Katrakis's Last Mistress (10 page)

Devastating.

He felt the fire build in her, the tremors that began to make her quiver. Her eyes fluttered shut, and her breath came faster and faster, as her moans turned to helpless pleading. Still, he waited, maintaining that same measured pace, that same iron mastery, turning her incandescent beneath him.

She was so alive. So vivid.
His.

When her head began to toss against the cushions, he bent to the tempting swells of her breasts, and began to lick the sweet flesh he found there, spilling out from her bodice. She tasted like cream with the faintest hint of peach, and her own feminine musk. She went straight to his head like the finest whiskey, making him surge against her like an untried boy. He peeled back the bodice of the dress and let her plump, round breast free. Then, never breaking his rhythm, he began to learn each breasts with his lips, his tongue, the faintest hint of his teeth.

She cried out his name, a broken sound of uninhibited passion. Of mindless pleasure. And that was when he found her nipple, sucking the peak into his mouth with a gentle insistence.

This time, she screamed his name. And when she hurtled over the edge, he followed.

T
HERE
were things he should think about, he knew; strategies he should put into place and advantages he should press, even while his heart thudded out a jagged beat. There would never be a better time to start the slow and steady process of destroying her family. Her. But she lay there beneath him so soft and warm, her eyes closed and her breath still coming hard, and Nikos could think of none of those things.

He was still inside of her, and he wanted her again. Immediately. He could not make sense of it. Hunger moved through him, making up his mind for him. There would be time enough to think, to plot. Now was the time to slake his unshakeable thirst for this most maddening, most inconvenient of women.

He moved, pulling himself away, and was pleased to see her stir as if reluctant to let him go. Her brown eyes opened, wary and still dazed with passion. She blinked at him as if she was not sure whether or not she had dreamed him. He stood up, kicking off his trousers. Her eyes darkened, and she propped herself up on her elbows, watching him carefully. Cautiously.

Did she know the wanton, disheveled picture she made? She sprawled across the sofa, a scarlet band of bunched-up dress clinging to her waist, her breasts free and her long legs splayed before her. He should, he knew, point out that she
looked more like a mistress ought to in this moment than ever before. Compliant. Alluring. Thoroughly debauched. He knew saying such things would put them back on to the solid ground he had the strangest feeling he had lost somewhere while losing himself in the delirium of her body.

But he did not say a word, and he could not have told himself why not.

Instead he reached down and picked her up as if she weighed nothing, as if she were insubstantial. She gasped as he lifted her, holding her high against his chest, but she did not speak. Instead she let her head drop onto his shoulder, her hair falling to cover her—almost as if she was hiding.

He should call her on that weakness. He should force her to face him. He should make sure they both had nowhere to hide. Because hiding places suggested intimacy, and that was impossible. This was sex. Long overdue sex, that was all.

That had to be all.

He set her down on her feet in the lushly appointed bath that sprawled next to his master suite. He did not meet her gaze, though he could feel her looking at him, searching his expression. He preferred to look at her body, he told himself. It was a work of art. Skin of cream and pink and gold, upturned breasts, and that band of tight scarlet wrapped around her middle, emphasizing the perfection of her figure, the swell of her hips and her long, silken legs.

Silently he reached down and took hold of the red dress, tugging it up and over her breasts and then helping her move the heavy mass of her hair through it. He cast it aside, and only then did he look at her.

She moistened her lower lip with her delicate tongue, making a new hunger uncoil within him. He leaned down and tasted the shape of her lips, that full, sweet bow, and then tested that delicate tongue with his own. He meant only to maintain this quiet between them, as if it was a sacred thing, though he refused to think of it that way—but her taste went
to his head again, making him hard and ready. Unwilling to wait. Unable to think. As desperate to have her as if he had not just done so.

He pulled her flush against him, pressing his maleness against the soft skin of her belly. She gasped, and then shivered, bracing her small hands on his chest. He saw the tiny goose bumps rise along the curve of her arms.

“Nikos,” she began, in a shaky kind of whisper.

“Hush,” he murmured. He kissed her neck, and ran his hands along the seductive line of her spine, following it to the breathtaking swell of her hips. He tested the weight of her pert, round bottom in his hands, and then slipped his fingers lower, curving around into her furrow, finding her soft and hot.

Just as ready for him as he was for her. A flash of possessiveness roared through him.

“Do not tell me—” she started, in that same breathy voice, and he could not allow it. If she started playing her little games again, he would have to think about the many reasons he should be handling this moment differently, and then he would have to do so.

