# Bought For The Greek's Revenge: The 100th seductive romance from this bestselling author

LYNNE GRAHAM

Bedded for the Greek’s pleasure!Ella Davies has neither the money nor the connections to warrant the interest of Nikolai Drakos’s arch enemy. Yet the unassuming beauty has done just that – and claiming her will be Nikolai’s ultimate satisfaction!The ruthless tycoon will use any means necessary to ensure Ella’s compliance so he buys out her family’s debts. Debts he’ll forgo if Ella becomes his mistress. But when he discovers the true extent of her innocence, Nikolai is forced to consider something new; it appears the indomitable Greek is about to take a bride!Congratulations Lynne Graham on OVER 35 MILLION copies sold worldwide with Harlequin®!

‘Mistress,’ Nikolai slotted in, cool as ice.

‘But we don’t even know each other,’ Ella framed dazedly. ‘You’re a stranger.’

‘If you live with me I won’t be a stranger for long,’ Nikolai pointed out, with monumental calm.

The very sound of that inhuman calm forced her to flip round and settle distraught eyes on his lean, darkly handsome face. ‘You can’t be serious about this.’

‘I assure you that I am deadly serious. Move in and I’ll forget your family’s debts.’

‘But it’s a crazy idea!’ She gasped the words, floundering against his restrained silence. It was obvious that he was determined to behave as though such a proposition was an everyday occurrence.

‘It’s not crazy to me,’ Nikolai asserted. ‘When I want anything I go after it—hard and fast.’

Did he want her like that? Enough to trace her, buy up her father’s debts and try to buy the rights to her body along with those debts? The very idea of that made her dizzy, and plunged her brain into even greater turmoil.

‘It’s immoral … it’s blackmail …’

‘It’s definitely not blackmail. I’m giving you the benefit of a choice you didn’t have before I came through that door,’ Nikolai Drakos said with glittering cool. ‘That choice is yours to make.’

Dear Reader,

I can’t quite believe this is my 100th book for Mills & Boon! It’s been an incredible experience, made all the more special by the wonderful editors, writers and readers I’ve met along the way.

As you may have guessed, this book is a very special one for me. When my editor gave me carte blanche on the story, I couldn’t resist coming back to my favourite themes. There’s something about a mistress story—especially when the hero is as commanding and determined as Nikolai Drakos!

Perhaps it’s the moment when the hero realises that he’s got more than he bargained for with the heroine … or maybe it’s when he realises just how much he has to make amends that I can never wait to write about. Perhaps it’s because finally the heroine is going to get the true love that she absolutely deserves. Either way, I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted to write more than Bought for the Greek’s Revenge for my 100th book.

It was a joy to write, from start to finish, and I hope that you love it as much as I do.

Much love,

Lynne Xx

Bought for the Greek’s Revenge

Lynne Graham


www.millsandboon.co.uk

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married to an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog who knocks everything over, a very small terrier who barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

For my readers,

who have given me endless support throughout my career.

Thank you.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

NIKOLAI DRAKOS SCANNED the photo with a frown and enhanced it. It couldn’t be the same woman; it simply couldn’t be! There was no way that his quarry, Cyrus Makris, could possibly be planning to marry a woman from a humble background.

Bemused, Nikolai lifted his arrogant dark head high and once again studied the picture of the ethereal redhead. No way could it be the same little temptress he had once met working as a parking attendant. The world wasn’t that small. Even so, he was aware that Cyrus owned a country house in Norfolk. A deeper frown lodged between his level dark brows, his quick and clever brain taking a rare hike into the recent past.

For all her diminutive size the woman he had met had had attitude, lots and lots of attitude, certainly not an attribute Nikolai sought from the transient beauties who shared his bed. But she had also had aquamarine eyes and a mouth as soft, silky and pink as a lotus blossom. A sizzling physical combination, which had taken a hell of a lot of forgetting on his part. His wide sensual mouth compressed with dissatisfaction. After she had blown him off, another man might have tried to find her again to make another attempt but Nikolai had refused to do so. He didn’t chase women, he didn’t do sweet talk or dates or flowers or any of that stuff ever. He walked away. The mantra by which he lived insisted that no woman was irreplaceable, no woman unique, and he didn’t believe in love. She had simply caught his imagination for a few intoxicating moments but he had refused to allow lust to seduce him into pursuit. Since when had he had to pursue a woman?

And although it was generally known that Cyrus’s elderly father was putting pressure on his forty-five-year-old son and heir to take a bride, it was a challenge to credit that Cyrus could be planning to marry the feisty little redhead who had scratched the paintwork on Nikolai’s cherished McLaren Spider. Besides, only pure and untouched female flesh excited Cyrus, as Nikolai’s late sister had learned to her cost. And no way could that sparkling little redhead still be that pure and untouched.

Flexing his lean muscles as he sprang upright, Nikolai swept up the file he had been studying. The investigator he used was a consummate professional and the report would be thorough. He studied the photos afresh. He was willing to admit that the likeness between the two women was startling. Curiosity at a height, he began to read about Prunella, known as Ella. Yes, that night he had definitely heard her boss using that name, he conceded grimly. Ella Palmer, aged twenty-three, a former veterinary student who had once been engaged to Cyrus’s dead nephew, Paul. Now there was a connection he could not have foreseen for Cyrus, who rarely bothered with relatives.

Nikolai read on, unexpectedly hungry for the details. It had been a year since the nephew had died of leukaemia and two years since Ella’s father, George Palmer, had had a stroke. The older man was currently drowning in debt. Nikolai marvelled that Cyrus, who was rich but tight, had not stepped in to help Ella’s family, but perhaps he was holding that possibility in reserve as a power play.

Nikolai, on the other hand, immediately grasped that it was his optimum moment for action and intervention. He called his team of personal assistants and issued his instructions even while he was still struggling to work out why Ella Palmer could be in line to become Cyrus’s bride.

What was so special about her? For a couple of years at least she had evidently hovered on the outskirts of Cyrus’s life. As his nephew’s fiancée she would have been untouchable, the unattainable always a powerful temptation to a male who thrived on the challenge of breaking the rules. Now she was alone and unprotected and Cyrus appeared to be playing a waiting game. However, it was equally possible that Ella was eager to marry Cyrus, because although he was old enough to be her father he was also a prominent, and wealthy, businessman.

But what, other than innocence, could be attracting Cyrus? Ella Palmer had neither money nor connections to offer. She was a beauty, but could a formerly engaged young woman still be a virgin in this day and age? Nikolai shook his arrogant dark head in wonderment. Was that even possible? And had she the smallest concept of the kind of male she was dealing with? A man who was excited by sexual violence? And who, given the opportunity, would cause her irreparable harm? Would she consider a wedding ring adequate compensation for brutal mistreatment?

Whatever, Nikolai’s objective was to take her off Cyrus. Cyrus was a dangerous man and Nikolai knew exactly how addicted he was to the seamier side of life. By utilising bribery, intimidation and hush money, Cyrus had so far contrived to escape justice. Nikolai had long been forced to pursue a more subtle form of revenge. Being both extremely rich and extremely clever, Nikolai had tracked his quarry’s every move in the business world and had regularly snatched lucrative deals from right under Cyrus’s nose. That had been easy because Cyrus was better at making enemies than keeping friends and making connections. But it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as striking out at Cyrus on a more personal level would be. Losing Ella Palmer, seeing her choose his greatest rival over him, would really hit Cyrus hard where it hurt. And anything that caused Cyrus pain made Nikolai happy.

