by Maisey Yates
Her head was spinning. Revenge? She had been under no illusions that there was any affection between Apollo and her, but if anyone should want revenge, it was her. “You... You used me.”
“Did you really think that I wanted you?”
She felt like he had driven a spike through her chest. The cold, black words matching his cold, black eyes, making it impossible to pretend she had misheard. “Of course I did. As far as I know men can’t fake...” She gestured toward the front of his pants. “They have to at least be attracted to a woman.”
“It isn’t just women who can lie back and think of England. What I really wanted, Elle, was to let your father know that I’ve taken everything from him. What would he think if he knew—?”
“Don’t you dare, you bastard.”
“Then I would have his company, and his daughter.”
“You don’t have me,” she said, her throat tightening. “Two weeks, Apollo. Two weeks I gave you... I did...” She swallowed hard, panic taking over, tears threatening to fall. “I held nothing back from you! I trusted you with my body.”
“A bad decision. I am untrustworthy. I have been from the beginning. You were convenient, darling, but let’s be honest. Hardly more than a diversion, and one I cannot afford anymore.”
“How can you say that?”
“It’s true. Elle, be realistic. What could I possibly want with a near-virgin who’s so cold she practically leaves icicles on my lips after a kiss?”
His words struck her like a physical blow. None of this made sense. She couldn’t process it. But somewhere, in the middle of all the pain, all the anguish flooding through her like an unchecked tide, she found rage. The same rage that had propelled her into his arms in the first place.
And she clung it to it with everything she had. “How dare you?” she hissed, low and hard. “My father did everything for you. He paid for your education. He loved you—”
“No,” he said. “He never loved me. He wanted to possess my mother, at any cost. And he did so. His very own Biblical fantasy where she was his Bathsheba and he sent her husband out to die.”
“What?”
“Yes. My family was not always impoverished. Your father and mine were business partners, Elle. But they both fell for the same woman. My mother. She preferred my father. Your father bided his time, waited until he saw the opportunity, and then he used his sway with the board to vote my father out of the company. My father was ruined. Ultimately, he killed himself. My mother held out against your father’s pleas for him to join her in the US. As his mistress. He was of course married to your mother then.”
“I...”
“My mother agreed when I was eight, and we were starving. He established us in a home near his, and he came to visit often. From what I discovered later, he paid your mother off, then waited an appropriate amount of time before bringing my mother to the estate to be his wife.”
“No... My father wouldn’t... He didn’t...”
“He did. He’s a manipulative bastard who sees us all as nothing more than pawns. His actions caused my father to kill himself, it ruined my family. But I started to look into the history of my family. And when I found out why my father killed himself...why he was ruined...it all became clear.” He paused. “It was your mother who contacted me.”
Elle’s mother who had long since abandoned the family. Whom Elle hadn’t seen in fifteen years. “My mother?”
“Yes. She had seen me rising in business circles and she...she found me one night at a bar. I didn’t know who she was. Just another blonde who was after a night, I thought. But unlike most women, she didn’t want sex. She wanted to talk. She wanted to tell me just what your father was.”
“She came and found you? After all these years, not speaking to me for any of them, she came and found you? Are you that much more compelling to both of my parents?”
“In her case, I think she was compelled by revenge.”
“Did she even ask about me?” Elle asked, despising the small sound of her own voice.
He said nothing, and it was his silence that spoke loudest. Of course she hadn’t. She hadn’t contacted her in years, why would she be concerned now? “I can’t... I don’t know what to think. I don’t know how to process this.”
His top lip curled. “Well, you will have plenty of time to process it while you stand in line filing paperwork to collect unemployment.”
“Apollo... You can’t do this.”
His expression was granite. “I am doing this. It was my plan all along, and I am keeping to it. I am simply shortening the timeline.”
Her stomach tightened, her entire body seizing up. She thought she was breaking apart from the inside out.
She had believed in him. Believed that he was the first person to see her for who she was. To want her for herself.
That was the worst betrayal of all. The fact that he’d used her. Not even because he hated her, not even because he wanted revenge on her, but because he wanted it on her father. Yet again, she was nothing. Nothing more than the most convenient chess piece on the board.
“Get out,” she said, shaking now, trembling inside and out.
“It is my house.”
“And it is my room. Leave me with what little dignity I have left.” He turned away from her, heading toward the door. “I can’t believe you. All the things you let me say. All the things you let me do. The bikini. As if I was... As if I mattered. But I never did. You’re not any better than my father. Even if what you say is true, every word of it, you haven’t risen above anything.”
He turned back to her, his expression bleak. “I never wanted to rise above. I only ever wanted to drag you all into hell with me.”
