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‘A little longer than I thought it might take, but still … not bad.’
It took a few precious seconds for what he said to sink in. He’d planned this. He’d orchestrated this and had been waiting for her to react exactly as she had. Sheer fury and impotence rushed through Lucy in a wave so strong she shook.
‘Where is my case, please?’
Aristotle folded his arms and that was worse—because where his shirt might have hidden those biceps, now she could see them in all their olive-skinned, bunched glory. Lord, but he was beautiful, and her body was reacting like the Road Runner, seeing his mate in the distance.
‘Your case is somewhere safe. I’ve taken the liberty of removing the items I think you’ll need, like your toiletries. I didn’t want to presume to know what products you like to use.’
‘Yet you can presume to know what clothes I may like and my size?’ Her voice fairly crackled with ice.
His gaze drifted down over her body, and she cursed herself for inciting him. His eyes met hers again and he drawled, ‘I think you’ll find that everything … fits.’
She cursed him under her breath. She wouldn’t be surprised to find them all a size too small, and if they were …
But he wasn’t finished. ‘I also decided that from what I’ve seen you’re more than capable of choosing your own underwear. You’ll find the items I’ve taken out there, in that bag.’
He gestured to a table nearby, where one of the hotel bags was sitting, a lacy bra strap dangling provocatively from the top. Blind rage and humiliation at the thought he’d handled her intimate clothes, and at remembering that he’d seen her changing, almost made Lucy stumble as she stalked over to get it. But in that instant she vowed she would not react as he was expecting her to. She would not give him the satisfaction.
So she merely walked back to the door, turned and, avoiding his eye, said grimly, ‘I’ll see you in the lobby in forty-five minutes.’
‘I’m looking forward to it, Lucy.’
It took an awful lot of restraint not to slam both interconnecting doors as Lucy went back into her own room, but under a steaming hot shower minutes later she vented her anger with no holds barred.
Some forty-five minutes later Lucy paced in the lobby and ineffectually tried to pull the dress down again. It felt indecently short, even though it came to just above her knees. She hated the fact that otherwise it fitted like a glove. And she’d never worn shoes with heels so spiky they looked like a lethal weapon, but it had been them or flat shoes, and even she had enough fashion pride not to make a complete fool of herself. She also hated the fact that they made her feel somehow … powerful. She couldn’t say the word sexy. Her brain seized at the mere nebulous thought.
Aristotle watched Lucy from behind a plant for a moment, feeling curiously protective—and something else: surprised at her obvious reluctance to embrace her innate sexiness, especially when she oozed such voluptuous femininity. She’d chosen one of the least revealing dresses, but even that made his blood boil over with lust.
It had a high neck but, unlike her other sack of a dress, this one was cut to define a woman’s body, to hug and emphasise its curves. When she turned to the side he had to draw in a breath. Her breasts were so beautifully shaped and enticingly full that he noticed more than one man falter as he saw her.
That galvanised Aristotle to move. Possessiveness was an alien emotion, but it was coursing through him now as he took in the way the dress drew the eye to those stupendously long and slender legs, a discreet slit showcasing their shapeliness. And those shoes …
Lucy turned away abruptly. She’d noticed a man nearly tripping over himself as he’d seen her and she flushed with mortification. He probably thought she was a call girl. She felt like one. This was ridiculous. She was going to demand her own things back—
Suddenly Aristotle was right in front of her and, as was becoming annoyingly familiar, her brain emptied of all rational thought. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt and royal blue tie. It somehow made his eyes pop out, even though they were a dark slumberous green. But weren’t they normally light green? As Lucy was wondering this, as if it had become the most important question in the universe, Aristotle moved so fast that she didn’t even notice until he’d whipped her glasses off her face and removed the pins from her hair.
