by Abby Green
His mouth tightened into a line. If anything it just proved that he was right: Siena wanted out of her challenging circumstances and back into the world she knew so well.
All he cared about was sating this burning desire inside him. Witnessing Siena DePiero swallow her pride and her denial of their mutual attraction would be a delicious revenge, and the very least he deserved after suffering so acutely at her hands.
‘Well, Siena? What’s it to be?’
Siena hated the smug tone of arrogance in Andreas’s voice. She couldn’t believe she was even contemplating what she was about to do, but assured herself she could do this. She had to.
In a way it should be easy—she’d merely be reverting to the type she’d played well for as long as she could remember: that of a privileged heiress with nothing more on her mind than the dress she’d wear to the next charity function. No one except for Serena had ever known of her deep hatred of that vacuous world where people routinely stabbed one another in the back to get ahead. Where emotions were so calcified that no reaction was genuine.
Before she could lose her nerve altogether, Siena blurted out, ‘I will come with you—right now if you wish.’ She saw Andreas’s slow smile of triumph curling his mouth and said quickly, before he thought he was about to have everything his way, ‘But I have terms for this…if we’re to embark on…’ Words failed her. She simply could not articulate what he wanted and expected. What she’d agreed to in her head.
He arched a dark brow. ‘This affair? Becoming lovers? Companions?’
Siena flushed. The word companions, even though he’d meant it sarcastically, struck her somewhere very deep and secret. They would never be companions.
Feeling agitated, she moved behind her one rickety chair, putting her hands on its back as if it could provide support. She nodded once, jerkily. ‘Yes. I have terms.’
Andreas folded his arms across his chest. He looked almost amused, and Siena welcomed this as it made the fire grow in her belly. He only wanted her for one thing, and she was only exploiting him for his desire.
Baldly she declared, ‘I want money.’ And then she winced inwardly. She’d been brought up to be the ultimate society diplomat, yet here with this man she regressed to someone barely able to string a sentence together. She was too raw around him. She couldn’t call up that fake polite veneer if her life depended on it.
As Andreas registered Siena’s words something dark solidified in his gut. He should have expected this. A woman like Siena DePiero would never come for free. She would expect him to pay handsomely for the privilege of bedding her. As much as he’d paid for touching her in the first place.
Disgust evident in his voice, he said coolly, ‘I’ve never paid for a woman in my life and I’m not about to start now.’
Siena went as pale as parchment and Andreas had to curb the urge to sneer. How could she look so vulnerable when she was effectively standing there asking for payment to be his mistress?
Two spots of colour bloomed then in her cheeks and bizarrely he felt comforted. He could see her struggling with whatever she wanted to say. Finally she got out, ‘Those are my terms. I want a sum of money or else I’m not going anywhere—and if you come near me I’ll scream the place down.’
His lip curled. ‘Just like your neighbours? I didn’t see anyone rush to their aid.’
Siena flushed more. It made Andreas bite out, ‘Just how much money are we talking about?’
He saw Siena swallow and she licked her lips for a second, effortlessly drawing Andreas’s eye to those lush pink swells and making that heat in his body intensify. Damn her, but he wanted her—possibly even at a price.
Siena felt sick. But she was too far gone to stop now. She saw the disgust etched in the lines of his starkly handsome face. He would despise her for this, but if he could despise her and still want her that was fine with her.
She named her price. The exact amount of money she would need to ensure Serena’s care for a year. If she was going to do this then she had to make it worthwhile. Six months wouldn’t be enough to ensure Serena’s long-term recovery. A year in therapy and rehabilitation would.
Andreas whistled softly at the amount and Siena saw how his eyes became even icier. He came close again and she fought not to back away, her eyes glued to his. In a bizarre way, now that she’d said it, she found a weight lifting off her shoulders.
‘You value yourself very highly.’
Siena burned. Shame came rushing back. Nevertheless, she tossed her head and said defiantly, ‘What if I do?’
