The Greek Billionaire's Secret Baby (Contemporary Romance) (14 page)

Then he clutched her hips and tasted her heat. His lower half turned to a rock but he needed to feast, needed to taste her orgasm, which came over his tongue in waves. Her hands clutched his hair, and she freed him only as his lips began to move back up her pleasured body, over the peak of her full breast as again he returned to her lips for another deep, spiraling kiss.

Her eyes flew open and satisfaction filled him. Her baby blue orbs were glossy with spent passion.

“We’re only just beginning,” he told her as he gently laid her on his bed. “Only beginning.”

She ran her hands over his back and then lowered her hands to find him. He groaned under her tentative touch and she grew bolder, caressing him through the folds of the karate pant material he hadn’t yet shed.  He caught her mouth with his. He wanted control…

Theé mou
! If their earlier kiss had been worthy of the gods, this one rocked the universe. This kiss promised more than all of the earlier kisses combined. It promised the sun, the moon, the stars and all things past present and future.

He cupped her breasts with his hands and took in a deep suckle that caused her to cry out in pure joy. 

Tonight was about her pleasure. He’d been without ever since they’d parted, but he could wait to satisfy his own needs. He wanted this night, their rejoining to be perfect, to be everything and more. He wanted it to erase the past, bury all other memories she might have. That much his pride demanded. After tonight the only man she’d ever think about was him.

So he gave her pleasure in every way he knew, his body rediscovering hers and finding even new ways to bring her to heights only before imagined. He gave no consideration to his own throbbing ache, but concentrated only on her body, bringing her to the edge and back several times before finally, she planted both of her hands on each side of his face. The intensity in her blue eyes made it clear, but she added the words as well.

“I need you,” she said. “Take me, Alex.  Be inside me.”

Only then did he allow her to strip off his pants. Only then did he allow her to really touch him, to feel him skin to skin. He rolled on a condom and settled his body gently onto hers. Her body quivered with anticipation of their imminent joining and he wasn’t unaffected. His body trembled too, and he caressed her and worked her again to a fevered pitch.

His hardness rested between her thighs, and slowly, tenderly he slid between her legs and filled her to the fullest and deepest extent.

“
Epitelous
!” he cried, as, once joined with deep inside her, he was thoroughly lost, just as he’d known he would be. He kept his strokes gentle until she was stretched and sure, and then he moved faster, harder, driving himself deeply and losing himself in her hidden depths. 

It was like coming home.

No other woman had ever made him feel this way. Lauren perfected him, made him complete, made him whole. He could feel her move beneath him as the journey that only they could take together began to reach crescendo.

Together they soared, crested and peaked, and then they repeated the process over and over again as he continued to make the most exquisite love to her.

“Alex!” She shouted his name and her sheath tightened and he knew that she’d reached that point where the stars seem limitless and touchable.

He drove himself into her one more time, the desire to give her the perfect moment even more intense than his own aching need. He felt her body shake and then he let himself go and joined her in a shattering release.

She clung to him afterwards, her body awash with satiation and satisfaction. He ran his fingers over her face, gently touching her while she drifted off into a much need sleep.

It hit him at that moment that despite everything, he could still love her, and that probably he’d never stopped. He hated their past, hated what had happened between them, but despite everything, he could not hate her.

But now was not the time to tell her. There were still too many independent variables, too many circumstances still out of his control.

She had betrayed him after all, and giving her too much power over him might leave him open for even more heartbreak.

Because, as he ran his fingers over her closed eyelids and down her face, her crimes had been terrible. Finding her with his brother had ripped him to pieces.

That he could have maybe dealt with. Her leaving him had shredded his heart. She’d chosen another man and forsaken him. But fate and circumstances had forced her return, and she was here.

He knew the pain he felt at being betrayed would erase each time they made love, each time he had her back in his arms and his bed. She was here now, where she belonged. She would marry him, bear his children. The years would temper the ugly past; make it into distant memories left forgotten. Fate could a times be kind.

He cradled her into his arms and let himself begin to sleep. They needed their rest. Nick wasn’t yet sleeping through the night although the baby monitor had been blessedly silent.

He owed it to that innocent child to protect his mother and somehow convince her that all of their futures looked bright, that the three of them would be a happy family. Somehow Alex would do it without making himself vulnerable, without saying the words that gave her the power to hurt him.

He could not bear it if she left again.

*****

Chapter Ten

Theo Pappas interrupted Lauren’s newfound happiness three days later by showing up at the hotel suite, again uninvited and unwelcome.

Alex, of course, let him in. Lauren, about to return to the living area, took a step back and closed the door all but a crack.

“We need to talk,” Theo said to Alex. He glanced around the living area of the suite. “Where is she?”

“With Nick,” Alex answered. “It’s his bedtime. They can’t hear us.”

“Good,” Theo said. He adjusted a cufflink and Lauren ducked behind the door. Despite what Alex said, she could hear.

“The board is not happy with you, Alex,” Theo said. “You have dawdled on matters for far too long and your service to the company is in question. I cannot protect you any longer.”

Lauren peered through the crack in the door in time to see Alex cross his arms across his chest. “Why don’t you explain,” he said.

“My father cannot believe that you negotiated a merger with Damien Favazza. Do you not know that the bad blood between our family and his goes back for generations? Ask my father.”

“I did what I thought was best. Our companies are stronger together.”

“You did wrong. But Andrelle, that company holds more promise.”