“Hush,” he said again, and he took her hips between his hands and lifted her high into the air, sliding her breasts against the wall of his chest.

She gasped again, but threw her arms around him, clutching fast to his shoulders. He slid his hands down to her delectable behind and then, propping her up with his hands and holding her in place, he thrust into her, hard. She stiffened, then let out a long, low moan and let her head fall forward against the crook of his neck. He could feel her mouth there, open against his skin, her sudden, labored breathing electrifying his own, making his heart beat faster, harder.

“Put your legs around my waist,” he ordered her, widening his stance. She obeyed him at once, locking her ankles in the small of his back. It was as if she had been made for
him, carefully engineered for this slick, impossibly perfect fit. He lifted her slowly, then let her sink back down, making them both shudder as his hard length filled her completely.

He did it again. Then again. Then one more long, slow stroke of her body against his, his shaft deep inside her, and she began to shake against him, sobbing out her pleasure against his neck. He waited for her to stop shaking, still hard within her, and then sank down to his knees into the thick, soft carpet beneath their feet. Never releasing her from that most intimate contact between them, he settled her on to her back beneath him, nestling himself between her soft thighs.

She was still breathing heavily, and her chocolate eyes were dazed when she finally opened them. It took her a long moment to focus on him.

When she did, he smiled. He could not seem to help himself. But he could not bring himself to worry about that as he knew he should.

“My turn,” he said.

She was lost.

Tristanne clung to Nikos’s sinfully hard body, and, impossibly, felt herself start to quicken once again with every long, slow stroke. He loomed over her, his dark gold eyes serious, his face drawn with passion.

It should not be like this. She should not have been capable of the feelings he invoked in her. She should not have felt as if his slightest touch might send her spinning into ecstasy. Or at the very least, she should fight it. But with every thrust of his powerful body, she found she could not think of anything save him, as if nothing existed except the two of them and the sensations that threatened to overcome her entirely.

Too soon, too quickly, she felt her breath catch. It should not have been possible. It should not have felt more electric, more overwhelming, with every slick movement of his hips.
He murmured encouragement in dark, rich words she could not understand, pressing his mouth against her neck, and into her hair.

He reached between them, and pressed against her hidden nub, making her writhe against him and then, at his soft command, explode into pieces. She heard his hoarse shout, and then, for a time, knew nothing.

He did not let her rest too long. Instead he pulled her into the wide, luxurious expanse of his shower. Multiple jets of water created steam and heat, and washed away everything outside of their hot, wet cocoon. Nikos washed her carefully, thoroughly, as if she were something indescribably precious.

Not precious
, she reminded herself.
Merely a possession. He is a man who takes good care of his possessions.

He did not speak as he washed her, and he did not speak when he pulled her from the shower’s warmth and dried her, still so carefully, with towels as soft as clouds. He pulled the fluffy cotton around her, and their eyes caught. His gaze was serious, more brown than gold. She had never felt more naked, more vulnerable. More exposed.

She had known from the moment she set eyes on him on the yacht that she should not—must not—allow this night to happen. And she had even known why. She had known that he would tear her into pieces, rip her open and leave her helpless. She could not handle this. Him. She had known all of that, and she had done it anyway.

The worst part was, even now, even knowing that she was in deeper trouble than she had ever been in before, she could not bring herself to regret it. Not a moment of it. Not even
this
moment. Biting her lip, she pulled the towel tighter across her breasts.

His eyes searched hers, then dropped to her mouth as if he, too, felt the pull of this impossible, incandescent attraction. But he did not act upon it. He merely ushered Tristanne into
the other room, and into the vast bed that sat raised upon a dark marble platform.

Tristanne lay with her head nestled into his shoulder and wondered how she could ever, possibly, survive this. Survive him.

His hands stroked through her damp hair, as if learning the raw silk of its texture with his fingers. He sighed slightly, as if the same words bubbled up in him that she knew fought to escape her own mouth, though she bit them back, preserving the silence between them—knowing what would happen once the silence between them ended. What had to happen.

Words were the only weapon she had, and she had abandoned them entirely tonight. She could not understand why she had done so. Was it Peter? Had his nastiness finally proved too much for her? Had she been desperate for Nikos’s touch because she wanted to prove, to herself at the least, that everything Peter said was a twisted lie? Or was it that Nikos was the only person who had ever made her feel safe in Peter’s presence? Did she want all of this heat, all of this fire, to mean something more than she knew it could?

Tristanne was almost afraid to take the necessary steps back, to try to navigate their relationship now that it had gone so physical, so atomic. How would she handle what had happened between them, when she could still hardly manage to take a deep breath? How could it still be happening, even now?

