by Lynne Graham
‘You don’t walk out on me in a public place…ever!’ Aristandros raked back at her in a tone of fierce condemnation.
‘You can tear up the agreement. I’m leaving you, so all bets are off.’
‘You’re all grown-up now,’ Aristandros lanced back with derision. ‘You’re not allowed to run away when things get too hot for you.’
‘I’ve never run away from anything in my life!’ Ella yelled back at him, her temper unleashing like a dam overflowing.
‘You run from anything that upsets you.’
‘I’m not upset!’ Ella practically screamed at him.
‘This is not the calm, sensible Ella that I know.’
‘But you don’t know me!’
A sleek ebony brow listed. ‘Don’t I?’
‘No, you don’t!’ she repeated squarely.
Aristandros settled scornful dark eyes on her. ‘I have to confess that I didn’t expect quite such a hysterical reaction.’
‘Who are you calling hysterical?’ Ella threw the demand at him furiously. ‘And why the use of that word, “expect”? Are you suggesting that you deliberately chose to flirt with other women to get a reaction out of me?’
His brooding gaze locked to her hectically flushed and lovely face, Aristandros spread brown hands in a graceful gesture that neither confirmed nor denied. ‘Would I do something that calculating?’
‘Yes!’ Ella’s seething gaze was glued to him, her accusing stance unabated. ‘Yes, you would if it amused you, because you are the most naturally devious and manipulative man I have ever met.’
‘I could simply have told you that you were behaving badly,’ Aristandros sliced back. ‘It’s ill-mannered to keep on taking phone calls in company.’
Outraged by that censure of her own behaviour, Ella looked at him in raw disbelief. ‘How dare you tell me that I was behaving badly?’
His sculpted jawline squared even more, and he settled his steady gaze on her with considerable cool. ‘It’s the truth. Your behaviour was atrocious this evening. You went out in a sulk and you never came out of it.’
‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say!’
‘Is it? You didn’t want to leave Callie.’
‘So, I’m human and caring, which is more than anyone could say of your attitude tonight. You didn’t give a damn that she was ill!’ Ella condemned him hotly.
‘Then why did I ensure that I spoke to the doctor who attended her? And why did I check back with Kasma after that?’
Ella ground her teeth together, while giving him a look that would have withered a lesser man. ‘I didn’t know you’d talked to the doctor…you didn’t mention it.’
‘In short, I was as informed as you were, with regard to your many phone conversations,’ Aristandros skimmed back, smooth as glass.
An almost overwhelming desire to slap him threatened Ella’s cracking composure. ‘Maybe you did speak to the doctor.’
Aristandros dealt her a tough look. ‘I’m not lying. I may not get all emotional and dramatic like you do, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t also concerned about Callie tonight.’
In receipt of that cutting, hard-hitting reproof, Ella snatched in a deep, steadying breath. ‘I apologise if I misjudged you on that score.’
‘You did,’ Aristandros drawled, rubbing salt in an already open wound.
‘But I do not sulk…and I certainly wasn’t sulking earlier!’ Ella slung back at him angrily.
‘Maybe you have another word for it, but you were definitely in a strop.’
‘I was annoyed with you,’ she admitted grudgingly.
‘I’m not so thick-skinned that I didn’t get the message, but it was juvenile to parade your mood in public.’ Aristandros sent her a grim look. ‘I’m a very private man and I value discretion, but tonight you made a scene for the gossip columns. Do it one more time and I’m sending you back to London.’
Ella sent him a fiery look of sheer loathing. ‘You don’t need to send me any place. I’m leaving. But, my word, you are good at turning the tables, You haven’t said one word about your own inappropriate behaviour, except to imply that you were giving other women encouraging signals purely to rile me.’
Aristandros laughed out loud, the unexpected sound of his amusement shattering the tense atmosphere in the room. ‘Not to rile you.’
‘I don’t give a damn what you do,’ Ella hissed, slamming the case shut and closing it.