As for how his actions would affect Ella Palmer and her family, Nikolai ruminated darkly, did he really care? They would simply be collateral damage in Nikolai’s battle. But, at the same time, her family would be freed from crippling debt while Ella would be protected from Cyrus. Nikolai’s burning desire for revenge was fuelled by ruthless resolution and by the knowledge that all Cyrus’s victims had been cruelly denied justice. Yet there was also a weird personal feel to the challenge that made his teeth grit because, try as he did to stay cool and in control and essentially uninvolved, unholy rage gripped Nikolai at the thought of Cyrus getting his slimy hands on Ella and hurting her...

* * *

‘It’s bad, Ella,’ Gramma said heavily.

‘How bad?’ Ella prompted, dry-mouthed.

George Palmer, Ella’s father and Gramma’s son, sighed heavily. ‘I’m a terrible failure of a man when it comes to my family... I’ve lost everything.’

‘The business, yes...perhaps it’s too late for anything to be saved there, but that doesn’t make you a failure,’ Ella conceded in a wobbly voice, because they had known for ages that the shop was doing badly. ‘But, at least, the house—’

‘No, Ella,’ Gramma cut in, her lined face pale and stiff with self-discipline. ‘This time the house has to go as well—’

‘But how can that be?’ Ella exclaimed incredulously. ‘You own the house, not Dad!’

‘My divorce from Joy took half the business,’ the older man reminded her.

‘And the house was the only asset we had left. Your father couldn’t get the business loan he needed to pay off Joy without backing it up with the house,’ Ella’s grandmother, Gramma, a petite white-haired lady in her seventies, told her tightly. ‘So, we put the house on the line and hoped for the best.’

‘Oh, my...goodness,’ Ella gasped after carefully searching for a word that would not make her grandmother flinch.

Thinking of her stepmother, the volatile Joy, Ella tried to reflect on the reality that since the divorce her father was a much happier man. His wife had been a very demanding woman, and although the older man had made a decent recovery from the stroke that had laid him low two years earlier, he now used a stick and the left side of his body remained weak. His wife, Joy, had walked out on him during his rehabilitation. She had deserted him as soon as his once comfortable income had declined. Her father had not been able to afford the services of a good lawyer in the divorce that followed and it had been a shock when his estranged wife had been awarded half the value of his furniture shop in the settlement. That pay out had led them straight into their current dire financial straits.

‘Taking that risk with the house hasn’t worked out for us but I’m trying to console myself with the idea that at least we tried,’ George Palmer said wryly. ‘If we hadn’t tried we would always have wondered if we should have done. Now it’s done and dusted and, unhappily for us, my creditors need to be paid.’

Ella’s mood was not improved by the older man’s accepting attitude. George Palmer was one of nature’s gentlemen and he never had a bad word to say about anyone or anything. Her attention fell instead on the letter lying on the kitchen table and she snatched it up. ‘That’s what this is about? Your creditors?’

‘Yes, my debts have been sold on to another organisation. That’s a letter from the new owner’s solicitors telling me that they want to put the house on the market.’

‘Well, we’ll just see about that!’ Ella snapped, scrambling upright and pulling out her phone, eager to be able to do something at last, for sitting around bemoaning bad situations was not her style.

‘This is business, Ella.’ Gramma gave her feisty grandchild a regretful appraisal. ‘Appealing to business people is a waste of your time. All they want is their money and hopefully a profit out of their investment.’

‘It’s not that simple...it’s our lives you’re talking about!’ Ella proclaimed emotively, stalking out of the kitchen to ring the legal firm and ask for an appointment.

Life could be so very cruel, she was thinking. Time and time again misfortune and disappointment had made Ella suffer and she had become so accustomed to that state of affairs that she had learned to swallow hard and bear it. But when it came to her family suffering adversity, well, that was something else entirely and it brought out her fighting spirit. Her father couldn’t regain his full health but he did deserve some peace after the turmoil of his divorce. She couldn’t bear him to lose his home when he had already been forced to adjust to so many frightening changes.

And what about Gramma? Tears flooded Ella’s bright green eyes when she thought of Gramma losing her beloved home. Gramma’s late husband had moved her into this house as a bride in the nineteen sixties. Her son had been born below this roof and she had never lived anywhere else. Neither had Ella or her father, Ella reflected wretchedly. The worn but comfortable detached house sat at the very heart of their sense of security.

George Palmer had fallen in love with Ella’s mother, Lesley, at university and had hoped to marry her when she became pregnant with Ella. Lesley, however, had been less keen and shortly after Ella’s birth she had left George and her daughter behind to pursue a career in California. A brilliant young physicist, Ella’s mother had since gone on to become a world-renowned scientist.

‘I obviously lack both the mum and the wife gene because I have no regrets over being single and childfree even now,’ Lesley had told Ella frankly when they first met when Ella was eighteen. ‘George adored you and, when he married Joy, I assumed it would be better for me to leave you to be part of a perfect little family without my interference...’

Ella dragged her mind back from that ironic little speech that she had received from her uncaring mother. Lesley hadn’t recognised that her complete lack of interest in Ella and absence of regret would hurt her daughter even more. In addition, George, Joy and Ella had not been a perfect family because as soon as Joy had become George’s wife she had made her resentment of Ella’s presence in their home very obvious. Had it not been for George’s and Gramma’s love and attention, Ella would have been a deeply unhappy child.

And Joy, Ella thought bitterly, had done very nicely out of the divorce, thank you. However, she cleared her mind of such futile reflections and concentrated on thinking instead about her family’s predicament while she outlined her request to the very well-spoken young man who accepted her call after she had been passed through several people at the legal firm. She was dismayed to then walk into a solid brick wall of silence. With a polite reference to client confidentiality, the solicitor refused to tell her who her father’s creditor was and pointed out that nobody would be prepared to discuss her father’s debts with anyone other than her father, although he did at least promise to pass on her request.

As she replaced the phone and checked her watch in dismay Ella’s eyes were stinging with tears of frustration, but she had to pull herself together and get to work, her small income being the only money currently entering the household aside of Gramma’s pension. As she pulled on her jacket an idea struck her and she paused in the kitchen doorway to look at the two older people. ‘You know...er...have you thought of approaching Cyrus for help?’ she asked abruptly.

Her father’s face stiffened defensively. ‘Ella... I—’

‘Cyrus is a family friend,’ Gramma stepped in to acknowledge. ‘It would be very wrong to approach a friend in such circumstances simply because he has money.’

A flush of colour drenched Ella’s heart-shaped face and she nodded respectful agreement, even though she was tempted to remark that matters were serious enough to risk causing offence. Perhaps her relatives had already asked and been refused help or perhaps they knew something she didn’t, she conceded uncomfortably. In any case approaching Cyrus was not currently possible because Cyrus was abroad on a lengthy trade-delegation tour of China.

She climbed into the ancient battered van that was her only means of transport. Butch went into a cacophony of barking on the doorstep and she blinked, very belatedly recalling her pet, who normally went to work with her. She braked and opened the car door in a hurry to scoop the little animal up.

Butch was a Chihuahua/Jack Russell mix and absolutely tiny, but he had the heart and personality of a much bigger dog. He had been born with only three legs and would have been euthanised at birth had Ella not fallen in love with him while she had been working on a placement at a veterinary surgery. He settled down quietly into his pet carrier, knowing that his owner frowned on any kind of disturbance while she was driving.

