An Heir for the Millionaire

by Julia James

  I should have told him—I should have told him I was pregnant. I should have taken the risk and lived with it. He had a right to know, and Joey had a right to a father.

  The self-accusation burned in her. Xander might not be capable of love for her—perhaps not for any woman—but he was capable of love for Joey. And she must accept it. Whatever it cost her, however cruel the fate she had been left with. The fate of knowing that all she could have was this bitter mockery—to see Xander with Joey, so warm and loving, and know that she was forever excluded.

  And another torment too. One that was twisting in her day after day, night after night. For if the days were bad—when she had to watch Xander and Joey forge their new bond together, a bond that shut her out—the evenings were even worse. Because every evening, when Joey was asleep, she had to endure the ritual torture of dining with Xander.

  And that was the worst of all. For the most awful of reasons.

  Anguish flashed in her eyes.

  Why? Why was it so hard? It should be getting easier, not harder! Day after day of seeing Xander again—surely it should be getting easier to endure? She should be getting more immune to him, day by day—surely she should?

  And yet she wasn’t. Her helpless, crippling awareness of him was increasing. It was a torment—a terror. Everything about him drew her eye—made her punishingly aware of him.

  During the day she could fight it—she had Joey’s presence to strengthen her. But over dinner…Oh, then, dear God, it was an excruciating torment. For him to be so close to her, a few feet away across the table—and yet further from her than if he had been on the moon.

  She had tried to fight it, but it was so hard, so impossible. While she had been able to resort to open hostility it had been a bulwark, a barrier against him. But now—

  I don’t want to want him!

  As she stared out over the beach, let her eyes run with helpless longing over his lean, muscled torso, feast on the sculpted features of his face, caught her breath as he threw back his sable head and laughed, she felt her stomach clench unbearably and knew the truth that terrified her.

  She still wanted Xander Anaketos.

  Whatever he had done to her—she still wanted him.

  Xander lifted his wine glass and looked across the table at Clare. Turbid emotion, laced with memory, swirled within him, but he ignored it. The past was gone, over. It was the present he had to deal with. And the absolute priority right now was to achieve his goal. He would do so. He had no doubt. He had always achieved his goals in life. He would now, too—whatever it took. Too much was at stake. His son’s future.

  His son…

  As he had done time after time, whenever those words rang in his head, he felt his heart turn over. Catch and swell with pride and love. How was it possible that he should feel so strongly? Emotion had never figured much in his life. He had had no use for it, no need of it, and he had always kept it at bay, taking whatever steps necessary to do so. Irony flickered briefly, then he brushed it aside, as an irrelevance that he could do without. And yet when he had set eyes on Joey, recognised him as his son, his reaction had been overwhelming. In an instant his son had become the overriding imperative of his life.

  Every day he spent with Joey only made him more determined that he would spend his life with him. And how he achieved that did not matter. Only his son’s happiness mattered. And Joey was happy—every grin, every excited cry of glee, told him that. There was no sign, none at all, that Joey sensed any hostility between his parents.

  He watched as Clare crumbled a piece of bread in her fingers. He had demanded a cessation of hostilities and she had complied. He granted her that. From the outside they must look like a normal family on holiday.

  His mouth twisted. How deceptive appearances could be.

  And yet…

  Xander’s fingers tightened momentarily around the stem of his wine glass. That moment today, when they had swung Joey into the water, for a few fleeting moments they had acted in unison, as if it were normal, natural to do so. As if the appearance was, even for a brief moment, the reality.

  His eyes rested on his son’s mother.

  Four years since she had been in his life.

  She had changed, indeed. Or had she merely revealed the person she had always been, having concealed it from him when she was his mistress? He had called her harder now than when he had first known her, and with him that was true—and yet with Joey she was as soft as butter. Emotions warred within him. What she had done was unforgivable—to keep his son from him, to deny Joey his father. And yet all the evidence of his eyes, both in London and now here, day after day, was that she was devoted as a mother. Warm and loving. Affectionate and demonstrative.

  A good mother.

  He had to allow her that, begrudge it though he did. And for his son’s sake, he had to be grateful. Even though the disparity between how she was with Joey and everything else he knew about her was so discordant.

  He frowned inwardly. With Joey he saw her being someone he had never seen before. A different woman from the one he’d known four years ago. As his mistress she had always been so cool, so detached, so undemonstrative. As his mistress he had found it highly erotic—knowing that, for all her outward composure, all he had to do was touch her and she would come alive at his touch. Within seconds she would be quivering with passion. It had been a powerful fascination for him, the contrast between her public self and the private one that he could arouse in her.

  That alone had been enough to justify why he had kept her so much longer than any other mistress.

  For a moment his eyes shadowed, as he remembered again the moment when he had finished with her. When she had got to her feet and walked calmly out of his life. Carrying his child away with her out of spite for being discarded.

  No. He set his glass down with a click on the surface of the table. There was no point going there. No purpose in revisiting the past. It was the present he had to deal with—and the future. That was all that was important. Right now, only his son’s happiness was important—and he would take whatever measures necessary to safeguard that happiness.

