LYNNE GRAHAM - Ruthless Revenge - Ultimate Satisfaction - Bought for the Greek's Revenge / Wedded, Bedded, Betrayed / At the Count's Bidding

Nikolai stared down at Ella, enchanted by the picture she made. The floaty thing she was wearing was sea green and it pooled around her like a mermaid’s tail. In the bright light her perfect skin glowed against her rich bronze hair. Feeling a little less like a man caged and about to hand over the key to his freedom, he dropped down into a seat. Thee mou, she was exquisite.

Max arrived with coffee and biscuits. Max, Nikolai ruminated, knowing that that was a problem still to be dealt with: Max had ushered Cyrus into Nikolai’s house. The dogs came up the stairs to investigate. At least Butch tried but he was unable to climb the stairs with his three legs and in the end, when he sat whining pitifully on the bottom step, Nikolai took pity on the little animal and went down to lift him and carry him up.

‘He’ll learn. He’s taught himself to go downstairs safely,’ Ella commented, but even so she was hugely impressed by his kindness.

‘We all learn from our mistakes.’ Nikolai lounged back in his chair and rested an ankle across one knee, the fabric of his well-cut trousers pulling taut to delineate the powerful muscles in his thighs. ‘For instance, I made a mistake specifying three months with you...’

‘Oh...’ Ella stilled, her facial muscles locking as if she was in shock. ‘Did you?’

‘Three months is nothing. I don’t want a time limit. I want to keep you,’ he advanced levelly, speaking as though what he was saying were not at all personal but simply a matter of business to be taken out and discussed.

‘I’m not Butch. I don’t think you can just keep me,’ Ella countered in a slightly wobbly voice, caused by the shock of thinking he wanted to end their arrangement early and then being shot fast in the other direction, only to fail to understand what he was talking about.

‘I hope I can if I ask you to marry me,’ Nikolai breathed very quietly, assessing dark eyes fringed with black lashes trained to her intently.

‘Marry me?’ Ella parroted as she straightened up, her shoulders stiffening. ‘I asked you to marry me first and you said that marriage was out of the question.’

‘You were right... I was wrong. Do we have to make a production out of it?’ Nikolai asked in the most suspiciously reasonable tone.

Ella was knocked right off balance. In her experience all men found it a challenge to admit to being in the wrong but the admission had just tripped effortlessly off Nikolai’s tongue. ‘You’re asking me to marry you...now?’

‘Yes. I think we fit together well,’ Nikolai declared.

Her wide green eyes couldn’t have got any wider. ‘In what way?’ And her voice lowered. ‘In bed?’

‘No, I wasn’t even thinking about that,’ Nikolai lied.

In fascination Ella watched the faintest hint of colour line his sculpted cheekbones and she was tickled pink by the discovery that he could blush. From his point of view the sex genuinely must have been as amazing as he said it was, was all she could initially think. Why else would he be talking about marriage when he had previously been so against the idea?

‘So, you want to marry me and keep me,’ Ella recounted, thinking that a marriage proposal could not get much more basic and medieval in tone than that.

‘Your family will be pleased... I think.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ Ella conceded, knowing that a wedding ring would make all the difference to her family’s concerns because it was a promise of commitment that they trusted.

Nikolai leant forward and closed a hand round hers. ‘I intend to do everything within my power to make you happy.’

‘That’s quite an aspiration.’

‘I like to aim high.’

‘But I haven’t agreed yet.’ Ella stared down nervously at the lean tanned hand that had engulfed hers. She glanced up involuntarily and fell into his melted-caramel eyes. Those eyes were as dangerous as a weed-infested pond to a lone swimmer, she thought crazily. She looked into his eyes and butterflies went crazy in her tummy and reasoned thought became too much of a challenge. She was falling for him, she recognised in dismay, falling fast and falling hard for a deeply unscrupulous male, who broke rules and ignored all her boundaries.

‘But I’m hoping you will...’ His black lashes swept down on his expressive eyes.

Nikolai didn’t do fake humility very well, Ella thought in sudden amusement. She wasn’t convinced for a moment. He was rich and gorgeous and successful and she was convinced that he had traversed a school of hard knocks to reach his current level. Cyrus had claimed that Nikolai’s parents were a drug dealer and a whore and Ella knew no polite or gentle way of asking if that was the truth. What she did know was that sometimes Nikolai made her just want to hug him, and when he wasn’t around it was a little like the sun vanishing without warning. She didn’t understand how he could possibly have come to mean so much to her so quickly but there it was: Nikolai Drakos was already of enormous importance to her.

‘I would want children,’ Ella declared abruptly.

His dark head whipped up, caramel eyes flashing with surprise.

‘And why are you looking surprised?’ Ella enquired. ‘Most women want children. I’m not talking this year or next year because I have to finish my training first, but eventually I would want children... I believe in being honest.’

Eventually.

‘I’ve never wanted children,’ Nikolai confessed.

‘Well, it’s children and me or no me, I’m afraid. Plus you’d also probably have to share your home with a selection of stray dogs and cats. That’s probably not negotiable either,’ Ella volunteered, determined to give him all the bad news at once before she lost her nerve and started trying to be someone she wasn’t.

None of those life-changing possibilities was going to happen overnight, Nikolai reminded himself. She was trampling all over his most cherished convictions because she assumed that they would stay married for ever. But, of course, it wouldn’t be that way, he reflected wryly. She would return to uni and meet some animal-loving younger man in muddy wellington boots and realise that Nikolai wasn’t, after all, what she wanted. And he would let her go. A hollow sensation formed inside him. He pictured her in a country house awash with dogs and children. Home and family would come first with her...always. He understood that about her without even thinking about it. He couldn’t give those things to her because he didn’t form attachments, but she still deserved to have those things as well as the love of a man who deserved her.

‘Are kids really a deal-breaker?’ Ella demanded, troubled by the shadowed look on his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘What are you thinking about?’

Nikolai sprang upright, bent down and scooped her off her seat to hold in his lap. ‘Private matters.’

‘If you marry me, you won’t get to be private,’ she warned him.

‘Children aren’t a deal-breaker if you’re talking a couple of years down the road,’ Nikolai conceded.

‘And what if we have an accident?’

‘I’m careful.’

Ella rested back in the cradle of his arms, drinking in the scent of his expensive cologne and the unique aroma that was purely, sexily his own. ‘You really want to keep me?’

Nikolai screened his eyes. He knew that if a younger man in wellington boots had presented himself at that moment, he would have kicked him down the stairs and jumped on his corpse. He wanted her. He wanted her far more than he was comfortable with but he was equally aware of his guilt and of what he ought to be feeling. He had to be unselfish for her sake. ‘I’ll make you happy, glikia mou,’ he swore doggedly and he meant every word of it.

He would make her happy, whatever it took and regardless of what it cost him. He would walk away from the pursuit of revenge that had consumed his life for the past five years. He would turn his back on Cyrus and his crimes for ever. Ella would become his first, his only priority.