He smiled when he heard her breath rush from her lungs as he wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her towards him so that she was pressed against his chest, against his heat and the hardness of his arousal that ached. Theos, he had never ached so badly for a woman before.
‘Alekos,’ she whispered. Her green eyes were very dark and he saw her uncertainty reflected in their depths as he lowered his head. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Rehearsing for when we meet your father,’ he growled before he slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her like he’d wanted to do, like he’d been burning up to do since he had kissed her in the lobby of the art gallery. The difference was that that had been for Zelda Pagnotis’s sake, or so Alekos had assured himself. But this time it was lust, pure and simple, that made him cup Sara’s jaw in his palm and angle her head so that he could plunder her lips and slide his tongue into her mouth to taste her sweetness.
Without her high-heeled shoes she was much smaller than him and Alekos lifted her up and sat her on the kitchen worktop, nudging her thighs apart so that he could stand between them. The fact that she let him gave him the licence he needed to capture her mouth and kiss her again, hard this time, demanding her response as the fire inside him burned out of control.
Her shoulders were silky smooth beneath his hands. He traced his fingers along the delicate line of her collarbone before moving lower to explore the upper slopes of her breasts. Touching wasn’t enough. He had to see her, had to cradle those firm mounds in his hands. With his lips still clinging to hers, he reached behind her and unzipped her dress. The green silk bodice slipped down and he helped it on its way, tugging the material until her breasts popped free. His breath hissed between his teeth as he feasted his eyes on her bare breasts, so pale against his tanned fingers, and at their centre her nipples, tight and dusky pink, just waiting for his tongue to caress them.
With a low growl Alekos lowered his mouth to her breast and drew wet circles around the areola before he closed his lips on her nipple and sucked. The soft cry she gave turned him on even more and he slid his arms around her back and encouraged her to arch her body and offer her breasts to his mouth. Every flick of his tongue across her nipple sent a shudder of response through her and when he transferred his attention to her other breast and sucked the tender peak she made a keening noise and dug her fingers into his hair as if to hold him to his task of pleasuring her.
He was so hard it hurt. His erection strained beneath his trousers as he shifted even closer to her, forcing her to spread her legs wider so that her dress rode up her thighs and he pressed his hardness against the panel of her knickers. Knowing that a fragile strip of lace was all that hid her feminine core from him shattered the last of his restraint and he groaned and cupped her face in his hands.
‘Let’s go to bed, Sara mou. This kitchen is not big enough for me to make love to you comfortably.’ He doubted that her single bed would offer much more in the way of comfort and remembering her collection of child’s soft toys strewn on her bed was a little off-putting. But the only other room was that soulless sitting room and he quickly dismissed the idea of having sex with her there.
He eased back from her and looked down at her naked breasts with their reddened, swollen nipples. ‘Come with me,’ he said urgently. If he did not have her soon he would explode.
* * *
Bed! Sara stiffened as Alekos’s thick voice broke through the haze of sexual excitement he had created with his mouth and his wicked tongue. When he had sucked her nipples she’d felt an electrical current arc from her breasts down to the molten core of her femininity. She’d been spellbound by his magic, enthralled by the myriad new sensations induced by his increasingly bold caresses. But his words brought her back to reality with a thud.
On the opposite wall of the kitchen she could see her reflection in the stainless steel cooker splashback that her mother had religiously polished until it gleamed. Dear heaven, she looked like a slut, with her bare breasts hanging out of the top of her dress and the skirt rucked up around her thighs. She pictured Joan’s disapproving expression and shame doused the heat in her blood like cold water thrown on a fire.
‘Men only want one thing,’ her mother had often told Sara. ‘Once you give them your body they quickly lose interest in you.’
