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‘You’re doing really good,’ Sebasten groaned and it was an effort to find the words in English as a telling shudder racked his big, powerful frame. The challenge he had set her from the pinnacle of his own bedroom supremacy was gnawing with increasing savagery and ego-zapping speed at his own self-control.
Lizzie gave him a smile old as Eve, leant up and ran the tip of her tongue in provocation and encouragement along his sensual lower lip and he growled and pushed her back against the pillows and drove his mouth down on hers with raw, hungry demand. Literal fireworks went off inside her. She was with him every step of the way, ecstatic at the change of pace that matched her own fevered longing and impatience.
‘I want you…now!’ Sebasten ground out hoarsely, hauling her under him with an incredible lack of cool when she had not the smallest intention of arguing.
And then he was there where she had so needed him to be, coursing into her and burying himself deep. Her climax was instant, shattering. Shorn of all control, she was thrown to a fierce peak and then she splintered into a million shellshocked pieces in an experience so intense she was left in a daze.
‘You’re a lost cause,’ Sebasten bit out with a sudden laugh and then he kissed her, slow and tender, and her heart gave a wild spin as though it were a globe on a hanger.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered but that was the exact moment that she realised that she was in love, head over heels, fathoms-deep in love as she had never been before.
‘Don’t be…you’re incredible in bed,’ Sebasten assured her, reminding himself that tomorrow was another day to reinstate restraint before he took her to heaven and back again.
Exactly a fortnight later, Lizzie experienced her first day at work.
Her concentration was not all that might have been: Sebasten was due back that afternoon from his second trip abroad since she had met him. In the intervening weeks, he had only managed to see her twice, once meeting her for dinner when he was actually en route to the airport, and on the second occasion taking her to the races to help him entertain a group of foreign businessmen in his private box. As neither event had entailed anything in the way of privacy, Lizzie was counting the hours until she could see him again and could indeed think of nothing else but Sebasten.
True love, she recognised ruefully, had taken a long time to hit her. What she had felt for Connor had just been a practice run for the main event. Connor had damaged her pride, her self-confidence and her blind faith in others more than her heart. With Sebasten, she had discovered an entire new layer of more tender feelings. She worried about the incredible hours he seemed to work. She cherished every tiny thing she found out about him but Sebasten could be stingier than Scrooge when it came to talking about himself. His different moods fascinated her, for the cool front he wore concealed a volatile temperament controlled by rigid self-discipline. He was full of contradictions and complexities and every minute she spent with him, even on the phone, plunged her deeper into her obsession with him.
Even so, the poor start she contrived to make at CI on her first day annoyed and frustrated her.
‘A couple of little points,’ Milly Sharpe, the office manager on the sixth floor, a whip-thin redhead in a navy business suit, advanced with compressed lips. ‘Getting off at the wrong tube station is not an acceptable excuse for being late. Please ensure that you arrive at the correct time tomorrow. Did you receive a copy of the CI dress code?’
Lizzie almost winced. ‘Yes.’
‘The code favours the darker colours, suits—longer skirts or trousers—and sensible shoes. The key word is formal, not casual.’
There was a pause while a speaking appraisal was angled over Lizzie’s fashionable green skirt worn with a matching fitted top that sported faux fur at cuff and neckline and the very high sandals on her slender feet. Lizzie reddened and wondered if the woman honestly believed that she had the wherewithal to rush out and buy a complete new wardrobe. She had never bought dark colours, had never owned sensible shoes that were not of the walking-boot variety and her trouser collection consisted of jeans, chinos and pure silk beach wear.
‘I would suggest that you also do something with your hair. It’s a little too long to be left safely loose when you’re working with office equipment.’
It was worse than being back at school, Lizzie thought in horror, waiting to be told to take off her earrings and removed her nail polish as well.
By the time Lizzie was shown to the switchboard and taken through a bewildering number of operations while various messages flashed up lightning-fast on the screen in front of her, sheer nervous tension had killed her ability to concentrate on the directions she was being given or remember them.
