Natalie Anderson - Exotic Nights - The Virgin's Secret / The Devil's Heart / Pleasured in the Playboy's Penthouse

His tone was withering. ‘And do you really want to play the game of apportioning blame?’

Angel felt something cold trickle down her spine when Leo’s eyes turned dark and deadly.

‘We have done nothing to affect your family directly. Your father’s greed and ineptitude has seen to the demise of the Kassianides shipping fleet. All we had to do was merge with Levakis Enterprises, and that in itself highlighted the inherent weakness of your father’s position.’

Angel swallowed. Everything he said was true. She couldn’t really blame him or his father for having done anything concrete. Her father had done it all by himself.

‘However,’ Leo continued, sitting back like a lord surveying his subject, ‘it leaves me with an interesting dilemma.’

Angel said nothing. She’d no doubt that Leo was about to enlighten her.

‘While we’ve managed to get our due revenge in seeing the Kassianides fortune reduced to nothing, lower than even we were ourselves seventy years ago, I must admit that it feels somehow … empty. Since seeing the extent of your sheer boldness, I find myself desiring something of a more … tangible nature.’

Panic struck Angel. She felt as if an invisible noose was tightening around her neck. Desperation tinged her voice. ‘I’d call going bankrupt pretty tangible.’

Leo leant forward again, utterly cold, utterly ruthless. ‘The bankruptcy is for your father, not you. No, I’m talking about something as tangible as my great-uncle being accused of raping and then murdering a pregnant woman from one of the wealthiest families in Athens. As tangible as an entire family forced into exile from their homeland because of the threat of a criminal investigation they couldn’t afford, and the possibility of my great-uncle facing the death penalty. Not to mention the scandal that would linger for years.’

‘Stop,’ begged Angel weakly. She knew the story and it always sickened her.

But he didn’t. Leo just looked at her. ‘Did you know that my great-uncle never got over the slur of being accused of that murder and eventually killed himself?’

Angel shook her head. She felt sick. This went far deeper than she’d ever imagined. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘My great-uncle loved your great-aunt.’ Leo’s mouth twisted. ‘More fool him. And because your family couldn’t bear to see one of their own darlings slum it with a mere ship worker, they did their best to thwart the romance.’

‘I know what happened,’ Angel said quietly, her insides roiling.

Leo laughed harshly, ‘Yes, everyone does now—thanks to a drunken old fool who couldn’t live with the guilt any more, because he’d been the one who committed the crime and covered it up, had it paid for by your great-grandfather.’

Her own family had murdered one of their own and covered it up like cowards.

Angel forced herself to meet the censure in Leo’s eyes even though she wanted to curl up with the shame. ‘I’m not to blame for what they did.’

‘Neither am I. Yet I paid for it all my life, I was born on another continent, into a community in exile, learning English as my first language when it should have been Greek. I saw my grandmother wither away a little more each year, knowing that she’d never return to her home.’

Angel wanted to beg him to stop, but the words wouldn’t come out.

Leo wasn’t finished. ‘My father was so consumed it cost us our relationship. And it cost him his first wife. I grew up too fast and too young, aware of a terrible sense of injustice and a need to put things right. So while you were going to school, making friends, living your life here in your home, I was on the other side of the world, wondering how things might have been if my father and grandmother hadn’t been forced out of their own country. Wondering if I might then have had a father who was present, not absent. Wondering what we had done to deserve this awful slur on our name. Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up being reminded that you don’t belong somewhere every single day by your own family? Like you’ve no right to put down roots?’

Angel shook her head. She didn’t think he’d appreciate hearing about how lonely she’d felt when her father had sent her to a remote and ultra-conservative catholic boarding school in the wilds of the west of Ireland. Somehow she didn’t think that even the worst of her experiences there would come close to what Leo had described.

She felt hollow inside. ‘Please, will you just tell me what it is you want or let me go?’

Leo sat forward, elbows on his knees, glass held casually between long fingers. Supremely at ease, as if he hadn’t just related what he had.

‘It’s quite simple, really. I wanted you the moment I saw you, and I want you now.’ His lip curled. ‘Despite knowing who you are.’

Angel could feel her mouth opening and closing like an ineffectual fish. ‘You don’t. You can’t.’

In a flooding of panic, Angel stood up. She carefully placed the glass down on a nearby table and hoped Leo wouldn’t notice how badly her hand was trembling.

Leo stood too, and they faced each other across the expanse of a few feet.

‘Sit down, Angel, we’re not finished yet.’

Angel shook her head mutely, feeling the world start to constrict around her. Leo shrugged as if he didn’t care. She tried desperately to block out the way he looked so intimidatingly huge opposite her.

‘You’re going to pay me back for everything you’ve done to me, and you will do it in my bed. As my mistress.’

Angel nearly burst out laughing, the need to release some of her pent-up panic almost emerging as hysteria. It faded, though, when she saw the look on his face. Her belly quivered.

‘You’re serious.’

‘Of course I’m serious. I don’t joke about things like this.’

A pulse beat in his jaw, making Angel’s belly clench.

‘Do you think I’m so naive as to assume your father is just going to roll over and take what’s coming to him? I want you, and I want to keep you close, where I can see you —away from your father and his machinations. If that heat between us is anything to go by, I don’t imagine it’ll be unpleasant for either of us.’

Angel’s belly quivered even more strongly and she felt slightly faint.

‘You want to sleep with me?’

His mouth quirked dangerously. ‘Among other things.’

‘But …’

‘But nothing. Everyone saw you and I at that party. I am not about to let you capitalise on that now that I’m back. Not to mention tonight’s fiasco. You’re a danger and a threat. You’ve had the audacity to come into my home twice, and now you’ll pay for it.’

‘But my father—’ She stopped. He will kill me , Angel thought, with a mounting dread that had been born long, long ago.

Leo waved a hand in an abrupt gesture of insult. ‘Your father I don’t much care about. I’m hoping it’ll cause him the maximum amount of humiliation when he sees his precious eldest daughter taken as mistress by his enemy. Everyone will know exactly why you are with me—warming my bed until I’m ready to move on, perhaps even settle down. Whatever you and he had planned, this will play out on my terms. And you can tell him that taking you as my mistress will afford him no honey-trap favours. Things still stand as they are. We certainly won’t be bailing him out.’

Angel just looked at him, barely believing the direction their conversation had taken. She didn’t see the point in revealing the reality of her dismal relationship with her father. He’d believe that as quickly as he’d believe her intentions had been honourable this evening.

So many things were impacting upon Angel at once, not least Leonidas Parnassus’ cold and calculating words. She wanted to shout out that she didn’t want him, that she didn’t desire him, but her mouth wouldn’t formulate the words. And in all honesty she was afraid of his reaction if she did say that. She was still smarting from what had happened in the study. She was far too vulnerable to him.