The Millionaire's Mistress

by Miranda Lee

  Marcus swore violently. He’d been doing quite well, trying not to think about her. Now she was back, tormenting his mind and his body. The thought that later this evening would find her alone in his office at the bank brought devilishly wicked temptations. He felt compelled to go there, to see her in the flesh. No one would think anything of his turning up, not even Justine. He had every reasonable excuse to return to the bank today.

  ‘Had to work late,’ he imagined himself saying to her when she came in. ‘Missed far too many hours this afternoon.’

  His smile was self-mocking. He wondered what she’d say if he told her what he was really thinking. ‘Missed you already, sweetness. Can’t wait till Saturday night. Care for a session on the boardroom table?’

  No.

  That was what she would say to him. No.

  Marcus was not about to put himself into a position where he might look desperate. Or like a fool. Which meant he would just have to wait patiently till Saturday night before making his next move.

  Clenching his teeth hard in his jaw, he pointed the remote at the TV screen and consigned the blonde newsreader to oblivion, then rose to get himself another cup of coffee.

  Justine wanted to cry. She’d been stuck in a traffic jam for fifteen minutes, yet she was less than fifty metres from the tall blue glass building which housed the bank. A couple of times she’d been tempted to leave her car where it was and just walk. But she couldn’t, could she? She was trading the darned thing in tomorrow. She needed the car. It was worth more money to her than two weeks’ work as a cleaner.

  Her insistence on doing this cleaning job that morning had been more a matter of pride and stubbornness than desperate need, despite what she’d said to her mother and Trudy. She’d wanted to show Marcus that she wasn’t lazy, that she was prepared to work hard. And now she was going to be late.

  Damn, damn and double damn!

  At long last the car ahead moved, and although it was at a crawling pace the line of traffic eventually crept through the lights, where the presence of shattered glass all over the road indicated an earlier accident.

  What rotten luck, Justine thought. Finally she was able to turn off the highway into the car park driveway. She whipped down the ramp, where she was stopped by a barrier and a security guard, who told her officiously that this was a private car park and not a racetrack. Justine kept her cool, flashed him one of her winning smiles, then showed him the pass the personnel manager had given her that morning.

  ‘I’m a relief cleaner,’ she explained. ‘This is my first night. There was an accident up the road and it’s made me late.’

  The guard frowned at her expensive car, shrugged, then directed her to a reserved though now empty parking space in a corner by the lifts. She was only twelve minutes late on arrival on the sixth floor, where she hunted frantically for the cleaner who was supposed to tell her what to do and how to do it.

  Justine located her in the very cubicle which had been the scene of her first embarrassing encounter with Marcus. After explanations and apologies, the woman—who was around fifty and called Pat—kitted Justine out in a grey overall and supplied her with a mobile cart full of cleaning equipment, along with a huge set of keys.

  The seventh floor was her domain, she was instructed, and each room was to be securely locked after being cleaned. She was to start at the far end of the corridor, where the boardroom and the big boss’s suite were, then work backwards. Vacuuming and dusting the rooms was on the agenda every night. Nothing was to be touched in any of the offices, except the rubbish bins which required emptying. Lastly, the washrooms were to be cleaned. There were four on the seventh floor. Mr Osborne had a small en suite bathroom attached to his office as well.

  ‘I stop for a cuppa and a bildde around eight-thirty,’ Pat told her at the lift doors. ‘I’ll give you a call. Oh, and don’t worry if some of the rooms aren’t empty. The fellas in this ’ere establishment are workaholics and slave away into the wee small hours of the night. Just clean around ‘em. They’ll hardly notice.’

  Pat gave Justine a sharp look. ‘Er...I take that back. A fella would have to be dead not to notice you, lovie. You’d better tie that hair of yours back. And don’t smile too often. You only have five hours to get around the whole floor, and being chatted up is not on your list of jobs.’

