The Secret That Can't Be Hidden (Rich, Ruthless & Greek, Book 1)

by Caitlin Crews

  “We’re talking about more than two million dollars, Kendra,” he said with no little dark amusement. “I need to be certain I am getting my money’s worth. You understand.”

  He expected her to turn and run from the room, screaming perhaps. No matter how many times she’d attempted to vamp her way out of trouble—a notion he could not say he enjoyed entertaining, though he shoved it aside—he doubted very much that anyone had ever spoken to her quite like this.

  All those preppy, pastel-wearing country club scions of this or that supposedly elite family, as if there was such a thing in this adolescent country. All those Ivy League boys. All this American nonsense so many millennia after his own country had taken shape and changed the world.

  It was something, all these pretensions to aristocracy. It really was. Balthazar could never tell if he admired these brash people or pitied them.

  Still, he didn’t like imagining any of them with Kendra.

  And if there was something in him that regretted what he planned to do here—what he should have been delighted to do here—he shoved it aside.

  But to his surprise, she only shrugged in return. “That sounds fair.” Her voice was so nonchalant it poked at him. She arched an elegant brow. “Right here?”

  He felt that like a shot of electricity, straight to his sex. When he should have felt nothing of the kind. When he had anticipated feeling only the sweetness of his long overdue revenge. And had perhaps imagined she would run from him again.

  Still, he did not back down. He was Balthazar Skalas. Backing down was not in his blood—his father had seen to that by spilling it himself, long ago. More, he had vowed that he would wipe the Connolly family off the map, one by one.

  And so he would, starting now.

  “Right here is fine, Kendra.” He inclined his head. “You can begin by stripping.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  KENDRA KEPT WAITING for the floor to open up and swallow her whole. But it did not.

  The situation had gone from terrible to outrageous to something far worse, and she wanted nothing more than to run away. But she couldn’t.

  Because this was Tommy’s only chance. She might not think much of Tommy and his endless messes, but she knew that Balthazar was right. If he dragged her brother through court, it would kill her parents.

  And Kendra might think that her father could use a little humbling, sure. It certainly wouldn’t do him any harm. But she didn’t think her mother deserved the same. After all, what had Emily ever done but what she was expected to do? Did she truly deserve the scorn of all the women who’d made the same choices she had—because that was what she would get, in spades.

  It didn’t seem fair that Emily should bear the brunt of Tommy’s poor decisions.

  Honestly, it didn’t seem fair that Kendra should, either.

  But she’d wanted to do this, hadn’t she? Wanted to help, anyway, even if she hadn’t wanted this, precisely...

  Liar, a voice inside chided her. You want whatever you can get.

  Because what little she’d gotten from him had been haunting her for years.

  Why was that so hard to admit?

  She told herself to calm down. To get a hold of herself. Yes, Balthazar was every bit as awful—and if she dared admit it to herself, as exciting—as she remembered. He was like a force of nature. Overwhelming and electric and impossible to look away from. The idea of actually having sex with this man made her feel hollowed out with the heat of it.

  Kendra wasn’t sure she’d survive.

  Oh, come on, she chided herself. How hard can it really be to do what he’s asking you to do? People do it all the time. The world is filled with people doing it right this minute.

  Maybe not bargaining to be the mistress of a man who was essentially a stranger, but the sex part, certainly. Kendra bet if she went and looked out the vast windows at the other lit up buildings, she would see people doing all kinds of things in those anonymous squares of light. That was what big cities were for, surely.

  She cleared her throat and wished she could clear her head as easily. “To clarify, you want me to get naked, right here in your office. Now.”

  “Stalling is probably not a good way to begin this arrangement. Or any arrangement, but particularly not one that relies on your naked obedience. Literally.”

  He sounded amused. More than amused. Those dark eyes of his were glittering, and that cruel mouth of his was set into something not quite a curve. As if he was taking pleasure in this.

  In what he was asking her to do.

  More, in how desperate she must be if she was really considering doing it.

  He was a horrible man. The way he spoke about sex and mistresses and even her family said absolutely nothing good about his character—

  But that wasn’t the point, was it? This wasn’t about his character.

  You don’t care about his character, something in her asserted, with a low sort of heat that shook around inside her and made her bones ache.

  Because if she wasn’t mistaken, what this was really about was how far she was willing to go. Something inside her seemed to soar at that notion.

  You don’t have to care about what he thinks of you, or what anyone else thinks of you, either, that same voice whispered, hot and deep, making her ache all the more. You were sent here to do these things.

  In a way, she felt free.

  Kendra had always been so afraid of putting a foot wrong, of embarrassing her parents, of causing trouble... But that all seemed to her now to be the dim concerns of a girl she hardly remembered.

  Because she was standing before Balthazar Skalas, who wanted her naked.

  His dark eyes blazed with how much he wanted it.

