Savage Atonement

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Everything,’ she assured him huskily, her blood singing with pleasure as he took her mouth, making his possession a statement and a pledge.

  ‘Just as soon as I can I’m taking you to Provence,’ he told her, reluctantly releasing her mouth, his hand sliding beneath her robe, cupping the rounded warmth of her breasts. ‘This time as my wife, this time sharing my bed.’

  Laurel looked up at him, her eyes demure, her body sending out a different more seductive message as she slid her arms round his neck.

  ‘Soon?’ she suggested hopefully, tugging his head down so that she could kiss him, her soft, ‘very soon’, lost against his lips as they parted hers insistently, re-affirming his love. Their love, she thought, in a daze of pleasure. A love she had never dreamed could be hers. She murmured a small sigh of pleasure and felt Oliver’s arms tighten possessively round her.

  ‘Very soon,’ he promised huskily. ‘The sooner the better!’

  * * * * *

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  CHAPTER ONE

  LETTY SPENCER HUNCHED her shoulders against the frosty February night as she pushed out of the Brooklyn diner, door swinging behind her. Her body was exhausted after her double shift, but not half as weary as her heart.

  It had not been a good day.

  Shivering in her threadbare coat, Letty lowered her head against the biting wind on the dark street. Snow flurries brushed against her exposed skin.

  “Letitia.” The voice was low and husky behind her. Letty’s back snapped straight.

  No one called her Letitia anymore, not even her father. Letitia Spencer had been the pampered heiress of Fairholme. Letty was just another New York waitress struggling to make ends meet for her family.

  And that voice sounded like…

  He sounded like…

  Gripping her purse strap tight, she slowly turned around.

  And lost her breath.

  Darius Kyrillos stood against a glossy black sports car parked on the street. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he was devastatingly handsome and powerful in his well-cut suit and black wool coat, standing beneath the softly falling snowflakes illuminated by a streetlight.

  For a moment, Letty struggled to make sense of what her eyes were telling her. Darius? Here?

  “Did you see this?” Her father had said excitedly that morning, spreading the newspaper across their tiny kitchen counter. “Darius Kyrillos sold his company for twenty billion dollars!” He looked up, his eyes unfocused with painkillers, his recently broken arm awkward in a sling. “You should call him, Letty. Make him love you again.”

  After ten years, her father had said Darius’s name out loud. He’d broken the unspoken rule. She’d fled, mumbling that she’d be late for work.

  But it had affected her all day, making her clumsily drop trays and forget orders. She’d even dumped a plate of eggs and bacon on a customer. It was a miracle she hadn’t been fired.

  No, Letty thought, unable to breathe. This was the miracle. Right now.

  Darius.

  She took a step toward him on the sidewalk, her eyes wide.

  “Darius?” she whispered. “Is it really you?”

  He came forward like a dark angel. She could see his breath beneath the streetlight like white smoke in the icy night. He stopped, towering over her. The light frosted his dark hair, leaving his face in shadow. She half expected him to disappear if she tried to touch him. So she didn’t.

  Then he touched her.

  Reaching out, he stroked a dark tendril that had escaped her ponytail, twisted it around his finger. “You’re surprised?”

  At the sound of that low, husky voice, lightly accented from his early childhood in Greece, a deep shiver sent a rush of prickles over her skin. And she knew he wasn’t a dream.

  Her heart pounded. Darius. The man she’d tried not to crave for the last decade. The man she’d dreamed about against her will, night after night. Here. Now. She choked out a sob. “What are you doing here?”

  His dark eyes ran over her hungrily. “I couldn’t resist.”

  As he moved his head, the streetlight illuminated his face. He hadn’t changed at all, Letty thought in wonder. The same years that had nearly destroyed her hadn’t touched him. He was the same man she remembered, the one she’d once loved with all her innocent heart, back when she’d been a headstrong eighteen-year-old, caught up in a forbidden love affair. Before she’d sacrificed her own happiness to save his.

  His hand moved down to her shoulder. Feeling his warmth through her thin coat, she wanted to cry, to ask him what had taken so long. She’d almost given up hope.

  Then she saw his gaze linger on her old coat, with its broken zipper, and her diner uniform, a white dress that had been bleached so many times it was starting to fray. Usually, she also wore unfashionable nylons to keep her legs warm while she was on her feet all day in white orthopedic shoes. But today, her last pair had been unwearable with too many rips so her legs were bare.

  Following his gaze, she blushed. “I’m not really dressed for going out…”

  “Your clothes don’t matter.” There was a strange undercurrent in his voice. “Let’s go.”

  “Go? Where?”

  He took her hand in his own, palm to palm, and she suddenly didn’t feel the snowflakes or cold. Waves of electricity scattered helter-skelter across her body, across her skin, from her scalp to her toes.

  “My penthouse. In Midtown.” He looked down at her. “Will you come?”

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  His sensual lips curved oddly before he led her to his shiny, low-slung sports car and opened the passenger door.