Ella worked at an animal sanctuary only a few miles from her home. She had volunteered at Animal Companions as a teenager, found solace there while the man she loved had slowly succumbed to the disease that would eventually kill him and had ended up working at the rescue centre when she had been forced to leave her veterinarian course before its completion. One day she still hoped to be able to finish her training and become a fully qualified veterinary surgeon with her own practice, but Paul’s illness and her father’s stroke had been inescapable events that had thrown her life plan off course.

Not such a bad thing, she often told herself bracingly at times when it seemed that her desire to work as an animal doctor was continually destined to collapse in the face of other people’s needs. She had gained a lot of experience working at the rescue centre and was using the skills she had acquired during her training by functioning as an unofficial veterinary nurse. To think any other way when her presence at home had achieved so much good would be unforgivably selfish, she told herself firmly. Gramma and her dad had badly needed her assistance during that testing time. And she was painfully aware of all the advantages that their loving support had given her.

Her boss, Rosie, a generous-hearted woman in her forties with frizzy blonde curls, surged out to the car park to greet Ella. ‘You’ll never believe it... Samson’s got a home!’ she gasped excitedly.

Ella started to smile. ‘You’re kidding—’

‘Well, I haven’t done the home visit yet to check them out but they did seem very genuine people. Just lost their own dog to old age, so I didn’t think they’d want another oldie but they’re afraid that a young dog could be too much for them to handle,’ Rosie told her.

‘Samson really deserves a good home,’ Ella said fondly, for the thirteen-year-old terrier had been repeatedly passed over because of his age by other prospective owners.

‘He’s a very loving little chap...’ Rosie paused, her warm smile dwindling. ‘I heard your father’s shop closed down last week. I’m so sorry for your dad—’

‘Well, can’t be helped,’ Ella responded, hoping to forestall further comment because she couldn’t discuss her family’s financial affairs with Rosie, who was a hopeless gossip.

While Rosie talked about the rise of the big furniture chain stores working to the detriment of smaller businesses, Ella made polite sounds of agreement while she checked that the kennel staff had completed their early morning cleaning routine. That done, Ella put on overalls and concentrated on sorting out an emaciated stray with matted hair brought to them by the council dog warden. When she had finished she peeled off the overalls, washed and fed the poodle mix and settled her down in a run.

She heard a car and assumed that Rosie had set off to do her home visit to check out Samson’s new potential owners. She went into the office where she worked between times, being better at paperwork than Rosie, who was more driven by her need to rescue animals and rehome them than by the equally important requirement of meeting all of a recognised charity’s medical, legal and financial obligations. As a team, however, she and Rosie were efficient because their abilities fitted neatly together. Rosie was fantastic at dealing with the public and fundraising while Ella preferred to work with the animals in the background.

Indeed Ella had been very uncomfortable at the fancy charity auction that Cyrus had persuaded her to attend with him only a month earlier. Champagne, high heels and evening dresses were really not her thing. But how could she have said no when Cyrus had been so very good to Paul while he was ill? Acting as Cyrus’s partner at a couple of social occasions was little enough to be asked to do in return, she ruminated wryly, wondering as she often had why Cyrus had never married. He was forty-five years old, presentable, successful and single. Once or twice she had wondered if he was gay but Paul had got very annoyed at her for trying to make something out of what he insisted was nothing.

Rosie entered the office, rudely springing Ella from her momentary loss of concentration. The older woman looked flustered. ‘You have a visitor,’ she announced.

Her smooth brow furrowing, Ella stood up and moved round the desk. ‘A visitor?’ she prompted in surprise.

‘He’s a foreigner,’ Rosie stage-whispered as if that fact were terribly mysterious and unusual.

‘But he went to school in the UK and speaks excellent English,’ a very masculine voice commented from the door that still stood open on the small outer hall, where he had evidently been left to hover.

Ella’s lower limbs succumbed to nervous paralysis as she froze where she stood, a tiny disbelieving quiver running down her spine because, incredibly, she recognised that voice even though she had only heard it on one previous occasion almost a year earlier. It couldn’t be but it was...it was him, the gorgeous guy with the fancy car and the very short temper and the eyes that reminded her of melted caramel. What on earth was he doing visiting her at Animal Companions? Had he tracked her down?

‘I’ll just leave you in...er...privacy,’ Rosie pronounced awkwardly, backing out of the office again as the very tall, dark man behind her strode forward without taking any apparent note of her still-lingering presence.

Rosie arched a pale brow. ‘Do we need privacy?’ she asked doubtfully.

Nikolai studied her fixedly. She was incredibly tiny and delicate in build. He remembered that. He remembered the long curling tangle of her bronze-coloured hair as well because the shade was unusual, neither brown nor red but a metallic shade somewhere between the two. She bore a ridiculously close resemblance to a pixie he had once seen in a fairy-story book, he thought, feeling oddly numb, oddly dry-mouthed as his keen dark gaze roved over her, reluctant to miss out on a single detail of that petite, pixeish perfection. No, of course she wasn’t perfect, no woman was, he reasoned, striving to be more lucid, but that flawless porcelain skin, those glorious green eyes and that lush mouth in that beautiful face were quite unforgettable. Memory hadn’t exaggerated her beauty, but his brain had persuaded him he had to prevent himself from chasing after her, he decided in exasperation.

‘We do,’ Nikolai confirmed, firmly shutting the door in Rosie’s wake. ‘We weren’t introduced at our last meeting.’

‘No, you were far too busy shouting at me,’ Ella reminded him doggedly.

‘My name is Nikolai Drakos and you are?’

As he extended a hand Gramma’s strict upbringing brought Ella’s own hand out to grip his. ‘Prunella Palmer. Most people call me Ella. What are you doing here, Mr Drakos? Or are you here about that stupid car?’ she asked witheringly.

‘You pranged that stupid car,’ Nikolai pointed out, unamused.

‘I inflicted a minuscule rubbing mark on one wing. I didn’t dent or scratch it,’ she traded drily. ‘I can’t believe you’re still complaining about it. Nobody got hurt and no real damage was done.’

Nikolai was very tempted to tell her how much that ‘rubbing’ mark had cost to remove. She had scraped the car past a bush when she’d accelerated too fast. His teeth ground together. It was healthy to be reminded just how very annoying she could be, he told himself warningly. Complaining? He had never complained in his life, not when his father beat him up, not when he was bullied at school, not even when his sister and only living relative had died. He had learnt at a very young age that basically nobody cared what happened to him and nobody was interested enough to listen to what he had endured. Nothing in life had ever come easy to Nikolai.

Ella couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was so physically large in both height and breadth that he ate up every inch of space in Rosie’s little office and made it feel crowded and suffocating. Tension held her rigid while she watched him like a rabbit mesmerised by a hawk ready to swoop down on her. Nikolai Drakos—the ultimate female fantasy with olive skin, black hair and spectacular dark eyes. His tailored charcoal-grey business suit couldn’t hide the reality that he was built with an athlete’s lean, muscular power and he moved with long-legged easy grace, she registered, struggling to pinpoint exactly what continually drew her attention to him. He was very, very good-looking but it wasn’t just the looks. He had amazing bone structure though and would probably still be turning heads in his sixties. Maybe it was the electrifying quality of the raw, masculine sex appeal he exuded. Twelve months earlier his sheer charisma had struck her like a thunderbolt and utterly humiliated her.

‘I’m not here about the car,’ Nikolai said very drily. ‘I’m here because you asked to see me...’