  She understood, then. He hated her family. She couldn’t really blame him for that, of course, given what Tommy had done. But she was a part of that family. Kendra had to assume that he hated her, too.

  And she told herself she didn’t care about that, but she knew that wasn’t true when something in her...hitched.

  It didn’t matter. She still had to do this.

  If only because it was something she alone could do. Neither her father nor Tommy could solve this problem, but she could.

  All it took was this.

  Free, something within her whispered.

  The way she never had been.

  “All right, then,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. “If that’s what you want.”

  “Something else you should know about me,” Balthazar said mildly, though that fire in his gaze did not diminish in the slightest, “is that I do not like to repeat myself.”

  Kendra had the slightly hysterical urge to say something inappropriate. Or perhaps...salute. She bit her tongue. And then, telling herself it was no different from stripping in a doctor’s office, started removing her clothes.

  Except she didn’t.

  She ordered herself to move, but her body did not obey. For one jarring thud of her heart. Then another.

  All while he stared at her, ruthless and darkly entertained.

  Everything seemed to fuse inside of her until she couldn’t have said, in that moment, if she was doing this for her family or if she was doing this because Balthazar clearly didn’t think she would.

  If she stepped back even an inch, she knew it didn’t make sense. Getting naked proved nothing at all.

  But suddenly it felt as if Kendra’s entire life had been leading her to this very moment. As if she needed to prove herself in this bizarre way, or die.

  That did it.

  She kicked off her shoes. Then, holding his gaze, unfastened the zipper at the back of her skirt, letting it fall to her feet. She stepped out of the circle of fabric and felt that hitch again inside her, because his gaze changed.

  The way he looked at her made her think of wild t
hings. Birds of prey, fast and dangerously large cats, predators of every description. There was something impossibly masculine in the way he gazed at her, and it made that place between her legs throb as if his hand was already there, cupping her.

  That hard, decidedly male grip, that she’d dreamed about since. Too many times to count.

  She pulled off her dark silk blouse, then dropped it to the side. She still held his gaze because that was all heat and demand, and better, somehow, than accepting the fact that she was standing before Balthazar Skalas wearing nothing but her bra and some panties.

  She realized he’d gone still. As if he’d turned to stone, though there was absolutely no doubt that he was a real, live man. Even if made of flesh, she suspected he would scald her if she leaned across the desk and touched him.

  Why did she want to do it anyway?

  Kendra didn’t wait for him to egg her on further. She reached around and unhooked her bra, then shrugged it off.

  He made a sound then, perhaps nothing more than a breath, but it was like fireworks going off inside of her—bright and hot and uncontrollable.

  She fought it, but her own breath came faster, then.

  It was as if there was an electrical charge between them, too intense. Almost painful.

  But she wasn’t done. She couldn’t dwell on what was happening inside of her, because she still felt a kind of drumming in her chest, threatening her ribs, that made her feel as if she needed to show him exactly how wrong he was about her.

  So Kendra finished the job, stripping off her panties and dropping them on top of the pile of her clothes.

  Leaving her...standing there. Stark naked.

  And though her cheeks were hot and she felt certain that the flush extended all over the rest of her body, though she was aware that she had so many competing emotions it actually hurt, she couldn’t access the things she was feeling. Not quite.

  Because his gaze was all over her.

  And then, to her horror—no, no, a voice in her chided, that’s not horror and you know it—Balthazar moved out from behind the desk.

  He hadn’t said he would touch her, and she assured herself that if he did, if he dared, she would—

  But that was a lie. It wasn’t even a fully formed thought and it was a lie.

  Because the thought of Balthazar touching her made her shiver. That low heat bloomed.

  And once again, she was as slippery and hot, as if he’d just finished stroking his way deep into her core.

  Maybe she wanted him to.

  But all he did was come to stand before her, that cruel face of his unreadable.

  If it weren’t for that blazing heat in his dark gaze, she might have crumpled into the pile of her discarded clothes.

  He let her stand there as he regarded her for what felt to Kendra like a lifetime. Three lifetimes.

  Then he walked in a circle around her.

  As if she was a horse.

  “Do you need to inspect my teeth?” she asked. Acidly.

  “Not yet.”

  She had to bite her tongue again, particularly as he took his sweet time. She could feel him and his dark perusal. His gaze was like a touch, running all over her, tracing over her body and making her pulse get faster and faster by the second.

  When he finally made his way around the front again, it was almost worse. Her breasts felt heavy once more, the way she remembered they had in that gazebo years ago. Beneath his commanding gaze, her nipples puckered and shamed her. Because she could tell herself that it was the chill from his air-conditioning units, but she knew better. And so, she could see, did he.

  He let his gaze drop, coming to rest between her thighs. And Kendra was absurdly grateful that he couldn’t see what was happening there. He couldn’t see how much she truly wanted him.

  Even though something in her whispered that he could.

  “How extraordinary,” Balthazar murmured after a while. “I was sure that color had to be fake.”