  Whatever measures necessary…

  His eyes rested on the woman who had once been his mistress, and he focussed his mind on the task ahead. She had been responsive to him then—oh, so responsive!—and neither the passage of four years, nor the splenetic anger she had unleashed on him, nor her cursed vindictiveness towards him by keeping his son from him, had changed that. He’d had proof, every day they’d been here, with no room for her to shut him out, ignore him, escape him.

  Exactly the proof he wanted.

  He eased his shoulders and lounged back in his chair as the staff served dinner. Opposite him, Clare sat stiffly. But her eyes had followed his movement, he knew. Surreptitiously, but discernibly. He could see her eyes following him and then flicking away, the way she didn’t want to meet his eyes, the way she pulled herself away from him if he got too close. Her whole body language and behaviour with him betrayed her.

  Well, that was good—very good. Just what he wanted.

  Excitement flared briefly in him, but he suppressed it. In its place he forced himself to look at her with impassive objectivity.

  Four years on her beauty had matured. Even without her making the slightest attempt to improve on nature by way of make-up, hairstyling or clothes, her beauty revealed itself. Beneath the cheap fabric of her T-shirt he could see the soft swell of her breasts, and her chainstore shorts could not disguise the slenderness of her waist and hips, the long smooth curve of her thighs.

  He felt the shimmer of sexual arousal ease through him.

  A sliver of emotion broke through the barrier he’d imposed.

  Can I really go through with this?

  For a moment doubt possessed him. Then he freed himself.

  He would do what he intended.

  For his son’s sake.

  Tonight was the worst yet. Clare sat, tension racking through every
limb, and picked at the exquisitely presented food in front of her. It felt so wrong not to appreciate it more, but she had no appetite. Maybe too much sun?

  But she knew that wasn’t the reason she had no appetite—wasn’t the reason she kept taking repeated unwise sips from her wine, even after she’d fortified herself with the rum punch that she was diligently handed every evening as she emerged from seeing Joey to sleep.

  The reason she felt so strangely weak, so hazed, was not because of the sun. It was because of the man sitting opposite her. The man who was lifting his wine glass to his lips with a lounging grace that sent a tremor through her veins. The man whose long legs were stretched out underneath the table, so close to hers that she had to inch them away, awkwardly shifting her position.

  The man whose gaze was resting on her now, with an expression she could not read.

  She took a forkful of food and tried to chew it, but it was hard to swallow. She washed it down with another mouthful of wine and set the fork back on the plate, letting it be.

  ‘You don’t like the fish?’

  Xander’s enquiry, civilly made, but with the slightest lazy drawl in it, drew a quick shake of the head from her.

  ‘I’m just not hungry,’ she said.

  ‘The chef will cook you something else. You only have to say.’

  ‘No—no, thank you.’

  She took another sip of wine—for something to do. She could feel the effects of the alcohol and knew she should not drink any more. Yet it seemed to give her the strength she knew she needed. She took another sip, turning her head to gaze out over the softly lit pool and the glimmering sea beyond. She could just make out the shape of the palm fronds, outlined against the sky.

  It was so beautiful.

  Idyllic.

  Idyllic to be here, on this beautiful tropical island, with the warmth kissing her body, the softest breeze playing with her hair, the coil of wine in her blood easing through her veins.

  She gazed out over the view, dim in the starlight and the shimmer of the pool lights.

  Her thoughts were strange.

  Unreal.

  Slowly she drank more wine.

  Across the table she could hear the chink of Xander’s knife and fork, but he did not talk to her.

  She was glad. Their stilted, deliberate conversations over dinner this last week had been an ordeal for her. Silence was easier.

  She eased back in the chair, stretching out her legs, and kept on gazing out to sea. She could hear the waves, murmuring on the shore, the wind soughing softly in the palms, the soporific song of the cicadas.

  Her body felt warm from the heat of the day. Warm and languorous.

  She felt herself easing more in her chair, stretching out her legs yet more.

  Lifting the wine glass to her lips.

  It was empty.

  Curious, she thought, and twisted her slender fingers around its stem, slowly replacing it on the table.

  Xander was watching her.

  He’d stopped eating. He was sitting there in his chair, very still. His eyes were narrowed, very slightly narrowed.

  Memory hollowed within her like a caverning space, enveloping time. She knew that look—knew it in the core of her body, in the sudden pulse of her blood. Her eyes locked to his. Locked, and were held.

  She could not move. Could only feel the heat of her body start to spread, like a long, low flush. Could only feel her heart in her chest start to beat with long, low slugs, a drum beating out a slow, insistent message that she knew—oh, she knew.

  Xander got to his feet. She watched him, eyes still locked to his, as he came around the end of the table to where she sat. He reached down his hand to her.

  And, ever so slowly, she put her hand in his.

  He drew her to her feet.

  For one last, long moment his eyes stayed locked to hers. And then the dark sweep of his lashes dipped and his head lowered.