The hours that followed were a nightmare for her. She learnt that if she pressed the wrong button, she created havoc. She put calls through to lines that were engaged, cut people off in the middle of conversations, connected calls to the wrong extensions, lost others in an endless loop which saw them routed round the building and back to her again. The amount of abuse she got was a colossal shock to her system. Furious callers raged down the line at her and several staff appeared in person to remonstrate with her.
‘A switchboard operator must remain calm,’ Milly Sharpe reproved when Lizzie was as wrung out as a rag, jumping and flinching at the mere sight of an incoming call and ducking behind the screen if anybody walked past in case they were about to direct a volley of complaints at her.
She was weak with relief when she was switched to photocopying duties after lunch. Although the machine’s sensors gave her a real fright by buzzing into sudden life the instant she approached, she felt better able to cope. In addition, something more than mere nerves was afflicting her: the longer she stood, the more light-headed she felt and her queasy tummy had put her off eating any lunch. She prayed that she was not developing summer flu.
Having access to a computer that was linked to the colour photocopier, while she waited for the copier to finish printing she succumbed to the temptation of doing an online search for information on Sebasten. But the very site she found brought up a to-die-for portrait photo of Sebasten and she never got any further. Her heartrate quickening at first glimpse of that lean, strong face, she drank in his image with intense appreciation. The stress of her difficult day seemed to evaporate as she hit the print button to get a copy of that photo to take home.
When more than one photo began to pile up in the copier, she did not initially panic. In fact she just thought she would have a photo for every handbag, would indeed not need to go an hour without a frequent fix of studying Sebasten. However, as the pile began to mount beyond the number of bags that even she possessed she tried to cancel the print run. But nothing she did would persuade the wretched machine to cease the operation. As luck would have it, Milly Sharpe arrived at that point.
Scooping up the first picture of Sebasten, she held it up like an exhibit at a murder trial, icy condemnation in her challenging gaze. ‘Where did you get this from?’
‘I only meant to print one—’
‘You mean…there’s more than one?’ the redhead demanded and swooped on the fat pile in disbelief, checking the print run with brows that vanished below her fringe. ‘You have printed four hundred copies of this photo?’
Lizzie reddened to her hairline, feeling like a kid caught languishing over a secret pin-up. ‘I’m really very sorry—’
‘Have you any idea how much this special photographic paper costs per single sheet?’
Lizzie was shattered to be informed that she had wasted a couple of hundred pounds of very expensive stationery.
‘And on company time!’ The other woman’s voice shook with outrage. ‘I would also add that I consider it the height of impertinence to print photos of Mr Contaxis. I think it would be best if you spent the rest of the afternoon tidying up the stationery store room across the corridor.’
Just when Lizzie was wondering why it should be ‘impertinent’ to print images of Sebasten, a wave of such overpowering nausea assailed her that she was forced to bolt for the cloakroom. After a nasty bout of sickness she felt so dizzy that she had to hang on to the vanity counter before she felt steady enough on her feet to freshen up. While she was doing that, a slight, youthful blonde came in.
‘I’m Rosemary. I’m to check up on you and show you to the sick room,’ she explained with a friendlier smile than Lizzie had so far received from any of the female staff.
‘I’m fine now,’ Lizzie asserted in haste, thinking that if she ended up in the sick room on top of such a disastrous work performance, her first day would definitely be her last day of employment in the building.
‘You’re still very pale. Don’t let Milly Sharpe get to you,’ the chatty blonde advised. ‘If you ask me, she’s just got a chip on her shoulder about how you got your job.’
Lizzie frowned. ‘How…I got my job?’
Rosemary shrugged a carefully noncommittal shoulder. ‘There’s this mad rumour flying round that you didn’t come in by the usual selection process but got strings pulled for you by someone influential on the executive floor—’
Lizzie coloured in dismay. ‘That’s not true—’
‘The average temp doesn’t wear delectable designer suits either and we’re all killing ourselves over what you did with the photocopier,’ Rosemary confided with an appreciative giggle as they left the cloakroom. ‘Four hundred copies of our hunky pin-up boss, Sebasten. I bet Milly takes them home and papers her bedroom walls with them! Glad you’re feeling better.’
‘Boss?’ Lizzie queried that astonishing label several seconds too late, for the blonde had already disappeared into one of the offices and Lizzie was left alone, fizzing with alarm and confusion.
