by Kendrick, Sharon; Lawrence, Kim; Crews, Caitlin; Milburne, Melanie
“I will see you in the morning,” Valentina said, resolutely. “When I’ll be happy to accept your apology.”
Achilles lounged farther down in his chair, and she had the strangest notion that he was holding himself back. Keeping himself in place. Goose bumps shivered to life over her shoulders and down her arms.
His gaze never left hers.
“Go,” he said, and there was no pretending it wasn’t an order. “But I would not lie awake tonight anticipating the contours of my apology. It will never come.”
She wanted to reply to that, but her mouth was too dry and she couldn’t seem to move. Not so much as a muscle.
And as if he knew it, Achilles kept going in that same intensely quiet way.
“Tonight when you can’t sleep, when you toss and turn and stare up at yet another ceiling I own, I want you to think of all the other reasons you could be wide awake in the small hours of the night. All the things that I could do to you. Or have you do to me. All the thousands of ways I will be imagining us together, just like that, under the same roof.”
“That is completely inappropriate, Mr. Casilieris, and I think you know it.”
But she knew full well she didn’t sound nearly as outraged as she should. And only partially because her voice was a mere whisper.
“Have you never wondered how we would fit? Have you not tortured herself with images of my possession?” Achilles’s hard mouth curved then, a wicked crook in one corner that she knew, somehow, would haunt her. She could feel it deep inside her like its own bright fire. “Tonight, I think, you will.”
And Valentina stopped pretending there was any way out of this conversation besides the precise images he’d just mentioned, acted out all over this office. She walked stiffly around the table and gave him a wide, wide berth as she passed.
When she made it to the door of the conference room, she didn’t look behind her to see if he was watching. She knew he was. She could feel it.
Fire and lightning, thunder and need.
She ran.
And heard his laughter follow behind her like the leading edge of a storm she had no hope of outwitting, no matter how fast she moved.
CHAPTER FIVE
ACHILLES ORDINARILY ENJOYED his victory parties. Reveled in them, in fact. Not for him any nod toward false humility or any pretense that he didn’t deeply enjoy these games of high finance with international stakes. But tonight he couldn’t seem to get his head into it, and no matter that he’d been fighting to buy out this particular iconic Manhattan hotel—which he planned to make over in his own image, the blend of European elegance and Greek timelessness that was his calling card in the few hotels scattered across the globe that he’d deemed worthy of the Casilieris name—for nearly eighteen months.
He should have been jubilant. It irritated him—deeply—that he couldn’t quite get there.
His group had taken over a New York steak house renowned for its high-end clientele and specialty drinks to match to celebrate the deal he’d finally put through today after all this irritating wrangling. Ordinarily he would allow himself a few drinks to blur out his edges for a change. He would even smile and pretend he was a normal man, like all the rest, made of flesh and blood instead of dollar signs and naked ambition—an improvement by far over the monster he kept locked up tight beneath. Nights like this were his opportunity to pretend to be like anyone else, and Achilles usually indulged that impulse.
He might not have been a normal man—he’d never been a normal man—but it amused him to pretend otherwise every now and again. He was renowned for his surliness as much as his high expectations, but if that was all there was to it—to him—he never would have gotten anywhere in business. It took a little charm to truly manipulate his enemies and his opponents and even his acolytes the way he liked to do. It required that he be as easy telling a joke as he was taking over a company or using his fiercest attorneys to hammer out a deal that served him, and only him, best.
But tonight he was charmless all the way through.
He stood at the bar, nursing a drink he would have much preferred to toss back and follow with a few more of the same, his attention entirely consumed by his princess as she worked the room. As ordered.
“Make yourself useful, please,” he’d told her when they’d arrived. “Try to charm these men. If you can.”
He’d been deliberately insulting. He’d wanted her to imagine he had some doubt that she could pull such a thing off. He’d wanted her to feel the way he did—grouchy and irritable and outside his own skin.
She made him feel like an adolescent.
But Valentina had not seemed the least bit cowed. Much less insulted—which had only made him feel that much more raw.
“As you wish,” she’d murmured in that overly obsequious voice she used when, he thought, she most wanted to get her claws into him. She’d even flashed that bland smile of hers at him, which had its usual effect—making his blood seem too hot for his own veins. “Your slightest desire is my command, of course.”
And the truth was, Achilles should have known better. The kind of men he liked to manipulate best, especially when it came to high-stakes deals like the one he’d closed tonight, were not the sort of men he wanted anywhere near his princess. If the real Natalie had been here, she would have disappeared. She would have dispensed her usual round of cool greetings and even cooler congratulations, none of which encouraged anyone to cozy up to her. Then she would have sat in this corner or that, her expression blank and her attention focused entirely on one of her devices. She would have done that remarkable thing she did, that he had never thought to admire as much as perhaps he should have, which was her ability to be both in the room and invisible at the same time.
