by Julia James
So she could start living again.
Markos’s mood was foul. The flight had been delayed, making him late at Heathrow, and the ten days he’d spent in Athens had been purgatory. Every last complaint he’d known his father was going to throw at him he had—and more. Worse, the old man had upped the ante disastrously by holding a dinner party to which he had invited the latest prospective ‘good Greek wife’ for his errant son.
Apollonia Dimistris was, Markos had instantly seen, exactly the type his father would like for him. Expensively dressed without the slightest attempt to make her attractive, she was demure to the point of inarticulate. Her mother had been more than happy to fill the conversational gaps, and Markos had been forced to behave with rigid politeness the whole evening, raining down silent curses on his father’s head—most particularly when his father had made excruciatingly heavy-handed remarks about his age, decrepitude and his longing for the next Makarios generation to arrive, at which Constantia, Apollonia’s mother, had smiled with an infuriatingly satisfied look on her face.
Markos had finished the evening when, finally, the dinner party had dispersed, by escaping to his own rooms in the opulent Makarios mansion and drinking too many glasses of ouzo.
For the first time in ten days his mood lifted a thread.
Thank God he was away from Athens. Thank God he was away from his father. And thank God the woman waiting for him in his London apartment was as different from Apollonia Dimistris as a succulent peach from an unripe damson!
Vanessa would be waiting for him, he knew—waiting with open arms and a warm, willing body. Beautiful and giving and oh, so eager for everything he was going to give her.
He felt himself stir as he pictured the woman who had proved such an effective means of banishing the ennui that had been haunting him in Paris. He’d been without sex for ten days—and that was ten days too many.
He leaned back in his soft leather seat as the car creamed down the M4 into London. Relaxing his leg muscles, he started to loosen his tie.
He wanted no delays when he got to his apartment.
‘Markos!’
Vanessa’s voice was faint with disbelief. For one endless moment she just stood, out on the terrace, staring at the silhouette outlined against the sliding glass doors.
‘Oh, Markos!’
She ran to him, clinging to him, joy surging through her. His body was strong and hard against her as she wrapped herself to him, hugging him tightly, burying her face in his shoulder.
His hands slid along her cheeks and tilted her face up to look at him.
‘Miss me?’ he asked softly.
Anguish flared in her eyes. ‘It’s been awful without you!’
He gave a low laugh, pleased with her answer. He closed her against him more tightly yet, and she felt, with a sudden spur of both shock and excitement, that he was fully aroused.
His mouth came down on hers. Hungry, sensual, demanding. She opened to him instantly, letting his tongue forge inside, his kiss deepen, his fingers spearing into her hair. Excitement leapt in her again, raw and primitive.
For ten long, agonising days she had been without him, and now, out of the blue, he had walked in from the bleak winter’s night and turned it instantly into pulsing heat.
‘Thee mou, but I want you!’
His voice was husky, and it sent a million shivers through her. Her breasts pressed against his hard body, their ripened peaks straining beneath the fine wool of her sweater. His hand slid from her hair, curving luxuriatingly down the length of her back to fasten over her rounded bottom, moulding her into him so that she could feel the full strength of just how much he wanted her.
He was guiding her towards the bedroom, his mouth still devouring hers, and excitement was splintering through her.
She felt herself tumble down on the bed, his weight coming on top of her. Clothes were shed—she didn’t know how, didn’t care, only felt the rabid, greedy hunger for him coursing through her, unstoppably. He was pressing her down, his bare, hair-roughened thigh parting hers, his hips positioning himself over her, one hand closing over hers and lifting them high over her head, so that she was splayed out for him while the other hand palmed her straining breast. His eyes were pinpoints of hunger.
She felt her back arch, her hips pressing against him, feeling the full, delicious length of him. In one swift, decisive movement he lifted away from her, then, with a slicing action, he plunged into her, right to the hilt.
She cried out, spine arching even more, arms straining where he pressed down upon her hands, and he filled her.
