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‘Want me to go faster?’ he mocked as he saw her tongue snake out to moisten her parched lips.
Rebecca shook her head as he slipped the garment from his broad, bare shoulders and let it flutter to the floor like the white flag of surrender—except she knew that he didn’t have a surrendering bone in his body.
Rebecca saw him give a mocking wince as he slowly slid the zip of his trousers down and it said much for his self-possession and steely control that still he did not hurry it, despite the very obvious evidence of his arousal.
How could he possibly look both elegant and sexy as he removed his trousers and draped them over the back of a chair? His feet were bare, so all that remained were the silk boxer shorts which gave his body the look of a taut and supremely fit athlete. He kicked them off and for a moment just stood before her—completely naked and thrillingly aroused—his eyes glittering with an irresistible and arrogant challenge. And in that moment there was something so daunting—almost forbiddingly masculine—about him that Rebecca’s heart thumped with something which felt more like fear than desire.
‘Shall I come to you now, agape mou?’ His voice was a caressing tease. ‘Is that what you want?’
She wanted to tell him to promise not to break her heart, and she wanted him more than she could remember wanting anything in her life—more than breath itself. Was he aware of that? Or that sometimes he made her feel emotionally raw—as if he had seared away the top layer of her skin, leaving her cruelly exposed to his analytical eye? And what did that eye see? Someone who lived the way that plenty of other young women did—yet one who was dating a man way out of her league.
‘If you want,’ she answered, as if she couldn’t care less.
He gave a low laugh of delight as he climbed onto the bed beside her. ‘Come here.’
‘No.’
‘Ah, Rebecca. Rebecca mou.’ Reaching out, he pulled her trembling body into the hard heat of his own, his thumb reflectively circling one puckered rose nipple so that it seemed to push insistently against him. ‘You are still angry with me for being late?’
Tell him. Tell him! ‘You could have let me know. I just don’t want to be taken for granted, Xandros. I thought that you—’
His kiss silenced her, but then it was the most effective silencer in the world where women were concerned—and if all she was intending to do was to subject him to the age-old complaint about how a woman wanted to be treated, well … He had heard that grievance more times than he cared to remember.
This was better. Just this. The feel of skin against skin, the growing warmth of their ardour making their bodies closer still—as if they were glued together. In his arms, she was everything he could want from a lover—a little inexperienced, it was true, but he liked that. He had no time for women with lots of different party tricks to try out—for they were little better than hookers. A sense of wonder was fine by him, and, for however long the affair lasted, he would enjoy teaching her everything he knew.
He enjoyed the mental battle he engaged in during sex. He liked to test himself—to bring the woman to the near-height of pleasure over and over again, while denying himself until he could deny it no longer.
‘Oh, Xandros,’ she pleaded, with a frantic little cry of pleasure.
‘Mmm?’
‘Please!’
‘Please, what, agape mou?’
‘Now!’
How eager she was! How quickly she reached her peak! He lifted his dark head from where he had been suckling at her breast and moved over her, his black eyes glittering, before thrusting into her long and hard and deep, with a little groan of pleasure.
Sometimes he liked to watch a woman bloom and flower, but Rebecca was reaching her hands up to his shoulders, pulling him down so that their mouths met, and she groaned with pleasure as she writhed beneath him.
Tangled and gasping, she wrapped her limbs around him like a soft, white octopus, moving her hips in abandon until he felt the control slipping away from him. His orgasm came with a strength and a power which surprised him, but it had been like that with her since the very first time, and he couldn’t quite work out why.
Because she had made him think the unthinkable—that he was actually going to fail to get her into his bed?
Her head lay against the stilling thunder of his heart and he stroked her hair, missing the absence of her warm breath as she turned her head away to stare at the wall, saying nothing.
Ironically, this was when he liked her best—when she was retreating from him, like the tide moving away from the ever-distant shore. Xandros only wanted something when it was beyond his reach. Because once he had possessed it he wanted to move on, as he had been moving on all his restless life.
‘Do you still want to go out for dinner?’ He stretched lazily, and yawned. ‘Or shall we stay here and order something in?’
