Читать книгу Purchased for Passion: Shackled by Diamonds / A Mistress for the Taking / His Bought Mistress - Julia James, Annie West - Страница 9

ANNA sat in her wide leather seat in the first class cabin and stared unseeingly at the glossy magazine lying across her lap. At her side, separated from her only by a drinks table, sat Leo Makarios.

He was working at his laptop, completely ignoring her.

But then, he’d ignored her almost entirely ever since she’d fled from his office, taking on her shoulders the burden of guilt for a crime she had not committed.

Accepting the blame for having stolen a priceless bracelet.

Accepting the ‘choice’ Leo Makarios had held out to her.

But she hadn’t had any other option. She’d told herself that over and over again, like a litany running in her head. She could not let Jenny be sent to prison and have her baby taken from her, brought up in some faraway desert country, where wives were locked up in harems, kow-towing to every male in sight…

So I’m going to have to go through with what Leo Makarios wants. There’s nothing else I can do.

Yet the enormity of it crushed her. Appalled her.

She couldn’t think about it; she just couldn’t. It was the only way she could keep going. By not thinking about what she had done, what she was going to do…

She willed herself not to think. Because if she thought about it, if for a moment, a single moment, she let her brain accept what she had agreed to, she would, she would…

The grille sliced shut in her brain again. Stopping her thinking. Stopping her doing anything—anything at all except what she had to do.

And it had started straight away—last night, when she’d walked out of Leo Makarios’s office, with the word thief branded on her, to see the person she had taken the branding for.

She’d made herself go back to Jenny’s room and tell her that she’d simply slipped the bracelet under the hall table, positioning it such that it was in shadow, obscured by one of the heavy wooden struts supporting the table’s weight.

‘They’ll just think they missed it, that’s all,’ she’d told Jenny.

Her friend had gone white with relief.

‘I must have been insane,’ she’d whispered, burying her head in her hands and starting to cry.

Mopping up Jenny had taken all Anna’s energies. So had getting through the evening ahead.

A gala ball, followed by fireworks, opened by a breathtaking descent down the grand staircase of all four models en grande tenue, glittering, for the last time, with the full panoply of the Levantsky jewels, to the music of Strauss and the audience’s applause.

It had taken all Anna’s professionalism to get through the evening. Only one thing had been spared her—waltzing with Leo Makarios.

Or, indeed, being anywhere near him. If the previous evening he’d kept her glued to his side, last evening he’d done the opposite. He hadn’t danced with any of the models, sticking to high-ranking female guests like the Austrian minister’s wife.

Anna had been sickly grateful. And even more grateful to the kindly German spa-loving industrialist who’d made a beeline for her. She’d hung on to him all evening.

When the ball had finally ended, deep in the early hours of the morning, and the models had been let off duty at last, Anna had hurried back to her room.

And locked her door.

If Leo Makarios wanted to come in he’d have to break through it with a sledgehammer.

But he had other plans for her, she’d learnt that morning, after a nerve-racking, sleepless night.

She’d been packing when the knock on her door had sounded. It had been Justin, pompously informing her of a new assignment.

‘Mr Makarios has very generously extended your booking,’ he’d told her. ‘It’s all arranged with your agency. You’ll be leaving in an hour. Please do not be late.’

Leaving for where? Anna had wondered.

Now, four hours later, she knew.

She was flying to the Caribbean, with Leo Makarios at her side.

To have as much sex with him as he warranted would atone for stealing the Levantsky rubies from him.

She felt sick all the way through every cell in her body.

Anna hung on to the strap above the door in the car as it bumped over the potholed island roads. She was dog-tired. In the front passenger seat Leo Makarios was talking to the driver, and she was dully grateful that he was continuing to ignore her.

Anna turned her head away, staring out into the black subtropical night. She’d been to the Caribbean before, on fashion shoots, but never to this particular island. At least it had been easy to convince Jenny that that was all this was—an unexpected extra shoot that Leo Makarios wanted done in a subtropical setting. Rich men, both she and Jenny knew, were capricious, and they expected others to jump when they said so.

