XAN COMPUTED THAT admission and he was so shocked by the revelation, he literally felt sick. His lethally accurate brain threw up the entirety of his dealings with Elvi Cartwright and shame engulfed him for the first time in his life because such a scenario, a sordid scenario in which he demanded sex from an innocent girl, appalled him. It had not once crossed his mind that at her age she could be literally untouched. No, not these days, when he was forever reading about young women treating sex as casually as young men and when he himself was offered sex as carelessly as a handshake at first meetings. He utterly recoiled from the image of himself as a violator of virgins. If he had known, he would have kept his distance, would never ever have suggested...
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me that?’ Xan demanded rawly, sliding off the bed in one powerful movement. ‘Naturally I assumed that you had sexual experience—’
Shot from the heights of her first real orgasm to the depths of embarrassment and then held trapped there by the unexpectedly angry reaction of her first lover, Elvi wrapped herself in the sheet and raised her knees to her chin, linking her arms round her trembling legs. ‘But why would you assume that?’ she asked shakily.
Xan raked an unsteady hand through his tousled black hair. ‘Because that’s the norm at your age. If I’d known you were a virgin, I would never have touched you and I would never have offered you the arrangement that I did!’ he shot at her furiously.
Elvi was perplexed because Xan had not impressed her as a man with sincere moral principles and she shrugged a rounded shoulder in dismissal of that statement. ‘It’s a little late now for regrets,’ she pointed out. ‘I did warn you that I wasn’t really suitable for what you had in mind but you weren’t interested in hearing it.’
Xan was never interested in hearing anything that conflicted with his own needs and wants and he didn’t require a stinging reminder from her that he had made an inexcusable mistake. Dark colour laced his high cheekbones and, with gritted teeth, he spun and strode towards the bathroom, only to freeze again and turn lithely back to her.
‘Are you on the pill?’
Elvi shook her head. ‘Why would I have been?’
‘On any form of contraception?’ Xan persisted tautly.
‘No. I was planning to sort something out this week but the very tight timetable you imposed on me prevented me from doing anything in advance,’ she said shortly.
‘You should’ve told me you were a virgin!’ Xan lashed back at her with unconcealed censure.
‘Why?’ Elvi countered. ‘It was none of your business!’
‘It became my business when you were planning to have a sexual relationship with me,’ Xan contradicted with controlled savagery.
‘As you well know, you were the one who planned to have a sexual relationship with me and I had to move in here barely twelve hours after agreeing, so my planning anything didn’t come into it!’
Xan shuddered at the burn of being force-fed the truth on an unappetising plate. He and no one else had brought about this disaster. His arrogance, his ego had resulted in this mess and it was a lesson he had never expected to receive because for too many years he had been invincible, his every move lauded, his every deal a phenomenal success. It seemed he was not the man he had been raised to become, not the person he had believed himself to be. It was a pivotal moment for him, glancing round the spacious room where he had spent so many hours with forgettable women and inwardly cringing at how he had foolishly believed he had it made with that set-up, because that detached conveyor-belt system had now gone badly wrong for him. And he still didn’t know how to fix it...
Elvi’s clasped hands round her knees tightened, her knuckles showing white below her skin. She was a little ball of rigid tension in recognition of his. Presumably he was disappointed. That was why he was angry. Angry not with her, she sensed, but with himself for a poor choice of playmate.
‘I’m not what you expected,’ she said for him.
Xan swallowed hard. ‘No,’ he conceded, wondering how the hell he was supposed to make amends. ‘You surprised me. Very few people manage to do that.’
Let her go, Xan reasoned. It was the obvious answer to fixing what was wrong but he looked at her, all wrapped round herself as if she was trying to make herself small, and his chest tightened and he hauled in a long rasping breath, his broad chest expanding. He didn’t want the obvious answer and he was still a selfish bastard, he acknowledged, because he still wanted her. Even when he could see the shininess of tears in her bright blue eyes. What did that say about him? That he was capable of wanting an unwilling woman? No way would he touch her again without an invitation from her, he told himself squarely, rationalising an irrational decision. He would make amends. He didn’t know how but in some mysterious way he would manage that feat. He was very clever. He would work it out eventually.
‘I think I’ll eat that lunch you were kind enough to make me,’ Xan said abruptly.