Sara assumed that was how her father had treated her mother. It was certainly true of Alekos. She knew about all the gorgeous blondes who had come and gone in his life, because he’d given her the task of arranging an item of jewellery from a well-known jewellers to be sent to his mistresses when he ended his affair with them. Who would choose a pretty trinket to be sent to a mistress who was also his PA? She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘We can’t go to bed,’ she told him firmly. ‘You know we can’t, Alekos. We shouldn’t have got carried away like we did.’ She watched his expression turn from puzzlement to shock at her refusal before his eyes narrowed to black slits that gleamed with anger.
‘Why not?’ he demanded, his clipped tone betraying his frustration. ‘We are both unattached, consenting adults.’
‘I work for you.’
He dismissed her argument with a careless shrug of his shoulders. ‘This evening we gave the impression that we are having an affair and tomorrow’s papers will doubtless carry pictures of us arriving at the art gallery together.’
‘But we were only pretending to have a relationship. You don’t really want me.’
‘It’s patently obvious how much I want you,’ Alekos said sardonically. ‘And you want me, Sara. Don’t bother to deny it. Your body doesn’t lie.’
She followed his gaze down to her bare breasts and silently cursed the hard points of her nipples that betrayed her. Red-faced, she yanked the top of her dress back into place. ‘We can’t,’ she repeated grittily. But her resolve was tested to its limit by the feral hunger in his eyes. ‘If we had an affair, what would happen when it ended?’
‘I see no reason why you couldn’t carry on being my PA. We work well together and I wouldn’t want to lose you.’
Alekos wouldn’t want to lose her as his PA, but that was all. She could not risk succumbing to her desire for him because she would find it impossible to continue to work for him after they were no longer lovers. It would be torture to know he was dating other women after he’d finished with her. And she would know. In the two years she had been his PA she’d learned to recognise the signs that he was having regular sex.
She felt emotionally drained from the evening. Meeting her half-siblings had made her long to be part of a family. But she certainly wasn’t going to sleep with Alekos to ease the loneliness she had felt all her life. ‘I think you had better leave,’ she told him huskily, praying he wouldn’t guess she was close to tears.
‘If you really want me to go, then of course I accept your decision,’ he said coldly, sounding faintly incredulous that she had actually rejected him. ‘But in future I suggest you do not respond to a man so fervently if you don’t intend to follow it through.’
‘Are you accusing me of leading you on?’ Her temper flared. ‘That’s a foul thing to suggest and grossly unfair. You came on to me.’
‘And you hated every moment when we were kissing, I suppose?’ he mocked. ‘It’s a little too late to play the innocent victim, Sara.’
‘I’m not trying to imply that I’m a victim.’ But if he knew how innocent she really was he would run a mile, she thought grimly. She suddenly remembered that they had travelled from Soho to her house in Alekos’s limousine. ‘If I had invited you to stay the night, what would your chauffeur have done? Would he have slept in the car?’
Alekos shrugged. ‘We have an arrangement. Mike knows to wait for a while...’ He did not add anything more but Sara understood that his driver had been instructed to leave after a couple of hours if Alekos went into a woman’s house and did not reappear. No doubt it was an arrangement that had been used on many occasions. Sara got on well with Mike and she would have felt
so embarrassed if she’d had to face him after Alekos had spent the night with her. It brought home to her that she could not sacrifice her job, her reputation and her self-respect for a sexual liaison with her boss.
But when she followed Alekos down the hall and he opened the front door she had to fight the temptation to tell him that she had changed her mind and wanted him to stay and make love to her. Love had nothing to do with it, she reminded herself. At least not for Alekos. And she had sworn she would not make her mother’s mistake and fall in love with a man who could never love her.
‘Goodnight,’ she bid him in a low voice.
‘Sleep well,’ he mocked, as if he knew her body ached with longing and regret that would make sleep impossible. As she watched him stride down the path she thought that at least she would be able to face him in the office tomorrow morning with her pride intact.
But pride was a poor bedfellow she discovered later, as she tossed and turned in her single bed. Her nipples still tingled from Alekos’s ministrations and the insistent throb between her legs was a shameful reminder of how close she had come to giving in to her desire for him.
