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“If you’d said the words, ‘I’m a virgin’, believe me, I would have listened.”
Claudia knew that, didn’t she? It was one of the main reasons she hadn’t said those exact words.
“I would never have slept with you if I’d known.” He spun away from her, and strode over to the windows. He stared out, his autocratic profile showing his dark emotions.
Claudia was bereft. Her heart, her stupid heart, was splintering into a billion pieces. His rejection, always awful, was more intense than any pain she’d ever known. Getting a grip was imperative. She had survived his rejection the first time and she would again now.
And all the more so if she could be brave and make him see that she was in control.
She pushed up to standing, wincing as muscles that had n
ever before been tested gave little sharp cries of complaint. She straightened her skirt and looked around for her sweater. It was on the floor by the door. She scooped it up and pulled it on quickly, her back to him. But he was still looking out the window, so it made no difference anyway.
“Stavros?”
He didn’t respond.
“Look at me.”
Slowly, begrudgingly, he turned to face her. “You didn’t listen to me when I tried to tell you that you know nothing about who I am. Maybe now you get it.”
He swore, jerking his head back in shock. “You slept with me to prove a point?”
She hadn’t. She’d slept with him because she’d wanted to, because she’d wanted to fiercely and with all of herself. But she wouldn’t admit as much to him.
Her chin tilted defiantly and she shrugged. “I can think of worse ways to make a point.”
She wrenched the door open and moved through it before her shield of bravado could slip. She wouldn’t let him see how hurt she was by his swift rejection of what they’d just shared. But inside, she was breaking apart.
*
His world was falling apart.
He stared at his office, his desk in disarray, and shock iced through his veins. What the hell had just happened?
Sleeping with Claudia wasn’t the problem. He was no fool. The heat between them had been going to explode from the minute she begged him to take her to bed, three years earlier.
It was all kinds of wrong. Not just because she was his ward and the daughter of his friend. Not just because he had been entrusted with looking after her.
He was fifteen damned years older than her. At twenty-one she was barely older than a teenager. And he’d just taken her against his desk, taken her innocence, as though it meant nothing. And then he’d yelled at her.
He swore loudly in Greek, the word ricocheting around his office, slamming back against him with renewed anger.
He ran his hand over the back of his neck, rubbing the muscles there.
He hadn’t just yelled at her. He’d blamed her, and he’d shamed her. What an A-grade asshole move. Hell, he hadn’t even undressed her, or himself. He’d been so impatient to take her, and he’d been too rough. His eyes shut on a wave of guilt. If he’d known it to be her first time, he would have spent hours teasing her and tormenting her with sensual promise, until she was incandescent with pleasure. He would have relaxed her and eased her into what they were to share.
Instead, he’d treated her like his equal. Like any number of the women he’d been with. Suddenly, he hated, loathed, and despised that he had been her first. He’d slept with more women than he could remember. He’d had meaningless sex. He used to like meaningless sex.
But not with Claudia. And not for her first time.
Her first time! How the hell could she still have been a virgin? He slammed his eyes shut and the litany or paparazzi photos he’d seen over the years ran before his eyes.
Claudia stumbling out of nightclubs at two in the morning, arm in arm with one man. A week in the French Riviera with another. At the Oscars with a film star. Then drunk at the Vanity Fair after party, wearing a sheathe of a dress that left little to the imagination.
He groaned as he shook his head. None of it made any sense.
And strangely, somehow, it did. He’d believed the press. She was beautiful – stunning – glamorous, moved in the kind of social circle where morals were seen as an optional extra. And yet she wasn’t like that. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did.
