smoothly.
“Elle.” It was a guttural growl that drove shivers down her spine. How the hell did she ever think she’d be able to get close enough to this man to find something she could use to pressure him into helping? His accent was spicy seduction. It was tinged with the sounds of his native Greek, but rounded out by America courtesy of the years she knew he’d spent studying there.
“And you are?” She asked, easing herself into one of the leather sofas he’d nodded towards. It was incredibly comfortable and she thought affectionately of her own lounge set, and the spring that prodded up determinedly from the middle cushion.
His smile was rich in disbelief, and with good reason. Everyone knew who he was. Everyone. “Christos Rakanti.”
“I’ve heard that name before,” she murmured, crossing her legs and leaning forward a little, aware that he was in a perfect vantage point to admire her generous curves.
Arrogance radiated from him but Elle didn’t care. It suited him; his arrogance was clearly an inherent part of him.
“Have you?” He ignored the armchairs that were on either side of the sofa. Instead, he sat beside her. Not down the opposing end of the sofa either, but so close that their thighs were brushing and she could feel heat sparking between them. He lifted his arm and ran it along the back of the lounge, dangling his fingers perilously close to her shoulder.
You’re playing a part, Elle reminded herself, when her naturally reserved manner would have seen her pull sharply backwards. She blinked her eyes up at him and leaned a little closer, knowingly forcing his arm to drop downwards and his hand to drape over her shoulder. “I’m almost sure I have.”
His fingers began to stroke her flesh lightly, drawing imaginary patterns against her smooth skin. Would sleeping with him be enough? Would the worry of exposing the truth to his mother and the world be enough to urge him to help her? She thought of Hannah, perched expectantly across the street, and her courage grew.
The waitress appeared with their drinks and placed them down on the shining table. He kept his eyes on hers as he reached forward and lifted the champagne to her lips. She opened her mouth wider, her breath fighting to escape her body, and he dribbled some of the liquid in. She tasted it gratefully, and then watched mesmerised as he sipped from the same glass.
“You’re from America.”
She nodded jerkily before recalling she was supposed to be sophisticated and confident. “Very good, Christos.” She batted her lashes and leaned forward. Her fingers curled around the stem of his martini glass and she mimicked his actions of a moment earlier, carrying it carefully to his lips. Only when he sipped from it, she leaned forward and pressed her finger to the side of his mouth, duelling with an imaginary drop.
He angled his head and took her finger between his lips, pressing his teeth to the ball of flesh with a soft growl. Flames of desire licked at her soul. Long-forgotten instincts flared to life. And she knew then that sleeping with him as a means to blackmail would not be a chore at all.
“I’m not into public displays of affection,” she said, leaning forward so that the whispered words breathed hot invitation across his ear.
“How about private displays of attraction then?”
She arched a perfectly shaped brow, having no idea how sinfully beautiful she looked. “Is there somewhere that would make that possible?”
His laugh was a husky growl. “You really don’t believe in taking things slowly, do you?”
“I don’t have time to take things slowly,” she said truthfully. The bill for Filip’s exclusive private school was burned into her memory, not least because of the accusatory red paper they’d printed it on. Not to mention the calls she’d been dodging from the school office. Typically, that old bastard Rakanti had died without settling the term’s fees, leaving Elle with a God awful mess to manage.
“Then let’s go.” He stood, and held a hand out. She laced her fingers through his with a complete awareness that it might as well have been a blood pact.
They weaved effortlessly through the crowd, despite the fact it seemed to have doubled in volume since Elle had found her way to him earlier. The music was loud; the kind of pop songs people her age listened to and that Elle had little patience for. There was no melody or genius in their computerised artifice. Then again, perhaps she was just a music snob.
It was a perfect mid-summer night and the air was balmy as they emerged from the club. After the oppressive blanket of noise, the silence of the laneway was a welcome relief. “That’s better,” Elle said, forgetting for a moment that she was trying to seem like someone who went to nightclubs and hooked up with strangers all the time.
“Not your scene?”
“Oh, sure it is. I just hate that song,” she lied unconvincingly. “Where are we going?”
He nodded across the street and she followed his gaze. A shining black Maserati, low and sleek, was parked directly opposite them.
Problem solved. If he would sell this ridiculously expensive sports car then the rest of her brother’s education would all be paid for… and then some. The injustice couldn’t help but tear a small hole in her equilibrium.
“Understated,” she drawled sarcastically, earning a responding grin from Christos.
“The same could be said for your shirt.”
Her cheeks flushed a becoming pink that was completely at odds with her air of sophistication. Christos noticed and it only served to stir a greater curiosity in his gut. She was the kind of woman he ate for breakfast; literally. But she was different, too. There was a freshness to her that didn’t quite make sense.
He moved across the street and held the door open for her. Though he was too wrapped up in the view as she moved to stand in the triangular opening he’d created, Elle knew where Hannah was waiting. She angled herself a little so that both of their faces would be visible. After all, sleeping with him was one thing but what good would it do if she couldn’t prove it? Hating herself for thinking with such calculated deception at a moment such as that, only the thought of her sweet brother stopped her from experiencing a sharp throb of shame.
