Читать книгу The Innocent's Surrender - Сара Крейвен, Sara Craven - Страница 8

NATASHA’S arrival in Athens occurred in the middle of a thunderstorm, but was otherwise painless. She had no baggage to reclaim, and a placard with her name on it was the first thing she saw when she emerged from Customs.

It was carried by a heavily built man in a pale linen suit who greeted her with unsmiling politeness, took her bag, and led her to a waiting limousine complete with uniformed chauffeur.

The air was like a hot, wet blanket smothering her and she was glad she’d decided on the cooler option of pinning her hair up into a loose knot on top of her head, rather than wearing it down.

She found herself being ushered into the rear of the car, occupying its luxurious seating in solitary splendour while her escort sat in silence beside the driver.

She leaned back, listening to the distant growl of thunder, and watching the rain pour down the windows, as she relished the rich scent of expensive leather.

No doubt the cost of this transfer would go on the lawyers’ bill, she thought with an inward grimace. It would have been far cheaper to get a cab, although, admittedly, not nearly as comfortable. And was it really necessary to send two people to collect her? After all, she was hardly likely to come all this way just to do a runner.

It was too dark to see anything, even without the distortion of the rain on the glass turning street lights and approaching traffic into a blur, so she closed her eyes and let her thoughts drift.

She had almost dozed off when she realised that the car was slowing down, then coming to a complete halt.

Now to face the family, she thought without pleasure. She sat up hurriedly, pulling her skirt over her knees, as the passenger door opened. Another man was standing there, holding a large umbrella, and for a moment, she assumed it was Manolis, the Papadimoses’ major-domo, and was just about to greet him when she saw that he was also a stranger. Realised too, that the brightly lit entrance she was being hustled towards was also completely unfamiliar to her.

She tried to hang back. ‘No,’ she said in Greek. ‘There has been some mistake. I should be at the Villa Demeter.’

‘No mistake, thespinis. This is the right place.’ The pair of them were on either side of her now, their hands implacably under her elbows as they urged her forward into a vast hall dominated by the wide sweep of an imposing marble staircase.

Natasha hardly gave her surroundings a second look. She was too angry for that, trying desperately to remember the name of the lawyer who’d sent them, because he’d be someone to complain to—and about—when this muddle was eventually sorted.

In the meantime, in spite of her efforts to pull free, she was being taken up those curving stairs to a galleried landing.

‘What is this?’ she demanded huskily. ‘Where am I? Tell me at once.’

Silent, impassive, they halted in front of a pair of double doors, and knocked. The man from the airport reached down to the ornate handles and the doors opened noiselessly.

They didn’t push her in. It wasn’t quite as crude as that, but somehow she was stepping forward, and they were moving backwards, and the doors were closing again behind her. Leaving her standing there, alone.

Except that she was not alone.

It was a very big room, but all Natasha noticed was the bed, lit on either side by tall lamps, like a stage set. Illumining, she realised dazedly, the man who was sitting in that bed, leaning back against a mound of snowy pillows, and naked down to the sheet discreetly draped across his hips, and probably beyond, as he worked in the laptop computer open in front of him.

He unhurriedly completed whatever task he was engaged on, then Alex Mandrakis closed the lid, put the laptop on the adjacent table and looked at her.

‘Ah,’ he said softly. ‘The beauty I was promised, here at last.’

His voice was cool. His English spoken with only a faint accent.

He can make love in four languages…

Her throat closed as, for the second time in her life, his dark gaze swept her from the silk of her blonde hair down to the neat black pumps on her feet. But this time, the expression of frank appreciation in his eyes was mixed with something altogether more disturbing.

Involuntarily, Natasha took a step backwards, and saw him smile.

She said hoarsely, ‘What’s happening? Why am I here?’

‘You offered yourself to me,’ he said. ‘In writing.’ He shrugged a bare, muscular shoulder. ‘I am therefore accepting your offer. It is perfectly simple.’

‘No.’ This time Natasha stood her ground, and glared at him. ‘It’s total nonsense, and you know it as well as I do. So don’t pretend you were fooled even for a moment by my agreement to marry you.’

She turned and walked to the door, with an assumption of calm she was far from feeling. ‘However, the joke’s worn thin for me now, so I’m out of here.’

She grasped the door handles, twisted them one way then the other, but the heavy panels they controlled did not move an inch.

‘You are wasting your time.’ His voice was tinged with amusement. ‘The door is locked and will remain so until morning.’

