by Julia James
She felt his weight shift slightly, then a click, and then something cold was slithering over her skin. Her eyes flew open.
She gave a little cry.
‘Oh Markos, they’re beautiful!’ she breathed, eyes wide.
‘Opals from Australia. Each stone has a rainbow in its heart.’ He draped the necklace around her throat. ‘Exquisite,’ he murmured. ‘But never—’ he dropped another soft, slow kiss on her mouth ‘—as exquisite as you.’ He lifted his head to gaze into her dazed eyes. ‘Every moment away from you was a torment,’ he said softly.
Her face lit, glowing with happiness.
‘Oh, Markos,’ she breathed, ‘do you mean it?’
He smiled down at her.
‘Do you doubt it?’ he asked, still in that caressing voice.
She shook her head, gazing up at him. ‘No. Never. Oh, Markos!’ She wrapped her arms around his back, holding him close to her.
They lay in each other’s arms, wound about each other. A deep contentment filled him. Softly, he stroked her hair.
‘Did you miss me?’ he asked.
‘Every minute!’
‘Good.’ He settled her more comfortably in the crook of his arm, feeling her head heavy on his chest. She fitted against him so well, he found himself thinking. Idly he splayed his hand over the sleek smoothness of her belly. Did she feel riper, rounder? He did not object. Skinny women did nothing for him, and Vanessa was definitely not skinny. Oh, no, she was all woman, all right…
And she was his—devotedly, absolutely.
The best mistress I’ve ever had.
Satisfaction eased through him again. The unpleasant scene with his aunt faded. It was so pointless, her and his father and Constantia Dimistris and the whole damn lot of them, scheming and plotting, going on and on at him—he was not going to marry and that was that. Nothing could get him to the altar.
He felt Vanessa shift her head very slightly on his chest.
‘Markos?’
‘Yes?’ he murmured.
‘Did—did you miss me?’ There was the slightest hesitation in her voice as she asked the question.
He smiled, brushing her hair with his mouth.
‘Didn’t I just show you how much I missed you?’
She was silent a moment.
‘Yes. But, I mean, was it…was it the sex you missed?’
He gave a low laugh. ‘Well, I certainly didn’t join the Mile High Club without you, I promise,’ he answered lightly.
She was silent again.
‘Markos?’
‘Yes?’ His encircling arm, cupping her shoulder, felt warm. Idly he twisted his fingers into her hair.
‘What—what do you think is going to happen?’
He smiled. ‘That’s a pretty open-ended question. Care to narrow it down a bit? Are we talking about tomorrow’s weather or the state of geopolitics?’
He could hear her swallow.
‘I mean—about us.’
‘Us?’
He felt her breath warm on his chest.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, like I said, as soon as I can get away we’ll head for the Caribbean. Unless something comes up, of course,’ he qualified. Business life could be unpredictable, and he didn’t want to make promises he couldn’t keep.
She was silent again. Then she spoke, in that same hesitant manner.
‘I mean—in general—about us?’
The slightest prickle of irritation started up in him. He’d known women do this before—talking about ‘us’ in that way, making plans, forming expectations. False ones—they always were. He hoped to God that Vanessa weren’t going to start on that. It was one of the things he appreciated most about her—that she simply went with the flow, the way he liked to do.
He gave an inward sigh. Maybe it was time to make that clear to her.
He shifted his weight, and her, so that she was tilted back to lie against the pillows. He lifted himself on to his elbow.
‘Vanessa—what is this?’
She stared up at him. Something was flaring in her eyes, and he felt a momentary pang of guilt. She was so easy, never made demands, did everything he wanted and said, never made a fuss, never complained—went with the flow.
He could see her lips quiver.
His expression softened. Swiftly he lowered his mouth to kiss her briefly.
‘Vanessa—we’re having a great time. Don’t let’s get heavy about things, OK?’
She was staring up at him. Her eyes were huge. There was an expression in them he didn’t like to see. It made him uncomfortable.
He firmed his lips, then spoke again.
‘Vanessa, I appreciate having you around more than any other mistress I’ve ever had,’ he told her. ‘And I think I show my appreciation—don’t I?’ He lifted one of the opals set into the necklace looped around her neck.
Something shuttered in her eyes.
‘You—you don’t think I expect you to give me beautiful things, do you, Markos? Please don’t think that. I couldn’t bear it!’
‘I like to give you beautiful things.’
‘Yes, but you don’t have to! Oh, Markos, you do believe that, don’t you?’
There was such anxiety in her voice suddenly. He smiled. ‘I told you—I like to give you things like this.’
‘Yes, but—’ She fell silent. She was gazing up at him, searching his face with troubled eyes. ‘Markos…’ Her voice was hesitant still. ‘I…I’m not trying to be clingy, honestly. I know you’d hate that. It’s just that…’ Her voice trailed off.
Markos let go the necklace and took his hand away. He didn’t want this conversation. He seriously did not want it. But even more he did not want Vanessa returning to the subject another time. These things were best nipped in the bud. Another ripple of irritation went through him. A sense of ill-usage. Vanessa had seemed so different from the other women who’d tried this sort of thing on with him.
