Billionaire Brides: An Anthology

by Connelly, Clare

  She was his already.

  The power was a beast; a seductive mistress for it made him feel God-like.

  He moved slowly, feeling his way, and watching her constantly, to see what pleased her most. When Sophie was almost manic with need, he stopped teasing her and returned to what she loved most.

  She released herself almost instantly, and he held her while she fell apart, whispering words in his native tongue until she slowly regained her breathing. But he wasn’t done with her yet. He began to move once more, thrusting powerfully into her, this time rough and hard, and she bucked even harder against him and screamed in surprised pleasure.

  He dug his fingers into her buttocks and when she began to spiral out of control for a second time, he followed after her, releasing himself with a guttural cry.

  Their breath combined in the air as a strangled sound of agreement.

  That had been earth-shattering.

  And for Alex, it had been necessary.

  He had done it.

  He had physically possessed her; but that wasn’t enough. He needed all of her, for good, to make sure she would stay out of Helena’s way. And so he did not pull away from her and put some distance between them, as he usually did with his conquests.

  This was a game, and he had to play his part.

  “You are every bit as perfect as I had hoped.”

  Sophie’s eyes fluttered shut and she lifted a hand to her neck. The fingers were not steady and her throat was pink from his stubble. “I don’t think I understand what just happened.”

  Sex. Sex had just happened. For the first time in her life, Sophie had just done something she’d always sworn she wouldn’t. She’d slept with a man she knew nothing about, just because he was gorgeous. She’d thrown caution to the wind and … and … fucked. Or been fucked. She didn’t know which.

  “Oh, God.” She covered both eyes with her hands and shook her head slowly from side to side. He was still inside of her, but mortification was beginning to take over any sense of lust she’d been indulging.

  “Sophie, what is the matter?”

  Even the way he said her name turned her insides to mush. She had never been so utterly vulnerable to a man as she was now, to this man.

  “I can’t believe that just happened.” She kept her eyes shut beneath the veil of her hands. “What the hell was I thinking?”

  “You weren’t thinking,” he teased. “You were feeling.”

  “Oh, stop. You’re making it worse. Please, please get off me.”

  He laughed softly, but did as she’d requested.

  “Oh, God.”

  Her guilt and shame were obvious, and he had a sinking feeling that he understood what motivated those emotions. She had, after all, just cheated on her lover. And it had been spectacular.

  “What we did is not wrong, agape mou.”

  “Easy for you to say,” she groaned. “You do this all the time.”

  He pushed aside the statement. “And you don’t?”

  “No!” She said it with such venom that he stilled. His hands were running down her arms, bringing her slowly back to life. But her guilt was too difficult to assuage. She was upset.

  He sighed and did as she’d asked, moving away from her. The instantaneous emptiness that filled him was a surprise.

  “You do not have sex?”

  “No!” She shook her head, her eyes still winched shut.

  “You were not a virgin.” He grinned down at her, genuinely amused by the picture she made. Somehow he doubted she had any idea how utterly ravishing she looked, stretched naked across his desk with her eyes shut and her lips pouted.

  “No, but I don’t know you. I mean, I hardly know you. And you’re just the kind of man I try to avoid.”

  Because I’m not married, he wondered bitterly. “What is it about me that you try to avoid?”

  “Your experience.” The way she said the word, an insult was obviously implied, but he couldn’t fathom what it was.

  “Did my experience displease you in some way?”

  She risked blinking one eye open, and even with a single look was able to convey a sense of mockery. “This is not the time to seek praise for your skills.”

  “Ah,” he shrugged. “You are wrong there. It is always the time for a man to be complimented on how well he makes love to a beautiful woman.”

  “Stop!” She closed both eyes again. “You’re making it … So. Much. Worse.”

  She was the woman who was breaking up his sister’s marriage and yet he felt a lovely kernel of pleasure at this unexpected conversation. He moved back to her and gently glided her jeans up her legs. “I do not know what you feel is bad about our situation, but I should like to have dinner with you while you try to explain it to me.”

