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Angel searched for words, but to her chagrin couldn’t get them out in time. To her consternation, Leo merely looked at his watch then, and said crisply, ‘I have to go to the office. Why don’t you get some rest? You look tired.’
And then he was gone, and she was alone. Angel walked into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t just look tired. She looked shell-shocked. Feeling incredibly weary, and more than a little numb, she stripped off and stood under a steaming hot shower for a long time.
And then she got out, dried her hair, shut the curtains, crawled into the softest bed she’d ever felt, and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
The first thing Angel knew was a gentle rocking. And then a voice. A deep, soulful voice that she found herself instinctively turning to. She smiled. The rocking became more forceful, and so did the voice.
‘Angel.’
She wasn’t dreaming. In an instant she was awake. Wide awake. Looking up with big eyes at Leonidas Parnassus, who was far too close to her, sitting on the bed, his face inscrutable. It all rushed back. She wasn’t in her own bed; she was in his home and had agreed to become his mistress.
Angel grabbed for the sheet and pulled it up, even though she was dressed in pants and a vest. She scrabbled back as far as she could go, away from him. She felt exposed at having been caught sleeping. How long had he been there?
Leo stood up from the bed and Angel asked huskily, ‘What time is it?’
He consulted his watch. ‘It’s 8:00 p.m.’
Angel sat up in shock, still holding the sheet. ‘I’ve been asleep all day?’
Leo nodded and went over to pull the curtains back, so Angel could see the sun starting to set in the sky. She felt completely disorientated—jet-lagged, almost. Leo started to walk out of the room, barely glancing at Angel now. ‘Dinner will be served in twenty minutes. I’ll wait for you downstairs.’
While he waited for Angel, Leo stood at the huge French windows of the less formal dining room. The doors were opened out onto the terrace—the same terrace he’d brought Angel out to on the night of the party. He could scarcely fathom that he’d been in Athens for barely twenty-four hours and already had Angel in his home. Yet bizarrely it felt right.
Just now, when he’d woken her, he’d seen something that had reminded him of that first evening they’d met. For a moment before she’d woken she’d almost turned to him, with a soft smile around her mouth, and that enticing beauty spot at the corner of her lip had made him want to bend down and kiss it. Made him want to do so much more. When she’d opened her eyes, though, he’d noticed slight shadows still lingering.
Her hair had been sleep-mussed, tangled over one bare shoulder, where the strap of her vest had fallen down. She’d looked incredibly sexy, yet unbelievably vulnerable, and he had felt a niggle of unease at how quickly things had progressed from him finding her creeping through the villa. He’d pushed the unease aside. Even those three hours waiting for her to return had been torturous. He’d actually been nervous that she wouldn’t return. That, despite everything he had on her, she would defy him. Leo noticed his hands had gone into fists now, just thinking about it. He forced them to uncurl.
He thought of how she’d looked when she’d returned, with shadows like bruises under her eyes …
She’d come into his family home to steal from them.
With more effort than he liked to admit, Leo pushed down the concern. A tight coil of desire held him in its grip. Tonight he’d have her, and he’d no doubt that within a very short space of time she’d prove to be as dismayingly predictable as every other woman he’d ever met, ultimately using emotion arising from intimacy, thinking that she could manipulate him.
He heard a noise at the door and turned around slowly. It was time for Angel to face the consequences of her actions.
Angel’s skin prickled when she was shown into a dining room by a smiling housekeeper and saw Leo standing with his back to her. The windows were open and the curtains fluttered on the breeze. She had no idea how to act in this situation. No idea what was expected of her. She felt acutely lonely all of a sudden.
Leo turned around slowly, and the impact on her senses was nothing short of cataclysmic. She’d not really noticed what he was wearing in her room; she’d been too shocked and groggy. But now she saw that he was dressed in a pair of lovingly worn and faded jeans, which clung to him like a second skin. The material stretched over powerful thighs and long, long legs.
A black polo shirt made the brown of his eyes seem even darker, his skin seem even more olive. His shoulders were almost too broad for the material, and huge biceps bulged from beneath the short sleeves.
‘Come and see the view, Angel.’
I’m already looking at it, she felt like blurting out slightly hysterically.
Knowing she was in a situation she couldn’t get out of, her fate sealed by her own stupidly impetuous actions and her wanting to make everything all right for Delphi, Angel walked over to Leo, very self-conscious in her plain black shift dress. Hair pulled back. She coloured when she saw his gaze drop. She’d viewed him on Google him in a moment of weakness and seen exactly the kind of woman he went for: invariably tall, blonde, soignée. Experienced. A million miles from herself.
‘Very demure,’ he murmured when she came close.