She swung round. ‘But you can’t do this,’ she said thickly. ‘You can’t shut me in—stop me leaving. I—I don’t know what game you think you’re playing here, Kyrios Mandrakis, but please believe I have no intention of becoming your wife. Now or ever.’

‘Then we are at least in agreement about that,’ he drawled. ‘Because there is indeed no question of marriage between us, Natasha mou. And you are the one playing games, not I.’

He paused. ‘You must understand that I am referring to your second letter, which was couched in very different terms from the first, and which promised me a range of intimate delights that few unmarried girls would dare admit they knew, let alone suggest to any potential husband.’ He added mockingly, ‘And least of all to a man they had never met.’

Her lips parted in shock. ‘Second letter?’ she repeated helplessly. ‘There was no second letter. I only signed the first under duress. You must be raving mad.’

‘And you are a hypocrite, which I find a disappointment,’ he told her coolly. ‘I had expected that a girl who spoke with such mesmerising frankness of her sexual desires and fantasies would at least have the courage of her convictions, when finally confronted with the focus of her…longings.’

‘You’re the focus of nothing, Kyrios Mandrakis, except my dislike and disgust,’ Natasha said curtly. ‘I thought my brothers had cornered the market in arrogance and conceit, but you beat them—hands down.’

‘And I shall continue to do so, Kyria Kirby,’ Alex Mandrakis retorted, ‘in every way that occurs to me, therefore your ludicrous assessment of my character does not concern me.

‘You may well regret your candour in writing to me, agapi mou,’ he added, the firm mouth twisting. ‘But I do not. And, while I may never have believed in you as a future wife, I look forward with eagerness to enjoying your versatility as my mistress.

‘Which is why you are here with me tonight, as you must know by now. To begin your new career in my bed.’

The breath seemed to choke in her lungs. She stared at him incredulously, her startled eyes taking fresh stock of his state of undress and its devastating implications.

The formal evening dress he’d worn at their first encounter had concealed broad shoulders, and a sculpted chest shadowed by body hair tapering down towards his flat stomach and lean hips. His tanned skin was almost shockingly dark against the white bedlinen.

She didn’t want to imagine how the rest of him might appear.

Her voice seemed to come from a great distance.

‘I’d rather die!’

His brows lifted cynically. ‘When it was your own idea?’ he challenged. ‘I hardly think so.’

‘But I keep trying to tell you,’ she protested, hating the edge of growing desperation she could hear in her own voice. ‘There was never any second letter. Oh, why won’t you believe me?’

‘Because I have the evidence which makes a liar of you.’ His tone was almost casual. ‘In which, of course, you are no different from the rest of the Papadimos clan. Liars and cheats all of you, and, like most of your persuasion, only sorry when you are found out.

‘But your foster brothers will have even more to regret,’ he went on. ‘They will have to endure the shame of knowing you belong to me as my eromeni—my pillow friend—and that when I tire of you they will have you returned to them—used, and discarded.’ He paused. ‘Maybe…even pregnant.

‘A final blow to their family honour from which they can never recover,’ he added harshly as Natasha caught her breath.

‘You can’t do such a thing.’ Her voice was ragged. ‘No one could. It’s barbaric—vile. And do you imagine that I’ll let you get away with it? That I won’t have you arrested for kidnap and—and rape, no matter how powerful you may think you are?’

‘Kidnap?’ Alex Mandrakis repeated musingly, and shook his head. ‘When you responded willingly to my invitation, and allowed my driver to bring you here? He reported no scene at the airport. No screams or struggles.

‘As for rape, I doubt whether such an accusation could possibly succeed. Not when your letter is made public, as it would have to be. No court would convict me for taking advantage of the services you volunteered of your own free will.’

She flung back her head. ‘I say you’re the one who’s lying, Kyrios Mandrakis. I don’t believe this letter even exists.’

He sighed, then leaned across to open a drawer in the bedside table.

The sheet slipped a fraction, and Natasha hastily looked away.

When Alex Mandrakis straightened, she saw with a sinking heart that he was holding a file. He extracted two sheets of paper.

‘The first,’ he said, holding it up. ‘Your agreement to become my wife as part of this mythical deal between our families. You accept that exists?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I admit that.’

He paused, his mouth curling sardonically. ‘And this is the second letter, which outlines your alternative proposals for our future union. The signatures on both documents are identical, as you see.’

Yes, Natasha thought numbly as she looked at them. She did see.

She said in a voice she hardly recognised, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Shall I refresh your memory—of the third paragraph, perhaps, which seems particularly inventive?’