For a moment, Rebecca didn’t answer. In a way, she was perfectly happy to stay there—for she was as warm and replete as a woman could be. He would order from room service and the food would be wheeled in on a grand linen-covered trolley, with big silver domes concealing the food. And a silent waiter would set their table for them, while they watched him, rather awkwardly.
There would be flowers and fine wines and morsels of food which they would pick at—and, soon enough, they would return to bed. Or make love on the sofa, while watching a film. And Xandros would probably take at least one business call.
The alternative was to get dressed and be whisked off to dinner—and every woman liked a little life outside the private world of the bedroom, no matter how wonderful the fantasy land within it. If theirs was a normal relationship she would have been thrilled to have been seen with him—but it wasn’t. They weren’t supposed to be dating and so they crept around, like thieves in the night. They visited discreet, out-of-the-way restaurants—or they stayed in his hotel room. Sometimes she wondered if anyone would actually believe her if she told them she was seeing the Greek billionaire.
But who could she tell? She had put her job on the line by agreeing to date him in the first place and none of her colleagues knew about it.
She turned her head to look at him, touching the strong curve of his jaw with the tip of her finger, and her heart turned over. Was she being selfish by wanting to go out? He looked so tired. Suddenly, her doubts and her fears melted away and she snuggled closer against his warm body, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders and massaging the silken skin beneath. Was it inbuilt in a woman that she should want to nurture her man?
‘Which would you prefer?’ she questioned softly. ‘To stay here?’
Xandros bit back an instinctive click of impatience. He wanted to tell her not to keep accommodating his needs. But this was inevitably what happened. Women tried to please you and in so doing they submerged their own identity into yours. And then you lost sight of what had attracted you to them in the first place—for you could no longer see it.
‘What I would prefer is to stay right here,’ he said brutally. ‘But I am afraid that if I do that, then I’ll fall asleep and I’ve booked the Pentagram for nine—and you told me how much you’d always wanted to go there. So you had better make your mind up.’
‘Then I guess we’d better go.’ Could his curt response be any better reminder that this particular man didn’t need any nurturing? She moved, her thigh brushing against his as she stretched—wondering if that would be enough to have him pull her back hungrily into his arms, but he didn’t. She gave him a quick smile, but it was one which was edged with nerves. ‘I’ll go and get dressed.’
He lay back against the pillows and watched her move across the room. She was both graceful and beautiful, he thought—but he recognised that something was changing between them. Something as inevitable as the sun rising in the sky each morning. The predictable had reared its ugly head. Xandros couched his words with velvet in an attempt to lessen their blow. ‘Because of course,’ he said softly, ‘this may well be the last chance we get to have dinner for some time.’
Her footsteps halted as Rebecca froze. Carefully composing herself, she slowly turned around, her heart beginning to beat hard beneath her breast as she considered the possible implication of his words—but she prayed that her face gave nothing away. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he questioned carelessly. ‘I have to fly back to New York tomorrow.’
Don’t react, she told herself. Stay calm. ‘Oh? For very long?’
He could see her face working to conceal her disappointment and he gave a shrug, for his timetable was his own. He would not have disclosed it even if he’d known it, because freedom was as important to Xandros as breathing. ‘It is impossible to predict. A fortnight at least. Maybe longer—depending on the deal.’
‘How absolutely lovely,’ she said, with the bright enthusiasm of a travel agent. ‘I expect the city is beautiful at this time of year.’
‘Yes, it is,’ he agreed. Yet in a perverse kind of way, Xandros was disappointed that she was accepting it so easily. Hadn’t he been anticipating some kind of scene which might have heralded the end? If she had objected or sulked that would have been it. He would have finished it without a second thought, because no woman had the right to question his movements, no matter how much pleasure he brought them in bed or how much they had begun to paint rosy pictures of the possibility of a future together.
But she turned and began to walk out of the bedroom—presumably in search of the clothes she had so delectably removed—and he felt his body stir at the sight of the high, firm curve of her naked bottom. And suddenly Xandros knew that he still hadn’t got her out of his system. His tongue snaked out over bone-dry lips and his words caught her on the threshold of the room. ‘But I will see you when I return, agape mou.’
