“We were. Now we’re talking about the person who’ll make your mother’s gift. What is she like?”
“She is, ah, she is talented.”
Talented, indeed.
“I assumed that,” his father said impatiently. “But what is she like? I am to meet her tonight, at dinner. Will she be able to carry on a conversation with some intelligence, or is she one of those leftover flower children who walks around barefoot?”
Sebastian coughed. Andreas cleared his throat. Alex shot them both looks that promised trouble when they were alone.
“She’s a designer, Father,” he said carefully. “A New Yorker. I’m sure you’ll find her interesting and able to hold her own at the dinner table.”
And more than able to hold her own everywhere else. In bed, for instance, where he should have been with her, right now.
“I assume you’ve put her in a suite at The Grand Hotel.”
“No.” Alex hesitated. “I, ah, I decided to keep her at my house at Apollonia.”
His father stared at him. So did his brothers. Damn it, Alex thought, and felt heat rise in his face.
“Security,” he said quickly. “She’ll be working with a fortune in diamonds.”
“Have we security problems at The Grand?”
“No, of course not. But there are so many tourists …”
“Tourists who pay a thousand Euros a night for a room are not tourists likely to dabble in theft,” Aegeus said, his words heavy with sarcasm.
There was a moment’s silence. Then Sebastian and Andreas spoke at the same time.
“You can never be too sure,” Andreas said.
“Remember that incident in—where was it, Alex? Some hotel in Manhattan?”
His brothers had redeemed themselves. “Exactly,” Alex said. “Security is much better at my place. The gates. The electronics. The guards. I had my guesthouse converted into a workshop for her.”
Aegeus nodded. “Well. Well, yes. Good thinking.”
A compliment. Something rare. Of course, it was a compliment given in response to a lie. He’d placed Maria in his home for reasons that didn’t have a thing to do with anything but lust.
He liked women. He liked sex. He knew what desire was, how anticipation could enhance the moment when a man finally took a woman.
But he’d never behaved like this.
Demanding Maria’s compliance. Damned near forcing her to agree to sleep with him. It had made sense, when he’d planned it. He would use her for his own ends as she had used him—
If that was true, why was his body in this almost constant state of arousal? He’d spent the last hours thinking about her. Imagining her waiting for his arrival. Imagining what he would do when he reached home.
The images, hot and raw, flooded his mind. If he didn’t do something soon, he was going to explode.
“Alex? Are you listening to me? I said—”
“Father.” Alex pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “I’m sorry, but I have to leave.”
Aegeus looked at him in disbelief. “You what?”
“I said I have to—”
“We have not finished discussing the convention center.”
“We finished discussing it three months ago,” Alex said crisply.
His father glared at him. “I don’t like your tone.”
“My apologies, Father. I’m exhausted, that’s all. I’ve flown to New York and back in, what, less than twenty-four hours.”
He forced a smile. “Perhaps we can put off this conversation until tomorrow.”
Aegeus studied his middle son, then nodded.
“Very well.” He rose from his chair. Sebastian and Andreas immediately did the same. “Be prompt for dinner tonight, please. All of you. Alex, tell Ms. Santos your mother and I look forward to meeting her.”
Alex started toward the door. The king called after him.
“Alex? My initial concern about this woman, on reading her proposal, was that she was too young and inexperienced. Now that you’ve spent a bit of time with her, what do you think? How does she strike you?”
Spectacularly beautiful. And spectacularly immoral. And, Thee mou, so desirable he ached to possess her.
“I told you,” Alex said calmly. “She’s very interesting.”
Then he got the hell out of there before his father or, worse, his brothers could ask him any more questions.
The drive home seemed to last an eternity, even though he was at the wheel of his Ferrari and took both the highway and then the winding road to the house at breakneck speed.
Would she be waiting for him? He’d told her to be ready by six; he was an hour early. She might be in the bath. Or undressing, baring her flesh to the waning afternoon light.
Such schoolboy fantasies, and completely demolished when Athenia told him Keeria Santos was in the guesthouse. In the workshop.
The workshop, he thought as he strode down the path to it. Of course. The only allegiance, the only honesty she had was to her work.
It filled him with a rage he knew had no basis in reality.
She should have been in the house. In his bedroom. Dressing for dinner, as he’d told her to. Or waiting for him. For his touch. For the act that would avenge what she had done to him weeks ago.
“Maria,” he barked as he flung open the guesthouse door. “Maria, I told you …”
And he saw her. At the workbench. Her head on her arms. Asleep.
His anger drained away. He felt something new take its place, something he could not name and he swallowed hard, closed the door quietly and stood watching her. Then, slowly, he walked to her.
Her head was turned to the side. Her lashes formed dark crescents against the high arc of her cheekbones; there were purple smudges of exhaustion under her eyes.
My fault, he thought. He had walked into her life… hell, he had bullied his way into her life, then dragged her halfway around the world. Not that he owed her more delicate treatment. It was just that she looked so innocent in her sleep. Her lustrous hair, lying tumbled over one shoulder. Her translucent skin. Her lips, delicately curved.
He could remember their taste.
Not from that last kiss he’d given her hours ago, a kiss given in rage. He remembered her taste from that night in Ellos. How her mouth had trembled beneath his. How her sigh of surrender had mingled with his breath. How he had groaned at the sweetness of her.
He didn’t think. Didn’t question. Instead, he bent down, brushed a soft, silken curl from her cheek. Put his lips to her temple. The pink shell of her ear. The curve of her jaw.
“Maria.” Her name was a whisper. “Maria,” he said again, and when she sighed, he squatted beside her and pressed his lips gently to hers.
Her lashes fluttered.
He kissed her again. Her taste was honeyed. Don’t, he thought, don’t. But what could be wrong with one more kiss? One more sip of nectar from her soft, rosy mouth? Just one last brush of his lips against hers. Just one… And this time, her lips parted to his. Clung lightly to his. Her eyes opened; her pupils were huge and dark.
“Alexandros?”