Seduced into the Greek's World Read online

  Do not think he’s calling you exceptional, Natalie. She had never been at the top of any kind of list, not even Most Reliable. She was straight-up, middle-of-the-road, work-hard-for-second-place stock.

  But he was staring at her mouth like a kid at the penny-candy window, making her lips tingle and her insides twist in anticipation. She shook her head in disbelief, but he took it as refusal.

  “Damn it, Natalie!” He shoved back from the door, crossing the room in a few steps, then swinging around to confront her. “Why the hell not?”

  The feminist in her said, I don’t have to have a reason, but she was so astonished by his reaction she could only speak the truth.

  “Demitri, I don’t do this. Forgive me for being lousy at this, but I don’t go home with men. I thought...” She winced inwardly, not wanting to sound as though she was okay with a one-night stand. It made her sound as cheap as he was treating her. “I had this vision of getting away and being someone different, maybe having a fling since I haven’t...” No. She would not admit it had been years. “Being away from home allowed me to behave in a way I wouldn’t normally, but I can’t continue doing it,” she asserted. “Last night was just...”

  What? An opportunity? An experiment? A much-needed climb back into the saddle of a horse she’d learned the hard way was expensive and ornery?

  “It was a fantasy,” she said, repeating what she’d told him last night. “One that shouldn’t have played out, but I did it, and now I’m awake and it’s time to be sensible.”

  * * *

  Funny, Demitri thought. He’d spent the night coming to the realization that, for once, something real was happening to him. Being with her hadn’t been an escape. It had been somewhere he wanted to go. That worried the hell out of him, but it had also pushed him to find her this morning and negotiate how they could continue seeing one another. And now he was remembering why women with standards were a pain in the butt.

  “What’s wrong with continuing the fantasy?” he demanded.

  “You own the company I work for,” she reminded.

  A wash of relief went through him as he quickly dismissed that as an obstacle. “We’ve covered that. You work for my brother. And if you want to keep your job, fine. We’ll work around it,” he said, reluctant but resigned to that inconvenience. At least with that concern out of the way, he could give in to the pull between them and saunter into her space, brushing past her anxious “Demitri—” with a firm promise of “I’ll show you a fantasy fling you won’t forget.”

  “Don’t.” She pressed herself into the door, avoiding his touch. “Please don’t touch me. I have to face people when I leave here and—”

  “You don’t want to go back there obviously aroused?” he challenged, needing to hear it. To see it in the helpless flush and disconcerted cast of her gaze around the room before she brought it back to his, eyes deeply shadowed with painful desire.

  He pressed his hand flat to the door beside her head, leaning close enough to smell the warm peach scent of her skin, aching for the graze of her rising breasts against his chest. Below his belt, a heavy rush of blood pulled him tight.

  Flustered and anxious, she still managed to send a coy glance south. Her body arched ever so slightly so she brushed against him. She released a powerless whimper on a sobbing “Yes.”

  “I want you very badly, Natalie. Not after five o’clock. Now,” he told her, willing her to fall in with his demands. To let him bend her over the desk and take both of them where they were screaming with agony to go.

  * * *

  Natalie heard the words and flinched inside, telling herself to remember who she was dealing with. She set her jaw and leveled her chin, forcing herself to stare into his black-coffee eyes. “Is saying that part of giving me the fantasy? Because I prefer honesty, Demitri. I’m pretty sure what you want is sex, not me.”

  He narrowed his eyes, displeased, but he only levered himself straight and said, “Do you know what vacuous means?”

  Apparently it was a real question. He waited until she said, “Yes,” with an exasperated frown before he continued.

  “Most of the women I’ve been with don’t. And it shows. You’re sexy as hell, but you’re also interesting. Give me your number. I’ll text you where to meet me tonight.”

