A Perfect Wife: International Billionaires V: The Greeks (10 page)

She challenged him with her attitude. Challenged him once more.

Lifting a brow in studied arrogance, satisfaction surged as he noted her outrage growing by the flush of heat on her pale cheeks. “Something is bothering you,
agápi̱ mou
?”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “I am not your love. The thought is ridiculous.”

“You’ve become proficient in my native language?” He should be focusing on getting her out of his family’s sphere, yet suddenly what he wanted to do was provoke, spar with, spear this female demon who’d invaded his life. “
Mia tétoia éxypni̱, kánei ta stravá mátia i̱ gynaíka mou
.”

“I understand a few words, but I’m certainly not proficient. So whatever you just called me flies right over my head and doesn’t hurt me.”

“Smart.”

Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “Well, wow. From you, that’s amazing.”

“Conniving.”

Her lush lips slammed shut and pursed in annoyance. “I figured a compliment from you was too good to be true.”

“My wife.”

“Your pretend wife.” She took her hands off the chair and stuffed them into the pockets of her tight jeans. The movement stretched the cotton of her simple top across those breasts. Those breasts that constantly, inevitably drew his attention.

Gamó̱to ti̱s
. Damn her.

Why? Why this woman and her lean body and barely-there breasts? Why did she ignite in him this bonfire of sexual heat he’d never, ever had to deal with before? He’d never gazed at any woman across a long breakfast table with a dozen other people in the room and found himself hardening into arousal. Never. He never argued with a female, an enemy, and let his focus be distracted by the way her jeans highlighted the length of her long legs. Never. And he’d assuredly never conceived of standing in front of a woman who he intended to get rid of and instead found his head filling with images of her naked.

Never. Never. Never.

“You’ll no longer have to play the role of my wife.”

She cocked her head and frowned. “What?”

He tapped his laptop. “Your background check came in.”

Another blush washed her pale cheeks. “Yeah?”

“I can’t have someone like you around my family.”

“Someone like me?” Her chin lifted. “What do you mean by that?”

“
Mágissa
.” He wanted to stride down the length of the room and shake her, but an instinct deep inside told him it was perilous. She was perilous. “Your father? Your brother?”

“What did you call me?” The chin rose another notch. “And what about them?”

He said nothing. Over the years, he’d learned silence often crushed an enemy better than a mountain of words. They soon crumbled, babbled their guilt, admitted their folly.

Gave him the win.

The silence hung, taut and tense, in the room. The sun abruptly seemed hotter, the bright beams lighting the table burning his skin. A line of sweat broke out along his spine and along the neck of his shirt. His family called their good-byes in the other room, his computer pinged with a new message, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and yet none of it penetrated the cloud of heat blistering his brain.

She said nothing.

Her eyes blazed, velvet turning to violence. The look torched something inside him, something he’d held on to for a long time because it was safe and secure. It was something he had no intention of letting go, of losing. Not to this
mágissa
, this witch. Not to this woman. Not to any woman.

The heat rose in him. Boiling his blood, searing his intentions.

“Criminals.” He threw the accusation at her, an incendiary weapon aimed right at her soul.

Her expression went flat, yet not with pain or defeat or guilt. She dared to stare at him with scorn, as if he and his accusation were nothing.

He gritted his teeth. Tried to struggle past this flaming rage to the words he needed to drive her away. Before he could find them, though, voice them—

“So?” Her nonchalant shrug threw gasoline on the fire. “That has nothing to do with me.”

The fire exploded, tore through the cold and ice anchoring his entire being, blinding him with its intense flames of anger and lust and cutting confusion. Without a thought or a plan, he paced down the length of the table and grabbed her.

She yelped and her hands slammed on his chest, pushing him away.

Still, he was too big for her, too powerful. The witch might try and weave her spells around and in him, but in this instance, in this physical area, he held control. “Nothing to do with you?”

“Let me go right now.” Her long fingers dug into his skin, creating hot circles of heat.