Ella was thoroughly disconcerted by that statement. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. How could I ask to see you when I have no way of contacting you? And why would I contact you when I haven’t had the slightest desire to see you again?’ she enquired tartly, her whole bearing suggesting that such a belief could only have come from an intolerable egotist.

A sardonic smile curved Nikolai’s wide sensual mouth as he gazed down at her with scantily leashed satisfaction. She had approached him. She had come looking for him first and that felt very much like the helpful hand of fate working on his behalf.

‘You did request my attention,’ he told her again.

Bewilderment gripped Ella but it was swiftly followed by a surge of frustrated fury. So far she had been having a very bad day and she was not in the mood for big arrogant male surprises and particularly not one who had offended her by offering her a one-night stand before he had even enquired what her name was! Yes, act first, think afterwards, that was how Nikolai Drakos functioned around women, she reflected scornfully. He had made her feel bad about herself and she allowed no man to do that to her. Yet when she gazed back at him and rated the uncompromising light in his eyes and the hard resolution etched in his strong-boned features, she could suddenly see that he was not the weak, frivolous and impulsive male she had first assumed him to be and that threw her off balance...badly.

‘I’ve had enough of this nonsense!’ she told him bluntly. ‘I want you to leave.’

Nikolai compounded his sins by slowly raising a beautifully drawn ebony brow. ‘I don’t think so.’

The rage that Ella always struggled to control broke through her cracking composure because she hated bullies and it seemed to her that he was trying to intimidate her. ‘I know so!’ she slammed back at him, half an octave higher. ‘And if you’re not out of here by the time I count to ten, I’m calling the police!’

‘Go right ahead,’ Nikolai advised, lodging his wide-shouldered frame back against the door and folding his arms with the infuriatingly cool poise of a male who had no intention of going anywhere. As she almost bounced in fury, she reminded him of a hummingbird dive-bombing a flower. Tiny but also colourful, intense and vibrant.

An unholy flash of hostility lit up Ella’s emerald-green eyes. ‘I mean it!’

Nikolai sighed. ‘You only think you mean it. Be aware that that temper of yours is a major weakness.’

Incensed by that crack, Ella said, ‘One—’

‘When you allow yourself to lose your head, you surrender control.’

‘Two—’

‘And you’re not thinking rationally either,’ Nikolai told her smoothly.

‘Three!’

‘How could you be?’ Nikolai continued. ‘Right now I can read your face like a map. You want to jump on me and thump me but you’re not physically up to that challenge, so you’re stuck acting illogical and childish—’

‘Four! And shut up while I’m counting! Five!’ Ella added jerkily, her throat muscles so tight, she could barely get the words out.

‘The performance you’re putting on for me now is why I never allow myself to lose my temper,’ Nikolai told her, thoroughly enjoying himself for the first time in a long time because she was that easy to rile. He would be able to wind her up like a clockwork toy and control her...so easily.

‘Of course, you could try asking yourself why you’re being this unreasonable. As far as I’m aware I did nothing worthy of this reception,’ Nikolai murmured smooth as glass, his wide, expressive mouth quirking round the edges.

‘Six!’ But that fast she remembered his mouth on hers, hard and demanding and passionate, rather than playful and shy and sweet. He was the only man apart from Paul to ever kiss her. The core of steel deep inside her reached a furnace heat of hatred and temper and shame but her body still betrayed her. Her nipples pinched into tight little buttons that stung, and lower down in a place she didn’t even want to think about she felt that almost forgotten liquid, hot, sliding sensation. It made her teeth grind together in vexation.

‘Seven!’ she launched and reached for the phone on the desk, almost desperate to see him go, her brain a morass of angry, tumbling impressions and images.

‘We’re going to get on like a house on fire...literally,’ Nikolai told her with sardonic bite. ‘Because while I may control my temper, I am demanding, stubborn and impatient and if you cross me you’ll know about it.’

‘Out!’ she spat at him furiously, outraged by the fact that she couldn’t get him to react to her threat in even the smallest way. ‘Get out of here!’

‘Eight...maybe even nine,’ Nikolai pronounced for her. ‘When you know why I’m here, you’ll beg me to stay.’

‘In your dreams...ten!’ Ella countered in a ringing tone of finality as she lifted the phone with a flourish.

‘I’m the man who bought your father’s debts,’ Nikolai admitted and watched her freeze and lose all her animated angry colour while her arm slowly lowered the phone back on its rest and her hand fell back from it in dismay.

CHAPTER TWO

‘THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE,’ Ella whispered unevenly. ‘It would be too much of a coincidence.’

‘Coincidences happen,’ Nikolai countered, for he had no intention of taking her into his confidence and sharing his ultimate plan.

‘Not one this unlikely,’ Ella argued, backing away from the desk while her brain endeavoured to regroup to this most surprising change of circumstance.

‘You rang the firm who handle my legal work and asked to see me,’ he reminded her levelly. ‘Here I am.’

‘I wasn’t prepared for a personal visit, maybe a phone call or an appointment,’ she muttered uncertainly, barely knowing what she was saying because the temper that was often her strength had subsided in fear like a pricked balloon. No, she couldn’t possibly shout at or drive off her father’s main creditor. Even angry, she wasn’t that stupid.

The silence lay between them as thick and heavy as treacle. She stared at him, incredulous at such a piece of unwelcome happenstance as the combination of events that had brought Nikolai Drakos back into her life again. A man she had naturally assumed she would never see again, a man she had prayed she would never see again! And she had preferred that reality, had needed to know she could bury that silly little episode and wipe it from her mind as an insane moment while she was still grieving for the man she had loved. Being confronted by him again was a real slap in the face and she could feel her face warming and prickling as though she had sunburn.

‘As you say...here you are,’ Ella acknowledged woodenly. ‘You can’t be surprised that I’m shocked that my father’s creditor is someone I’ve met before.’

‘Would you call it a meeting? A brief encounter in a car park would be more accurate,’ Nikolai murmured with a dry mockery that made her yearn to knock his teeth down his throat, for he made it sound as though they had shared rather more than a kiss.

And had she been willing, they would have done. She had no doubt of that. He was a player, the kind of male who did what he wanted when he wanted and he had certainly been in the mood for sex. Her face flamed at the awareness that, had she agreed and had it been physically possible, they could well have enjoyed a sordid, sweaty encounter there and then in his car and she would never have made it back to the misleading respectability of the hotel he had suggested. Inwardly she cursed her fair skin as mortification burned her cheeks, while he studied her with a measured attention that warned her he was picking up on her every reaction.

‘So, you own Dad’s debts,’ Ella recapped, striving to push onward past the personal aspect and withstand the odd tingling heat that infiltrated her every time she clashed with Nikolai’s stunning dark, black-lashed eyes. It was attraction. What else could it be? And it made her hate herself.

‘You wanted the chance to speak to me,’ Nikolai reminded her levelly. ‘I have no idea what you want to say to me...apart from the obvious. If you’re planning to pluck the violin strings, it won’t work on me. Let’s cut to the bottom line: this is business, nothing personal—’

‘But it is personal to my family!’

‘Your family is no concern of mine,’ Nikolai declared with unapologetic assurance. ‘But I do, as it happens, have another option to offer you.’

Tension made Ella rise slightly on her toes. ‘Another option?’ she queried breathlessly.

