Mistresses: Seduction In The Boardroom
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Lucy studied her food, a delicious-looking Greek salad and fresh crusty bread.
‘Would you like some wine?’
She looked up to automatically shake her head. Wine on a plane with this man was a recipe for disaster.
‘Some water will be fine, thanks.’
She watched as Aristotle’s lean dark hand elegantly poured himself wine, and then water for her. She muttered thanks and took a deep gulp, hoping it might dampen the flames that were licking inside her.
They ate companionably in silence. It was one of the things that perplexed her about this man. They had moments like this when she could almost imagine that they might be friends. She’d noticed in general that he didn’t feel the need to fill silences with inane chatter, and neither did she. It surprised her to find that in common. In all honesty, if it wasn’t for the great hulking elephant in the room, Lucy had to admit that so far she’d enjoyed working for Aristotle and admired his work ethic.
She was finishing her final mouthful of salad when she sensed him leaning back in his chair. She could feel the brush of his leg against hers again and fought not to move it aside. She was aware of his regard and it made her self-conscious.
‘You really don’t approve of me, Lucy, do you?’
She looked up, surprised. It was the last thing she would have imagined hearing him say. She gulped and wiped her mouth with a napkin, a flare of guilt assailing her.
‘I…I don’t think one way or the other. I’m here as your assistant, not to form a personal opinion.’ She wondered wildly what had brought this on.
He folded his arms across his chest, supremely at ease.
‘I’ve seen those little looks you dart at me—those little looks that have me all summed up. And when I asked you to send a gift to Augustine Archer, you most certainly didn’t approve of that.’
Lucy was so tense now she thought she might crack. ‘Like I said before…it’s not my place to judge—’
‘And yet you do,’ he inserted silkily.
Lucy’s face flamed. Yes, she did. She had him wrapped up, parcelled and boxed as being exactly like the men she’d seen court her mother, and no matter how she’d seen him treat women, the inherently unfair judgement of that made her feel unaccountably guilty all of a sudden.
It goaded her into saying, ‘All right. Fine. I don’t think it was particularly professional of you to ask me to send a parting gift to your mistress. It’s not my business, it made me uncomfortable, and I felt that it crossed the boundaries.’ Not to mention that it made me feel angry and disappointed too. But Lucy held her tongue. She couldn’t go that far, and those revelations made her feel far too vulnerable.
She felt as prim as a mother superior, and couldn’t look Aristotle in the eye, sure he had to be laughing his head off at her.
‘You’re right. I won’t ask you to do that again.’
She looked at him in shock. His face wasn’t creased in hilarity, it was stone cold sober.
‘To be honest, Lucy, I did it to get a reaction out of you…and you gave it to me.’
She frowned and shook her head minutely. ‘But why?’
He shrugged one broad shoulder nonchalantly, not at all put out to be discussing this, his gaze on hers not wavering for a second. ‘Because I sensed something about you, under the surface…’ His gaze dropped to where she could feel her breasts rising and falling with her breath. He looked back up and her heart stopped. ‘And I suddenly realised that you were causing me an inordinate amount of…frustration.’ His mouth tightened. ‘I blamed you for the fact that it had become necessary to say goodbye to a perfectly good mistress.’
His words caused little short of an explosion of reaction within Lucy. She tried desperately to block it out—the realisation that even then—Her brain froze at that implication. Her hands clenched tight on the table and she hid them on her lap.
‘Look, Aristotle…’ She knew she was all but begging. ‘I’ve already told you, I’m not interested in anything…like that. Really, I’m not. If I’ve given you that impression I’m really sorry.’
His eyes flashed and he leaned forward, hands on the table, starkly brown against the surface. ‘Don’t patronise me. You give me that impression every time you look at me. It’s there right now. You’re desperately aware of where my leg is—how close it is to yours under this table—’
‘Stop it,’ Lucy all but cried out. ‘Don’t do that words thing again.’ She wouldn’t be able to handle it.
