Katrakis's Last Mistress (9 page)

“But you have spent time with her now,” Peter said, with a shrug. “I do not need to tell you how difficult it is to keep her in line, do I?”

Nikos wanted to destroy Peter. He told himself that was the way he would feel no matter what the man had said, simply because of who he was, but he knew better. He knew exactly why he wanted to wrap his hands around Peter Barbery’s throat.

It made an alarm sound deep within him. But, defying all logic, he ignored it.

“I do not find it difficult at all,” he said quietly.

“Then you must have abilities that I do not,” Peter said, in a sneering voice that Nikos did not much care for. “I confess that our father found her so tiresome that he washed his hands of her years ago.”

“I am, in fact, standing right here,” Tristanne said crisply, her brown eyes snapping with temper—and something far darker. “I can hear you.”

Peter smirked, but continued to gaze at Nikos. “Or perhaps your definition of
keeping her in line
and mine differ,” he said with a sniff. “She is too insolent by half. A trait she gets, no doubt, from her mother.”

“My mother is many things,” Tristanne said with marked calm. Nikos admired her smile, so pointed and bright, and her seeming ease. He believed neither. “But insolent is not one of them. Come now, Peter. Must we air our family laundry in public? I am certain Nikos must be bored to tears.”

“And by all means,” Peter said in that oily voice, “you must keep Katrakis happy.”

Nikos felt her tense again next to him, as if she was contemplating hurling herself at her brother and pummeling him into a pulp with her fists. Or perhaps that was only his own desire, projected upon her. Either way, the conversation had
served its purpose. Nikos wanted to waste no more time on Peter Barbery than strictly necessary.

“You will excuse us,” he said abruptly to Peter, dismissing him with an offhanded arrogance he knew would enrage the other man. “I must circulate.”

“Of course,” Peter said, with an icy nod. He turned his gaze on his sister. She smiled at him, if something that frigid could pass for a smile. And then Peter moved off into the crowd without a backward glance.

Giving into an urge he could not name, and did not want to admit, Nikos slid his arm around her bare shoulders, pulling her closer to the expanse of his chest.

Tristanne looked up at him then, her eyes dark and stormy. He could not sort through the emotion he saw there. But he could see that same fire banked in her that he knew was in him, even now. She was too responsive. Too aware of his every move. How was he to resist that? Why was he bothering to try?

This is all part of your revenge
, he reminded himself.
Even this. Especially this.
But he was not certain, suddenly, if he believed it.

Nikos handed her the drink he had procured for her, having foregone his own when he’d seen her brother approach her, and noted that her hand was trembling slightly as she took the wineglass from him. It was the only outward sign he could see that her brother had affected her.

“You and your brother do not get along,” he observed in a low voice. It was an absurd understatement, and her mouth curved into something near a smile.

“In our family, emotions were viewed as the enemy,” she said. “Woe betide the person who showed them, no matter the circumstances. We were expected to be perfect little automatons, smiling on command, and attending to my father’s wishes without so much as an altered expression.” She shrugged, and stepped away, out from under his arm. He let
her go, reluctantly. “So you see, I am not certain Peter gets along with anyone. But he would never show it either way.” She did not look at him, and Nikos could not understand why he wanted her to. Badly. She took a careful sip from her glass instead.

Nikos could not make sense of his own urges. Everything was proceeding exactly as he’d planned it, aside from today’s strange interlude in the rain. He was squiring the Barbery heiress in front of cameras, at an event filled with business associates and gossipmongers. To say nothing of her despicable brother. The fact that they were an item would be assumed—and there would be few who would not speculate about any relationship between Nikos Katrakis and a Barbery. Nikos was not the only one with a long memory. When it came time to spurn her as Althea had been spurned years ago, it would be all the more devastating, all the more embarrassingly public. He was sure of it. It was just as he wanted it.

But all he could really concentrate on was that damned dress.

It licked over her curves, plastered itself to them and dared any man in the vicinity to notice another woman in all of Florence. Nikos could not tear his eyes away from her. She stood out like a ripe, hot flame, begging to be touched. She did not look trashy, as he had intended, thinking it some kind of punishment for her obstinacy. In truth, he had expected her to refuse to wear the dress at all.