Aetos leaned in closer, wanting to roar and rage at what she did to him. Her amethyst eyes widened, and
Theós
, a wild image flew through him. Of him falling and falling into her wicked wine, becoming drunk and delirious forever. He needed to remember, remember for his own safety. “You are exactly like them. A criminal.”

“I am not.” Her gaze turned fierce. “I am nothing like them.”

He shook her. Tightened his hands around her shoulders. The realization came, with a sudden shot of panic and pain, that she was fragile. Her bones were fine, her skin soft, the curve of her arms dainty. Tall and lean, yet all woman. All delectable, delicate woman.

Let her go. You’re hurting her.

Let her go. Before she hurts you
.

He couldn’t. Somehow, he’d lost control of his hands, his brain, his breath. The fire inside him torched his insides and now ate into his body, an unquenchable storm of hot heat. He searched to find words yet found none on his tongue.

“I’m nothing like them,” she snapped again.

His tortured gaze fell on her lips. Those lush, ruby lips. He tried, how he tried to pull himself out of her witchy grasp. With every atom in his body, he strained to yank his focus from her temptation.

It was no use. Her sorcery was too much for a man. A mere man.

His mouth slammed onto hers. Taking those lips, the challenge of her, and answering it with one of his own. He might be a mere man confronting a goddess witch, but he’d face this and find some way to have her, conquer her, win this battle raging between them.

Inside him.

She gasped and he didn’t hesitate to use it to his advantage.

His tongue leapt into her mouth, slicing into her soft flesh and tasting, gorging on her essence. Her flavor was like no other woman he’d ever kissed. Pure woman, pure salt and sweet and savory. He couldn’t get enough of the wet, winsome mouth. His hands moved from her shoulders to her cheeks, tilting her head so he could ravish her like a warrior ready to win the battle in any way he could.

Somehow, somewhere he found himself sliding, slipping down and down into her rule.

Did it start when her gorgeous lips finally softened and sipped on his? Or did it happen when her soft fingers slid across his shoulders to his sweating neck? Had there been even one moment where he had time to come to his senses, when the female wound her long leg around his own and entrapped him in her snare?

This wasn’t a kiss. This wasn’t like the kisses he’d placed on pouty painted lips as a means to get a woman to give him some sexual release. This wasn’t like any of those kisses.

This was a taking. A branding.

Of him.

His gut roared the knowledge, yet his brain was fogged with lust so deep and dark and delicious he lost his way, lost his mind. If he’d been able to find a way out of her enchantment, he would have taken it.

There was no hope, though. No hope for a mere man in the grip of a siren.

“
Ŏmorfi̱
,” he groaned into her mouth as she sucked on his lower lip.

He opened his eyes, trying to regain some control. But the only thing he saw before him were hers, swirling with magic and mystery. A velveteen wash of pure enthrallment circling around him and through him and in him until he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t merged with this woman into a new being. A new creature of sex and fire. Of heat and life.

“Aetos.” She said his name. For the first time. Soft and whispery and seductive.

Memory chimed in him. An ancient bell of long-ago hope or dreams or need. Desires he’d lost and forgotten and thought he’d been well rid of.

To dream. To hope. To need another person with desperation.

He took her mouth once more. Even though he yearned to pull back, he found himself unable to stop kissing her and touching her. His hands cupped her plush butt and the memory of her walking before him at the airport—the sway, the strut, the sashay—zipped through his mind, causing his cock to harden to pain.

The
mágissa
hummed deep in her throat when he involuntarily punched his arousal into her stomach. The female, the fiendish female, rolled her hips against his in an invitation as old as the human race.

He gasped and groaned. The fire inside him burnt the last of his reason into a billow of smoke.

“
Eínai kaló na deíte énan ántra kai ti̱ gynaíka sti̱n agápi̱
.”

It is good to see
…

His brain wrapped around the spoken words with no comprehension.

The witch tensed in his arms.

His grandmother chuckled softly.

A husband and wife
…

The fire inside him froze.

In love
.

No. Never. His brain roared back to life. Roared the rejection in his soul.