As for Jenny herself, Anna had phoned mutual friends of theirs—a photographer and his wife—who would meet Jenny at Heathrow. The couple owned a holiday cottage in the Highlands, and had promised to keep Jenny there until Anna got back to the UK.

When that would be, Anna did not want to think.

Or about anything that was going to happen. As she had done every waking hour since that hideous exchange in Leo Makarios’s office, Anna shut off her mind.

She kept it shut even when the car arrived at its destination, driving through metalwork gates set in a high retaining wall and along a smooth gravelled drive to draw up in front of a large, low villa. As she got out, the chill of the air-conditioned interior evaporated into the hot sub-tropical night. For a moment she simply stood there, taking in the sounds and smells of the Caribbean, the croaking of the tree frogs and the heady fragrance of exotic blooms.

Then she was following Leo Makarios indoors, back into air-conditioned cool and a huge, cathedral-ceilinged reception room. The light dazzled her. She took in an impression of great height, cool marble floors, lazily circling overhead fans, wooden shutters and upholstered cane furniture.

Leo Makarios seemed to have completely disappeared.

Instead, a middle-aged woman was coming towards her.

‘This way, please,’ she said, with a dignified gesture to follow her.

Anna fell in behind, her eyes automatically registering the unselfconsciously graceful walk of the woman—a walk that managed to be both indolent and purposeful. By contrast, she felt she was dragging her own body along, clumsy and exhausted.

Sleep—that was all she wanted. All she craved in the world right now.

The room she was shown to was vast. Up a short, shallow flight of stairs, off a broad gallery-style landing. Inside the room another high, wooden cathedral ceiling soared. A huge mahogany four-poster bed, swathed in what looked like ornamental muslin but was, Anna assumed, mosquito netting, dominated the room. Again, although the room was chilled by airconditioning, a ceiling fan rotated lazily.

‘May I get you some refreshment?’ the woman was saying. Even as she spoke a porter entered, carrying Anna’s suitcase.

She shook her head.

‘Thank you—I’m just going to sleep.’

The woman nodded, said something to the porter in local patois, quite incomprehensible to Anna, and then they both left. Anna looked around her blearily. Her eyes automatically went to the vast four-poster bed.

Easily big enough for two.

Not tonight, Mr Makarios, she thought sourly—you’ll have to wait.

Five minutes later, clothes stripped, en suite bathroom perfunctorily utilised, she was fast asleep.

Leo stood out on his balcony. A half-moon glittered over the palm-fringed bay that curved in front of the villa. The location was superb, the scene in front of him idyllic, tranquil and untouched. He’d bought this place five years ago, yet how often had he been here? Not often enough.

Life seemed to be rushing by him at ever faster speeds.

Leo’s mouth twisted. So little done, so much to do—some politician had said that, and he could identify with the sentiment.

Another line drifted through his head.

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

He frowned. No politician, the poet who had said that. And no businessman either. Getting and spending was what his whole life was about. It always had been.

But then, he’d always known that his destiny was to do that. To continue with the work his grandfather had begun, rebuilding the Makarios fortunes after they had been lost in the debacle of the Greek expulsion from Asia Minor in the 1920s.

He could hear his grandfather’s harsh voice even now, in his head, from when he’d been a boy.

‘We had nothing! Nothing! They took it all. Those Turkii. But we will get everything again—everything!’

Rebuilding the Makarios fortune had occupied his grandfather’s life, and his father’s, and now his too. The Makarios Corporation spread itself wide—property, shipping, finance, investment, and even—Leo thought of his latest contribution to the family’s coffers—the ultimate in luxury goods: priceless historic jewellery, and the revival of a name that had been synonymous with Tsarist extravagance.

He gazed out over the moonlit sea, feeling the warmth of the Caribbean night, hearing the soughing of the wind in the palms, the call of the cicadas, and, drowning them out, the yet more incessant calls of the tree frogs.

A thought came to him out of the soft wind, the sweetfragranced air.

Who needed diamonds and emeralds on a night like this? Or sapphires and rubies? What use were they here, on the silvered beach by the warm sea’s edge?

What use are they at all?

