by Abby Green
Lying right over her, so she could feel his chest against her, he’d stretched her arms above her head, the movement causing her breasts to rise as if offered to him like succulent desserts.
Holding her hands captive with one of his much larger ones, he’d trailed his other hand down the side of her body, teasing the side of one breast, and whispered in her ear, ‘You are quite simply the pure embodiment of my every fantasy of what the perfect feminine form is…I didn’t know it till I saw you, and now I can see nothing else…’
Lucy’s heart had stopped altogether. She’d searched his eyes as he’d lifted back and looked down, so dark and hot they’d scorched her alive.
‘You…really mean that?’
Lucy hoped desperately now that she hadn’t sounded as vulnerable as she’d felt in that moment.
In answer Ari had bent his head and laved one of her nipples with his mouth and tongue, before sucking it deep, causing her back to arch again helplessly.
Releasing her hands for only a second while he’d put on protection, he’d come back and captured them high again. Lucy’s hips had bucked of their own volition.
He’d then slid into her, inch by torturous inch, and when he was in as far as he could go, when she didn’t know where she started or he ended, he’d leant close to her mouth and kissed her deeply, before saying, so quietly that she almost didn’t hear, ‘Yes…I really mean it.’
And then, with slow, deep thrusts which built and built to a stunning crescendo—
The door in front of Lucy opened suddenly, and she jumped up at the same time as Parnsassus’ assistant, a guilty flush staining her cheeks, breathing as if she’d just been running. A pulse throbbed between her legs and she was caught by a pair of glittering green eyes.
She saw Ari smile sardonically, as if he knew exactly what she’d just been thinking about, and Lucy flushed even redder. He strolled over and took the file she was holding out of her hands, his fingers caressing hers underneath for a lingering moment, making her pulse beat even faster.
Lucy nearly groaned out loud, and then he said sotto voce, ‘Have Helios bring the car round. We’ll be out of here in less than ten minutes…I’ll tell Parnassus we can work from my office for the rest of the afternoon.’
Lucy just nodded, not capable of much else, and certainly not capable of anything like work. She felt feverish, distracted, more elated than she’d ever felt, and knew that right now she had neither the strength of will nor the inclination to resist this man.
‘We’ve been invited to my father’s house for dinner on Friday night.’
‘You mean you’ve been invited for dinner.’ Lucy shuddered inwardly, she didn’t fool herself for a second in thinking that Helen Levakis had included her in that cosy little invitation.
Ari shook his head and marvelled at this woman in front of him. They were having a private dinner in her bedroom at the hotel, late in the evening. She looked so beautiful in just a bathrobe, with her dark hair spread around her shoulders, not a scrap of make-up, that delicious cleavage just visible in the gap of her robe. When he thought of how they’d barely made it back to the office the afternoon before—He stopped his rampant mind. He was far too susceptible to this woman. And, worryingly, he didn’t feel at all complacent or triumphant about the fact that he’d got her into bed. If anything he just felt a growing sense of hunger. The fact that that was not the usual way for him and women was conveniently pushed aside. He reminded himself that Lucy was different, from a different class—world. It was the novelty of that, that was all. And for now he was loving the novelty.
Reaching for her hand, he tugged her up and over until she fell into his lap, making a spasm of lust arrow straight to his groin.
He shook his head, and before he bent to kiss her said, ‘Where I go, you go.’
Lucy accepted the kiss, drowned in the kiss, but a sense of guilty anticipation made her shiver slightly. No matter that they were spending time together like this. Ari was still as open as a closed book when it came to anything but the most general conversation. And now the thought of getting a chance to learn more about this man, who was fast tangling her head into one big knot of confusion and reducing her body to little more than a slave to his, was proving to be far headier than was healthy for her heart.
When the kiss deepened, and as Ari carried Lucy over to the bed and came down on top of her with his delicious weight and told her how beautiful she was, how desirable, she conveniently blocked out the clamour of voices in her head telling her to be careful, not to be weak, and not to be so easily seduced—and above all not to fall in love.