It was a statement, not a request. Rebecca felt like a mouse who had been played with by a large cat—and then had her fate spared at the very last moment. ‘You might. If you’re lucky,’ she said, in a light, who-cares voice which she thought sounded pretty convincing.
Thank heavens he couldn’t see her face—because surely he would have read her almost dizzy relief that he was coming back. And that he was planning to see her again. Or was he clever enough to guess at her dreadful, aching realisation that one day soon it would all be over and it was going to feel a million times worse than this?
Her hands were trembling by the time she reached the sitting room and began to pick up her clothes, wondering how the hell she had let this happen—to have got herself into something she’d known was hopeless from the very start. And wishing that she could have sustained the strength of character which had attracted him to her in the beginning. In the days when it had been so easy to refuse him.
CHAPTER TWO
THEIR paths should never have crossed, of course. Ordinary, suburban girls like Rebecca weren’t supposed to rub shoulders with jet-setting billionaires like Alexandros Pavlidis.
But Rebecca worked as a flight attendant for a small and highly exclusive private airline which brought her into contact with the kind of people that most mere mortals only read about.
Evolo airline was based close to London and ferried its mega-rich customers around the world for astronomical fees. It paid Rebecca more than any of the bigger airlines would have done, but in return required her to be available at very little notice and, above all, to be discreet.
Rock stars, Hollywood actors, minor royals and just the plain rich frequented the champagne-fuelled flights which had been started by an ambitious blonde pilot named Vanessa Gilmour.
Each time she flew, Vanessa or her male deputy would brief Rebecca on the passenger list and one morning she had seen a name she didn’t recognise. A rather beautiful name.
‘Who’s this?’ she asked, tongue twisting over the words. ‘Alexandros Pavlidis?’
Vanessa pulled a funny kind of face. ‘Don’t you ever read the newspapers?’
‘Sometimes.’ Rebecca pulled her uniform cap down over her smoothed-down hair and smiled. ‘But I prefer books.’
‘He’s an architect,’ explained Vanessa, an impatient wave of her hand dismissing the entire concept of books. ‘Or starchitect as the press like to refer to him. A Greek based in New York—he’s designing a new bank near London Bridge. I met him at a party and persuaded him that Evolo could accommodate his every need. It’s the first time he’s flown with us—and I don’t want it to be the last. So be nice to him, Rebecca—just not too nice.’
Rebecca heard the warning in her employer’s voice—although she didn’t need one. She knew it was forbidden to date any of the customers. ‘What’s he like?’ she checked politely, because as crew they were supposed to know about the passengers’ likes and dislikes.
There was a pause. ‘He’s difficult,’ admitted Vanessa softly. ‘Very difficult.’ And then her eyes sparkled in a way that Rebecca had never seen them do before as her voice dropped into a kind of ecstatic whisper. ‘And absolutely bloody gorgeous.’
If difficult was an understatement, then so was gorgeous, Rebecca decided when she met him later that day. She found herself startled by the man’s overwhelming charisma as well as his astonishing good looks.
If someone had said, ‘Bring me the most delectable man in the world,’ then Alexandros Pavlidis would have been the list-topper. If you wanted tall, dark, ruggedly handsome—with a coldly irresistible air about him—then Pavlidis ticked all the right boxes.
The Greek was terse to the point of rudeness, and he operated at the speed of light—the retinue who were following his tall, black-clad figure into the small departure lounge almost having to run to keep up with his long-legged stride.
And it didn’t escape her notice that every woman who worked in the building found some kind of pretext to try to catch a glimpse of him.
But it wasn’t her job to swoon over customers. Her manner had to remain benignly courteous and respectful. Whatever he asked for, she brought. She did not attempt to engage him in any kind of conversation and her entire dialogue with him was confined to politely answering his requests.
He began to use Evolo regularly for his European trips, since apparently he had sold his own private jet fleet for environmental reasons, and his work took him all over the globe. Rebecca tried not to be so heart-poundingly aware of him, but it wasn’t easy. She couldn’t quash the excitement she always experienced when she saw his name on the passenger list.