Into his head jarred a voice—’They’re just carbon crystals…lots of other common crystals are just as beautiful.’ Anna Delane’s lofty sneer at the Levantsky jewels.

His face hardened.

Hypocrite! She hadn’t helped herself to the ruby bracelet because it was beautiful, but because it was worth a fortune.

It had been a mistake thinking about her. He’d spent the last twenty-four hours assiduously putting her out of his mind. Even when she’d spent the flight sitting right next to him he’d refused to think about her, let alone look at her, or speak to her, or in any way acknowledge her existence. Now, fatally, she was there—vividly in his mind.

Desire shot through him, hard and insistent. His hands clenched over the wooden balustrade.

No! Now was not the time nor the hour. Sleep was the priority now—and it would be for her, too. When he took her it would not be like this, on the edge of exhaustion, but in the rich, ripe fullness of all his powers.

He would need all night to enjoy her to the full.

And every night.

Starting tomorrow.

How long would it take him to tire of her?

The hard smile twisted at his mouth.

A lot, lot sooner than it would take her to tire of him.

He would see to that.

Anna walked along the edge of the beach. It was one of those crystalline white sand, palm-fringed crescents that were put into travel brochures to make everyone instantly want to go there. But this beach she had to herself. Completely to herself. It belonged to the beautiful sprawling villa spilling along the shore, and the villa belonged to Leo Makarios.

She could see why he’d bought it.

It was, quite simply, idyllic. Like the beach, a travel agent’s dream of what a Caribbean villa should look like. The green tiled roof, the white walls, the wraparound veranda, the palm trees fringing the shore, the crystal beach, the pink and purple bougainvillaea and hibiscus splashing colour, the turquoise glitter of a freshwater pool.

Quite, quite idyllic.

Anna stopped to look out to sea. The sun was lowering, a thin band of cloud just above the surface of the sea starting to pool in the lengthening rays of the sun, like rich dye running into spun silk. Bars of gold were sliding across the azure water. Across the sun’s face a large, ungainly pelican flapped lazily. High in the sky a frigate bird soared.

Anna glanced at her watch. Though only just evening, the sub-tropical latitudes meant the sun was going down apace. The night would sweep in from the east like a velvet concealing cloak.

And the night would bring, she knew, Leo Makarios.

There had been no sign of him all day. She’d slept long and when she’d surfaced it had been late morning. She’d eaten breakfast on her balcony, and as she’d gazed out over the beautiful grounds leading down to the sea she’d felt the biting, mocking irony of her situation. Here she was in a Caribbean idyll—and tonight she was going to have sex with a man. Deliberate, cold-blooded sex, with a man she did not want to have sex with—a man who thought her a thief, a man she had already thrown out of her bedroom once but who now she could not throw out.

Deliberate, cold-blooded sex.

She made herself say the words again in her head. And again.

Because that was what it was going to be.

Something flared briefly in the depths of her eyes, but she crushed it instantly.

A sudden panic speared through her. She couldn’t go through with this. She just couldn’t!

I’ve got to tell him the truth! Tell him it wasn’t me who stole his precious bracelet, that it was Jenny, and that she only did it because she’s pregnant and terrified, and has got herself involved with a man so dangerous he makes Leo-Money-Bags-Makarios look like a pussycat…

Cold pooled in her stomach. However much she desperately wanted to, she knew she could not tell Leo Makarios the truth. The risks were far too great. As a woman, she might automatically side with Jenny, but who knew what a rich, powerful man like Leo Makarios would think? His attitude to women was dire—she had personal proof of that already—so why should he think Jenny deserved any favours, any mercy? After what she’d heard him say about Vanessa, and guarding his precious cousin from her, he’d probably think Jenny had got herself pregnant on purpose—picking a rich man to get at his money—and that a man so entrapped was entitled to take a woman’s baby from her—especially a woman who’d shown herself so morally lax that she’d stooped to theft…He wouldn’t understand.

No—Anna’s face closed—there was no way she could take that risk. And that meant—her expression twisted—she just couldn’t tell Leo Makarios why she had taken the blame for stealing his rubies.

He had to go on thinking that she was the thief. It was the only way she could protect Jenny.