‘Hey!’ she cried out, too late, only to see him calmly snap her glasses in two and feel the heavy fall of her hair around her shoulders. He took her by the arm and marched her out towards the entrance, handing her broken glasses and hairpins to an unsurprised-looking doorman, who took them obsequiously, clearly not fazed by such behaviour. It made Lucy even madder. Those glasses had been her last bastion of defence and he’d merely ripped it away, like removing a toy from a cranky child.
She barely noticed the pleasantly warm early evening air caressing her skin between the hotel and the luxury car. When they were ensconced in the back, Aristotle curtly ordered the driver to put up the privacy partition, which he duly did. Lucy’s mouth was opening and closing ineffectually, steam practically coming out of her ears as Aristotle rounded on her, blocking out any daylight coming through the tinted windows. Absurdly, in that split second Lucy thought how unbearably intimate it seemed to make the space.
‘Enough,’ he growled out, and before she knew which end was up Aristotle had reached out, hauled her into his chest and his mouth was over hers. He was kissing her as if his life depended on it, one arm like steel across her back, one hand in her hair, clasping her head. There was no hesitation. Lust exploded in a blaze of heat.
All of Lucy’s reflex denials melted away in a flame of desire so profound and deep that she couldn’t question it. All she knew was that Aristotle’s mouth was on hers, his tongue stabbing deep, with ruthless precision, and she was craving it. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, her hands trapped against those hard contours, and the beat of his heart was an unsteady tattoo that made her own beat faster.
She forced her hands free to twine them around Aristotle’s neck, fingers pushing upwards into the thick, silky hair that brushed his collar. He groaned deep in his throat, their mouths not parting for a moment, lost in a dark, lustrous world of tasting and touching, of sensation heaping on top of sensation so acutely delicious that when Lucy felt herself being lowered back onto the seat behind her, and Aristotle coming over her, she too gave a deep moan of approval.
All she knew was here and now. Sanity had ceased to exist.
The outside world? Gone.
This was her world, and this man was the only thing in it. His huge hard body crushed hers to the seat beneath her, but her arms were free and she explored and spread them under his jacket to feel the latent strength of his broad shoulders.
His mouth left hers to blaze a trail of hot kisses along her jaw and down her throat, where he nipped gently and then sucked, making her squirm as an arrow of pure lust shot to her groin, making her wet.
As if he’d read her mind, she felt his hand encircle her ankle and start to travel up her leg. He breathed into her mouth, ‘Remember what I said the other day?’
Words couldn’t impinge upon her mind in this drenching of desire. Lucy couldn’t function. She was finding it hard to open her eyes, finding it hard to breathe as she looked up and drowned in dark green oceans. She didn’t recognise the man above her. The expression on his face was so raw and elemental. All she knew was that he looked exactly how she felt. Her breasts were tight and aching, tips chafing against the confining bra and dress. And slowly, so slowly, his hand was climbing with relentless precision, until its heat was wrapped around her upper thigh, where her sheer stockings ended. His fingers spread wide to encompass as much as he could touch. Any second now they’d be on her bare skin. She stopped breathing in earnest.
‘Please …’ Was that voice hers? Who was she anyway? She was suffering from temporary amnesia. Somewhere distant, where a bell was ringing, she felt something wanting to intrude, but more than that she wanted this. It felt so right and so necessary. Too right to question.
‘Please … Ari …’
With a muffled groan of something that sounded Greek and almost painful, he lowered his head, took her mouth again. Their tongues connected feverishly just as his hand hovered and tantalised at the tender place of her soft inner thigh, on the edge of her silk pants. Lucy tore her mouth away and arched herself towards him, gripping his shoulders. She could feel the heavy stabbing weight of his erection against her leg and she moved experimentally, exulting in his answering growl of unmistakable torture.
And then he was there, fingers pushing aside the barrier of her pants to slide into hot slickness, where she ached most. She sucked in a breath, shocked eyes opening wide. She looked up and his fingers began to move, finding the secret spot and pressing it, flicking it. Blood roared into Lucy’s head, drowning out everything but the clamour for satisfaction which was coming towards her like the mirage of an oasis in the desert.
