Loe raamatut: «Katrakis's Last Mistress»

“I had heard you were between mistresses at present. I had so hoped to be the next.”

His dark eyes flared, then turned to molten gold. She held his gaze as if she were as bold, as daring, as her words suggested. Hoping that she could be. She had to be.

“But of course,” she continued, because this was the crux of it—because she knew Peter was listening and so she had to push the words out, no matter how they seemed to clog her throat, “as your mistress, I would require your generosity. A great deal of it.”

For another endless moment Nikos only watched her, his gaze still searing through her—reducing her to ash, making her breath desert her—but otherwise his big body remained still, alert. It was almost as if she had not propositioned him. As if she had not offered to prostitute herself to him as casually as she might have ordered a drink from the bartender.

But then, making every hair on her body prickle, Nikos smiled.

It had been a long time in coming, this moment, and Nikos could not help but savor it. Revel in it. He had never dared dream that his archenemy’s sister would offer herself to him as his mistress, thus ensuring his ultimate victory—his final revenge. But he would take it—and her.

Katrakis’s Last Mistress

BY

Caitlin Crews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CAITLIN CREWS discovered her first romance novel at the age of twelve. It involved swashbuckling pirates, grand adventures, a heroine with rustling skirts and a mind of her own, and a seriously mouthwatering and masterful hero. The book (the title of which remains lost in the mists of time) made a serious impression. Caitlin was immediately smitten with romances and romance heroes, to the detriment of her middle-school social life. And so began her life-long love affair with romance novels, many of which she insists on keeping near her at all times.

Caitlin has made her home in places as far-flung as York, England, and Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised near New York City, and fell in love with London on her first visit when she was a teenager. She has backpacked in Zimbabwe, been on safari in Botswana, and visited tiny villages in Namibia. She has, while visiting the place in question, declared her intention to live in Prague, Dublin, Paris, Athens, Nice, the Greek Islands, Rome, Venice, and/or any of the Hawaiian islands. Writing about exotic places seems like the next best thing to moving there.

She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.

To Liza, who dreamed of gold-eyed dragons, Jane, who knew I couldn’t pull that punch, and Jeff, who makes it easy to write about heroes.

Chapter One

NIKOS KATRAKIS was by far the most dangerous man aboard the sleek luxury yacht. Ordinarily Tristanne Barbery would take one look at a man like him—so dark and powerful her breath caught each time she gazed at him from her place within sight of the elegant marble-topped bar where he stood—and flee for her life in the opposite direction.

Any man who seemed to dim the sparkling blue-green waters of the Mediterranean Sea with his very presence was far too complicated, far too much for Tristanne. This is not about you, she told herself fiercely, then ordered herself to release the fingers she’d clenched into fists. She willed away her nausea, her shakiness. Her panic. Because this was not, indeed, about Tristanne. It was about her mother and her mother’s crippling, impossible debts. And she would do whatever she had to do to save her mother.

There were other rich and powerful men aboard the boat, rubbing expensively clad shoulders together while gazing at the glittering shores of the Côte d’Azure: the olive-clad hills and pastel waterfront facades of Villefranche-sur-Mer to the left, the red-topped villas of Cap Ferrat to the right, and the sparkling sweep of Villefranche Bay spread out around them in the late afternoon sun.

But Nikos Katrakis was different from the rest. It wasn’t simply because he owned this particular yacht, though his ownership was as clear as a brand—almost visible, Tristanne thought; almost seeming to emanate from him in waves. It wasn’t even the undeniable physical power he seemed to just restrain beneath his deceptively calm surface, even dressed as casually as he was, in denim trousers and a white dress shirt left open at the neck to display a swathe of dark olive skin.

It was him.

It was the way he stood, commanding and yet so remote, so alone, even in the center of his own party. There was a fierce, unmistakably male energy that hummed from him, attracting notice but keeping all but the most brave away. He would have been devastating enough if he were unattractive—he was that powerful.

