by Maisey Yates
She was not allowing him to do her tipping for her.
“I am in the penthouse suite. It’s very nice.”
“Why am I not surprised that I just got out of a meeting where you were discussing tightening belts for my company, and yet you’re staying in the penthouse suite.”
He pushed the button for the elevator and the doors slid open. She followed in after, starting to feel slightly out of breath.
“I am not in need of money, agape, if that’s why you thought I was mentioning cuts.”
Agape. She hated that. He’d started using that on her sometime when she was in high school. Just to make her angry. And some small part of her grabbed hold of it every time, holding it near. Love.
Oh, what a ridiculous, stupid...
She really hated her hormones.
“Why else would you mention cuts?” she asked, keeping her tone sweet.
The doors slid shut and she had the uncomfortable feeling of being trapped in a closed-in space again.
“Because you need the money. Matte needs the money. In a digital world your print publication is lagging and while you have certainly come up with innovative ways to compete, you haven’t leveled out yet.”
“But if you have enough—”
He chuckled. “I don’t run a charity. I run a business. My corporation turns profits. That’s what it does. I make money hand over fist, and I’m comfortable admitting that. I’m proud of it. But that won’t continue if I don’t refine my assets. Refining is a hot and painful process. It takes fire. And people being fired.”
“Ha-ha. You’re far too funny for your own good.”
He frowned. “Was that funny? It wasn’t meant to be.”
The elevator stopped and the doors opened on a narrow hallway. Apollo stepped out and walked down a few doors, pausing to open it. “Come in,” he said.
She very much had the feeling of being a small, vulnerable creature invited into the lair of a predator.
You are not a wildebeest. You are just as scary as he is. You are a lioness.
She stepped over the threshold and into the room. It was lovely, he was right. Ornate moldings and trim framing the space, the windows looking out over Central Park.
There was a large seating area with a bar, and off to the left an open door that she could see led to a bedroom with a very large, dramatic bed.
She imagined, as tall as he was, he took up most of the mattress. That thought made her picture him—long, tanned limbs sprawled out on the bed. Would he look more relaxed in sleep? Would he seem less...lethal out of that custom-fit black suit that conformed to every line, every muscle in his body?
He closed the door behind her with a finality that made her jump.
“My team is the best there is,” she said. “They have some of the most creative minds in this—or any—industry. You have to admit the fact that the Matte Guidebooks have been hugely successful. And the makeup guide actually helped to increase sales of the cosmetics. It was specific to the brand and that—”
“Again you are telling me things I already know. I didn’t get to this position in life without paying attention. I understand that your team is important to you. But if I don’t do what must be done, if I don’t make the hard cuts, none of you will have a job.”
“But I—”
“You seem to be under the impression that this is a democracy, Elle. Be assured, absolutely, that this is a dictatorship. I am not negotiating with you. And it is only by my good graces that your pretty ass remains in the CEO’s office.”
Heat and fury washed over Elle in a fiery baptism. “And here I thought it was because I’m good at my job.”
“You are,” he said, taking a step toward her. “But there are a great many people who would be good at your job. People who didn’t get handed their position from their daddy.”
“Oh, that’s hilarious, Apollo. As if you didn’t get a leg up from my father, you Judas.” She took a step toward him, rage propelling her now. “My father treated you like one of his own children. He put you through school.”
“And I excelled on my own.”
“Then you stabbed him in the back.”
“I bought him out for much more than thirty pieces of silver, little girl. Perhaps what really hurts is the fact that you were betrayed by your father, not by me. He put you in this position knowing you would fail.”
She gritted her teeth, doing her best to shake off his words. To not allow them to take hold. All of this reached down deep. To old wounds. To the way she’d felt she couldn’t measure up to Apollo, the son her father had always wanted. To her own fears of being eternally inadequate. And he knew it.
She would not let him win so easily. “He trusted you. When you offered to help he didn’t imagine you dismantling everything.”
Apollo lifted one broad shoulder. “He made a mistake in trusting me.”
“Clearly. You would betray not only the man who set you on the path to success, but your own mother.”
“She’s fine. Your father is hardly financially ruined. She continues to enjoy her status as his wife. And again, Elle, need I remind you your father sold Matte, and some of his other holdings, to me of his own free will.”
“You had him in a position where he couldn’t say no.”
Apollo took another step toward her. He was so close now that she could see his eyes weren’t completely black. She could see a faint ring of gold that faded to copper, then to deep brown. Could see the dark stubble beginning to grow in at his jawline.
Could smell the scent of his aftershave and skin.
“Interesting you put it like that. If dire financial straits take away choice you could argue my mother had little choice in marrying your father in the first place.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Elle said. “She wanted to.”
“Did she?”
“Of course.”