CHAPTER SIX
MONACO WAS A playground for millionaires and billionaires, and for the last three days the tiny principality had hosted the iconic yacht show, which this year had taken place in June rather than its usual date in September. Some of the world’s most impressive superyachts were moored in the harbour, the largest and most spectacular being the two-hundred-and-eighty-foot Artemis from leading yacht brokerage and shipyard, Gionakis Enterprises.
On Sunday morning, Alekos made his way through Port Hercules in the sunshine. Now that the show was over, the huge crowds that had packed the waterfront had gone and his route to where Artemis was moored was no longer blocked by yacht charter brokers, who had been keen to tour the vessel and discover the superlative luxury of her interior.
Gone too were the glamour models and hostesses who were synonymous with the prestigious show. Monaco surely boasted more beautiful women wearing minuscule bikinis that revealed their tanned, taut bodies than anywhere else in the world, Alekos thought cynically. He could have relieved his sexual frustration with any of the numerous women who had tried to catch his eye, but there was only one woman he wanted and she had studiously kept out of his way.
After the frenzy of the past three days, Alekos’s preferred method to unwind had been to go for a fifteen-mile run along the coast. Now he felt relaxed as he boarded Artemis and walked along her deck, with nothing but the cry of gulls and the lap of water against the yacht’s hull to break the silence. His sense of calm well-being was abruptly shattered when he entered the small saloon which he had been using as an office and found Sara sitting at a desk with her laptop open in front of her.
She was dressed in white shorts and a striped top and her hair was caught up in a ponytail with loose tendrils framing her face. Without make-up, the freckles on her nose were visible and she looked wholesome and utterly lovely. Alekos felt his gut twist.
‘Why are you working already? I told you I was planning to go for a run and you could have a lie in this morning.’
‘I woke early and decided to get the report about the show typed up,’ she said, carefully not looking directly at him. ‘I thought you wouldn’t be back for another hour or so.’
‘Is that why you started work at the crack of dawn, hoping to have finished the report before I came back, so that you could avoid me like you’ve done since you arrived on Wednesday?’
She flushed. ‘I haven’t avoided you. We’ve worked together constantly every day.’
‘During the day we were surrounded by other people, and you took yourself off to bed immediately after dinner every evening. I can’t believe you usually go to bed at nine p.m.,’ he said drily.
The colour on her cheeks spread down her throat and Alekos wondered if the rosy blush stained her breasts. ‘I was tired,’ she muttered. ‘The past few days have been incredibly busy.’
‘I don’t deny it. And because I came to Monaco a couple of days before you did, this is the first chance we have had to discuss what happened after we attended the art gallery launch last week.’
Now she did look at him, her eyes so wide and full of panic that she reminded him of a rabbit caught in car headlights. ‘There’s nothing to discuss. We...we got carried away, but it won’t happen again.’
‘Are you so sure of that?’ Alekos deliberately lowered his gaze to the hard points of her nipples, outlined beneath her clingy T-shirt, and grinned when she crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. He did not know why he took satisfaction from teasing her but he suspected it was to make him feel less bad about himself. He couldn’t comprehend why he had come on to her so strong last Sunday evening. It was not his style. And she had rejected him! Theos—that was a first for him.
What was it about Sara that fired him up as if he were a hormone-fuelled youth instead of a jaded playboy who could take his pick of beautiful women? All week he had racked his brain for an answer while he’d been alone each night in the opulent master suite on Artemis, whereas at last year’s show he’d enjoyed the company of two very attractive—not to mention inventive—blondes.
The only reason that made any sense—but did not make him feel good about himself, he acknowledged grimly—was simply that he wanted Sara so badly because she had turned him down. He wanted to see her sprawled on his bed, all wide-eyed and flushed with sexual heat, and he wanted to hear her beg him to make love to her because his ego couldn’t deal with rejection.