Astonishment flashed through Elvi and her lashes lowered on her anxious eyes. He was still imprinted on her eyelids, a spectacular bronzed man naked as a jaybird, standing there like a stone statue, his discomfiture obvious to her. What was the matter with him? The soft sounds of him dressing, the click of cuff links snapping closed, the sound of a zip penetrated her shell of silence. She had had sex for the very first time and he had disappointed her because he had denied the intimacy of the experience, pulling away as soon as he was done, and none of the pleasure he had given her had made up for that distance and reserve.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Xan prompted, more uncomfortable than he had ever been in his entire life with a woman.
‘I’m lonely,’ Elvi muttered truthfully. ‘I’m used to having my family around—’
‘I’m here,’ Xan reminded her.
‘But you’re not cuddly,’ Elvi told him apologetically.
Xan grimaced. ‘No. Is that what you like?’
‘It’s not the kind of physical you’re used to,’ Elvi guessed wryly, wondering how she had given herself to such a man, wondering how she could look into those hard, dark but stunning eyes and want to give herself again, want to make him smile for once and hear him laugh.
‘I hug my mother,’ he declared in his own defence.
‘Even you have to have one weakness,’ Elvi quipped.
‘Lunch,’ Xan reminded her. ‘Why don’t you join me?’
Wrapping the sheet round herself with innate modesty, Elvi headed into the other bathroom and went for a very quick shower. In some ways, she was in shock. His possession had hurt more than she had been prepared for and then had come the pleasure that had also been more than she had expected. For the first time, she understood why Xan Ziakis was so hooked on sex. He was good at it too, she conceded ruefully, because he had turned a bad start into something truly amazing and then trashed that by moving away from her afterwards, as if, once he got his satisfaction, he was keen to forget who had given it to him. It had made her feel used, unappreciated. She should have anticipated that. Sex was only sex for him. He didn’t look to receive anything beyond that fleeting physical thrill.
He was still in the bedroom, his back turned to her when she emerged breathless from hurrying out of the fancy dressing room. She had worn something new from what Sylvia had described as a basic ‘capsule’ wardrobe, but which covered more garments than she had ever owned in her entire life at one and the same time. And apparently, even more clothes tailored to her precise requirements would eventually arrive. The skirt she had chosen was short and flirty, the top thin silk, the sandals high-heeled. Did she look like a proper mistress now? she wondered unhappily. Would he actually look at her again? For some reason, he seemed to be avoiding looking. The strangeness of his behaviour was starting to wear on her. She hated the knowledge that she didn’t know what was going on inside his head. But why did she even want to know? That was a question she couldn’t answer.
‘Lunch,’ she murmured, thankful she had only made a salad and not something that would have spoiled.
Xan swung round, immediately noticing the clothing, tensing because it gave her a much more sophisticated look than her own clothing did, reminding him that right from the start he had tried to make her into something she wasn’t, ignoring the signs that she was different, an individual, trying to make her over into the kind of sleek, faceless sex object he was comfortable with. That suspicion unnerved him because he wasn’t accustomed to examining his own motives or to seeing how his stubborn determination to treat all his mistresses the same had ensured that he flatly refused to acknowledge that Elvi might be unique.
Xan was so tall, so dark he snarled up the breath in Elvi’s dry throat. A jolt of wanton response curled warm and low in her pelvis, which amused her because had he tried to touch her again she probably would have screamed because she was sore, way too sore to desire further intimacy.
In a determined movement, she left the bedroom and went into the kitchen to serve the chicken salad. While she would have been happy to eat at the kitchen table, she reckoned Xan would baulk and she carried the plates out to the more formal dining area. He sank down into a chair within seconds of her taking a seat. For an instant, she allowed herself to look at him. The guy was insanely hot from those killer cheekbones to the shadow of stubble accentuating the fullness of his sensual lips. Heat mushroomed up inside her and she immediately dropped her head to eat.
Xan glanced around himself, disliking the familiarity of the room and the recollections of how he had spent his time there. He would sell the place, would never return to it, he decided at lightning speed. He couldn’t wait to remove Elvi from surroundings which only reminded him of what he would prefer to forget. The answer of what to do next came to him and his cautious streak fired up. He would be breaking a habit, decimating his usual routine, but slavishly following that routine and indulging those habits had subjected him to several far from commendable discoveries about his own nature.
‘Tomorrow, I am leaving early in the morning for Greece,’ he murmured flatly. ‘There is a wedding in my family and I must attend. I would like you to accompany me.’
Elvi was sharply disconcerted and a piece of chicken almost went down the wrong way because her throat tightened like all the rest of her in surprise. ‘Me?’ she queried uncertainly.
‘You see anyone else sitting here?’ Xan said drily.
Elvi flushed and went back to eating.