She hastened into the stationery store room and yanked her mobile phone from her bag to punch out Sebasten’s personal number. When he answered, she broke straight into harried speech. ‘Am I working for you?’
‘Yes…did you finally get to read a letterhead?’ Sebasten murmured with silken mockery. ‘CI stands for Contaxis International.’
‘Did you fix this job for me?’ Lizzie demanded with a sinking heart, devastated by that first confirmation.
‘You wouldn’t have got it on your own merits,’ Sebasten traded, crushing her with that candid assessment. ‘Personnel don’t take risks when they hire junior employees even on a temporary basis.’
‘Thanks…’ Lizzie framed shakily and then with angry stress continued. ‘Thanks for treating me like an idiot and not telling me that this was your company! Thanks for embarrassing me to death by doing it in such a way that the staff here know that I got preferential treatment!’
‘Anything else you want to thank me for?’ Sebasten enquired in an encouraging tone that was not calculated to soothe.
‘I needed a job but you should have told me what you were doing!’ Lizzie condemned furiously. ‘I don’t need your pity—’
‘Trust me,’ Sebasten drawled, velvety soft and smooth. ‘The one emotion I do not experience in your radius is…pity. I’ll pick you up at eight for the dinner party…OK?’
Lizzie thrust trembling fingers through the hair flopping over her damp brow. ‘Has one thing I’ve said got through to you?’
‘I’m not into phone aggro,’ Sebasten murmured drily.
‘I don’t want to see you tonight—’
‘I didn’t hear that—’
‘I…don’t…want…to…see…you…tonight,’ Lizzie repeated between clenched teeth, rage and pain gripping her in a vice that refused to yield. ‘If you don’t care about my feelings, I shouldn’t be with you!’
‘Your choice,’ Sebasten breathed and cut the call.
After work, Lizzie returned to her bedsit in a daze. She stared at her fresh, daffodil-yellow walls, completed to perfection by the decorators he had hired. It was over, finished…just like that? Without ever seeing him again? Had she been unfair? Even downright rude and ungrateful? How long would it have taken her to find a job without his preferential treatment? She had no references, no office skills, no qualification beyond good A-level exam results gained when she was eighteen. In the following four years she had achieved nothing likely to impress a potential employer, although she had gone to great creative endeavours to try and conceal that fact on her application form.
When her father phoned her on her mobile phone out of the blue at seven that evening and asked her if she would like to meet him for dinner she was really pleased, for they had not spoken since she had left home. Over that meal, she made a real effort to seem cheerful. Felicity, Maurice Denton then confided wearily, had demanded that he dismiss their housekeeper, Mrs Baines, and he didn’t want to do it. The older woman had worked for the Dentons for over ten years and was very efficient, if somewhat dour in nature.
‘I thought possibly you could have a quiet word with Felicity on the subject,’ her parent completed hopefully.
‘No, thanks. It’s none of my business.’ But, even so, Lizzie was curious as to what the housekeeper could have done to annoy Felicity and she asked.
‘Nothing that I can see…’ Maurice muttered with barely concealed irritation. ‘To tell you the truth, sometimes I feel like I don’t know my own wife any more!’
Sebasten went to the dinner party alone, smouldered in a corner for an hour with a group of men, listening to sexist jokes that set his teeth on edge, snubbed every woman who dared to so much as smile at him and left early. On the drive home, he decided he wanted to confront Lizzie.
When he pulled up in the street he was just in time to see Lizzie, sheathed in a little violet-blue dress that would have wowed a dead man, in the act of clambering out of a Porsche. Smiling as if she had won the lottery, she sped up onto the pavement to embrace the tall, well-built driver.
Maurice Denton returned his daughter’s hug and sighed. ‘Let’s not leave it so long the next time. I’m really proud that you’re managing on your own. I can’t have got it as wrong as I thought with you.’
Lizzie was so busy keeping up her happy smile as her father drove off again that her jaw ached from the effort. In truth it had been an evening that provoked conflicting reactions inside her. Her father had let her see that his marriage was under strain. Once she would have been selfishly overjoyed by the news, but now she was worried, wondering if she had been a mean, judgemental little cat when it came to her stepmother. Felicity was pregnant and stressed out and surely had to be labouring under a burden of guilt and unhappiness?
