Читать книгу Greek Mavericks: Giving Her Heart To The Greek - Jennifer Taylor - Страница 15
ОглавлениеVIVEKA’S VISION GREW grainy and colorless for a moment. She thought she might pass out, which was not like her at all. She was tough as nails, not given to fainting spells like a Victorian maiden.
She had been subtly hyperventilating this whole time Mikolas had been tying his noose around her neck. Now she’d stopped breathing altogether.
Had she heard him right?
He looked like a god, his neat wedding haircut finger-combed to the side, his mouth symmetrical and unwavering after smiting her with his words. His gray eyes were impassive. Just the facts.
“But—” she started to argue, wanting to bring up Aunt Hildy.
He shook his head. “We’re not bargaining. Actions have consequences. These are yours.”
“You,” she choked, trying to grasp what he was saying. “You are my consequence?”
“It’s me or Grigor. I’ve already told you that I won’t allow you to hurt yourself, so yes. I have chosen your consequence. We should eat. Before it gets warm,” he said with a whimsical levity that struck her as bizarre in the middle of this intense, life-altering conversation.
He picked up his spoon, but she only stared at him. Her fingers were icicles, stiff and frozen. All of her muscles had atrophied while her heart was racing. Her mind stumbled around in the last glimmers of the bleeding sun.
“I have a life in London,” she managed. “Things to do.”
“I’m sure Grigor knows that and has men waiting.”
Her panicked mind sprang to Aunt Hildy, but she was out of harm’s reach for the moment. Still, “Mikolas—”
“Think, Viveka. Think hard.”
She was trying to. She had been searching for alternatives this whole time.
“So you’re abandoning the merger?” She hated the way her voice became puny and confused.
“Not at all. But the terms have changed.” He was making short work of his soup and waved his spoon. “With your sister as my wife, Grigor would have had considerable influence over me and our combined organization. I was prepared to let him control his side for up to five years and pay him handsomely for his trouble. Now the takeover becomes hostile and I will push him out, take control of everything and leave him very little. I expect he’ll be even more angry with you.”
“Then don’t be so ruthless! Why aggravate him further?”
His answer was a gentle nudge of his bent knuckle under her chin, thumb brushing the tender place at the corner of her mouth.
“He left a mark on my mistress. He needs to be punished.”
Her heart stopped. She jerked back. “Mistress!”
“You thought I was keeping you out of the goodness of my heart?”
Her vision did that wobble again, fading in and out. “You said you didn’t want sex.” Her voice sounded like it was coming from far away.
“I said I would decide if and when I gave it to you. I have decided. Are you not going to eat those?” He had switched to his fork to eat his prawns and now stabbed one from her bowl, hungrily snapping it between his teeth, but his gaze was watchful when it swung up to hers.
“I’m not having sex with you!”
“You’ve changed your mind?”
“You did,” she pointed out tartly, wishing she was one of those women who could be casual about sex. She’d been anxious from the get-go, which was probably why it had turned into this massive issue for her. “I’m not something you can buy like a luxury boat with your ill-gotten gains,” she pointed out.
“I haven’t purchased you.” He gave her a frown of insult. “I’ve earned your loyalty the same way my grandfather earned mine, by saving your life. You will show your gratitude by being whatever I need you to be, wherever I need you to be.”
“I’m not going to be that! If I understand you correctly, you want to live within the law. Well, pro tip, forcing women to have sex is against the law.”
“Sex will be a fringe benefit for both of us.” He was flinty in the face of her sarcasm. “I won’t force you and I won’t have to.”
“Keep. Dreaming,” she declared.
His fork clattered into his empty bowl and he shifted to face her, one arm behind her, one on the table, bracketing her into a space that enveloped her in masculine energy.
She could have skittered out the far side of the bench, but she held her ground, trying to stare him down.
His gaze fell to her mouth, causing her abdominals to tighten and tremble.
“You’re not thinking about it? Wondering? Dreaming,” he mocked in a voice that jarred because he did not sound angry. He sounded amused and knowing. “Let’s see, shall we?”