  As Letty climbed in, she took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of rich leather. This car likely cost more than she’d earned the past decade waiting tables. She moved her hand along the fine calfskin, the color of pale cream. She’d forgotten leather could be so soft.

  Climbing in beside her, Darius started the engine. The car roared away from the curb, humming through the night, leaving her neighborhood to travel through the gentrified areas of Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights before finally crossing the Manhattan Bridge into the New York borough that most catered to tourists and the wealthy: Manhattan.

  All the while, Letty was intensely aware of him beside her. Her gaze fell upon his hand and thick wrist, laced with dark hair, as he changed gears.

  “So,” his voice was ironic, “Your father is out of prison.”

  Biting her lip, she looked at him hesitantly beneath her lashes. “A few days ago.”

  Darius glanced back at her old coat and fraying uniform. “And now you’re ready to change your life.”

  Was that a question or a suggestion? Did he mean that he wanted to change it? Had he actually learned the truth about why she’d betrayed him ten years ago?

  “I’ve learned the hard way,” she said in a low voice, “that life changes, whether you’re ready or not.”

  His hands tightened as he turned back to the steering wheel. “True.”

  Letty’s eyes lingered on his profile, from the dark slash of eyebrows to his aquiline nose and full, sensual mouth. She still felt like she was dreaming. Darius Kyrillos. After all these years, he’d found her at the diner and was whisking her off to his penthouse. The only man she’d ever truly loved…

  “Why did you come for me?” she whispered. “Why today, after all these years?”

  His dark
gaze was veiled. “Your message.”

  She hadn’t sent any message. “What message?”

  “Fine,” he murmured, baring his teeth in a smile. “Have it your way.”

  Message? Letty felt a skitter of dark suspicion. Her father had wanted her to contact Darius. For the last few days, since he’d broken his arm in mysterious circumstances he wouldn’t explain, he’d been home on painkillers, sitting next to her ancient computer with nothing to do.

  Could her father have sent Darius a message, pretending to be her?

  She glanced at Darius, then decided she didn’t care. If her father had interfered, all she could be was grateful, if this was the result.

  Her father must have revealed her real reasons for betraying Darius ten years ago. She couldn’t imagine he would even be talking to her now otherwise.

  But how to know for sure?

  Biting her lip, she said awkwardly, “I read about you in the paper this morning. That you sold. Your company, I mean.”

  “Ah.” His jaw set as he turned away. “Right.”

  His voice was cold. No wonder, Letty thought. She sounded like an idiot. She tried to steady herself. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. It cost ten years of my life.”

  Ten years. Those two simple words hung between them in silence, like a small raft on an ocean of regret.

  Their car entered Manhattan, with all its wealth and savagery. A place she’d avoided since her father’s trial and sentencing almost a decade before.

  Her heartbeat fluttered in her throat as she looked down at her chapped hands, folded tightly in her lap. “I’ve thought of you a lot, wondering how you were. Hoping you were well. Hoping you were happy.”

  Stopping at a red light, Darius abruptly looked at her.

  “It was good of you to think of me,” he drawled in a low voice, once again with that strange undercurrent. In the cold night of the city, headlights of passing cars moved shadows across the hard lines of his face.

  The light changed to green. It was just past ten o’clock, and the traffic was starting to lessen. Heading north on First Avenue, they passed the United Nations plaza. The buildings had started climbing higher against the sky as they approached Midtown. Turning off Forty-Ninth onto the gracious width of Park Avenue, they approached a newly built glass and steel skyscraper on the south side of Central Park.

  As he pulled his car into the porte cochere, she was craning her neck back in astonishment. “You live here?”

  “I have the top two floors,” he said casually, in the way someone might say, I have tickets to the ballet.

  His door opened, and he handed the keys to a smiling valet who greeted him respectfully by name. Coming around, Darius opened Letty’s door. He held out his hand.

  She stared at it nervously, then put her hand in his.

  He wrapped it tightly in his own. She felt the warmth and roughness of his palm against hers.

  He had to know, she thought desperately. He had to. Otherwise, why would he have sought her out? Why wouldn’t he still hate her?

  He led her through the awe-inspiring lobby, with its minimalist furniture and twenty-foot ceilings.

  “Good evening, Mr. Kyrillos,” the man at the desk said. “Cold weather we’re having, hope you’re staying warm!”

  Darius held Letty’s hand tightly. She felt like she might catch flame as he drew her across the elegant, cavernous lobby. “I am. Thank you, Perry.”

  He waved his key fob in front of the elevator’s wall panel, and pressed the seventieth floor.

  His hand gripped hers as the elevator traveled up. She felt the warmth of his body next to hers, just inches away, towering over her. She bit her lip, unable to look at him. She just stared at the electronic numbers displaying the floors as the elevator rose higher and higher. Sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy…

  The bell dinged as the door slid open.

  “After you,” Darius said.

  Glancing at him nervously, she stepped out directly into a dark, high-ceilinged penthouse. He followed her, as the elevator door closed silently behind them.