And then suddenly, as quickly as this insanity had taken over, it was gone. Aristotle was taking away his hand, moving back, his features harsh and unbearably tight. Cold seeped into Lucy as she realised where she was. She was supine on the back seat of a car, her legs spread, and her boss had just been—
Oh God.
She also realised what Aristotle had realised way before her: they had stopped, obviously at their destination, and the driver was patiently knocking on the privacy window. They hadn’t heard him because—
Oh God.
More shame and mortification and self-disgust than she could ever remember feeling coursed through Lucy in a tidal wave of heat so intense she felt feverish. She scrambled to sit up, hands shaking as she pulled her dress down to cover her thighs.
A large brown hand came over hers, and she had to stop herself flinching back.
‘OK?’
The huskily asked question surprised her. It was almost as if he really cared. But she couldn’t look at him, just nodded jerkily, a curtain of hair hiding her face from view. She could give thanks for once that it was down. She didn’t think she could ever look at him ever again. In the split seconds they had as they gathered themselves and she heard Aristotle—Ari—speak to the driver, Lucy tried to assimilate what had just happened.
The fact that she’d all but drowned in an instantaneous pool of lust in his arms was evident enough. She’d deal with that in a darkened room on her own later. But it was the fact that it had happened without hesitation, with not even a flicker of rejection or desire to draw back. Was it simply because after weeks of denying this to herself, weeks of this desire building and building, the merest touch had sent her up in flames and she’d been unable to draw up even the flimsiest of defences? She’d turned into a complete wanton.
When Aristotle climbed out of the car, and Lucy readied herself to step out too, she realised that any vulnerability she’d felt before had paled into pathetic insignificance. The truth swirled sickeningly in her breast. She truly was her mother’s daughter, and that knowledge jeered her for all her efforts to deny it for so long.
There was no going back now, not after that little performance, and she quaked when she saw the huge looming shape materialise on the other side of the door. That everything she feared most lay outside that door right now was obvious, and also the fact that she’d just kissed goodbye to any pretence of a defence she might dream up to excuse her behaviour. The door opened abruptly and Lucy was compelled to step out, taking the hand that was offered and forcing down the frisson of electricity at even that innocuous touch. She felt as though the entire world had changed, and suddenly her place in it.
It was while they were standing alone for a moment, in the luxurious salon of the palatial Parnassus villa on the outskirts of Athens, that Lucy felt Aristotle turn towards her. She closed her eyes momentarily and pleaded silently, Please don’t look at me ... please don’t say anything. But since when were her prayers answered? She opened her eyes and gritted her jaw.
Aristotle looked down at Lucy and felt completely out of his depth. He still couldn’t quite believe what had happened in the back of his car. He’d never, ever been so consumed with lust like that—that he’d laid a woman down in the back seat and all but made love to her there and then. When he thought of it now, of how close he’d been to unzipping his fly—his hand clenched around his drink and he had to force it to unclench.
Lucy hadn’t looked at him since she’d stepped out of the car and he couldn’t blame her. What was it he’d said? That he wouldn’t be a lecherous boss? And then within seconds of getting into an enclosed space … But she’d been so responsive, dammit. Like his most potent dream, his hottest fantasy. She’d been hot, willing, passionate … wet for him. His body tightened again. She’d shown him the woman she was hiding under all that primness.
It was hard to equate the woman who’d paled at seeing her bra strap hanging out of a bag earlier to the woman who’d almost come apart in his arms less than a couple of hours ago.
‘Lucy?’
He could see her grit her jaw, and it was only then that he noticed the faint pink mark on her neck. Shock coursed through him—and self-disgust. He’d given her a love bite? The last time he’d given a woman a love bite it had been a girl, and in a boarding school in England, probably at the age of thirteen. All of a sudden Aristotle felt anger for what this woman was reducing him to.