Andreas looked her up and down and walked around her. Siena could feel his eyes roving over her body.
He said from behind her, ‘For that kind of money I think it would be within my rights to sample the goods again before making a decision, don’t you? After all, that’s just good business sense.’
Siena whirled around indignantly even as heat suffused every particle of her skin, but words got lodged in her throat. She would be the worst kind of hypocrite if she were to lambast him.
She could see that Andreas was livid, with dark colour slashing his cheeks. Before she could stop him he was snaking a hand around her neck and pulling her towards him. She had to go with it or fall off balance completely.
He ground out with disgust, ‘I don’t pay women for sex. I never have and I never will. It’s heinous and disgusting and demoralising. Especially when you want it as much as I do…’
And with that his mouth was on hers and he was obliterating any sense of reality—again. Siena’s thoughts were lost in a blaze of heat. Her hands were on Andreas’s chest and he’d gathered her closer by curling his arm around her back, arching her into him, where she could feel the burgeoning evidence of his arousal against her belly.
His mouth was forcing hers open, and once that happened she didn’t have a chance. His tongue found and tangled with hers, stroking along it, demanding a response. Siena mewled deep in her throat, almost pitifully. Andreas was possessing her with sensual mastery and, far from being disgusted, she found that her arms itched to climb higher, to curl around Andreas’s neck, and her tongue was dancing just as hotly as his.
His hand left her waist and travelled up along her ribs. Siena was aware of an intense spiking of anticipation in her blood as her breasts seemed to swell in response, nipples peaking painfully, waiting for his touch.
But Andreas didn’t cup her breast as she was suddenly longing for him to do. He stopped just short and pulled his head back. She opened her eyes with an effort, to see his, hot and molten, searing her alive, damning her for her audacity and stubborn denial of their attraction. Her breath was coming in rapid bursts and a million and one things were vying for supremacy in her brain, all of them urging her to pull away—fast. But she couldn’t move.
Roughly he said, with disgust lacing his voice again, ‘Much as I hate to admit it, I think that perhaps you might just be worth paying an astronomical amount of money to bed.’
He was the one to pull away, leaving Siena feeling adrift and wobbly.
He ran a hand through his hair and looked at her, his mouth taut with condemnation. ‘You’ve learnt your lessons well, DePiero…in the beds of however many countless lovers you’ve entertained. Were they the ones to teach you that intoxicating mix of innocence and artless sensuality designed to inflame a man?’
Siena looked at Andreas, stunned at his words. He had no idea. He couldn’t tell her gauche responses were all too real. And she vowed then that he never would know—however she had to do it.
She fought to find some veneer of composure and said, as cynically as she could, considering she was shaking inwardly like a leaf, ‘What else did you expect? A disgraced virgin heiress? This is the twenty-first century—surely you know better than most that virgins are as mythical as the knight on a white horse you just spoke of?’
Andreas stalked away from her, tension emanating from his body in waves. In that moment he hated her, and he hated himself, because he knew he didn�
��t have the strength to just walk away and leave her here. To show her nothing but disdain. If he did he knew she would torment him in dreams for ever. He’d spent five years haunted by her. He had to have her—had to have this closure once and for all. And he despised himself for his weakness.
He looked at Siena and to his chagrin all of his previous thoughts were blasted to smithereens and rendered to dust. Her hair was tousled from his hands, her cheeks were rosy and her lips full and pouting, pink from his kisses. Her chest still rose and fell with uneven breaths and those glorious blue eyes flashed defiantly.
Andreas had the very strong urge to take her right here in this scummy flat—to turn that expression of defiance into something much more acquiescent. And he would if he thought that once would be enough. But he knew with a preternatural prickling of awareness that it wouldn’t be enough. He hardened his resolve. She would not reduce him to such baseness.