Nikolai gazed into those luminous green eyes and read the hope writ large there and for some reason it made him feel like a bastard. He crushed that foreign sensation and irritably squashed down his conscience. What was it about her? That air of vulnerability? Her physical delicacy? The shocking naivety that could persuade her to look at a stranger hoping that he was about to play the good Samaritan? How could she still be that trusting at her age? Sadly, he was not a soft touch, never had been, never would be and there was no point in even trying to pretend that he was. He didn’t get close to anyone; he didn’t connect with other people. He had been that way for a very long time and he had no plans to change his basic nature. When you let yourself care about anyone, you got kicked in the teeth and it had happened to him so often when he was a boy that he had learned his lesson fast.

‘There is one situation in which I would be prepared to write off your father’s debts,’ he admitted.

In the unearthly silence that dragged, her tension heightened and her tummy gave a nervous flip. ‘Well, what is that situation?’ she pressed impatiently.

‘You move in with me in London for a period of three months,’ Nikolai outlined smoothly.

Her eyes opened wide and rounded in bewilderment. ‘Move in with you? And exactly what would that entail?’

‘What it usually entails when a man and a woman live together,’ Nikolai countered, wondering why he wasn’t just spelling the terms out with his usual directness.

Possibly he was a little squeamish about the terms. Her reactions, the unmistakeable shyness she couldn’t hide, were persuading him that, unlikely as it seemed, she might indeed be a virgin. He would very much like to take her to bed but he really didn’t want her there on sufferance. He didn’t particularly want to be the man who deflowered her either, although, when he thought about that aspect, he realised that he didn’t want any other man to do it for him.

All of a sudden his brain was leaping about in directions he hadn’t counted on, throwing up objections to what had seemed perfectly simple and straightforward only an hour before. And all that had changed was that Ella Palmer was now in front of him, and, instead of being merely a step in an ongoing project, was becoming very much a lust object in her own light.

Nikolai was confounded by that too because she was not his usual type. He went for tall, curvy blondes and Ella was tiny, skinny and almost as bare of curves as a teenaged boy. So, he had no understanding of precisely why he had developed a throbbing hard-on the instant a slight movement made her tiny, unfettered breasts shift below her T-shirt. Now he could see pointed nipples poking through the thin fabric and his body was eager to see a lot more of that slender but highly feminine body of hers. However, that was sex, nothing more, and he had many more convenient options in that line, didn’t he? Diavole, why was he thinking such thoughts? What was the matter with him? He had never allowed himself to be driven by what lay south of his belt.

‘You want me to be your girlfriend...?’ Ella mumbled in wonderment, barely crediting that they were truly having such a conversation.

Nikolai winced. ‘I don’t have girlfriends... I have sex.’

‘So, you’re a man whore,’ Ella pronounced before she could think better of it, for in her experience there were only two types of men available. One type was open to the possibility of meeting the one and commitment while the other type only wanted to sleep around with the maximum possible number of women.

His dark-as-jet eyes flashed like golden flames. ‘Don’t apply that label to me!’

‘Oddly enough I wasn’t trying to be insulting. I just meant that you only want sex and I know there are women like that too, so, although I shouldn’t have said it, I was simply stating a fact.’ Ella finally fumbled to a perspiring halt, her skin dampening below her clothing while she inwardly acknowledged the foolishness of saying anything he could find offensive. ‘I’m only trying to interpret what you suggested as an option—if not girlfriend...?’

‘Mistress,’ Nikolai slotted in cool as ice.

Ella blinked, thinking he did not just say that...did he? Such a delightfully old-fashioned role for such a modern man. But then what did she know about Nikolai Drakos? She turned away from him, wandered over to the window and was surprised to see a big glossy dark limousine complete with driver parked outside. The limo could only belong to him, which meant that Nikolai was rich and privileged and that the concept of having a mistress to cater to his sexual needs might not seem as much of an anomaly to him as it was to her.

Unhappily, shock had welded Ella’s tongue to the roof of her mouth because he was sexually propositioning her and nothing could have prepared her for that possibility. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous...ironically, he was! Male heads didn’t tend to swivel when Ella walked down the street because she had neither the length of leg nor the curves usually deemed necessary to attract such attention. Why on earth could he be making her such an offer?

‘But we don’t even know each other,’ she framed dazedly. ‘You’re a stranger...’

‘If you live with me I won’t be a stranger for long,’ Nikolai pointed out with monumental calm.

And the very sound of that inhuman calm and cool forced her to flip round and settle distraught eyes on his lean, darkly handsome face. ‘You can’t be serious about this!’

‘I assure you that I am deadly serious. Move in and I’ll forget your family’s debts.’

‘But it’s a crazy idea!’ She gasped, having failed to get him to acknowledge that reality and floundering against his restrained silence. It was obvious that he was determined to behave as though such a proposition were an everyday occurrence.

‘It’s not crazy to me,’ Nikolai asserted. ‘When I want anything, I go after it hard and fast.’

Her lashes dipped. Did he want her like that? Enough to track her down, buy up her father’s debts, and try and buy rights to her and her body along with those debts? The very idea of that made her dizzy and plunged her brain into even greater turmoil. ‘It’s immoral...it’s blackmail.’

‘It’s definitely not blackmail. I’m giving you the benefit of a choice you didn’t have before I came through that door,’ Nikolai Drakos fielded with glittering cool. ‘That choice is yours to make.’

‘Like hell it is!’ Ella fired back. ‘The choice you’re offering is totally unscrupulous.’

‘When did I say I had scruples?’ Nikolai asked almost conversationally. ‘I want what I want and I want you in London to take out and show off.’

‘But...why?’ she interrupted, helpless in the grip of her desire to know that answer. ‘Why pick me? I said no that night...was that all it took to fire you up? For you to suggest this?’

‘I’m not going to answer those questions. I don’t need to,’ Nikolai told her without apology. ‘My motivation is my own. Either you want to consider the option I’ve offered or you don’t. It’s entirely up to you.’

‘But a mistress...!’ A driven laugh fell from Ella’s convulsing throat because she was struggling to accept that he could have confronted her with such an insane choice. ‘Don’t you understand that even if I wanted to say yes I couldn’t?’

He frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘My father wouldn’t live with himself if he knew I was sleeping with a man just to get him out of trouble! No, the mistress option is a total impossibility as far as I am concerned.’

‘That’s for you to decide.’ Nikolai settled a business card down on the desk. ‘My phone number. I’ll be staying at the Wrother Links Hotel until tomorrow.’

‘I’ve already made my decision and it’s a no,’ Ella hastened to tell him.

Nikolai flashed her a slow wicked smile that radiated charisma. ‘Think about it properly before you say no but if you discuss it with anyone else, I’ll withdraw the offer,’ he warned her smoothly. ‘It’s a strictly confidential option.’

‘You know, you can’t simply ask a woman you don’t know to live with you,’ she bit out, fit to be tied at his sheer nerve and nonchalance.

Black curling lashes screening his shrewd gaze, Nikolai shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘I believe I just did.’

‘But it’s barbaric!’ she exclaimed. ‘A complete cheat of a supposed offer!’

Nikolai sent her a gleaming sideways glance. ‘No, the real cheat was you kissing me the way you did last year and then saying no and acting as if I had grossly insulted you,’ he murmured with lethal quietness.

‘You did insult me!’ Ella flung back, her cheeks hot as fire while she wondered if her refusal that night had started off his whole chain reaction. What else could possibly be driving him?

Nikolai straightened lazily as he opened the door. ‘If you take offence that easily, maybe it’s just as well that the answer is no.’

Strangely that wasn’t what she wanted to hear and she didn’t understand that truth, nor the feeling that his departure was somehow a low point rather than something to be celebrated. She watched the limo drive off, her thoughts miles away, trailing back down the timeline to the moment she had first met Nikolai Drakos...

