The chauffeur took her to a beauty salon next. Ella had no objection to a little fine grooming. Indeed, it was a treat to have someone else do her hair and her nails, and the process of being made up by a professional beautician intrigued her. Colours and techniques were employed that she would never have dreamt of trying. Not for nothing had Aristandros called her ‘koukla mou’—my doll—she reasoned wryly. She was no longer required to be herself. Instead she was to be what Aristandros wanted her to be: a painted, pampered ultra-feminine remake of her former self programmed to behave like the mistress equivalent of a Stepford wife.
In an underground car-park, she got out of the limousine and was ushered into a lift. Aristandros lived in a tri-level penthouse apartment that overlooked Hyde Park. Luxurious acres of space seemed to run off in every direction from the imposing entrance-hall. She and her shopping were taken straight to the master bedroom. A swimming pool gleamed beyond the patio doors, alongside a sun terrace and the lush greenery of a rooftop garden. A maid, who addressed her in Greek, proudly demonstrated the lavish appointments of the dressing room where her clothes were to be stored, before showing her the opulent marble bathroom.
Ella discovered that she couldn’t take her attention off the massive bed that occupied centre-stage in the bedroom. The divan was so big Aristandros would have to chase her round it to capture her, she thought crazily, her heart starting to beat very, very fast. Sex with Aristandros—something she had dreamt about seven years earlier and now cringed at the threat of, she acknowledged ruefully. Still, if practice made perfect, he ought to be better in bed than most.
The maid hung the black dress in readiness, while Ella selected a turquoise voile-and-lace bra and matching panties and then went for a shower. When she had put on these items, she posed in front of the bathroom mirror, noticing how the clinging fabric of the underwear clung to the fullness of her breasts and the swell of her hips, not to mention even more personal parts. Just then, the door opened without warning. A gasp was snatched from her parted lips, and she snatched up a towel to conceal her only partially clothed body. Her startled blue gaze was very wide.
Aristandros was in the doorway, seeming taller and more powerfully built than ever. Having already discarded his jacket, his tie and his shoes, he was an aggressively masculine sight with his shirt hanging loose to frame a muscular brown slice of hair-roughened chest. ‘You should have locked the door if you didn’t want company,’ he teased, eyeing the big white towel she was clutching to her chest with feverish hands. ‘For a woman who has been with, and I quote a few men, you’re very shy.’
Pride stiffened Ella’s backbone and she flung her head high, blade-straight white-blonde hair feathering in a silken swathe across her flushed cheekbones. ‘I don’t have a shy bone in my body!’
‘Drop the towel and prove it,’ he advised lazily.
In a convulsive movement, her slim fingers released their grip and the towel tumbled to the marble floor. She knew it was silly, but she felt ten times more naked and self-conscious in the fancy lingerie than she would have felt in her own unadorned skin.
Aristandros looked, and made no attempt to hide the fact that he was looking and enjoying the view of her scantily clad curves. Her body tingled in all the private places as though a flame had passed too close to her skin. ‘It pays to undress you, glikia mou.’
Ella dragged in a charged breath, the creamy swell of her breasts stirring, her swollen nipples visible below the lace. His brilliant eyes smouldered gold, and her mouth ran dry as he took a step forward and reached for her, sinking his hands below her hips to lift her up and settle her down on the marble vanity-unit as if she weighed no more than a child’s toy.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.
‘Appreciating you,’ Aristandros husked, breathing in the soapy fresh scent of her skin as he bent over her, the hot blood pooling at his groin. His soap from his shower, his woman, right where she belonged. It was a moment of supreme sensual satisfaction for Ari. He pressed his warm mouth lightly to the tender skin at her collarbone, where a tiny pulse was beating out her tension. With the tip of his tongue he tasted her. His hands slid from her slim shoulders to brush the bra cups down and ease her pert breasts free of confinement. The sweetly curved mounds spilled forward, held high by the constraint of the bra, the stiff, pink crests drawing his attention.
‘You’re perfect.’ He moulded the ripe swell of her brazenly exposed flesh and kneaded the tender tips. Taken by surprise, Ella was defenceless, mentally unprepared for a sexual challenge before nightfall. Her nipples were unbearably sensitive. Her head tipped back, and a moan broke from her throat as he stroked and pinched the distended buds. A warm, rich wave of sensational response was engulfing her even before he lowered his head to suck the rosy crests. Her control was sliding as inexorably as night followed day. Desire was sinking taloned claws of need into her treacherous body. He drove her lips apart with sudden mesmeric urgency, his tongue plundering the moist interior of her mouth while his skilled fingers traced the taut, damp stretch of material between her thighs and made her shiver violently.