  Just like that? Breeze right past shouldn’t to will? Misgivings danced in her periphery, but there was no sick knot of guilty conscience that would have stopped her doing something truly immoral. Two unattached adults spending time together for a few nights was allowed, she rationalized. She’d be leaving on Saturday. Three nights out of her life to keep her warm for the next thirty years. It might make her cheap, but it would make her happy. She’d regret saying no.

  When would she ever again have a chance to be with a man on her terms, without it impacting her daughter? This was the only time she could do something reckless and imprudent, selfish and deeply sexually satisfying.

  With giddy excitement expanding in her chest, she heard herself giving him her number, saying, “You could have got that from my company profile. You realize that, don’t you?”

  “I told you, I’m not going to read about you when I can see you face-to-face and ask.” His eyes came up from his smartphone, gaze warm with satisfaction and lit with anticipation. His carnal expression was exhilarating, but unnerving.

  “You’re really not going to read it?” she asked.

  “Is there a reason I should?”

  “No,” she said with false calm. Three nights of sidestepping honesty and pretending she didn’t have a daughter. That made her squirm internally, but she instinctively knew it would change everything, and she wanted the fantasy. She wanted to be a single woman alone in Paris having an affair with a hotel magnate.

  And what an affair! They didn’t come up for air until two in the morning, when she rose to dress, muscles aching, nipples abraded and loins tender. Oh, it was an amazing feeling. Her skin felt like velvet on the inside, luxurious and petted smooth.

  “I don’t like you going back alone at this time of night. Stay.”

  “I’m not going to walk. I’ll take a cab,” she said, even though it was only a few blocks. He’d booked this suite in a competitor’s hotel for the rest of the week, he’d informed her when she had arrived to a candlelit dinner looking out on the Eiffel Tower.

  They hadn’t eaten any of it, consuming each other with a crazy appetite she put down to her years of abstinence and his years of building a healthy one. In her heart she knew this was bad, being such an easy conquest for him, but, dear Lord, he knew how to make it good for her.

  “Bring a bag tomorrow,” he ordered, following her into the lounge, casual in his nudity. “So you can go to work from here in the morning.”

  The man was incredible. Completely un-self-conscious, possessing more command unclothed than a decorated general. He was playful when he was relaxed, like right after sex, but he got straight to the point if things weren’t going his way.

  He was spoiled. Privileged and spoiled, yet so generous in bed she felt like the spoiled one.

  He was dangerous, that was what he was. If she wasn’t careful she’d start fantasizing about more than two more nights with him.

  She crossed to the untouched table where the tea lights in their globe of water had gutted out. Stabbing an olive with a fork, she waved the little green orb at him.

  “That’s two meals you’ve made me miss—lunch this afternoon, now dinner. You’ll be lucky if I don’t go on strike for better conditions.” She popped the olive into her mouth.

  “Here I thought the package of benefits was enough to keep you satisfied.”

  Said package was twitching to life, making her grin right along with him. They locked gazes, and the prospect of returning to the bedroom crackled like a welcoming fire. But one of them had to show some control.

  “Yeah, well, I guess I’m one of those high-maintenance women who can’t be pleased.”

  “Ha! That is far from true
, Natalie,” he said in that husky tone he used when all his blood was rushing into one particularly prominent place.

  “You’re saying I’m easy?” Even though they were her own words, they went through her like a white-hot spear. She looked away from him, startled to feel the backs of her eyes sting. Why? Because she’d just remembered she was one in a legion of women for him? Because this was as good as it would ever get for her?

  She dropped her fork with a clatter and headed for the door.

  “Hey.” He caught her up before she reached it, scowling when she stiffened with resistance against his hold. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just need some proper sleep,” she dismissed. “I get emotional when I’m tired.” And she was suddenly so homesick she could cry. She wanted desperately to hold Zoey. Right now. Her arms ached with need to feel the wiry strength of her girl. That was who she was: Zoey’s mom. That was where she belonged, and she didn’t need a man in her life, in any capacity, to make her life bigger or better.

  She told herself.