  Sophie’s sharp intake of breath showed her surprise. “You would?”

  “Ne.”

  “No?”

  “Ne is yes,” he admonished softly. “And if you are to raise two Greek boys, you should learn to speak some of the language.” He gripped her hands and pulled her gently to standing. “I will teach you.”

  Her eyes were enormous, and she stared at his face as though she were drowning. “You will?” For that implied so much more than what she was expecting from him.

  “Ne,” he grinned, and pressed a light kiss against the tip of her nose.

  “Alex.” But what did she want to say? What could she say? This was wrong. Or was it? It certainly felt a thousand shades of right. “What shall we eat?”

  Chapter 3

  “Two sisters?” His look of disbelief was priceless. Then again, Alex had led his life to that point looking out for Helena. The idea of multiplying his worry and responsibilities was onerous indeed.

  Sophie shook her head dolefully. “Not just two sisters. Triplets.”

  “Triplets?” He expelled a long, slow whistle. “You mean somewhere in Australia there are two girls just as gorgeous as you walking around the outback?”

  Sophie laughed. “No.” The champagne was excellent; the food even more so. She’d always been a sucker for Indian and this little restaurant was the most authentic she’d tried. She fingered a pappadum thoughtfully. “We’re not identical. Though if you saw us together, you’d know we were related. And as for the outback, Olivia and Ava wouldn’t be seen dead there.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  Sophie screwed up her nose unconsciously as she thought of her sisters with the same lurching in her gut that always accompanied their absence. “They’re the most amazing women you can possibly imagine.”

  “Really?” He reclined in his chair, his expression indomitable. It was very easy for Sophie to see him then as the powerful, dynamic megalomaniac who’d amassed a global empire all on his own.

  “Really,” she confirmed, ignoring her dry mouth and racing heart.

  “How so?”

  “They’re just … the kind of women that you look at and think ‘wow’.” He looked at her with an expression of doubt. Did Sophie not know that she was similarly impressive? “Olivia is the flighty one. She’s beautiful and popular and footloose and fancy-free. She travels on a whim. She’s truly …”

  “Amazing?” He supplied with a teasing grin.

  She nodded and sipped her water.

  “What about the other one?”

  Sophie smiled when she thought of Ava. “Far more serious. Then again, she’s the responsible one. Despite the fact we’re triplets, Ava has always seemed older. She’s felt very free to boss Liv and me around from day one.” She shrugged. “But we’re happy to let her. She’s holding the business together at home now, while Olivia and I get to travel and have fun.”

  “The business?”

  Sophie’s eyes assumed a faraway expression. “Casa Celli.” She sighed wistfully. “Our vineyard.”

  “I don’t see you as the agricultural type.”

  She smiled distractedly. “I’m not. Hence my itchy feet as soon as I left school.” She shrugged. “But we gr
ew up on the property. Mum ran it and produced some fantastic vintages before she … before we lost her.”

  Something like pain sharpened inside his gut. Alex ignored it. “When did she die?”

  Sophie winced. “I’m sorry. I don’t think like that. Even now I find it hard to accept that she’s gone.” She shook her head wistfully. “It was five years ago this Christmas.”

  “How?” Ever the businessman, he was focussed on the information he could obtain.

  “When mum wasn’t checking the vines for pests and sugar, she was diving.” When he didn’t speak, she continued, though she couldn’t meet his eyes for they reflected her own pain too clearly. “Our vineyards slope all the way to the sea. It’s the most stunning piece of land on Earth. I can’t begin to explain the glory and goodness of those hills.” She smiled as she recalled her youth. “My sisters and I used to run amongst the vines for hours on end, building cubby houses and pretending we were wayward fairies on our way to the faraway tree. It was an air-bubble-childhood.”

  Alex linked his fingers with hers. “An air bubble? What does this mean?”