‘Liar,’ Aristandros framed silkily. ‘For a woman who doesn’t do jealousy, you were red-hot with it tonight.’
Ella went rigid, shot him a fuming appraisal and swung the case down. She was so mad she wanted to throw things at him. How dared he accuse her of being jealous? How dared he have the power to divine feelings she had not even admitted to herself? As she stalked across the room in a rage, he cut across her path and snatched the case off her. ‘What the heck do you think you’re doing?’ she shouted at him.
‘I’m preventing you from doing something very stupid, moli mou,’ Aristandros growled, throwing open the door of the dressing room and slinging the case in there with a resounding crash.
‘I’m not some whore who’s going to take whatever you throw at her!’ Ella flung at him wrathfully, adrenalin pumping like crazy through her veins and making it impossible for her to stay still or even think with any rationality. ‘I’m not interested in your money or what you can buy me. I’m not impressed. Nothing you could give me would persuade me to tolerate the kind of treatment you gave me tonight!’
‘Even if I admit that the only woman I want is you?’ Aristandros chided, leaning elegantly back against the door to close it. ‘Yes, I conducted an experiment tonight, I wanted a reaction.’
‘An experiment?’ Ella parrotted with raw incredulity.
‘A harmless one. Only a very possessive woman would get so worked up at the sight of me dancing with another woman.’
Her slim hands clenched into fists. So much emotion was hurtling round inside her that she felt frighteningly violent, and yet terrifyingly vulnerable at the same time.
‘But that’s all that I did,’ Aristandros continued steadily. ‘Nothing else.’
The hard truth of that statement struck Ella like an avalanche powerful enough to knock her off her feet. So he had danced with another woman and smiled and laughed…big deal! Social interactions of that ilk were normal at parties. What had made her overreact to such an extent? Why did she feel like rage was ready to explode out of her because she couldn’t contain it? He had wanted a reaction and she had given it to him. Only a very possessive woman…And in spite of all her denials she was possessive, wasn’t she? Violently possessive, with feelings and responses born from years of sitting by on the sidelines looking at photos of Ari with other women and reading about his affairs. Lily had suggested it was an unhealthy obsession, and so it was, for it had fostered a bone-deep streak of jealousy that she had not even recognised for what it was.
‘Maybe I overreacted.’ Ella voiced those words as though they were composed in a foreign language she found hard to pronounce. It was an acknowledgement of folly which cost her pride dear. For a moment she was standing outside herself and wondering in horror at the raging mindless jealousy that had consumed her and almost persuaded her to burn every one of her boats. Had she truly been willing to sacrifice Callie in that conflagration as well? She was genuinely appalled.
The silence stretched, drawn tight by her strain.
Ella focused on Ari’s lean, classic profile, her nervous tension at an incredible high. He had set her up to see how she would react to his flirtation, and he would have had to torture her to get an apology out of her. She hated him, not only for doing that to her, but also for appreciating that what he had made her feel scared her. Suddenly she did not want to probe the precise nature and cause of the madness that had overpowered her common sense. ‘The last couple of days—all the changes in my life—have been an incredible strain,’ she said instead, her low voice tight and stilted, becau
se her pride was cringing at the excuse she was using.
‘Of course,’ Aristandros breathed with an almost instantaneous agreement of that explanation that took her aback.
She was standing beside a mirror, and she looked at herself. The illusion of perfection was gone now, replaced by tousled hair, smudged mascara, lipstick and a T-shirt bought at a rock concert.
‘Sometimes I push too hard.’ Aristandros murmured that concession without any expression at all. ‘But don’t ever walk out on me like that again.’
Ella jerked her head in agreement, her throat taut with self-restraint. He had pushed her so hard that he had almost broken her. She was scared that she was going to cry as her jangling emotions continued to surge without any hope of being vented. She was fighting to reinstate intelligence and control. He reached for her before she could seal shut the dangerous gaps in her mental armour. The intoxicating sensuality of his mouth met hers in a hot, melting collision.
