Which meant she had only one course of action.
“That is a pity,” Tristanne said, with a calm she did not feel. She felt panic claw at her throat, and rise like heat to her eyes, but she swallowed it. She was determined. She knew her brother was not bluffing, that he had meant every awful word that he’d said to her, that he would not rest until she earned her keep in service of filling the family coffers, and that he would think nothing of tossing her mother out into the street if Tristanne defied him. She knew exactly what would happen if she did not do this.
What she did not, could not know was what might become of her if she did.
“Not at all,” Nikos said, his golden eyes watchful, intent. “Merely the truth.”
Women do this every day, she told herself. Since the dawn of time. With far lesser men than this.
“It is a pity,” Tristanne forced herself to say, the emotions she would not acknowledge making her voice husky, “because I had heard you were between mistresses at present. I had so hoped to be the next.”
His dark eyes flared, then turned to molten gold. She held his gaze as if she were as bold, as daring, as her words suggested. Hoping that she could be. She had to be.
“But, of course,” she continued, because this was the crux of it—because she knew Peter was listening, and so she had to push the words out, no matter how they seemed to clog her throat, “as your mistress, I would require your generosity. A great deal of it.”
For another endless moment, Nikos only watched her, his gaze still searing through her—reducing her to ash, making her breath desert her—but otherwise his big body remained still, alert. It was almost as if she had not propositioned him. As if she had not offered to prostitute herself to him as casually as she might have ordered a drink from the bartender.
But then, making every hair on her body prickle and her nipples pull to hard, tight points, Nikos smiled.
It had been a long time in coming, this moment, and Nikos could not help but savor it. Revel in it. He had never dared dream that his arch-enemy’s sister would offer herself to him, as his mistress, thus ensuring his ultimate victory—his final revenge. But he would take it—and her.
He did not have to look at Peter Barbery to feel the other man’s outrage—it poured from him in waves. It felt as sweet as he had always imagined his revenge would, in all these years he’d so carefully plotted and planned, gradually drawing the noose tighter and tighter around the Barberys, forcing them ever closer to ruin.
He only wished he were not the only one left. That his critical, disapproving father, his tempestuous half sister and her unborn child, had lived to see that they had been wrong. That Nikos really would do what he’d sworn to them he would do: take down the Barberys. Make them pay. They had died hating him, blaming him; first the heartbroken Althea by her own hand and then, later, the father he had tried so hard and failed, always, to impress. But he had only used that as further fuel.
Just as he used whatever befell him as fuel. He had not allowed a childhood in the slums of Athens to hold him back, nor his mother’s callous abandonment of him. When he had finally wrenched himself from the gutter, using tooth and nail and sheer stubbornness, he had not let anyone keep him from locating the father who had discarded his mother and thus him. And once he’d started to prove himself to his harsh, often cruel father, he had tried to endear himself to Althea, the legitimate, favored and beloved child. He had never resented her for her place in his father’s affections, not like she had eventually blamed him, once Peter Barbery was done with her.
He looked at Tristanne, standing before him, her words still echoing in his ears as if they were a song.
He had no idea what game the Barberys were playing here, nor did he care. Did Tristanne Barbery believe she was some kind of Mata Hari? That she could use sex to control him? To influence him in some way? Let her try. There was only one person who called the shots in Nikos’s bed, and it would not be her.
It would never be her. He might have felt a wild, unprecedented attraction to her—but he would take her for revenge.
“Come,” he said.
He took her bare arm, relishing the feel of the supple smoothness of her bicep beneath his palm. He nodded toward the interior of the yacht, indicating his private quarters. The urge to gloat, to taunt Peter Barbery as the other man had done years ago, was almost overwhelming, but Nikos repressed it. He concentrated on the Barbery he had before him, the one whose scent inflamed him and whose mouth he intended to taste again. Soon.
She looked at him, but did not speak, her eyes dark—again with an emotion he could not name.
“Second thoughts?” He was unable to keep the taunt from his voice.
“You are the one who has yet to answer,” Tristanne said, that strong chin tilting up, her shoulders squaring. As if she intended to fight him—as if she were already fighting him. He wanted her naked and beneath him. Now. For revenge, he reminded himself, nothing more. “Not I.”
“Then it appears we have much to discuss,” Nikos said.
She swallowed, the movement in the fine column of her throat the only hint she might not be as calm nor as blasé as she pretended to be. Her eyes darkened, but held his.
“You are taking me to your lair, I presume?” she asked.
“If that is what you wish to call it,” he replied, amused. And powerfully aroused.
She said no more. And he made sure every eye was on them, every head was turned, her brother’s chief among them, so there could be absolutely no mistake whose arm he held with such carnal possession as he led her across the deck.
Toward the master suite. Away from prying eyes—or any recourse.
Straight into his lair.
Chapter Three
SHE had seen him once before.
Tristanne remembered it as if it were moments ago, when in truth it had been some ten years earlier. She walked across the crowded deck next to Nikos with her head high, her spine straight, as if she walked to her own coronation rather than to the bedroom of the man she had just offered to sleep with. For money.