And with that, he walked out of the room, leaving her there, desolate and broken and certain she would never be whole again.
CHAPTER NINE
“IF YOU DON’T mind me saying, Mr. Savas, you’ve been impossible the past few weeks.”
“I know you don’t mind saying it, Alethea,” he said, his tone hard as he looked at his computer screen, ignoring his assistant.
“It’s true,” she said, turning on her heel and walking out of the office. Apollo didn’t look up until the door had been shut firmly behind her.
Damned woman. She was always speaking the truth. He should fire her and hire someone stupid, beautiful and biddable.
When he thought the word beautiful, only one face came to mind. Of course, that woman was neither stupid, nor biddable. And she was persistently in his head.
Particularly in his dreams. He had woken up hard and reaching for her and she wasn’t there. Because he’d sent her away.
It had seemed necessary at the time. Like he needed to put distance between them. But the longer he spent without her, the more he questioned that decision.
After all, his issue had been his loss of control, but sending her away wasn’t any more controlled.
He had removed temptation from his path, but he had not successfully destroyed his lust for her. Because of that, he was suffering now.
There was no reason to do so, of course. She had nothing to do, nowhere to go. No job. He could have her back. Make her his.
The memory of her—the warm weight of her, her sweet scent, the way she sighed and said his name—haunted him. His days, his nights.
He was like an addict in desperate need of a fix. His hands shaking, sweat breaking out over his skin at the thought of tasting her lips. Feeling her softness beneath his palms.
She was his own personal designer drug. One taste had only sent him headlong into an addiction he couldn’t shake.
So maybe that was the problem. Cutting himself off completely would never work. It would only leave him wondering what it would be like to have her one last time. To lose himself inside her. To feel her
delicate fingertips skimming over his back.
Just the thought sent a rush of need through him, so hot, so swift it nearly sent him down to his knees.
He had never felt like this before. Had never felt the need to keep and possess quite so fiercely.
As her father felt for your mother?
No. This was different. But one thing he knew: he had spent too many years denying this desire. He would not continue on.
He had been forced into denial, into poverty as a boy because of her father.
He would not subject himself to denial of his needs again.
He would not go one more night without her in his bed.
* * *
Elle was certain she was dying. It had been four weeks since she had left Greece. Four weeks since she had left Apollo, jobless, broken and humiliated. At least none of it had made it out into the public.
All anyone knew was that she had been replaced in her position at Matte. No one knew about her relationship with Apollo, and that was about the only thing saving her from melting into a puddle and sliding down the nearest drain, disappearing forever.
As upset as her father was about the entire situation, at least he didn’t blame her. Or, maybe she didn’t care. She had no idea how she felt. In only a month her entire life had been completely upended. She was avoiding her father. Avoiding dealing with that situation entirely.
Everything Apollo had said, all of the things he had told her that her father was guilty of, had settled down deep inside of her, and created just enough doubt about...everything that she wasn’t sure she could deal with right now.
And then, purely selfishly, there was the issue of her firing.
She stood up, the floor pitching beneath her as she rose from the couch for the first time in hours. Being unemployed was bad for her wardrobe choices. She had been wearing sweats for three days, because there was no one there to see her anyway. Yesterday she’d worn flannels with small foxes on them. Today, her pants had owls.
“Very sexy,” she said, crossing the length of the apartment and heading toward her fridge. She opened it up, immediately swamped by the smell coming from the inside. She wrinkled her nose. Something did not smell right. But it wasn’t like she kept that much food in the fridge.
She dry heaved, and slammed the door shut. She’d forced herself to eat when she’d first woken up, but nothing tasted like...anything. A broken heart did that to you, apparently. But any semblance of an appetite she might have was gone now.
She felt like she had licked the inside of the tennis shoe. Okay, that thought made her stomach feel even worse.
She heard a knock on her door, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. People didn’t just gain admittance to the building, so it had to be someone who already lived here. Though, her neighbors didn’t speak to her, so she had no idea who it was or what it could be about.
Taking a deep breath, she crossed the apartment and undid the dead bolt and the chain, jerking it open just as she realized she should have looked through the peephole first.
But it was too late. The door was open, and standing there was her worst nightmare.
Suddenly, the vague sense of nausea intensified and she ran from the room, losing her breakfast violently in the bathroom.
“Elle?” Apollo’s voice was coming from behind her.
“Stay away,” she said, shakily getting to her feet. “I’m...horrifying.”
“You’re sick,” he said, his tone vaguely accusatory.