On Friday evening Lucy was sitting ramrod-straight on a rigid divan in the main drawing room of the grossly opulent Levakis house. Tonight had to be one of the most excruciatingly uncomfortable evenings of her life. From the moment she’d arrived, with Ari’s hand on her arm, it had been clear she wasn’t welcome.
Lucy had held her head high and thanked her lucky stars for her chaotic but expensive education; every time Helen had directed some snide comment her way, or had tried to undermine her, Lucy had answered with the utmost dignity. Helen had even been so rude as to conduct some of the conversation between the few guests in French, but her eyes had almost popped out of her head when Lucy had replied fluently.
Lucy felt inordinately proud of her mother’s legacy.
Ari was now on the other side of the room, talking to the same beautiful blonde who’d captured his attention at that function the first week. Lucy tried to ignore the poisoned darts that seemed to be arrowing into her heart, and tensed even more when she saw Anatolios, Ari’s half-brother, head her way.
He sat down, far too close for comfort, obviously drunk, and Lucy tried to edge away, smiling weakly. He merely moved with her, crowding her. She felt intensely vulnerable.
Anatolios’s blue eyes followed where her gaze had just been and he said, ‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’
Lucy flushed. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’
She looked at Anatolios reluctantly. She guessed she couldn’t be much older than her own twenty-three years, and hoped the revulsion she felt didn’t show on her face.
He smiled sleazily, and then, shockingly, ran a fleshy finger up and down Lucy’s bare arm. She flinched, but couldn’t move, hemmed in as she was.
He gestured with his head. ‘That’s Pia Kyriapoulos. She used to be a famous model, and now she’s famous for being wealthy and divorced and looking for a new husband.’
Lucy swallowed painfully and looked across the room. They did look amazing together—blonde contrasting with dark. Pia had her hand resting on Ari’s arm, and he certainly didn’t look in a hurry to move it. At that moment he looked up and straight at Lucy. Feeling inordinately exposed, Lucy smiled brilliantly and looked back at Anatolios as if he’d said something funny. Not as if he’d said something to make her heart feel as if it was being ripped, still beating, out of her chest.
When she felt Ari’s gaze move again Lucy ripped her arm away from Anatolios, who glowered sulkily at her. His eyes dropped to her cleavage and Lucy screamed inwardly. The guy was a total creep.
Just then Helen swept into the room and said something to Ari who, after a moment’s hesitation, followed her from the room, his face hard. Sensing a chance to escape, Lucy mumbled something about needing the bathroom and fled, vowing to get out of there even if she had to leave on her own.
Wherever I go, you go. Ari’s words resounded mockingly in her head. At least until the next available, infinitely more beautiful woman came along, she surmised grimly.
She was coming back from the bathroom and passing a partially opened door when she heard raised voices. Ari and Helen.
Without being conscious of what she was doing, she slowed down and heard Ari say, a low and blistering voice, ‘I’ll never marry someone like her; she’s completely inappropriate. And anyway, don’t you think it’s a little late to be doing the concerned mother act?’
Chapter Eight
/> LUCY’S heart froze like ice in her chest as the words registered. Was Helen afraid that their affair was more than just a fling? She had to swallow back a semi-hysterical cry, putting a hand to her mouth. Well, Ari had certainly reassured her of that.
The next words from Helen were indistinctly shrill, and then Ari’s voice came again. Lucy stood rooted to the spot in some kind of sick, paralysed fascination, and heard him say something along the lines of, ‘…useless waste of space of a brother…’
There was an awful silence, and then the sharp crack of what could only be a hand across a cheek.
Knowing that it wouldn’t have been Ari, and acting on a surge of adrenalin that was pure primal instinct, Lucy pushed open the door and flew into the room, aiming herself straight at Helen, who still had her hand raised, her eyes glittering almost feverishly.
Lucy was unaware of their shocked looks. She saw only Ari’s proud stance, the livid handprint and the trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. She saw red, and for the first and only time in her life considered striking another person. It was only Ari’s quick reflex action, pulling her back behind him, that stopped her.