But in her mind, she was seventeen again, and peering across the crowded ballroom of her father’s grand house in Salzburg. It had been her first ball, and she had had too many dreams, perhaps, of waltzing beneath all the shimmering lights of the chandeliers and candles in her pretty dress. But Nikos Katrakis had not been a dream. He had strode across her father’s ballroom as if it belonged to him. He had been dark and dangerous, and potent, somehow. Tristanne had not understood, then, why she was so mesmerized by the sight of him, even from afar. Why she caught her breath, and could not seem to draw a new one. Why her heart pounded in a kind of panic—and yet she could not bring herself to look away from the darkly handsome stranger who moved through her father’s house as if it were his own, or ought to be.
“Who is that man?” she had asked her mother, feeling a strange, new heat move through her, along with an unfamiliar kind of shyness. It terrified her. She did not know if she wanted to run toward this oddly compelling man, or away from him.
“He is Nikos Katrakis,” Vivienne had said in a soft tone. Had she also sensed his power, his magnetism? “He has business with your father, my dear. Not with you.”
And now, ten years later, Tristanne still did not know whether she wished to run toward the man or away from him. She knew that his kiss was far much more than she had ever imagined it might be, ten years ago when she was still a girl. And she knew that his hand felt like a brand against the bare skin of her upper arm. And that she was going with him willingly. She had suggested it, hadn’t she?
This was her choice.
He led her away from the crowd, away from the shining late afternoon sea, far into the opulent depths of the ship. Tristanne had only the faintest hectic impressions—gleaming wood and lush reception rooms, windows arching high above the dancing waves of the Mediterranean, letting in the golden Côte d’Azur light—because the only thing she could concentrate on was Nikos.
She was aware of every breath he took, every stride, every movement of the powerful body so close to hers. She could feel the hot, bright heat that seemed to burn from inside his very skin, and she knew that the heaviness in her belly, the softening below, was all for him. Her face felt red, then white, then red again, as if she was feverish.
But she knew better.
She had to get herself under control, she thought desperately. She could not lose herself in this man’s touch, no matter how formidable and attractive he was. She was only using him, she told herself. He was but a means to an end.
Nikos ushered her into a room, finally, slapping the door shut behind them. Tristanne looked around, but could hardly register a thing. She had only the haziest notion that this was an elegant, spacious stateroom, and that it contained a bed. A large bed. And that she was in it, by her own design, with the most sensually dangerous man she had ever encountered.
“Mr. Katrakis,” she began, spinning around to face him. It was not too late to wrest control of this situation. That was what all of this was about, in the end—control. She had only to assert herself, surely. She had only to be strong.
“It is too late for that, don’t you think?” he asked, too close already, so close she could have reached out and laid her hand on that swathe of olive skin at his neck, directly in front of her eyes.
Tristanne could not help herself. She backed up a step, then froze, sure that simple reaction would give her away—would show him that she was not the sophisticated mistress sort of person she was pretending to be, that she was just an artist from Canada swept up in events outside her control. But he only smiled.
Tristanne’s entire body kicked into red-alert. She felt poised on the brink of some kind of cliff, something steep and deadly, and it was as if he was the harsh, strong wind that might toss her over the side.
Dragon, she thought again. She had known it from the start—she had known it on some level ten years ago, at a distance. And yet here she was, begging to be singed. Or worse—burned to a crisp.
Nikos seemed to take over the room, as if he expanded to fill all the available space, crowding everything else out. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his denim trousers, but that in no way contained the unmistakable sensual menace he exuded like his own, personal cologne. His shoulders seemed broader, his chest wider, his height excessive. Or was it that Tristanne felt so small? So vulnerable, suddenly—completely devoid of the bravado that had carried her this far. She knew what it was now, his particular brand of potent charisma. She knew what it meant.
You must not let him shake you, she cautioned herself. You must think only of Vivienne.
And still he watched her with those old coin eyes, as if he was merely waiting for the right moment to pounce.
“Call me Nikos,” he invited her after a moment, when the sound of her own breathing threatened to drive Tristanne to the brink.
She knew she should say something. Even, as he’d suggested, his name. But she could not form the word. It was as if she knew that once she said it, there would be no turning back. As if his familiar name was the last boundary between her old life and this new one she had to pretend to live.
And she could not seem to cross it.
His smile grew darker, more sardonic.
He leaned back against the door he’d closed, his eyes hooded. He said nothing. Then—when Tristanne’s nerves were stretched to the breaking point, when she was certain she must scream, or sob, or run as her body ordered her to do, anything to break the tension—he raised his hand and crooked his finger, motioning for her to come to him.
Arrogantly. Confidently. Certain of instant obedience.
Like he was no different, after all, than men like her father and her brother.
Like she was a dog.
A sudden wild anger pulsed through her then, but she stamped it down somehow. Was that not what a mistress was, when all was said and done? A woman on command? At a man’s whim? Wasn’t this precisely what she’d claimed to want?