* * *

Her stepmother’s best friend, Ailsa, had been a wedding planner and when one of Ailsa’s part-time workers had taken ill, Joy had insisted that Ella step in. Ella could have declined but she had been too well aware that if she crossed the older woman Joy would throw a tantrum and rain down misery on the whole family. And she had always hated listening to her stepmother torment her father with nasty, sneering comments. When Ella had arrived at the country house that evening she had been startled to be asked to park cars rather than wait tables as she had dimly expected. And, truth to tell, with an advanced driving test under her belt and a love of fast cars, parking the luxury models driven by the wedding guests would have been fun, had her foot not slid off the pedal of that McLaren Spider, causing the wing of it to be grazed against an overhanging bush.

Nikolai had started shouting and Ailsa had come running out to smooth over the incident. Unfortunately, Ella’s immediate apology had had no effect and Ailsa had made a big deal out of supposedly sacking Ella simply to comfort Nikolai. That was when Nikolai had suddenly cooled off, dismissed the matter and insisted that he didn’t want Ella sacked before striding into the house to join the rest of the guests.

It had been much later that night before she’d seen Nikolai again. She had been outside the ballroom listening to the DJ playing for the evening party while half dancing to the beat of the music to keep warm in the cold. And when she had heard something behind her, she had spun and he had simply been standing there watching her, dark eyes glowing golden as melted caramel in the reflected lights.

‘If you want your car, you can fetch it for yourself,’ Ella told him.

‘You’re right. I wouldn’t allow you behind the wheel of it again,’ he admitted, strolling almost soundlessly closer to gaze down at her. He had moved very quietly for such a big male. ‘When do you finish tonight?’

‘I’m finished now. I’m waiting for a lift home from one of the bartenders.’

‘Could be a long wait,’ he murmured softly.

‘Could be.’ Lifting her head, Ella shook her hair back from her face because the breeze was blowing it into her eyes.

‘You have gorgeous hair,’ he breathed.

‘Thank you...’ In the light flooding through the windows behind her, she could see his lean dark features with clarity and all she could think at that moment was that he was definitely the most gorgeous man she had ever come across.

‘And stunning eyes...but, you’re a rubbish driver.’

‘My shoe slid on the pedal. I have an advanced driving test.’

‘Don’t believe you.’

Ella lifted her chin. ‘Your problem, not mine.’

‘My problem is that I want you,’ Nikolai said boldly. ‘I saw you dancing by the window and it gave me a high.’

Sharply disconcerted, Ella reddened. ‘Oh—’

‘Oh?’ he mimicked with derision. ‘That’s it, that’s all you’ve got to say?’

‘What do you want me to say?’ Ella rolled her eyes expressively. ‘I’m not looking for a man right now.’

‘And I’m not looking for a woman... I’m looking for one night,’ Nikolai admitted silkily, lean brown fingers reaching up to curl into the fall of her hair and urge her closer than she would have chosen to be, had she been in her right mind.

As for that, what happened next proved to her that she was not in her right mind when Nikolai was around her because he closed his other hand to her spine and tilted her forward into sudden searing contact with his long, hard body. Within seconds he was kissing her as she had never been kissed before, forcing apart her lips with the hard pressure of his, sliding in his tongue, and sending such a jolt of wild excitement through her that her head swam and her knees buckled. He was passionate and demanding and all-male hungry, every sinuously sexual movement of his lean hips and powerful thighs against her warning her that a kiss could be almost as sizzlingly intimate as a naked embrace.

He lifted his handsome dark head and the chill of the night air on her back contrasted with the heat of his powerfully aroused body against hers. Immediately, Ella remembered who she was and where she was and the chill on her skin slivered inside right down to her stomach, and sickened her.

‘Thanks, but no, thanks,’ she said tartly, pulling free and starting to walk away.

‘You can’t be serious,’ he breathed, his surprise audible because he knew she had been fired up just as much as he.

But what he didn’t know was that Ella had never been that aroused...ever. And mere weeks after she had watched the love of her life being laid in the ground at twenty-four years of age, that truth hurt so bad that she almost sobbed over it. She had believed she truly wanted Paul but Paul had never made her feel like that and the pain of that acknowledgement tore into her grief and ate her alive with guilt.

‘Watch me go,’ she told Nikolai thinly, walking towards the back entrance of the country house where she would wait for her lift...regardless of how long because it would be infinitely safer than going any place with the male who had just kissed her. Kissed her until there was no yesterday and no Paul in her mind. Kissed her for now, for the moment, for a cheap pickup and one-night stand. She knew she was in a big enough emotional mess without making that mistake and doing something she would undoubtedly regret...

* * *

As she filed paperwork to tidy Rosie’s desk, Ella drifted back from that powerful memory and shivered. She had blown him off. Even though it hadn’t been intentional, she had given him the impression that she was with him every step of the way during that kiss and then she had changed her mind. But a woman was entitled to change her mind and she had exercised that right. Yet had she become that much more desirable after she walked away? How many women had said no to Nikolai? Ella reckoned that score would be low because he was very handsome and evidently wealthy into the bargain. Nikolai was a hard hitter, an achiever. Had she challenged his male ego?

Was it really pure coincidence that he now owned her father’s debts? He hadn’t answered her questions. He had said he was giving her a choice she hadn’t had before he arrived, and, although she didn’t like to see it that way, she saw that it was the unwelcome truth. The father and grandmother she adored were on the brink of losing everything they had left. How could she stand back and let them suffer when she had been given an alternative?

Throughout the day her mind seethed with wild ideas. She was willing to do just about anything to save the roof over her family’s head. Freed from the burden of those awful debts and Joy’s extravagance, her father would finally be in a position to make a reasonable living again. Although he had lost the furniture shop, he remained a qualified accountant and the ability to work again would give him his self-respect back.

Yet while Ella might want to help her family, Nikolai Drakos had put her in an impossible situation. Her father would never accept such a sacrifice on her part. So, how could she get around that obvious stumbling block?

Well, one possibility would be offering Nikolai the intimate night she suspected he felt cheated out of. She shuddered at the prospect of having sex with anyone in such circumstances but just as quickly told herself off for being a drama queen. Why make a three-act tragedy out of a perfectly normal feature of life? If possessing her body meant that much to the man, he was welcome to it.

It was not as though she were still a virgin because she had actively chosen to embrace that state. She had waited for Paul, for the miraculous day when he would be ‘well enough’, only that opportunity had failed to arrive. Now and not for the first time she wished Paul had not been so exacting in his wishes, so determined that everything be right and perfect before they became intimate, because going to bed with Nikolai would have been much less intimidating had Ella already acquired some sexual experience. One night, she told herself bleakly, yes, she could do one night if it saved her family. Were there any other options?

Well, instead of making her a mistress, Nikolai could marry her, lending their entire arrangement the sort of respectable patina that would allow her father to accept his debts being paid off, because a son-in-law was a family member while a lover who was a stranger was something else entirely. Somehow she didn’t think Nikolai would want to go for the wedding-ring option. In fact a reluctant giggle was forced from between Ella’s tense lips at even the idea of making such a suggestion. The man who didn’t date and only had sex was unlikely to warm to the prospect of holy matrimony...

At the end of her working day, Ella called the number on the business card Nikolai had left her and before he could even speak said, ‘I want to come and see you this evening.’

Taken aback by that bold declaration, Nikolai frowned. ‘You’ve changed your mind?’