Triumph lit Aristotle’s eyes. ‘See? You want me, Lucy. I can smell it from here. But don’t worry. I’m not some lecherous boss who is going to force you into some compromising position. You’ll come to me. It’s just a matter of time before we see how long you can hold out against it.’
Between Lucy’s thighs she felt indecently damp. She coloured even more hotly. Could he really smell that? Did desire have a smell? And since when had she admitted it was desire and not just sheer banal human reaction? The thought made her squirm, but also made her feel weak and achy. She scrambled out of her seat. She had to get away.
As she pushed past his chair he snaked out a hand and caught her wrist. She looked down, and he was looking right up at her, trapping her. She watched as he took her wrist and brought it to his mouth. He pressed his lips against the sensitive skin on the underside. And then she felt his tongue flick out to taste her there, right against her pulse. With a strangled cry that spoke more of desire than disgust, she yanked her hand away and ran, aiming for the toilet at the back, his mocking chuckle following her all the way. Any complacency she’d felt in the past week was blown sky-high to smithereens. He’d just been biding his time.
She locked herself in with shaking hands and looked at herself in the small, unforgiving mirror. She had to fatally and finally accept the knowledge that she desired this man. It wasn’t just his indisputable charisma, it was him. And his effect on her. She wanted him with a hunger that she’d always intellectualised as something she’d never experience. Except now she was. And it was ten million times worse than anything she could have ever imagined.
This was nothing short of catastrophic when she’d happily devoted herself to a life that had promised to offer up only the sort of passion she could handle. Safe, staid, unexciting. She hadn’t committed herself to being celibate—she did hope to one day meet someone and settle down, perhaps even have children—but at no point had she ever hoped for the kind of fulfilment that was a deep throbbing ache within her right now.
She’d unconsciously left her hair loose, and now she bundled it up again, tight, digging out some hairpins from her pocket to hold it in place. Then she searched for and found the comforting frames of her glasses. She’d kept them close by but hadn’t worn them all week, as she’d been genuinely afraid of what Aristotle might do, but now she needed to send him a message once and for all. Lucy Proctor was not available and not interested. And never would be. If she told herself that enough, she might actually believe it.
Even though Aristotle might be laughing at Lucy’s reaction, his body most certainly wasn’t laughing. His body had never felt so serious and intent on one thing: carnal satisfaction, and with that woman. He burned from head to toe with it. The past week had been pure torture. They’d worked in such close proximity that it had taken all of his strength and will-power not to sweep aside the paperwork, throw her across his desk and take her there and then.
The only thing holding him back—apart from the very real need to prepare for the merger, and it irked him that that hadn’t been enough—had been Lucy’s own reaction. Any other woman, knowing that he desired her would have happily laid herself bare for his delectation. But not Lucy. She’d avoided his eye—she’d avoided him at all costs. She’d scurried out every night and been there quietly, studiously working every morning. Buttoned up and covered up to within an inch of her life in shapeless boxy suits.
It inflamed him and perplexed him. He’d genuinely never had to deal with this before. But what it was doing was raising the stakes, and raising his blood pressure. He was too proud to force her, even though he knew she wasn’t far from tipping over the edge, but damned if he’d do it.
No, she would come to him, just as he’d declared. When she was weak with longing and stir crazy with desire she’d come to him, and this build-up would finally explode in a blaze of mutual satisfaction. He heard the bathroom door click open behind him and shifted in his seat to ease the constriction of his trousers. He picked up some work papers resignedly and it chafed—because he was not a man used to resigning himself to things.
For now, though, he’d use work to drown out his clamouring pulse. He would not let her see the roiling waves of frustration that gripped him and tossed him like a tiny boat in a thundering storm. When she came and sat down opposite him, and that sensual womanly smell that was so at odds with her prim appearance teased his nostrils and made his arousal even more acute, he almost groaned.
He looked up for a second. Predictably, she was looking down, immersed in papers. He saw what she’d done to her hair and the firmly reinstated glasses. He felt a surge of adrenalin and thought to himself, Fine, if that’s the way you want it.