  Justine wound her hair up into an untidy and hopefully unattractive knot on the short ride up to the seventh floor, then wiped her lipstick off with the back of her hand. She hadn’t come here to be hit upon by some yuppie bank executive. She’d come to clean, and to prove something to herself and Marcus.

  The lift doors opened and she stepped out into the hushed corridor, pushing the cleaning cart before her. Pat had been right. There were lights on in a few of the offices. A door on her right suddenly opened and a man in a grey suit hurried past, not so much as giving her a glance. He looked very harried.

  Was this what Marcus demanded of his employees? she wondered. Ten-hour days and tunnel vision? Was this what Marcus himself was like most of the time? She recalled how startled his secretary had been when he’d said he was taking the afternoon off. Obviously he didn’t play hookey from work too often.

  Her mind turned momentarily to his marriage and the reasons for its failure. Trudy had called his exwife a trollop. But Trudy called every second female a trollop! Maybe Marcus had never been home, and his wife had strayed out of neglect. Such things happened.

  She would ask Trudy tomorrow to find out whatever she could from her father about Marcus’s marriage and the woman he’d married. She wanted to know how long the marriage had lasted and how long it was since his divorce was finalised.

  Justine recoiled at the sudden appalling thought that there might have been children involved. She didn’t want Marcus to have children. Actually, she didn’t want him to have had a wife, either. She certainly didn’t like the idea of his ever having been in love before.

  But he’s not in love now, you fool, came the savage voice of reason. Certainly not with you! He’s struggling to like you. He wants to get you into bed, darling. That’s the bottom line. He admitted it. You tempted him last Friday and he finally acted on that temptation. Keep that thought in mind and don’t start turning this into a romance. It’s a matter of chemistry, not true caring, of lust, not true love.

  Justine’s stomach contracted, and her heart did as well. Oh, God... Was Trudy right? Was she falling in love with Marcus? Had she already fallen in love with him?

  She didn’t know. How could she? She’d never fallen in love before, had no idea what it felt like. Wasn’t it more likely she’d fallen into lust? After all, whenever her thoughts turned to Marcus, sex was not far behind. She could not stop thinking about what it would be like, being with him. Saturday night could not come quickly enough.

  Her resolve to tell Marcus she was a virgin wavered considerably in the face of the possibility he might run a mile once he knew her lack of experience. That was not what she wanted. Not at all. She wanted his mouth back on hers, and his hands, and every other part of his body!

  A disturbingly erotic shudder rippled through her.

  Dear God, this will never do, she decided shakily. She had to stop thinking about him or nothing would ever get done here tonight.

  But not thinking about Marcus was impossible, especially once she pushed the cart down the corridor to the reception area where she’d sat that very morning, waiting to see him. Although the lights were still on, his secretary’s desk was now unattended, her computer turned off, her chair pushed back.

  Grace was not a young woman, a fact which had pleased Justine at the time. If his secretary had been a glamorous young piece Justine knew she would have been jealous.

  Was jealousy a sign of love? Or just lust? Whatever, it was certainly a sign of feeling something. Boys had often accused her of being heartless over the years, of caring for no one but herself. Justine had shrugged off their accusations as sour grapes because she hadn’t cared a whit abo
ut them. She would not have been jealous of any girl ensnaring Howard Barthgate, or any of the boys she’d gone out with. But the thought of Marcus admiring or being with any other female brought jabs of real pain.

  Justine shook her head at herself. Lust or love, it was not a very nice thing to suffer from. She decided she didn’t like it one bit!

  Marcus lasted till twenty past six. His third cup of coffee was left to go cold on a side table while he dashed to his room and pulled on underpants before dressing in what came quickest to hand—a pair of grey trousers which had just been returned from the drycleaners and were hanging on the wardrobe door. He grabbed a navy silk shirt from his shirt drawer and fumbled appallingly with the buttons. Grey socks and black leather shoes proved not so difficult, but were still irritatingly time-consuming.

