Bought Greek's Bride

CHAPTER ONE

HIS BIG,WARM HAND against the small of her back, Ellie allowed Sandor to guide her into the exclusive Boston restaurant. It felt good to walk into the air-conditioning. Boston in the summer was muggy and hot, but the instant cold sent shivers chasing along her arms and made her nipples bead behind the black silk bodice of her dress.

Rather than discomfort, her body reacted with a sensual pleasure that was her constant companion in this man’s company.

It had marked their first meeting and had not abated since, leaving her with a need to explore a side to her character that she usually ignored. Her feminine sexuality. She found herself dressing more sexily around him than she ever had in the past and reveling in the small, possessive touches he peppered their dates with.

Tonight, she’d worn a dress by Armani that she loved because it was both elegant and sexy. Its sleeveless design and scooped neck left her arms, a good portion of her chest and her back exposed, but the hem swirled modestly below her knees. The black silk clung to her understated curves and the thin fabric offered no real barrier between his hand and the sensitive skin of her back. And that single point of contact was enough to send her nerve endings rioting.

She had to concentrate on maintaining a bland façade for him and the other restaurant patrons, but she couldn’t help wishing they were someplace private. Someplace she might actually get the nerve up to ask why he’d never pressed for deeper intimacy when his good-night kisses were powered by a wealth of barely leashed passion. Passion she’d decided she wanted to explore.

She recognized several faces as the maître d’ led them to their table and wished she didn’t. She would like to go out, just once, to a restaurant that was not one of the accepted watering holes for their kind. But Sandor Christofides demanded the best. In everything.

Sometimes, it made her wonder what he was doing with her.

She had been born to the world he had worked so hard to enter, but as far as she could see, that was all she had to offer him. At five foot nine, with small curves, average features, and rather boring dark blond hair, she was not particularly beautiful; she did little to cultivate the contacts others would kill to obtain; she abhorred the standards set by money and frequently refused to uphold them. Her job as an employment counselor for the state was as unglamorous as it got. Her clients wouldn’t make it on to the “Who’s Who” list of anything, for that matter…neither would she. Not anymore.

Her dad considered her career a complete waste of her Ivy League education, but she didn’t care. She considered his overwhelming preoccupation with his business a waste, too. Not that she dismissed his company as unimportant, but she hated the fact that it always had and always would come before her, anyone or anything else.

Interrupting Ellie’s thoughts, the maître d’ stopped beside the same table they always had when Sandor brought her here. Its placement was an indication of Sandor’s importance, something her father would take for granted, but she didn’t think Sandor did. His dark brown eyes would glow with satisfaction for a brief moment at small things like this, as if they really mattered to him.

Which was another reason they weren’t exactly well suited. Stuff like that just did not impress her. Maybe she was jaded by growing up around it, but she got a lot bigger thrill out of one of her clients getting a job, or a certification necessary to do so, or additional education.

She knew why she said yes to every one of Sandor’s invitations. Because she was quite literally enthralled with the man. But she didn’t understand why he kept extending them. Especially if he didn’t want to sleep with her. He just didn’t seem like the celibate type, but that might be her own libido talking.

Sandor seated her though typically the maître d’ would have done so. She took it as a mark of his Greekness…or his possessiveness. She wasn’t sure which, but for as little as she understood what Sandor saw in her, she knew she would not be the one to end their relationship. Because the little actions like him seating her personally made her feel special.

They also exhibited a side to his nature she found enticing. He didn’t bow to the dictates of the world he inhabited, but insisted it take him on his terms. And when she was with him, she felt truly alive for the first time in her twenty-four years.

She couldn’t help watching with a hungry intensity she tried to hide as he folded his six-foot-four frame into the chair across from hers. His dark, wavy hair, cut just a little long framed chiseled features she could stare at all night. His superbly muscled frame filled out his dinner jacket in a way few businessmen did.