He pulled out his laptop and fired off a curt but informative e-mail to his assistant in Athens, instructing her to have everything ready by the time they landed in two hours. For someone with his wealth and resources, what he’d just asked for shouldn’t be hard to pull off, and as he sat back he realised with a jolt that once again he felt more alive than he’d done in months.
The fact that the merger was once again relegated to second place raised just the dimmest clanging bell in his consciousness.
Chapter Five
A FEW hours later, Lucy sat on the bed of a palatial suite in one of the most expensive hotels in Athens. She’d never seen such opulence and luxury in her life. Everyone here seemed to talk in hushed tones. She’d even found herself almost whispering thank you to the concierge who’d shown her to her room.
Her mouth quirked dryly. Needless to say, the manager himself had shown Aristotle to his room. She’d seen that they were more or less next door to each other, he in the Royal Suite and she in a smaller adjoining one, although she had no intention of using the interconnecting door that had been pointed out to her. She was already far too close to her boss for comfort.
Feeling antsy, she got up and wandered about the room for a bit, looking out of the window, taking in the view of Syntagma Square and its elegant lines and trees. She hadn’t expected Athens to be so…elegant. She’d seen the Acropolis in the distance and felt a lurch of joy; even though she’d travelled extensively due to her peripatetic childhood, she never tired of seeing famous monuments.
Her thoughts went inward. She hadn’t failed to notice that the closer they’d got to Athens, the more tense Aristotle had grown—until by the time they’d been walking through the airport, his hand tight on her elbow, he’d been positively radioactive. She knew it had nothing to do with her. She suspected it had something to do with the way that, whenever he had to deal with his stepmother or half-brother, he always seemed to go inwards and become monosyllabic. Clearly there was no love lost between him and his family or his ancestral home, and it made Lucy wonder about that—before she realised what she was doing and put a halt to her wayward thoughts.
She checked her watch. They were due to have informal drinks with Parnassus and his team in one hour and she had to wash and change, but there was still no sign of her luggage. Lucy called down to Reception, and what the girl said made her frown.
‘I’m sorry? You say my clothes are here? But I’m still waiting for my case.’
The hotel receptionist’s tone was smooth, as if she was used to dealing with recalcitrant hotel guests. ‘I think if you check your wardrobe, Miss Proctor you’ll find everything hanging up and ready for your use. The chest of drawers is also full.’
Lucy thanked her faintly and put the phone down. She knew that Aristotle’s wealth could just about do anything, but surely it couldn’t magically conjure up her suitcase, unpack and store all her clothes without her even noticing? With a snaking feeling of something slithering down her spine, Lucy threw open the ornate door of the wardrobe in the corner and gasped.
It was full, heaving with a myriad assortment of every piece of clothing any one woman could possibly hope for. Day-wear, casual wear, evening-wear. Lucy flicked past dresses and suits and trousers and shirts and wraps and capes, feeling more and more dizzy as she did so. All sorts of shoes were lined up below the hanging clothes.
She backed away from the wardrobe with something like horror in her chest, and went to open the drawers of the chest beside the wardrobe. She pulled out T-shirts, shorts, casual trousers, capri pants…They all fell from nerveless fingers. There was thousands of euros’ worth of clothes in front of her and not one stitch was hers. A deeply scooped-neck T-shirt fell from her hands and she looked at it and shuddered at the thought of how much cleavage that would expose. Suddenly realisation struck. Aristotle.
Without thinking, galvanised by pure anger, she marched over to that adjoining door between their rooms and yanked it open. To her surprise his own door was already open, leading into a room that made her own opulent one look like a prefab.
He strolled out at that moment from what she presumed must be his bedroom, naked except for a small towel around lean hips. All Lucy could see was a magnificently bronzed muscled chest, a light smattering of dark hair and long, long muscled legs. His hair was wet and slicked back, making him look somehow more approachable, vulnerable.
Seeing him like this completely scrambled her brain and defused her anger.
‘I…’ She realised she was breathing hard.
He stopped and looked at her enquiringly, and then she watched him lift his wrist to look at the heavy platinum watch.
‘A little longer than I thought it might take, but still…not bad.’
