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Or was it more payback time than safeguard? Payback for the manner in which he had forced her to immediately move in? That made better sense to him, integrating as it did the kind of cunning slyness he hated in her sex but had often experienced. There had been a stepmother who’d tried to seduce him to hit back at his father for his infidelity. There had been mistresses who tried to play games calculated to increase his interest in them, several who told him outrageous lies in an effort to charm more money or jewels out of him. So great was his ire at the suspicion that he had been played by Elvi, he couldn’t even bring himself to look at her again or trust himself to speak.
‘I’m sorry,’ Elvi muttered in the pulsing silence, her hands twisting nervously together in the tense atmosphere. ‘I should have told you when I got into the car earlier but I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t feel comfortable talking about having sex with you because you’re a stranger. I don’t suppose you understand but it would be a lot easier if you would allow me to get to know you first.’
Xan’s lean brown hands clenched into fists. ‘I don’t get to know women I have sex with. That’s not my style,’ he admitted grittily, involuntarily forced out of silence by that naïve little speech of hers. ‘Maybe I missed out on asking the one question I should’ve asked in my office last week...are you a prude? Because, to be brutally blunt, you sound like a hell of a prude and that’s not going to work for me at all.’
Very pale now, Elvi chewed her lower lip and decided not to respond because silence was safer. Not a prude, a virgin, she almost said, and who could tell how he would react to a surprise like that? Perhaps he was already thinking of letting her go again but would that mean he would reinstate the theft charge? Could he even do that? She had no idea and she was scared and apprehensive, plunged into a relationship she had not the smallest idea how to handle with a man that said stuff that chilled her to the marrowbone.
Xan strode back out of the apartment, still maddeningly taut with an arousal unlike anything he had ever felt before and unnerved by it. Let her go, his intelligence told him, cut her free now before it gets even more messy. He wanted her but she could be a disaster waiting to blow up in his face.
He ignored his security team’s open surprise at his almost immediate reappearance, climbed into his limousine and tried to think about walking away fast from Elvi Cartwright because she had taken him to a level of rage he had never felt before and that was disturbing.
Or merely normal? he reasoned, given his sexual frustration. The very last thing he
had expected was to end the night with a cold shower. He was beginning to suspect that Elvi might not have even indulged in a one-night stand. Some nauseating romance with a long-term boyfriend struck him as the more likely base of her sexual experience, he decided cynically. She wanted him to get to know her? Was she a throwback to the Victorian era? Where did she get a weird idea like that when he had asked her to be his mistress?
* * *
Elvi got into the vast bed alone and shivered, still shaken by that confrontation and the kiss that had preceded it. When his mouth had crashed down on hers, she had been overwhelmed by his electrifying sensuality, her physical responses wildly out of her control, but she had pulled back, mustered her strength and finally said what had to be said. And not surprisingly, Xan had been furious because she should have made her position clear at the start of the evening, not at the end, she acknowledged guiltily.
Xan Ziakis wasn’t accustomed to the word no. He was selfish, arrogant and obsessed with sex. Well, work and sex, she adjusted ruefully. He had expected to take her straight to bed and she had dealt clumsily with those expectations, probably because she was the prude he had labelled her. But the concept of sharing her body with someone she didn’t even know properly had proved too much for Elvi to cope with on the spot. When she couldn’t even imagine taking off her clothes for him, she was in trouble and way outside her comfort zone. Why, oh, why had she ever believed that she could give him what he wanted? That she could simply have sex as if it meant nothing?
And even more inexplicably, why was she just a little disappointed that he hadn’t managed to persuade her to change her mind? He hadn’t even tried to persuade her, had he? Had simply announced that she didn’t suit him, rejecting her because she had dared to reject him. Was that it, then? Were they over before they had even begun?
CHAPTER FOUR
SALLY CARTWRIGHT PHONED her daughter mid-morning the next day. ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened,’ she burbled in an excited surge. ‘The theft charge has been dropped. No explanation, nothing, just the assurance that the complaint has been withdrawn and the police have no further interest.’
‘My goodness, that’s wonderful news!’ Elvi declared brightly, relief rolling through her in a rejuvenating wave of energy. It was done. Xan had kept his promise.
Elvi texted him a stiff apology for her lack of confidence, resisting the urge to remind him that he hadn’t trusted her either. In truth she didn’t know what she was wishing for. That he had ditched her and moved on? In which case she would be moving home again. Or was she stuck with the agreement she had made?