‘If I’d known casual was okay I would have worn jeans too,’ she said stiffly, her gaze resolutely fixed on the view of Athens spread out below them. Not even that spectacular vista could distract her from the man beside her.
‘I like to be casual at home, Angel, so here you can wear what you want … even go naked if you wish,’ he finished softly.
Angel coloured even more at his mocking tone, wondering what on earth he saw in her. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Pity.’
She heard him pour some wine into a glass, and then he was offering it to her. She took it—anything to try and give her some courage.
‘What do you think of the view—it’s amazing, no?’
Angel snuck a quick look up; Leo was staring out, his profile to her, showing that he had a slight bump in his nose, and she could see the faint raised line of the scar over his lip. Hurriedly she looked back, afraid to be caught staring.
‘Yes, it’s truly beautiful.’ Amidst everything, she thought of something else, and looked at her watch to check the time. ‘Actually, any minute now … yes, there. Look—’ Angel lifted her hand to point to where the evening lights were coming on to illuminate the Acropolis, far below in the distance.
She heard Leo’s intake of breath and couldn’t look at him, for some reason afraid of what she might see. It was always a magical sight, and one that took her breath away too. Was it having the same effect on him? She felt a lurch to think that she’d grown up seeing it as an everyday occurrence but he hadn’t.
‘I’ve seen the lights before, but never the moment when they come on like that.’
Angel murmured something inarticulate feeling unaccountably guilty. She turned with more than a little relief when the housekeeper bustled in with their food, and Leo turned too, indicating for her to precede him to the table.
Leo watched Angel walk in front of him, took in the glossy hair tied back in a low, careless bun, the long, elegant neck. And looked down to where her bare legs were slender, yet shapely enough to make his heart kick and his pulse throb.
Her palpable air of nervousness had caught him unawares as she’d stood beside him. He had to question why she was feigning it now, when they both knew where they stood. She’d been nervous before, in the study, but that had no doubt been because she’d no idea how he’d react to catching her red-handed.
He’d certainly not been prepared to have her point out a sight she must have seen a thousand times before, which must be wholly unremarkable to her but had taken his breath away, seeing it for the first time. In any other instance he would have considered it a sweetly considerate gesture.
She wasn’t acting the way he’d imagined she’d act in this situation. He’d expected a certain initial belligerence, or even defiance at having been caught and manipulated so spectacularly. Or he’d imagined that she’d want to make the most of the situation and take advantage of becoming his mistress. Leo had yet to meet a woman who didn’t see the advantage in becoming his mistress, so for her to be feigning this nervous skittishness was going to get her nowhere fast.
They sat down. Leo looked at Angel darkly, but she was avoiding his eyes. Straightening her cutlery, her napkin. She was up to something. She had to be. Trying to disarm him for some reason. He reminded himself that she’d been home earlier, and of course she must have taken advice from her father. Leo cursed himself. The fact that he didn’t trust Angel was not in question, so why was he trying to decipher her behaviour? The only behaviour that concerned him was her good behaviour as his mistress, on his arm and in his bed. Anything above and beyond that was of no interest to him.
Angel was doing her best to eat the deliciously prepared dinner, but it tasted like sawdust in her mouth. All she could see, all she could think about, was the man eating his dinner at the head of the table to her left. Her eyes kept being drawn to his hands, how powerful they looked. The tension mounted and mounted, especially when she thought of those hands in other places. On her.
Leo, however, seemed happy to concentrate on his food. Angel had countless questions bubbling on her lips: did he expect to sleep with her tonight? What would he do when he discovered how inexperienced she was? Would he reject her outright, as Achilles had? And why did that thought hurt so much? Why was she so consumed with him when he was all but blackmailing her into his bed?
Angel had never felt more confused, and very, very vulnerable. The silence, she was sure, was Leo’s way of unsettling her, reminding her she was here for just one purpose. A purpose she was woefully ill prepared for. He wasn’t even attempting small talk. When she felt something brush against her bare legs under the table she let out a startled cry, and dropped her knife to the floor with a clatter.
Just then the housekeeper came back in—Leo had introduced her to Angel earlier as Calista—and Angel saw that it had just been a cat. Her cat. After profuse apologies, and her knife being replaced, they were alone in the room again.
Leo put down his knife and fork and Angel jumped minutely.
‘Why so tense, Angel?’
She looked warily at Leo. His eyes were dark, like mysterious pools. He was all hard angles and shadows. A dark line shadowed his jaw after a day’s growth.
‘I …’ She couldn’t articulate a word. Something dense was in the air around them all of a sudden, something tangible and electric. Was this desire?
‘No appetite?’ he asked then innocuously, with a raised brow.
Angel just shook her head and watched, dry-mouthed, as his gaze fixated on her mouth. It tingled. God, why couldn’t she be immune to him and stand up in disgust and tell him if he touched her she’d call the police? Because then he’d probably call the police himself, send her away, and Delphi and Stavros would be back to square one. Worse, with the ensuing media storm.