But instead, she had beaten him at his own game. The dress was pure sex, a wicked invitation to her lush, tight body. And yet she looked almost aristocratic, as if the tight dress were the perfect accessory for her beauty, her position. It was the serene smile she wore, as if she had never been more comfortable in her life that she was in that scant dress, standing on the arm of a man who made no attempt to hide the fact that he would much prefer to be deep inside her than
attending this function. Surely everyone could see his desires, written across his face. He hardly cared.

He could not remember ever wanting another woman more.

“You are staring at me,” she said after a long moment. The tension spun out between them, shimmering and unmistakable, and Nikos knew that he was finished waiting. He had to have her, and to hell with his reasons
why.
It felt as if it had been years. Decades. A lifetime.

“You are mesmerizing,” he said, his voice low. “But surely you know it.”

“You are the one who found this dress,” she said. Finally she looked at him. Her eyes were melted chocolate, rich and dark, a temptation he could no longer resist. “I am merely wearing it.”

“It is the way you wear it,” he told her, standing too close, not daring to touch her as every cell in his body demanded. Not here. Not in public. Not where he would have to stop. “I want to take it off you. With my teeth.”

T
HE
ride back to the flat passed in a liquid kind of silence, heavy and weighted, yet shimmering with unmistakable heat.

She had not agreed to anything, Tristanne reminded herself. She had only gazed at him and that addicting fire in his dark eyes, and he had not said another word. He had led her from the courtyard, fetched the car from the valet and handed her into it with a quiet chivalry completely at odds with the frank sensual hunger in his gaze.

Before she knew it they were back in that vast loft of a living room high above the ancient streets. She was caught between the epic grandeur of the Duomo on the other side of the window behind her and the heavy front door to the flat that Nikos shut tight and bolted, locking them in.

Locking
her
in.

Suddenly the enormous space seemed to contract, until there was nothing but that hot, hard gleam in his dark eyes. Tristanne felt her heart beat, wild and loud, in her throat, her temples, her chest, her sex. She wanted to run, then—run through the old streets and over the cobblestones, run and run and run as if that might make this feeling disappear, as if she could leave it behind somehow. That same thought that had troubled her earlier in the evening returned, with force. She could not escape him. She would never be free of him.
But not, she thought now with devastating insight, because he would chase her—but because for all her panic and her pounding heart, she did not move. Could not move. Did not
want
to move.

Dragon
, she thought almost helplessly, and she knew with a deep certainty that she was about to see his real fire—the flames she had been dancing around since the moment she’d met him. The powerful conflagration that had always been there, waiting in his dark gaze, his mocking smile, while she’d tried to talk her way out of exactly this moment. The fire that she knew would consume her, immolate her, turn her into nothing more than ash.

Still, she did not turn away from him. She did not scream, or run for her room, or for the streets, or do anything except hold his gaze. She did not understand how she could be so fascinated with him even when she knew he was the reason for her panic. She did not know how now, when it mattered the most, she could be so heedless of her own self-preservation. He stood opposite her, that half smile carved into the sculpted leanness of his hard jaw, his dark eyes making the kind of sensual promises that made her feel shaky, intoxicated.

“Come here,” he said, his voice a ribbon of sound across the elegant room, seductive and stirring. Tristanne felt it against her skin like a caress. Like another one of his promises, the ones her body ached for—the ones she knew she had to fight off at all costs.

“I don’t think so,” she said. She hadn’t meant to say it—had she? She only knew that she could not let this happen. She could not surrender to this man.
She could not.
And not only because of her ulterior motives. She coughed slightly. “I think, in fact, that I will stay over here instead.”

His smile deepened, turned dangerous in ways that made her nipples peak and her belly tauten, further signs that she was in so far over her head, she might as well consider herself half-drowned.

“Of course not.” But he did not seem angry, or even particularly tense. Instead his gaze moved over her, sending heat flashing across every place on her overtly displayed body that his eyes touched. When his eyes met hers again, he seemed almost relaxed. Almost. “Why am I not surprised?”

“You promised…” she began, but she lost track of the sentence because he moved, that long, rangy body eating up the distance between them with sure strides. He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it aside, in the general direction of the grand sofa that commanded one wall. Never taking his eyes from hers, he removed his cuff links in a few quick jerks and dropped them on the wide, wooden coffee table.

He stalked toward her, and she knew he was doing it deliberately. Openly. She could not seem to summon breath to fill her lungs, much less the will to step back, to avoid him.