He sliced again, and again, and each time she cried out, more, and more breathlessly, the raw, greedy sensation of what he was making her feel buckling through her, shock after shock.
Excitement surged, and surged again, driving through her, unstoppable, feeding on itself, thrust after thrust, as every nerve and cell in her body started to fire.
‘Oh, God, Markos—Markos!’
Sensation exploded through her. Buckling her body, sheeting through her flesh. It was unbearable. It was incredible. It was—Markos.
He came the moment she did, as if he had only been waiting for her to ignite before he gave free rein to his own demands. His body convulsed into hers, surging in its explosive release.
For one long, endless moment they writhed in unison, their bodies in tumult.
Then, with slow, absolute exhaustion, he lowered himself down on her, his body slick with sweat. His hold on her hands slackened and she felt his weight press her down.
Exhaustion drained through her. She felt as if she had run a mile at a sprint, her whole body trembling and sweating. Her mind was blown, and she was incapable of doing anything but simply lying there, eyes closed, as her breathing slowly became less ragged. Against her breasts she could feel his chest rising and falling in panting breaths.
She felt his mouth on hers, moving with dying possession.
‘Now, that,’ he said, his voice rough with repletion, ‘was worth coming back for.’
His mouth slid from her, his head nestling into the pillow. She felt his dead weight over her, felt his breathing slow, his hold on her slacken. His breathing deepened, his body cooling.
He slept.
Beneath him, Vanessa lay, limbs inert and splayed, hands around Markos’s smooth back. Heaviness filled her, and repletion, and a deep, deep flood of gratitude.
Markos stood under the shower, needles of water pounding over his skin. He felt fantastic. The sex had completely restored his good mood, and it had been fantastic. He tried to think of a woman he’d enjoyed more, and failed. He put the search aside. Who cared whether previous women had been as good? The one he had now was exactly what he wanted—and exactly what he had.
On top of being such a knockout, such a novelty to teach the art of pleasure to, and so openly adoring of him, she was the easiest mistress he’d ever had. She made no demands on him. She didn’t ask for clothes, jewels, gifts. She didn’t drop subtle-as-lead hints, didn’t pester him, didn’t phone him, didn’t ask him where he was going or what he was doing. As for other men—well, they simply didn’t exist. He could see that, and it pleased him considerably. Even Leo, whose allure for women was infamous, had no appeal for her. He’d asked her outright once whether she didn’t consider his older cousin had sex appeal, and Vanessa had just looked at him as if he was mad.
His eyes shadowed briefly. An exchange he’d had with Leo at his ostentatious Schloss Edelstein fleeted back in his memory.
‘Watch yourself, little cousin,’ Leo had murmured caustically. ‘A devoted woman can be most dangerous of all—even to someone as paranoid about marriage as you! You’d do better sticking with the ones who are open about wanting your money—you know where you are with them.’
As he’d spoken, a harsh, black light had darkened Leo’s eyes. Markos had ignored it—and the warning he’d just received. So Vanessa was devoted to him? Where was the danger in that? Her very devotion made her the easie
st mistress he’d ever had. Vanessa did everything he wanted, in bed and out of it, and never complained, never hinted or whinged, or played sulky or made up to other males.
Least of all did she try to manipulate him. In that she was a balm to his bruised skin after ten days of having his benighted father going on at him, trying to play on his son’s nonexistent sense of guilt for failing to produce heirs.
Hell, the last thing he wanted was offspring! Didn’t he know, first hand, what it was like growing up with no reason for his existence other than to be a bargaining chip for his mercenary mother and a walking reproduction of Makarios DNA for his father?
No, he wasn’t going to think about that. Nor about his father’s exasperating but pointless machinations. He had successfully compartmentalised his life years ago. There was his real life—running his share of the Makarios Corporation and enjoying the plentiful fruits that that brought him, from fast cars to beautiful women. And even when that had threatened to become boring through familiarity and repetition the arrival of the devoted Vanessa in his life had banished that danger.