“I...wasn’t.” Except she had been—though not this sick—but off her game for the past few days.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” She wandered over to the sink and splashed cold water on her face. “Who buzzed you in?”
“Some young woman who lives down the hall. Nose ring. Pink hair. She thought I looked trustworthy.”
Elle laughed. Bitter, hollow. “She thought you looked like you belonged in her bed. I would give her advanced warning, but I imagine she wouldn’t really care either way.”
“Sadly for her. I’m not on the market.”
“Okay. If you aren’t here to hook up with my down-the-hall neighbor, why are you here?”
“Would you believe that I came to check on you?”
“No.”
“I want you back.”
“No,” she said, her tone incredulous. “You can’t have me back. You were awful to me. You fired me.”
“And now you don’t have a job. I thought you might be interested in pursuing some sort of arrangement.”
She laughed, flinging her arms wide. “And here I am, vomiting as you ask me to come be your mistress. Really, there are probably more romantic settings than the bathroom.”
“You need money. You certainly need a way to occupy your time.”
“You’re despicable.”
She swept past him, trying to hold her head high. Difficult to do when the man who had made love to you then humiliated you had just seen you puke.
“Maybe,” he said, lingering in the door frame, bracing his hands against it. “But it doesn’t change the facts.”
“Oh,” she said, the world tilting slightly. “I need to lie down.”
He frowned. “How long have you been feeling sick?”
“I told you, I only just... That, in the bathroom.”
“You’ve been otherwise feeling well?”
“Not really. But then, you humiliated me and fired me. So I don’t know how well you could possibly expect me to feel.”
“I’m not talking about your emotions, I’m talking about physically.”
“No. I have not been feeling very well. But your emotions inform things like that.”
“Have you gotten your period?”
Her mouth dropped open. “What kind of question is that?”
“The only question that matters to me right now.”
Ice shivered down her spine. “I haven’t,” she said. “But that doesn’t... It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You’re here vomiting and looking pale, you haven’t had your period in the past month and you don’t think that means anything.”
“We...”
“Were not very careful.”
No, they hadn’t been. They hadn’t used a condom in the elevator, and again during that last time at his home. So really... She hadn’t had a period since the elevator. “No, I guess we weren’t.”
“And it didn’t occur to you until just now that you might be pregnant?”
“No,” she said, her hand flying to her mouth, her eyes wide. “No. I’m not... I’m not.”
“You have no way of knowing that.”
No. She didn’t. Because she hadn’t taken a test. And, while she had never been particularly regular, that hadn’t exactly been a problem because she had been a virgin. Now...it was a bit suspicious.
“I mean, I would prefer to wait a few days...”
He had already pulled out a cell phone. “Yes, Alethea? Find a discreet women’s doctor in Manhattan who can see a patient immediately. Text me the information once you have it. When I say immediately, I mean I’m about to get in the car and start driving. They had better be ready to see us.”
He hung up, and she could only stare at him. “What are you doing?”
“We are going to answer this question once and for all, agape. And make no mistake, if you are carrying my child there is no question that you are coming back to Greece with me. Immediately.”
* * *
He could do nothing but pace outside the office at the posh, private medical facility he had taken Elle to.
He had found himself back in Manhattan for business reasons, and then he had displayed a characteristic weakness and found himself at Elle’s building.
He did not know what
manner of witchcraft Elle possessed that she made it impossible for him to forget her. Forget how she made him feel. Whether it was four weeks in the past, or nine years—before he had ever even touched her. She was a woman who lingered in his mind in a way that none before her—or since—ever had.
He wondered now if she had been some sort of bad omen. If the fact that he had never been able to get her out of his mind had been a warning of some kind. If she were truly pregnant with his child, he could not discount that. He had never intended to have children. But the moment the idea that she might be pregnant had entered his mind he had known that he would take possession of his child.
After his own childhood, after the way he had lost his father, he knew he would never subject his own child to such a thing. To a life without the man who was meant to protect him.
He gritted his teeth. His own father’s feelings had hardly been his fault. He had been pushed into ruin by David St. James. The fault would always lie with St. James. Apollo however was standing on his own two feet. No one was pushing him anywhere.
The door opened, and Elle emerged, clutching a few pieces of paper, her face pale. He didn’t need her to speak to know what the answer was.
He had never imagined being in this situation. He supposed that any man who was sexually active could potentially face it, but he had always been very careful. So it was never anything he had considered seriously. But he had not been careful with Elle. The theme in their relationship, and the consequences of that, were now coming home to roost.
There was no panic. There was not even any rage, though he had expected it. No, there was nothing but cold, clean determination. He knew exactly what he was going to do. What he would demand.