His hand shifted to cup her neck. The caress of his thumb into the hollow at the base of her throat unnerved her. If he’d been forceful, she would have reacted with a slap, but this felt almost tender. She trusted this hand. It had dragged her up to the surface of the water, giving her life.
So she didn’t knock that hand away. She didn’t hit him in the face as he neared, or pull away to say a hard No.
Somehow she got it into her head she would prove he didn’t affect her. Maybe she even thought she could return to him that rejection he’d delivered earlier.
Maybe she really did want to know how it would be with him.
Whatever the perverse impulse that possessed her, she sat there and let him draw closer, keeping her mouth set and her gaze as contemptuous as she could make it.
Until his lips touched hers.
If she had expected brutality, she was disappointed. But he wasn’t gentle, either.
His hold firmed on her neck as he plundered without hesitation, opening his mouth over hers in a hot, wet branding that caused a burn to explode within her. His tongue stabbed and her lips parted. Delicious swirls of pleasure invaded her belly and lower. Her eyes fluttered closed so she could fully absorb the sensations.
She had wondered. Intrigue had held her still for this kiss and she moaned as she basked in it, bones dissolving, muscles weakening.
He kissed her harder, dismantling her attempt to remain detached in a few short, racing heartbeats. He dragged his lips across hers in an erotic crush, the rough-soft texture of his lips like silken velvet.
All her senses came alive to the heat of his chest, the woodsy spice scent on his skin, the salt flavor on his tongue. Her skin grew so sensitized it was painful. She felt vulnerable with longing.
She splayed her free hand against his chest and released a sob of capitulation, no longer just accepting. Participating. Exploring the texture of his tongue, trying to compete with his aggression and consume him with equal fervor.
He pulled back abruptly, the loss of his kiss a cruelty that left her dangling in midair, naked and exposed. His chest moved with harsh breaths that seemed triumphant. The glitter in his eye was superior, asserting that he would decide if and when.
“No force necessary,” he said with satisfaction deepening the corners of his mouth.
This was how it had been for her mother, Viveka realized with a crash back to reality. Twenty years ago, Grigor had been handsome and virile, provoking infatuation in a lonely widow. Viveka’s earliest memories of being in his house had been ones of walking in on intimate clinches, quickly told to make herself scarce.
As Viveka had matured, she had recognized a similar yearning in herself for a man’s loving attention. She understood how desire had been the first means that Grigor had used to control his wife, before encumbering her with a second child, then ultimately showing his ugliest colors to keep her in line.
Sex was a dangerous force that could push a woman down a slippery slope. That was what Viveka had come to believe.
It was doubly perilous when the man in question was so clearly not impacted by their kiss the way she was. Mikolas’s indifference hurt, inflicting a loneliness on her that matched those moments in her life that had nearly broken her: losing her mother, being banished from her sister to an aunt who should have loved her, but hadn’t.
She had to look away to hide her anguish.
The porter arrived to bring out the next course.
Mikolas didn’t even look up from his plate as he said, “What is the name of the man who has your things? I would like to retrieve your passport before Grigor realizes it’s under his nose.”
* * *
Viveka needed to tell him about Aunt Hildy, but didn’t trust her voice.
Mikolas said little else through the rest of their meal, only admonishing her to eat, stating at the end of it, “I want to finish the takeover arrangements. You have free run of the yacht unless you show me you need to be confined to your room.”
“You seriously think I’ll let you keep me like some kind of pirate’s doxy?”
“Since I’m about to stage a raid and appoint myself admiral of Grigor’s corporate fleet, I can’t deny that label, can I? You call yourself whatever you want.”
She glared at his back as he walked away.
He left her to her own devices and there must have been something wrong with her because, despite hating Mikolas for his overabundance of confidence, she was viciously glad he was running Grigor through.