He began to read it aloud, his tone almost impersonal, but before he’d uttered more than the first couple of sentences, Natasha was whispering, ‘Oh, God, stop—please stop,’ her whole body burning with shame, her hands pressed to her ears.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘So you do remember.’ He replaced the papers in the file and returned it to the drawer, which he closed.

She stared at him, hugging herself with her arms. When she could speak, she asked, ‘you think that I could think about such things, let alone write them down? Degrade myself in such a way?’

He shrugged again. ‘Why not?’ he countered. ‘When you swim naked at night, careless of who might see you.’

She began, ‘But I don’t…’ Then stopped, the hot colour deepening in her face as she recalled the one occasion when she’d succumbed to the temptation of cool water against the entire surface of her skin.

She said with a gasp, ‘You mean that—even then—you were having me watched?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean, I came to see you for myself.’

‘But why?’

‘In case, by some remote chance, your brothers were serious about a marriage between us. I wished to refresh my memory of what was on offer, so I arranged a brief visit to your room while you were asleep.’ He saw the look of horror on her face, and flung up a hand, laughing. ‘No, agapi mou, nothing more. Not then.

‘But even that became unnecessary,’ he added softly. ‘Because suddenly you were there, and I had only to stand in the shadows and look at you in the moonlight.’

‘That’s not possible,’ Natasha said sharply. ‘You couldn’t get into the garden. We have cameras—a security patrol.’

‘Cameras can be switched off,’ he said. ‘And poorly paid men can be bribed. When I was informed you had been sent for, I made my plans accordingly.’ He smiled reminiscently. ‘And I was…infinitely rewarded.’

There was a silence while Natasha struggled to compose herself. To tell herself that this wasn’t happening. To pray that she was asleep and enduring the worst nightmare of her life. Was it only a couple of hours ago that she’d been sitting on that plane, debating the comparative morality of sleeping with Neil? Complacently considering her choices in their relationship as if they were all that mattered.

And now she was faced with this—this…

She was still aware of the snarl of the storm overhead, and found herself praying ridiculously that the house would be struck by a thunderbolt if nothing else could save her from this—horror.

Eventually she said, not looking at him, ‘Whatever you saw on your spying mission, kyrie, I still did not write those things to you. I—I couldn’t.

‘And you don’t really want me,’ she went on in a low voice. ‘If you…do what you’ve threatened, it will only be another form of revenge against my family. You’ve said as much.

‘But I—I have a life in England. A man I could love. And you—you’re seeing someone too. You…don’t need to do this. So, I’m begging you now to unlock that door and let me go.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll tell my brothers my plane was delayed, and I won’t say a word about what’s happened here tonight. I swear it. No one will ever know except the two of us.’ She added, ‘And I’ll thank you every day of my life.’

‘Your brothers are expecting you to arrive tomorrow, just in time for the meeting,’ he told her softly. ‘And I want them to know about us, Natasha mou. Also to imagine what they cannot know.’

She said, ‘I am not your Natasha.’

‘But you will be,’ he said. ‘And your life will belong to me—until I decide otherwise. Did I not make that clear to you?’

He smiled at her. ‘However, you plead with passion, agapi mou. I hope you will bring the same intensity to the pleasure we shall soon share, when I prove beyond any doubt that I do indeed want you, and not just for revenge.’

He paused. ‘My attentions may even console you for the English lover you have lost.’

He took two of the pillows from behind him, and placed them beside him on the bed. ‘But we have talked enough. Now, my lovely one, it is time you came to me. So, take off your clothes.’

She took a step backward. ‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘I won’t do it.’

His brows lifted. ‘Would you prefer my men to help you?’ he enquired pleasantly. ‘I have only to summon them.’

‘Oh, God.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Do you possess even a scrap of decency?’

‘When it is required.’ He shrugged. ‘To judge from your letter, none is needed in your case. To find yourself being stripped by strangers might even have appealed to you. But no matter. Now, do not keep me waiting any longer,’ he added. ‘A pretence of coyness is hardly appropriate.’

Pretence? she thought. When I’ve never knowingly undressed in front of anyone in my life. When I’ve never actually seen a man naked either, apart from paintings and statuary.

The door was locked, but the window might not be, she told herself desperately. If there was a balcony outside, she might be able to jump…

And stopped right there, knowing that a broken arm or leg might be the least harm she could do to herself.

She was trapped—caught between Scylla and Charybdis, the monster and the whirlpool, in the story of ‘The Odyssey’ that Thia Theodosia used to read to her.

She touched dry lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘Will you at least—turn off the lights?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘And I am becoming impatient.’ The dark eyes scanned her again more slowly. ‘You may begin by taking down your hair. I prefer to see it loose.’