  Another precious minute was wasted trying to put some order into his pool-damp hair, which had a tendency to kink and wave when wet. Usually he blow-dryed it straight. Tonight he didn’t have time, or the patience. Despite his rush, it was still twenty five to seven by the time he backed out of the garage and pointed in the direction of the Pacific Highway. As he accelerated away, he thanked his lucky stars that he’d bought a house close to the bank. Ten minutes and he’d be there!

  Not quite. There must have been an accident earlier, for the traffic was backed up and moving very slowly.

  Seven had come and gone by the time a very frustrated Marcus pulled into the underground car park under the concrete and glass skyscraper which housed his bank, only to have the security guard flash him an anxious look.

  ‘Gee, Mr Osborne, you said you’d gone for the day. I...er...I let someone else use your parking spot. A new cleaner. Pretty little thing. She was running late because of the traffic. Sorry, Mr Osborne, but I didn’t think you’d mind. The spot next to your usual is empty.’

  He didn’t mind at all—till he saw what kind of a car Justine was driving.

  Marcus slid his Merc into the spot next to the sporty Nissan and glared across at the sleekly silver lines. He knew exactly what such a car was worth, especially one so new. Hardly the sort of transport a girl needed when she was down to her last dollar, when that very morning she’d begged to be allowed to work as a cleaner because she needed the money. Even if she didn’t own the car outright, the insurance alone would be quite high, much higher than an ordinary little runabout which would have sufficed for her needs.

  Clearly Justine wasn’t about to compromise the parts of her life which showed her status to the world at large. Her home. Her car. Her wardrobe.

  There was no longer any doubt in Marcus’s mind that Justine intended to put plan B into action in the not too distant future. Everything else she was doing were merely stop-gap measures, designed to keep the wolf from the door till she could land herself that sugar-daddy husband she’d seemingly scorned.

  But was the object of her manipulations yours truly? he speculated caustically. She was certainly working hard to change his bad opinion of her.

  Marcus suspected, however, he was another stop-gap measure—someone to satisfy her highly sexed nature till a suitable marital candidate came along. She’d have to be a fool to think he’d marry her, given the manner of their initial meeting.

  Justine Montgomery might be a lot of things, but not a fool.

  No. She’d decided to kill two birds with one stone, supplying herself with a lover while conveniently keeping him sweet over the loan at the same time. Then, when plan B succeeded, she would have done with both in one fell swoop.

  Or maybe not? Marcus pondered darkly. Maybe, if he pleased her in bed, she might plan to keep him on as her lover. It would not be the first time an ambitious young woman had married one man to better her financial position while entertaining other males on the side.

  Marcus rode the elevator up to the seventh floor with fire in his eyes, and in his belly. If Justine thought she could use him, then she had another think coming. It was her who was going to be used. Ruthlessly. Smoothly. Mercilessly.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  JUSTINE was finding cleaning more complex than she’d thought it could possibly be. There was so much equipment on her cart. Pat had assumed she knew what was used for what, and she did recognise some of the products, but the others required a good reading of the label before she understood their purpose and the right method of application, which slowed things down somewhat.

  Marcus’s washroom had proved more difficult than his office, but she was proud of the job she’d done and was standing in the doorway, admiring the sparkling surfaces and smudge-free mirror, when Marcus’s face suddenly appeared in that mirror, right behind her left shoulder. She almost dropped the can of spray-on polish she was holding.

  ‘My God, Marcus!’ she exclaimed, whirling to smile shakily up at him. ‘You almost scared me to death then. What on earth are you doing here?’ she demanded to know while her eyes ran over his startlingly casual yet still elegant clothes. He looked sinfully sexy in that navy silk shirt, the open neck revealing a hint of dark hair on his chest. Justine had never thought she would like a hairy-chested man. Now it seemed a most desirable asset.

  ‘I had to get something from my office,’ he said, his dark eyes running over her in return, their expression dryly amused by her appearance.

  In truth, the overall she was wearing was much too big for her slender frame, and lacking shape altogether. A grey colour, it was like a boiler suit, with studs which snapped shut down the front from the neck to the groin.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said, a mixture of embarrassment and arousal heating her face. ‘I look ridiculous. Pat couldn’t find any smaller ones.’

