Greek Affairs in his Bed: Sleeping with a Stranger\Blackmailed into the Greek Tycoon’s Bed\Bedded by the Greek Billionaire (40 page)

‘If you want to insult me, Princess, at least use some term that I might actually find offensive. I am a bastard, I know that. I’ve known it since before I was old enough to walk. Certainly before I was old enough to understand just what the word meant and to wonder about the other bastard in my life—the father who seduced my mother, left her pregnant and then went back home to marry the woman he was engaged to.’

Jessica hadn’t known that. The thought that they had something in common caught her up short for a moment but, seeing the look on her face, Angelos shook his head reprovingly.

‘Don’t try it, Princess—don’t go claiming that you feel sorry for me in the hope of getting me to be a little more generous. It won’t work.’

‘I wasn’t going to try any such thing,’ Jessica flung at him. ‘I should have known this would happen—that you wouldn’t really have a job to offer. At least not one that I could seriously consider taking. I wouldn’t touch this one with a forty foot bargepole.’

‘You wouldn’t?’ Angelos’s carved mouth twisted cynically as he nodded. ‘I rather suspected that that might be your answer. So it’s just as well I have a second idea for you.’

‘Another job?’

Jessica bit down hard on her bottom lip as she thought back over her response to his first offer. Was it possible that she had got this all wrong and that he really did have another job to offer her? What if he had just been testing her to see if she would react in what he called her ‘lady of the manor’ way to a job that he would believe she’d think well beneath her? Certainly her response would have made him believe that was how she felt. Somehow, Angelo had the knack of always putting her on the wrong foot whatever she said or did.

‘Another position, certainly.’ Angelos nodded.

‘And that is …?’ Jessica prompted when he paused, sipping
some more of his water in another deliberate delaying ploy, she was sure. ‘Angelos!’

‘I don’t want to rush things,’ he told her when she almost stamped her foot in impatience at his slowness. ‘After all, it’s not every day I do this.’

‘Do what?’

Still he paused, taking another swallow of the water before putting the glass aside on to a table.

‘Do
what
?’

‘Ask someone to come into partnership with me.’

If he had reached out and slapped her hard in the face she couldn’t have reeled back more sharply or felt her head spin more sickeningly. She should have known that it would be a joke. A very black, very cynical joke. He had never had another job to offer her at all. He had just meant to torment her for turning down the stable job—the job that he had once had to take from Marty.

‘Oh, ha, ha, ha!’ She faked the laugh with cynical contempt, swinging away from him and putting as much distance between them as was possible. She even moved to put the bulk of the big chesterfield in the way so that it acted as a shield against him, if he should decide to move forward. She could just imagine that he might try to prove that this was a good idea by trying to kiss her as he had done twice yesterday.

He would kiss her to show her that they had—what was it he had said?—unfinished business between them. He would be so sure that he could kiss her into submission, leave her gasping for more and only too willing to accept the insulting proposal he had just tossed at her. And then, of course, if she showed any sign of yielding or even showing him that it had made her think at all, then he would take great pleasure in withdrawing the partnership idea in a flash—no doubt laughing at her for being fool enough to even consider believing it in the first place.

So she must never let him suspect that she had actually
believed that he was in any way serious at all. Because he wasn’t, of course. He couldn’t be. There was no way he could mean this travesty of a proposal; no way that he wanted her as a partner for a moment. He was just doing this to torment her. To torture her with the idea that there might be another way for her to have a future—a life that included being able to stay on the Manorfield estate that she loved and even still have her horse and her old way of life given back to her.

But it would all be just a lie.

There was no way she would ever want to be his partner—not like this.

‘V
ERY
funny, Angelos.’

A sudden uncomfortable sting that resulted from her reaction—
not like this
—to Angelos’s proposal actually hitting home in the most worrying way made her voice harder and sharper than she had ever meant. Her mouth twisted cynically as she faced him defiantly, her chin coming up, her jaw firming.

‘Now you’ve had your joke so I hope you enjoyed it. You really didn’t think I’d fall for it.’

‘No joke,’ Angelos inserted quietly, but so firmly, so apparently sincerely that it made her feel as if the ground had suddenly lurched under her feet so that she grabbed at the back of the chair for support.

‘Oh, come on! Don’t try to claim that you actually meant that farce of a suggestion!’

‘What makes you think that I did not?’

His tone implied that she was a total fool to think anything else. That even an idiot could have seen that he was being genuine. So much so that for a second she was forced to snatch in a deep calming breath as she studied him closely, trying to see some glimmer of humour or at least mockery in the darkness of his eyes. Something that would tell her that she had been right all along in believing that he was just playing with her like a cat
toyed with a mouse until it tired of the game and reached out a deadly claw to deal the final, fatal blow.

Disturbingly—frighteningly—she could see nothing at all of that. All she could read in his face was a straightforward, direct openness. Which could only have one possible meaning and that was that he was totally straight in what he was saying. But he couldn’t be—could he?

Even as she allowed the question into her thoughts she pushed it away again. It was impossible! She wasn’t even going to consider it.

