by Lynne Graham
Dio lived in the penthouse apartment. A Greek manservant ushered them in to the high-tech interior. Seeming acres of space ran in every direction. The furniture was stark and elegant, an effective backdrop for what appeared to be an extensive and fabulous art collection. She focused on one canvas. It looked like a Picasso she had once seen in a book. She realised that it might well be the real thing. Swallowing hard, she looked away again, suddenly utterly intimidated by her surroundings.
‘I want to get changed,’ she said stiltedly.
Dio showed her into a luxurious guest room. Ellie peeled off her overall and her canvas shoes. She freshened up in the bathroom, noting in disgust that her hands were trembling. She tipped her clothing out of the bag which Demitrios had removed from her locker. After wriggling into her stretchy short black skirt and fine short-sleeved sweater, she hauled on her knee boots. She left the overall lying in a heap. No way would she ever be walking back into work at Alexiakis International again. There were plenty of other evening jobs available…only few of them would be suitable for a pregnant woman.
On her reluctant passage back to rejoining Dio, Ellie noticed a large gilded photo on prominent display on a cabinet in the hall. The photo was of three people. Dio with a tall, older man, so like himself that he simply had to be his late father, and Helena Teriakos, all of them wearing evening dress. The Greek woman had signed it across one corner.
Realising that she was only putting off the inevitable confrontation, Ellie breathed in deep, smoothed down her skirt and walked back into the airy drawing room. She started speaking before Dio even got to turn round to face her.
‘I didn’t mean to tell you. It was stupid. I’m going to do a pregnancy test tomorrow,’ she shared tautly.
Dio swung round. ‘You’ve made an appointment with your doctor?’
‘No—’
‘I’ll make one—’
Ellie stiffened. ‘That’s not necessary.’
‘I think it is,’ he contradicted steadily. ‘A medical examination would give a more reliable result.’
Ellie folded her arms in a defensive motion. ‘But I—’
‘I’m as much involved in this as you are,’ Dio spelt out stubbornly.
No, she thought strickenly, he wasn’t. She could feel the distance in him already. He was saying the right things, going through the motions of being decent and supportive, but naturally he was praying hard for a negative result and probably wishing he had never set eyes on her. ‘It’s very stuffy in here,’ she said tautly. ‘Can I go out on the balcony? I could do with some fresh air.’
‘It’s very cold tonight.’
‘So shut the doors after me!’ Ellie advised sharply.
Dio swept up a remote control. The wall of glass glided back. Ellie headed out with alacrity and was totally unappreciative of his magnificent view of the Thames. She gripped the rail girding the parapet until her knuckles showed white. All she could see in front of her still were Dio’s cloaked dark eyes. Those beautiful midnight-dark eyes that haunted her dreams. She heard him behind her.
‘Oh, go inside, for heaven’s sake!’ she urged without turning her head. ‘I know you’re freezing.’
‘I’m not—’
‘Look, I boiled alive when you switched off the air-conditioning at the beach house in the middle of the night! We don’t even match temperature-wise,’ Ellie completed accusingly, swallowing back the thickness in her throat.
‘Ellie…’ Dio released his breath in an audible hiss and closed his arms round her, easing her slight body back into the lean, hard strength of his.
Every fibre of her longed to luxuriate in that physical contact, but she gritted her teeth and held herself rigid, refusing to give way to her own weakness. She loved him; she really, really loved him. It was a waste of time hoping that those feelings were about to magically go away and leave her free of pain and vulnerability. He wasn’t in love with her. At most all Dio had wanted was a casual affair, and now he probably didn’t even want that. Unlike Cinderella, she had blown it. She hadn’t gone home alone at midnight.
‘You feel like ice.’ Dio ran long gentle fingers down over her bare arms. ‘Come inside.’
‘I just want to go home,’ she enunciated with great care.
‘Not tonight. You shouldn’t be on your own.’
‘Don’t be wet. I’ve been on my own for a long time.’ She hesitated. ‘I really shocked you again, didn’t I?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I said to you on the beach that night. You just don’t expect bad things to happen to you.’