Which meant—the fear pooled in her stomach again, but with a different cause this time—that she was, indeed, going to have to go through with what Leo Makarios intended.

Have sex with him.

She stared unseeingly out over the water. In Austria it had seemed unreal; she’d been in shock, Anna realised, using all her mental energy to tamp down the panic that had been trying to erupt. Here, after being on her own all day, the reality of what she was going to have to do was hitting.

Hitting hard.

For a moment she felt revulsion stiffen through her.

A phrase welled up in her thoughts.

Self-respect. An alien concept to so many people, she knew, moving in the world she did. Men who treated women’s bodies as commodities—women who treated them the same way. She could name half a dozen other models she knew who would have thought themselves in paradise to have been offered the choice that Leo Makarios had offered. Queued round the block for it.

I’m not one of them!

Even as she mentally shouted her denial, another voice spoke in her head. With killing, merciless force.

But you will be…

Leo Makarios will reduce you to exactly that. Strip you of every last vestige of your self-respect even as he strips the clothes from your body…

Pincers bit inside her stomach, sharp and painful.

She went on staring out over the darkening sea, her mind even darker.

Facing up to what she was going to do.

What she was going to lose.

Yet, for all that was true, she could not sacrifice her friend’s future, her baby, just to protect her own self-respect.

I have to do this.

And after all, she thought, with savage mockery at her own prurience, supposing it was Jenny or jail? What would you do then? Would you still stand by her if it meant losing years of your life?

Instead of just a few days…a few nights…

So why make such a fuss about what Leo Makarios is offering?

Even as Anna let the thought into her mind she tried to suppress it.

Leo Makarios was dangerous. She’d thought him so the very first time she’d set eyes on him, and every encounter with him had proved it to her. Especially the one in her bedroom…

Memory flooded back like a drowning tide, and suddenly she was there, there again, as Leo Makarios held her, kissed her, caressed her—a sensual onslaught that had simply overwhelmed her, made it impossible for her to resist…

Until, with a strength she’d hardly been able to summon, she had flung him from her…

She shut her eyes in anguish, blocking out memory.

Self-respect? The words stabbed at her. Mocking her. Taunting her.

She wasn’t just going to sacrifice her self-respect by having deliberate, cold-blooded sex with Leo Makarios. She was going to lose it for a much, much worse reason…

She turned away abruptly. Grimly, she headed back up the beach in the brief sub-tropical dusk.

Her face had hardened.

She couldn’t get out of it now. That wasn’t in her power. Not if she wanted to keep Jenny safe, herself out of jail.

But she could, she must ensure that it was nothing but deliberate, cold-blooded sex.

Nothing more.

Dear God, let me have the strength I need—please, please!

’More champagne?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Smoked salmon?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Caviar?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘As you wish.’ There was an amused, baiting quality to Leo’s voice. He sat back in his rattan chair on the terrace. From the veranda the gardens were landscaped so that the curve of the beach opened up, framed by palm trees. A light, cooling breeze came off the sea. Moonlight bathed the surface of the water.

It was a beautiful scene—and the woman sitting opposite him complemented it perfectly. His eyes slid over her as she sat there, ramrod-straight, staring determinedly out to sea.

She was wearing a jade-green loose silk-trousered affair, with long sleeves and a high collar. As she’d stalked across the terrace, her hair caught back in a stark, high knot, not a scrap of make-up on her, he’d read the signals coming from her as if she’d been broadcasting in neon.

She was making not the slightest attempt to look alluring.

It hadn’t worked in the least. Anna Delane would have looked alluring in a sack. Her body had a long-limbed grace that could not be disguised, and the bones of her face had been constructed with a natural artistry that meant make-up or hairstyle was an irrelevance.

Oh, yes, Anna Delane had an allure that she could not suppress. Leo gave a mocking, inward smile. Even when she was doing her best to be sullen and monosyllabic, as she was now.

He took a mouthful of champagne and contemplated her. A sliver of irritation wormed its way under his amusement. She really was a piece of work—sitting there as stiff as a board and twice as hostile. He’d caught her red-handed, a proven thief. But was she abashed? Guilty? Contrite?