“No,” he said, as he came to a stop a scant few inches in front of her. His voice was soft, his gaze so hot, so terribly, impossibly hot, and she felt an echo of that dangerous fire flash through her. “No, I did not promise you a thing, Tristanne.”

“Of course you did,” she contradicted him desperately, that thrumming, tightening panic making her scowl at him. “And even if you did not, what does it matter? Surely the great Nikos Katrakis does not have to take unwilling women to his bed!”

“Do you see such a creature in this flat?” he asked, his eyes molten gold and impossible to look away from. “Perhaps you see unicorns, too?”

“You cannot imagine that anyone could turn you down, can you?” she threw at him, her head spinning, her chest tight, as if she had in fact been running all this time, putting all of Florence between her and this man.

Instead of what she was actually doing, which was simply standing there, hoping her legs would hold her up, hoping the bravado that had gotten her through every other complicated
interaction with this man would keep her going just a little bit longer. Just this one night more.

He smiled then, a real smile, for all that it was stamped with a deeply male satisfaction that seared through her, making her eyes heat and her sex pulse in want, in need. In that instinctive, insane response to him that she could not seem to control, nor reason away.

“I cannot imagine that
you
can turn me down, Tristanne,” he said quietly, that undercurrent of certainty, of command, somehow more shattering than anything he might have said. “But by all means, prove me wrong.”

He began to unbutton his shirt as he stood there, looking down at her like some kind of ancient god, all arrogant male confidence and power. Tristanne swallowed convulsively as her eyes, of their own accord, dropped to follow the widening swathe of smooth, olive-toned skin, brushed with a dusting of jet-black hair.

She could not remember her arguments, her strategies. It was as if the entire world had disappeared—all she was, all she had been, all she had planned to do—and all she wanted was to touch the hard male flesh he was unveiling so close in front of her. Taunting her, she was sure. Torturing her.

“I don’t know what you’re doing,” she managed to say, somehow. “This display is highly unlikely to make me change my mind. I told you on the boat—”

“We are not on the boat,” he said, amusement and fierce, unmistakable intent in his gaze, in his voice.

He peeled his shirt back from the hard planes of his chest and let it drop from his arms, and then there was no more hiding from his stark male beauty, rough and compelling, hard-worn steel covered in satin. He was the most glorious man she had ever seen, and she was trembling with the effort it took to keep her hands away from the expanse of smooth, muscled
male
that stood so tantalizingly close.
So close.
She
curled her hands into tight balls, her fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her palms.

“Nikos…” she whispered, and she knew then that she was lost. All she had was her bravado, her reckless, hopeless willingness to fight the inevitable against all odds. To throw words at him in desperation, because she had nothing else. And if she could not deflect him, if she could not keep him at arm’s length…

“I told you,” he said in that velvet and whiskey voice that thrilled her deep in her feminine core, in ways she did not dare admit to herself. “You need only tell me that you have reached your limits. You need only say the word.”

There was a moment then, shimmering and tense, when she wavered. When she thought in a brief burst of something darker than mere bluster that she could do it, that she could say the one small word that would end this. As she should. As she knew she should. She opened her mouth to say what she knew she ought to say, what she knew she must say if she was to survive this encounter with this tempting, impossible man.

“Nikos…” she breathed.

The fire in his dark gold eyes flared to a blaze, and his mouth moved into a hard, triumphant curve.

“That is not the word,” he said, satisfaction coloring his low, knowing tone.

But she still did not, could not, say it.

He reached over, and traced the shape of her cheek with one large, confident hand. His palm was too hot, his fingers too clever. Her skin was too sensitive, too raw. But, unaccountably, she felt herself sway toward his hand, not away from it.

“Tell me to stop,” he urged her, his eyes nearly black now with a passion she could not help but feel, humming through her like electricity, making her yearn for things she knew on some deep, primitive level would destroy her.

Giving in to an urge that was so intense it nearly felt like pain, Tristanne reached over and placed her palms against the wall of his chest. Heat exploded through her hands and ricocheted up her arms, searing a path that led directly to her swollen breasts, her aching sex. He hissed in a breath, then let it out in a sound that was too harsh to be a laugh.

“Tell me to stop,” he said again, a taunt, and then he pulled her toward him and fitted his mouth to hers.