‘That is not at all how I would describe this situation.’ Losing patience, Dio closed a determined arm round her and urged her back indoors. ‘You need something to eat.’
Pulling free of him, Ellie sank down on a sofa. ‘I’m not hungry.’
Dio sent the wall of glass gliding shut again in the teeth of the wind. He tossed the remote aside and studied her with black fathomless eyes. ‘What happens happens, yineka mou,’ he murmured wryly.
‘You still didn’t think it was going to happen to you.’ Ellie felt like a dog with a bone she had to keep on digging up, even though she knew she ought to leave it buried.
His expressive mouth quirked. ‘I have to admit that I am so accustomed to more experienced women who protect themselves from pregnancy that I didn’t quite compute the true level of risk we faced.’
‘Why do you keep on saying we? It leaves me cold,’ Ellie told him thinly. ‘After all, we don’t have a relationship.’
‘You are very angry with me.’
Colliding with far too perceptive dark eyes, Ellie flushed and squirmed. There was a kind of rage inside her desperate to break out, but he had recognised it before she had.
‘Come here…’ Dio urged with the sort of rueful exasperation an adult employs with a difficult child.
Ellie could feel a giant well of tears gathering behind her eyes. Instantly she scrambled upright. ‘It’s late, and if I’m staying, I might as well go to bed…it’s not like you’re going to make a move on me now, is it?’
‘Not without a whip and a chair,’ Dio agreed with dulcet cool.
Ellie moved a couple of steps away and then paused, discovering that she was oddly reluctant to leave him. ‘I thought you’d be punching walls and swearing by now,’ she confided without turning round.
‘Public school followed by so many years in business teaches a reasonable amount of self-control,’ Dio advanced with gentle irony.
‘Well, the Mr Smooth and Cool act really annoys me. You haven’t given me one genuine emotional reaction since I told you!’ she condemned grittily.
But even as Ellie voiced that accusation she saw how foolish it was. How could he give her a genuine reaction? Did she really want him to show her the volatile flipside of that cool, controlled façade which he had donned like armour? Yes, she acknowledged. She needed a good excuse to hate him. Everything would be so much more bearable if she hated him.
Closing his hand over her knotted fingers, Dio spun her back to him. Ellie dropped her head, struggling desperately to control her emotions. Dio turned her face up to his and met defiant green eyes that shimmered with unshed tears.
A roughened groan escaped him. ‘You’re panicking. Why? You are not alone with this. Trust me.’
‘How do I trust a guy who asked me to be his mistress?’ Ellie demanded with raw, incredulous force.
‘What has that got to do with this?’ Dio asked with a frown.
‘Everything!’ Ellie condemned unevenly. ‘You were thinking of what suited you…you certainly weren’t thinking about my wellbeing! Do you honestly think I’m stupid, Dio? How could I possibly trust you? If I’m pregnant, your solution will be a discreet termination…exactly what my loving father planned for me!’
His hard, bronzed features froze. As a ragged sob broke from Ellie’s throat, her vision of him mercifully blurred and she twisted away. With a stifled expletive in his own language,
Dio closed his arms round her. She made a frantic effort to pull free, but he was so much stronger she might as well have been trying to break through solid steel bars.
Ellie finally subsided against him, weak as water after that outburst which had come from the very depths of her. Crushed against his chest, she listened to the solid, reassuring thump of his heart and drank in the achingly familiar scent of him. She shut her eyes tight and wished the world could stop for ever at that moment.
‘I can promise you that I will not suggest that as a remedy,’ Dio breathed, his Greek accent very thick.
The tight knot of fear inside her began to uncoil. ‘I just don’t want that pressure put on me…it’s not fair,’ she muttered shakily.
‘At least your mother withstood that pressure—’
A humourless laugh was dredged from Ellie. ‘Only because she was terrified of what the procedure might involve.’ She snatched in a jagged breath. ‘She didn’t even see that my father just didn’t want me to be born. He told her that he couldn’t bear the thought of her having to live as an unmarried mother and she believed him.’
‘You never did tell me the rest of that story.’