Princess Valentina, by contrast, couldn’t have stayed invisible if her life depended on it. She was the furthest thing from invisible that Achilles had ever seen. It was as if the world was cast into darkness and she was its only light, that bright and that impossibly silvery and smooth, like her own brand of moonlight.
She moved from one group to the next, all gracious smiles. And not that bland sort of smile she used entirely too pointedly and too well, which invariably worked his last nerve, but one he’d seen in too many photographs he’d looked at much too late at night. Hunched over his laptop like some kind of obsessed troll while she slept beneath the same roof, unaware, which only made him that much more infuriated.
With her, certainly. But with himself even more.
Tonight she was the consummate hostess, as if this was her victory celebration instead of his. He could hear her airy laugh from across the room, far more potent than another woman’s touch. And worse, he could see her. Slender and graceful, inhabiting a pencil skirt and well-cut jacket as if they’d been crafted specifically for her. When he knew perfectly well that those were his assistant’s clothes, and they certainly weren’t bespoke.
But that was Valentina’s power. She made everything in her orbit seem to be only hers. Crafted specifically and especially for her.
Including him, Achilles thought—and he hated it. He was not a man a woman could put on a leash. He’d never given a woman any kind of power over him in his life, and he didn’t understand how this creature who was engaged in a full-scale deception—who was running a con on him even now—somehow seemed to have the upper hand in a battle he was terribly afraid only he knew they were fighting.
It was unconscionable. It made him want to tear down this building—hell, the whole city—with his bare hands.
Or better yet, put them on her.
All the men around her lapped it up, of course. They stood too close. They put their hands on her elbow, or her shoulder, to emphasize a point that Achilles did not have to hear to know did not require emphasis. And certainly did not require touch.
She was moonlight over this gr
im, focused life of his, and he had no idea how he was going to make it through a world cast in darkness without her.
If he was appalled by that sentiment—and he was, deeply and wholly—it didn’t seem to matter. He couldn’t seem to turn it off.
It was far easier to critique her behavior instead.
So Achilles watched. And seethed. He catalogued every single touch, every single laugh, every single time she tilted back her pretty face and let her sleek copper hair fall behind her, catching all the light in the room. He brooded over the men who surrounded her, knowing full well that each and every one of them was imagining her naked. Hell, so was he.
But he was the only person in this room who knew what he was looking at. They thought she was Natalie Monette, his dependable assistant. He was the only one who knew who she really was.
By the time Valentina finished a full circuit of the room, Achilles was in a high, foul temper.
“Are you finished?” he asked when she came to stand by his side again, his tone a dark slap he did nothing at all to temper. “Or will you actually whore yourself out in lieu of dessert?”
He meant that to hurt. He didn’t care if he was an ass. He wanted to knock her back a few steps.
But of course Valentina only shot him an arch, amused look, as if she was biting back laughter.
“That isn’t very nice,” she said simply.
That was all.
And yet Achilles felt that bloom of unfortunate heat inside him all over again, and this time he knew exactly what it was. He didn’t like it any better than he had before, and yet there it sat, eating at him from the inside out.
It didn’t matter if he told himself he didn’t wish to feel shame. All Valentina had to do was look at him as if he was a misbehaving child, tell him he wasn’t being nice when he’d built an entire life out of being the very opposite of nice and hailing that as the source of his vast power and influence—and there it was. Heavy in him, like a length of hard, cold chain.
How had he given this woman so much power over him? How had he failed to see that was what was happening while he’d imagined he was giving her the rope with which to hang herself?
This could not go on. He could not allow this to go on.
The truth was, Achilles couldn’t seem to get a handle on this situation the way he’d planned to when he’d realized who she was on the plane. He’d imagined it would be an amusing sort of game to humble a high and mighty spoiled-rotten princess who had never worked a day in her life and imagined she could deceive the Achilles Casilieris so boldly. He’d imagined it would be entertaining—and over swiftly. He supposed he’d imagined he’d be shipping her back to her palace and her princessy life and her proper royal fiancé by the end of the first day.
But Valentina wasn’t at all who he’d thought she’d be. If she was spoiled—and she had to be spoiled, by definition, he was certain of it—she hid it. No matter what he threw at her, no matter what he demanded, she simply did it. Not always well, but she did it. She didn’t complain. She didn’t try to weasel out of any tasks she didn’t like. She didn’t even make faces or let out those long-suffering sighs that so many of his support staff did when they thought he couldn’t hear them.
In fact, Valentina was significantly more cheerful than any other assistant he’d ever had—including Natalie.
She was nothing like perfect, but that made it worse. If she was perfect, maybe he could have dismissed her or ignored her, despite the game she was playing. But he couldn’t seem to get her out of his head.
It was that part he couldn’t accept. Achilles lived a highly compartmentalized life by design, and he liked it that way. He kept his women in the smallest, most easily controlled and thus ignored space. It had been many, many years since he’d allowed sex to control his thoughts, much less his life. It was only sex, after all. And what was sex to a man who could buy the world if he so chose? It was a release, yes. Enjoyable, even.