At no point should she consider Mikolas her hero, she cautioned herself. She should have known there’d be a cost to his saving her life. She flashed back to Grigor calling her useless baggage. To Hildy telling her to earn her keep.
She wasn’t even finished repaying Hildy! That hardly put her in a position to show “gratitude” to Mikolas, did it?
Oh, she hated when people thought of her as some sort of nuisance. This was why she had been looking forward to settling Hildy and striking out on her own. She could finally prove to herself and the world that she carried her own weight. She was not a lodestone. She wasn’t.
A rabbit hole of self-pity beckoned. She avoided it by getting her bearings aboard the aptly named Inferno. The top deck was chilly and dark, the early night sky spitting rain into her face as the wind came up. The hot tub looked appealing, steaming and glowing with colored underwater lights. When the porter appeared with towels and a robe, inviting her to use the nearby change room, she was tempted, but explained she was just looking around.
He proceeded to give her a guided tour through the rest of the ship. She didn’t know what the official definition for “ship” was, but this behemoth had to qualify. The upper deck held the bridge along with an outdoor bar and lounge at the stern. A spiral staircase in the middle took them down to the interior of the main deck. Along with Mikolas’s stateroom and her own, there was a formal dining room for twelve, an elegant lounge with a big-screen television and a baby grand piano. Outside, there was a small lifeboat in the bow, in front of Mikolas’s private sundeck, and a huge sunbathing area alongside a pool in the stern.
The extravagance should have filled her with contempt, but instead she was calmed by it, able to pretend this wasn’t a boat. It was a seaside hotel. One that happened to be priced well beyond her reach, but whatever.
It wasn’t as easy to pretend on the lower deck, which was mostly galley, engine room, less extravagant guest and crew quarters. And, oh, yes, another boat, this one a sexy speedboat parked in an internal compartment of the stern.
Her long journey to get to Trina caught up to her at that point. She’d left London the night before and hadn’t slept much while traveling. She went back to her suite and changed into a comfortable pair of pajamas—ridiculously pretty ones in peacock-blue silk. Champagne-colored lace edged the bodice and tickled the tops of her bare feet, adding to the feeling of luxuriating in pure femininity.
She hadn’t won a prize holiday, she reminded herself, trying not to be affected by all this lavish comfort. A gilded cage was still a prison and she would not succumb to Mikolas’s blithe expectation that he could “keep” her. He certainly would not seduce her with his riches and pampering.
I won’t force you and I won’t have to.
She flushed anew, recalling their kiss as she curled up on the end of the love seat rather than crawl into bed. She wanted to be awake if he arrived expecting sex. When it came to making love, she was more about fantasy than reality, going only so far with the few men she’d dated. That kiss with Mikolas had shaken her as much as everything else that had happened today.
Better to think about that than her near-drowning, though.
Her thoughts turned for the millionth time to her mother’s last moments. Somehow she began imagining her mother was on this boat and they were being tossed about in a storm, but she couldn’t find her mother to warn her. It was a dream, she knew it was a dream. She hadn’t been on the other boat when her mother was lost, but she could feel the way the waves were battering this one—
Sitting up with a gasp, she sensed they’d hit rough waters. Waves splashed against the glass of her porthole and the boat rocked enough she was rolling on her bed.
How had she wound up in bed?
With a little sob, she threw off the covers and pushed to her feet.
Fear, Aunt Hildy would have said, was no excuse for panic. Viveka did not consider herself a brave person at all, but she had learned to look out for herself because no one else ever had. If this boat was about to capsize, she needed to be on deck wearing a life jacket to have a fighting chance at survival.
Holding the bulkhead as she went into the passageway, she stumbled to the main lounge. The lifeboat was on this deck, she recalled, but in the bow, on the far side of Mikolas’s suite. The porter had explained all the safety precautions, which had reassured her at the time. Now all she could think was that it was a stupid place to store life jackets.
* * *
Mikolas always slept lightly, but tonight he was on guard for more than old nightmares. He was expecting exactly what happened. The balcony in Viveka’s stateroom wasn’t the only thing alarmed. When she left her suite, the much more discreet internal security system caused his phone to vibrate.