‘You have a passport?’ he checked.
Elvi nodded. Her mother had spent her last bonus on equipping the three of them with passports. They had had a dream of travelling abroad for a few days, something cut price and last-minute and cheap. Of course, that prospect had died with Sally’s dismissal, along with everything else. Like life as she had known it, Elvi conceded ruefully. Only a couple of days had passed since she had worked in the craft shop, going home each evening to her family. Xan had taken everything, she thought unhappily.
Xan had never been with such a quiet woman and it unsettled him. He had expected a modest amount of enthusiasm to greet the kind of invitation he had never given a woman before. Of course, she probably didn’t appreciate that reality. But she had mentioned wanting to get to know him, hadn’t she? What better opportunity could he offer her? It crossed his mind that possibly she no longer wanted to get to know him better, but he brushed off the suspicion with all the instinctive disdain of a man accustomed to being the number one, highly desirable target of every young woman in his radius.
‘I’ll send a car to pick you up at nine this evening,’ Xan announced, rising lithely upright. ‘It will be more convenient if you spend the night before we travel at my apartment.’
Elvi rose to follow him to the door, although she didn’t know why she was offering him that courtesy when he had his own key to the apartment. He was already on his mobile phone, uttering what sounded like instructions to someone in another language. Greek? She had no idea, having only studied French at school.
For a split second, Xan hovered on the threshold and looked back at her, feeling weirdly uneasy about abandoning her when it was obvious that she was missing her family so much. Her glow wasn’t back, he noted, thinking grimly that he had successfully killed that. An air of nervous uncertainty lay in her small restive movements. He hadn’t discussed the pregnancy risk. It wasn’t the moment, he told himself squarely, because she hadn’t noticed that contraceptive mishap. Why worry her about something so unlikely? What were the chances after one encounter? Slim, to none, he reasoned, and he offered up his first inner prayer since childhood in support of that hope. Wasn’t he already feeling guilty enough? Surely that ultimate axe would not also fall on him?
Elvi met Xan’s dazzling amber eyes and it was as though a mental ping of recognition sounded somewhere deep within her own brain. He was upset about something. She didn’t know how she knew that but somehow she did, belatedly recognising that nobody could be quite as detached from the rest of humanity as he liked to appear. And such beautiful eyes he had, lushly enclosed between black velvet lashes, such an amazing colour and surprisingly eloquent. Her body reacted with shocking intensity, her breasts tightening while a sensation of awareness purred between her thighs.
‘H-how long will we be in Greece?’ she asked abruptly, battling that awareness with fierce discomfiture.
‘Five days,’ Xan said in a roughened undertone, wondering how the hell he was going to keep his hands off her when she could turn him on so fast she made him feel like an animal.
Not that that was so very far from the truth concerning their single encounter, Xan reminded himself with gritted teeth as he strode into the lift, refusing to allow himself to linger, thoroughly distrusting, indeed loathing, the powerful sexual urges pulling at him. He had already fallen on Elvi once with all the refinement of a sex-starved teenager, so out of himself that he had forgotten protection and had failed to note that he had hurt her. Scarcely a stellar show of sophistication or skill. No way was he about to repeat that idiocy.
Determined to get every change made instantly, Xan contacted the concierge company to organise the removal of Elvi’s possessions from the apartment and the sale of it. He was still issuing instructions when he climbed into the limousine and was absently aware of Dmitri’s frowning face. What the hell was up with his head of security? Dmitri Pallas had been with Xan for years. A former inspector in the Greek police force, he was very efficient in his field. But of recent, crucially the placing of Elvi’s letter in the cause of Sally Cartwright, Dmitri’s behaviour had been strange.
Already feeling unusually hassled, Xan shelved the acknowledgement as something else to deal with at a more opportune time. Maybe Dmitri had family problems or something. Maybe he knew more about that theft business than he had been willing to share. Whatever, Xan was in no mood to delve into anything that could verge on the personal. It was a direction he never went in with his staff because he valued his own privacy too highly. And the day when he blew his own cherished privacy sky-high was not a day when he felt prompted to break down barriers with others.
A woman in his apartment, even if it was only for one night, was a major departure from the norm for him. Should he have put her in a hotel? No, that would’ve been shabby, he decided, and his behaviour had been shabby enough for one day, hadn’t it?
While Xan was contemplating the challenge of sharing his space for even one night, Elvi was on the way home for a visit, unable to sit alone in the empty apartment even though she knew she would either have to lie or evade the truth as the price of that family visit. The knowledge made her sad but the dropping of the theft charge was, in her opinion, a worthwhile return, regardless of the dishonesty it had involved her in.