  The rubber soles of her white shoes squeaked against the marble floor as she walked through the foyer beneath the modern crystal chandelier above. She flinched at the noise, embarrassed.

  But his handsome face held no expression as he removed his long black overcoat. He didn’t turn on any lights. He never looked away from her.

  With a gulp, she turned away.

  Gripping her purse strap, she walked forward into the shadowy main room. It was two stories high, with sparse, angular furniture in black and gray, and floor-to-ceiling windows twisted around the penthouse in every direction.

  Looking from right to left, she could see the dark vista of Central Park, the high-rise buildings to the Hudson River, and the lights of New Jersey beyond it, and to the south, the skyscrapers of Midtown, including the Empire State Building, all the way to the Financial District and the gleaming One World Trade Center.

  The sparkling nighttime view provided the only light in the penthouse, aside from a single blue gas fire that flickered in the stark fireplace.

  “Incredible,” Letty breathed, going up to the windows. Without thinking, she leaned forward, putting her overheated forehead against the cool glass, looking down at Park Avenue far below. The cars and yellow cabs looked tiny, like ants. She felt almost dizzy from being so high off the earth, up in the clouds. It was a little terrifying. “Beautiful.”

  His reply was husky behind her. “You are beautiful, Letitia.”

  Turning, she looked at him in the soft blue glow of firelight. Then, as she looked more closely…

  Her lips parted with an intake of breath.

  She’d thought Darius hadn’t changed?

  He’d changed completely.

  At thirty-four, he was no longer a slender youth, but a powerful man. His shoulders had broadened to match his tall height, his body filling out with hard muscle. His dark hair had once been wavy and tousled, like a poet’s, but was now cut short, as severe as his chiseled jawline.

  Everything about Darius was tightly controlled now, from the cut of his expensive clothes—a black shirt with the top button undone, black trousers, black leather shoes—to his powerful stance. His mouth had once been expressive and tender and kind. Now his lips had a hard twist of arrogance, even cruelty.

  He towered over her like a king, in his penthouse with all New York City at his feet.

  At her expression, his jaw tightened. “Letitia…”

  “Letty.” She managed a smile. “No one calls me Letitia anymore.”

  “I have never been able to forget you,” he continued in a low voice. “Or that summer we were together…”

  That summer. A small noise came from the back of her throat as unwanted memories filled her mind. Dancing in the meadow. Kissing the night after her debutante ball. Escaping the prying eyes of servants in Fairholme’s enormous garage, steaming up the windows of her father’s vintage car collection for weeks on end. She’d been ready to surrender everything.

  Darius was the one who’d wanted to wait for marriage to consummate their love.

  “Not until you’re my wife,” he’d whispered as they strained for each other, barely clothed, panting with need in the backseat of a vintage limousine. “Not until you’re mine forever.”

  Forever never came. Their romance had been illicit, forbidden. She was barely eighteen, his boss’s daughter; he was six years older, the chauffeur’s son.

  After a hot summer of innocent passion, her father had been infuriated when he’d discovered their romance. He’d ordered Darius off the estate. For one awful week he and Letty had been apart. Then Darius had called her.

  “Let’s elope,” he’d said. “I’ll get a day job to support us. We’ll get a studio apartment in the city. Anything as long as we’re together.”

  She’d feared it would hurt his dream of making his fortune, but she couldn’t resist. They both knew there was no chance of
a real wedding, not when her father would try to stop the marriage. So they’d planned to elope to Niagara Falls.

  But on the night his car waited outside the Fairholme gate, Letty never showed up.

  She hadn’t returned any of his increasingly frantic phone calls. The next day, she’d even convinced her father to fire Eugenios Kyrillos, Darius’s father, who’d been their chauffeur for twenty years.

  Even then, Darius had refused to accept their break-up. He’d kept calling, until she’d sent him a single cold message.

  I was only using you to get another man’s attention. He’s rich and can give me the life of luxury I deserve. We’re engaged now. Did you really think that someone like me would ever live in a studio apartment with someone like you?

  That had done the trick.

  But it had been a lie. There had been no other man. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight, Letty was still a virgin.

  All these years, she’d promised herself that Darius would never know the truth. He could never know how she’d sacrificed herself, so he’d be able to follow his dreams without guilt or fear. Even if it meant he hated her.

  But Darius must have finally found out the truth. It was the only explanation for him seeking her out.

  “So you know why I betrayed you ten years ago?” she said in a small voice, unable to meet his eyes. “You forgive me?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said roughly. “You’re here now.”

  Her heart pounded as she saw the dark hunger in his eyes.

  She looked down at the coffee stain on her uniform, the smear of ketchup near the cheerful name tag still on her left breast: LETTY! She whispered, “You can’t still…want me?”

  “You’re wrong.” He pulled her handbag off her shoulder. It felt unspeakably erotic. He pulled off her coat, dropping it to the marble floor. “I wanted you then.” Cupping her face with both hands, he whispered, “I want you now.”

  Electricity ran up and down her body. Involuntarily, she licked her lips.