He acknowledged the signal, then pushed to his feet and adjusted his shorts. That was another reason he’d been restless. He was hard. And he never wore clothes to bed. They were uncomfortable even when they weren’t twisted around his erection, but he’d anticipated rising at some point to deal with his guest so he had supposed he should wear something to bed.
He’d expected to find release with his guest, but when he’d gone to her room, she’d been fast asleep, curled up on the love seat like a child resisting bedtime, one hand pillowing her cheek. She hadn’t stirred when he’d carried her to the bed and tucked her in, leaving him sorely disappointed.
That obvious exhaustion, along with her pale skin and the slight frown between her brows, had plucked a bizarre reaction from him. Something like concern. That bothered him. He was impervious to emotional manipulations, but Viveka was under his skin—and she hadn’t even been awake and doing it deliberately.
He sighed with annoyance, moving into his office.
If a woman was going to wake him in the night, it ought to be for better reasons than this.
He had no doubt this private deck in the bow was her destination. He’d watched her talk to his porter extensively about the lifeboat and winch system while he’d sat here working earlier. He wasn’t surprised she was attempting to escape. He wasn’t even angry. He was disappointed. He hated repeating himself.
But there was an obdurate part of him that enjoyed how she challenged him. Hardly anyone stood up to him anymore.
Plus he was sexually frustrated enough to be pleased she was setting up a midnight confrontation. When he’d kissed her earlier, desire had clawed at his control with such savagery, he’d nearly abandoned one for the other and made love to her right there at the table.
His need to be in command of himself and everyone else had won out in the end. He’d pulled back from the brink, but it had taken more effort than he liked to admit.
“Come on,” he muttered, searching for her in the dim glow thrown by the running lights.
This was an addict’s reaction, he thought with self-contempt. His brain knew she was lethal, but the way she infused him with a sense of omnipotence was a greater lure. He didn’t care that he risked self-destruction. He still wanted her. He was counting the pulse beats until he could feel the rush of her hitting his system.
Where was she?
Not overboard again, surely.
The thought sent a disturbing punch into the middle of his chest. He didn’t know what had made him throw off his jacket and shoes and dive in after her today. It had been pure instinct. He’d shot out the emergency exit behind her, determined to hear why she had upended his plans, but he hadn’t been close enough to stop her tumble into the water.
His heart had jammed when he’d seen her knock into the side of the yacht, worried she was unconscious as she went under.
Pulling her and that whale of a gown to the surface had nearly been more than he could manage. He didn’t know what he would have done if the strength of survival hadn’t imbued him. Letting go of her hadn’t been an option. It wasn’t basic human decency that had made him dive into that water, but something far more powerful that refused, absolutely refused, to go back to the surface without her.
Damn it, now he couldn’t get that image of her disappearing into the water out of his head. He pushed from his office onto his private deck, where the rain and splashing waves peppered his skin. She wasn’t coming down the stairs toward him.
He climbed them, walking along the outer rail of the mid-deck, seeing no sign of her.
Actually, he walked right past her. He spied her when he paused at the door into the bridge, thinking to enter and look for her on the security cameras. Something made him glance back the way he’d come and he spotted the ball of dark clothing and white skin under the life preserver ring.
What the hell?
“Viveka.” He retraced his few steps, planting his bare feet carefully on the wet deck. “What are you doing out here?”
She lifted her face. Her hair was plastered in tendrils around her neck and shoulders. Her chin rattled as she stammered, “I n-n-need a l-l-life v-v-vest.”
“You’re freezing.” He was cold. He bent to draw her to her feet, but she stubbornly stayed in a knot of trembling muscle, fingers wrapped firmly around the mount for the ring.
What a confounding woman. With a little more force, he started to peel her fingers open.
The boat listed, testing his balance.
Before he could fully right himself, Viveka cried out and nearly knocked him over, rising to throw her arms around his neck, slapping her soaked pajamas into his front.