‘Busy night?’ a familiar accented drawl murmured, breaking into Lizzie’s uneasy thoughts with sizzling effect.
In bemusement, Lizzie spun round and just feet away saw Sebasten lounging back against the polished bonnet of a fire-engine-red Lamborghini Diablo. Instantly, she went into melt-down with relief: he had come to see her. Shimmering dark golden eyes lanced into hers.
‘Sebasten…?’ Lizzie tensed at the taut angularity of his hard features.
Like a jungle cat uncoiling prior to springing, Sebasten straightened in one fluid movement and strode forward. ‘Theos mou…you staged a deliberate fight with me today, didn’t you?’
Her brow furrowed in confusion. ‘Sorry?’
‘You had other plans for tonight,’ Sebasten grated, ready to ignite into blistering rage and only holding on to his temper while his intellect continued to remind him that he was in the street with a car-load of his own bodyguards sitting parked only yards away.
‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And Lizzie didn’t, for she had already forgotten her father’s brief presence while her brain strove to comprehend what Sebasten was so very angry about.
‘You slut!’ Sebasten bit out, lean hands coiled into powerful fists. ‘I should’ve been waiting for this!’
Acknowledging that the volatile side of Sebasten that she had once considered so very appealing was in the ascendant, Lizzie sucked in a sustaining breath and murmured with determined calm. ‘Could you lower your voice and say whatever it is you just said in—er—English?’
When Sebasten appreciated that he had spoken in Greek, incandescent rage lit up in his simmering gaze. He gave her the translation at sizzling speed.
So taken aback was Lizzie by that offensive charge that she just stared at him for a count of ten incredulous seconds.
‘And you’re coming home with me so that we can have this out in private!’ Sebasten launched at her between even white gritted teeth.
A shaken little laugh with a shrill edge fell from Lizzie’s parted lips. Even as pain that he should attack her out of the blue with such an unreasonable accusation assailed her, she could not credit that he should imagine that she would now go any place with him.
Without warning, Sebasten closed a purposeful hand to her elbow.
Temper finally igniting, for caveman tactics had never had even the smallest appeal to her, Lizzie slapped his hand away and backed off a pointed step. ‘Are you crazy? What’s got into you? I have a stupid argument with you and you come out of nowhere at me and call me a name like that?’
‘I saw you smarming over the jerk in the Porsche! How long has he been around?’ Sebasten raked at her, all awareness of surroundings now obliterated by a fury stronger than any he had ever experienced.
At that point, clarification was shed on the inexplicable for Lizzie: he was talking about her father. Green eyes sparkling, she tilted her chin. ‘Since before I was born. My father looks well for his age, doesn’t he? But then he keeps himself very fit.’
‘Since before you were born…your father?’ Sebasten slung before the proverbial penny dropped, as it were, from a very great height on him.
‘Goodnight, Sebasten,’ Lizzie completed and she swanned into the terraced building behind him with all the panache and dignity of a queen.
Out on the pavement, Sebasten turned the air blue with bad language and then powered off in immediate pursuit.
When a knock that made the wood panels shake sounded on the door of her bedsit, Lizzie opened it on the security chain and peered out. ‘Go away,’ she said fiercely. ‘How dare you insult me like that? And how dare you call my father a jerk?’
Before Sebasten had the opportunity to answer either furious demand, the door closed again in his face. Her father. What he had witnessed was the innocent family affection of a father and daughter. The mists of rage were dimming only to be replaced by a seething awareness that he had got it wrong. And she had laughed. Lean, whipcord muscles snapping to rigidity as he recalled that shrill little laugh, Sebasten went home and collected a speeding ticket on the way.
