by Julia James
Now he was here in the gift shop again, in the flesh, and her pulse was racing.
Suddenly, quite abruptly, it slewed to a halt. He picked up the scarf and reached forward. With a casual gesture he draped it around her neck, his fingers lifting her hair free.
She thought she would faint. Her eyes widened helplessly, her breath catching in a little gasp in her throat as she gazed at him.
He smiled down at her. The annoyance was gone. In its place amusement…and speculation.
"On you," he said, the husk in his voice melting her bones, "the color is perfect."
Then, still holding the ends of the scarf, he drew her forward and lowered his head….
His kiss was bliss, his mouth moving with slow appropriation over her lips. There wasn't breath left in her body.
As he let her go he went on smiling down at her.
"Come and have dinner with me," he said.
And she went. Just like that. Without thought, without question. Closing up the shop and following him out into the hotel lobby as meekly as a lamb. The only thing she managed to say, half terrified that it would make him change his mind, was, "I'm not properly dressed!"
He paused and glanced at her neat gray pencil skirt, her crisp white high-necked blouse.
His eyes washed over her, draining even more breath from her.
"You look very…demure." The expression in his eyes changed minutely, and she felt heat flushing through her. "It has its own allure." He nodded imperiously. "Come."
And so it had begun. He had seduced her that very night, wining and dining her in the finest restaurant, where every bite had tasted like ambrosia, then taking her back to the hotel, back up to his suite, removing her crisp white blouse, button by button, slipping her narrow skirt down over her slim hips and slender thighs. And when she had been naked, completely naked, he had taken her to bed — and paradise. A paradise that had lasted for six exquisite months before the bitter, bitter end had come.
And now, nearly five long years later, a single glance from Leon Andreakos's night-dark eyes could relight the ashes of passion she had thought quenched forever.
Then the flash of fire was gone, and he thrust her from him.
On legs like jelly Alanna stumbled away from him, desperate to escape. Shock was shooting through her, making her heart seize up, her every movement jerky and uncontrolled. How she got out of there she didn't know, but as she gained the escalator lobby, felt the soft carpet give way to the clack of stone beneath her winter boots, she felt as if a tank had just rolled over her. Crushing the life from her.
As she stepped onto the up escalator, clutching the hand rail for support, her whole body still trembling, heart racing, chest heaving, she quite failed to notice a suited, inconspicuous figure following her out of the dress department.
Under clear orders from Leon Andreakos.
Chapter Four
Leon Andreakos glanced at the out-of-town address printed on the memo his security agency had forwarded to him, then let the paper drop again.
No, he would not follow it up. Would never again have anything to do with the woman who had destroyed his brother Nikos.
Just Nikos?
The question mocked at him, and he crushed it aside. No, he had not let Alanna Richards destroy him! He had felt nothing for her but desire — that was all.
She had been his mistress — that was all.
True, she had been different — engagingly different — from his usual female fare. It wasn't just that her natural, unforced beauty had caught his connoisseur's eye the first time he had seen her in that hotel gift shop, or that her wide-eyed gaze had reflected her immediate response to him. It was that usually his mistresses were seductive, sophisticated and very sexually experienced. Alanna had been none of these things.
Oh, there had been some fumbling boy, so he had learned from her faltering lips, who had taken her virginity in a tipsy teenage congress, but all she had learned from the experience was how not to have sex. At his skilled hands she had learned the art of pleasure from a master — and had proved an apt and ardent pupil. He had enjoyed teaching her — had enjoyed taking her on that journey to the paradise of the senses, had found, indeed, that she had extended that paradise for him in ways he had never previously experienced.
He had not expected that. He had seduced her simply because her predecessor had foolishly chosen to try to manipulate him, something he never tolerated in a woman, and because Alanna had been such a refreshing contrast.
Memory flickered at him — how she had gazed in wonder at him, her dark hair a cloud around her lovely face, blue eyes huge, pupils dilated, body trembling whenever he touched her….
Roughly he pushed the memo away from him, and stood up. It hadn't just been him she'd gazed in wonder at, but at the things he'd bought her, too! His mouth tightened. He'd been amused at first — amused by her stunned reaction to his showering down his wealth on her. Buying her beautiful clothes, taking her to beautiful places, bestowing a luxury lifestyle on her. She had reveled in it, adored it!
A hard light glinted in his dark eyes.
She had become greedy. Wanted more. And hadn't been fussy how she'd got it. First she'd tried to trap him, and then, when he'd made it clear he wasn't about to hand her a lifetime's golden meal ticket, she'd made Nikos her target.
Screwed up, malleable, vulnerable Nikos — and she'd got her greedy little claws into him and hadn’t let go. Not until he had married her. And then she had destroyed him.
Betrayed him within weeks of their wedding — and it had killed Nikos. Killed his brother…
He thrust the memo unread into his desk drawer and strode out of his office. Seeing Alanna again had been nothing more than chance — ill chance.