He swore at the impact, working to stay on his feet.
“Are we going over?”
“No.”
He could hardly breathe, she was clinging so tightly to his neck, and shaking so badly he could practically hear her bones rattling. He swore under his breath, putting together all those anxious looks out to the water. This was why she hadn’t shown the sense to be terrified of him today. She was afraid of boats.
“Come inside.” He drew her toward the stairs down to his deck.
She balked. “I don’t want to be trapped if we capsize.”
“We won’t capsize.”
She resisted so he picked her up and carried her all the way through his dark office into his stateroom, where he’d left a lamp burning, kicking doors shut along the way.
He sat on the edge of his bed, settling her icy, trembling weight on his lap. “This is only a bit of wind and freighter traffic. We’re hitting their wakes. It’s not a storm.”
There was no heat beneath these soaked pajamas. Even in the dim light, he could see her lips were blue. He ran his hands over her, trying to slick the water out of her pajamas while he rubbed warmth into her skin.
“There doesn’t have to be a storm.” She was pressing into him, her lips icy against his collarbone, arms still around his neck, relaxing and convulsing in turns. “My mother drowned when it was calm.”
“From a boat?” he guessed.
“Grigor took her out.” Her voice fractured. “Maybe on purpose to drown her. I don’t know, but I think she wanted to leave him. He took her out sailing and said he didn’t know till morning that she fell, but he never acted like he cared. He told me to stop crying and take care of Trina.”
If this was a trick, it was seriously good acting. The emotion in her voice sent him tumbling into equally disturbing memories buried deep in his subconscious. Your mother died while you were at school. The landlord had made the statement without hesitation or regret, casually destroying Mikolas’s world with a few simple words. A woman from child services is coming to get you.
So much horror had followed, Mikolas barely registered anymore how bad that day had been. He’d shuffled it all into the past once his grandfather had taken him in. The page had been turned and he never leafed back to it.
But suddenly he was stricken with that old grief. He couldn’t ignore the way her heart pounded so hard he felt it against his arm across her back. Her skin was clammy, her spine curled tight against life’s blows.
His hand unconsciously followed that hard curve, no longer just warming her, but trying to soothe while stealing a long-overdue shred of comfort for himself from someone who understood what he’d suffered.
He recovered just as quickly, shaking off the moment of empathy and rearranging her so she was forced to look up at him.
“I’ve been honest with you, haven’t I?” Perhaps he sounded harsh, but she had cracked something in him. He didn’t like the cold wind blowing through him as a result. “I would tell you if we were in danger. We’re not.”
* * *
Viveka believed him. That was the ridiculous part of it. She had no reason to trust him, but why would he be so blunt about everything else and hide the fact they were likely to capsize? If he said they were safe, they were safe.
“I’m still scared,” she admitted in a whisper, hating that she was so gutless.
“Think of something else,” he chided. The edge of his thumb gave her jaw a little flick, then he dipped his head and kissed her.
She brought up a hand to the side of his face, thinking she shouldn’t let this happen again, but his stubble was a fascinating texture against her palm and his lips were blessedly hot, sending runnels of heat through her sluggish blood. Everything in her calmed and warmed.
Then he rocked his mouth to part her lips with the same avid, possessive enjoyment as earlier and cupped her breast and she shuddered under a fresh onslaught of sensations. The rush hurt, it was so powerful, but it was also like that moment when he’d dragged her to the surface. He was dragging her out of her phobia into wonder.
She instinctively angled herself closer, the silk of her pajamas a wet, annoying layer between them as she tried to press herself through his skin.
He grunted and grew harder under her bottom. His arms gathered her in with a confident, sexual possessiveness while his knees splayed wider so she sat deeper against the firm shape of his sex.
Heat rushed into her loins, sharp and powerful. All of her skin burned as blood returned to every inch of her. She didn’t mean to let her tongue sweep against his, but his was right there, licking past her lips, and the contact made lightning flash in her belly.