Instinct warned her that she had nowhere else to go. That tears—the only option she had left—wouldn’t move him any more than her protests had done, her pleading.

She had abased herself for nothing, and she would not do so again, she told herself with cold determination. From now on, she would concentrate on survival alone.

She had never understood or been part of this feud between the two families, and had always found it faintly ludicrous that grown men should so implacably pursue each other’s downfall.

But all that had changed forever when she’d entered this room, and found him waiting for her. Because Alex Mandrakis was now her enemy too, and someday, somehow, he would pay for tonight.

I’ll make him sorry that he was ever born, she vowed silently as she took the clips from her hair and shook the long, silky strands free over her shoulders.

He said softly, ‘Like a cloud of gold. Now, continue.’

She took off her jacket, and let it drop. Stepped out of her shoes.

He can’t touch the real me, and he never will, she told herself. Whatever he does, however he treats me, I won’t let him reach me in any way.

She would simply, endure until it was over, and he let her go. Because, although it might seem an eternity, in reality her time with him was unlikely to last very long.

It couldn’t, she thought, as she began to unbutton her shirt, forcing her trembling fingers to obey her. Not once he discovered that she would never in a million years meet the sophistication of his demands on her. That she had no sexual enticements, as her current lacklustre performance must be demonstrating.

My God, she thought, sliding the shirt off her shoulders. I don’t even know how to be a woman, and I certainly won’t be learning with him.

And when it was finally over, and she had made him suffer as she was doing now, she would manage, somehow, to put all the shame, all the betrayal behind her, and rebuild a life for herself back in England.

It wouldn’t be the same, of course. She couldn’t imagine Neil wanting to be a part of it any more once he discovered what had happened. And if Alex Mandrakis made good his threat to parade her publicly as his mistress, and, clearly, he did not threaten lightly, then Neil was bound to find out, and be hurt.

One day, she would grieve about that. About the might-have-beens that he would always represent, which were all being systematically destroyed by the man in the bed, silently watching her undress.

And the way to deal with that, she told herself as she unzipped her skirt, was to pretend that Alex Mandrakis did not exist. That she was actually alone in her room at the London flat, getting ready for bed. Just a night like any other.

If I don’t look at him, she thought as her skirt joined her other garments on the floor, I won’t know that he’s looking at me. I can make that my first line of defence.

And there would be others.

She couldn’t fight him off physically, because she would lose. Every line of his lean, toned body told her that.

Besides, he was probably decadent enough to enjoy subjugating her, and she would do nothing that might give him any kind of pleasure.

It would be far safer to bore him, she thought. To adopt a policy of passive resistance. Obedient, but unresponsive, with never a kiss or a touch given of her own free will. And the complete opposite of the reaction he was expecting.

In spite of this resolution, it took every scrap of courage she possessed to remove her underwear, and bare herself completely to his gaze. She tried to tell herself as she unhooked her bra, and slid down her briefs, that he’d seen her naked before, even if she’d been unaware of it, and therefore, this time, it didn’t matter. It mustn’t be allowed to matter.

Except that somehow it did—quite terribly.

She had to fight, too, not to cover herself with her hands but keep them, in a show of her indifference to his scrutiny, at her sides, as she waited for him to say something. Anything.

But when he spoke, her startled senses reacted as if his hand had touched her quivering flesh.

‘The moonlight did not lie, Natasha mou,’ he said quietly. ‘Your body is indeed exquisite.’ He threw back the sheet, indicating with an imperative gesture that she should go to him.

Natasha crossed slowly to the bed, aware that he was lying on his side, propped on one elbow, waiting for her. She supposed that in some shrinking corner of her mind she’d gone on hoping against hope that he might decide he’d humiliated her enough, and call a halt.

But he was not going to relent, she thought, her heart thudding in panic at the prospect of what awaited her. Her one small consolation was that it would be on her terms, not his. And that one day his own life would lie in ruins too.

However, he’d said he was running out of patience, so it might all be over very quickly. In fact, if he was sufficiently disappointed in her lack of response, this might not be just an initial encounter, but also the last one.

But that made the immediate future no easier to contemplate as she lay beside him, staring rigidly at the ceiling. It shouldn’t be like this, she thought as tension knotted inside her. Not her first time. She should be with someone who’d treat her with tenderness and consideration.

Instead, she was about to be possessed by her family’s enemy, a man who despised her and would make no allowances for an innocence he didn’t believe existed.

She sank her teeth into the inner softness of her lower lip as she remembered the things he’d read to her from that vile letter. Was that what he’d want from her, and, if so, how could she bear it?