The words were unknown to her, clearly.

Shameless. That was the only word that fitted her.

He took another mouthful of champagne and washed off the irritation. Well, there was an expression in English that perfectly captured Ms Anna Delane’s forthcoming fate—riding for a fall.

And she would do it, very, very satisfyingly, in his bed.

Anticipation eased through him. He was going to enjoy Anna Delane, every last exquisite drop of her—and the greatest enjoyment would be her enjoyment of him. However galling it was to her.

He reached out a hand and scooped some more beluga with his spoon.

Numbly, Anna took another forkful of grilled fish. Somewhere in her mind she knew it was delicious, but it didn’t register. Nothing registered. She wouldn’t let it. Must not. Instead she just sat there, eating grilled fish and salad like an automaton, without will or feeling. Resolutely refusing to look at the man sitting opposite her.

He’d abandoned attempts at talking to her, and she was glad. It allowed her to keep her mind blank—as blank as her expression. She was well trained in that—it was like having to stalk out onto a runway, features immobile, not a person at all, just an ambulatory clothes-horse, walking, posing, stopping, going, all at the direction of other people. No will of their own.

Just as she now had no will of her own.

She set her fork aside, having consumed enough. She reached for her champagne and took a small, measured sip, then set her glass back. She’d contemplated getting drunk, but decided against it. Alcohol lowered your guard. Made you stupid. Weak.

And weakness was something she must not allow.

It was far, far too dangerous.

She’d known it, known it with a hollowing of her insides, as she’d walked out on to the terrace this evening.

And set eyes on Leo Makarios again.

A jolt had gone through her that had been terrifying in its intensity. A jolt that had nothing to do with him thinking her a thief and everything to do with the sudden, instant quickening of the blood in her veins, the surge of emotion dissolving through her, the debilitating weakening of her knees.

She’d taken in the presence of Leo Makarios.

Waiting for her.

And almost, almost, she had turned and run.

But she’d forced herself to go forward. She couldn’t run. There was nowhere to run to.

So she’d steeled herself, drained all expression from her face, all feeling from her mind, sat herself down and stared out to sea.

Not looking at Leo Makarios. Not looking where he sat, lounging back with lazy, dangerous grace, the open collar of his shirt revealing the strong column of his throat, the turned-up cuffs showing the lean strength of his wrist and hands, the taut material over his torso emphasising the breadth of his chest.

And not looking, above all, at his face. The wide, sensual mouth, the dark heavy-lidded eyes.

Eyes that pressed on her like weights.

With all her strength she sat there, impassive, indifferent, while her stomach contorted in hard, convoluted knots.

Praying for the strength to get through the ordeal ahead.

But she could not, dared not, put into words what she was praying for.

The meal seemed to go on for ever. She refused dessert, desultorily picking at a slice of mango and sipping mineral water, her champagne abandoned. Leo Makarios, it seemed, was in no hurry. He’d eaten a leisurely first course, a leisurely main course, and had made a considered selection from the cheese board.

Finally he leant back, brandy swirling slowly in his glass, a cup of coffee at his place, eyes resting on her contemplatively.

‘Tell me something,’ he said suddenly, his tone conversational. ‘Why did you steal the bracelet?’

Anna’s head turned. Her eyes looked at him, widening slightly as the meaning of what he’d just asked registered. The question seemed extraordinary.

‘That’s none of your business,’ she returned repressively.

For a moment Leo Makarios just stared at her, as if he did not believe what she’d just said. Then a thread of anger flashed in his eyes. Next it was gone.

He leant back in his chair and gave a laugh.

It was an incredulous, disbelieving laugh, with not the slightest trace of humour in it.

‘You really are a piece of work,’ he said slowly. His eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me it was for your sick grandmother, or something? To pay for an operation?’ His voice was jibing.

She looked at him levelly. ‘No.’ Her voice was expressionless, but inside emotion was running. Thank God she had not tried to throw herself and Jenny on his mercy—his taunt just now showed exactly how he’d have received her plea. No. Her face hardened. There was only one way out of this, and that was the way Leo Makarios had given her in his office.

Oh, God, just let it be over and done with!