In the bath that Lizzie took to wind down, she ended up humming happily to herself. True, she had been furious with Sebasten, but Sebasten had been beside himself with rage only because he was jealous. No man had ever thrown a jealous scene over Lizzie before and she could not help but be impressed by the amount of emotion Sebasten had put into that challenge. For the first time in her life, she felt like an irresistible and dangerous woman. Just imagine Sebasten getting that worked up over the belief that she was two-timing him! Lizzie smiled and smiled. But he just had to learn what was acceptable and what wasn’t. He wasn’t very trusting either, was he? However, he did seem pretty keen. He would phone her, wouldn’t he? Should she just have let him come in?
The following morning, Lizzie wakened feeling out of sorts again and groaned with all the exasperation of someone rarely ill. Perhaps she had picked up some bug that her system couldn’t shake off. About that point, she registered that, although she had finished taking her contraceptive pills for that month, her period had still not arrived and she tensed. No, she couldn’t possibly be pregnant! Why was she even thinking such a crazy thing? All the same, accidents did happen, she reasoned anxiously and she decided to buy a testing kit at lunchtime just to prove to herself that she had nothing to worry about.
When she arrived at Contaxis International, she was taken down to the basement file-storage rooms with an entire trolley-load of documents to be filed away. As Milly Sharpe smiled after showing her the procedure with her own personal hands, Lizzie had the sneaking suspicion that the subterranean eerie depths of the building were where she was destined to stay for the remainder of her three-month contract.
Footsteps made a creepy hollow sound in the long, quiet corridors and Lizzie had a rich imagination. She peered out of the room she was in: there was a security guard patrolling. As she worked, she heard occasional distant noises and indistinct echoes. With the exception of the older man parked at a desk with a newspaper at the far end of the floor, there seemed to be nobody on permanent duty in the basement. It was boring and lonely and she hated it but she knew she had to stick it out. Not having made a good start the day before, she reckoned she was still lucky to be employed.
When she heard brisk footsteps ringing down the corridor just before lunchtime, she assumed it was the security guard again until she heard her own name called loud and clear and setting up a train of echoes. ‘Lizzie!’
It was Sebasten’s voice and he was in no need of a public-address system, for, having done an initially discreet but fruitless search of half a dozen rooms for her, he was out of patience. He had ensured that a magnificent bouquet of flowers had been delivered to her early that morning and he had expected her to phone him.
Lizzie ducked her head round the door. ‘What are you doing down here?’
‘This is my building—’
‘Show-off,’ she muttered, colour rising into her cheeks as she allowed herself to succumb to the temptation of looking at him.
‘Isn’t this a great place for a rendezvous?’ Sebasten leant back against the door to shut it, sealing them into privacy.
‘I don’t think you should come looking for me when I’m at work,’ Lizzie said with something less than conviction, for in truth she was pleased that he had made the effort.
From the crown of his proud dark head to the soles of his no doubt handmade shoes, he looked utterly fantastic, Lizzie acknowledged, the flare of her own senses in response to his vibrant, bronzed virility leaving her weak. His charcoal-grey business suit exuded designer style and tailoring. His shadow-striped grey and white shirt would have an exclusive monogram on the pocket: she ought to know, after all; she had two of them in her possession and had no intention of returning them.
As Sebasten began at her slender feet and worked his bold visual path up over her glorious legs to the purple silk skirt and aqua tie top she wore, sexy, smouldering intent emanated from every lithe, muscular inch of his big, powerful body.
‘Miss me…?’ he enquired lazily.
‘After the way you behaved last night? You’ve got to be joking!’ Lizzie dared.
‘How was I to know the guy with the Porsche was your father?’ Sebasten demanded, annoyed that she was digging up a matter that he believed should be closed and forgotten.
‘You could have given me the benefit of the doubt and just come over and spoken to us.’ With unusual tact, Lizzie swallowed the ‘like anybody normal would have done’ phrase she had almost fired in addition.
Sebasten dealt her a level look golden eyes now dark, hard and unapologetic. ‘I don’t give women the benefit of the doubt.’
Lizzie stiffened. ‘Then you must’ve known some very unreliable women but that’s still not an excuse for throwing a word like “slut” at me!’
‘What I saw looked bad,’ Sebasten growled, evading the issue.
‘Did you have a really nasty experience with someone?’ Lizzie was dismayed by his stubborn refusal to apologise but far more disturbed by that initial statement of distrust in her sex.