So what if he'd felt, like the blade of a knife, desire stab through him at the sight of her, standing there, as lovely as she ever had been, her hair a cloud around her face, her eyes as wide and as brilliant for him as they had ever been? Making every other woman he'd been with since seem cloying, boring — pointless.
He would not remember it. Would not remember her. He'd worked her out of his system, and she was gone now. History. She'd taken Nikos's money and had cleared out nearly five long years ago — and good riddance to her! He would never think about her again.
* * *
Alanna emptied out the washing-up bowl and rinsed round the sink. Then she turned her attention to drying the dishes. Nicky was asleep in bed, tired out from an afternoon spent with his pal Ben at the municipal swimming pool. She gave a fond smile. Money might be punishingly tight, but her son was having a good childhood, for all that. She was making sure of it.
Her smile wavered. Her son would grow up without a father, and although that was increasingly common these days — look at her friend Maggie, promptly abandoned by her waste-of-space boyfriend the moment she'd told him she was pregnant — it was a source of perpetual guilt for her. But what kind of father would Nikos have made, even if he'd lived?
She sighed heavily. What was the point of thinking about that? Nikos was dead. And though she would feel responsible for his death to the end of her days, she must not think about the past. It was gone, over. Nikos was dead. And Leon — Leon might as well be.
Certainly she was dead to him.
Seeing him again like that before Christmas had been traumatic, but she'd gotten over it. She'd gotten over him the first time around. She'd had to — she'd had no choice. And this time — three months ago now, since that brief, awful encounter at the department store that had lasted just a couple of minutes, no more — she'd gotten over that, too. She'd had to. Nothing had changed. Leon Andreakos still hated her.
She felt her heart squeeze the way it used to in those first nightmare months after she'd fled his bed, and went on drying up. She had Nicky. A new life with him. A blessing beyond all grace.
The buzz of the doorbell made her head lift sharply. Who on earth? Not Maggie at this time of night. Ben would be asleep as well. So
who?
Cautiously, because although the small block of flats was in a quiet part of town, you could never be too careful these days, she walked down the narrow hallway to the front door. The buzz came again, impatient. Peremptory. She peered through the fish eye, but all she could make out was a man in a suit, face distorted. He seemed respectable, but for all that she opened the door slowly on the chain.
"Alanna?"
Blackness folded over her eyes.
The voice — deep, accented.
"Alanna, open up."
Not a request. An order. A hand, large, square, long-fingered, pressed insistently against his side of the door.
Like a zombie she opened the door to him. To Leon Andreakos.
She stared at him blankly.
"What are you doing here?"
Her voice was a thread.
His eyes, so dark — condemning — looked down at her. No expression.
But in their depths, something she had not seen for an eternity of lonely nights.
Desire.
He stepped inside. She couldn't stop him. Felt her knees buckling. He saw her reaction and a smile slashed across his face. Cynical. Mocking.
But it was not her he was mocking. It was himself.
He looked down at her, his eyes filled with a dark fire.
She stood there, completely incapable of movement. Silently, saying not a word, he slid his hand around her neck, stroking the nape softly with the tips of his fingers, his other hand drawing her against his long, lean body, his hand hard on her spine.
Sensation, like a hot flood, drenched through her.
"I still want you —" said Leon Andreakos as he lowered his mouth to hers.
For an instant, so brief it scarcely existed, she tried to resist. Then she gave a moan, low in her throat, and was lost.
Arousal surged through Leon. Thee mou, but he wanted her! Wanted the feel of her lissome body pressed against him, wanted the warmth of her mouth opened to him, wanted to knead and stroke those soft, rounded breasts…
He'd tried not to want her. Tried for three months to not think about her — not to remember her. But seeing her again like that, out of the blue, had relit a flame he’d thought he'd doused five long years ago as he lowered his brother into his untimely grave.
And the flame was burning now, searing through him, firing his blood. Alanna Richards had destroyed his brother, but right now he didn't care. He would have her one more time.
Right now.
Chapter Five
Alanna was drowning, drowning in bliss, in sensation, as Leon possessed her mouth with his. Conscious thought had gone, submerged totally in this flood of hot, hungry desire that was consuming her very soul. Oh, after so long, so long, she had Leon again in her arms, wrapping him against her, pressing against his hard, muscled body, yielding her mouth to his as he plundered its sweetness, fingers spearing into her hair. Her hips strained forward, feeling with shocked excitement his instant response to her stimulus.
There were no words, none. How could there be words? she thought as her body took her over, yielding to what it so desperately longed to do — recover what had been lost so long ago….
His hand was moving to her waist, sliding between their tight-pressed bodies, seeking the zipper on her jeans. He was moving her, moving her backward —
"Where?" It was all he said, hardly lifting his mouth from hers.
"In here." The words gasped from her, and she let him steer her into her darkened bedroom.
It was insanity, madness. She had to stop him — she had to! She had to stop herself….
But she could not. A power greater than she could resist possessed her.
Silently, without words, only with touch, he stripped the clothes from her, tumbled her down upon the bed.
