Her lips parted, though no sound emerged. Nikos smiled. She might be here for any number of reasons—and he would find her out, of that he was certain. But in the meantime, there was this chemistry between them, so surprising and electrifying. He had no intention of ignoring it. He would use it, he told himself, to make his revenge upon her—and her family—all the more devastating. It was a tool, that was all.
“When you enter a room, you must always come to me,” he continued, his voice a low murmur. One hand tangled in her hair, while the other continued its lazy exploration of her back, flirting with the hem of her blouse, teasing the band of flesh exposed between the top of her trousers and the shirt’s tail. “You should assume that you will sit on my lap, not your own chair, unless I tell you otherwise.” He pressed his lips to the curve of her ear, then traced a pattern with his lips and tongue along the length of her fine cheekbone. She shuddered.
“I understand,” she said, but her voice was the faintest whisper of sound. Her dark lashes covered her eyes, and her face was flushed. He could feel the electric current that moved through her body, making her tense and vibrate against him.
“And you should greet me, always, with a kiss,” he whispered, and then took her mouth with his.
Once again, that treacherous fire swept through Tristanne, reducing her to ruins.
She was nothing but need and yearning, gasping against his mouth yet held deliciously immobile in his strong arms. She nearly forgot herself as his lips claimed hers, tangled and teased and beguiled. She wanted to forget herself.
But that was the one thing she must never, ever do.
Tristanne leaned back, breaking off the kiss and daring to look down at Nikos, to meet his gaze full-on. His eyes were molten gold, dark with a passionate heat that made her sex pulse in response. His mouth, so wicked and masterful, curled into the slightest of smiles.
“Thank you for the lesson,” Tristanne said. Her voice was the breathiest thread of sound—completely insubstantial—and told them both far more about her frenzied state than she would ever have wished to share. How could he do this to her so easily? Some part of her had thought—hoped—that yesterday’s explosive passion had been an accident of some kind—an anomaly. But this was not the time to agonize over it. There was nothing to do but brazen her way through such an unexpected obstacle.
She must not succumb to passion. Hadn’t that been how her mother had thrown herself into her father’s power in the first place? Tristanne would not be so stupid.
“Has it ended?” His gaze dropped from hers to trace her mouth, and his fingers spread against the exposed skin of her lower back. She fought off a shudder of reaction, but couldn’t keep the heat from her face.
“Of course,” she said, pretending that she could not feel the heat between them—or in any case, did not care. She leaned back slightly. Barbery ice, she reminded herself, with some desperation. “We already have an idea of how well we suit in this area. There are so many other areas yet to explore.”
“Again, Tristanne, I believe you miss the point of the entire exercise.” His voice was low, rich, amused. His midnight brows arched up, while his dark gold eyes saw far too much.
It would be so easy, Tristanne thought as she fell into that dark, honeyed gaze—too easy—to simply bend into his will. He was so powerful, so commanding, and it would be the simplest thing in the world to let herself go, and let him take control as he was, clearly, so used to doing. Hadn’t yesterday showed her exactly how easy that would be? It would be like diving into the sea—the decision to dive would be the only difficult part, and everything after that would be gravity.
But who would she be then, when she had fought so hard to make a life for herself—a name for herself that borrowed nothing from her family, had nothing to do with any of them? And more important—what would become of her mother?
She thought of her mother’s tears at Gustave’s grave. She thought of Vivienne’s forced, determined cheer in the following weeks. She thought of the fine bones on the back of her mother’s delicate hand, far too visible now.
Tristanne could not acquiesce to this man, however easy it might be. Especially because it would be so easy to do so, and such a mistake. She had to maintain control of this situation—tenuous though it might be—or she would lose everything she had worked for over the past years, and everything she hoped for her own future and her mother’s life. She had to stand up to this man, somehow—when she had chosen him precisely because he was the kind of man that no one stood up to, because no one would dare.
“Not at all,” she said now, gathering her courage as best she could. She tossed her hair back from her face, and made herself smile down at him, still perched on his lap like she was sitting on a hot, iron stove. She could do this. She could hide everything she felt, and show him only what she wanted him to see. Hadn’t Peter accused her of being frigid and cold a thousand times? She could pull it off. Couldn’t she?
“Oh?” he asked, still so amused. Still so unmanageable, so impossible.
“While I appreciate your list of rules and regulations, and will make every effort to follow them, being a mistress is much more than the ability to follow orders.” She traced the strong line of his jaw, the proud jut of his chin, with a lazy fingertip—though she felt as far from lazy as it was possible to feel. She kept on. “A good mistress must anticipate her partner’s needs. She must adapt to his moods, and follow his lead. It is like a complicated dance, is it not?”
“It is not like a dance at all,” Nikos replied, his eyes glittering. “Not if you are doing it correctly. Euphemism cannot change the facts, only the way they are relayed, Tristanne.”
“The man is not supposed to see the steps of this dance, of course,” Tristanne continued airily, as if she had such conversations regularly and they affected her not at all. “That is my job. And I do not wish to be protected from anything, I assure you. Least of all you.” She lied easily, because she had no choice, and then met his gaze, hoping her own was clear, guileless. Unclouded by her own fears and indecision. “But I will confess that I am something of a perfectionist.”