And then there was the life he had turned away from, where he was supposed to do his family duty and keep his father happy. Well, his father hadn’t worried much about his happiness while he was growing up, so why should he worry about his father’s now?
Markos’s expression hardened. After the bitter wrangling over custody, when his father had finally got back his nine-year-old son, had he wanted him enough to keep him at his side? In his house? No, he’d packed him off to a private international boarding school in Switzerland, with no one except his cousin Leo to look out for him. As for his mother, once she’d lost the custody battle she’d had no more interest in the child who had been merely a pawn in her financial manoeuvrings against her ex-husband. Instead she’d devoted herself to making the most of her massive alimony by enjoying every fleshpot she could flash herself around in.
Markos reached to snap off the shower, deliberately turning off memory along with the water.
Stepping out, he lifted up a fresh towel and patted himself dry, dropping it to the floor to take another larger one to wrap around his hips. He went out into the bedroom.
The bed was empty. He frowned slightly. Vanessa had been asleep when he’d woken, and because today he needed to go into his London office to catch up on his business affairs he’d had no reason to wake her.
Was she making him breakfast?
She liked to do that. Another sign of her devotion, he supposed. She seemed to get a kick out of cooking for him, instead of summoning Housekeeping or having breakfast delivered from the central kitchens which serviced all the apartments.
But there was no sign of her in the huge, gleaming kitchen, glistening with polished steel surfaces. Annoyed now, Markos padded into the lounge. Also deserted. Then an idea struck him. Even after five months of intimacy Vanessa was still reluctant to come into the en suite bathroom if he was showering, so she often slipped into one of the en suites in the other bedrooms.
He went exploring, and ran her to earth.
She was in one of the bathrooms all right.
And she was throwing up.
Markos froze. His initial impulse was to retreat hurriedly, partly out of male reluctance to be in the vicinity of such an event, and partly out of consideration that the last thing she would appreciate was a witness.
Then, hard on the heels of both impulses, another thought struck him.
What the hell was she throwing up for?
Cold snaked through him. Even he, with his limited knowledge of the female reproduction system, knew about morning sickness.
No. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.
Could it?
Urgently he forced his brain to work. A stab of relief went through him. She’d been due a period just when she’d left for Austria—he remembered he’d been relieved that it would not inconvenience him, as he had missed the first few days of the fashion shoot because of a trip to New York.
Silently, on bare feet, he retreated. Vanessa, with all her innate reserve, would not appreciate his presence right now. Instead, he’d go and make her some coffee. She’d appreciate that far more. Feeling virtuous, he headed away.
Shakily, Vanessa finished rinsing out her mouth, giving the loo one last flush and an extra helping of disinfectant.
Where on earth had that come from? She’d slipped out of bed, heading for this bathroom, and suddenly, in the doorway, nausea had rushed up and taken her over.
With trembling fingers she pushed her tumbled hair back and stared at her reflection. She looked as white as a ghost, despite the fine sheen of gold dust that was the sole effect of her freckles on her complexion.
I’ve just been sick in the morning.
The words tolled through her brain, but she could not believe them. Nor their import.
I can’t be pregnant—I just can’t.
For a moment she just stared, thinking the unthinkable. Then, with a wash of relief, she realised it was all right. No, of course she couldn’t be pregnant—she’d had a period in Austria. It had been a bit of an odd period—different, scantier—but she remembered reading somewhere that altitude could affect menstrual cycles, and had put it down to that.
It must be a bug, then, making her throw up. Or a last bite from the one that she’d suffered just after Christmas, when Markos had insisted she get antibiotics.
Maybe, she thought with a wry smile as she made her way shakily out of the bathroom, it had been more than missing Markos that had made her feel so rotten these past ten days. Maybe she’d been coming down with a bug as well. The smile faded. She didn’t want to be ill with Markos—not again—it would be such a drag for him. He hated illness, she knew, and was highly impatient of it in himself and others. Though he would, of course, not be horrible to her, he would hardly be glad if she were hors de combat so soon after that post-Christmas bug.