She just wanted it over and done with. That was all she wanted.

Suddenly, tension spilling out of her in words, she spoke.

‘Look, what’s with this stupid inquisition? You gave me the choice of the police or you—and here I am. So what are you waiting for? You’ve had your dinner—why hang around? Just get it over and damn well done with!’

Her voice was terse.

For a moment he just went on looking at her, his face suddenly unreadable. Then, abruptly, he set down his brandy and got to his feet.

‘Very well. Time for bed, Ms Delane. Let the reparation begin.’

Was there mockery in his words? She couldn’t tell. Didn’t know.

Didn’t care.

This was it, then. No more tense, fraught waiting. No more prevarication.

She was going to go to bed with Leo Makarios.

Right now. Now.

And have sex with him.

Carefully Anna got to her feet. Her heart, she could tell, seemed to have gone strangely numb as well. Just like the rest of her.

She could only be grateful.

It was the best way to get it over and done with.

She just had to keep her nerve, that was all. Endure. Let him take what he wanted and it would be over.

At least for now. Tomorrow night she’d have to go through it all again, but that was tomorrow. She’d think about that then. Now she just had to focus on getting through tonight.

She walked into the villa ahead of him, every footstep, his and hers, falling heavily on the marble floor, and let him guide her up the shallow flight of stairs into a room that was not hers.

His, evidently.

She stood for a moment in the middle, not sure what to do. There was a large bed in here, just like in her bedroom, but this one was not a four-poster, and it did not have yards of muslin draped. The air was cool from the air-conditioning, but not as chilly as the setting in her room. On either side of the bed low lamps provided the only illumination, making the room shadowed, intimate.

‘Wait there.’

She did as she was told. Leo Makarios disappeared into his en suite bathroom. She heard the sound of water running. Anna went on standing there, immobile. Her brain was frozen, her mind empty. She couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. She was standing in Leo Makarios’s bedroom, waiting for him to emerge from his bathroom and take her to his bed. It was impossible, outrageous.

And yet it was happening.

Now.

Tonight.

She should be feeling something, she knew—but she felt nothing. Nothing at all.

Only the hard, heavy thumping of her heart in her breast, the tautness in the line of her jaw told her that, numb though her mind was, her body was registering the anxiety, the tension in her psyche at what was going to happen.

Tonight.

Now.

She went on standing there. Not looking. Not thinking. Not feeling.

Completely numb.

The bathroom door clicked open and Leo Makarios reappeared. He was wearing a white towelling robe. Short. To the knees. Belted tight. The whiteness made his Mediterranean skin tone even darker in the subdued lamplight.

Anna felt some kind of emotion prickle out across her skin.

She watched him as, scarcely glancing at her, he went across to the bed, drew back the covers, and lounged down against the pillows, propping them up behind him. His long tanned legs stretched out bare on the white sheets.

He settled his gaze on her.

Time seemed to stop. Stop completely. As if the world had stopped turning.

His eyes were dark, unreadable. His face immobile.

But something in his eyes made the prickling intensify across her skin.

A pressure started to build.

Inside her—outside her. In the room, in the space between where she was standing, motionless, numb, in the middle of Leo Makarios’s bedroom, and where he was lounging back on his bed.

Looking at her.

Waiting for her.

For one endless moment the silence held.

Then he spoke.

‘Come here,’ he said softly.

For the space of a single heartbeat—which lasted an unbearable agony of time—Anna did not move.

Could not move.

Somewhere deep in her head words were forming. She could hear them, very low. They were telling her to run. To yell. To shout abuse at the man who lounged back against his pillows like some eastern pasha, waiting for his slave woman to come and pleasure him…

But even as she heard the muffled, vehement words they were stifled. Extinguished.

She could not listen to their siren call. Must not.

If she did, Jenny would be doomed.

Slowly, like a puppet, Anna started walking towards him. Feeling nothing, she stood beside the bed.

Docile. Compliant to his will.

Holding down with iron force the voice that was trying to speak deep inside her head. The pressure that was building, molecule by molecule, inside her veins.

It wanted to get out, she knew. She must not allow it.