She was watching him warily, and for some reason it angered him. She had been with him all the way the other night, right up until he’d suggested they go to bed. Even though she had said no, he’d sensed he could have persuaded her to change her mind. But he’d never pleaded with a woman to have sex with him before, and he had no intention of starting with his PA, who clearly had a hang-up about sex.
He leaned across the desk and tugged her arms open. Ignoring her yelp of protest, he drawled, ‘It will help to make the pretence that we are lovers more convincing if you drop the outraged virgin act when your father and his guests arrive.’
Her eyes flashed with anger and she clamped her lips together as if to hold back a retort. Alekos wondered how much resistance she would offer if he attempted to probe her lips apart with his tongue. Lust swept like wildfire through him and he abruptly swung away and strode over to the door, conscious that his running shorts did not hide the evidence of his arousal.
‘As you are so keen to work, you may as well type up the financial report for the shareholders. It will keep you busy until lunchtime, and as you are so averse to my company you won’t want to join me for a swim in the pool, will you?’ he murmured, and laughed softly at her fulminating look.
* * *
They had lunch on one of the yacht’s four decks, sitting at a table set beneath a striped canopy that provided shade from the blazing Mediterranean sun. Lionel Kingsley, his son and daughter and Warren McCuskey had boarded Artemis at midday, and Alekos had instructed the captain to steer the yacht out of the harbour and drop anchor a couple of miles off the coast.
They were surrounded by blue, Sara thought as she looked around at the sparkling azure ocean which met a cornflower blue sky on the horizon. A gentle breeze carried the faint salt tang of the sea and lifted the voices and laughter of the people sitting around the table. She popped her last forkful of the light-as-air salmon mousse that the chef had prepared for a main course into her mouth and gave a sigh of pleasure.
After her run-in with Alekos earlier in the morning, her nerves had been on edge at the prospect of them having to act as though they were a couple. She’d fretted about the lunch, knowing that she had lied to her father about being Alekos’s girlfriend and, even worse, not being truthful to Charlotte and Freddie that she was their half-sister.
But she need not have worried. Alekos had been at his most urbane and charming, although his eyes had glinted with
amusement and something else that evoked a molten sensation inside her when he’d slipped his arm around her waist as they had walked along the deck to greet Lionel and his party. ‘Showtime, Sara mou,’ Alekos had murmured before he’d kissed her mouth, leaving her lips tingling and wanting more, even though she knew the kiss had been for the benefit of the interested onlookers.
Recalling that kiss now, she ran her tongue over her lips and glanced at Alekos sitting across the table from her. Heat swept through her when she discovered him watching her through narrowed eyes, and she knew that he was also remembering those few seconds when his lips had grazed hers. She tore her gaze from him when she realised that Charlotte was speaking.
‘An office love affair is so romantic. When did you and Alekos realise that there was more to your relationship than you simply being his PA?’
‘Um...’ Sara felt her face grow warm as she struggled to think of a reply.
‘It was a gradual process,’ Alekos answered for her. ‘Obviously, Sara and I work closely together and to begin with we were friends before our friendship developed into something deeper.’
He sounded so convincing that Sara almost believed him herself. It was true that friendship had grown between them over the last two years. But that was where fact ended and her fantasy that he would fall in love with her began, she reminded herself.
Keen to change the subject, she turned to Freddie. ‘Tell me what it was like at art school. It must have been fun. I would have loved to study for an art degree.’
‘Why didn’t you, if it is a subject that you say you have always been interested in?’
She shrugged. ‘My mother wanted me to find a job as soon as I’d finished my A levels. There was only the two of us, you see, and she struggled to pay the bills.’
‘Couldn’t your father have helped?’
Sara froze and was horribly aware that her father had broken off his conversation with McCuskey and was waiting tensely for her to respond to Freddie’s innocent question.
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