He took her arm and tried to ignore the way her skin felt, tried to ignore the way he wanted to caress it, tried to ignore the way she looked almost green.
‘Lucy, look at me.’
With the utmost reluctance Lucy turned her head and looked up, willing her reaction far down. She even pasted a smile on her face. ‘Yes?’
Aristotle looked angry. ‘Lucy …’ He sighed with exasperation and ran his other hand through his hair, leaving it to flop back in such sexy disarray that Lucy felt her knees tremble.
‘I had no intention of kissing you like that, and I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have happened—’
‘No, it shouldn’t.’
His eyes narrowed dangerously. He turned so that the room was blocked out and it was just the two of them facing each other.
‘That’s not what I meant. I was going to say it shouldn’t have happened like that.’
‘Well, it shouldn’t have happened at all.’
Aristotle’s brow went up. Lucy hated that brow.
‘Are you going to try and tell me that you didn’t like it? Or that I was mauling you again? What was it you called me? Ari?’
‘Stop it,’ Lucy hissed, a crimson tide washing into her face when she remembered that passionate entreaty, how easily it had fallen from her lips. ‘Of course I’m not going to say … that. But it shouldn’t have happened, and it’s not going to happen again.’
Aristotle moved closer, and Lucy realised that she couldn’t move back as there was a plant behind her. His heat and that innately musky scent came and wrapped itself around her, binding her into the memory of what had happened, making longing rush through her. And she hated it.
Aristotle’s face was a harsh mask of self-recrimination as he said, ‘It will be happening again, Lucy—just not in the back seat of a car. Somewhere infinitely more comfortable, where we won’t be constricted by space and hampered by clothes.’
Just then someone approached, and Aristotle smoothly turned to deal with the newcomer, stunning Lucy with his ability to morph from intensely demanding alpha male to urbane businessman. And for the rest of the evening, as she accompanied him around the room, meeting and greeting the people involved in the Parnassus side of the merger, she could almost be forgiven for thinking she’d imagined the whole thing.
While they were in Athens Lucy was to be Aristotle’s executive assistant. She’d met Martha, his Greek PA, a pleasant older lady who she’d spoken to on the phone before. She met them at the hotel earlier. She was going to deal with the day-to-day office stuff. Martha wasn’t aware of the merger. In fact none of his family seemed to be—something which had perplexed Lucy.
Mr Parnassus approached them now, distracting her from her thoughts. He and Aristotle had already gone to his study for a private meeting as soon as they’d arrived. Now this old and stooped man, who walked with a cane, looked Lucy up and down with a wink. They’d been introduced earlier.
He said to Aristotle, ‘Well, Ari, do you think we can trust her?’
Aristotle’s voice was deep and authoritative. ‘Absolutely. She’s been with my firm for over two years now.’
As they continued to converse, Lucy decided that she liked Parnassus. He had a friendly twinkle in his eye. Suddenly he declared that Aristotle should go and mingle so that he could ‘take this beautiful young woman outside for a turn around the patio’.
At a pointed look from her boss that Lucy couldn’t really fathom, she gave her arm to Parnassus and led the way outside. It was night and the sky was clear, stars twinkling over a commanding view down into Athens. Momentarily relieved to be out of Aristotle’s disturbing orbit, Lucy breathed in. ‘It’s so beautiful here. You have a lovely home, Mr Parnassus.’
‘Please, call me Georgios.’
Lucy smiled. ‘Very well. Georgios.’
He looked at her with shrewd eyes. ‘He must trust you very much. This merger is very important. Not even his own family know about it.’
Lucy’s belly clenched painfully. It wasn’t so much about trust as necessity and desire, but of course she couldn’t explain that. She frowned slightly. ‘I’m aware of that.’ She didn’t want to say more. She didn’t know Aristotle’s reasons for not divulging this to his family, and she knew the only reason they were here in Athens was because Parnassus had requested it.
‘He’s driven.’