But of course, Nikos Katrakis was not, in any sense of the word, unattractive. Tristanne felt a shiver of awareness trace its way down her spine, and she could not bring herself to look away. He was more powerful than her late father had been but not, she thought, as cold. And somehow she could sense that he was no brute, like her brother, Peter—a man so cruel he had refused to pay her mother’s medical bills, a man so heartless he had laughed in the face of Tristanne’s desperation.

Yet something about Nikos made her think he was different, made her think of dragons—as if he was that magical and that dangerous; as if he was epic. He was too virile. Too masculine. His power seemed to hum around him like an electric current. Dragon, she thought again, and her palms suddenly itched to sketch the bold, almost harsh lines of his face—though she knew that was exactly the sort of thing Peter so scorned. There was no explaining creativity to her overbearing brother.

But all of that was precisely why Nikos Katrakis was the only man who would do. She was wasting time simply gazing at him, trying to get up her nerve, when she knew Peter would be searching for her before too long. She knew he did not trust her, no matter that she had agreed to go along with his plan. And she would go along with it, or seem to, but she would do it on her terms, not his. And she would do so with the one man Peter hated above all others—the one man Peter viewed as his chief business rival.

She had moved beyond nervous into something else—something that made her pulse flutter and her knees feel like syrup. She could only hope that it didn’t show, that he would see what her brother, Peter, claimed everyone saw when they looked at her: nothing but Barbery ice.

It’s about time you used your assets to our advantage, Peter had said in his cold voice. Tristanne shook the memory away, determined not to react to him any further—even in her own mind. Not when so much was at stake. Her mother’s survival. The independence she had fought so hard to win. Tristanne sucked in a fortifying breath, sent up a little prayer and forced herself to walk right up to Nikos Katrakis himself before she talked herself out of it.

Nikos looked up from his drink at the polished wood and marble-topped bar and their eyes met. Held. His eyes were the color of long-steeped tea, shades lighter than the thick, dark hair on his head and the dark brows that arched above, making them seem to glow like old gold. They seared into her. Tristanne’s breath caught, and a restless heat washed over her, scalding her. The sounds of the high-class partygoers, their clinking glasses and cultured laughter, disappeared. Her anxiety and her purpose fell away as if they had never been. It was as if the whole world—the glittering expanse of the French Riviera, the endless blue-green Mediterranean Sea—faded into his hot, gold gaze. Was consumed by him, enveloped into him—changed by him, that fanciful voice whispered in the back of her mind.

“Miss Barbery,” he said in greeting, his native Greek coloring his words just slightly, adding a rough caress to his voice. It sounded like a command, though he did not alter his careless position, lounging so indolently against the bar, one hand toying with his glass of amber-colored liquor. He watched her with old, intent eyes. The hairs on the back of Tristanne’s neck stood at attention, letting her know that he was not at all what he seemed.

Something wild and unexpected uncoiled inside of her, making her breath stutter. Shocking her with its sudden intensity.

He was not careless. He was in no way relaxed. He was only pretending to be either of those things.

But then, she was banking on that. Surely her brother, who cared only about money and power, would not be as obsessed as he was about this man unless he was a worthy opponent.

“You know my name?” she asked. She managed to keep her composure despite the humming reaction that shimmered through her, surprising and unsettling her. It was the Barbery family trait, she thought with no little despair: she could appear to be perfectly unruffled while inside, she was a quivering mess. She had learned it at her father’s emotionless knee—or suffered the consequences. And she wanted only to use this man for her own ends, not succumb to his legendary charisma. She had to be strong!

“Of course.” One dark brow rose higher, while his full, firm lips twisted slightly. “I pride myself on knowing the names of all my guests. I am a Greek. Hospitality is not simply a word to me.”

There was a rebuke in there somewhere. Tristanne’s stomach twisted in response, while he looked at her with eyes that saw too much. Like he was a cat and she a rather dim and doomed mouse.