He released the witch from his grasp and stepped back. She said nothing. Merely stared at him, her blonde curls falling out of her ever-present braid. Had he done that with his rough hands? Her lips were plump and rosy. His rough mouth had definitely been responsible for that. Her dark gaze was awash with startled frustration.

A frustration he refused to share.

His
giagiá
stood by the door, gazing at them with kind, old eyes. “
Den ypárchei típota gia na ntrepómaste
, Aetos.”

His
giagiá
was wrong. There was plenty of reasons to be ashamed. He was ashamed to find himself capable of panting over a woman. Slathering slavishly in her arms. Ashamed to find inside him a passion he’d known with surety he would never feel.

“
Giagiá
,” he croaked. “Leave us.”

“I can see you need to be alone.” Her thick accent blurred the English words, making them almost incomprehensible, but the witch smiled her acknowledgment of his grandmother’s attempt at speaking in a tongue she understood.

The woman’s soft smile faded as the door closed, leaving them only with each other once more.

Silence thudded. Along with his heart.

He tried to find words, even thoughts. He tried to form his mouth into repudiation, into putting an end to this, an end to her.

Then, she did it. Made it worse. Made him desperate.

She smiled. An entirely different kind of smile than she’d recently given his grandmother. A Circe smile of seduction and sorcery and searing, scary charm.

With the survival instinct of an animal cornered, he forced his aching body to turn from her, walk away from her. Down the length of the table. Back to his laptop, back to reality. He sucked in a deep breath and realized her wildflower scent clung to him, enwrapping him in her spell even though he now stood far enough away from her to be safe.

He flipped open his laptop, ignoring her and her scent and her spell. He stared blankly at the report labeling her trouble. For his family, and certainly, for him.

A short, sharp silence followed.

“It was just a kiss,” she blurted.

Just a kiss? Could she be serious? Just a kiss didn’t turn and twist the insides of a man until he found it to be a futile exercise to find a remnant of himself that he recognized. Just a kiss didn’t have the ability to bring a man to his knees. Bring a man to the end of his reason.

“There will be no more kisses,” he stated.

His pride forced him to meet her gaze. The woman wrapped her arms around her in an act of protection while her eyes turned dark with wariness. Yet they blazed with unearthly fire. The fire he planned on staying away from going forward. Because now he knew the danger.

“Fine. Still, let’s be clear on who started the kiss.” Her words were tight and clipped. “It wasn’t me.”

She was wrong. Very wrong. She’d tugged and tortured him into the act. She’d laced and lined him with need so huge he’d been a slave to her and her allure. The passion she’d alighted inside him had nearly, nearly burned an entirely different reality into his existence.

Nearly.

But he’d survived. He’d managed to tear himself away.

Taking another deep breath in, relief washed through him. Her scent was gone. Her control over him was gone.

“Let’s get back to what is important.” He was relieved that his voice was contained and calm once more. “Your background.”

“Right. Let’s.” Her mouth tightened. “My father was a mobster. My brother, too. I am not.”

His fingers tapped on the laptop cover. “I’m supposed to believe this?”

“You can believe anything you want.”

“I choose not to believe you, then.”

A disgruntled grunt was her only response.

“I will have the plane readied for your departure to the States. And to the police.”

A bright spark of fear flashed across her face, much to his satisfaction. He wanted to stir in her as much fear as she’d stirred in him with her artful, tricky ways. “No,” she stuttered.

“
Nai
.”

“What about your family?” Her hands flew into the air, the long fingers fluttering. “What will they say?”

“I will take care of my family. As I always do.”

He noticed the flare of alarm in those violet eyes, noticed the color of her cheeks leech away. Relief surged, grew to envelop him in safety. Finally, he would be free of her. Finally, he would be secure in his usual habits.

Suddenly, everything changed. Everything about her changed. Her hands fell, her expression mellowed, her lips smoothed into another of her witchy smiles.

His heart beat; drummed. Sweat broke out on his sides.

“You can’t.” Her words were simple and solid. An indictment.

“What the hell does that mean?”