He didn’t like to think she was the same as them. She’d been so different, all the time she’d been with him. Had someone been putting ideas in her head? His expression darkened momentarily.
Cosmo Dimistris. Was he responsible for this? Making her see that she could so easily pick herself another lover?
Even as the thought formed he felt a stab of rage go through him. Thee mou, no way was Vanessa going to pick herself another lover! She was his—and that was an end of it!
With instinctive possessiveness he lowered himself down off his elbow, sliding his arm around her again. That was better. Holding her felt good. He settled himself back comfortably against the pillows, positioning her against his shoulder, and felt his mood lift.
‘Now you can cling all you like,’ he said smilingly. He settled his free hand on her rounded stomach again, splaying out his fingers the way he liked to do. He felt her tense suddenly.
Was she worried about gaining weight? Worried he might not approve? He didn’t want her thinking that.
‘Don’t panic,’ he told her, amusement in his voice now. ‘I like you soft and rounded—like a ripe peach.’
But his lightly spoken words did not seem to relax her. Maybe she was still upset from the exchange that had taken place? Well, there was nothing he could do about that. He lived his life on his own terms, nobody else’s, and that was that.
And for the foreseeable future—for as far ahead as he was prepared to look, and that wasn’t far, because there was no reason to look further, he would live his life with Vanessa at his side. In his bed.
Maybe that was what was worrying her. Maybe she thought her shelf-life was up. Well, he could set her right on that, at any rate. He’d told her so before, that night she’d come up when he’d been speaking to the Duchesse—reassuring her that he still wanted her as his mistress. Clearly it was time to repeat the message.
He twisted his head slightly, so he could graze her brow with his mouth. It was a gesture of reassurance, possession. Then he spoke.
‘Are you worried I’m ge
‘Yes,’ she answered in a low voice. ‘You’re very good to me, Markos. It’s just that—’
‘Yes?’ The edge had sharpened an iota.
She must have registered it, because he saw that look fleet in her eyes again. But this time she did not relapse into silence. This time she spoke.
‘Suppose something happens, Markos.’
His eyebrows rose.
‘What sort of thing? Earth gets hit by an asteroid?’
She swallowed. ‘No, I mean, like…something to us. Something that—that changes things.’
‘Like you get tempted away to Mexico with another man on the strength of a dodgy promise of a cut-price emerald necklace?’ he jibed gently, without rancour. He didn’t like the way she’d got the conversation back to this subject.
But his attempt to steer her away from it failed.
He could feel her body tense in his arms. She wasn’t looking at him, and he could see she’d shut her eyes.
‘What sort of thing, Vanessa?’ There was no humour in his voice, but no edge either. He kept it studiedly neutral. Sometimes that was the best way to flush out what someone was trying to say.
Or conceal.
Suddenly, with the kind of certainty that came to him when he was in a business negotiation and he knew that his opponent was making a feint of some kind, Markos knew that Vanessa was about to get evasive.
Well, he wasn’t having that. She was the one who’d turned the conversation heavy. Now she could follow it through.
‘What sort of thing?’ he repeated, keeping the same neutral tone in his voice.
He felt her swallow again.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Honestly—nothing.’
Why did women do that? thought Markos, suppressing the irritation that had sliced through him again at her response. Why did they start to say something, then say ‘nothing’ in that tone?
‘Vanessa?’ He wanted this sorted—now. He really wasn’t in the mood for it—it wasn’t the kind of conversation he’d ever been in the mood for—and coming right now, when his body and mind were replete and relaxed, when he’d just spent days travelling to the other side of the world and back again, and getting hassled by his aunt while he was there, it was definitely not what he wanted.
But it had to be done. It wasn’t a topic he wanted to come up a second time.
‘You can’t just say “nothing” like that, and then go silent on me.’
He could feel the tension stiffen her body, but he hardened his heart. This had to be sorted, or it would just louse things up further down the line, and that was the last thing he wanted. Life with Vanessa was too good for him to want it to do that.
‘So? What sort of thing?’ he prompted.
There was a long—overlong—pause. Then, finally, she answered him.
She’d opened her eyes, and was looking straight at him, tension and apprehension in their amber depths.
‘Supposing I got pregnant,’ she said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOR A LONG moment, there was complete silence. Then, very, very carefully, Markos spoke.
‘Are you pregnant?’
The neutrality in his voice was absolute.
But it cost him every ounce of effort. His mind had slammed shut. Totally shut. It was essential.
He heard her take a breath.
Was it him, or did the breath seem to take for ever?
Then—‘No,’ she answered.
He felt relief sheet out, like a flash flame through his consciousness.
‘But…’ She was speaking again. ‘But if I were, what…what would…what…?’
‘But you’re not.’ His voice was flat. Inside, he was nailing something down, very hard, very instant. ‘So idle speculation of this kind is pointless. Especially since you are not going to get pregnant—are you, Vanessa?’
He looked straight at her, into those wide, expressionless eyes.