‘I want to talk...’

Nikolai was dubious. He had already wondered how sure she was of Cyrus’s support if she was willing to turn his offer down without hesitation. Had his old enemy already proposed to her? Yet wouldn’t she have thrown that information at him?

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ he countered.

‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way,’ Ella quoted Gramma in her desperation to get him to listen.

Ten minutes later, Ella walked into the exclusive Wrother Links Hotel. Rather belatedly she became conscious of her shabby work clothing, which consisted of a tee and worn skinny jeans thrust into sensible ankle boots. Perhaps she should have gone home first and changed and used some make-up, she reflected uneasily. But then Nikolai had outlined his outrageous proposal at the start of her working day when she was looking far from glamorous. Her smooth brow indented.

What did the wretched man want from her?

The obvious, she told herself irritably as the receptionist directed her into the lift with a curious appraisal. Just because she had never viewed her body as a means of negotiation didn’t mean Nikolai felt the same. He had to want her for something and her body was the most likely explanation, Ella reasoned uncomfortably. Over the years she had listened to friends insist that men saw sex as being of crucial importance, which had left her confused, dealing with Paul’s rigid self-discipline.

Even so, it was an enormous challenge for Ella to credit that suave, sophisticated Nikolai Drakos could possibly see a woman like her in some irresistible had-to-possess-her light. When she had first gone to uni to study, she had been bombarded by sexual approaches. In many ways that was why meeting Paul, initially only a friend, had been such a relief. Paul had valued her for the person she was, not for her body or the physical pleasure he assumed she could give him. Paul, however, had been a very special case, she reminded herself with regret.

A young man who introduced himself as Nikolai’s employee opened the door of the suite and ushered her in. The desk in the room was scattered with papers, a laptop sitting open on it. She got a glance at the columns of figures on the screen before the employee closed it down and gathered the papers into a file to take his leave.

‘Mr Drakos will be with you shortly,’ he assured her as he departed.

Ella stared out of the window at the renowned golf course and, in an effort to steady her leaping nerves when she heard a sound somewhere behind her, she said, ‘Do you play golf?’

‘No. Not my game,’ Nikolai proclaimed as he shook out his shirt. ‘Why are you here, Ella?’

Ella spun round and focused in consternation on Nikolai’s incredibly well-defined muscular abs and stomach as he pulled on a shirt. Clearly he was fresh from the shower with his black hair still curling damply and his hard-boned jaw clean-shaven, but the bronzed expanse of naked male flesh on show above the belt encircling his lean hips sharply disconcerted her. Cheeks warming, she glanced away. ‘Is it inconvenient?’

‘Let’s call it unexpected,’ he replied, his brilliant dark eyes resting on her.

Well, there was nothing of the seductress in her appearance, Nikolai acknowledged wryly. He had assumed she would dress up but she hadn’t made the effort, which for some strange reason irritated him. Wasn’t he worth that much effort? In the shower he had reminded himself that approaching Ella Palmer had always been a long shot. After all, if she had already had one rich man in the palm of her hand why would she accept another dictating terms to her? And yet the fact remained that, astonishingly, Cyrus was evidently not coming to his supposed future wife’s rescue and had taken himself off on a long trip to China. Maybe the tip-off Nikolai had received about Cyrus’s marital plans was rubbish, maybe Cyrus was simply playing with Ella...as he did in the initial stages of his games with such women, when he played the honourable respectful male to perfection to lull any suspicion of his true intentions.

‘The unexpected doesn’t always have to be bad,’ Ella fenced while he buttoned his shirt. Her cheeks were hot because the little peepshow he had unthinkingly subjected her to had made perspiration break out on her skin below clothes that suddenly felt too tight and constricting.

‘I believe you’re acquainted with Cyrus Makris,’ he remarked.

Startled, Ella glanced at him. ‘Yes. He’s a family friend. I was engaged to his nephew, Paul, until he died,’ she told him, wondering how he had known about her acquaintance with Cyrus before a vague association occurred to her. ‘Your name... I should’ve guessed. You’re Greek as well, aren’t you?’

‘I am. Would you like a drink?’

‘No, thanks.’ Ella simply wanted to get what she had to say said and then run. ‘Can’t stay long anyway. I left my dog outside in the van.’

‘So...?’ Nikolai prompted, watching a strand of bronze hair fan out across her white throat as she lifted her head high, her pale skin accentuating the luminous green of her eyes and the succulent pink of her lips. He tensed, fighting the incipient throb at his groin with annoyance.

‘Would...?’ Ella breathed in deep and straightened her spine. ‘I’m here to ask if one night would do.’

‘One night of what?’ Nikolai queried blankly.

‘You know, sex, for goodness’ sake!’ Ella launched back at him in furious embarrassment. ‘I mean, if that’s all you want, I hardly need to go to London and live with you for it!’

Nikolai surveyed her in shock and it took a great deal to shock him. ‘Let me get this straight...you’re offering me a night of sex instead?’

‘Don’t make it sound so sordid!’ Ella lashed back at him.

‘It wasn’t me who made the offer. No, the night of sex wouldn’t meet my...requirements.’ Nikolai selected the word and voiced it smooth as silk. ‘I also assume by that offer that you’re not a virgin?’

‘And why would you think I was at my age?’ But Ella thought better of lying because there was always the hope that the truth would be a total turn-off for him. ‘Actually, I am inexperienced but...’

Distaste at the entire conversation was filling Nikolai. Of course she had assumed he wanted her for sex. What else was she supposed to think? But he wasn’t a ball of sleaze like Cyrus, who treated women like toys he enjoyed breaking. And as it occurred to Nikolai what a challenge making that offer must have been for an innocent like her, he almost swore and had to fight back an angry sense of discomfiture. For the very first time he appreciated that he had recklessly plunged himself into a scenario that was not at all his style.

‘One night won’t work for me,’ Nikolai admitted in a driven undertone.

Ella’s heart was thumping at what felt like a mile a minute behind her breastbone. Relief and dismay assailed her in equal parts. Naturally she was very relieved not to be asked to immediately deliver on the shameless proposition she had just made, but she was taken aback by the speed and power of his repudiation as well. What did he really want? What on earth more could he possibly want or expect from her?

‘Then I only have one other...suggestion to make,’ she murmured tightly. ‘You marry me.’

‘Marry you?’ Nikolai exclaimed after an unnervingly protracted pause while he studied her with incredulous force. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

She had finally got an honest and true reaction out of Nikolai Drakos, Ella realised, and a curious feeling of triumph mingled with her mortification. The idea of getting married had shattered him, scoring colour along those amazing high cheekbones, widening his stunning dark-fringed golden eyes. Evidently he had not been prepared for that idea.

CHAPTER THREE

‘IT WAS A purely practical suggestion from my point of view,’ Ella told him curtly.

‘You need to change your point of view,’ Nikolai retorted with sardonic bite.

Her face was burning with embarrassment and her hands had closed into tight little fists of restraint. If he couldn’t be more frank about exactly what he needed from her, then he could take the rough with the smooth and it would be his own fault. ‘I can’t. You would have to marry me to persuade my father that it was acceptable for you to write off his debts. He’s no freeloader.’

‘There is no way that I will marry you to get what I want!’ Nikolai cut in with a raw edge of impatience to his dark deep drawl.

‘Then that concludes our discussion,’ Ella stated without heat, simply desperate to escape the opulent hotel suite and forget that she had ever met him. As her father had said when he had put the family home on the line and lost it, well, at least he knew he had tried. Well, she now knew what it was like to try hard and still fail too.