His aggression should have felt threatening, but it felt sexy and flagrant. As the kiss went on, the waves of pleasure became more focused. The way he toyed with her nipple sent thrums of excitement rocking through her.
She gasped for air when he drew back, but she didn’t want to stop. Not yet. She lifted her mouth so he returned and kissed her harder. Deeper.
Her breast ached where he massaged it and the pulse between her legs became a hungry throb as he shifted wet silk against the tight point of her nipple.
His hand slid away, pulling the soggy material up from her quivery belly. He flattened his palm there, branding her cold, bare skin. His fingers searched along the edge of her waistband and he lifted his head, ready to slide his hand between her closed thighs.
“Open,” he commanded.
Viveka gasped and shot off his lap, stumbling when her knees didn’t want to support her. “What—no!”
She covered her throat where her pulse was racing, shocked at herself. He kept turning her into this...animal. That’s all this was: hormones. Some kind of primal response to the caveman who happened to yank her out of the lion’s jaws. The primitive part of her recognized an alpha male who could keep her offspring alive so her body wanted to make some with him.
Mikolas dropped one hand, then the other behind him, leaning on his straight arms, knees wide. His nostrils flared as he eyed her. It was the only sign that her recoil bothered him.
Contractions of desire continued to swirl in her abdomen. That part of her that was supposed to be able to take his shape felt so achy with carnal need she was nearly overwhelmed.
“You said you wouldn’t make me,” she managed in a shaky little voice.
It was a weak defense and they both knew it.
He cocked one brow in a mocking, I don’t have to. The way his gaze traveled down her made her afraid for what she looked like, silk clinging to distended nipples and who knew what other telltale reactions.
She pulled the fabric away from her skin and looked to the door.
“You’re bothered by your reaction to me. Why? I think it’s exciting.” The rasp of his arousal-husky voice made her inner muscles pinch with involuntary eagerness. “Come here. I’ll hold you all night. You’ll feel very safe,” he promised, but his mouth quirked with wicked amusement.
She hugged herself. “I don’t sleep around. I don’t even know you!”
“I prefer it that way,” he provided.
“Well, I don’t!”
He sighed, rising and making her heart soar with alarmed excitement. It fell as he turned and walked away to the corner of the room.
She had rejected him, she reminded herself. This sense of rebuff was completely misplaced.
But he was so appealing with his tall, powerful frame, spine bracketed by supple muscle in the way of a martial artist rather than a gym junkie. The low light turned his skin a dark, burnished bronze and he had a really nice butt in those wet, clinging boxers.
She ought to leave, but she watched him search out three different points before he drew the wall inward like an oversize door. The cabinetry from her stateroom came with it, folding back to become part of his sitting room, creating an archway into her suite.
“I haven’t used this yet. It’s clever, isn’t it?” he remarked.
If she didn’t loathe boats so much, she might have agreed. As it was, she could only hug herself, dumbfounded to see they were now sharing a room.
“You’ll feel safer like this, yes?”
Not likely!
He didn’t seem to expect an answer, just turned to open a drawer. He pawed through, coming up with a pink long-sleeved top in waffle weave and a pair of pink and mint green flannel pajama pants. “Dry off and put these on. Warm up.”
She waved at the archway. “Why did you do that?”
“You don’t find it comforting?”
Oh, she was not sticking around to be laughed at. She snatched the pajamas from his hand, not daring to look into his face, certain she would see mockery, and made for the bathroom in her own suite. Infuriating man.
She would close the wall herself, she decided as she clumsily changed, even though she preferred the idea of him being in the same room with her. He was not a man to be relied on, she reminded herself. If she had learned nothing else in life, it was that she was on her own.
Then she walked out and found a life vest on the foot of her bed. When she glanced toward his room, his lamp was off.
She clutched the cool bulk of the vest to her chest, insides crumpling.
“Thank you, Mikolas,” she said toward his darkened room.
A pause, then a weary “Try not to need it.”
