APOLLO WOKE, it was starting to turn gray outside. And Elle was curled up around him like a cat. He had no doubt, even for a moment, who he was lying in bed with. Who he had fallen asleep with.
He had never been close enough with a woman to even contemplate letting his guard down enough to fall asleep with her. In the past, the moment he finished making love with a woman, he left. There was no reason to linger. Sex, in his experience, could be perfectly impersonal. Sleeping with someone had seemed an intimacy he did not wish to contend with.
But he had fallen asleep with Elle, after she had asked him to stay. He had not imagined he would sleep. But it seemed natural. To hold her in his arms while they both drifted off. Bathing in the afterglow of the pleasure they had shared.
Suddenly, panic overtook him. He had a plan. A plan to make the St. James family pay for the sins they had committed against his family. To avenge the death of his father. The loss of his family fortune. The strange relationship Apollo’s mother had been forced into by David St. James.
And every indignity he had suffered. Every moment he had been made to feel like he had not earned his position at the prestigious boarding school he went to. Every time he had to defend his placement in the boardroom because he had come from such humble beginnings.
She was weakening that plan. She was weakening his determination. And he could not let that stand.
He extricated himself from her hold, rolling out of bed. He forked his fingers through his hair, looking around, before remembering he had no clothes in her room. He wrenched open the door, walking down the hall completely naked. All of the staff would have gone home. Anyway, they knew better than to stare too long if they saw something shocking in his home.
Instead of going to his bedroom, he went into his office, taking a bottle of whiskey from the shelf to the left of his desk. He poured a healthy amount, and took a fortifying drink. Elle drove him to drink. This was the second time he’d turned to alcohol to deal with the effects she had on him.
Most women didn’t affect him at all.
He had been determined to keep her with him until the attraction between them burned out, but he could see that something else was heating up between them, something he had no hope of burning out half so quickly.
Rage took him over. He didn’t want to send her away. He could imagine it, telling her to leave. Never touching her again. Never spending another night with her. Anger overtook him, completely, dictating his next action. He took the half-full glass of whiskey and hurled it at the wall, watching the glass shatter, feeling no remorse at all.
The fact that the very thought of her leaving made him feel so helpless, so enraged was only more evidence that he had to send her away.
If he was going to take his revenge, he would have to take it now.
* * *
They had forgotten to tint the windows. That was Elle’s first thought when she woke up the next morning. Her second thought was that she was alone. True to his word, Apollo had not spent the night with her. She shouldn’t be surprised, but after she had confessed to him that he was her only lover, she supposed she had expected...something.
She supposed that she was foolish.
For wishing that things could be different. For wishing that something had changed between them. She didn’t know what.
She sat up, clutching the blankets to her chest. And suddenly, Apollo came bursting through the door. “Good morning,” he said, his mouth set into a grim line.
“Good morning,” she said.
During all of the time she’d spent here, he had never come into her room unannounced. He had never come in unless it was to make love. He did not look like he had...that on his mind. Not in the least. He looked... He looked like he had come in with demons on his heels.
“I trust you slept well,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, a strange, uneasy feeling settling in the center of her chest. She didn’t know why. She only knew that something wasn’t right.
“I think it is time you left,” he said, his words cold.
“But we... I don’t understand,” she said. “Yesterday we...”
“That was yesterday. And this is today.”
She thought back to last night, to what had transpired between them. Had she done something wrong? Had he not liked her wearing the bikini and reminding him of that day? No. Yesterday he had enjoyed it. She knew he had.
“I’m not ready to leave,” she said. “We agreed we needed to burn this out and I don’t think it’s burned out.”
“A difference of opinion,” he said, his tone hard. “For me, it is over.”
“Apollo...”
“Also, effective immediately you have been terminated from your position as CEO of Matte.”
“I... What?” She couldn’t make sense of his words. She was naked, in bed, after having just spent the night making love with him, and he was firing her.
Two weeks. Two weeks she had spent with this man. In his arms. Kissing him, sharing her body with him...sharing everything.
“You heard me,” he continued. His tone was flat. His eyes were flat. He was like a stranger. Only yesterday she had felt that she’d known him more intimately, more deeply than any other person on earth. And now she doubted it. She truly did. “I grow tired of the charade, Elle. Truth be told, I was planning on drawing this out longer. I was anticipating feeling a great sense of pleasure when I let you know that I was simply using you to hurt your father. I planned to set you up as the face of the company, to bring you into greater prominence so that when I made it very clear that I had taken all of your father’s assets and left him ruined, the world would know exactly who he was, exactly what that meant. But frankly, I find it’s just too tiring. So, I will have to be content in my revenge all on my own.”
Her head was spinning. Revenge? She had been under no illusions that there was any affection between Apollo and her, but if anyone should want revenge, it was her. “You... You used me.”
“Did you really think that I wanted you?”
She felt like he had driven a spike through her chest. The cold, black words matching his cold, black eyes, making it impossible to pretend she had misheard. “Of course I did. As far as I know men can’t fake...” She gestured toward the front of his pants. “They have to at least be attracted to a woman.”
“It isn’t just women who can lie back and think of England. What I really wanted, Elle, was to let your father know that I’ve taken everything from him. What would he think if he knew—?”
“Don’t you dare, you bastard.”
“Then I would have his company, and his daughter.”
“You don’t have me,” she said, her throat tightening. “Two weeks, Apollo. Two weeks I gave you... I did...” She swallowed hard, panic taking over, tears threatening to fall. “I held nothing back from you! I trusted you with my body.”
“A