  She had no idea what he meant. But then, when he lifted his gaze to hers again, she got it.

  And hated the fact that her cheeks burst into a brighter flame. She could feel it roll all the way over her body, like a flash flood of heat, so that she likely matched the hair on her head and between her legs that he’d apparently found so hard to believe was real. She felt red and obvious, and had to grit her teeth to keep from diving for cover.

  “There are so many things I find surprising about you, kopéla,” Balthazar continued on, as if this was a deeply boring dinner party and he was sharing his views on something distressingly civil and dry. As if she wasn’t naked before him. Why did that make it even harder to pull in a full breath? “This shocking show of obedience, for example. I would have said a girl of your station would find it impossible.”

  She made herself breathe, somehow. “I told you I was here to make amends, if possible.”

  “Naked amends.” As if she might have missed that. He considered her for a moment, that face of his stern. “What a good daughter you are, Kendra. Far more of a sister than your brother deserves, don’t you think?”

  She didn’t answer that.

  “How far does this obedience extend, I wonder?” He stood before her, the devil in a dark suit that fit him much too well, fully aware of his power. Exultant in it, even. “If I asked you to drop to your knees and take me in your mouth, would you? If I bent you over this desk and took my release without bothering to see to your pleasure, would you allow it? There are so many options available to us, are there not? So many ways to audition, after all.”

  And somehow, it was only then that it occurred to Kendra to take stock of the precariousness of her position.

  It was only then that she really thought about what she was doing here.

  Because her head was filled with new images now. Balthazar doing exactly what he’d just told her he might. She could see it too clearly—too vividly—and she couldn’t decide if it seemed like peril or passion. To sink to her knees, tilt her head back, and taste the most male part of him. Or to be tossed across the vast expanse of his desk as if she’d been put on this earth with no other thought but to please him, when and how he wished...

  She couldn’t decide if those things terrified her. Or if they didn’t.

  “Look at you,” he mused, his voice a dark, rough abrasion. She felt her skin prickle, breaking out into goose bumps. “So eager to please.”

  She was breathing too hard, after failing to breathe at all for a while. She couldn’t seem to speak.

  And then he made it worse by reaching out and fitting his hand to her cheek.

  It was not a soft, caring sort of gesture.

  He might as well have slid it straight between her legs. Again.

  Kendra shook so hard she thought her bones might have flown apart. She had to check a moan, but it still made her teeth rattle.

  Balthazar laughed, dark and terrible. “You’re not a martyr at all, are you, Kendra?” he asked quietly. Cruelly. “You’re just a little whore.”

  It took her too long to register those words. Even longer to understand them.

  And when she did, when that blow landed the way it was clearly meant to, she actually staggered back.

  But by then, he had already walked out and left her there.

  Naked, in his office, alone and sick with shame.

  It was as if all the blood that had been pumping inside of her drained away, and suddenly she was freezing cold. Her teeth began to chatter. Her hands felt thick and unwieldy, but she did the best she could to hurriedly climb back into the clothes she’d discarded.

  What was she thinking? How had she let this happen?

  How had she actually wanted—

  But none of that mattered, she told herself sternly, shutting it down. This was no time to spiral. There would be all the time in the worl
d for that.

  What mattered now was that he hadn’t agreed to anything.

  He could have left his office to call the authorities right now, and all of this would have been for nothing.

  Kendra didn’t think she could survive it.

  When she was finally dressed again, she took an extra moment with her reflection in the mirror on the far wall. Because her skin might have been several shades too red for comfort, but she thought she really might die if she marched back out into all that corporate luxury...disheveled. So clearly a fool.

  Her breasts were still too sensitive. She was horrifyingly damp between her legs. But none of that mattered, not yet. Kendra imagined she’d have the rest of her life to regret, deeply, what had happened here. But right now she needed to figure out how not to disappoint her father.

  She headed toward the door, her mind racing. She should have expected that Balthazar would want to humiliate her. Clearly he wanted to humiliate the entire Connolly family—which, if she was honest, she couldn’t really blame him for. Two million dollars wasn’t exactly pocket change.

  Okay, maybe it was for Balthazar Skalas.

  Kendra couldn’t blame him for wanting to punish someone who’d stolen from him, so she focused on the real culprit in all this. Her brother. If she allowed herself, she would get so furious with Tommy that it might take her to her knees—

  And she really didn’t want to think about being on her knees. Not after Balthazar had introduced an entirely new way of thinking about kneeling to her today.

  She strode out, still trying to come up with a new game plan, and then stopped dead.

  Because Balthazar was there, leaning against the long, white wall that served as his gallery, waiting. And the way his gaze found hers, she understood that this interaction had gone exactly as he’d intended it to.

  That helped. It reminded her why she was here—what was at stake.

  And how little it had to do with those maddening sensations he stirred up in her.

  This is your chance to prove you’re valuable, she reminded herself sternly. Don’t waste it.