Helen lowered her hand and her eyes took on a malevolent glow. She smiled cruelly. ‘Well, well—if it isn’t the quiet little secretary, come to save her lover.’ The woman’s obsidian eyes flicked up and down and she added cuttingly, ‘Or perhaps I shouldn’t say little.’
Lucy made to move again and Ari held her firm, glancing back with a hard expression, ‘Leave it, Lucy.’
He turned back, and Lucy could feel the ice in his gaze even though he wasn’t looking at her.
‘She wouldn’t balk at striking you too. After all, you never had any qualms about striking a five-year-old—did you, Helen?’
Helen’s focus moved back to Ari, and Lucy could see the older woman’s face grow mottled with anger. Abruptly Ari turned and pulled Lucy with him, and within a blur of minutes they were sitting in the back of his car, leaving the house behind.
Lucy was still shaking, a mixture of powerful anger and shock coursing through her. She glanced at Ari. He was looking resolutely out of the window. When she saw his mouth her heart lurched painfully.
‘You…you’re bleeding.’
He turned abruptly, and the dead look in his eyes scared her. He smiled harshly. ‘Want to kiss it better for me, Lucy?’
He flicked out a handkerchief nevertheless, and dabbed at the blood. Overcome with an emotion she couldn’t name, Lucy reached out and put her hand to his cheek, where it still felt warm.
‘How could she have hit you when you were so small?’
A surge of emotion so powerful that it made him tremble caused black spots to dance before Ari’s eyes. His breathing grew shallow. The feel of Lucy’s hand like a cooling balm on his hot cheek, the look on her face…He’d never, ever had someone rush to his defence so unreservedly. He’d felt the fine vibrating tremors of her anger as he’d held her back, and he didn’t doubt that if he hadn’t stopped her she might very well have struck Helen. The realisation was cataclysmic, earth-shattering.
A hardness entered him. He certainly wasn’t going to shatter along with it. Everyone wanted something out of him—especially women. Lucy was just taking advantage of a vulnerable moment.
Lucy’s wrist was gripped and pulled down. Ari’s eyes glittered at her, but at least some life had come back into them. ‘Quite easily,’ he bit out. ‘I was an easier target then.’
He kept hold of her wrist, almost painfully, but Lucy didn’t say anything.
‘Don’t pity me, Lucy Proctor. I don’t need anyone’s pity.’
The fierce pride on his face nearly made Lucy weep. She shook her head and managed to pull her hand back, cradling it with her other one. He saw the movement and sighed deeply, raking his hair with barely concealed anger.
Lucy looked away for a long moment. The rest of the evening was coming back—what had happened just before she’d gone to the bathroom, and then the words she’d heard. What was wrong with her? Sitting here mooning over a man who quite patently needed no one and was biding his time with her until he flitted to the next woman.
She started hesitantly, ‘I didn’t mean to…I was just passing and heard her…’
‘How did you know it wasn’t me hitting her?’ came the sardonically amused question.
Lucy turned around, a fierce expression on her face. ‘Because I know you would never do anything like that.’
His belly clenched. It was harder not to touch her than to touch her and risk that emotion rising again, so Ari reached out and tugged a resisting Lucy onto his lap. He felt an unusual peace steal over him. He buried his head in her neck and after a moment felt her relax, her curves softening into him with delicious inevitability.
But then he felt her tense again, and he looked up and said with a growl, ‘Stop it. Relax, Lucy, mou.’
She was biting her lip and avoiding his eye. He turned her jaw so that she had to face him, and she said, almost defiantly, ‘I saw you with that woman. I won’t…won’t be some substitute. If you’d prefer to be with her, then please…just go back.’
The thought of going back to that house made Ari shudder. He’d known it would be a mistake to go at all, and hated the fact that he had done so. Hated the fact that after all these years there was still a tiny sliver of yearning left for something he’d never experienced. Harmony. Even as that thought materialised in his head he blocked it ruthlessly, focused on the woman on his lap, reducing his world to the here and now.
