any form of contraception?’ Xan persisted tautly.
‘No. I was planning to sort something out this week but the very tight timetable you imposed on me prevented me from doing anything in advance,’ she said shortly.
‘You should’ve told me you were a virgin!’ Xan lashed back at her with unconcealed censure.
‘Why?’ Elvi countered. ‘It was none of your business!’
‘It became my business when you were planning to have a sexual relationship with me,’ Xan contradicted with controlled savagery.
‘As you well know, you were the one who planned to have a sexual relationship with me and I had to move in here barely twelve hours after agreeing, so my planning anything didn’t come into it!’
Xan shuddered at the burn of being force-fed the truth on an unappetising plate. He and no one else had brought about this disaster. His arrogance, his ego had resulted in this mess and it was a lesson he had never expected to receive because for too many years he had been invincible, his every move lauded, his every deal a phenomenal success. It seemed he was not the man he had been raised to become, not the person he had believed himself to be. It was a pivotal moment for him, glancing round the spacious room where he had spent so many hours with forgettable women and inwardly cringing at how he had foolishly believed he had it made with that set-up, because that detached conveyor-belt system had now gone badly wrong for him. And he still didn’t know how to fix it...
Elvi’s clasped hands round her knees tightened, her knuckles showing white below her skin. She was a little ball of rigid tension in recognition of his. Presumably he was disappointed. That was why he was angry. Angry not with her, she sensed, but with himself for a poor choice of playmate.
‘I’m not what you expected,’ she said for him.
Xan swallowed hard. ‘No,’ he conceded, wondering how the hell he was supposed to make amends. ‘You surprised me. Very few people manage to do that.’
Let her go, Xan reasoned. It was the obvious answer to fixing what was wrong but he looked at her, all wrapped round herself as if she was trying to make herself small, and his chest tightened and he hauled in a long rasping breath, his broad chest expanding. He didn’t want the obvious answer and he was still a selfish bastard, he acknowledged, because he still wanted her. Even when he could see the shininess of tears in her bright blue eyes. What did that say about him? That he was capable of wanting an unwilling woman? No way would he touch her again without an invitation from her, he told himself squarely, rationalising an irrational decision. He would make amends. He didn’t know how but in some mysterious way he would manage that feat. He was very clever. He would work it out eventually.
‘I think I’ll eat that lunch you were kind enough to make me,’ Xan said abruptly.
Astonishment flashed through Elvi and her lashes lowered on her anxious eyes. He was still imprinted on her eyelids, a spectacular bronzed man naked as a jaybird, standing there like a stone statue, his discomfiture obvious to her. What was the matter with him? The soft sounds of him dressing, the click of cuff links snapping closed, the sound of a zip penetrated her shell of silence. She had had sex for the very first time and he had disappointed her because he had denied the intimacy of the experience, pulling away as soon as he was done, and none of the pleasure he had given her had made up for that distance and reserve.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Xan prompted, more uncomfortable than he had ever been in his entire life with a woman.
‘I’m lonely,’ Elvi muttered truthfully. ‘I’m used to having my family around—’
‘I’m here,’ Xan reminded her.
‘But you’re not cuddly,’ Elvi told him apologetically.
Xan grimaced. ‘No. Is that what you like?’
‘It’s not the kind of physical you’re used to,’ Elvi guessed wryly, wondering how she had given herself to such a man, wondering how she could look into those hard, dark but stunning eyes and want to give herself again, want to make him smile for once and hear him laugh.
‘I hug my mother,’ he declared in his own defence.
‘Even you have to have one weakness,’ Elvi quipped.
‘Lunch,’ Xan reminded her. ‘Why don’t you join me?’
Wrapping the sheet round herself with innate modesty, Elvi headed into the other bathroom and went for a very quick shower. In some ways, she was in shock. His possession had hurt more than she had been prepared for and then had come the pleasure that had also been more than she had expected. For the first time, she understood why Xan Ziakis was so hooked on sex. He was good at it too, she conceded ruefully, because he had turned a bad start into something truly amazing and then trashed that by moving away from her afterwards, as if, once he got his satisfaction, he was keen to forget who had given it to him. It had made her feel used, unappreciated. She should have anticipated that. Sex was only sex for him. He didn’t look to receive anything beyond that fleeting physical thrill.
He was still in the bedroom, his back turned to her when she emerged breathless from hurrying out of the fancy dressing room. She had worn something new from what Sylvia had described as a basic ‘capsule’ wardrobe, but which covered more garments than she had ever owned in her entire life at one and the same time. And apparently, even more clothes tailored to her precise requirements would eventually arrive. The skirt she had chosen was short and flirty, the top thin silk, the sandals high-heeled. Did she look like a proper mistress now? she wondered unhappily. Would he actually look at her again? For some reason, he seemed to be avoiding looking. The strangeness of his behaviour was starting to wear on her. She hated the knowledge that she didn’t know what was going on inside his head. But why did she even want to know? That was a question she couldn’t answer.
‘Lunch,’ she murmured, thankful she had only made a salad and not something that would have spoiled.
Xan swung round, immediately noticing the clothing, tensing because it gave her a much more sophisticated look than her own clothing did, reminding him that right from the start he had tried to make her into something she wasn’t, ignoring the signs that she was different, an individual, trying to make her over into the kind of sleek, faceless sex object he was comfortable with. That suspicion unnerved him because he wasn’t accustomed to examining his own motives or to seeing how his stubborn determination to treat all his mistresses the same had ensured that he flatly refused to acknowledge that Elvi might be unique.
Xan was so tall, so dark he snarled up the breath in Elvi’s dry throat. A jolt of wanton response curled warm and low in her pelvis, which amused her because had he tried to touch her again she probably would have screamed because she was sore, way too sore to desire further intimacy.
In a determined movement, she left the bedroom and went into the kitchen to serve the chicken salad. While she would have been happy to eat at the kitchen table, she reckoned Xan would baulk and she carried the plates out to the more formal dining area. He sank down into a chair within seconds of her taking a seat. For an instant, she allowed herself to look at him. The guy was insanely hot from those killer cheekbones to the shadow of stubble accentuating the fullness of his sensual lips. Heat mushroomed up inside her and she immediately dropped her head to eat.
Xan glanced around himself, disliking the familiarity of the room and the recollections of how he had spent his time there. He would