‘There was no happy ending.’
‘So?’ Dio challenged, his deep-pitched drawl reverberating through his chest, making her quiver in reaction.
Ellie lifted her head and looked up at him. It was a long way up, but those stunning black eyes of his could have gripped and held her at a hundred yards. She fought to concentrate. ‘Mum was his mistress for sixteen years…’
Taken aback by that bald admission, Dio expelled his breath in a fracturing hiss.
‘So you really weren’t on a winning streak with that offer you made,’ Ellie pointed out, a pained attempt at a teasing smile curving her soft full mouth. ‘But at least you’re not someone else’s husband, like he was…’
Dio had gone very still. His incredible lashes lowered to screen his gaze.
‘And even though it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, I guess you were honest,’ Ellie conceded jerkily. ‘Which he never was.’
Tension snaked through Dio’s big powerful frame. His arms tightened round her. Ellie felt whole again for the first time since she had left Chindos, but all the more conscious that the emotional hold which Dio had on her was stupendously strong.
Dio smoothed the tumbled silvery hair from her damp brow, his eyes liquid dark with emotion. ‘You were right,’ he murmured with a roughened edge to his dark, deep voice. ‘When I asked you to be my mistress, I didn’t consider you. I wanted you back in my bed. That was the bottom line.’
Ellie trembled, defenseless against her own hunger to be as close to him as his own skin. ‘Well, I don’t want to be your mistress,’ she whispered shakily. ‘But I do want to be with you tonight…’
Dio wasn’t quite quick enough to hide his surprise.
Shocked by her own daring, Ellie reddened, not even sure where that frank confession had come from.
‘I really don’t deserve you,’ Dio grated quietly as he bent and lifted her easily off her feet and up into his arms.
Ellie buried her hot face in his shoulder and gloried in his physical strength. At that instant being with Dio was all she wanted in the whole wide world. He settled her down on a divan in a low-lit elegant bedroom. He ran the zips down on her boots and eased them off. He sprang upright again with that fluid grace she adored and began to undress.
Watching him discard his clothes, Ellie was weak with longing. She shimmied out of her tights and clumsily tugged off her sweater.
‘Stop it,’ Dio scolded with shimmering golden eyes full of mingled reproach and anticipation. ‘I want to do that.’
Her mouth ran dry as he came back to her, his bold arousal flagrant proof of his powerful masculinity. He was like a bronze sculpture, but far too erotic to ever be put on public view. Nor could any metal ever have portrayed his sheer vibrance. Stinging sexual awareness shot through Ellie like an electric current.
Dio unclipped her bra. Her full breasts were adorned by pouting pink nipples. His slumbrous eyes burning her temptingly exposed flesh, Dio suddenly groaned, ‘Cristos…I shouldn’t be doing this!’
Ellie frowned in bewilderment. His tension pronounced, Dio raised his scorching gaze to her moist parted lips and then to her confused eyes. Just as suddenly he appeared to reach a decision, and he closed his hands over hers to haul her all the way into his arms. He possessed her mouth with a raw, hungry heat that provoked a startled gasp from her, and then he eased her over him to deftly dispose of the rest of her clothing.
‘I want you every way there is,’ he intoned, lowering her to the pillows and running sure hands over the straining sensitivity of her breasts. ‘But gently, pethi mou.’
Excitement already running like fire through her as he teased her prominent nipples, Ellie could only manage a shaken moan, and then she reached up, plunging her fingers into his thick black silky hair to draw his gorgeous mouth back to hers again. She let her fingers slide down over his taut flat stomach, reveling in the sudden tightening of his muscles as she traced the fine furrow of hair to its magnificent source.
With a ragged laugh at her new boldness, Dio flung himself flat on the bed and watched her explore him with golden eyes full of indulgence. Then he drew her up to him with lazy eroticism and began to show her what he liked. And, shy and uncertain as she was, she was driven by the most intense need to give him pleasure.
‘Enough,’ Dio groaned all too soon, lifting her up to him with powerful arms and kissing her breathless. He studied her with deeply appreciative eyes. ‘I love teaching you…but you’re too fast a learner.’