"I have to have you."
The words grated from him. And in the dark, without words, only with touch — hot, hungry touch — he took her.
Fire scorched through them, urging them to wild, wanton consummation. His possession was total, absolute. Her passion total, absolute. The whiteout of desire blinding them both, convulsing their bodies in one final, extreme urgency of ultimate sensation.
She cried out, smothering her cry in his shoulder, nails digging into his back without volition, only with need, absolute need. He surged within her one last time, head lifting, eyes blinded, for one long, endless moment that held eternity in it.
Then he lay, still and heavy, on her panting, exhausted body.
Her heart pounded, and slowly, very slowly, she realized what she had done. But before she even put mental thought to the emotion that now sluiced through her like a cold draft, he had thrown himself back off her, lying staring up into the dark. She could feel his bare arm against her arm, he was still that close — but as distant as the stars.
He said something in Greek that she did not understand. Then, in English this time, he said, "I'll set you up in a flat in London. I'll have to be discrete about you this time around. Even my father must not know that I've taken you back — let alone my mother."
His voice was harsh.
Bile rose in her throat. Horror at what she had just let happen. Disbelief that it had happened. And beneath the horror and the disbelief her body still throbbed, uncaring of anything but itself, its own needs and demands.
Hating herself, her body, she rolled jerkily to her side, swinging her legs to the ground and pushing herself upright. A hand shot out, imprisoning the hand she was using to lever herself up.
"Let me go!" Her voice was low, hissing.
He gave a grating laugh.
"I cannot! There is no question of it. Understand that. You should never have let me see you again. I have fought this for three months — and I have lost. I will take you back, make you my mistress again!"
There was a choking sound in her throat.
"You're insane!"
He laughed again. She turned round to look at him. In the dim light the planes of his face were etched starkly. His eyes blazed with a black light.
"Yes," he acknowledged, "I am. Insane to want you like this — insane to take you back. After everything you did to me. And yet I do, God help me. I want you — greedy, treacherous, faithless — but I don't care! You destroyed my brother, and I don't care! He wasn't even cold in his grave when you ran, taking all his money with you. And I don't care!"
His other hand snaked around her waist, hauling her down against him. Every muscle in his body was tensed, she could tell, and so were hers. His eyes burned into hers. "You looked so demure that first time I saw you —I had to teach you everything. So how is it, how, that you do this to me?" His hand moved, splaying down over the smooth curve of her hip, starting to caress her.
This time she found the strength to pull away. For a moment, so brief, he resisted the attempt. Then, abruptly, he let her go. She got to her feet unsteadily, horribly conscious of her nakedness — his.
"I want you to go," she said in a shaky husk. "Just get out. Go!"
He stood up. Totally unconcerned by his nudity, his superb body glistening in the half light. She felt her insides turn over and jolted backward with a step. His eyes glanced dismissively around the small bedroom and into the narrow hallway beyond.
"You've sunk low," said Leon, his dismissive glance coming back. "You must have blown Nikos's money in a big way to be reduced to this dump. Well, I'll bank roll you again, but —"
"Get out!" Her voice was a shriek. She groped for her clothes, finding her baggy sweatshirt and pulling it over her head. It came down to mid-thigh, concealing the essentials.
As for Leon, he simply started to dress again as calmly as if nothing had happened.
"You always were greedy for Andreakos money," he said, his tone almost conversational, as Alanna stood there, heart pounding, limbs trembling and emotion bucketing through her like a hurricane.
How could he be doing this to her? How? She was over him, over. But he'd walked in and without a word taken her to bed….<
br />
She started to shiver, but not with cold. Disbelief was washing through her just as his words — so cruel, so hateful — were washing over her.
"You'll have an allowance but nothing more," he was saying as he shrugged on the shirt she had all but torn off him. "I'll be generous — but don't even think of getting more out of me this time around! Tell me —" he jerked his head up and looked at her across the bed, as he calmly did up his cuffs "— just how long did it take you to spend Nikos's money? One year? Two? Or has it only just run out? Was that why you'd gone clothes shopping that day when I saw you? To tart yourself up again so you could catch another sucker at a Christmas party? Looks like you didn't get lucky…."
The sneer was open, and suddenly, quite suddenly, Alanna’s shaking stopped. In its place anger, raw and vehement, burned through her. She whirled around, flicked on the bedside lamp, then yanked open a wardrobe door and tugged out a large cardboard box from the base. Thrusting her hand inside, she pulled free an envelope with a letter still inside.
She hurled it at Leon.
"Read it!" she snarled. "Go on, read it!"
With a faint frown he picked up the envelope, pulling out the letter and opening it up.
She watched his face change. His eyes snapped to hers. The letter dropped from nerveless fingers to the bed, the printed heading from the famous London's children's hospital quite visible.
"You gave it away. You gave Nikos's money away."
His voice was blank.
She stood, chest heaving still.
Then, into the absolute silence between them, another sound was heard from beyond the bedroom.
"Mummy!"
Shock etched Leon's face.
