His face shuttered, his eyes turning obsidian with cold fury and seething recrimination. ‘Then there’s nothing more to say. Your hotel will be mine, and I’ll do with it what I please.’ He turned and walked away.
And she stood there, locked in indignation and disbelief. Far too many minutes later, realising she couldn’t let him get away with it, she chased after him, past waiting staff who watched her with varying expressions of interest which she blatantly ignored.
He was clearing the first-floor staircase and turning right, presumably towards his suite, when she scrambled up after him. And he was almost at a set of double doors when she shot past him and faced him, perhaps with more bravado than sense, stopping him in his tracks. Every inch of his grim expression warned her not to engage further. Not to attempt to traverse the impassable landscape of his glorious discontent. But chances had come and gone, and been under-utilised. It was finally now or never.
‘You do realise this paints you with the same label, don’t you? Because what you’re suggesting is monstrous.’
A veritable cocktail of emotions swirled across his face before it settled into a rigid, savage mask. ‘No,glykia mou. This makes me shockingly human, seeking to right a heinous wrong.’ A spasm of anger ripped through the mask before he stifled it. ‘I might be too late for one, but I will seek accountability for the other who’s gone far too long without it.’
‘God, you can barely even bring yourself to say her name, can you?’
‘Why should I?’ he said with a perfectly arctic tone. ‘In a right and just world she would bemama,’ he ground out, his chest rising and falling once, as if that was the only vulnerability he intended to allow himself, when an ocean of emotion seethed just beneath his surface. ‘Now? Now she deserves nothing.’
He went to move past her. Where Vayle found the strength to step squarely into his path, she would never know.
‘Take heed and stop,’ he advised. His voice was even and yet it sounded like a charged echo left behind after a vicious eruption.
‘Stop trying to make you feel? To make you see you’re only hurting yourself in the long run by doing this? I won’t. I can’t.’
He tried to step back. She bunched her hand in his shirt, gripping a handful of expensive cotton-silk blend. His breath hissed out.
‘Vayle.’
‘Nelios.’
They were captured, lashed together by emotions neither wanted to feel or define. A sound rumbled from him. Vayle heard a softer version slip from between her lips. His gaze dropped to her mouth. They parted as if commanded, her breathing turning sharper, shallower.
He changed direction, pressing into her hold. Her fist unclenched and splayed right over his heart, feeling the heavythud, thud, thud, then feeling the beats gallop faster.
He pressed another inch closer and her fingers danced up past his breastbone, over his collar, sinking into the hair at his nape. They pulled him close, closer, held him captive again. Then she surged up on her tiptoes, her silent demand clear.
His mouth swooped onto hers. And what felt like a lifetime in the making was born of fire, of need, of desperate desire. His hands seized her waist and Vayle was only too glad to leap into his arms, wrapping her legs around his hips, delighting in his immediate lunge forward to throw open his suite door, stride inside and kick it shut.
She revelled in his large hands clasping her bottom, dragging her closer still until the imprint of his shaft was unmistakable. The hot groan that rumbled from his chest was smashed between their lips, right before his tongue breached her mouth, seeking entry she was only too giddy to provide.
And then he introduced her to a sensual plane so erotically sublime, she moaned helplessly. Then carried on moaning as he dropped her in the middle of his bed and shrugged off his jacket with jerky, near-desperate movements. ‘Is this what you want?’
‘Yes,’ she breathed, because perhaps on some level she truly believed that it might be a way to reach him. Or, on a purely selfish, needy level, this feeling of having had her world torn from under her would always lead to this: to taking a small triumph from the raging need in his eyes, the escalation of his breathing and, yes, the bold imprint of his cock against his trousers, the culmination of his need for her.
‘Yes,’ she echoed, stronger, rising to her elbows so as not to miss a second of watching him bare his beautiful body to her.
And then Nelios Petralis was naked, a bronze god who she knew would ignite her every fantasy from now until eternity.But even the thought of him having that supreme power over her didn’t matter in this moment. Not when her nipples screamed for attention and her core ached with the need for his possession.
Their eyes connecting, he reached for the side of her dress and, this time, Vayle did not stop her gasp when his fingers deliberately traced the outline of her exposed skin through the cut-out.
‘This has been driving me insane all evening,’ he said with that dark rumble that stated they might be engaging in a mutually desired connection, but the undercurrents still remained.
‘Then do something about it,’ she whispered huskily.
Eyes glinting with a feral light that set another raft of shivers dancing over her, Nelios gripped the delicate garment and tore it off her body.
Vayle didn’t care. She’d planned to leave these possessions behind when she left tomorrow. When he treated her undergarments to the same vicious, sexy treatment, she gloried in it. And, when he proceeded to explore her with hands, teeth and mouth, drawing not one but two orgasms from her needy body before thrusting hard inside her with a muted shout, she threw herself into the act with an enthusiasm bordering on zealous abandon.
He didn’t need to know that this was only her second time having sex; that the reactions he drew from her would be forever sealed in her memory as the transcendent experience it was. Nelios Petralis already had far too much power over her and those she cared about. But she was well aware that she drew equal zeal from him, if not feral desire, in those stolen hours of the night.
And, yes, she intended to hold that tiny win close to her chest, a bolster she suspected she would need in the coming weeksand months. Because, as much as it hurt her to admit it, when it came to salvaging her inheritance from the clutches of the ruthless billionaire, she’d failed.
CHAPTER FIVE