She shifted her weight then, leaning back so that he would have to choose between letting her stand up or grabbing her close to his chest and making a deliberate show of his superior strength. He chose the former—though not without the faintest hint of a smirk. But Tristanne would take whatever small victories she could with this man. She knew without having to be told directly that they would be far and few between.
“By all means,” he murmured, lounging back against his seat, his eyes trained on her, burning into her, “tell me more about this job you plan to perform with your perfectionist tendencies.”
“Sex is so reductive,” Tristanne said briskly. Rather than take her seat, she moved over to the nearby rail and gazed out at the sea, the passing red and gold French countryside. Her palms were damp. She could still feel the heat of him, stamped into her skin. She turned to face him, hoping she looked nonchalant.
His brows arched as he regarded her, his gaze steady. “I would imagine that depends entirely on the quality of the sex,” he replied. “And with whom you are having it, yes?”
Tristanne waved a hand in the air, with a breeziness she did not feel, as if discussing sex with him was nothing to her. As if her heart did not pound heavily in her ears, her neck, her softening core. As if she could not feel a faint sheen of heat along her skin, making her too hot, too aware. Think of your purpose here! she ordered herself.
“There is so much more to an artful, sustained seduction,” Tristanne continued, as if she had spent a significant amount of time puzzling over the issue, instead of merely last night, while she stared desperately at the ceiling in lieu of sleep and tried to come up with a plan to handle this man. She leaned back against the rail. “And that is what a mistress must do, is it not? Produce the fantasy on command. Seduce on call.”
“I am glad we agree on the command and the call,” Nikos said, ru
bbing a finger over his chin. “It is the most important part of the equation.”
“Is it?” Tristanne let out a trill of laughter, and immediately regretted it. The laughter was too much—too absurdly blasé. It gave her away, surely. But he only watched her, much the way large and deadly predators watched their prey before making a quick meal of them. He is a dragon, she reminded herself, and she already felt as if she had the burn marks to prove it. Blisters everywhere he’d touched her. She could almost feel them on her skin.
“It is to me,” Nikos said after a moment. “This conversation is missing the crucial point, I think. I am delighted that you wish to perform well as my mistress. But if you think that there is some debate, some contention, over who is in charge of the relationship, I must disabuse you of the notion at once.”
He did not need to deepen his tone, or strengthen the force of his dark gaze when he said such things and, indeed, he did not. He actually relaxed. He lounged in his chair, and stretched out his long legs. He spoke casually, almost as if what he said was an afterthought.
But his undisputable power hummed in the air between them, making the fine hairs on the back of Tristanne’s neck stand at attention.
“You are misunderstanding me,” Tristanne said in the soothing, conciliatory tone she used primarily with her mother when Vivienne was inconsolable, from her ailments or her grief. When that maddening half smile of his deepened, she knew he recognized exactly what sort of tone it was. That it was meant to handle him, appease him.
“I doubt that very much,” he said. “But, of course, I did not have the benefit of your expensive education. Perhaps you must explain things to me in very small and simple words, so that I will understand you.”
Tristanne did not address the idiocy of that remark, though the hard gleam of something like bitterness in his eyes was momentarily disconcerting. She shook it away. In a week’s time, she would be on her way back to Vancouver with her trust fund and her mother, and whatever bitterness he carried within him would remain his and his alone. It was no concern of hers.
“I am trying to point out to you that we must concentrate on things other than sex,” she said matter-of-factly, pushing away the odd urge to ask him what he meant about his education, or hers. “Sex is easy, but seduction requires more flair, does it not? If I am to serve you well, I must access your brain as well as your body. All good seductions begin with the brain, and only use the body as something secondary. A dessert, if you will.”
“My brain,” he repeated. He shook his head. “My brain is not the part of me that invited you on to this yacht, Tristanne.”
“It should have been,” she replied. She met his gaze again, and then there was nothing left but to go for it. “Because we cannot have sex, Nikos. Not so soon. Certainly not on this boat.”
Chapter Five
HE LAUGHED.
It was a bold, bright sound. It took Tristanne by surprise, and seemed to ring inside of her like some kind of bell. She had to remind herself to breathe, to keep herself from laughing with him—it was that compelling.
“Why am I not surprised by this turn?” he asked. Rhetorically, obviously. Still laughing slightly, his teeth gleaming white and his eyes like rich honey, he met her gaze. “Explain to me, please, why I would consent to such a thing?”
“I’ve just explained it to you,” Tristanne replied, trying to maintain the air of insouciance she had managed to use like a shield so far.
“So you have.” He shook his head slightly. Then shrugged. “If that is what you want, then what is it to me?” His tone was light, his eyes anything but.
She was so consumed by that hard, hot gaze that she almost didn’t hear him. Then, when his words penetrated, she thought for a long moment that she had misheard him. Had he…agreed?
“What does that mean?” she asked when he did not speak again.
“You may set whatever limits you like,” he said easily. Again, that careless shrug that only called attention to the muscles that moved, lithe and dangerous, beneath his skin. “You need only mention that they have been reached, and I will not argue.”