Siena was slowly regaining control of herself. His words rang in her head: ‘I don’t pay women for sex. I never have and I never will. It’s heinous and disgusting and demoralizing.’ The pity of it was she agreed with every word he’d said, and had to admit to respecting him for it.
She finally dragged her almost stupefied gaze from his and walked on very shaky legs back to the door, about to open it—because surely he would be leaving now, for good? Once again Siena didn’t like the hollow feeling that thought brought with it.
Before she could open the door, Andreas said ominously, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
Siena looked at him, the breath catching in her throat for a moment. ‘But you just said you wouldn’t pay…’
Andreas’s face was like stone, his eyes so dark they looked navy. ‘Yes, I did, and I meant it.’
Siena struggled to understand. ‘So, what…?’
Andreas crossed his arms. ‘There are other means of payment that aren’t so…’ his lip curled ‘…obvious.’
Something very betraying kicked in Siena’s gut at the thought that he wasn’t leaving her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Gifts…’ He smiled cynically. ‘After all, how many women and men have benefited from the largesse of their lovers for aeons? You can do what you like with them when our relationship is over, and if that means converting them into the money you want so badly then you’re welcome to do it.’
Suspicious now, and feeling supremely naive because she’d never been in this situation before, she said, ‘Gifts…what kind of gifts?’
Andreas’s jaw tightened. ‘The expensive kind. Jewels. Like the ones you were wearing that night.’
Siena flushed to recall the priceless diamond earrings and necklace her father had presented her with on the evening of that exclusive debutante ball in Paris. They’d belonged to her mother, but had been seized by the authorities along with everything else she had owned.
Siena found herself feeling almost a sense of sick relief that he wouldn’t just be handing her a sum of money. The thought of receiving jewellery made what she’d just asked for a little more palatable, despite the fresh shame heaped on top of old shame. Siena comforted herself with the thought that Andreas must have presented plenty of his lovers with tokens of his affection.
‘Fine,’ she said shakily, barely believing she was agreeing to this. ‘I’ll accept gifts in lieu of payment.’
Andreas smiled. ‘Of course you will.’
Siena had a vision of walking out of here with him and fresh panic galvanised her to ask, a little belatedly, ‘What..what will you expect of me?’ She held her breath.
Andreas’s smile faded. He suddenly looked harsh, forbidding. Not like a man who wanted her in his bed so badly that he’d sought her out and was prepared to pay her in kind for it.
‘Considering the price you’ve put on yourself…I will expect you to be a very willing, affectionate and inventive lover. I’m a very sexual man, Siena, and I pride myself on satisfying my lovers, so I expect the same in return. Especially from you.’
Siena struggled to hold down a hysterical giggle. Inventive lover? He’d be lucky if she managed not to betray her innocence, and she could imagine now with a lancing feeling of pain just how unwelcome that knowledge would be. It might even be enough to turn him off altogether. As tempted as Siena was to suddenly blurt out that intimate truth, she thought of her sister and clamped her mouth shut. No going back. Only forward to accept the consequences of her actions, which she’d set in motion five years before.
Not wanting to think of how his assertion that he was ‘a very sexual man’ had impacted her deep inside, Siena asked rather shakily, ‘How long will you want me for?’
Andreas came close to Siena, where she stood near the door, and touched her jaw with his finger, making her shiver with helpless sensation. His eyes travelled up and down her body with dark intent and then rose back to hers.
With almost insulting insouciance he said, ‘I think about a week should satisfy my desire for retribution and for you.’
Siena flinched minutely. There was a wealth of insult in his assumption that a week would be enough, and Siena hated that it felt like an insult when it should feel like a reprieve. Anyone could handle anything for a week. Even this.
‘A week, then.’ Siena assured herself that seven days was a blip in the ocean of her life. She could do it.
Andreas smiled, but it didn’t reach those dark eyes. ‘I’m already looking forward to this time next week, when the past truly will be in the past. For ever.’