She should have been exhausted, but instead she felt herself soften and grow restless as she lay against him, breathing in the dizzying, seductive scent of his warm skin. She felt that now familiar, but no less irresistible, fire move through her, making her limbs feel heavy, and her mouth go dry.

How could she want him, when she had already had him, and more than once? Something like anguish moved through her, mingling with the ever-present burn of desire, making her wonder what kind of sorcery this was—and how she would
ever escape him. She knew, now, what it meant to be burned alive by this man. Before, she had only considered how he would ruin her. She had not imagined that she would crave the very thing that would destroy her, slowly and surely, with every touch of his hands and every tantalizing kiss.

She knew that he would haunt her for the rest of her days.

Perhaps that was why she turned her head, and pressed desperate kisses against his hard, wide chest, hardly understanding her own urges. Perhaps that was why the way his hand closed around the back of her neck was like gasoline against a flame, and his mouth against hers a bright new inferno. She could not help but surrender herself to the now-familiar, still-devastating whirl, the kick and the fire. She moved against him helplessly, wantonly, and then somehow she was astride him.

For a moment she looked down at him, and all she could see was the gold gleam of those eyes, and the wicked curve of his mouth as she took him deep inside of her.

She was irrevocably, irretrievably lost. In more ways than she could possibly count.

She had known it would be this way from the start. She had dreamed this when she was still just a girl, and had only imagined him from afar.
She had known.

And so she moved against him, losing what was left of her in the glory of the fire that raged between them, not caring, in the dark of the night, that it left her little more than ash. Just as she had expected. Just as she had worried.

Exactly as she had feared.

H
IGH
on the green and gray cliffs of Kefalonia, Tristanne sat out on the wide stone patio that encircled the sumptuous villa and let the wild, rugged coastline of the Greek island sink into her bones, as if the shining Ionian Sea could soothe her, somehow, as it crashed against the dark rocks far below. Olive groves, bursts of pine and columns of cypress trees lined the narrow isthmus that stretched out before her in the late morning light. The tiny fishing village of Assos straddled the small spit of land, cheerful orange roofs turned toward the sun, while the ruins of a sixteenth century Venetian palace stood sentry above. This was not the smooth, white and blue beauty of the better-known Greek islands that Tristanne had explored in her youth. This was tenacious, resilient Greece, beautiful for its craggy cliffs as well as its unexpected and often hidden golden-sand beaches.

It did not surprise her that this remote and isolated stretch of land, torn between the cliffs and the sea, was the place Nikos Katrakis called home.

Tristanne shifted in her seat, and deliberately did not look over her shoulder to where Nikos sat closer to the wide-open patio doors that led inside, taking one of his innumerable business calls on his mobile phone in clipped, impatient Greek. She did not have to look at him to know where he was and what he was doing. It was as if she had been tuned
to him, on some kind of radio frequency that only she could hear. She knew when he was near. Her breasts tightened and her sex warmed, readying her body for him, no matter what.

It was only one among many reasons to despair, she knew. Only one among many reasons to accept that she had lost any measure of control she might have had over this odd interlude in her life. If there was any way she could have been further complicit in her own destruction, Tristanne could not imagine what that might be.

He had taken her over, body and soul. He made love to her so fiercely, so comprehensively, so well and so often, that she wondered how she would ever be the same again. She worried that she had completely lost touch with whoever she might have been before that night in Florence. And the most frightening part was that she was not at all certain she cared as she should, as she knew she had back in Florence, standing in that flat with the Duomo looming behind her, trying to stop the inevitable. The days turned to weeks, and she could do nothing but burn for him. Again and again and again.

They had sailed from Italy to Greece, stopping wherever the mood took them. Sorrento. Palermo. The sights blurred in her memory, narrowing to a singular focus. Nikos. She remembered his slow, hot smile on a sun-baked street in Sorrento. She remembered the possessive weight of his hand in the small of her back as they explored the old seawall in the ancient city of Valletta in Malta. Then they had sailed on to the famed island of Ithaka, before mooring in Assos, the small village on neighboring Kefalonia that Nikos called his home.

“The villa was originally my grandfather’s,” he’d said that first afternoon, when they’d left the yacht in the tiny harbor and were in the back of an exquisitely maintained Mercedes
as it navigated the twisting, turning road toward the hills. “It came to me following my father’s death.”

“So you never came here as a child?” she had asked. She had been staring out the window of the car at the pebbled beach in the village center, where children played beneath white umbrellas, and the pastel facades of the houses seemed to beg to be photographed, all of it beneath the impossible blue of the Greek sky.