  His lips were velvet on hers, touching her with liquid smoothness, dissolving through her. It was bliss—honeyed, sweetest bliss—and she felt her eyes flutter shut as she gave herself to the exquisite sensation. With infinite skill he played with her mouth, and yet with every touch his kiss deepened, strengthened. Somehow—she did not know how, could not tell—his hands had folded around her, one splayed across her spine at her waist, one at the tender nape of her neck, holding her for him.

  She felt herself sinking, yielding to the sensations he was arousing in her.

  From touch…exquisite touch.

  And, more potent still, from memory.

  Because her body remembered. Remembered as if four years had never been. Instinctively, as if she had always, always been in his arms, his embrace. As if no time had passed at all. As if it had dissolved at his liquid touch.

  How long she stood there, with his hands gliding down the length of her spine while his mouth gave play to hers, softly, arousingly, oh, so arousingly, she did not know. Did not know when it was that she felt the strong columns of his thighs pressing against hers, guiding her, turning her, or when his hand slid to hers, folding it within his fingers as his mouth, still dipping low over hers, drew back enough for him to start to lead her—lead her to where she could only ache to go.

  She was helpless, she knew. Knew somewhere in the last frail remnants of her mind that she could not stop, could not halt what was happening to her. Could only go where she was being led, along the terrace to another door, another room, a room with a wide, luxurious bed. He was guiding her towards it, his mouth dipping to hers, tasting her, caressing her, arousing her…

  And she was responding. She felt the heat flow in her veins, flushing through her skin, warming her with its soft, insistent fire. She could feel herself quickening, tightening, tautening—her body’s responses feeding off him, off itself. Her breathing quickened too, her pulse beginning to beat more rapidly.

  He was lowering her down upon soft sheets already drawn back by the maids, the pillow yielding as her head pressed down, his mouth still on hers.

  Her hands were on his back, and as the hard muscles and flesh indented to her fingers she felt memory flood back into her head like a racing tide.

  Oh, dear God, it was Xander—Xander in her arms again, Xander’s mouth on hers, his hands caressing her, his strong, lean body pressing down on hers. Desire was unleashed within her, and hunger, such a hunger, ravening and desperate, to have him, to hold him, to touch him and possess him—to give herself to him.

  Swiftly, he pulled off her T-shirt, and she lifted her arms to let him, and in the same skilled movement his fingers had slipped the fastening of her bra. It was falling loose, loosening its burden within, so that her breasts spilled into his returning hands.

  Her back arched in pleasure as her breasts filled his grasp, and then, as his thumb teased over the instantly stiffening peaks, a low, long moan came from her throat.

  How could she have forgotten such bliss? How could she have lived without it? It was ecstasy, it was heaven, it was everything she had ever wanted, could ever want. The low, gasping moan came again, and as if it had been a signal his hands went from her breasts to her waist, lifting her hips, sliding down the unnecessary covering of her clothes. And then his body was against hers. He was naked. How had that happened? She did not know, did not care—knew only that her hips were lifting to him even while at her breasts his mouth was lowering.

  Sensation flooded through her. The exquisite arousal of his tongue, slowly circling the straining peaks of her nipples, shot with a million darts of pleasure, making her neck arch back, her lips part.

  She wanted more, and yet more. An infinity of more! Her body knew and was asking for it, craving it, hungering for it, hips lifting to him, wanting him—oh, wanting him so much, so much…

  She could feel herself flooding, dewing with desire, and she could feel him, feel the seeking tip of his velvet shaft. Excitement burst through her, more intense, more urgent than ever, and she gave again that low moan of longing in her throat.


  His head lifted from her breast. For one long, endless moment his eyes looked into hers. In the dimness she could not see his face, only the faint outline of his features, only the glint of light in the eyes that held hers—held hers as slowly, with infinite control, while she gazed wildly, helplessly up at him, her body flushed and aching for him, he came down on her.

  He filled her completely, in one slow, engorging stroke, and as she parted for him, took him in, it was if she had melded to him, become one with him.

  Her hands convulsed around his back, her hips straining against his.

  He was saying something, whispering Greek words she did not understand. She knew only that suddenly, out of nowhere, the rhythm had changed, that suddenly, out of nowhere, he was moving again within her—not slowly now, but urgently, desperately.

  She answered him—meeting each thrusting stroke with her own body, clutching at him with her hands, her shoulders lifting from the pillows, bowing herself towards him, legs locking around him.

  She cried out, and what she cried she did not know—knew only that she wanted him, needed him to hold her. He held her so closely as he thrust into her, deeper and more deeply yet, until he struck the very centre of her being. The very heart of her.

  And she cried out again.

  A cry stifled as his mouth caught hers, as her body caught fire from his. It sheeted through her body, white-hot, searing with a sensation so intense it was as if never until this moment had she existed.

  It went on and on, flooding through time, dissolving it as if it did not exist. Burning away everything that had come between them. Emotion swept through her, overwhelming and overpowering. Filling her, flooding her.

  She knew, without uncertainty or doubt, without hesitation or resistance, what that emotion was.

  And as the realisation gaped through her she realised the most terrible truth in the world.

  She was still in love with Xander Anaketos.

  CHAPTER NINE