She fell into that kiss like a drowning swimmer in search of air. Hunger exploded through her every nerve ending in a chain reaction. Her hands delved deep into his thick, black hair. She could feel the raw passion pent up in his powerful body, and even the clothing between them couldn’t douse her awareness of the bold ridge of his erection. The sure knowledge of his desire made resisting her own need impossible. The taste of him went to her head, and she felt dizzy and breathless. He curved his hands to her hips and settled her on the side of the bed where he proceeded to dispense with the barrier of her jeans.
‘I can’t salsa dance like that,’ Ella heard herself say abruptly. ‘Like that redhead—’
‘I can take care of that,’ Aristandros declared, pushing up the T-shirt and burying his face in the scented valley between her high breasts, impatiently while he peeled her free of the expensive scraps of satin and lace that still separated him from her slender curves.
Her chest rose and fell rapidly with the short, straining breaths she drew. She was hyper-aware of his every move. The abrasive brush of his stubble against the smooth slope of her breasts sent a violent shiver through her. The scent of him that close left her liquid with longing. ‘I want you,’ she admitted in a driven undertone.
Lush black lashes lifted from scorching golden eyes. ‘I have died and gone to heaven,’ Aristandros breathed softly. ‘I thought I was never going to hear those words from your lips.’
‘We’ve only been together two days!’ Ella protested.
‘Since when have I had patience?’ Aristandros traded, long fingers skating over the tormentingly tender flesh between her thighs with a provocative skill that caused a startled gasp to part the swollen contours of her lips.
Her head tipped back against the pillows and her spine incurved. A glorious, heavy lassitude was spreading through her limbs, closely followed by energising darts of erotic sensation. She strained up to him, moaning out loud when he used his sensual mouth to tease and taste her urgently sensitive nipples. There was a sweet, painful tightness gathering in her pelvis as her inner muscles tensed and her hips squirmed in a rhythmic pattern against the sheet. She wanted, needed him. He turned her over on to her stomach and raised her on to her knees.
For a split second Ella didn’t know what he intended but, an instant later he plunged his fully engorged manhood into her yearning flesh. Shock and wild excitement gripped her in an overpowering wave. His every deep thrust sent a hot, primitive charge to electrify her. The erotic pleasure of his virile dominance ravished her sense, and she whimpered her delight, encouraging him with every yielding flex of her hips. The seething tension and disturbed emotions she had stored up were blown away by a spellbinding orgasm that flooded her body with ecstasy and drained her of energy.
‘Better?’ Aristandros muttered thickly, curving her into his arms in the dizzy, dreamy aftermath when she honestly felt that she would never move again.
‘Still floating,’ she whispered before she could think better of it.
He leant over her, keen dark eyes lustrous as polished jet beneath the fringe of his black lashes. ‘So why do you fight me?’
Ella rested her head against a brown muscular shoulder, revelling in the intimate connection of their bodies and the gloriously familiar scent of his skin. ‘I like a challenge?’
His incredibly handsome features taut, Aristandros closed his arms round her and studied her with sardonic force. ‘Stop it now, hara mou. Making me angry is a bad idea.’
Ella let her fingers trail along the line of his ruthless but aesthetically beautiful mouth. ‘It makes you more human, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t ever be all giggly and flattering and submissive.’
‘That’s not what I want, either. Be natural, be yourself…the way you used to be without even trying,’ Aristandros urged.
Ella lost colour and turned her head away, knowing there was no going back to the young woman he was remembering. Was that what he wanted from her—the impossible? The turning back of time? How could she be twenty-one years old again and in love for the first time in her life? Even thinking about being that vulnerable again turned her stone-cold with fear inside. Loving Ari again would be a one-way ticket to hell.
‘If you stop looking for problems, you’ll soon find that you can enjoy what we have,’ Aristandros intoned with blistering conviction. ‘We’re sailing back to Greece tomorrow.’