  Sophie flickered her gaze to his chiselled face and then turned her focus back to the pappadum. “You know, an air bubble. Like life is the water and our childhood was that single, miraculous bubble, floating indefatigably amongst it. We were immune from everything. Sadness, responsibility, grief and worry.”

  He didn’t speak, but his dark eyes urged her to continue. “Mum was magical all the time, but at Christmas, she was like an angel on earth.” Her smile was unknowingly enigmatic. “She spent months preparing. We didn’t have a lot of money, growing up, so she’d have to order our presents early. They were never extravagant. Just a book we wanted or maybe a special dress.” She shrugged. “We’d decorate the tree together, all four of us. It would take a whole day and we’d listen to carols, singing along as we hung all of our favourite pieces.” Her fingers toyed with her hair. “Mum was American, and she’d brought a heap of very old ornaments over with her. They were glass, and so beautiful and fragile that they still make me all gooey to think of them today.”

  “Gooey?” He teased.

  “You know. Heart rushing, excited. There were a million little things she did that made it the most beautiful time of year.”

  “What else?” It fascinated him, for his own life had been devoid of such traditions.

  “Well, we had a pudding recipe that would knock your socks off. So much rum and port, with fruit mince and figs. It was rich and heavy and oh so good. My sisters and I would huddle around mum while she made it, begging for tastes from the spoon.”

  He laughed softly at the memory. “And when she boiled it, the whole house would smell like Christmas. For days and days we’d joke that we were living in a cinnamon cloud.”

  He nodded, and so she continued. “We’d make a gingerbread house every year. We started off making just one. When we were young, mum would dig out the stencil and we’d sit around the table while she cut the pieces. But then, as we got older, we each tried our hand at making our own house. Eventually, it became a competition, and mum would judge the winner.”

  “And did you all win?”

  “Oh, no. Mum wasn’t one of those ‘please everyone’ new-age parents. She genuinely judged based on merit. Which meant I never won.”

  He laughed again. “Why not?”

  “Are you kidding? I’d eaten half the house by the time I got to stick it together. I am a sucker for gingerbread. The less baked the better. In fact, it would probably be my desert island food.”

  “A gingerbread house?”

  “Nope. Gingerbread dough. Unbaked. Cold and smooshy.”

  “That sounds … disgusting.”

  “You wait. I’ll make it for you one day.”

  Something odd flushed through him at the easy way she threw such promises around.

  He covered it quickly with another question. “Who made the best gingerbread houses?”

  “Ava,” she responded immediately. “I can still picture her, sitting up late measuring the walls to within a millimetre. She’d bake spare slabs in case any developed cracks. She is very precise.”

  “She sounds it.”

  Sophie sighed. “And on Christmas morning, we’d wake up to the smell of baked ham and scrambled eggs, and croissants with cheese. Mum was a wonderful cook. Looking back, it must have been exhausting, but she always swore she loved it.” Sophie’s smile was bitter-sweet. “That was mum, though. She was determined that we would have a happy, uneventful life.”

  “A true opposite to my own childhood, then.” He’d spoken without thinking. He never, without exception, spoke of his youth.

  But Sophie was fast. “In what way?”

  “We are not talking about me,” he attempted to demur, but she wasn’t going to let it pass so easily.

  “No, but I’d like to. I presume you mean you were the water. Or at least, that you were flotsam on the water. Rather than the air-bubble,” she clarified, at his lost expression.

  He couldn’t help but smile at her quick turn of phrase. “If you exchange water for sludge, then yes. I was detritus in the mud of life, during my childhood.”

  She squeezed his fingers. “I am tempted to say that it can’t have been so bad, except that I suspect you are not prone to exaggeration.”

  “No,” he admitted grimly. “It was more dire that I would admit to most people.”

  “How?” She pushed, in the same demanding way he had employed.

  And though he’d brought her to his house to seduce her, and though he believed he had every reason to distrust her, he heard himself say, “It would be impossible to describe.”