  He cupped her jaw and smoothed his thumb along her cheek. “Give me a minute to dress. I’ll come with you.”

  “No, I’m fine.” She couldn’t let him become something she thought would fulfill her. She already had all she would ever need. Smiling flatly, she pressed the middle of his chest, tempted to let her touch linger on his taut skin, still able to taste his flavor on her lips, but she was her own person, apart from him. Had to be. “Good night.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DEMITRI WAS TYPICALLY the one who needed space. That was how it had always been. Yet Natalie pushed him back a step and walked out.

  Usually he created distance when the microcues of emotional discord began to manifest. He was deeply attuned to them, whether he wanted to be or not. His childhood had predisposed him to picking up the slightest shift in the air, when bad could go worse within the space of a heartbeat.

  He’d learned to defuse those explosive situations with an outrageous comment or an injection of chaos. He stirred the soup very deliberately, taking control of the moment by drawing attention and forcing the detonation. The shrapnel never landed on him, so it had always worked for him to push the plunger or pull the pin.

  This was different. Everything about Natalie was different. She wasn’t clingy. She was defensive. Oddly quick to isolate herself even though she projected genuine warmth and affection. One second she’d been teasing, the next revealing a kind of desperation, but not looking to him to resolve it for her.

  That was often the impetus for him to dust his hands of a relationship. The moment things grew complex and a woman grew needy, he slipped away. But Natalie hadn’t looked to him for solace. She’d looked off into the distance, as though he was the last place she’d expect to find whatever it was she needed.

  A bizarre, painful hollowness sank into him, urging him to follow her to the hotel and catch at the connection they’d had and lost without him understanding how or why.

  Damn it, he didn’t do introspection and angst. Especially over women.

  Nevertheless, he found himself returning to the hotel first thing, snapping out arrangements that brought her into the hotel dining room with a harried look on her face. It was just before 8:00 a.m. Her hair swung in the sweep of gold he’d run his fingers through just hours before, and her warm brown eyes refused to meet his, instead taking a run around the table of three managers he’d assembled on the fly.

  “I’m sorry. I just picked up the message about this breakfast meeting. I’m not prepared at all,” she said.

  “No problem, Natalie. It’s informal. Adara asked me to check in on the software transition while I’m here, so I thought we’d have a quick round table over eggs and coffee.” It was an outright lie, but he’d wanted to see her and figured she’d balk at something more private or intimate. This was an excuse to sit beside her, brush his sleeve against hers, memorize her lipstick print on her coffee cup. He resented every second of not having her to himself, but it was better than nothing.

  She was the first to leave, anxious to get to her training session on time, she said, tilting her head over her phone as she left without looking back.

  His mobile vibrated. He took his eyes off her and pulled out his phone to glance at the screen.

  What was that? her text asked.

  He grinned.

  The first of three square meals, he thumbed into his keypad, inordinately pleased to flirt with her this way. I don’t want you going on strike.

  Who can I expect at lunch?

  Who do you want?

  Her reply took a few minutes, then, Just you.

  He began to breathe again.

  Meet me in our suite.

  * * *

  “I feel so Parisian,” Natalie said as she put herself together, one eye on the clock ticking toward the end of her lunch hour. She was pretending her attack of insecurity this morning hadn’t happened, and he seemed to be going along. “Meeting a man in a hotel in the middle of the day is very French, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done it.”

  “Met a man?” She laughed, pausing before applying her lip gloss to sit on the edge of the bed instead. “A woman, then.”

  He came up on an elbow, the sheet tangled around his hips, his physique seeming sculpted by an old master. His kiss was lazy and lingering, but he searched her eyes, making her drop her gaze.

  “Are you embarrassed to be doing this, Natalie? Ashamed?”

  “No,” she said, but even she heard the not quite tagged on to the end. The clock was ticking. No time to search out the words to explain how she was betraying a part of herself. “Are we meeting here tonight?”

  “Would you rather go out?”