“A cleaning lady offered the chance to live in luxury after years barely making it in the US? After years of homeless poverty in Greece?”
“That isn’t... It has nothing to do with this.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe the point is that you can always say no, Elle.” He leaned in. “Always.”
She could barely breathe, her head swimming, her entire body on high alert. She was almost certain she had no blood in her veins, not anymore. It was molten lava now, heating her from her core.
She remembered so clearly feeling this way every time he brushed past her in the halls of the family estate. Every time she caught sight of him at the pool—his lean, muscular body so fascinating to the girl she’d been.
Only once had they ever come so close to each other. Only one other time had she ever thought he might feel the same forbidden desire that she’d felt from the moment she’d set eyes on him.
Apollo is going to be your new stepbrother.
Everything in her had rebelled at that, immediately. Because she had seen him and wanted him in a way she knew would be wrong once their parents were married. So she had distanced him. She had been...well, sometimes she’d been terrible. But it had been for her own survival.
It was even worse now. He was still her stepbrother. But now, any affection she’d ever felt for him had been twisted by his betrayal. She should have stopped obsessing about him a long time ago.
But she hadn’t. She couldn’t. She was a slave to this, to him. Always.
She hated it. She hated him.
And she had spent nine years resisting him. Embracing the anger, the annoyance and everything else she could possibly use as a barrier between her desire for him and her actions.
Giving in would be a failure. In terms of her self-control. In terms of her relationship with her father. What would he think if he knew she wanted Apollo? What sort of scandal would erup
t if the media knew she was helplessly attracted to her stepbrother?
So she had denied it. Pushed it down deep. But she had been aware of it every time she saw him. Every glance. Every accidental brush of his hand against hers. Every time she went to bed at night, hot and aching for something she knew only he could give her.
But he had bought out her father’s company. He was gunning for Matte. Her father had installed her as CEO to keep some connection to the company—just as Apollo had said. And she’d failed spectacularly.
She could feel everything slipping out of her grasp. The company. Her control. Everything.
And she’d never tasted him. Never had him. This man who was destroying her whole life. Who commanded her fantasies and called out the deepest, darkest desire from deep inside of her.
For what? For appearances. To triumph.
There would be no triumph here. She was losing. Utterly. Epically.
Why not have this? Why not have him?
It was all going to burn to the ground. She might as well go up in flames with it.
She could see his pulse throbbing at the base of his throat. If only she had a pen in her hand. It would be so easy from this position to stab him clean through with it. But she didn’t.
So instead, she reached up and grabbed hold of the knot in his tie, and wrenched it free.
CHAPTER TWO
APOLLO SAVAS DIDN’T entertain daydreams. He was a man of practicality and action. When he wanted something, he didn’t sit around fantasizing about it, he took it.
That was the only reason he knew that it was no hallucination that Elle St. James, his stepsister and mortal enemy, was currently stripping his clothes off, her eyes bright, glittering with rage and desire.
He had resisted her, this, for years. Resisted her. Out of deference to the man he considered a father. Out of respect for all he’d been given.
But all of it had proven to be false, had proven to be a lie. And still he had roped Elle off. Had kept her separate—in many ways—from his plans for revenge.
And David St. James had known he would. Because whether she knew it or not, he had always protected Elle. She had always mattered.
But things had changed. And now she was tugging at his tie. And he was tired of restraint.
He reached out and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, holding her hands still. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, his voice a growl.
She looked up at him, her green eyes round, those soft, sassy pink lips shaped into a perfect O. “I...” Color flooded her face.
“If you were thinking you were going to take my shirt off, either stop now and walk out that door, or keep going and understand that I will have you flat on your back and screaming my name in a very different way before you can protest.”
Her color deepened, her eyes growing even wider. He thought she would run. Because Elle was a good girl, by the standards of her father. Though, she was stone-cold, aloof and fancied herself far above him.
It had made him want to destroy that facade from the first. He hadn’t. Because he knew that she was innocent. Knew that she was nothing more than a cosseted rich girl who would be completely out of her depth with a man like him. A man who had grown up on the streets in Athens, who had learned the hard truths about life early on. About loss. About the true nature of people.
He had known that if he ever touched her it would violate the trust he had built with her father.
But if she was going to touch him now, if she was going to remove that barrier that had always loomed between them, then he wasn’t going to put a stop to it.
Apollo Savas was a man who took what he wanted.
With one exception.
Elle.
He had wanted her from the moment she’d transformed from a girl to a woman. A haughty, rude woman who walked by him with her nose in the air half the time. Perversely, it had always made him want to have her even more.
She thought his hands were dirty. Thought he was beneath her. It made him want to put his filthy hands all over her. Made him want to pull her right down with him.
His biggest betrayal had never been buying St. James Corp’s most valuable assets and breaking them off piece by piece.
