Exotic Nights

‘Did you really design Lucy’s necklace?’

Angel stopped rotating her head and looked at Leo warily. ‘Of course. I wouldn’t lie about something like that. What would be the point?’

Her simple assertion struck him somewhere deep. Leo just looked at her for a long moment. ‘It’s a beautiful piece.’

Angel shrugged awkwardly. He sounded surprised, as if he hadn’t meant to give her a compliment. ‘Thank you.’

‘You haven’t been making jewellery since you left college because …?’

Angel jumped in. This was a very tender point for her. ‘I haven’t been making jewellery because I don’t have the facilities.’

Leo shook his head. ‘But you’ve been working, surely it’s possible to rent a workspace?’

‘The equipment and the raw materials I need are too expensive.’

Leo sat back. ‘You must really resent having had to resort to menial work.’

Angel blinked. In that moment she realised that she’d never resented having to work; she’d only missed the fact that she’d had to put off her dream. It had been very simple: she’d had to be there for Delphi. Necessitating that they stay at home to cut down on living costs. She shook her head. ‘I had no choice.’

Leo found himself wondering uncomfortably why Angel hadn’t just resorted to hanging out on the vibrant Athenian social scene in order to try and seduce a rich husband from her own social sphere. Evidently her sister had done just that … But then just as quickly he found himself quashing the curiosity when he found it inevitably led to wondering how she’d remained a virgin. A virgin didn’t go out to seduce rich husbands.

She wasn’t a virgin any more; she was his. Something deeply primitive and possessive moved through him. Ruthlessly he pulled Angel over until she sat in his lap. She resisted him, but he caressed her back through the flimsy silk. He’d seen her sitting alone at their dinner table earlier, and had had to restrain himself from going over and claiming her. The only thing that had stopped him had been the weakness he’d felt that would show, especially when Ari Levakis had been quizzing him as to why on earth he’d taken her as his mistress. So he’d let her sit there, but had been burningly aware of her every second, of the proud way she’d held her head—defiant, almost.

It hadn’t sat well with him, and when Angel had said those things to him he’d felt shame clawing upwards. Not an emotion he was used to when it came to women.

No matter why he was with Angel, he’d had no conscious intention of ignoring her in public. His plan had been humiliation, yes, but that would come when he had had enough of her and ejected her from his life, making it very clear she’d been just a temporary addition. It would come from knowing that Tito Kassianides would be confronted with pictures splashed all over the tabloids tomorrow of his daughter in bed with the enemy.

In truth, he’d been shocked to hear her say that she’d already been the subject of gossip; clearly Athens was in a league with New York and its wildfire gossip circuit.

Angel still resisted him on his lap, looking resolutely out of the window. He stroked her back and pressed an open-mouthed kiss against her arm. He felt the first tiny signs of her relaxing and smiled. His caressing hand pulled her in closer, until she fell against him, yet still she was tense. His other hand rested on her thigh and then started to move to where her legs were pressed tightly together.

With gentle force he pressed his hand against her mons. He could feel heat coming through the silk, and the inevitable hardening of his own arousal. He moved subtly and heard Angel’s indrawn breath as she felt him push against the thin barrier of her dress, against the globes of her bottom.

He reached up and pulled her chin around to face him. He didn’t like the look in her eyes: it was too naked. Too full of things he didn’t want to know. So he pulled her head down and kissed her, hard, and with a deep groan of triumph felt her sink into him completely, her lithe body pressing into his, enflaming him so much that by the time they reached the villa he was aching to bury himself inside her.

By the end of that first week the whole world knew that Leo Parnassus had taken Angel as his mistress. Paparazzi were camped at the gates to the villa. Every night they’d gone out, either to a function or just for dinner, and the response had been a growing hysteria.

Headlines screamed out of newsstands: ‘Parnassus and Kassianides bury seventy years of enmity between the sheets.’ And other headlines, more snide, with suggestions of Leo Parnassus being paid in kind. It was awful. It was exactly what Leo had planned.

One morning, when Angel had gone down to breakfast and had been surprised to see Leo there, she’d asked nervously, ‘What about your father—won’t this hurt him?’

Leo had looked at her sharply, and then with a hard look had said, ‘My father is aware of the situation, but he has no say in who I choose as my lover.’

Angel had swallowed nervously, unaccountably concerned for the much elder man she could remember seeing at the party in the villa; he’d looked so frail. ‘But still, it can’t be easy, when he’s spent his whole life wanting to avenge his family name.’

Leo had just replied with silken emphasis, ‘Which is exactly what I’m doing. My father, above all things, is a strategist. If he knew for a second what you’d done, what a threat you are, he would endorse my methods wholeheartedly.’

Angel had still felt miserable to think of how his father might be feeling, and had been reminded again that whenever Leo spoke of him it was clear that little love was lost.

And then Leo had asked casually, ‘Have you spoken to your father yet?’

Angel had blanched and shaken her head. She knew from Delphi that her father was home and in a near constant state of violent inebriation, cursing her volubly. His trip to London had been spectacularly unsuccessful. Angel knew a lot of his bluster was just that. And she wasn’t scared for Delphi’s safety. Her father had only ever lashed out at her, Angel, with his fists, in those moments when she reminded him too much of her mother.

She’d shaken her head again. ‘No, we haven’t spoken.’ Angel sent up a silent prayer. At least when Delphi was married she’d be moving in with Stavros and Angel would be free to live elsewhere. And lick her wounds from the fall-out of her association with Leo.

Leo had looked suspicious. Angel had done her best to ignore him.

Now, Angel sighed as she looked in the full-length mirror of her dressing room. She was tired. And she had to admit that she was still shell-shocked. She felt as though from the moment she’d met Leo again, that fateful night in the study, she’d not had a chance to draw breath.