‘It wasn’t even a serious proposal!’ she hedged desperately. ‘So what kind of relationship are you suggesting?’

‘I need to drag the Manorfield estate into the twenty-first century. To do that, I need the cooperation of the locals—the villagers—the tenant farmers. They’re all traditionalists, people who have lived here for years, where their families have lived for centuries. They do things the way they’ve always done them, dealing with the people they’ve always dealt with. Until now, that has been Marty and his family—his father and his father before him. But now everything has changed.’

‘Yes,’ Jessica muttered bitterly. ‘You changed it. You came into our lives and took over Manorfield and now nothing will ever be the same in any way ever again.’

‘Not the same, perhaps—but it can come close.’

‘It can? How?’

The look he turned on her was a blend of exasperation and pure impatience. How can you not know? that look said. How can you not see what is right in front of your face?

‘If we blend the old and the new—work together on it. Marty lost his grip on the reins in his last years. He was addicted to gambling and deeply in debt and he couldn’t concentrate on anything else. The whole of Manorfield is going downhill fast. It needs hard work, money and time to build it back up again. I
have the money and I have the time—as long as I have the loyalty of my workers—the confidence of my tenant farmers.’

‘But …’ Jessica put in when he paused for breath because there obviously was going to be a but, and now at last she thought she could see what was coming.

‘But they don’t have that confidence in me. To them I am a stranger, coming in from nowhere—a foreigner who has usurped the family line, who has taken the inheritance from the one they believed was entitled to it.’

‘Me …’ It was just a breath, a barely formed sound.

‘You,’ Angelos confirmed deeply. ‘You are the one they expected to be Marty’s heir. I own the estate but in the eyes of the villagers, the tenants, you are the one with the legal right to it—the right of convention and tradition. You may not have been Marty’s blood relative but in their opinion you are the closest he ever had to one. The one with the moral right to the estate. The one they expected to be working with.’

‘So this arrangement …’

‘Would combine the best of both worlds. With you by my side, I could still link to that tradition they expected to follow and with my money and your knowledge we could build Manorfield back up to the way it used to be. Make it successful, profitable all over again.’

Dear God, she was almost tempted. He made it sound so wonderful, as if so much was possible. And with Angelos at the helm she had no doubt that it would be. She had always loved Manorfield so much and she knew it would almost break her heart to leave it. If only …

‘This partnership …’ she tried again. ‘It would be just the business arrangement …’

She broke off abruptly, unable to go on as he shook his dark head in adamant rejection of that last sentence.

‘Not just business,’ he said deeply. ‘Not just business but pleasure as well.’

‘Pleasure?’ Jessica found that the word caught in her throat, choking her so that she couldn’t get it out. ‘What pleasure?’

Once again Angelos turned that frankly sceptical look on her face, his eyes lighting with total disbelief that she could possibly be so naïve.

‘What pleasure?’ he echoed softly, his voice becoming husky and rough on the word. ‘What pleasure could there be but sexual,
agape mou
? This would be both a business and a sexual partnership. That way, we would have the very best of both worlds.’

‘A sexual partnership—you’re asking me to be your
mistress
!’

The bitterness that ate into her soul with the realisation that, just for a few moments, she had been fool enough to let herself think he was actually offering her a genuine partnership made her voice shake in shocked disgust.

‘What else?’ Angelos tossed at her. ‘You surely did not think that I was going to go down on one knee and ask you to marry me?’

The image of him doing just that, of being able to look down on his raven dark head, see him look up into her face, those stunning black eyes locking with hers and holding them, but in a way that was so very different from the way he’d held her mesmerised earlier closed her throat and prevented her from speaking. To her horror, she found that she was trembling in reaction to just the thought of it, and her heart had lurched into a rapid, uneven pulse that made her chest rise and fall in rough, frantic breaths.

‘I’m not looking for a wife—but as a mistress you would suit me well.’

‘Never! No way!’

Her response sounded too sharp, too nervous, even in her own ears. She knew that she sounded as if she was protesting too much and with a terrible sense of despair she knew that Angelos must recognise that too.

‘You could at least do me the courtesy of being honest,’ Angelos rapped back. ‘I am offering you a chance to stay on at Manorfield and you cannot even give me a truthful answer.’

‘I … am,’ Jessica managed but she knew that the revealing pause, the way that she couldn’t meet the accusing glare in his eyes but dropped her gaze to the floor told its own story.

‘Little liar.’

It was soft and deadly.

‘You know that what burns between us is something special. Something that few people ever experience in their lifetime.’

‘I …’ she tried but he ignored her attempt at an interruption, the words sweeping over as if she had never opened her mouth.

‘You deny yourself as well as me if you try to pretend that there is nothing.’

‘I’m not pretending!’

‘No?’

For the first time since he had started this shattering conversation, Angelos abandoned the cool, controlled mood that had held him still, apparently relaxed, at the opposite side of the room. He moved so fast that she barely saw him coming and, as his sudden fast stride towards her had been the last thing that she had been expecting, he took her totally off balance as he caught hold of her hands and swung her round to face him, hauling her into the confines of his arms as they clamped tight around her, holding her prisoner against his broad chest.