  ‘You still look a damned sight cuter than Gwen did,’ he said, his eyes raking over her once more.

  But not with amusement this time. A raw, naked passion blazed in their black depths, both shocking and exciting her.

  She took a somewhat shaky step backwards, which he seemed to read as a silent invitation, for he followed her into the en suite bathroom and shut the door behind them. Justine just stood there like a frightened rabbit while he took the spray can from her frozen right hand and deposited it on top of the toilet.

  She wanted him to kiss her, but she was afraid all of a sudden. There was a dark intensity about Marcus—an almost angry quality—which she found both unnerving and disturbing. But, for all that, she was powerless to stop him, her body already filled with a deep longing to feel his mouth and hands on her once more.

  He obliged. Oh, how he obliged, kissing her with a hunger which rattled her brain and took her breath away while his busy hands were snapping the overall open and peeling it back till it fell off her shoulders and pooled onto the white-tiled floor, leaving her standing there in nothing but her joggers and undies.

  It momentarily crossed Justine’s befuddled mind that her very sexy-looking pink satin half-cup bra and French knickers did not present a virginal image, neither did the way she suddenly began undressing Marcus with as much indecent haste as he’d stripped her.

  His shirt buttons were proving decidedly difficult, so he simply ripped the shirt apart from under her fumbling fingers, sending buttons flying everywhere. Four frantic hands disposed of his trousers, Justine’s eyes blinking wide at the size of the bulge in his underpants.

  It was a sobering moment when he took her hand and held it to him, letting her feel the harsh outline of his stunningly large erection. There was no way, she realised, that he wasn’t going to hurt her, no way she could hide her virginity. Not that she really wanted to. She wanted him to know how special this was for her, how special she found him. Whether it was true love or not didn’t matter. It was still the first time any man had made her feel like this.

  ‘Marcus,’ she rasped, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth. ‘I...I...’

  ‘Don’t talk,’ he ordered brusquely, and bent to dispose of his underpants before straightening.

  Justine could only stare in awe at the power of his naked male body with all its aggre
ssive sexuality. Her mouth dried as she tried to imagine such a formidable shaft buried deep inside her, her heart stopping for a moment.

  But then he took her hand again and wrapped it around his straining flesh, urging her to stroke its satiny length, to feel its strength as well as its strangely stirring vulnerability. She did what he wanted, and watched as his eyes closed on a moan of raw, ragged pleasure.

  The sound found echoes in her own body. Soon she was burning with desire, any idea of saying anything that might stop him swept away by her own unstoppable yearnings.

  When he pushed her downwards and pressed himself against her lips, she took him blindly into the heat of her mouth, no thought entering her head but that she wanted to please him, to give him pleasure. He stopped her all too swiftly, lifting her back up to cup her face and stare into her passionglazed eyes with a hot and almost disbelieving gaze.

  ‘You’re a witch,’ he growled, before his head bent to take a fierce possession of her lips, his tongue ravaging the depths of her mouth with a wild and frenzied passion. She gasped for breath when he finally abandoned her mouth, but there was to be no peace for the rest of her body. He grabbed her upper arms in a bruising grip and hoisted her up to sit on the vanity, pushing her legs apart and moving between them. He kissed her neck while he dragged her bra straps off her shoulders, peeling them downwards till the satin cups gave up their swollen inhabitants to his questing and quite ravenous mouth.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Justine moaned when he swept his tongue over each rock-hard nipple. Her back arched to offer her breasts up to be licked and sucked more easily; her hands pressed palms-down on the granite surface at her sides. Her eyes closed in ecstasy, her head tipping back, her lips falling softly apart. It felt better than it had that afternoon, the sensations electric and compelling. She panted his name, moaned her dismay when he stopped, her head snapping forward to dazedly watch him yank off her joggers then peel her panties down her legs.