Lucy was lost in her thoughts for a moment. She almost didn’t hear what the man said. But he was continuing, looking down at the view laid out before them.
‘He reminds me of myself when I was his age.’ Parnassus smiled, but it seemed sad. ‘He reminds me of my own son. In exile. Driven to succeed at all costs. And for what?’
Lucy was nonplussed. Parnassus caught her look and chuckled. ‘I’m sorry—you don’t want to hear an old man’s ramblings. We should go back inside.’
She put out a hand. ‘Oh, not at all … I just … I don’t know Ar—’ She blushed. ‘That is, I don’t know Mr Levakis all that well.’
Parnassus stalled and looked at her closely. He gestured with an arm to encompass the view and the villa. ‘See all this?’
Lucy nodded and sat back against the balustrade, captivated by this wizened man, by his deeply ingrained accent which he obviously hadn’t lost despite living in the US for decades.
‘It’s taken me years to build it up. My family left this country in shame, and all I’ve ever wanted was to come back in a blaze of glory.’
Lucy frowned. ‘But … that’s what you’re doing with this merger, isn’t it?’
He shrugged one bony shoulder. ‘Ack. In some ways. It’s not how I imagined it, even though I’ll get what I want for my children, whether they want it or not: re-introduction and acceptance into Athens society. But the ultimate glory will belong to that man in there, and he’s welcome to it.’
They both looked to where Aristotle stood, surrounded by a fawning crowd. Lucy shivered slightly despite the treacherous heat curling down low in her abdomen. He reminded her of a lone wolf. Head and shoulders above everyone else, supremely confident, supremely sexy and yet … alone. She hadn’t really thought of him like that before, and didn’t like the tender feelings it aroused.
At that moment a very glamorous-looking middle-aged woman came out to the terrace. Parnassus introduced her as his wife, bade Lucy goodnight and went back inside. Lucy turned to face the view again, her mind full of questions. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a sudden cool breeze. What did Parnassus mean about Aristotle? Did he somehow see him heading for an empty life, driven by a need to succeed? Clearly he wasn’t far wrong. Aristotle had said himself that this merger was the most important thing, and yet—
She jumped when she felt a warm blanket of heat settle around her shoulders and heard a deep, ‘We should get going. We’ve got a busy day tomorrow.’
His jacket was warm with his body heat and scent. It enveloped Lucy, making her sway a little as they went back in. She didn’t say a word. Every nerve was twanging at the thought of sharing a car with him again, and her head was bursting with all the enigmatic questions Parnassus had posed.
But she needn’t have worried. Aristotle couldn’t have made it clearer he had no intention of touching her. Lucy sat in her corner and watched as they were driven down the hill towards the city centre. Feeling somehow compelled, she turned to face Aristotle and asked, ‘Don’t you have a family home here?’
She sensed him tensing, but he just said, without looking at her, ‘Yes, it was my father’s home, but I prefer to stay in a hotel.’
And then, before Lucy could halt her runaway mouth, she heard herself asking, ‘Why don’t your family know about the merger?’
His head whipped around so fast that she nearly flinched back. The lines in his face were stark. ‘What makes you ask that?’ The thread of warning was explicit.
Lucy shrugged. ‘I just … wondered.’
‘None of them are aware,’ he said curtly. ‘And I’ve already told you they must not know. As far as they’re concerned I’m here for three weeks to check up on the Athens side of the business.’
Lucy’s jaw clenched. ‘I know all that, and of course I won’t be telling them anything. I’m well aware of the terms of my contract.’
She turned her head away, stunned to feel a welling of emotion and discover that she had sudden tears stinging the backs of her eyes. What on earth was that about?
When she felt her hand being taken by a much larger, warmer one, her heart tripped. She looked around warily. She couldn’t really see Aristotle’s face in the dark gloom.
He sounded weary all of a sudden. ‘Look, it’s complicated, OK? It’s family stuff between them and me and they just don’t need to know. It’s for security reasons …’
