LYNNE GRAHAM - The Greek Tycoon's Blackmailed Mistress

Indeed, Aristandros had gone on to fulfil every worst expectation that Ella had had of him seven years earlier. His relationships appeared to be short-lived, shallow, self-serving, and not infrequently featured infidelity. He had closely followed in the footsteps of his notorious father as a womaniser. Nothing Ella read about Aristandros had ever given her cause to regret refusing to marry him. He could no more have adapted to the restrictions of matrimony than a tiger could adjust to being a domestic pet. He would have broken her heart and destroyed her, just as her faithless stepfather had destroyed her mother with his extra-marital diversions. After twenty-odd years of marriage, Jane Sardelos had neither backbone nor self-esteem left.

‘You’re suggesting that, if I have sex with you, you’ll let me see Callie?’ Ella queried in a polite tone of incredulity.

‘I’m not quite that crude, glikia mou ,’ Aristandros fielded. ‘Nor so easily satisfied. I’m even prepared to offer you something I’ve never offered a woman before. I want you to move in with me—’

‘To live with you?’ Ella echoed in astonishment, a powerful wave of disbelief winging through her taut length.

‘Live and travel with me as my mistress. How else could you look after your niece? Of course, there would be conditions,’ Aristandros continued smoothly. ‘You couldn’t hope to work and still meet my expectations. Living with me and taking care of Callie would be a full-time occupation.’

‘You haven’t changed one little bit,’ Ella framed shakily, even as her heart jumped in anticipation at the idea of having the freedom to take care of her niece. ‘You still expect to take priority over everything else.’

Aristandros angled back his arrogant dark head, stubborn eyes hurling an unashamed challenge. ‘Why not? I have known many women who would be delighted to make me and my interests their main priority in life. Why would I even consider accepting a lesser commitment from you?’

‘But you can’t make a child part of a deal like that!’ Ella condemned fiercely. ‘It would be immoral and horribly unscrupulous!’

‘I don’t suffer from moral scruples. I’m a practical guy who has no plans to get married to give Callie a mother. So, if you want to be her replacement mother, you have to play this as I want it played.’

He was offering her everything she longed for in return for surrendering everything she had worked so hard to achieve. It was blackmail and it was revenge in one cruelly potent weapon. ‘After seven years, how can we go from having no relationship at all into living together? And me a mistress ?’ she questioned unevenly, the unfamiliar word thick and unwieldy on her tongue. ‘It’s crazy.’

Aristandros slowly unfolded his big powerful frame, from his seat and strolled towards her like a sleek panther on the prowl. His narrowed gaze blazed golden and welded to her, homing in on the soft pink of her mouth. ‘It’s not a problem for me. I find you amazingly attractive.’

‘And that’s all that it takes for you—lust?’ Ella slung between gritted teeth with a look of distaste.

‘Lust is all that we need concern ourselves with, glikia mou .’ He lifted a hand and let confident fingertips trace the proud curve of her cheekbone. Blue eyes spitting angry flame, she jerked her head away in a violent rejection of his touch. ‘Let’s keep it simple. I want you in my bed every night.’

‘No way !’ Ella launched back at him furiously.

‘Of course, I can’t force you into agreement,’ Aristandros conceded, trapping her by the rails with his size and proximity, while staring down at her with burning resolve. ‘But I’m a stubborn and tenacious man. I have waited a long time for this day. Many women would be flattered by my continuing interest.’

‘Lust is not an interest!’ Ella practically spat at him, her scorn unconcealed. ‘This is all because I said no to you seven years ago, all because you never got me into bed!’

Towering over her slighter, smaller figure, Aristandros went very still at that charge. His dark eyes gleamed, diamond-bright and hard as granite. ‘I let you say no because I was prepared to wait for you. This time around I’m not prepared to wait for anything.’

Butterflies danced in her tummy while rage preoccupied her thoughts and clenched her hands into fists. ‘I can’t believe you have the nerve to try this on me!’

He closed his hands over her fists to hold her entrapped. He bent his proud, dark head, his breath skimming her temples as he murmured thickly, ‘But I always have the nerve in a fight, koukla mou . Fighting for what I want comes naturally to me and, if the stakes are high enough, I will risk everything to win. I wouldn’t be a true Xenakis if I didn’t occasionally sail too close to the sun.’

He was so close she couldn’t breath, and she was trembling while her heart pounded as if she was running a marathon. He lowered his head to claim her lips and he kissed her slowly with an irresistible passion. Extraordinary, achingly familiar, that kiss was everything she had steeled herself to forget. For a timeless moment she was lost in the heat and pressure of his hungry urgency, shivering violently at the deeply erotic thrust and flick of his tongue into the tender interior of her mouth. Suddenly her body was flaring wildly out of her control, her nipples pinching into stiff, painful buds, moisture surging between her thighs. Memory took her back and she froze, shutting out and denying those shameful sensations while she shifted away from him in an abrupt, defensive movement that caught him by surprise.

‘No,’ she told him flatly, throwing her head back, little strands of silvery-pale hair breaking free of the clip to brush her cheekbones.

A wolfish smile slashed Aristandros’s lean face. He made no attempt to hide his triumph. ‘“No” is very close to becoming a blatant invitation on your lips,’ he derided softly.

‘You can’t buy me with Callie. I’m not up for sale, and I can’t be tempted,’ Ella swore, praying even as she spoke that she had the strength of character to make those statements true.

‘Then we will all be losers, and perhaps the child most of all. I doubt if any other woman would be prepared to offer her the honest and genuine affection that you could give her,’ Aristandros pronounced. ‘Although many women will no doubt try to convince me otherwise.’

That final assurance was like a knife finding a gap in her armour to pierce her skin, penetrate deep and draw blood. The very thought of ambitious gold-diggers auditioning to be Callie’s mother-substitute simply to impress her billionaire guardian hurt Ella immeasurably and threatened her composure.

‘You’re being so cruel,’ she muttered tightly. ‘I wouldn’t have believed that you could be so cruel.’

Unmoved, Aristandros surveyed her with hard eyes. ‘It’s your choice—’

‘There isn’t a choice!’ Ella gasped strickenly

‘It’s a choice you don’t like. But be grateful there is a choice to make,’ Aristandros urged harshly. ‘I could have said no, you can’t see Callie, and slammed the door shut in your face!’

Gooseflesh gave Ella’s skin a clammy feel. It felt like the cold breath of reality making its presence felt, for of course what he said was true. In the circumstances, even a choice was a luxury, for he might have turned her request down flat. Furthermore, what happened next was entirely her decision. She glanced up at him from below her lashes. He was on some sort of power kick. With the options and offers that came his way every single day, how could he still be interested in her? Was it just the fact that she was one of the precious few to have turned him down? Wasn’t that the real secret of her enduring attraction—her one-time refusal, her apparent unavailability? And wouldn’t her pulling power wane fast once she was freely available?