He’d spent almost a year here after it had happened – running from his own part in his father’s death. Running from the fact that letting his guard down for the first time in his life, and opening up to someone, had directly led to Stavros’s heart attack.
Over time, he’d come to realise that Eleanor was some kind of witch – surely. Magical, enchanted, utterly terrifying – because when he was with her, he lost all sense of time, place, duty, responsibility. There was a reason he’d kept his father’s secrets for so long – a reason he’d kept those secrets even from his own sister, pushing her away with everything he had, protecting her from the shame of their father’s truth.
No one should have known what kind of man Stavros Heranedes was. Hell, if Apollo had had his way, he wouldn’t have known. But Stavros hadn’t only been a despotic, power-hungry billionaire with a twisted and insatiable sexual appetite: he’d been determined to indoctrinate Apollo into his lifestyle.
A hooker had been Stavros’s idea of the perfect fifteenth birthday present for Apollo – a beautiful, exclusive Manhattan call-girl, flown in for his ‘private use’. Apollo grimaced now, his reaction to the ‘surprise’ only natural given his hormonally-charged state. It had been years before he’d become enough of a man to refuse such gifts, to refuse to be groomed into the second-coming of Stavros Heranedes.
Oh, in business acumen he had always been pleased to take after the old man. Exceed, in fact, for Stavros had the skills of his father without the emotional ambivalence. He was smart, driven, ruthless, but could make decisions from the cold-place of certainty, rather than the heat of ego.
At least he could with everything except Eleanor.
Which brought him back to his first question: what the hell was he doing, bringing her to prâsino nìsi?
His eyes lifted of their own accord to the doorway that led to the rear of the plane. It was all too easy to imagine her in the bedroom. Lying down, that beautiful tangle of dark hair around her captivating face, eyes swept shut, so that only her long, dark lashes fanned her cheeks – cheeks that had been kissed by the sun often enough to birth a happy brigade of freckles across the bridge of her nose – appreciable only when you were close enough to kiss her.
Which he’d been often in the time they spent together. To kiss her, to hold her, never to sleep with her.
He expelled a sigh borne of anger and frustration now.
Eleanor had seemed the very opposite of everything he was: the fast-paced lifestyle Stavros lived was full of wealth, glamour, beautiful women clamoring to become his mistress, women for whom sex was cheap and life was a rapid succession of parties and men. Eleanor had been the total opposite. So shy and nervous when they’d first met – a meeting which he now understood to have been a brilliant construct.
She’d studied him, to know where he grabbed a coffee after a jog each morning: she knew that he queued up at the Pret around the corner from his penthouse. She’d bumped into him, spilling both their coffees and he’d looked into those caramel eyes of hers and felt as though he’d been sucker-punched and reborn, all at once. In her eyes he saw the person he should have been, the man he might be, if only he could look into her eyes for long enough.
It had been a stupid romantic fantasy, but by the time he’d bought her a replacement coffee, he’d known he wouldn’t let her get away. He’d known that whatever fate had brought them together – literally – it was a fate that demanded he follow her to the ends of the earth.
Or, as it turned out, to his own destruction.
It wasn’t, after all, fate that had brought them together: it was her ruthless determination to uncover whatever she could about his family, using her face and body as temptations, drawing him close and keeping him there, enchanting him as his own Scheherezade, so that each night he found himself spinning more and more of himself out for her, until he’d been laid bare to her eyes.
And her notebook.
He made a sound of impatience and turned his gaze back on the window. The island was in view now – lush and verdant per its name “Green island” – floating in the midst of a pale blue ocean. The plane flew over the village first – not so much a village as a colony for the exclusive use of his staff. There were forty of them on the island, and their families, so roads had been built over time, to allow access to the remote parts of the land, and the airstrip. The plane dipped lower, low enough that he caught sight of his mansion, on the northern tip of the island, built right on the beach, with views that stretched for miles and the kind of privacy that Apollo found essential.
And now he’d brought a witch to his safe haven, and he had no clue how he was going to avoid being caught by her spells again – only he knew that he had to. One encounter with Eleanor Jones had almost destroyed him. A second would certainly finish the job.
* * *
THE GREEK’S VIRGIN CAPTIVE IS AVAILABLE NOW and is free to read in Kindle Unlimited!
Books By Clare Connelly
HARLEQUIN TITLES
Bought for the Billionaire’s Revenge
Innocent in the Billionaire’s Bed
Off Limits
Her Wedding Night Surrender
Burn Me Once
Bound by the Billionaire’s Vows
The Season to Sin
His Innocent Seduction
Bound by their Christmas Baby
Her Guilty Secret
Shock Heir for the King
The Greek’s Billion-Dollar Baby
Spaniard’s Baby of Revenge
The Bride Behind the Billion-Dollar Veil
Dare Continuity
Cross my Hart (Notorious Harts Bk 1)
* * *
SINGLE TITLES
* * *
Her Guardian’s Christmas Seduction
Stolen by the Desert King
In the Hands of the Sheikh
His Nine Month Seduction
The Sheikh’s Contract Bride
Seduced by the Vengeful Tycoon
The Sheikh’s Stolen Bride
The Sheikh’s Secret Baby
The Sheikh’s Million Dollar Bride
The Tycoon’s Virgin Mistress
The Sheikh’s Virgin Hostage
Bartered to the Sheikh
The Sheikh’s Arranged Marriage
Marrying for his Royal Heir
The Greek’s Marriage Revenge
The Velasco Love Child
The Sultan’s Virgin Bride
Bound to the Sheikh
The Medici Mistress
His Loving Deception
The Sheikh’s Convenient Mistress
The Princess’s Forbidden Lover
Marrying her Enemy
Rakanti’s Indecent Proposition
Seducing the Spaniard
The Italian’s Innocent Bride
The Greek Tycoon’s Forbidden Affair
The Terms of their Affair
A Second Chance at Love
The Sheikh’s Christmas Mistress
At the Sheikh’s Command
The Billionaire’s Christmas Revenge
Seduced by the Italian Tycoon
Raising the Soldier’s Son
Warming the Sheikh’s Bed
The Tycoon’s Christmas Captive
The Brazilian’s Forgotten Lover
Betrayed by the CEO
The Billionaire’s Ruthless Revenge
The Italian Billionaire’s Betrayal
The Sultan’s Reluctant Princess
Love in the Fast Lane
Bought by the Sheikh
The Tycoon’s Summer Seduction
All She Wants for Christmas
One Night with the Sheikh
A Bed of Broken Promises
Tempted by the Billionaire
The Sheikh’s Christmas Wish
To the Highest Bidder
The Tycoon’s Secret Baby
Bedding His Innocent Mistress
The Sheikh’s Baby Bargain
The Greek’s Virgin Ca
ptive
The Sheikh’s Inherited Bride
Claiming His Secret Baby
Blackmailed by the Spaniard
Her Surprise Baby Christmas
* * *
COMPENDIUMS
* * *
Casacelli Brides
Mediterranean Tycoons
Desert Rulers
Billionaire Bad Boys
Too Hot to Handle
Desert Kings
Happily Ever After
The Darling Buds of May Café
Royal Weddings
The Evermore Series
Loving the Enemy Page 39