Must not.

She went on standing there, motionless beside Leo Makarios’s bed, with him lounging back against the headrest.

Looking at her.

There was something in his eyes, dark and hooded, something that made the prickling in her skin intensify again, as if the voltage applied to her flesh had just been increased.

She felt her breath quicken and tried to suppress it.

His eyes washed over her.

Her heart started to slug in her chest; her veins dilated.

Desperately she tamped it down.

Leo’s voice was murmuring. Slow, and low, with a creamy, sensual timbre.

‘Oh, Anna Delane, you have no idea how much I’m going to enjoy this.’

His voice was soft and heavy. His eyes slumberous with desire.

He reached a hand out to her, taking hers in his. Her hand was limp, inert.

He drew her down on the bed and she sat there, half twisted towards him. Looking at him. Nothing in her eyes. Nothing at all.

She was a doll, a puppet. Capable of no feeling at all…

Slowly, never taking his dark, slumberous eyes from her, he lifted his hands to her hair, pulling out the pins. Her long black hair tumbled down over her shoulders, cascading over the jadegreen silk.

Leo spoke again, his Greek accent low and heavy, his lashes sweeping down over those dark golden eyes.

‘You come to me like a sacrificial virgin.’ His hands sifted through her hair. ‘Laying down your virtue for me. Pure, unsullied, innocent.’ Something shifted in the depths of those eyes. Shifted, and hardened.

Like his voice.

‘How extraordinarily deceptive appearances can be.’

The words drawled from him.

She did not respond. Did not speak. Did not do anything except go on sitting there as his long, sensual fingers sifted through her hair. Her body was like marble—motionless, insensate. It had to be—it had to be—she must not be anything else! Must not let herself feel his fingers in her hair, feel the myriad pressure points in her skull sending a soft, shivering sensation through her. She must not feel that.

Must remember she was only a puppet. Feeling nothing. Nothing at all.

His fingers stopped, then slid through her hair to stroke the back of her neck. Slowly, sensually…

And suddenly, out of nowhere, sensation started to flow through her. She tried to stop it, tried to remember why she was there, with no feelings, no thoughts, no will, merely a mindless doll that Leo Makarios could touch and stroke, and she would let him, because that was what she had to do…

But it was impossible.

She could not stop herself. Could not stop the sensation rippling through her as his fingers played with the sensitive skin they were touching.

She felt her eyes close. Heavy, slumberous.

Slowly, his fingers tautened around her nape. Leisurely he drew her down towards him. She let him do it. She let him brush her lips with his, slide his tongue within and start to caress her.

She let him slip her top from her, the silky material sliding away, let him pull her over him, let her bared, braless breasts graze against the towelling of his bathrobe, let his hands slide beneath the waistband of her silk trousers, mould over the soft roundness of her bottom. Even as he started to slide off the material, down her thighs she let him do it, wanted him to.

Anna let him go on kissing her, moving his mouth on hers, let the hard shaft of his manhood probe at the juncture of her legs, let his hand palm her breast in slow, rhythmic circles as its peak ripened under his touch.

She let herself lie there, spread across him. His hand was at the nape of her neck, the other at her breast, and his mouth was on hers, his thighs hard beneath hers, his shaft strong and seeking.

She had no will, no emotion, only total, absolute submission to sensation—sensation he was arousing from her, stroking from her, caressing from her. A slow, spreading fire started to lick through her. A long, low pulse started in her veins, and in every cell of her body a warm, dissolving heat began to steal.

She felt herself move, press her body along his, felt the hardness of his hips, the lean strength of his smooth, muscled chest. Felt her mouth move, move over his, felt herself start to kiss him back, to seek his tongue with hers. Felt the hunger start, deep, deep within her. Felt her hands curl over his strong, sculpted shoulders, revelling in the touch of his skin beneath her kneading fingers.

The fire was licking now, like flames at dry grass, spreading through her veins. She could hear low, aching moans, and knew they were coming from her throat, but she could not stop them. She had no will, no power.

Something had taken her over. Consumed her so completely, so absolutely, she was helpless in its thrall, in its overpowering, overwhelming need.