What did it matter how this arrogant man treated her? She did not, in truth, wish to become his mistress. She wanted only to make Peter think she had done it—she wanted only the appearance of this man’s interest, his protection.
A few days, she had thought. What harm could truly come to her in a few short days? They would have a few dinners, perhaps share some more kisses—preferably within sight of the paparazzi who hung about the sorts of places men like Nikos Katrakis frequented. It would all be for show, and Nikos Katrakis himself need never be any the wiser.
And it was all for a good cause, lest she forget herself entirely. For her beloved, incapacitated mother, who could not seem to understand that her stepson was a monster, nor that he had no intention of caring for her as Gustave had intended. Tristanne needed access to her trust fund—which would not come to her until her thirtieth birthday, unless Peter, as executor, allowed it—so she could pay her mother’s debts, see to her health and protect her from further harm. She had no choice.
So Tristanne did not laugh at Nikos, or slap him, or storm from the stateroom as she yearned to do. She was not auditioning for the role of this man’s partner, much less his wife. A mistress was a mistress—and Tristanne had the feeling that Nikos Katrakis was a man who made very sure that his mistress knew her place. Instead of reacting as she wanted to, as everything in her screamed to do, she moved toward him, her hips swaying as her high heels sank into the plush carpet at her feet.
“Perhaps you should simply whistle,” she could not help but say, with a bite to her tone despite the lecture she had given herself. “It will be far less confusing.”
“I am not at all confused,” Nikos murmured.
He straightened from the door with a lethal grace that might have dizzied her, had she had time to react. But he gave her no such courtesy. Instead he reached over and snagged her wrist with his big, strong hand, then tugged her to him as if she weighed no more than the lightest feather.
He cupped her jaw, lifting her face to meet his. It was a starkly possessive gesture, and yet, somehow, almost tender—making Tristanne gasp in confusion, and something much hotter.
Then his mouth was on hers. He spun her around until her back was against the door, and he kissed her, tasting her again and again, as if he might devour her whole.
And though she knew she shouldn’t, though she knew she should think about why she was there and not her girlish fantasies of moments just like this one, she kissed him back as if she might let him—as if she might beg him. Not to let her go. But not to stop.
Never to stop.
He could not seem to get enough of her. Her sweet honeyed taste, the fit of her mouth to his, the little murmurs she made in the back of her throat, as if she could not help but respond to him with such abandon, with such passionate recklessness. Nikos felt a fire rage through him, making him hard and ready, and did not try to stop it. Could not have stopped it, even if he’d wanted to.
She wanted to be his mistress. He wanted her, with an intensity he had not expected, but had no wish to deny. He told himself that he would use it, that was all. It would merely fuel his revenge.
He pressed her back against the door, holding her there with his body while his hands roamed over her curves. One hand fisted in the dark blonde waves of her hair, tilting her head back to give him better access to her mouth, while the other stroked its way along the elegant line of her throat, then down to the sweet perfection of her jutting breasts.
Pulling away from her mouth with reluctance, Nikos turned his full attention to her breasts, tracing the flesh that swelled proudly above the bustline of her dress. He held them in his hands, weighing them against the silken material, testing their shape, running his thumbs across the hard peaks until she groaned.
It was not enough.
His blood pumped in his veins, urging him on. He reached down and found the hem of her dress, then worked it up toward her waist, exposing her silken thighs, and the hea
t of her femininity between them. He pulled one long, exquisitely formed leg over his hip, settling himself against her, so his hardness was flush against her center, separated only by his trousers and a single scrap of silk. She moaned. Her hips bucked against him. Her head was thrown back against the door, her eyes closed, as if she felt the heat, the fire, as he did.
He slanted his mouth over hers, tasting her again and again, while his hips moved, rolling against hers, rocking them both toward insanity.
He buried his face in her neck, licking the hollow of her throat, while his hands found her. He cupped her heat with his palm, feeling her molten heat, her softness. She cried out. Was it his name? He found he did not care.
She was a Barbery. She was his enemy. He wanted her for revenge, and he did not yet know what she wanted from him. He only knew, in this moment, that he had to have her.
Nikos pulled her delicate, panties to one side, stroking her with his long fingers. She sobbed out words he could not identify. Then, teasing her, he circled her entrance, before succumbing to the desire he could not seem to control. She was wet, and so soft, so hot, that he had to bite back his urge to throw her to the floor and sink so deep within her that he might forget his own name. Instead he moved his hand, rocking gently against her sex—and then, not so gently.
She made a helpless sound, but then her hips began to move against his hand, riding him, as her hands clutched at his shoulders.
“Look at me,” he ordered her.
Her eyes fluttered open. They were wide, and brown, and so wild with desire it made him curse. He felt her stiffen against him. She bit back a cry. Her cheeks flushed hot and red. A purely male satisfaction thrummed through him, along with a deep, primal surge of possession. He ignored it, and focused on the wet heat in his hands, the ecstasy he knew was just within her reach.
“Come for me,” he whispered gruffly, pressing kisses against her mouth, her cheek, her neck. “Now.”
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