He shook his head, amazed that Lucy could have seen him and Pia together and not have known that he’d all but itched to go back across the room to her. Then he remembered the moment before Helen had come into the room and asked to speak to him. Lucy had been with Anatolios, looking at him and laughing gaily. Anatolios had been practically sitting in her lap.
Dark anger surged. ‘From what I saw of you and my brother, you looked very cosy also…Are you sure it’s not you who wants to go back to him?’
Lucy couldn’t help the shudder of disgust run through her as she said quickly, ‘No. I was just—we were just…talking.’
The relief that surged through Ari made him feel weak. He pressed a kiss to Lucy’s bare shoulder and she shivered again, but this time he recognised desire and it was heady.
‘Then, please believe me, I too have no desire to go back to that house. Pia Kyriapoulos is a woman who is looking for her next wealthy protector. She thinks I could be it, but this evening I told her in no uncertain terms that I have no interest in signing up for the job. And anyway…’ Ari brought Lucy’s hand between them to his lap, where she could feel the stirrings of his growing arousal. ‘She doesn’t have this effect on me.’
Ari felt Lucy’s fingers flutter over him and held back a low groan as his arousal soared. In that second he had a flash of an idea. Without stopping to consider what he was doing, he said, ‘When we get back to the hotel, pack some things for the weekend. We’re getting out of Athens…’
When Lucy woke the next morning she knew immediately that she was alone in the strange bed, but she was too deliciously lethargic and sated to worry about it. She heard nothing except beautiful stillness and the gentle lapping of water nearby.
They had travelled here, to this island, which Ari had told her was called Paros, by helicopter last night. It had all been a little overwhelming to Lucy. When they’d arrived Ari had driven them in a Jeep to this place, which Lucy hadn’t been able to make out in the dark.
Now, without opening her eyes yet, as if superstitious for a moment that it might disappear, Lucy knew that there were doors open nearby. She could feel the warm breeze, could smell the tang of the sea and feel the bright sunlight.
Finally she opened her eyes. They took a second to adjust, and then as if in a dream she got up, blindly threw on a T-shirt and walked to the open French doors and the tiny balcony. She simply could not take in the beauty of her surroundings for a moment. The balcony seemed to
be perched right over the Aegean Sea, which stretched out in glittering blue before her, other islands visible as shapes in the hazy distance under a clear cerulean sky.
The modest house was whitewashed and all but clinging onto the rocky coast, nestling alongside equally bright houses either side. Lucy frowned slightly. She’d seen Ari’s portfolio of extensive properties around the world, and knew he had a luxurious villa on Santorini, but she’d never seen pictures of this house. She looked around. Admittedly, it was more humble than anything she might have expected of him. And all the more intriguing.
She heard a sound behind her and turned to see Ari, shouldering his way in through the door with arms full of supplies. Her breath snagged at remembering how he’d stripped her bare last night and taken her to heaven and back on the modest double bed. He was wearing long shorts and a faded T-shirt, and looked impossibly young and handsome at that moment—a million miles from the proud, successful, arrogant billionaire.
He pressed a lingering kiss to her mouth and proceeded to spread out a veritable feast of a breakfast on an ancient wrought-iron table. Bread, jams, fruit…Then he disappeared, presumably to the tiny kitchen downstairs, and came back with steaming fragrant coffee in two cups.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ he asked lightly as they sat down and Lucy still hadn’t said a word.
She shook her head and tried to communicate with him what she was thinking, feeling. She made a half-gesture around them, encompassing the view. ‘It’s so beautiful…I can’t even begin to describe…’ She looked at him then. His face was shuttered, dark glasses shielding his eyes. ‘This property isn’t listed with your other ones…’
Ari’s jaw clenched. He looked out towards the glittering Aegean. When he’d made the decision to come here he hadn’t stopped to consider Lucy’s reaction to the basic nature of the house. He knew very few women who wouldn’t have turned up their noses and shuddered disdainfully. A ridiculous feeling of disappointment ran through him and he drawled, ‘You’d prefer to be on Santorini? The villa there certainly is…larger.’