And even though she did her best to disguise it a kind of unspoken awareness began to sizzle between the two of them—because nothing could disguise chemistry, no matter how hard you tried. His black eyes would narrow thoughtfully when he saw her, and her heart would leap whenever he dealt her his rare, slow smile.
But she remembered Vanessa’s words about discretion and boundaries and quickly turned away from it. Even if it wasn’t forbidden to date the clients—was she really considering herself the kind of woman that someone like Xandros would date?
Yet her apparent lack of interest seemed to inflame him. He went out of his way to engage her in conversation and surely it would have been discourteous not to have joined in?
‘What are you doing once we land?’ he asked her one dark, starry night as the plane touched down in Madrid.
‘I’m having an early night,’ she answered.
‘Ah!’ His black eyes glittered with sudden understanding, for this would explain her inexplicable resolve not to flirt with him. He felt a slight pang of disappointment, but it was quickly followed by the inevitable rush of challenge—for there was no rival who could not be easily dispatched if Xandros wanted something. ‘And who is the lucky man?’
Rebecca felt colour tinge her cheeks. ‘Mr Pavlidis!’
‘Ne, agape mou, what is it?’
Why did he call her that? Didn’t it mean ‘darling’, or something? ‘Will that be all?’
‘Ochi,’ he said roughly, for he had seen her blush—something which was as rare as the rose-coloured Starlings which sometimes appeared on the Aegean islands. ‘It will not be all. I want you to have dinner with me. In fact, I demand it.’
Maybe if she had agreed to his request then it would have all been over before it began, but Rebecca did something that few women ever did. She said no.
When a man had everything—he wanted what he couldn’t have, and Xandros wanted Rebecca. He wanted her in a way he hadn’t wanted a woman for years and he was forced to pursue her—something which was almost alien to him. Even when he’d first arrived in New York as an unsophisticated eighteen-year-old, women had fallen eagerly into his arms.
‘What harm is there in dinner?’ he mused, the next time they flew together. It was a late winter afternoon as the luxury jet began its descent towards Paris and the early-setting sun was lighting the sky with its fiery blaze. Coal-black eyes mocked her. ‘Do not worry.’ His voice was like silk, embroidered with sardonic thread. ‘You have turned me down enough times to impress me, agape mou. And now that we have established your fine reputation, you can see there is no reason for us not to enjoy one another’s company.’
It sounded unbearably tempting. Rebecca tugged unnecessarily at the neat jacket of her Evolo uniform. ‘But I’m not supposed to mix with the customers, Mr Pavlidis,’ she said.
‘Says who?’
‘Says my boss.’
‘This would be Vanessa?’ he queried, his eyes narrowing.
‘That’s right.’
He nodded, as if satisfying himself of something. Or someone. ‘Vanessa has her own agenda,’ he drawled softly. ‘And I’m not proposing that we ride off into the sunset together,’ he added sarcastically. ‘I just think Paris is not a city to be alone in and that it would be agreeable to have a little company. Mmm? What could be wrong with that?’
His black eyes glittered with enticing question. In her heart, Rebecca knew that he wasn’t being straightforward with her; she suspected he had an address book crammed with the numbers of beautiful and willing women no matter how many cities he visited. But she had held out for so long against her feelings for him and in that moment she felt defenceless against the full onslaught of his charm.
‘Just dinner?’ she verified breathlessly.
‘If that is what you want,’ Xandros returned, his smile careless.
It hadn’t been ‘just’ dinner, of course. For how could you not let a man like Xandros kiss you at the end of it when you had been longing for him to kiss you since the first time you’d set eyes on him? And then? Her battle had been with herself rather than with him. Her sense of what was right and proper vying with her heart and her body’s desires.
She had lost the battle. Of course she had ended up in bed with him. He was a powerful, virile man who would not be satisfied with a chaste kiss at the end of a first date—and for the first time in her life, neither was she.