  She shook her head, feeling foolish for her stricken neediness this morning when she’d wished for a moment that she was the only woman he’d ever known. When she’d wished she was the type to expect the best and had every right to receive it. When she’d wanted to be someone he found hard to please but longed to anyway.

  It had been a silly moment of conditioned anxiety for a man to complete her when really she knew that was the real fantasy. Her father hadn’t stuck around to help her mom. Her own husband had never really been there for her. If she sometimes yearned for someone to walk through life with her, to be there when Zoey was grown and spreading her own wings, well, maybe she’d look for that companion in twenty years.

  Right now, this was enough. She had a gorgeous man showering attention on her, even if it was just physical. The here and now was pretty damned good. You had to embrace these things, even if they weren’t perfect. That was what she’d learned from her brother. Merely having a good day was a gift. Take it and run.

  And Demitri made her day so good. When he rolled her beneath him late that night, she was still trembling and damp with having taken her fill of him, but she was glad it wasn’t over. He was still hard inside her, his body primed with tension.

  “My turn,” he said, closing his arms into a tight cage around her. “But that was insanely hot, watching you lose it like that on top of me. I don’t have much control left. This might get rough.”

  “Okay,” she said dreamily, hugging her quivering thighs to his hips, surrendering herself utterly to his control.

  He groaned out a curse and clenched his hands on her shoulders. “Except I want to stay like this, so aroused I’m going to snap. What are you doing to me, Natalie?”

  “Can’t last to take me with you?” she teased.

  A feral light came into his eyes, and when he moved, he wasn’t rough, but he was deliberate and thorough, thrusting deep and driving her inexorably along the path he was taking. It was almost too intense to bear, but soon she was gasping, “Don’t stop. Please, I’m so close.”

  “Now, damn it. Now.”

  He did get rough at that point, and she encouraged him, eyes open but vision white as they shattered together, crying out with jagged ecstasy while they turned over and over
in the abyss of pulsing pleasure. The waves of joy went on forever, holding them in a paralysis of tense and clinging rapture, only fading enough for their hold on each other to relax, but they were still locked tight, his weight upon her, both of them weak, breaths uneven, hearts still pounding hard against the other’s.

  Dimly she grew aware that she wasn’t going to get her breath back as long as he stayed on top of her, but she didn’t care. He was sweaty and heavy, and her hip was cramping, but she didn’t want to move.

  “I’m a little bit afraid you’re going to kill me, Demitri,” she finally whispered, only half joking. This intensity between them put her utterly at his mercy.

  He snorted and shifted half off her, sliding a lazy hand up to cradle her breast. “I’ve been thinking the same thing about you since that first night.”

  That made a funny bubble of optimism lift her heart, but she quickly ignored it. Turning her head, she kissed him once. More of a quick nip.

  “Seriously. I have to eat. That croissant at lunch was not a meal,” she complained.

  He groaned as he rolled away from her. “You are so demanding. If you recall, I offered to take you out to dinner this evening, but you chose to jump my bones.”

  She had, and she didn’t feel like dressing to go out now. They wore hotel robes on the sofa and ate picnic-style food he’d ordered this afternoon: cheese and bread, pickles and caviar, wine and strawberries.

  Tell him, she thought, feeling close enough to risk it, but tested the waters first by asking, “You have two nephews, don’t you? Do you spend much time with them?”

  “And a niece.” He paused, gaze drifting into the distance while a darkly introspective look came over his face. “But that’s a long story. One I don’t even know how to tell. And no. I have as little as possible to do with them.”

  Her heart dropped. “Really? You don’t like kids?”

  “I don’t think they’re a scourge on the planet that needs to be wiped out. But I don’t...” He scowled again. “I honestly didn’t think any of us wanted kids. I knew Adara was trying, but I thought she was just buckling to pressure from our father. He wanted an heir. I didn’t think she genuinely wanted a baby. Realizing she did... And then Theo turning up with one. I was downright stunned. Worried even, because—”