Siena’s sense of vulnerability increased. ‘The feeling is mutual, believe me.’
After a tense moment Andreas dropped his hand, stepped back and said, ‘Get your stuff packed, Siena, and don’t leave anything behind.’
‘But I’ll be coming back here…’
Andreas’s mouth thinned as he took in the meagre furnishings with a disdainful glance. ‘You won’t be returning here. Ever.’
Siena opened her mouth to protest and then stopped. Of course he thought she wouldn’t be coming back here if she was going to turn his gifts into cash. Andreas didn’t know that in a week’s time she’d be as broke as she currently was, and she didn’t want his razor-sharp brain to pick that up.
Faintly she assured herself that she’d worry about it when the time came and went into the tiny bedroom and pulled out her case. Only a few hours ago she’d had nothing more on her mind than how to get through the evening without keeling over from exhaustion and the constant niggling worry about how she would be able to look after Serena, because they didn’t have enough money to continue paying for her psychiatric care.
But now her life had been turned upside down and she had a very unexpected and unwitting benefactor for Serena.
The next week stretched ahead like a term of penal servitude. But, treacherously, Siena felt a shiver of anticipation run through her. Would Andreas expect her to sleep with him tonight? The thought made her heart leap into her throat and her mouth went dry. She wasn’t ready—not in a million years.
The thought of all that intense masculinity focused on her was overwhelming when she was so inexperienced. Siena felt numb as she started to pull the paltry collection of clothes from the rail. She didn’t even have a wardrobe. She could almost laugh when she thought of the palatial bedroom she’d had all her life, with its medieval four-poster bed. It would have encompassed this entire flat about twice over…
A huge shadow darkened her bedroom door and Andreas rapped out with clear impatience, ‘Actually, you can leave everything here. Unless there’s something of sentimental value. I’ll be supplying you with a new wardrobe.’
Siena just looked at Andreas. She saw an austerely handsome man, eager to get out of this hole of a place and take her with him so that he could mould her into what he wanted. He was so sure of himself now—a Titan of industry, used to having what he wanted when he wanted.
Siena didn’t doubt that most of the women in Andreas’s life were only too happy to comply with his demands, and she had to quash the
dart of something dark at the thought of those women. Dismay gripped her. It wasn’t jealousy. It couldn’t be jealousy. She hated this man for what he was doing and what he’d become—he was welcome to his hordes of satisfied lovers.
Self-derision that she could allow this to happen to her and the knowledge that she had no choice because this was her only hope to help Serena made Siena’s spine straighten. Tersely she bit out, ‘Give me five minutes.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘WHAT WILL HAPPEN to my flat?’
Siena was trying not to notice Andreas’s big hands on the steering wheel of his car, the way he handled it with such lazy confidence. Of course his car hadn’t been on blocks when they’d gone outside. The young kid had been watching it like a hawk and had stared at Andreas as if he was a god.
Siena didn’t know how to drive. Her father hadn’t deemed it necessary. Why would she need to drive if she was going to be chauffeur-driven everywhere?
Sounding crisp, Andreas replied, ‘I’ll have my assistant settle up with your landlord. She can also inform your employers that you won’t be coming back.’
Siena’s hands tightened in her lap. In a way it was karma. She’d lost him his job and now he was losing her hers. Just like that. With a mere click of his fingers, Andreas was changing her life and ripping her very new independence out from under her feet. If she only had herself to worry about she wouldn’t be here now, she assured herself inwardly, and hated the tiny seed of doubt that even then she could have held out against Andreas’s will, or the guilt she felt.
She wondered what Andreas would have done if he’d known that she couldn’t care less for his fortune? That his money wasn’t for her at all? But she was forgetting that this man didn’t care. Just as the younger man from five years ago hadn’t cared. He’d only wanted her because it had been a coup to seduce one of the untouchable debutantes; their supposed virtue had been more prized and guarded than a priceless heirloom in a museum.
