point in continuing to argue with him when all he had to do was to mention the money to devastate her every line of defence.
Hard, tough, unforgivably ruthless, she reminded herself, wondering how she had allowed herself to forget those things about him while she had been giving him free use of her body—as a part of their deal.
She didn’t look at him as she walked past him and out into the hallway. She kept her head lowered when he stepped in front of her to lead the way through the apartment and into a room lit by flickering candle-light and another glass wall. Bernice was there, arranging the last pieces of cutlery on a white linen tablecloth intimately set for two. Candles flickered. Beyond the table stood the night view of Athens, making the most romantic backdrop any woman could wish for.
Any romantically hopeful woman, that was.
Friction stung the atmosphere and the housekeeper smiled and said something in Greek to Leo. He replied in the same language as he held out a chair for Natasha to use. After that there was no privacy to speak of anything personal because a maid arrived to serve them. Natasha had a feeling Leo had arranged it that way so he didn’t get into yet another dogfight with her, but the tension between them made it almost impossible to swallow anything, though she did try to eat. When she couldn’t manage to swallow another beautifully presented morsel, she stared at the view beyond the glass window, or down at the leftover food on her plate, or at the crisp white wine he had poured into the glass she was fingering without drinking—anywhere so long as it wasn’t at him.
Then he shattered it. Without any hint at all that one swift glance from his eyes had sent the maid disappearing out of the room, Leo suddenly leant forwards and stretched a hand out across the table and brazenly cupped her left breast.
‘I knew it,’ he husked. ‘You are wearing no bra, you provoking witch.’
Pleasure senses went into overdrive. Natasha shot like a sizzling firework rocket to her feet. He rose up more slowly, face taut, his dark eyes flickering gold in the candle-light.
‘Don’t ever touch me like that without my permission again,’ she shook out in a pressured whisper, then she turned to stumble around her chair and made a blind dash out of the room.
The lift stood there with its doors conveniently open. Natasha did not even have to think about it as she dashed inside and sent the lift sweeping down to the ground floor. Outside in the garden the thick, humid air was filled with the scent of oranges. Soft lighting drew her down winding pathways between carefully nurtured shrubs and beneath the orange laden trees. She didn’t know where she was heading for, all she did know was that she needed to find that dark corner she could huddle in so she could finally—finally give in to the tears she’d held back too long.
She found it in the shape of a bench almost hidden beneath the dipping branches of a tree close to the high stuccoed wall that surrounded the whole property. Dropping down onto the bench, she pulled her knees up to her chin, leant her forehead on them, then let go and wept. She wept over everything. She just trawled it all out and took a good look at everything from the moment she’d opened the message on her mobile telephone that morning to the moment Leo had touched her breast across the dinner table—and she wept and she wept and she wept.
Leo leant against a trunk of the tree and listened. Inside he had never felt so bad in his life. The way he had been treating her all day had been nothing short of unforgivable. The way he’d made love to her when he’d known she should have been doing this instead was going to live on his conscience for a long time to come.
But the way he had reached across the dinner table and touched her just now was, without question, the lowest point to which he had stooped.
And listening to her weep her soul into shreds was his deserved punishment. Except that he couldn’t stand to listen to it any longer and, with a sigh, he levered away from the tree trunk and went to sit down beside her, then lifted her onto his lap.
She tried to fight him for a second or two, but he just murmured, ‘Shh, sorry,’ and held her close until she stopped fighting him and let the tears flow again.
When it was finally over and she quietened, he stood up with her in his arms and took her back inside. He did it without saying a single word, ignoring the dozen or so security cameras he knew would have been trained on them from the moment Natasha ran outside.
She was asleep, he realised when he lay her down on the bed. With the care of a man dealing with something fragile, he slipped off her shoes and her skirt, then covered her with the sheets.
Straightening up again, he continued to stand there for a few seconds looking down at her, then he turned and walked out of the bedroom and into his custom-built office.
A minute later, ‘Juno,’ he greeted. ‘My apologies for the lateness of the hour, but I have something I need you to do….’
CHAPTER SEVEN
NATASHA drifted awake to soft daylight seeping in through the wall of curved glass and to instant recall that sent her head twisting round on her pillow to check out the other side of the bed.
The sudden pound her heart had taken up settled back to its normal pace when she discovered that she was alone, the only sign that she had shared the bed at all through the night revealed by the indent she could see in the other pillow and the way Leo had thrown back the sheets when he’d climbed out.
Then the whispering suggestion of a sound beyond the bedroom door told her what it was that had awoken her in the first place, and she was up, rolling off the bed and running for the bathroom, only becoming aware as she did so that she was still wearing the white top she’d spent most of the day yesterday in.
So he’d shown a bit of rare sensitivity by not stripping her naked, she acknowledged with absolutely no thought of gratitude stirring in her blood. Leo had taken her to pieces yesterday brick by brutal brick, so one small glimpse of humanity in him because he’d put her limp self to bed and had the grace to leave her with some dignity in place did not make her feel any better about him.
She stepped into the wet room, with her hair safely wrapped away inside a fluffy white towel, frowned and at the range of keypads and dials, trying to work out how she could take a shower without having to endure a thorough dousing at the same time. Leo Christakis was one of life’s takers, she decided. He saw an opportunity and went for it. He’d wanted her so he just moved in on her like a bulldozer and scooped her up.
Water jets suddenly hit her from all angles, making mockery of the buttons she’d pushed to stop them from doing it. A gasping breath shot from her as the jets stung her flesh. The sensation was so acute it made her look down at her body, half expecting to see that it had altered physically somehow, but all she saw was her normal curvy shape with its pale skin, full breasts and rounded hips with a soft cluster of dusky curls shaping the junction with her thighs.
But she had changed inside where it really mattered, Natasha accepted. She’d become a woman in a single day. One stripped of her silly daydreams about love and romance, then made to face cold reality—that you didn’t need love or romance to fall headlong into pleasures of the flesh.
You didn’t need anything but the desire to reach out and take it when it was right there in front of you to take.
Rico was like that. So was her sister, Cindy. They saw, they desired, so they took. It was there to take, so why not? Now she might as well accept that she’d joined the ranks of takers because she could stand here letting the shower jets inflict their torture