His look had been dark, and far too cynical to be amused.

“I did not holiday on the island, if that is what you mean. I grew up in Athens, and stayed there,” he’d said, matter-of-factly, and she’d remembered, then, his talk of slums and poverty, and had flushed. It had already started then, she knew, the need she felt to protect him—even from his own past. She had not yet allowed herself to think about what that must mean—what it could not mean. What she refused to permit it to mean.

“Since you call it home, I assumed that meant you had some childhood connection to it,” she had said stiffly. She was terrified that he could sense that she had softened considerably, that she
cared
in ways she knew perfectly well would appall him. It appalled her. His dark gaze had been cool, assessing, and she’d frozen next to him in the backseat of the old Mercedes that his servant drove carefully up the snaking, hilly road, hoping her expression would remain calm, removed.

“It is the only one of my father’s properties that he never visited as long as I knew him,” he’d said in that detached, cold way that did not encourage further discussion. “I suppose I find his absence soothing.”

She had not asked any further questions about his father. Not then. He had swept her into the villa, and then into the wide bed in his stark white room that took its only color from the sea beyond, the stretch of water and the gleaming bowl
of the endless sky. And she had been so hungry for him, so desperate to feel that heady rush and that exquisite fall into ecstasy, that she had not minded such diversions.

If only we could stay in bed forever,
she thought now, her eyes on the horizon.

But once they were in Greece, where Nikos seemed to be as much a part of the island landscape as the olive trees and the rugged hills, it seemed almost inevitable that the old tycoon should come up in conversation. His father, she’d learned, had been raised on this island by Nikos’s grandfather, then sent out into the world to help run the old man’s business concerns. It was difficult to say which of those two men had been the harder, the more driven. She told herself she wanted to know about his family because it made sense to learn all she could about the man who had so entranced her, however brief this liaison must be, but she was afraid she knew perfectly well that was not the reason she asked.

“Did you know your grandfather?” she had asked one afternoon, as they sat in a bustling taverna in the village square lunching on goat
stifada
and fresh-grilled sea bass in a delectable lemon sauce. Tristanne sipped at a dry white wine while Nikos drank from a large glass of Mythos beer.

“You are obsessed with a man who has been dead for decades,” Nikos had said in quelling tones. His brows had arched high, mocking her. “Are you looking for ghosts, Tristanne? The island is full of them, I am sure. There are plenty of saints and martyrs here to occupy your thoughts. There is no need to go digging in my history.”

“I am hardly obsessed,” she had replied in the calm voice that she wielded as her only remaining weapon. Her only armor, however weak. She’d taken a sip of her wine and had pretended to be unmoved. “I am interested, however. He built an amazingly artistic home for a man you refer to in such harsh terms.” The villa was an artist’s dream—every room
carefully designed to captivate the senses, and to gracefully frame the stunning views.

“My grandfather was not a particularly nice man, Tristanne,” Nikos had said, a gleam in his dark eyes that had made the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickle in warning. “And the only artistic impulse he possessed involved buying things that others told him were sought-after.” He’d shrugged, though his gaze had been hard. “But what man who builds an empire is
nice
? He raised his son to be even worse. His own image, magnified.” His mouth had twisted. “This is my heritage, of which I am deeply proud.”

She’d let his sardonic tone wash over her, and schooled herself not to react. He would not respond well to any show of emotion, she knew—any hint of compassion, or identification. She’d sometimes thought he deliberately tested her to see if there was any hint of softness in her demeanor. It was her duty to behave as if all that was between them was sex and the promise of money. Perhaps, for him, that was even true.

“Whether you are proud of it or not,” she had said then, “it is still where you come from. It is worth knowing.”

“I know exactly where I come from,” he had retorted in that quiet, dangerous tone that Tristanne remembered only too well from Portofino. Did it mean she had struck a nerve? Or only that he wished to slap her down, put her in her place? She’d felt her chin rise in automatic defense. His mocking half smile had seemed extra bitter then, as if he’d been able to read her as well as she was learning to read him.

“Then there is no need to get so upset about it, is there?” she had asked lightly.

His eyes had seemed to catch fire and his smile had deepened to a razor’s point.

“Why should I be upset?” he had asked, in that cutting tone, though whether he’d wished to slice into her or himself, she’d been unable to tell. “In retrospect, I should thank my
father for casting my mother aside when her charms as a mistress grew stale. After all, she was merely a dancer in a club. What did he owe her? That he chose to favor her at all was more than she could have dreamed. No doubt that is why she succumbed to the usual narcotics, and abandoned me. But then, as he told me himself many years later, long after I proved myself to him through DNA and hard work—the streets hardened me. Made me a more formidable opponent.” His shrug then had struck her as almost painful to watch. “Truly, I should have thanked him while I had the chance.”