However, those very good reasons aside, with the heavy weight of inevitability, the real reason sank into her head: she wanted him to touch her. The truth was shocking when she acknowledged it. Despite everything, she wanted him to touch her. Had done from the moment she’d seen him emerge from the pool … and from the moment he’d kissed her on the terrace. Since that night she’d had dreams, when she’d woken in sweaty tangled sheets, aching … And it killed her to admit it. Especially when she’d all but written sex off after her first experience.
Her hormones had turned traitor and were in league with this man.
Leo suddenly pushed his plate away and stood up, towering over her. His eyes glittered with a dark promise. A muscle popped in his jaw. ‘I find that my appetite for food has gone, too.’
There was something rough in his voice that resonated deep within her. When he held out a hand, Angel hesitated for a second before putting her hand in his. She told herself this was just part of the agreement. She was securing Delphi’s freedom and happiness. He wasn’t throwing her to the police with accusations of theft. All she had to do … all she had to do … She stumbled as Leo led her from the room. They encountered Calista on the way, and Leo explained in rapid Greek that they were both tired and going to bed.
Angel’s cheeks burned as Leo led her up the stairs. She was mortified. She tried to tug her hand back, panic making her voice high. ‘She’s going to know exactly what we’re doing.’
Leo’s voice was hard. ‘You’re my mistress. I should hope so. And if the gossip here is anything like in New York, it’ll already be halfway round Athens by morning that I have taken Angel Kassianides into my bed.’
CHAPTER FIVE
HIS stark words rendered Angel mute. She felt she had no choice as Leo led her into his bedroom. She chastised herself; there was always a choice. But her choice to retain her dignity and walk away would have an effect on the person closest to her.
And she found as Leo kicked the door shut with one foot and led Angel further in, close to his massive bed, that the desire to walk away was disturbingly elusive. She hated to admit it to herself, but was she using Delphi in some way to justify this?
Disgusted with herself, because that was a very real possibility, Angel wrenched her hand free from Leo’s. The very pertinent fact of her virginity had also been easy to push down to somewhere she didn’t want to explore. But now it was rising again. How could it not, when it was about to become an issue?
Angel backed a few feet away from Leo and stood tall. ‘I’m not going to just fall into your bed like some concubine.’
His mouth tightened. ‘No, there’s a more modern word: mistress. You’ll fall into my bed like the mistress you are. I’m sure you’ve done it for countless others, Angel, no need to be shy.’ He smiled, and it was cruelly mocking. ‘It’s lucky I caught you between lovers.’
‘How …?’ Angel asked shakily, the wind taken out of her sails. ‘How do you know I don’t have a lover?’
Leo walked over to where she stood. ‘Because I’ve had you followed since I left Athens and your every move reported back to me. So you see, Angel—’ here Leo reached out and tucked some wayward hair behind her ear ‘—I know that you must be dying to get a taste of the life you’ve undoubtedly been missing, thanks to your father’s excessive greed.’
He lifted up her hands, which were dry and a little rough from all the cleaning she’d been doing. Each time she’d had to scrub a toilet she’d imagined the day when she’d be polishing the white gold of one of her jewellery designs.
With no clue as to what was in her head, Leo brought her hands up to his mouth and kissed them one by one, making Angel’s heart speed up even as delayed shock made her useless. He’d had her followed?
‘You can’t deny that you aren’t craving the easy life again, Angel, and I can provide that for you.’
Bitterness that he had so little idea of who she really was made Angel say, ‘Just temporarily, though.’ She knew saying that would most likely give him the impression that she was greedy, and she hated that she cared.
He quirked a brow and dropped her hands, but kept hold of them. ‘It’s up to you, Angel. It depends on how much you please me in bed …’
Bed. Panic exploded in her gut. He thought she was experienced, really experienced. And, to give him his due, most of the girls in her peer group were. She and Delphi, they were a breed apart—always had been, thanks to Tito’s excessively controlling nature, and the fact that he’d had Angel all but locked away in a remote school for most of her teenage years. It was why their sister Damia had rebelled and come to such a tragic end.
‘Leo, I don’t think you understand—’
He came even closer and snaked a hand around her neck, drawing her mouth up to meet his. ‘There’s nothing to understand, Angel except this.’
Leo tipped her chin up, and before she could react his mouth was on hers for the second time in just twenty-four hours. So much had happened in so little time that Angel’s head reeled, but it was all being washed away as Leo’s mouth moved seductively against hers, eliciting a response that she couldn’t deny.