“They were trying to take us over. A merger will stop that.”

“Andrelle might have been hostile at first, but if we negotiate with them we can change things. Theirs is a good offer that you fight, Alex. It’s no longer unwanted. Most of the board members, like my father, are old. They want to retire, spend their golden years gambling and cruising the Mediterranean on their new yachts. A buy out would make everyone rich.”

“They can sail the world now. No one is stopping them. Most of them have small fortunes thanks to my father’s blood, sweat and tears. I have made offers to each of them to buy out their Pappas Foods stock. I have the capital to do it. They can go any time.”

“No one is questioning your personal financial situation. But they want the best offer. Besides, you do not inspire them with confidence that you will not eventually destroy this company as you have your life. You are living with a non-Greek woman who has given birth to your brother’s baby. You haven’t married her and the baby has not yet been christened. The talk, Alex, you know the talk. Are you a man or a mouse? That’s what they’re asking.”

“I know the talk,” Alex said. He set his chin forward stubbornly in the line Lauren had seen many times before. “And you, Theo, do you agree with the talk? Do you stand with me or are you against me as well?”

Theo gave an erratic gesture with his hands. “No one is against you, Alex. You should not see things like that. The family worries about you, though. You have obligations and you are faltering. The woman, she is a distraction.”

Alex’s temper increased and he paced. “I have doubled our growth this past year. I’ve dealt with stockholders who never should have been stockholders and returned their stock to Pappas control. I have spent a month in Greece negotiating a truce and better market share. The board of directors should be pleased with my management and their profits.”

Theo shrugged his wide shoulders. “They see it you’ve been personally trying to buy back the shares so that you own the majority and control the company yourself. They see you forcing them out.”

“My father, Theo, and yours. That’s all who controlled the company before your father started selling stock everywhere. The only way to keep the business in the immediate family and under family control is to own all the stock. A family company should be owned and run by family, not by their friends and distant cousins hundreds of times removed. It was your father who convinced my father to overextend this company two years ago, thus necessitating this stock fiasco and subjecting us to endless takeover attempts.”

“My father sees it as a slap in the face.”

“Maybe your father needs to join the twenty-first century. If he no longer wants in, tell him to sell me his stock.”

Theo’s face contorted.

“Go on,” Alex said flatly. “Say it all, cousin. You appear to be holding back something.”

“Alex, your mother was never involved with the family business. Her lifestyle is secure with the sound investments your father made before Alzheimer’s. Christopher is dead. The board sees your inaction in this Lauren matter as another indication of your instability.”

“I am not instable.”

“Yes, but if your goal is to recover Pappas Foods, it seems odd that you have not started on the home front. You have not gotten control of Christopher’s shares before Lauren realized that while the court won’t take them away, she can sell them to whomever she wishes. Christopher should never have made such a will. His shares should have gone to you.”

Lauren could see that Alex struggled for control. “Water under a bridge, Theo. What is done cannot be undone. She offered to sell them to me and I said no. My brother is gone and he obviously planned on marrying her. The past is past.”

“Yes, and I mean no ill in speaking of him. But Alex, you need to show the family that you are in control. You insult my father by doing business with his enemy’s son. You further insult the family honor by allowing Christopher’s son to be a bastard. As much as I hate to say it, to do that you need to marry that girl.”

“I don’t work on your or anyone’s timetable.”

“You know Christopher’s will and the conditions of his trust. You marry her and you control the shares. Yet, two months later you still make no movement to do so and tell everyone the shares and Lauren are to be left alone. What else can the family think? She has you by the balls. They see that you have gone soft over a woman with no Greek heritage, no sense of responsibility to uphold Greek traditions. She betrayed you, for God’s sake, Alex. She slept with your brother and had his brat. Yet you let her be your one weakness, your Achilles’ heel. It is bad enough you must marry her, a non-Greek gold digger, but at least get it done. Better yet, get her heavy with child so that everyone believes you are a man and not a mere boy trying to run a business.”

“You should not be speaking to me like this,” Alex said. Lauren had never seen him so angry.

“No,” Theo said. He stepped back a pace and lowered his head in a gesture indicating humbleness. “Perhaps I should not. But I am your cousin and it is my obligation to warn you that rough times are on the horizon if you cannot do your family duty. She is poison, Alex. She has always been your poison. She is your slow death. She needs to be…”

Alex cut him off. “I will take the matters you have brought to my attention under advisement and consider what you have said.”

“The judge is free this Friday. I took the liberty to call. Get it done, Alex. None of us want you to marry her nor will we welcome her to our family with open arms, but as we have no other choice, we will accept her as your wife. Prove yourself stable and marry her and secure her Christopher’s shares. It is your family duty.”

“You should go now,” Alex dropped his arms to his side.

“As you wish.”

As Theo strode towards the front door, Lauren stepped away from her bedroom door and closed it quietly.  She’d forgotten about the stock shares. She knew she voted the proxies, but she hadn’t realized she had the power to sell them, or that transfer of ownership of the shares would go to Alex when they wed.

Oh Christopher, what have you done? Lauren felt the true magnitude of her friend’s actions. Christopher had assumed that eventually Alex and Lauren would make up and all would be well.

It had almost happened, except for Christopher hadn’t known about the business problems. He hadn’t known about the current Pappas Foods takeover, or the board of directors’ sudden lack of faith in Alex who was against the Andrelle buyout.

Christopher had just been trying to help her and the baby by providing for them.