Rebecca had never felt so physically vulnerable beneath a man’s caresses as she was to Xandros. She hated herself for her easy capitulation that night and yet she couldn’t stop herself. Her hungry body’s need overrode everything else—ruthlessly quelling the voice in her head which demanded to know whether he would respect her after this.
And to Xandros, her only spoken objection was a practical one. ‘No one from work must know,’ she told him urgently as his hand began its inevitable and longed-for journey up her inner thigh.
‘Why should they?’ he breathed, peeling off her panties with a low moan of delight.
‘Because … oh … oh … Xandros! Because people …’ She closed her eyes, and swallowed. ‘They talk,’ she whispered eventually.
‘Then we won’t give them anything to talk about,’ he assured her silkily, his fingers working ruthlessly against her hotly aroused flesh, feeling it yield to him. ‘No one will know a thing. We will keep it secret, ne? Our little secret …’
But weren’t secrets wrong? Wasn’t that making it sound as if he wanted to keep her hidden away—like something furtive, to be ashamed of? Rebecca tried to pull away, but the lure of his embrace was too strong to resist, the gentle caress of his fingertips too tremblingly intense. ‘Xandros?’ she tried, one last time.
‘Ochi,’ he negated fiercely. ‘Say nothing! Do nothing but stay here in my arms when you know that this is what we both want!’ And he kissed her into willing submission.
Yet even at the height of her very first orgasm, Rebecca was aware of a sharp twist of pain in her heart. That her surrender could be her emotional undoing, and that she risked losing everything—the most important thing being her heart. Her life and her future was one in which a man like Xandros would have no place—and yet, having tasted all the pleasures that he gave her, the thought of any future without him already seemed bleak and empty.
If she had known all that right from the beginning, then why hadn’t she stopped? Why give into something which you knew instinctively was doomed on so many levels?
Because human nature wasn’t like that. It made you reach out and grab at the unreachable.
The mists of memory cleared as Rebecca blinked around at her luxurious surroundings. She bent down to pick up one of the shoes she had discarded while she had been stripping off for her hard-bodied Greek lover and sighed. It was pointless going back over what had happened. She could do nothing to change the past—what she could work on was the present.
But the present brought her scant comfort.
She was here, in Xandros’s penthouse suite—about to go out for a meal which she knew that neither of them really wanted. And after that he was off to New York, and she didn’t know when she was going to see him again. So how was she going to play it? Did she have enough acting ability to convince him that she didn’t really care, either way—or would he see right through her?
‘Rebecca?’
The silken, accented Greek voice filtered through the air. By concentrating on finishing fastening her shoes, Rebecca was able to compose herself before straightening up to look at him. His black eyes were set like dark jewels in the backdrop of his gleaming olive skin and her heart turned over with love and longing. If only he didn’t look so heartbreakingly gorgeous. Reaching into her handbag, she took out a hairbrush and began to make great sweeping strokes through hair all tousled from love-making. ‘Yes, Xandros?’ she questioned calmly.
He liked to watch her brush her hair. The first time she had loosened it for him he had told her that it was the colour of Greek honey—which was darker and richer than any honey in the world. ‘The car is waiting downstairs, agape mou.’ His eyes narrowed at her in question. ‘You still want to go and eat?’
What would he say if she told him the truth—that what she really wanted was to know how he felt about her? Whether he was tiring of her—or whether it was a figment of her over-active imagination. But some bone-deep instinct told her that a man like Xandros would ultimately despise a woman who wanted that kind of reassurance. To an independent man that might smack of neediness—and everyone knew how unattractive that was.
‘Eat? I thought you’d never ask,’ she said lightly, turning her head so that her newly brushed hair swung in a scented curtain around her still-flushed cheeks. She even managed to give him a faintly mocking look in return. ‘Somehow I’ve worked up quite an appetite—though can’t for the life of me work out why!’
Xandros gave a barely perceptible nod as he picked up her coat and held it open for her, watching the naturally sinuous movement of her body as she wriggled into it. Her response had held just the right amount of cool distance and yet her apparent composure was strong enough to fan the flames of his desire once more. He found himself wanting to pull her back into his arms again and a nerve flickered at his temple.