But Ella was already recalling the crazy weeks when she had been twenty-one and madly in love with him. Everybody who was anybody had spent those weeks warning her that Ari Xenakis would quickly lose interest in her. That was his track record, and his appetite for beautiful women ensured that he had an intimidating reputation as a heartbreaker. Ella, however, remembered feeling ridiculously happy during that period. Cool reflection hadn’t got a look-in. She had not continually rehashed their dates in her mind looking for hints that he might be considering a future with her, either, for that possibility had not even occurred to her. She had simply adored being with him and had lived for the moment.
He had taken her out sailing a lot, for long drives and lengthy meals, rarely inviting others to join them. They hadn’t gone to many parties or clubs, and when they had they hadn’t stayed long. They had talked constantly and she had been herself, for she had not known how to be anything else in those days. Hard as it was to credit now, she had believed she had met her soulmate in Ari. The second time she’d called a halt to their love-making he had just laughed and made no further attempt to persuade her into bed. When he’d invited her to his grandfather’s seventy-fifth birthday celebrations, she’d been overjoyed, because she had known how close Drakon was to his grandson and had felt honoured to be invited to meet him.
Now, a good deal older and wiser, she lay in the darkness, dully, painfully, reliving that final evening.
‘I love you,’ Aristandros had told her squarely, and she had responded with the same words. And, although he had afterwards accused her of insincerity, she had really meant what she said.
‘I want to be with you. Will you marry me?’ he had asked.
And her heart had bounced as high as a rubber ball, since it had not occurred to her then that he might have made the offer with sacrificial restrictions attached, a sort of trick question which was likely to come back and haunt her and leave her heartbroken. She had dimly assumed that they would get engaged and that Ari would visit her in London and marry her once she had completed her training. When he had got up to make a speech in honour of his grandfather’s birthday, he had announced their engagement—along with the news that she would be giving up medicine.
Reality had swiftly burst her bubble of happiness. After a ferocious argument he had dumped her, and minutes later retracted the announcement he had made. Her family had taken her home in disgrace, unable to believe or come to terms with the startling idea that she could possibly have refused to marry a Xenakis.
Aristandros catapulted her back into the present by hauling her up against his lithe, muscular frame. Blue eyes very wide, she
clashed with his heavily lidded, smouldering, dark-golden gaze. This man, she acknowledged with a fast-beating heart, already had the power to make her feel bitterly jealous and act in an irrational way. He was dangerous, was a very dangerous threat in every way to her peace of mind.
‘Once is not enough,’ he growled sexily, half under his breath. ‘I still want you, moli mou.’
And some very basic element in Ella exulted in her sexual hold over him. In that instant, her heart racing, her pulses quickening and her treacherous body quivering with anticipation, she was a slave to the promise of the pleasure he would give her and she had no time to spare for agonising over the label that other people might affix to her position in his life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TEN days later, Hellenic Lady arrived in Athens.
Ella was still in bed in the yacht’s magnificent main state-room and she was devouring the British newspapers, several of which contained items about her. It was an extraordinary experience to suddenly see herself appear for the first time in print in the guise of a celebrity. In her case, however, her fame was purely borrowed from association with Aristandros. She was variously described as his ‘new companion, Dr Dazzler’, ‘Calliope’s sexy aunt’ and ‘the family black-sheep’. Her fascination only died when she came on a disturbing couple of paragraphs that suggested that her family had shut the door on her because she was a promiscuous wild-child.
Aristandros strode in, clad today in a dark pinstripe suit of faultless tailoring that made the most of his tall, well-built body. He was said to electrify a room when he walked into it, and Ella was certainly not immune to that effect. She tensed against the heaped-up pillows, sapphire-blue eyes very wide in the heart-shaped delicacy of her face.
‘I’ve been working for four hours. One glimpse of you,’ Aristandros husked, strolling over to the side of the bed, neatly sidestepping the sprinkle of discarded toys that betrayed Callie’s visit earlier that morning, ‘And I want to get straight back into bed.’