in his eyes masking his shock at her assertion that her life in London had not been one of luxury and over-indulgence, as he had assumed.
Of course she could be lying, he mused. Experience had taught him that most women were accomplished liars—none more so than Yalena, when she had been sleeping with one of his closest friends at the same time as swearing her love for him. But his gut instinct told him that Tahlia was telling the truth about her financial situation. No wonder she had agreed to be his mistress in return for him buying her father’s company, he thought cynically. He knew from the numerous photos of her in the press that she liked to dress in haute couture. No doubt she would spend her share of the proceeds of the sale of Reynolds Gems on restocking her wardrobe.
He glanced at his watch, and then strolled towards the en suite bathroom. ‘We’re running seriously late, so I’ll have to wait until tonight for the pleasure of taking you to bed,’ he drawled. ‘As for shopping—I will be paying for your clothes. Think of it as one of the perks of being my mistress,’ he said in a harder tone, when she opened her mouth to argue. ‘I want to see you in sexy clothes that flatter your gorgeous body. Not in an outfit that makes you look as though you are auditioning for a role in The Sound of Music.’
Dinner was the ordeal Tahlia had expected. In ordinary circumstances she would have enjoyed the stunning décor and the ambience of the Artemis’s gold-star restaurant, where a celebrated French chef had prepared four superb courses. But from the moment Thanos led her over to the table where his guests were already seated and introduced her as his ‘companion’ she felt so painfully self-conscious—everyone must have guessed she was his mistress—that she could do no more than toy with her food.
As well as the dignitaries from Mykonos, three of Thanos’s top executives were also present, and although everyone spoke in English rather than Greek, her attempts at conversation with them were stilted. They clearly thought she was a bimbo, and one of the executives, a man Thanos had introduced as Antonis Lykaios, watched her avidly throughout the meal, trailing his eyes over her as if he were mentally undressing her.
Tahlia was torn between longing for the evening to be over and praying that it would last for ever—because what was to come next was certain to be a hundred times worse, she brooded. Her eyes were drawn to Thanos. He looked breathtaking tonight, in a black dinner suit and a white silk shirt, his dark hair swept back from his brow and the flickering light from the table’s centrepiece of candles highlighting the sharp edges of his cheekbones. He was urbane, sophisticated, and no doubt a skilful lover, she thought, feeling a rush of shaming heat flood through her when he looked across the table and their glances locked.
The voices around her faded, and she was reminded of the first time she had seen him at the art gallery, when she had felt as though they were the only two people in the universe. She watched his eyes darken with a sensual promise that made her mouth run dry, and butterflies leapt in her stomach. It was not Thanos she was afraid of, she acknowledged bleakly; it was herself and her pathetic inability to resist him. It was utterly ridiculous to feel so drawn to a man who openly admitted that he despised her, but when she had first seen him at Rufus Hartman’s exhibition—before she had learned that he blamed her for his sister’s accident—she had felt an emotional bond with him which defied logic or common sense. A voice in her head had whispered that he was the ‘the one’ she had been waiting all her life to meet.
‘Would you like more wine, Tahlia?’ Antonis Lykaios leaned towards her, proffering a bottle of Chardonnay, and Tahlia was so grateful for the excuse to drag her eyes from Thanos that she forgot how her skin had crawled when Antonis had leered at her and smiled at him.
Across the table Thanos fought the urge to rearrange his junior executive’s handsome face with his fist—before continuing the caveman tactics by throwing Tahlia over his shoulder and carrying her off to his bed. How dared she flirt with Lykaios in front of him? he thought furiously. But what had he expected? In recent months the British tabloids had regularly reported on her energetic love-life with Z-list celebrities. Clearly she would flirt with any man under seventy.
He gave a brief nod to his chief executive, indicating that it was time to bring the evening to an end, before his gaze strayed back to Tahlia. His initial opinion that her outfit was unflattering had been wrong, he thought irritably. At first glance she looked chaste and demure in the high-necked blouse, but look closer and it was possible to see the outline of her breasts beneath the sheer material. His fingers itched to unfasten every one of those tiny buttons and slowly reveal her delectable body. With her pale red-gold hair falling in a silky curtain around her shoulders and a subtle pink gloss on her lips she looked incredibly sexy, and he was infuriated by the knowledge that he was not the only man at the dinner table who could not keep his eyes off her.
The dinner party eventually came to an end, and Tahlia stifled a sigh of relief when the guests stood up from the table. Antonis Lykaios seemed to have taken her smile as a sign that she was interested in him; twice she had had to forcibly remove his hand from her thigh beneath the tablecloth, and she forced herself not to flinch now, when he lifted her fingers to his mouth and kissed them in a theatrical farewell gesture. She saw Thanos’s brows lower in a slashing frown, and her sense of foreboding escalated when they crossed the marble vestibule to the lift and he surveyed her in a brooding silence as they travelled to the top floor.
‘I realise that you automatically flirt with anyone in trousers,’ he drawled as followed her into his suite, discarding his jacket and tie and flinging them carelessly over the back of a chair. ‘But Antonis Lykaios is engaged, and I will not allow you to sink your predatory claws into him.’
‘I pity his fiancée,’ she snapped, her temper flaring at the undisguised contempt in his voice. ‘Your executive was flirting with me, and I’d be grateful if you would tell him to keep his sweaty hands to himself in future.’ She closed her eyes against the pain stabbing at her skull, aware that her headache was due as much to the two glasses of wine she had drunk although she had eaten very little dinner, as to her rising nervous tension. Thanos was heart-stoppingly sexy, with his dark hair falling onto his brow, but he also looked grim and forbidding, and the prospect of giving her virginity to him when he had made it plain that he despised her was suddenly unendurable.
She lifted a hand to massage her temples, and pleaded shakily, ‘Thanos, can we talk?’
His dark brows lifted in an expression of arrogant amusement. ‘Talking is the last thing I have in mind for tonight.’ He strolled towards her and drew her hand away from her face. ‘We made a deal, Tahlia,’ he reminded her, his voice suddenly harsh and his eyes glittering with cold indifference. ‘And now the time has come for you to honour your side of it.’
Her heart was thudding so hard that it hurt to breathe. ‘Please…’ she cried urgently. ‘I swear I had no idea that James was married to your sister…’
She was prevented from saying any more when Thanos placed his finger across her lips. ‘Save your lies—and your tears.’ He surveyed her over-bright eyes dispassionately, and brushed away the single tear that slipped down her cheek with his thumb. ‘I’m not taken in by either,’ he said savagely, and lowered his head, capturing her mouth in a punishing kiss that sought to dominate as he forced her lips apart with a bold flick of his tongue.
Once again he had moved with the speed of a panther, pouncing for the kill, and once again Tahlia was unprepared for the molten heat that swept through her the instant he touched her. What was wrong with her? she wondered despairingly. Pride dictated that she should remain stiff and unresponsive in Thanos’s arms, but he intoxicated her senses so that she could not think logically, and she was conscious only of the slight abrasion of his cheek against hers, the tingling sensation in her breasts as he crushed her against his chest.
Thanos finally lifted his head and stared down at