Then, just as her taut nerves approached snapping point, Alex Mandrakis touched her at last, his fingers hardly more than a whisper on her skin as he pushed her hair back from her forehead, before winding one silken strand round his hand, and lifting it to his face as if to inhale its fragrance.

It was the last thing she’d anticipated, and, in spite of herself, she turned, startled, to look at him, and saw his smile, crooked, almost rueful.

Then he bent, putting his mouth very precisely on hers and caressing it softly, coaxing her silently and with insidious gentleness to part her lips and allow him the deeper intimacy he sought.

This was not the brutality she’d expected to defy, but deliberate temptation.

And for an instant, as his lips moved on hers, Natasha was aware of an odd, tingling warmth deep in the pit of her stomach, and realised just how much on her guard she would need to be.

She closed her eyes, staying motionless, her mouth tightly compressed against him, forbidding any closer access. At the same time, she was unable to prevent him moving ever closer, so that the warmth of him seemed to be permeating the chill of her own flesh, while the musky scent of his skin filled her consciousness like an intoxicant.

Eventually, the insistent sensuous pressure on her mouth halted and she was aware that he’d lifted his head. He said, ‘Look at me.’

Slowly she raised reluctant lids, staring up into his dark face with cool antagonism.

‘You do not include kissing in your repertoire?’ He sounded little more than mildly curious.

‘Perhaps I merely have no wish to kiss you, Kyrios Mandrakis.’

‘The possibility had crossed my mind,’ he murmured. ‘And are you also unwilling to call me by my given name?’ His hand cupped her breast, his fingertip teasing the nipple, rousing it to a proud, aching life that she realised with horror she could not control. ‘Although such formality in the circumstances is strangely erotic,’ he added with faint amusement.

‘Circumstances that are not of my making.’ To her chagrin, her own voice sounded slightly breathless.

‘And that you are trying to ignore.’ The amusement was open now, his hand still moving on her in devastating purpose. ‘Your mind may have decided you no longer harbour your former overwhelming desire for me, Natasha mou, but your body seems to have other ideas.’ He added softly, ‘Instead of a certainty, you have become an intriguing challenge.’

Natasha turned her head away. She said bitterly, ‘Have you no shame?’

‘I could ask you the same question, my little cheat,’ Alex Mandrakis retorted. ‘After all, you were my would-be wife—the one making all the promises that were supposed to blind me to your family’s real purpose.

‘No doubt they guaranteed you would never have to keep any of them,’ he added scornfully. ‘Well, now you know you are wrong, and they will know it too.’

He altered his position slightly, significantly, making her suddenly, shockingly aware of the heated potency of male arousal against her thigh, then bent his head and put his mouth to the scented mound of her breast, his tongue stroking its taut, rosy peak with lingering appreciation.

Sensation, sudden and unwanted, lanced through her. She pushed at his shoulders. ‘Don’t…’

He raised his head and looked at her, his gaze quizzical. ‘It is not easy to please you, agapi mou.’

‘Then don’t try,’ she flung at him, stormily. ‘Just—let me go.’

‘Having taken all this trouble to acquire you?’ he mocked. ‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’

‘But for how long?’ she asked in a stifled voice. ‘You have to tell me.’

He was silent for a moment. ‘Perhaps—until you no longer wish to leave, Natasha mou. But for now….’

His hand slid down her body with slow, insolent mastery, caressing the flat plane of her stomach, and the delicate inner hollow of her hip, before moving down to the silky triangle at the junction of her thighs.

Natasha set her teeth, her skin burning with embarrassment as he parted her legs, and she felt the glide of his fingers exploring her moist inner heat, setting off another chain of unwanted response that almost verged on excitement.

She was bitterly, angrily aware that her breathing had quickened even more, in spite of herself, and that there was an unfamiliar ache somewhere deep within her.

But she wouldn’t let herself think about that, or its inevitable implications. She would focus instead on disgust. On hating her body’s scalding, slippery reaction to this new intimacy almost as much as she loathed the man who was creating it with such casual expertise.

Then, as if he recognised her mental struggles: ‘Why don’t you stop fighting me, agapi mou?’ Alex Mandrakis whispered. ‘Because the battle is already lost.’

‘Not for me,’ she managed hoarsely. ‘I’ll never forgive you for this. Not as long as I live.’ Or as long as you do…

He shrugged. ‘Then I have nothing to lose,’ he said, half to himself, as he lifted himself over her. ‘But everything to gain,’ he added in husky triumph. And entered her with one smooth, unerring thrust.