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His reaction to her was unusual. He had never experienced anything like it—it was intriguing as much as it was unwelcome. He had had women who fulfilled every last “requirement” he had laid out for Tristanne this morning. Many of them. And none of them had interested him half as much as this one, who was, if today was any indication, shaping up to be, quite possibly, the worst mistress of all time.
He turned without meaning to do so, and sure enough, she was still in the same position on the plush lounge chair. Her knees were pulled up, and she frowned as she read, oblivious to the world around her—and to his gaze from the window above. Her dark blonde hair was back in another forbidden twist, though strands flew free in the breeze from the ocean, and she nibbled gently on one finger with that lush mouth of hers that he was not nearly done with, not yet. He felt desire pulse in his sex, low and insistent.
He wondered what game she thought she was playing, still. Did she think she would win it? Did she imagine that Nikos Katrakis was the posturing, toothless dog that her brother was? She would learn soon enough that he could not be leashed.
His mood darkened immediately at the thought of Peter Barbery—but not, for once, with thoughts of the damage Peter had wrought so long ago on what had passed for Nikos’s family. Instead he thought only of those bruises on Tristanne’s otherwise flawless flesh—bruises he had no doubt whatsoever Peter had put there.
He was surprised at the smoldering rage that rolled through his gut, and the possessive edge to it that fanned it on. It was no more than any man must feel when faced with evidence that another of his sex was no better than an animal, he told himself resolutely. He did not prey upon the weak and innocent like Peter Barbery.
Except for Tristanne—
But he did not allow himself to finish the thought, because it was impossible. Tristanne Barbery, sister of his sworn enemy, had not walked up to him and demanded he kiss her in front of some seventy witnesses by divine accident. She had had an agenda from the first—one that was very obvious to Nikos, for all that she tried to weave her desperate webs to conceal it. She had no interest in the role she’d claimed to want, and no talent for it, either. Nikos didn’t know yet what she did want, but he did know that the fact she was not what she claimed to be meant she could not possibly be an innocent in all of this. She could not.
She was a Barbery. How could anything else matter? She was a Barbery—and that was all Nikos needed to know. That was all there was to know.
She might entertain him in a way he had not imagined a woman could, but that was of no matter. He might want her in a way he had not expected, but then, he had never been one to deny his appetites, no matter how inconvenient. He could use all of that for his own ends.
It would in no way prevent him from taking his revenge.
“Tell me,” Nikos said that evening, his low voice making the fine hairs all over Tristanne’s body stand at attention. “Does your brother often leave his mark upon your skin?”
It was the first time he had spoken since they’d left the yacht, and his voice seemed to echo off of the cobblestone street around them, ricocheting off of the famous yellow and pink pastel buildings of Portofino that clustered in a sparkling curve around the pretty, tiny harbor, and stood out against the green hills of pine, cypress and olive that rose steeply behind them. Or perhaps she only thought so, as she flexed her bruised arm slightly in response and felt that twist of shame roll through her again. That deep, black despair.
Tristanne took a quick breath to dispel it, and snuck a glance at the striking man who walked so quietly, so deliberately, at her side. His mood had changed considerably over the course of the day. Gone was the mockery and the sly insinuations; the man who met her for dinner after the sun had set in a red and orange inferno above the turquoise sea was quiet and watchful now. Brooding. He walked beside her with his hands thrust into the pockets of his dark trousers, a crisp white shirt beneath his expertly tailored jacket, which hugged the contours of his broad, muscled shoulders intimately.
“Of course not,” Tristanne said. She was surprised to hear her own voice sounded so hushed, as if she expected to hear it tossed back from the hills, her lie repeated into every passing ear. She frowned at her feet, telling herself that she was concentrating on walking in her high, wedged sandals over such tricky, ancient ground. That was all. That was the only reason she felt so unsettled, so unbalanced.
She wished she had not dressed for him. She wished even more that she did not know perfectly well that she had done so. At first she did not understand how she had found herself in this particular dress, an enticing column of gold that reminded her of his eyes. It poured over her curves from two delicate wisps of spaghetti straps at her shoulders and swished enticingly around her calves as she moved. She did not know why she had left her hair down, so that it swirled around her upper arms and her naked back, nor why she had dabbed scent behind her ears and between her breasts, so that it breathed with her as she moved. Why she had so carefully outlined her eyes with a soft pencil, or why she had darkened her lashes with a sooty mascara. It was as if someone else, some other Tristanne, had done those things, made those choices.