‘Diavole, Ella!’ Nikolai bit out as she reached the door. ‘There has to be another way!’

Ella spun round. ‘No, there honestly isn’t. My father couldn’t live with the idea that his daughter would move in with some man to clear his debts.’

His melted caramel eyes suddenly flashed as brilliant a gold as sunlight. ‘You have the rare ability to make everything sound sleazy!’

‘No, you just don’t like plain speaking...unless it’s you doing it. And you talk in riddles. You asked me to be your mistress yet you say no to the chance to sleep with me.’

‘Obviously I want more from you than sex. I can get sex anywhere, any time,’ he assured her dismissively.

Frustration roared through Ella. ‘I’m not a secret heiress, am I?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘I thought I might be the sixth cousin of some distant relation who’s worth a fortune and that you had found out and that maybe—’

‘Your imagination is more inventive than mine. But in that situation a man would want marriage to secure his share of the inheritance. However, in this instance...’ Nikolai compressed his wide sensual mouth.

Marriage, even a fake marriage, was out of the question. Nikolai had never wanted to get married. From the little he remembered of his irresponsible parents, they had fought continually and spent their money on alcohol and drugs while neglecting their two children. He probably wouldn’t have survived early childhood without the loving care of his older sister, who had had a real live baby to look after instead of a doll. No, Nikolai would be perfectly happy to leave the world without descendants of his own. Nor could he imagine wanting one woman for the rest of his life and shunning all others. He barely repressed a shudder because he set a high value on his freedom of choice.

‘In this instance?’ Ella prompted.

‘I need you with me in London.’

‘But as I’ve already explained, you can’t have me without a wedding ring. You know, I don’t want to marry you either,’ Ella admitted shortly. ‘But if it makes my family happy and secure again, I would do it for their sake.’

‘I wouldn’t even consider it. I will deal with your family,’ Nikolai said flatly.

‘What on earth do you mean?’

What it really came down to was how far he was prepared to go in his efforts to punish Cyrus, Nikolai reflected. A fleeting image of his sister’s gentle smile, brought to the surface by memories of his background, froze him in place. There should be and there would be no limits to his desire for revenge. If others got caught up in the backlash, what was that to him? He could not afford to have a conscience. Ella was a pawn, nothing more.

‘I will tell your family that we’ve been seeing each other and that now we want to be together in London,’ Nikolai explained smoothly. ‘Your father cannot struggle to settle debts that no longer exist. He will not have the luxury of choice.’

‘You think it’s a luxury for me to be able to choose to be your mistress?’ Ella launched at him furiously, rage bubbling up through her slight body like a hot spring at the prospect of that indignity. ‘But I’ve already said no to that option!’

‘Which is wasting my time and your own! You can’t renegotiate the terms just because you don’t like them. I won’t let you. There will be no single night, no marriage either,’ he asserted in a harsh undertone, his lean, darkly handsome features forbidding in cast, his stunning eyes hard as black diamonds. ‘Either you come to London to be with me or I walk away. That’s the only choice you have!’

The raw tension straining the atmosphere sent a wave of dizziness through Ella. Consternation brought her defensive barriers crashing down. He had ruthlessly rejected her options. Her head swimming a little, she closed her hands over the back of a tall chair to force her body to stand steady. She stared back at him with a sinking heart. It was the moment she had been fighting to avoid since he’d first confronted her earlier that day. The ‘grit your teeth and deal’ moment when there was no room left to wriggle. Perspiration dampened her skin.

‘Your sole source of interest here should be the pay-off,’ Nikolai reminded her drily. ‘And learning to do as you are told.’

In the rushing silence, Ella wrinkled her nose. ‘If I don’t agree with something, I’m hopeless at doing what I’m told.’

‘But you can learn,’ Nikolai sliced in, his tone as glacial as ice water. ‘Don’t sign up for this if you can’t respect the rules.’

‘Perhaps you could tell me how I’m supposed to respect a man who wants me even though I don’t want him?’ Ella shot back at him in scornful challenge.

‘Do you always lie in preference to telling the truth about yourself?’ Nikolai enquired dangerously softly as he strode closer.

Ella found herself backed up against the door before she could grab the opportunity to make the swift exit she had originally planned. ‘I’m not lying—’

Nikolai rested the palm of one hand against the door and gazed down at her with hard dark eyes. ‘The worst of it is that you know you’re lying...but I don’t play that game.’

‘I want to leave.’

‘Not until I say you can,’ Nikolai fenced, so big he was like a wall blocking the rest of the room from her view and cutting out most of the light, so that for the first time she wished she were wearing heels to cut the ridiculous height differential between them to a more reasonable level.

Ella turned up her face, chin tilted at an obstinate angle, green eyes sparkling. ‘I could use my knee to persuade you.’

‘Why would you damage a part of me you hope to enjoy?’ Nikolai countered.

‘It would take an avalanche to crush your ego, wouldn’t it?’

‘If I was modest you would walk all over me with pleasure.’ Nikolai was entranced by the glorious green of her eyes against the smooth, fine grain of her porcelain skin. ‘But that’s not what you want from me, is it? You’d much prefer me to take your choices away and give you the excuse to be with me.’

‘That’s rubbish!’ Ella gasped, barely able to credit that he had made such an allegation. ‘I don’t want or need an excuse to be with you!’

‘Ne...yes, you do,’ Nikolai insisted, pinning her up against the door in blatant entrapment. ‘You want excuses and persuasion and, sadly, you’re not going to get them from me. That’s not how I am with a woman.’

‘Fascinating as this dialogue no doubt is to a man who likes to listen to the sound of his own voice, I’m not interested.’

‘Every time you lie to me I’ll punish you.’

‘Punish me?’ Ella parroted, blinking in bewilderment.

Nikolai bent down and scooped her up, disconcerted by how very light she was. Yes, she was small and slight in build but he was convinced she weighed too little to be healthy. Nikolai walked through the room into the bedroom with her in his arms. ‘You’ll like the way I punish you.’

‘What are you doing?’ Ella exclaimed as he swept her off her feet.

‘Sealing our agreement.’

‘What agreement?’ she demanded rawly as he dropped her down on a bed so well sprung that she bounced.

‘Your agreement to be my mistress.’ He savoured the word.

As Ella made a sudden sidewise motion intended to remove her from the bed Nikolai came down and imprisoned her with the vastly superior weight and strength of his big, powerful body. ‘Get off me. Let go of me...right now!’ she raked at him.

‘I really hate being shouted at,’ Nikolai confided a split second before his hard, sensual mouth claimed hers.

And for that same split second it was as though Ella’s world stopped turning and she was jolted off course, sent breathless and spinning into the unknown. Heat surged up through her like an invasive weapon. He eased her out from under him but kept her trapped in his arms. Irritation flamed through her because inexplicably she had liked his crushing weight on hers. Her fists struck at shirt-clad shoulders as unyielding as rock. The tip of his tongue flicked inside her mouth and she shivered violently, the clenching at her secret core almost painful in its intensity. He nipped at her lower lip, sucked and soothed it with his tongue. She wanted more, she wanted more so badly it hurt to be denied and the rushing tide of that hunger shocked her back into her mind again.

His kisses were like nothing she’d ever experienced before. A lean hand tunnelled below her tee and closed round a small, high breast, long fingers stroking the throbbing tip and lingering to rub and tug until her spine arched in response and her hips jerked up and a helpless sound of craving was released from low in her throat.