‘Am I?’ Ellie shivered, shockingly aroused by the excitement of touching him, loving him. She sank down on his lean, hard all-male length to lose herself in another carnal kiss with the ease of a programmed doll.
He rolled her over and began to systematically drive her wild. Her heart hammered like crazy. Nothing existed for her but Dio and the tormenting need which now controlled her. He found the swollen, aching sensitivity at the very heart of her and she couldn’t stay still. Her breath sobbed in her throat then as she twisted and jerked beneath a tidal wave of exquisite sensation.
‘Please…’ she gasped helplessly.
Eyes burning pure gold, Dio slid between her parted thighs and entered her with an earthy growl of satisfaction. The feel of him stretching her gave her the most intense tormenting pleasure. He moved fast and deep, and a low, keening sound was wrenched from her. His every thrust burned her with liquid fire. All control was decimated, her overwhelming hunger driven higher and higher. She clung to him in wild abandonment, out of her senses with pleasure long before he pushed her to a shattering climax.
Ellie came back to herself with tears in her eyes and a dazed sense of wonder. She relived the instant when Dio had shuddered over her, reaching down his own zenith with dominant power, and she stroked loving fingers through his tousled damp hair and pressed her reddened mouth reverently against his shoulder. ‘You make me feel so special…’ she whispered unsteadily.
Really special, for the first time in her entire life, she realised ruefully—just as the phone by the bed buzzed and Dio’s long, lithe length suddenly tensed above hers.
‘Don’t answer it,’ she muttered urgently, not wanting anything to intrude.
‘I’m expecting a call.’ Dio eased free of her to roll over and reach for the phone.
Lying on her stomach, Ellie watched him recline back against the padded headboard. His brilliant black eyes were screened from her but she could feel his sudden distance like a cold chill in the air. He was talking in Greek, his darkly handsome features grave and taut.
Ellie frowned, anxiously wondering what the call was about.
A couple of minutes later, Dio cast the phone aside. ‘I need a shower, and then I might work for a while,’ he announced, his stunning eyes veiled, his jawline clenched. ‘Try to get some sleep, Ellie.’
When he spran
g off the bed without another word, Ellie paled. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing that need concern you.’
‘Maybe you’d just like me to vanish in a puff of smoke now!’ Ellie exclaimed rawly.
Dio drove exasperated fingers through his hair and swore long, low and viciously in his own language. Black eyes glittering, he drew in a deep, shuddering breath, visibly attempting to control a temper that was now, it seemed, on a hair trigger. ‘Ellie, just lie down and go to sleep—’
‘I’m going home.’ Her face a furious pink, but her eyes mirroring her pain and confusion, Ellie swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
Dio loosed a savage groan. ‘I want you to stay!’
Ellie flung back her head in challenge. ‘It doesn’t feel like it.’
‘I’m not about to beg, yineka mou,’ Dio incised in stark warning.
It was the endearment that soothed her. At least she assumed that the thing he’d called her was a term of affection. She listened to the shower running in the bathroom, but all happy contentment had now been wrested from her. Maybe he had got some bad news during that phone call. But if that was true, why hadn’t he just said so? Her insecurity level began to climb. Inevitably she started questioning the renewed intimacy she had personally invited, and her misgivings mushroomed.
In a desperate need to convince herself that they did have a relationship, she had just thrown herself at Dio. All right, she loved him, and was currently suffering from the most humiliating need for reassurance, but that was certainly not an excuse. Tonight, prompted by the fear that she was pregnant, she had tried to attach strings that didn’t exist, hadn’t she? If Dio was feeling in need of some space now, how could she possibly blame him? She should have resisted her own weakness and slept elsewhere. Why, oh, why did she always get it wrong with Dio? she asked herself in positive anguish.
Getting out of bed, Ellie hurriedly gathered up her clothes. She crept down the corridor to the room in which she had changed earlier and climbed into the bed there. If Dio really wanted her with him, he would come and get her. If he didn’t—well, then she had done the right thing, hadn’t she?