‘No?’ he muttered roughly. ‘Still so determined? Then it seems you need a reminder. A reminder of what it takes to change you from a hissing, spitting cat into the temptress who was in my arms last night. The woman who went up in flames—burning with a fire so hot that it practically ate us up alive. The woman who forgot about anyone and everyone else, who forgot about the world because she knew that when we two are together we have all the world—there is no need of anyone or anything else.’

‘I …’ Jessica tried, struggling impotently against the powerful grasp.

She was also fighting against a terrible sense of despair, she knew. The thought that, deep down in her soul, she knew that he was right. It was all so true. Even now, even like this, when she knew the real truth, she still couldn’t stop herself, stop her weak, foolish heart from responding to the dark litany of seduction that fell from those sensual lips.

Even knowing that it was only seduction didn’t help. Somewhere inside was a needy part of her that responded to his words like a flower opening to the sun. He didn’t love her; he wasn’t making any declaration of anything other than sexual hunger and yet it touched that equally starving part of her. The part that needed to be truly wanted by someone. To be special, central to their life even if only in this most basic, most primitive way.

And he was right about what happened when they were together. Right about the way that the world disappeared, evaporating into a cloudy haze through which she could see nothing, hear nothing, sense nothing …

Nothing but the Black Angel who held her so close.

His scent was all around her; she took it into her with every breath she inhaled. The heat of his body pervaded hers, warming her blood and setting her pulse racing. She knew that her face had turned to his, that her mouth was there for him even before his dark head lowered to take it.

And she was lost. As she sank into the kiss, as her lips parted and her eyes closed she felt the dark tides of sexuality rise up to drown her once again, sweeping away all resistance, all sense, all hope of self-preservation. Because he was right, she acknowledged as she felt herself going down, down, down for the third time. What burned between them
was
special. It was unique, and it was so searingly powerful that she would never, ever be able to resist it.

It was what she had been born for—the reason for her existence. Her rational brain might scream at her to fight it—that this path led to danger, to heartbreak, to the total destruction of all that made herself, but, even as it did, the most instinctive, essential, most female part of her yearned to give herself up to this hugely elemental force. She wanted to dive deep into those boiling, tossing waves and drown, never surfacing to reality ever again.

‘Yes …’ Angelos’s mutter was warm against her mouth, his breath blending with hers, the taste of him a powerful aphrodisiac on her tongue. ‘This is the woman I meant—the woman I want. This is the woman you are with me and only with me.’

‘Yes …’

There was no way she could hold back the admission. No point at all in even trying to do so. He must know how she felt, must understand his victory and it was impossible to even think of hiding it from him. She was molten in his arms, limp with the need that was shuddering through her, her mouth yielding to the plundering force of his. And when his hand cupped the softness of one breast she moaned deep in her throat and pressed herself harder against the warmth of his palm …

And then suddenly it was all over.

Suddenly the heat and the passion had stopped; the force field she had felt all around her had evaporated and he was no longer there.

He had given her one last punishing kiss—and then he had put her from him, moving away to the far side of the room so that once more the chesterfield was between them and she was on her own.

The sudden, terrible rush of cold air against her heated body was a shock to her system, leaving her shivering in a very different response to the heated hunger of just moments before. And without the strong support of Angelos’s arms she felt lost, bereft and very much alone.

‘Now will you tell the truth?’

The question was rapped at her, each word fierce and cruel as bullets from a gun as she struggled to clear her mind, blink her eyes back into focus. All she could see was a dark blur standing watching her but she could feel the challenge that issued from him, that was directed straight at her.

‘Now will you admit that what is between us is stronger than sense, stronger than thought?’

Jessica managed an inarticulate sound that might have been agreement. Her whole body was one big ache of frustration and her heart was racing so much that she felt it would burst out of her chest, breaking her ribs. But as she snatched in several deep, calming breaths she at least found that her vision had cleared and she could see the man standing before her.

She could see the way that the challenge in his voice was mirrored in the tilt of his head, the gleam in his dark eyes. She saw the curl to that beautiful mouth that told her he thought he had her exactly where he wanted her and she felt her bare toes clench in fury, digging into the carpet. Too late she remembered how she had meant to speak to him about the past. She had meant to apologise for what had happened between them all those years before, to try to explain. That was, after all, why she had waited for him—why she had sat up late into the night, watching for his car coming back so that she could talk to him.

But not now. Not any more. This man didn’t deserve to be talked to or to have any concessions offered him. She would rather die than apologise now.

‘Stronger than sense, certainly,’ she managed, wincing as her voice croaked embarrassingly. ‘That much is definitely true.’

The sound of her voice, rough and husky, made Angelos frown. Reaching down, he picked up the glass of water he had placed on the table and held it out to her.

‘Do you want a drink? You look hot.’

Hot with embarrassment, Jessica thought to herself. Hot with anger at what he’d said. And yes, at first, hot with the hungry passion that his kisses, his caresses had aroused—that too. But not now.