But Achilles couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken in the night, his heart pounding, the hardest part of him awake and aware. With nothing in his head but her. Yet it was a nightly occurrence since Valentina had walked onto his plane.
It was bordering on obsession.
And Achilles did not get obsessed. He did not want. He did not need. He took what interested him and then he forgot about it when the next thing came along.
And he couldn’t think of a single good reason why he shouldn’t do the same with her.
“Do you have something you wish to say to me?” Valentina asked, her soft, smooth voice snapping him back to this party that bored him. This victory that should have excited him, but that he only found boring now.
“I believe I said it.”
“You misunderstand me,” she replied, smiling. From a distance it would look as if they were discussing something as light and airy as that curve to her mouth, he thought. Achilles would have been impressed had he not been close enough to see that cool gleam in her green gaze. “I meant your apology. Are you ready to give it?”
He felt his own mouth curve then, in nothing so airy. Or light.
“Do I strike you as a man who apologizes, Miss Monette?” he asked her, making no attempt to ease the steel in his voice. “Have I ever done so in all the time you’ve known me?”
“A man who cannot apologize is not quite a man, is he, Mr. Casilieris?” This time he thought her smile was meant to take away the sting of her words. To hide the insult a little. Yet it only seemed to make it worse. “I speak philosophically, of course. But surely the only people who can’t bring themselves to apologize are those who fear that any admission of guilt or wrongdoing diminishes them. I think we can both agree that’s the very opposite of strength.”
“You must tell me if I appear diminished, then,” he growled at her, and he had the satisfaction of watching that pulse in her neck go wild. “Or weak in some way.”
He wasn’t surprised when she excused herself and went back to working the crowd. But he was surprised he let her.
Not here, he cautioned that wild thing inside him that he’d never had to contend with before, not over a woman. And never so raw and bold. Not now.
Later that night, they sat in his car as it slid through the streets of Manhattan in the midst of a summer thunderstorm, and Achilles cautioned himself not to act rashly.
Again.
But Valentina sat there beside him, staring out the window with a faint smile on her face. She’d settled beside him on the wide, plush seat without a word, as if it hardly mattered to her if he spoke or not. If he berated her, if he ignored her. As if she was all alone in this car or, worse, as if her mind was far away on more interesting topics.
And he couldn’t tolerate it.
Achilles could think of nothing but her, she was eating him alive like some kind of impossible acid, yet her mind was miles away. She didn’t seem to notice or care what she did to him when he was the one who was allowing her grand deception to continue—instead of outing her the way he should have the moment he’d understood who she was.
His hands moved before he knew what he meant to do, as if they had a mind of their own.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t push or prod at her or fence more words, forcing some sort of temper or explosion that would lead them where he wanted her to go. He didn’t stack that deck.
He simply reached across the backseat, wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and hauled her closer to him.
She came easily, as if she really was made of nothing but light. He pulled her until she was sprawled across his lap, one hand braced on his thigh and another at his side. Her body was as lithe and sweetly rounded as he’d imagined it would be, but better. Much, much better. She smelled like a dream, something soft and something sweet, and all of it warm and female and her. Valentina.
But all he ca
red about was the fact that that maddening mouth of hers was close to his.
Finally.
“What are you doing?” she breathed.
“I should think that was obvious,” he growled. “And overdue.”
And then, at last, he kissed her.
He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t anything like tentative. He was neither soft nor kind, because it was too late for that.
He claimed her. Took her. He reminded her who he was with every slick, intense slide of his tongue. Or maybe he was reminding himself.
And he couldn’t stop himself once the taste of her exploded inside him, making him reel. He wanted more. He wanted everything.
But she was still fighting him, that stubbornness of hers that made his whole body tight and needy. Not with her body, which was wrapped around him, supple and sweet, in a way that made him feel drunk. Not with her arms, which she’d sneaked around his shoulders as if she needed to hold on to him to keep herself upright.
It was that mouth of hers that had been driving him wild since the start.
He pulled his lips from hers. Then he slid his hands up to take her elegant cheekbones between his palms. He tilted her face where he wanted it, making the angle that much slicker. That much sweeter.
“Kiss me back,” he demanded, pulling back farther to scowl at her, all this unaccustomed need making him impatient. And testy.
She looked stunned. And entirely too beautiful. Her green eyes were wide and dazed behind those clear glasses she wore. Her lips were parted, distractingly soft and faintly swollen already.
Achilles was hard and he was greedy and he wanted nothing more than to bury himself inside her here and now, and finally get rid of this obsession that was eating him alive.
Or indulge in it awhile.
“In case you are confused,” he told her, his voice still a growl, “that was an order.”
She angled herself back, just slightly. As if she was trying to sit up straighter against him. He didn’t allow it. He liked her like this. Off balance and under his control, and he didn’t much care if that made him a savage. He’d only ever pretended to be anything else, and only occasionally, at that.