A need to move her body over his, touching, seeking, questing, with her thighs tautening, hips lifting slightly, so slightly, but just enough, just enough…

She wanted…

She wanted…

She wanted to feel his hand on her breast, palming it, scissoring rhythmically, pulling at her inflamed, jutting nipple. Wanted the other breast to feel the same. Wanted more, more—much more.

The fire was coursing through her, hungry for more to feed it with. The low, aching moans were coming again, need and ravening hunger.

Hunger for him. For the lean, hard body beneath her. For the silky moistness of his mouth, the sensuous gliding of his tongue, the rich velvet of his lips. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough.

Fire licked again, all through her veins, but with a new focus, a new urgent source of heat.

She wanted…

She wanted…

She twisted her hips, feeling the long hardness of his shaft at her belly.

She wanted…needed…

Again she lifted her hips, straining down on him with her thighs, her hands pressing on his shoulders, her breast ripe in his hand, as she writhed against his body.

She felt the tip of his shaft against her, and the fire flamed within her. She reared up, hands pinioning his shoulders, her thighs over his, hair tumbling over her back. And with a last, low, rasping moan in her throat she caught his tip at the vee of her legs, lifting and positioning it just where it had to—had to be.

He let go her mouth, let go her nape, and she threw back her head, rearing up over him. Her eyes were blind, shut, her body one single writhing twist of flame.

His hand glided down her back in a single smooth sweep, splaying over her bottom.

Words came from him. She could not hear them. Could only feel the tip of his probing shaft at the entrance to her inflamed, aching, flooding body.

And she wanted it. Needed it so much that not having it was a torment, a hunger, a desperation.

So she took it.

Took him into her.

His hand splaying across her guided her down on him, slowly, infinitely slowly, and he filled her, stretching and moulding her.

A long, low exhalation breathed from her. He was solid inside her. Solid, and hard and full. For a long, timeless moment she just stayed there, half-reared over him, feeling his fullness inside her, filling her, filling her so completely that she could only stay completely, absolutely still.

Then slowly, very, very slowly, she moved. Indenting her hips, pressing forward.

And the fire inside her sheeted into flame. White hot flame.

A cry came from Anna as her head fell back, helpless, rolling. She cried out again.

‘Is that good?’ Leo’s voice was low. His hand pressed at her, the fingers at her nipple scything her, sending shoots of pleasure through her. ‘Because for me it’s good. But this—this would be better.’

In a single powerful movement he thrust up into her, and the fire sheeted again, burning down through her hands, her feet. She cried out in pleasure again, louder, more helpless.

He thrust again—up, up into her—and there was a place somewhere, somewhere inside her, that was catching fire, and she wanted…

His hand was on her bottom now, kneading and pressing. He thrust again, and the sensation was unbearable. But he thrust again, and her body was melting, and writhing, and burning.

He thrust again. And this time as he thrust she twisted on him with her hips, and again. The rhythm mounted and mounted, and the fire inside her grew hotter and hotter. More cries were coming from her throat, her body one single flame of sensation, and her head was rolling, rolling. She had become a writhing, ravening hunger, and she wanted…needed…

This.

Oh, God, this—this was what she needed!

The place deep within her, which his thrusting fullness had been stoking, stroking, had caught fire. Igniting in a single blazing funnel of sensation, of pleasure so intense, so consuming, that Anna could not breathe, could only gasp.

And then there was another cry, hoarse and urgent, and Leo was thrusting up into her again. Short, rapid thrusts. His hands suddenly on her shoulders, as he jerked powerfully, repeatedly into her, to reap his own unstoppable pleasure.

She collapsed down on him, panting, exhausted, drained. The storm of sensation shaking her even in its dying embers.

She felt a hand smoothing back the hair from her forehead, felt warm breath on her cheek.

‘Thee mou, I knew you would be good, but—’

His hoarse voice changed to Greek. It seemed to be coming from a long, long way away. Everything was coming from a distance.

Except for one thing. Something black and dark was rolling in, darker than anything she had ever known. Stifling her, annihilating her.

Slaying her.

It was the realisation of what she had just let happen.

The worst thing in the world…