It took a few precious seconds for what he said to sink in. He’d planned this. He’d orchestrated this and had been waiting for her to react exactly as she had. Sheer fury and impotence rushed through Lucy in a wave so strong she shook.
‘Where is my case, please?’
Aristotle folded his arms and that was worse—because where his shirt might have hidden those biceps, now she could see them in all their olive-skinned, bunched glory. Lord, but he was beautiful, and her body was reacting like the Road Runner, seeing his mate in the distance.
‘Your case is somewhere safe. I’ve taken the liberty of removing the items I think you’ll need, like your toiletries. I didn’t want to presume to know what products you like to use.’
‘Yet you can presume to know what clothes I may like and my size?’ Her voice fairly crackled with ice.
His gaze drifted down over her body, and she cursed herself for inciting him. His eyes met hers again and he drawled, ‘I think you’ll find that everything…fits.’
She cursed him under her breath. She wouldn’t be surprised to find them all a size too small, and if they were…
But he wasn’t finished. ‘I also decided that from what I’ve seen you’re more than capable of choosing your own underwear. You’ll find the items I’ve taken out there, in that bag.’
He gestured to a table nearby, where one of the hotel bags was sitting, a lacy bra strap dangling provocatively from the top. Blind rage and humiliation at the thought he’d handled her intimate clothes, and at remembering that he’d seen her changing, almost made Lucy stumble as she stalked over to get it. But in that instant she vowed she would not react as he was expecting her to. She would not give him the satisfaction.
So she merely walked back to the door, turned and, avoiding his eye, said grimly, ‘I’ll see you in the lobby in forty-five minutes.’
‘I’m looking forward to it, Lucy.’
It took an awful lot of restraint not to slam both interconnecting doors as Lucy went back into her own room, but under a steaming hot shower minutes later she vented her anger with no holds barred.
Some forty-five minutes later Lucy paced in the lobby and ineffectually tried to pull the dress down again. It felt indecently short, even though it came to just above her knees. She hated the fact that otherwise it fitted like a glove. And she’d never worn shoes with heels so spiky they looked like a lethal weapon, but it had been them or flat shoes, and even she had enough fashion pride not to make a complete fool of herself. She also hated the fact that they made her feel somehow…powerful. She couldn’t say the word sexy. Her brain seized at the mere nebulous thought.
Aristotle watched Lucy from behind a plant for a moment, feeling curiously protective—and something else: surprised at her obvious reluctance to embrace her innate sexiness, especially when she oozed such voluptuous femininity. She’d chosen one of the least revealing dresses, but even that made his blood boil over with lust.
It had a high neck but, unlike her other sack of a dress, this one was cut to define a woman’s body, to hug and emphasise its curves. When she turned to the side he had to draw in a breath. Her breasts were so beautifully shaped and enticingly full that he noticed more than one man falter as he saw her.
That galvanised Aristotle to move. Possessiveness was an alien emotion, but it was coursing through him now as he took in the way the dress drew the eye to those stupendously long and slender legs, a discreet slit showcasing their shapeliness. And those shoes…
Lucy turned away abruptly. She’d noticed a man nearly tripping over himself as he’d seen her and she flushed with mortification. He probably thought she was a call girl. She felt like one. This was ridiculous. She was going to demand her own things back—
Suddenly Aristotle was right in front of her and, as was becoming annoyingly familiar, her brain emptied of all rational thought. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt and royal blue tie. It somehow made his eyes pop out, even though they were a dark slumberous green. But weren’t they normally light green? As Lucy was wondering this, as if it had become the most important question in the universe, Aristotle moved so fast that she didn’t even notice until he’d whipped her glasses off her face and removed the pins from her hair.
‘Hey!’ she cried out, too late, only to see him calmly snap her glasses in two and feel the heavy fall of her hair around her shoulders. He took her by the arm and marched her out towards the entrance, handing her broken glasses and hairpins to an unsurprised-looking doorman, who took them obsequiously, clearly not fazed by such behaviour. It made Lucy even madder. Those glasses had been her last bastion of defence and he’d merely ripped it away, like removing a toy from a cranky child.