  Sophie lifted his hand above the table and unfurled his fingers. She placed a kiss in his palm and then closed his fist back up. “I want to know more.”

  An exasperated noise escaped his throat without his consent. “I’m not sure it would do any good to speak of it.”

  “But would it do any harm?”

  He studied her carefully. “You might think less of me.”

  Sophie pulled a face. “If you truly believe I am the kind of woman to judge someone on their background or the way they were raised then you don’t know me at all.” She flushed to the roots of her pale, silky hair. “You don’t know me at all. Not really. So let me tell you something. I don’t really care about where you’ve come from, except in so much as it changes who you are now. If you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll let it go. But if you’re hiding it from me because you’re ashamed, then I’m going to be very offended.”

  A long beat of silence throbbed between them before Alex found his voice. “You seem to have an ability to unsettle and surprise me.”

  “I try hard,” she teased with a shrug of her shoulders.

  “It is not something my lovers usually care to discuss.”

  And in a flash, the atmosphere began to crackle with tension. It zapped around them, and Sophie didn’t know where to look. Despite the crowd in the restaurant, they were alone, and her chest was hurting.

  “What do they want to discuss?” She managed through half-gritted teeth.

  “Sophie.” He sighed. “We have gone off-course.”

  “Have we?” She simpered, biting into the pappadum and swallowing the piece whole.

  “You were telling me about your air-bubble.”

  She lifted her water and sipped it slowly. It wasn’t his fault that her emotions were zipping all over the place. Something had slipped loose in her usual resolve and now it was up to Sophie to pick up the pieces.

  “It was my mother’s doing. She was determined that we would enjoy a beautiful youth.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she never had one,” Sophie said simply. “Her parents were poor, and she had to get a job when she was young. She grew up in Manhattan and she got a part time job in a record store, but it took her almost an hour to get there on three different busses. As soon as she found out she was pregnant with us, s
he drove off into the sunset.”

  “To Australia? That seems … both drastic and brave.”

  “Yes to both. That was my mum though. Brave and fearless, and determined as hell.” She sipped on her soda water, and told herself that the burning in her throat came from the bubbles and not the cloying threat of tears. “She was diving when she died.” Her eyes were prickling with the sting of unshed salt. “Countless people have said to me, ‘at least she died doing something she loved’.”

  Alex made a sound of frustration. “A pointless platitude. Far better to live and spend many more years doing what she loved than to die needlessly.”

  Sophie’s heart turned over in her chest. “Yes, exactly. That is exactly as I feel. It almost seems worse that we lost her to diving. As though one of her great loves betrayed her.”

  He pushed his sympathy deep down in his gut. He didn’t want to feel it for this woman. He couldn’t forget, no matter how enchanting her stories were, that she was a danger to him, for she was a danger to his sister.

  “And your father?” He enquired silkily.

  Sophie shrugged. “We never knew him.”

  “Never? He chose not to be in your lives?”

  “Apparently.” She bit down on her lip, a habit of hers he found distracting to the extreme.

  “You’ve never contacted him?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t want him in your life.” A statement, not a question.

  “I don’t know how to contact him,” she corrected, careful to keep emotion flattened from her tone.

  “What do you mean?” His eyes narrowed as he studied her.

  “Whoever he is, he wanted no part of mum when she told him she was pregnant. From what we know, which isn’t a lot, he paid her off to stay out of his life and keep quiet.”

  Something like anger rolled through Alex. Anger at this man? At his lack of integrity? “How old was your mother?”

  “Twenty four. My age.”

  “A baby.”

  “Hardly. How old are you?”

  His laugh was a rich sound. “Thirty four.”

  “A decade between us.” She reclined in her chair and studied his face. He had an ageless quality to him. Skin that was flawlessly tanned and eyes that were mysterious and loaded with emotion. “You are older than Helena,” Sophie said, moving her hands to her lap and clasping them there.