With a muted groan of despair at her own helpless reaction, Angel let her hands find their way to Leo’s chest, where they clung to his shirt. She had to hang on or she’d fall down in a heap. She could not understand how this man had such an instantaneous effect on her, but he did.
His tongue sought hers and made her insides melt into a pool of lust, just by stroking it. Their mouths clung. Angel remembered the study and her awfully wanton response, how he’d left her so unsatisfied. But she didn’t have time now to feel humiliated; all she could feel was that new-found ache, growing again.
Leo’s hands were on the back of her dress; the zip was being drawn down. Angel pulled away and looked up. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and her heart was thumping so hard she felt faint. Her mouth felt bruised and swollen. She could only stand there as she felt a cool breeze whistle over her skin as the zip descended. All the while Leo was holding her gaze and not letting her look away.
When the zip was all the way down, to just above her buttocks, Leo pulled Angel in close again and smoothed his hands up and down her naked back. Electric shocks of sensation made her shudder; the tips of her breasts tingled. She felt him undo the clasp of her bra. Things were moving quickly … too quickly.
Jerkily Angel pulled away from Leo’s caressing, distracting hands. The dress gaped forward slightly, and she put up her hands to stop it falling. She knew now that she’d blocked out the reality of what it would mean to do this.
But just when she went to open her mouth to say something Leo started pulling off his own clothes. Her eyes grew huge, and between her legs she throbbed when he stood before her naked, like a proud warrior. His broad, superbly muscled chest and shoulders had been awe-inspiring when she’d seen them, but when her gaze dropped Angel’s breath stopped altogether.
A taut, flat belly led down to a thatch of dark hair from which sprang a truly intimidating erection. Angel had only ever seen one man in this state, and that would never have prepared her for this. Leo stood proud, legs apart, thighs heavily muscled, cradling his impressive masculinity.
There was a blur of movement and Angel felt her dress being pulled away and down her arms. Suddenly it lay in a pool of black at her feet. She gave a squeal of protest but Leo was remorseless, and somehow, with an economy and efficiency of movement that took her breath away, she stood before him in just her panties. Her hair fell about her shoulders. She put an arm across her breasts and a hand down to cover between her legs.
Leo chuckled darkly, ‘There’s really no need to act the innocent …’
‘But I’m not—’
‘Enough talking,’ he growled, and stopped her words with his mouth again, his naked body coming into hot and immediate contact with hers. Angel’s brain went into meltdown. He took her arm away from her breasts, and Angel’s brain nearly short-circuited when she came into contact with that turgid erection.
Despite the wild excitement that flared through her body she wasn’t ready for this. She’d never be ready for this. She’d had some dim and distant hope that perhaps she could pretend, that her virginity might not be glaringly obvious, but that hope laughed in her face now.
Leo was backing her towards the bed, pushing her down. Things were moving too fast. She had to stop him, even though knowing that he was naked and feeling his smooth olive skin next to hers was turning her thoughts to mush.
Angel couldn’t bear for them to get to the point she’d reached before with Achilles and have Leo look at her with the same awful dawning horror on his face when he found out she was a virgin. Angel could remember the excruciating pain, the awful humiliation when Achilles hadn’t been able to penetrate her. He’d shouted at her, told her she was frigid, that no one would want to sleep with her because she was a virgin.
And even though Angel felt in her body instinctively that this was different, that the same outcome wasn’t assured, her brain was warning her of the pain and humiliation to come. And she knew that, however bad it had been with Achilles, to face the same from Leo would wound her so much more deeply, and that knowledge alone was enough for her to call a halt.
With a mammoth move, Angel pushed at Leo’s chest. One of his hands was travelling up her leg, and already she could feel herself weakening, moistening. Her body wasn’t hers any more.
She shoved again, and knocked his hand away with enough violence to make it sound like a slap, ‘No!’ The sound echoed in the room.
Leo’s movements stilled over her.
She looked up at him and bit her lip. All she could see were the strong planes of his face. He too was breathing harshly.
‘I … I have to tell you something.’
After a long moment Leo pulled back and reached over to put on a lamp beside the bed; it cast out a warm pool of low light. Abruptly he plucked his jeans off the floor and pulled them on roughly, standing up.
Angel felt very exposed and sat up, grabbing the sheet and pulling it around her.
Leo stood with hands on his hips, jeans undone. She could see the bulge of his arousal. He oozed such potent virility in that moment that Angel knew she was right to stop this now; she was no match for him. He needed a woman with experience, a woman to equal him, a woman like the women she’d seen on the internet. She felt sick.
‘Well, Angel? This had better be good.’
Angel would have stood, but the sheet was tucked into the bed so she sat awkwardly, holding it against her. She looked down for a moment, gathering her courage, and felt the welcome curtain of her hair around her face.
She looked up finally, and spoke at the same time as Leo.