“You’re not the least bit worried about getting into the car of a stranger?”
His eyes were studying her with a perceptiveness she hadn’t expected; for a moment she felt the mask drop and she worried that he might see more than she wanted him to.
She stood onto the tips of her toes – even in the stilettos there was still a decent gap in height – and brought her lips tantalisingly close to his. “Kiss me and we’ll no longer be strangers.”
He made a noise of frustration as he lifted his fingers into her hair and pushed her head the final distance. He took her lips angrily, passion and heat made him impatient to taste all of her. He pressed her back against the car, the weight of his body a hard plane to her delightful curves. His hands were rough in her hair and it made her ache to rip his clothes off in the same punishingly desperate manner, and to touch his naked body.
Long beyond what Hannah would have needed, she kissed him and ran her hands over his back, until finally he broke the kiss and stared down at her as though he’d never seen a woman before. “Get in. Now.”
She nodded, her lips swollen from the force of his kiss. As he moved to the driver side door, her eyes lifted back to the entrance of the bar. Hannah, one thumb in the air in the universal gesture of encouragement, smiled back.
Elle didn’t have time to wonder if she was making the biggest mistake of her life. Her body was sparking with electrical currents and he was the conductor. He revved the engine as soon as she’d buckled in, pulling the car into the narrow laneway with a powerful, throbbing sound of the engine.
They didn’t speak.
For her part, Elle wasn’t sure she trusted her voice to work right. And Christos was focussed only on getting back to his home and carrying
this woman straight to bed.
He pressed a button above his head and then turned the car off the road, sliding it between a pair of wrought-iron gates that were folding in on themselves swiftly.
The driveway was short but curving, and it was only as he rounded the bend that the home came into view. A testament to modern architecture, it was steel and glass, several cubes built on top of each other, some jutting out more than others, creating balconies at jaunty angles.
There was an enormous hedge that blocked anyone else from view, and more importantly, that served to screen his home from unwelcome intrusion.
“This is where you live?” She asked, staring at the mansion with a sinking heart. How much would something like this cost? This man had more money at his disposal than Elle could even fathom, and she was stressing about how she could cover her brother’s school fees?
What a joke it was.
Filip and Christos shared the same father. What was Christos’s birthright should have been Filip’s too!
It took a tremendous amount of discipline to keep any disapproval from her face. Soon she would find a way to make him pay and this horrible worry would go away. She didn’t quite know exactly how the next part of the plan would work, but she was getting herself into a position to have this tycoon at her beck and call.
He clicked her door open and before she could move he’d reached across and unclicked her seatbelt. “How fast can you walk in those shoes?” He appraised the skyscraping heels with interest.
She stepped out of the car and nodded. “Fastish, I guess.”
“Fastish? Do I need to carry you?”
He wanted her. He wanted her with the same force that was throbbing through her soul. Though she knew this was all a game – and one she had to win – the fact he desired her gave her a kick of courage. “Carry me.”
His smile was grim as he scooped down and lifted her to his chest. He shouldered the door open without pausing to kick off his own shoes. He took the steps easily to the third floor of his home. He shunned the use of his own bedroom; that was private, and whoever this woman was, he doubted she’d be more than a distraction to him for one night. Though he did want her more than he could remember wanting anyone in a very long time.
Elle took in the details of the minimally furnished room with a sense of loneliness. Is this really how he lived? She could have been in an exclusive hotel. “It’s a guest room,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. He placed her on the bed but bent down to kiss her instantly.
She had thought he’d ravaged her outside the nightclub, but this kiss was passion and greed; need and desperation. His lips assaulted hers as his tongue lashed hers in a fierce declaration of dominance.
Elle surrendered. Completely.
She writhed in his arms, searching for a fulfilment she couldn’t have named. She knew only that she needed something. More. The kiss was simply stoking fires and they burned brightly through her whole body.
It had been so long since she’d made love to a man that it occurred to her she might not know how to act or what to do, but Christos made doubts impossible. His hands pushed at her clothes, freeing her from the shirt and bra so that he could stare down at her breasts and cup them as though they had been made for his touch, and his alone. His fingers ran across her nipples, plucking them and teasing them, before dropping to her jeans and dispensing with the denim.
When his hands moved to her underpants, she stilled, anxiety and uncertainty creeping back.
She was about to sleep with the enemy; a man she had been taught to hate for the blood that ran through his veins.
And she couldn’t wait. That impatience scared her, and she would know later how wise she had been to experience a presentiment of worry in that moment.
“I have a condom in my wallet,” she said, earning a flicker of a dark smile from him.
“Yes, I imagine you would.” The hint of judgement smarted. He reached across to the bedside table and lifted a foil packet out. “You can save it for next time.”
Next time? With him? Or the next man he imagined she’d fall into bed with? What would he say if he knew she’d only been with two men and both of them when she was fifteen?