“He sounds deeply unpleasant,” Tristanne had said quietly.

“He was Demetrios Katrakis,” Nikos had said coldly. “What softer feelings he had, and he did not have many, he reserved for his late wife and their daughter. Not his gutter trash bastard son.” His expression had been so fierce then, almost savage. Tristanne had known, somehow, that were she to show even a hint of sympathy, he would never find it in himself to forgive her.

So, instead, she had settled back in her seat, sipped at her wine and gazed out at the picturesque little village, quite as if her heart were not breaking into pieces inside her chest, for the discarded little boy she knew he would never acknowledge had existed.

He never spoke of these conversations. He only made love to her with an intensity that she worried, sometimes, in the dark of night, might destroy them both. How could anyone live with so much stark, impossible pleasure? How could they handle so much fire so often, and not turn themselves into cinders?

So rather than voice the thoughts and feelings that she was afraid to entertain even in the sanctity of her own head, Tristanne drew. She drew Nikos in a hundred poses, in a hundred ways. She told herself he was no more and no less than an example of a particular kind of hard male beauty,
and she owed it to her artistic growth to master his form with pencils and a pad of paper.

That was why she traced the line of his nose a thousand times, the high thrust of his cheekbones, the proud set of his chin. That was why she agonized over the fullness of his lips, so wicked and seductive even at his most mocking, his most cutting. She spent whole afternoons learning the sweep of his magnificent torso; spent endless hours studying the strength and cleverness of his hands. It was to improve her craft, she told herself—to become a better artist.

“Surely you have drawn me more than enough,” Nikos said now, coming to stand behind her. His fingers moved through her hair, pulling at the dark blonde waves almost absently. “Why not sketch the rocks? The cliffs? The cypress trees?”

Tristanne had not heard him end his call, but she had known the moment he moved across the wide patio to join her. She sat on one of the comfortable chairs that was placed to take advantage of the sweeping views of the Assos peninsula and the Ionian Sea beyond. But on the pad propped up on her knees in front of her was another drawing of Nikos. This time, she had drawn him in profile, his brow furrowed in thought, his mouth curled down at the corners. This was the Nikos she knew all too well, she thought now, looking at the drawing with a practiced eye. Resolute. Commanding. In control.

“I prefer to draw people—it’s far more challenging. And you are the only person I see regularly,” she said airily. “I could ask one of the tourists in the village to pose for me, but I do not believe you would care for it if I did.”

“Indeed, I would not.” There was an undercurrent of amusement in his rich voice, and she knew if she looked that he would be biting back that almost-smile.

“So, you see, I must use you,” she said. “It is an artistic imperative.”

She put down her pencil, and twisted to look up at him. As ever, her breath caught in her throat as she gazed at him. As ever, he seemed larger-than-life, blocking out the enormous azure sky. She could not see the gold in his eyes with his face in shadow, but she felt it anyway, as if another kind of gold hummed within her, and turned into an electric current when he touched her.

“I must go into Athens this afternoon,” he said in a low voice. His hand moved from her hair to her cheek. His thumb traced a firm line along her jaw.

“Do I accompany you?” she asked softly. She could not pretend that she was not his mistress now, in word and in deed. Not when she knew what to ask and how to ask it, with no expectation or recrimination. Only availability. She was endlessly, terrifyingly available. She told herself that she was only ensuring Peter’s continued compliance, and thus her mother’s future, as they came ever closer to the month her brother had demanded at the party in Florence. Peter had even sent the papers that indicated she would have access to her trust, should she continue as she was. She was not doing this on a whim, she reminded herself firmly. Her plan was working just as she’d hoped. She had not meant to sleep with Nikos, it was true, nor had she anticipated spending more than a few days with him, but the fact that those things had changed did not alter the rest of her plans in any respect. She was not like her mother in her earlier, healthier days, kept for a man’s pleasure like an inanimate object; a toy. She was not. She told herself so every day.

“I will only be gone a few hours,” he said. He meant he would take the helicopter, which made the trip to his office in Athens merely a long, if rather flamboyant commute. “I will return tonight.”

“I will miss you, then,” she said, in that casual tone that she knew would not set off his alarms. She was so calm, so blasé. She worked so hard to appear that way. “Luckily I have
my drawings of you. In case I begin to forget what you look like.”