Xan was still in a temper with her when he read the text. He was done with her, wasn’t he? Last night had been his warning. When you draped a woman in diamonds, threw in a new wardrobe and the use of a very expensive apartment, you expected something in return...obviously. It infuriated him that that conviction made him feel cheap. It infuriated him that he was tempted to walk out in the middle of his working day and stage a rendezvous with her because he still burned for her. After a sleepless night, the urge to possess Elvi’s glorious body was as strong as ever, undaunted by the difficulty of dealing with her unrealistic expectations.
His thought processes were becoming disturbingly insidious and unfamiliar. Every man was entitled to one mistake, wasn’t he? Why shouldn’t he enjoy the mistake he had made and move on afterwards? He texted her that he would be with her that afternoon and endeavoured to get back into the meeting he was in. But he couldn’t concentrate, not for wondering what she would be wearing, what she would look like naked, how she would look when he gave her pleasure. In a passion of rare indecision, Xan breathed in deep and slow and wondered what the hell had taken hold of him. He didn’t like wanting Elvi as much as he did because such urges smacked of immoderation, indiscipline and chaos, every sin he meticulously avoided in life.
Even so, he stood up in the middle of the meeting and abruptly announced his departure. He would have Elvi one single time and then that would be it. Once only, as his mother lamented when she overindulged in chocolate. A treat was one thing, a habit quite another and he did not want a habit like Elvi who took his mind off his work.
Xan texted Elvi.
Coming for lunch.
Was she supposed to cook? Elvi wondered in panic. Or was lunch a euphemism for sex? Was she supposed to greet him in the rather risqué lingerie that had been delivered along with the most massive amount of clothing and accessories earlier that morning? Or was she simply supposed to drape herself somewhere and look inviting? I am not a prude, she told her reflection, and then pinched her cheeks because she looked so pale. Maybe she was a prude in comparison to him because he seemed to be astonishingly free of inhibitions and self-consciousness. Ironically his ability to be that way made her feel rather envious.
Xan didn’t know what he was expecting but he wasn’t expecting to be greeted by lunch or the shocking disarray of the living area, which ran counter to his every conviction of how an interior should be maintained. Something in the process of being knitted lay abandoned on one sofa and a box of sewing supplies sat on the rug. Books spilled across another seat and the coffee table was littered with random items. There was no organisation, no order. He averted his gaze from it all to focus on her, all anxious blue eyes above pink cheeks, glorious hair framing her face. And he had given her a new wardrobe and what was she wearing? An old denim skirt with a faded top and scuffed cowboy boots, he registered in stupefaction.
‘I didn’t know whether you’d be hungry or not,’ Elvi admitted tightly, striving not to stare at him but, oh, it was difficult not to surrender to base and embarrassing promptings. Xan looked like her every fantasy in one devastating package from the black luxuriance of his hair to the flawless hard lines of his breathtakingly beautiful features, all set within the frame of an exquisitely tailored light grey suit, a white shirt and a crimson silk tie.
‘I only have an hour,’ Xan imparted, stunned by the food she had prepared because he had never had a mistress who tried to feed him before.
‘Oh...’
‘I’m only hungry for you,’ Xan intoned huskily while wondering if he should draw up a list of rules to urge her in the right direction—tidy up, don’t feed me, wear the clothes I give you—and then his attention locked onto the voluptuous pink lower lip she was chewing on and the throb at his groin overpowered every other thought and he simply reached for her.
He snatched her up into his arms and kissed her breathless and a sort of giddy, unfamiliar delight pierced Elvi, because Xan Ziakis could wreak havoc on her body with one extraordinary kiss. So, when the kisses piled up, she got lost in them, which in its own way was a relief because it stopped her overthinking stuff and held the nerves at bay. Her arms snaked round his neck as he carried her out of the kitchen and her momentary panic had subsided to be replaced by a helpless sense of anticipation. She was finally coming to terms with the truth that she wanted him too and that there was nothing one-sided about their chemistry.
Abandoned clothing festooned the single chair in the bedroom. Xan ignored the display, for once too caught up in the wonder of Elvi’s response to notice. She tasted like strawberries and the soft damp welcome of her mouth inflamed him. He wanted that wondrous mouth of hers everywhere on him. In fact colourful images were tumbling through Xan’s head and making control a rare challenge. One time only, he reminded himself doggedly, like a man trying to bargain with the devil, as he settled her down on the bed.
‘I need a shower,’ Xan confided, yanking loose his tie beneath her arrested gaze. ‘Join me—’