She was startled when she got home to find her mother actually turning out cupboards and packing the contents into boxes.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ she asked her mother from the kitchen doorway.
Sally smiled up at her daughter from her position on her knees on the floor.
‘We’re moving to Oxford in a few days...’
Elvi’s brow furrowed, her eyes uncomprehending. ‘I don’t understand—’
Sally picked herself up. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea and explain,’ she said, visibly in a far better state of mind than she had been the last time Elvi actually saw her, with something of her usual bustling energy back in her step and voice.
‘Dmitri Pallas...the head of Mr Ziakis’s security team...is a good friend of mine,’ Sally advanced with a slight deepening of colour. ‘He’s come to our rescue...’
Her brow furrowing, Elvi sank down at the table while her mother brewed the tea. ‘You’ve never mentioned him before,’ she pointed out uncomfortably.
‘Didn’t see the need because I used to see him every day at work,’ Sally Cartwright told her wryly. ‘And no, there’s no romance there, nothing but friendship, and I don’t know if there ever could be but I do like him very much.’
‘Nothing wrong with that,’ Elvi said gently, disconcerted by her mother’s fluctuating colour and embarrassment. No romance, yeah, as if she was going to believe that with that look on the older woman’s face! She thought of the man whom she had met so briefly, the warm concern she had seen in his eyes over that letter. She thought of Sally’s lost years and of how in all the time since she’d lost her husband her mother had had not a single man in her life...and then she thought of how wonderful it would be if her parent could finally have something nice in her life, something for her rather than the children she adored.
‘Well, Dmitri has a little house in Oxford because he has family living in the area,’ Sally proffered. ‘He knows how we’re fixed financially and, now that I’ve lost my job...well, he’s found me another one there with a connection of his. Waitressing, a step up from cleaning, I think—’
‘Yes,’ Elvi agreed.
‘We’re to stay in Dmitri’s house initially and then, when we get on our feet again, we can move on to somewhere of our own. He doesn’t live there...ever,’ Sally added stiltedly. ‘Mr Ziakis travels abroad a lot and Dmitri travels with him. Dmitri buys property as an investment for when he retires.’
‘You’ll be in Oxford for the beginning of Daniel’s classes,’ Elvi remarked approvingly.
‘Yes...’ Sally smiled suddenly, all her natural warmth on display as she hugged her daughter’s shoulders where she sat. ‘Isn’t it amazing how life can just suddenly take a turn for the better?’
‘Amazing,’ Elvi agreed.
‘My only concern is that I’m going to see less of you.’ Sally sighed.
‘Can’t have everything,’ Elvi quipped. ‘And I can still visit.’
‘Can I ask you just one question?’ Sally prompted anxiously. ‘Why can’t we meet this boyfriend of yours?’
Elvi tried and failed to fit Xan Ziakis into the boyfriend category and reddened. ‘It’s...er...too soon,’ she mumbled uncomfortably.
‘So, it has been one of those “love at first sight” efforts, then,’ Sally assumed, seeming to relax at that idea. ‘He hasn’t been around long—’
‘And it could end as quickly as it started,’ Elvi dared to add.
Sally grimaced as she made the tea. ‘I won’t wish that on you...but it would mean you could move to Oxford and join us.’
‘Probably,’ Elvi allowed, cupping her hands round the warm mug, her turmoil over Xan soothed by her mother’s restored spirits.
And why did she even feel that she was in turmoil over him? she questioned with self-loathing. They had had sex and that was all. There was nothing more to them. They were not a couple in a relationship. And if she was learning things she would sooner not have known, well, that was part of growing up, she told herself impatiently. The first lesson had been that she could enjoy intimacy without the finer feelings getting involved, and she hadn’t been proud of that until Xan’s detachment in the aftermath had wounded her, teaching her that while she might tell herself that she expected nothing more, she was still somehow programmed to want more from the man than he was ever likely to give her.
Only a couple of minutes before nine, Elvi returned to the apartment and was perplexed to find it stripped of everything she owned. Where was her stuff? It meant she couldn’t change out of the jeans she had gone home in, even had she wanted to.
And why would she want to? she asked herself irritably. Pleasing Xan by wearing the clothes he had bought for her shouldn’t be on her to-do list. In fact the sooner he got tired of her, she told herself, the better it would be for both of them. A trip to Greece in his company wasn’t likely to change anything between them and they had nothing whatsoever in common beyond the fact that they had both been born human.