Scandinavia that made the most of all that open space.
Maria’s loft lacked only whatever machines had once been installed here. Raw space, New York realtors called it, and made it sound as if that was a good thing—which, he supposed, it was if you intended to transform it into something habitable.
This was not habitable.
The floor was wood but the finish had long since worn away. The walls were brick. Not warm brick, just brick. Old, dark, depressing. The ceiling soared, all right. It soared straight up to an intimidating tangle of pipes and electrical lines.
As for furniture… there were a couple of work tables. Some cabinets and benches. Boxes. More boxes. And, in this end of the room, farthest from the entry door, a screen that he assumed concealed the bathroom, or what passed for a bathroom, and in front of that, a bed.
Maria’s bed.
Neatly made. Simple. Almost convent-like in appearance…
A double bed.
Alex’s jaw tightened.
His own bed—his beds, considering the number of homes he owned—his beds were always king-sized. A bachelor’s necessity, his brothers called them. Plenty of room for a man and a woman and hours of hot sex.
But a double bed might have advantages.
There’d be little space in which to sprawl while the lovers in Maria’s bed took some needed rest. They would have to sleep on their sides, spoon fashion, she with her backside tucked into his groin, her spill of wild, sexy curls tucked beneath his chin. He would wake during the night, feel the heat of her against him and his sex would engorge, fill with heat, throb as he shifted his weight, as she backed up to him, as she awoke and drowsily whispered his name while he sought her moist entrance, while he pistoned within her until she cried out…
Skata!
He was watching Maria pack and turning himself on.
How could she have that much power over him? He didn’t like it, not one bit. Men were the ones who held power and if that marked him as old-fashioned, so be it.
He had surely made the right move. Taking her to his bed as often as he wished would purge her from his system. And no matter what she said, she would not be unwilling for long. She could talk about not wanting him all she liked but when he touched her, all that staunch denial fled. To hell with the fact that she despised him. He felt the same about her. What he’d told her was true enough.
Sex had nothing to do with emotion.
As for her threat not to react in his bed… A lie. A magnificent lie. He knew a thousand ways to make her react. His mouth at her breasts. Between her thighs. On her clitoris…
“Damn it,” he growled, and strode toward the bed on which her suitcase stood open. “That’s enough!”
She swung toward him. “What?”
“Perhaps you have forgotten what my country is like,” he said through his teeth. “It is not the wilderness. We have shops.”
The understatement of the year, Maria thought. Ellos had all the shops that made Fifth Avenue paradise and dozens more. Unfortunately, it had the prices to go with them. She wouldn’t have the money to step through those doors until she completed this commission. One new outfit, she’d been in debt for life.
Not that that was a possibility. The outfit she’d worn today had pretty much melted her credit card.
“Excuse me,” she said with enough sugar in the words to cause diabetic coma, “but I’m not done.”
“You are done,” he said grimly. “You’ve packed enough for ten women.”
What she’d done was pack enough for one woman who had no idea what the weather was like halfway around the world this time of year. Yes, she could ask him, but that would be a show of weakness. Stupid, perhaps, but that was the way she felt.
So she’d taken jeans. T-shirts. Sandals. Hiking boots. Sweaters. She’d considered something dressy, but what for? She would not be going out in the evenings.
She would be going to the prince’s bed.
She stared at him as he closed the suitcase. She hated him as a woman; as an artist, she couldn’t help but admire him. Well, no. Not him. Not Alexandros Karedes. What she admired was his long, leanly muscled body. His wide shoulders and broad chest. Narrow hips and long legs. The black-as-midnight hair, the dark eyes, the face that Praxiteles might have chiseled from the finest marble.
He was even more beautiful nude.
She remembered that. The corded muscles in his arms. The ridged abs. The powerful thrust of his penis rising from a cluster of dark curls…
Maria swung away and went to the workshop end of the loft.
Forget that. Block it from her mind. Besides, despite all that about the contract, he couldn’t mean to enforce such a demand. The more she thought about it, the more assured she grew that the sleep-with-me nonsense was just a particularly nasty way of reminding her that she had no standing in his world.
Fine, she thought, plucking a big leather tote from a shelf and sweeping a handful of tools into it, absolutely fine. Let him play his stupid games. One month, that was all, a month of his bullying tactics and then—
Unless she was wrong.
What if he was serious? What if he really expected her to sleep with him? Well, not ‘sleep’. She remembered that one night in his bed. They hadn’t slept at all. He’d taken her over and over, driven her out of her mind each time, made her do things…
No. Her breath caught.
He hadn’t ‘made’ her do anything. She’d wanted to do them, things she’d heard of and read about but never, ever imagined she’d want to do.
And would never do again.
Blindly, she grabbed another handful of tools and dumped them in the tote.
What she’d told him was true. If he insisted on holding her to their devil’s bargain, she would not participate. She would lie in his bed but she would not move. She’d let his hands seek out every shadowed valley. Let him put his mouth on hers. On her breasts. Between her thighs. She’d let him do everything he wanted but she would not react, she would not, would not…
She gasped as Alex grabbed the tote from her, snapped the lock, then hoisted it and her suitcase from the floor.
“We’re leaving.”
“I need the rest of those tools—or maybe you thought I work gold and precious stones with tweezers and a crowbar?”
“Did you not hear me when I said you will have the studio of your dreams?”
“I heard you. I still want my own things. It’s how people are, when they’ve worked at the same job for a while. They want the stuff they’re familiar with, whether it’s a pen or a chisel. I know that’s difficult for you to get your head around, considering that you’ve