The dark sorcery of his mouth, his taste, overwhelmed her. Tristanne forgot everything. He kissed her like they would both perish if he stopped, and she kissed him back as if she believed him. She tasted the warm, tanned skin of his strong neck, let her hands trace the magnificent male architecture of his ridged abdomen, so much heat and power, all of it like warm, hard rock beneath her hands.

His hands dove into her hair, anchoring her head in place so he could tease her lips with his, tasting her again and again, pausing only to whisper words in Greek she could not understand, hot and dark words that inflamed her, made her try to move closer to him, to press against his wicked body with her own.

She felt the room tilt and whirl around her, and realized only as her back met the softest suede, that he had picked her up and laid her down on the sofa. He stretched out above her.

Finally,
she thought, as his body came up hard against hers. It was too much and it was not enough, and she could not stop touching him.

“Tell me,” he said roughly, as his hard chest crushed her breasts with a delicious pressure, as her hips cradled his maleness, hard and hot, as she gasped in delight and a kind of sensual terror. “Tell me, Tristanne.”

Some part of her objected, in some dim corner of her mind—how could he still have the presence of mind to taunt her when she was very nearly in pieces? And yet the same
deep, feminine part of her that had warned her away from this man knew, now, that her power lay not in words, but in an age-old knowledge that seemed to flood into her as she stared up at his face, so dark and determined above her.

She did not speak. She merely moved her hips in a lazy circle, and had the instant satisfaction of making him groan and grow, if possible, harder against her. He muttered something incoherent, and took her mouth again, his own insistent, demanding.

She met his demands, gloried in them. His hands slicked down the sides of that scandalous dress, tracing the curves he had displayed so unapologetically for all of Florence to see. He moved from her mouth, tracing a searing path down to her breasts, tasting them through the material. Hot, wet heat. Tristanne arched against the delicate torture of his mouth, gasping, as a tremor snaked through her, lighting her up from her sex to the tips of her toes.

His dark eyes caught hers, then, as he reached between them, his movements sure, his gaze like some kind of heat lightning. He pulled the stretchy fabric up around her waist, and then released his own trousers. As if they had done this a thousand times before, as if she knew his moves as well as her own, she wrapped her legs around his hips.

Tristanne felt that mad fever break over her, making her flush with want, with heat, with hunger. She moved against him mindlessly, helplessly. He angled his hips, held her thigh in his strong, commanding grasp, and in one, sure stroke, sheathed himself deep inside her.

She might have screamed. She thought she did—she could hear the echo of it, the force of it, ricocheting through her, the pleasure almost too much, almost too great to bear.

“Tell me to stop, Tristanne.” It was a hoarse whisper. A taunt, or perhaps a dare. She was too far gone to care which.

“Stop!” she threw at him, fiercely, surprising them both.
He froze at once.
“Talking,”
she hissed. Her hands fisted against his broad, hard back. “Stop talking!”

A breathless, impossible moment. His hard length so deep inside of her she could not tell where she ended and he began, the pleasure emanating in waves from every place their bodies touched, the dress plastered to her, trapping her—and his dark, addictive gaze, seeing so far inside of her she knew she should be afraid of what he would know.

But instead, he moved.

She fit him like a glove. Like a benediction.

She was wrapped around him, her spicy-sweet scent and her soft moans almost too much for him to bear. Almost. He pulled himself back from the edge with iron control, and angled himself back so he could look down at her.

She was wild with passion beneath him, her eyes dark with need, her lips parted. Her hair was tangled from his fingers, her mouth slightly reddened from his kisses. A rosy glow brightened her skin, made her look even warmer, even hotter, than she felt against him. The scarlet dress wrapped around her lushness like a candy wrapper. She looked edible. Her hips moved beneath his, demanding and hungry, as if she could not get enough of him.

Mine,
he thought again, from a dark place inside of him he did not care to explore, yet still rang through him with the force of a vow. He ignored it, and concentrated instead on those tiny noises she made in the back of her throat. On her long, shapely calves that were pressed against his hips, urging him on, deeper, closer.

He thrust into her slowly, deliberately, setting a lazy, unhurried pace that soon had her panting in a mixture of need and frustration. Her hips rose to meet his. Her back arched as she fought to get closer, to speed him on. He ignored his own hunger, her wordless demands, even the pounding of his own blood, and kept it slow. Easy.