Too expressionless?
He felt that thing he’d nailed down so fast, so hard, strain against him, but he ignored it. Instead, he directed every ounce of his mental focus on to what he said next.
‘If you’re concerned about your current method of contraception it can be changed. Go to the doctor this afternoon and sort something else.’ He made a heroic effort to inject a lighter note into this conversation from hell. ‘I’ll even put up with condoms if it makes you happy. Now, isn’t that a sacrifice?’ He forced a smile to his lips.
But she didn’t smile back. Her eyes were still staring at him, still quite expressionless.
A shaft of annoyance speared through him.
Though he didn’t want to, he knew it was time to get tough. And that annoyed him even more. Never in all the time Vanessa had been with him had he thought he was going to have to have one of these damn conversations with her. He’d thought she knew better.
Evidently not.
Maybe all women were the same, after all, whatever the appearances to the contrary.
He sat up, reaching for the bathrobe he’d abandoned after showering when he’d got back from the airport. Standing up, he shrugged it on, and belted the tie.
Then he stood, looking down at her, so he could get the message across. He didn’t want to do it, but it had to be done. God, who knew better than him that it had to be done?
He took a sharp intake of breath and began.
‘Vanessa, I’ve told you this before—you’re the best mistress I’ve ever had, and I appreciate you considerably. But—’ His eyes bored down into hers, nailing home the message. ‘This is a very big but, and you have to take it on board—I am not going to marry you. Under any circumstances. So, please, do not try and bargain with a child’s life in order to achieve that end. Because if I have the slightest suspicion that you are trying to play that game then you are out. OK? Totally out. No hesitation, no second chances. Nothing. Out.’
For one long, level moment he stood, looking down at her where she lay in his bed, ripe from his lovemaking.
Her face was expressionless.
So was his.
‘Out,’ he repeated, the warning sounding like a hammer blow.
Then, turning on his heel, he stalked into the en suite bathroom.
There was an old black and white movie playing on the huge plasma screen TV in the lounge, but Vanessa wasn’t watching it. She was staring at the flickering images, but she wasn’t seeing them.
She wasn’t doing anything, except sitting, curled up on the sofa, while the rain beat on the closed terrace windows, the wind buffeted the high penthouse apartment.
Markos was gone. Gone to his offices in the City, whisked away in his chauffeured car, the faithful Taki and Stelios in attendance as usual. A rich man, with a rich man’s things to do.
She stared ahead of her.
And what am I? she thought. The answer tolled in her brain like a funeral bell.
A rich man’s mistress.
One of the many luxuries a rich man acquired to make his life pleasant and enjoyable.
That’s all I am to him. I’ll never, never be anything else…
His mistress.
Her eyes stared unseeingly ahead.
Didn’t he tell me? Didn’t he say it often enough—that horrible afternoon with the emeralds from that disgusting Cosmo Dimistris? Mistress, mistress, mistress.
The word tolled through her, would not be silenced.
I tried to pretend it didn’t matter, that it was only a word, that it was how he treated me that was more important. But all along it was just as a mistress that he was treating me—someone for his bed, to pamper and indulge and amuse himself with.
Nothing more than that.
Nothing more than a mistress.
Her body was immobile, curled up on the huge sofa, and she’d been sitting there for ever, it seemed, while her brain went round and round.
He thinks I want to get him to marry me. That I’m trying to trap him into marriage with pregnancy.
She felt her stomach hollow out, the breath solidifying in her lungs.
Her whole body felt as if it was slowly freezing.
The low buzz of the doorbell did not register at first. But when it was repeated it managed to penetrate her numbed senses.
Slowly, very slowly, she got to her feet. She’d been immobile for so long that the blood was not flowing properly to her feet, and it took her a moment to make herself walk jerkily towards the door. Whatever it was, whatever was being delivered, she did not want it.
But the bell buzzed again, insistently, and with numbed, stumbling legs she went to answer it.
It wasn’t a delivery.
It was a middle-aged woman she’d never seen in her life.
Vanessa opened her mouth to say, ‘May I help you?’ gathering her stricken thoughts to try and be civil, but the woman simply walked inside, her bulk carrying her forwards. Vanessa, utterly taken aback, could only blink.
Gaining the entrance hall, the woman turned.
‘I wish to speak to you.’
Vanessa’s brain was like porridge. All she registered was that the woman was expensively dressed, had Mediterranean colouring, and spoke English with an accent—and in the kind of tones that, Vanessa knew from her time with Markos, rich people reserved for those who were not rich.
The woman’s eyes flickered over her. They were dark, and not friendly.
Hostile.
Vanessa swallowed. Who was this woman? And why had she just barged in here? And why had the concierge not phoned to first to ask if she could come up?
The woman’s eyes flicked over her in that same hostile manner. Then, again without waiting for an invitation, she walked through into the lounge.
‘Turn that off,’ she instructed, gesturing at the TV.
Silently, Vanessa crossed to the coffee table and clicked the remote. The room fell silent. She turned. This woman might be rude, but she would not be.
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