She barely noticed the pleasantly warm early evening air caressing her skin between the hotel and the luxury car. When they were ensconced in the back, Aristotle curtly ordered the driver to put up the privacy partition, which he duly did. Lucy’s mouth was opening and closing ineffectually, steam practically coming out of her ears as Aristotle rounded on her, blocking out any daylight coming through the tinted windows. Absurdly, in that split second Lucy thought how unbearably intimate it seemed to make the space.
‘Enough,’ he growled out, and before she knew which end was up Aristotle had reached out, hauled her into his chest and his mouth was over hers. He was kissing her as if his life depended on it, one arm like steel across her back, one hand in her hair, clasping her head. There was no hesitation. Lust exploded in a blaze of heat.
All of Lucy’s reflex denials melted away in a flame of desire so profound and deep that she couldn’t question it. All she knew was that Aristotle’s mouth was on hers, his tongue stabbing deep, with ruthless precision, and she was craving it. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, her hands trapped against those hard contours, and the beat of his heart was an unsteady tattoo that made her own beat faster.
She forced her hands free to twine them around Aristotle’s neck, fingers pushing upwards into the thick, silky hair that brushed his collar. He groaned deep in his throat, their mouths not parting for a moment, lost in a dark, lustrous world of tasting and touching, of sensation heaping on top of sensation so acutely delicious that when Lucy felt herself being lowered back onto the seat behind her, and Aristotle coming over her, she too gave a deep moan of approval.
All she knew was here and now. Sanity had ceased to exist.
The outside world? Gone.
This was her world, and this man was the only thing in it. His huge hard body crushed hers to the seat beneath her, but her arms were free and she explored and spread them under his jacket to feel the latent strength of his broad shoulders.
His mouth left hers to blaze a trail of hot kisses along her jaw and down her throat, where he nipped gently and then sucked, making her squirm as an arrow of pure lust shot to her groin, making her wet.
As if he’d read her mind, she felt his hand encircle her ankle and start to travel up her leg. He breathed into her mouth, ‘Remember what I said the other day?’
Words couldn’t impinge upon her mind in this drenching of desire. Lucy couldn’t function. She was finding it hard to open her eyes, finding it hard to breathe as she looked up and drowned in dark green oceans. She didn’t recognise the man above her. The expression on his face was so raw and elemental. All she knew was that he looked exactly how she felt. Her breasts were tight and aching, tips chafing against the confining bra and dress. And slowly, so slowly, his hand was climbing with relentless precision, until its heat was wrapped around her upper thigh, where her sheer stockings ended. His fingers spread wide to encompass as much as he could touch. Any second now they’d be on her bare skin. She stopped breathing in earnest.
‘Please…’ Was that voice hers? Who was she anyway? She was suffering from temporary amnesia. Somewhere distant, where a bell was ringing, she felt something wanting to intrude, but more than that she wanted this. It felt so right and so necessary. Too right to question.
‘Please…Ari…’
With a muffled groan of something that sounded Greek and almost painful, he lowered his head, took her mouth again. Their tongues connected feverishly just as his hand hovered and tantalised at the tender place of her soft inner thigh, on the edge of her silk pants. Lucy tore her mouth away and arched herself towards him, gripping his shoulders. She could feel the heavy stabbing weight of his erection against her leg and she moved experimentally, exulting in his answering growl of unmistakable torture.
And then he was there, fingers pushing aside the barrier of her pants to slide into hot slickness, where she ached most. She sucked in a breath, shocked eyes opening wide. She looked up and his fingers began to move, finding the secret spot and pressing it, flicking it. Blood roared into Lucy’s head, drowning out everything but the clamour for satisfaction which was coming towards her like the mirage of an oasis in the desert.
And then suddenly, as quickly as this insanity had taken over, it was gone. Aristotle was taking away his hand, moving back, his features harsh and unbearably tight. Cold seeped into Lucy as she realised where she was. She was supine on the back seat of a car, her legs spread, and her boss had just been—