Her heart was crashing against her ribcage as he sheathed himself and then brought his body over hers. “You are sure you want this?”
Her cheeks were flushed, her pupils huge. “What do you think?”
“I think you are the most sexually insatiable woman I’ve met, and that I like it.”
Sexually insatiable? Lord, was he about to be disappointed. Elle was as frigid as they came. A few rolls in the hay with teenage boyfriends had taught her that when it came to sex, she was a total dud.
Only as he moved his arousal towards her feminine core, a fever burned her blood. She dug her nails into his muscular body and panted his name over and over like an incantation that might soothe her tempest.
He thrust into her in one firm, insistent motion. The possession was absolute. Her body lifted, her arms embraced him, and her muscles enclosed him tightly as though begging him never to leave her. Elle wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles together and as he began to move she issued an animalistic scream into the warm night air.
She hated this man, but she thought she could easily get addicted to sleeping with him. In fact, she already was.
2
It was close to five o’clock when he reached for her.
The light was drifting in through the bay windows, shades of pink and peach bathed him in the morning’s warmth. He extended an arm lazily, confident that he would feel her silky skin and soon be possessing her. After all, he had buried himself in her all night, whenever his body had craved that contact. And he had craved her, and often. Time and again, he’d found his dreams disturbed by sensual recollections and his body had found a way to her, to inhabit her and make her his for a moment.
She was perfection.
She had answered his calls of desire willingly, wrapping herself around him and taking him deep into her core.
He couldn’t recall having met a woman he was so simpatico with on a sexual level. His voracious appetite had been answered completely. If love was cast from sexual compatability then he would have said he’d fallen head over heels for this mysterious woman.
So, when morning began to breathe light across his villa, and he found her missing, he stood from the bed with an impatient start. He paused only to don boxer shorts and then pushed out of his room, his eyes scanning the hallways and stairs with frustration he didn’t bother concealing.
Belatedly he remembered they’d spent the night on the third floor. He pounded down the stairs, bypassing the second floor as it was largely reserved for his bedroom and offices, and emerged on the ground floor.
The second he saw her he breathed out a low, soft breath.
She was cradling a mug of tea, curled into a large white armchair, her eyes fixed across the room. When he entered, she blinked up at him as though he was the last person she expected to see, despite the fact it was his house. Her smile was self-conscious and sweet. The sweetness lodged an odd ache deep in his gut.
He didn’t often see them like this; the women he slept with. Vulnerable and … as people, rather than just bodies.
She had pulled on her jeans and t-shirt but without the red bra. Perhaps out of coyness in the light of day she’d wrapped a blanket around her shoulders to hide the fact.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said softly, lifting her tea a little higher. “I helped myself.”
“I missed you when I woke up.” His words were husky. She swallowed, the delicate muscles of her throat bunching visibly. Fascinated, he knelt right in front of her, pushing her legs apart so he could lean in and kiss her lips.
Elle felt flushed by guilt.
Could this plan possibly work? Would he feel worried enough by the threat of her disclosing the fact they’d slept together to be compelled to take over his father’s agreement to pay for Filip�
��s school fees? She kissed him, but arrows of pain were shooting through her. He would never touch her again when he knew the truth. He would hate her, and he would be right to. She was using him. She was using his beautiful body and voracious appetite for the most mercenary of reasons.
Her mother had done this all her life; she’d slept with men, taking what she could from them by whatever means possible. And to what end? She’d died broke, scorned, drunk and bitter.
Panic was in her bloodstream. “I’m hot,” she said against his lips, not sure if it was desire, guilt, or the warm summer’s morning that was causing her skin to tingle red.
“Are you?” He stood, pulling her with him, keeping his arms wrapped around her waist. He lifted her easily, straddling her legs about his waist and kissing her as he walked through the apartment.
She closed her eyes, experiencing the moment fully for it would not last long. Soon she would have to leave and plan her next move. How to make the most of what they’d shared and the photo Hannah had taken?
But first?
Could she get to know him better? To discover if he knew of Filip?
Maybe, and hope flared in her chest, just maybe she could get his help without pressuring him. Perhaps if she were honest, he would offer?
The water around her legs startled her and she broke the kiss with a squawk. He was waist-deep in the swimming pool before she realised it. Elle squealed but he kept walking, until she was submerged to her shoulders. “What are you doing?” She laughed, surprising him by tilting her head back and wetting her long blonde hair. It drifted behind her like a pale fan.
She was beautiful, but obviously not vain. She’d washed all that make up off at some point, and fresh-faced she looked even prettier, and far younger. He kept her cupped tight to him until she righted herself. “My clothes are wet.”
He nodded, his expression one of mock seriousness. “Well then, you’ll just have to stay here until they’re dry.”
Her stomach clenched. Is that what he wanted? For her to stay longer in his house?
“I haven’t finished with you yet,” he murmured, dropping his mouth to hers. His tongue was a force she was powerless to resist, and as he kissed her, he slid his hands under her top so that he could feel her wet, full breasts in his palms.