No, his biggest betrayal had started long before he’d discovered David St. James’s true nature. It had begun long before he’d discovered the dark secrets surrounding just why he and his mother had been brought into the St. James home.
His first betrayal had been in the way he’d looked at Elle.
But everything was shot to hell now anyway. Every allegiance broken with his “family.” Why not this, too? Why not slaughter the last sacred cow?
He had destroyed everything else. He might as well destroy this, too. And he would relish it.
Her hand was still frozen, holding on to his tie. Then, her eyes took on a determined glitter, her lips curling into a snarl as she yanked hard on the silken fabric, pulling it free from its knot.
He growled, grabbing ahold of that sleek high ponytail that had been taunting him from the moment he had walked into the boardroom today. He wrapped his fingers around her coppery hair and pulled hard, tilting her head backward. Her nostrils flared slightly, her lips parting.
They held their positions for a moment, staring at each other, clearly waiting to see what the next move was.
He had waited too long. He was not waiting another moment.
He would have her now. Strip away every prim and proper layer. Punish her with his kiss as he should have done that day she’d dared him at the pool. The only time the anger between them had given way and revealed the layer beneath.
Of course, she had acted as though nothing had happened after. And so had he.
But he would make sure this time she would not be able to act unscathed after he was through with her.
He wrapped his arm around her slender waist, drawing her up against his body as he backed them both toward the wall. It stopped their progress ruthlessly, her shoulder blades pressed firmly against the hard surface. He bent his head, kissing her neck, his teeth scraping her skin.
The sound that escaped her lips was raw and desperate, her hands clutching his shoulders, her fingernails digging into his skin through the fabric of his suit jacket. Then she slid her palms down flat, grabbing hold of the front of his shirt and tugging hard, sending buttons flying as she wrenched it open. She pushed his jacket from his shoulders, grabbing hold of his shirt and shoving it down, too. He unbuttoned the cuffs, helping her and her progress, and untucking it from his pants and throwing it down onto the floor.
She looked completely shocked, and wholly satisfied by her actions as she regarded his body. Then she pressed her palms to his chest and slid her fingers down to his stomach, her fingernails scraping him lightly as she did. She grabbed hold of his belt, making quick work of that, as well.
“Greedy,” he said, taking hold of her wrists and drawing her arms up over her head, holding her there with one hand as he set to work on the buttons of her silk blouse with the other.
She fought against him, the color in her cheeks deepening, her breasts rising and falling with the shallow gasps of her breath. He chuckled when her shirt fell open, revealing an insubstantial red lace bra and he imagined she thought it made her seem daring.
She arched her back, thrusting her breasts into greater prominence. He tightened his hold on her, pressing her hands more firmly against the wall. “You don’t get to set the terms,” he said. “Not in the boardroom, not in the bedroom. I am in charge in all things.”
“Always a competition with you, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Oh, agape, it has never been a competition. How can it be when I always win?”
For the first time, he saw a slight flicker of doubt in her eyes. But it was quickly replaced by a chall
enge. “So insecure that you have to exert your dominance in such a cliché fashion? You are exactly the same here as you are in the office.”
He leaned in, his lips a whisper away from hers. “You’re going to pay for that.”
“I hope this isn’t an empty threat, Apollo,” she said, the words throaty, enticing. “You seem to be full of those.”
He closed the distance between them, closing his teeth around her bottom lip and biting her. She gasped and he pulled away. The flush in her cheeks had spread to her neck, had down to the full swell of her breasts. She might be angry, but she was aroused, too.
“One thing you need to learn, agape, is that my threats are never empty. It’s simply that the consequences might be delayed in coming.”
She looked down, then back up. “I do hope the coming isn’t terribly delayed today.”
Those words, coming from Elle’s lips, seemed shocking. From any other woman it might have been commonplace dirty talk. Not even all that dirty when it came down to it. But from Elle? It had the desired effect.
He was so hard he thought he was going to burst through the zipper on his pants. His heart was raging, his hand shaking as he undid the last button on her blouse and pulled it from her shoulders.
He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had affected him in such a way. If one ever had. But then, he had never been in a situation quite like this. His partner had never looked at him with lust and rage burning from her eyes all at the same time. She’d never looked quite like she wanted to strangle him and have her way with him in the same moment.
And, he had never been with Elle.
“I didn’t realize you were a dirty talker, Elle.” He scraped the edge of her ear with his teeth. “If you had been negotiating this way all along you might have been a lot more successful.”
“You’re a bastard,” she bit out, turning her head and tracing the line of his jaw with the edge of her tongue. “A complete and utter—”
“And you want me,” he said, releasing his hold on her and drawing his face back, pressing the tip of his nose against hers and meeting her fierce gaze. “So what does that say about you?”