For a moment, she watched him, caught by his potent masculinity in ways she was afraid to examine. Far above, a gull called, then dropped in a graceful arc toward the beckoning sea.
“That is not quite the same thing as agreeing, I cannot help but notice,” she said, when the odd hush around them made her too restless to remain silent any longer.
“No.” His half smile appeared again, mocked her. “It is not.”
“I really feel that we must come to some kind of—”
“We will not come to an agreement,” he interrupted her smoothly, unapologetically. He rose then, in a show of graceful, careless strength, and moved toward her, blocking out her view of the Mediterranean, the sun, the world. He reached across the scant space between them, and tugged on a stray strand of her hair. It was an oddly affectionate gesture, for all that it was also a naked display of possession.
“I will not promise you such a thing. I will only promise you that if you do not wish it, you need only say so. Isn’t that enough?”
It would be enough if he were any other man alive, Tristanne thought with no little bitterness. She had never had any trouble at all before, because she had never combusted before at a man’s slightest touch. She had never had to remind herself of all the reasons why she could not simply surrender herself to a man’s fire; she had instead had to come up with reasons why she should bother to go on a second date or return a telephone call.
“It is a start,” she said eventually, feeling mutinous as she looked at him.
“If it helps,” he said softly, still far too close, his hands coming to rest on either side of her, caging her against the boat’s rail, “I believe in a more holistic approach. Mind and body as one. You might wish to incorporate that into your seduction plans.”
“A good seduction does not simply happen,” Tristanne retorted, aware that her voice sounded cross, when, once again, she’d wanted to appear effortless. Easy. “It requires a certain amount of research, of mystery, of planning—”
“Of this,” he said. He bent and nipped gently at her chin, then pressed his lips to hers. It was not the consuming kiss of before, but it was no less demanding. It was like a brand. A stamp of ownership. Of intent.
He pulled back, and laughed again, more softly this time. Then he let his hand drop down, tracing a path from her neck, across her collarbone toward her shoulder, and then squeezed the bicep that he had held yesterday.
She tried to control her immediate wince of pain, but knew she failed when his dark eyes narrowed. He released her immediately.
“That hurt you?” He frowned.
“No,” she lied, shame twisting through her, cramping her stomach. “It was a sudden chill, I think…”
But he ignored her, and drew the billowing sleeve of her shirt up along the length of her arm. Tristanne did not know why she simply stood there and let him do it, as if he had somehow mesmerized her into compliance. But she did.
He muttered something harsh in Greek, and stared at her upper arm. Tristanne knew what he would see—she had seen the livid marks after her shower this morning, red and blue and black. One for each of Peter’s fingers.
She felt a rush of that toxic cocktail of shame, rage and fear that always flooded her when Peter’s aggression came out—and when it was noticed. When she was forced to explain that this was how her only sibling treated her. She felt that blackness roll through her, tears much too close—
“It is nothing,” she said in a low voice, and then, finally, jerked away from him, pushing her sleeve back down. She tilted her chin up, not sure what she would do now. What she would do if she saw even the faintest hint of pity in those dark gold eyes where there had been so much heat—
But his gaze was unreadable. He only watched her for a long moment, and then stepped away from her in one of those impossibly graceful movements that took her breath away and in the
same instant reminded her of how dangerous he was.
“I must tend to some business affairs,” he told her, towering over her. She told herself that it was the simple fact of his height that made her feel so small, so vulnerable—not what he had just seen. Not what he now knew, that she had never meant to share. “I suggest that you slip into something significantly more revealing and enjoy your indolence. We will dock this evening in Portofino.”
He sent her another long, intense, unreadable look, and paused for a moment. A shadow moved across his face, and she thought he might speak, but it passed as quickly as it had come. He turned and walked away without another word, leaving her to the tumult of her own thoughts.
A proper mistress would have availed herself of the opportunity to flaunt her wares, Nikos thought later that afternoon as he concluded another in a long series of tedious phone conferences with business associates in Athens who could not, apparently, follow simple instructions. A malady that was going around.
An enterprising mistress might have indulged in topless sunbathing, perhaps. Or in the lengthy and comprehensive application of unnecessary lotion while in deliberately provocative poses, having known full well that he was watching. A mistress would have known that a day on a yacht was meant to be spent securing her position, and the best way to achieve that was to make certain her every word and deed served to arouse her protector.
Tristanne Barbery, yet again, proved that she had no concept at all of what made a decent mistress. She had spent the entire day with her face pressed into a novel. A large, heavy paperback, with exceedingly dense and small print. The sort of novel that announced its reader had thoughts. Deep and complex thoughts, no doubt, which no man sought in his mistress—as she might look to share those deep and complex thoughts with him when he wished only to be soothed and eased and pampered. Still, the book might have been marginally acceptable had she been wearing something appropriate to her station. A miniscule bikini, perhaps, to soak in the Mediterranean sun. One of those gauzy so-called cover-ups that clung to each curve and begged to be removed. But Tristanne, despite what he had told her earlier, quite clearly, he’d thought, had not changed her clothes.
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