Well, she would just not succumb, that was all. She felt much better now, anyway. Probably throwing up had got the germs out of her and done her good.
Tightening the belt of her dressing robe resolutely, she went in search of Markos.
He was in the kitchen, putting coffee beans into the grinder.
‘I’ll do that!’ she said instantly. She knew he hated fiddling about with the kitchen gadgets.
He turned and made space for her.
‘How are you?’ he asked, his dark grey eyes searching over her rapidly.
Don’t let him know you’re coming down with a bug, she thought. He’s only just got back; he won’t want news like that.
‘Fine,’ she said brightly. Then, her smile deepening into radiance, she gazed at him. ‘Oh, Markos, I’m so glad you’re home again! I missed you so much!’
For just the most fleeting second she thought she saw reserve in his eyes. Then it had gone. With a fond, careless flick of his finger he touched her cheek as she gazed up at him.
‘Yes, you showed me last night,’ he said indulgently, and watched the colour steal across her cheeks.
She was very pale, he found himself thinking. Paler than usual. Why had she not mentioned having been sick? He gave a mental shrug. The English side of him knew why—not making a fuss over things like that was a national characteristic. And if he mentioned it now she’d just be embarrassed by it.
His eyes glanced at the kitchen clock and he muttered an oath in Greek. He was running late. He had a meeting with his finance director in fifty minutes. True, the man would wait, but it was bad practice to run late in front of subordinates. It encouraged them to think they could be sloppy.
‘No coffee—I’ll catch breakfast in my office,’ he said briskly. As he headed out of the kitchen back to the bedroom to get dressed, he called over his shoulder. ‘I’ll take you out to dinner tonight. Buy a new dress to wear for me. Something sexy. On second thoughts, if it’s that sexy, we’ll eat in—afterwards,’ he added, with a throwaway taunting laugh.
Vanessa watched him go, lettin
g her eyes feast on the angled planes of his smooth, bare, muscled back. A wave of longing went through her. Reluctantly she turned back to the coffee grinder.
As the rich fragrance of the beans struck her, so did another wave of nausea.
She clamped her lips tight and breathed deeply through her nose. No, she would not be sick again. She would not be ill.
She’d rest in the morning, then go and do what Markos asked. Buy a new dress and make herself beautiful for him.
It was what he wanted—and doing what he wanted was all she wanted to do.
She loved him so much.
Vanessa leant forward and softly blew out the two candles on the coffee table. It was stupid to waste them when Markos was not here. She glanced at the time again. Ten o’clock.
In the dining room, the table was laid for dinner. The food had been sent up, all prepared, and now waited in the fridge, as did the champagne. Everything was ready—especially her.
As she walked, the silky folds of her new dress sussurated around her long legs. The colour was daring for her—a deep, saffron-shot vermilion that she would never normally have worn. But during the fashion shoot for Leo Makarios’s jewellery the stylist had put her into a similar coloured dress that had at first horrified her and then, as she’d realised that the colouring was clever enough not to clash with her red hair but instead complemented it stunningly, amazed her.
For a moment she gazed at her reflection in the mirror on the lounge wall. She did indeed look beautiful. A slow smile lit her face. Never before in her life had she been so grateful to be beautiful—because her beauty was for the man she loved. For Markos. Without it, after all, he would not have looked twice at her—but with it, oh, with it, she could lay it at his feet as her gift to him!
After all, it was all that she could give to him. She had nothing else. Whereas he, with his incredible wealth, could shower largesse down upon her endlessly. And he did—far more than she was comfortable with. Far more than she wanted from him. But she never said a word of that. He would be offended—how would he not be, if she rejected his largesse? And besides, all of it was to make her more beautiful. And her beauty was for him, not her. Like this dress now, costing hundreds and hundreds of pounds, purchased from one of the dozen fashion shops where he’d set up accounts for her.