“I have a favor to ask you,” she blurted out, unable to play the game as she ought to—as she’d planned so feverishly once she’d realized where Peter was taking her this afternoon. There was something in the way Nikos regarded her—so calm, so direct, so powerfully amused—that made her feel as if the glass of wine she’d barely tasted earlier had gone straight to her head.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, surprised to feel a flush heating her cheeks. She, who up until this moment had considered herself unable to blush! “I wanted to work up to that. You must think I am the rudest person alive.”

His dark brows rose, and his wicked mouth curved slightly, though his enigmatic eyes did not waver, nor warm. “You have not yet asked this favor. Perhaps I will reserve judgment until you do.”

Tristanne had the sudden sense that she was more at risk, somehow, standing in front of Nikos Katrakis in full view of so many strangers than she was from Peter and his schemes. It was an absurd thought. You must be strong! she reminded herself, but she couldn’t seem to shake that feeling of danger.

Or stop what came next. What had to come next—even though she knew, suddenly, with a deep, feminine wisdom that seemed like a weight in her bones, that this was a mistake of unfathomable proportions. That she was going to regret stirring up this particular hornet’s nest. That she, who prided herself on being so capable, so independent, did not have what it took to handle a man like this. One should never rush heedlessly into a dragon’s lair. Anyone who had ever read a fairy tale knew better! She bit her lower lip, frowning slightly as she looked at him, feeling as if she fell more and more beneath his dark gold spell by the moment. It was if he was a trap, and she had walked right into it.

The trouble was, that didn’t seem to frighten her the way it should. And in any case, she had no choice.

“The favor?” he prompted her, something sardonic moving across his face. Almost as if he knew what she planned to ask him—but that was silly. Of course he could not know. Of all the things that Tristanne knew about Nikos Katrakis—that he was ruthless and magnetic in equal measure, that he had clawed his way from illegitimacy and poverty into near-un-imaginable wealth and influence with the sheer force of his will, that he suffered no fools and tolerated no disloyalty, that he alone drove her cold brother into fits of rage with his every success—she had never heard it mentioned that he was psychic. He could have no idea what she wanted from him.

“Yes,” Tristanne said, her tone even. Confident. In direct contrast to the mess of unsettled churning within. “A favor. But just a small favor, and not, I hope, an entirely unpleasant one.”

She almost called it off then. She almost heeded the panicked messages her body and her intuition were sending her—she almost convinced herself that someone else would do, that she need not pick this man, that someone less intimidating would work just as well, could accomplish what she needed.

But she glanced to the side then, to ease the intensity of Nikos Katrakis’s gaze and to catch her breath, and saw her brother shoulder his way into the bar area. Half brother, she reminded herself, as if that should make some difference. Peter’s familiar scowl was firmly in place when he looked at her—and who she was with. Behind him, she saw the clammy-palmed financier Peter had handpicked for her—the man he had decreed would be his ticket out of financial ruin for the modest price of Tristanne’s favors.

“You must bolster the family fortune,” he had told her matter-of-factly six weeks earlier, as if he was not discussing her future. Her life.

“I don’t understand,” she had said stiffly, still wearing her black dress from their father’s memorial service earlier that day. She had not been in mourning, not even so soon after his death. Not for Gustave Barbery, at any rate—though she would perhaps always grieve for the father Gustave had never been to her. “All I want is access to my trust fund a few years early.”

That bloody trust fund. She’d hated that it existed, hated that her father thought it gave him the right to attempt to control her as he saw fit. Hated more that Peter was its executor now that her father was dead—and that, for her mother’s sake, she had to play along with him in order to access it. She’d wanted nothing to do with the cursed Barbery fortune nor its attendant obligations and expectations. She’d spent years living proudly off of her own money, the money she’d earned with her own hands—but such pride was no longer a luxury she could afford. Her mother’s health had deteriorated rapidly once Gustave fell ill; her debts had mounted at a dizzying rate, especially once Peter had taken control of the Barbery finances eight months ago and had stopped paying Vivienne’s bills. It fell to Tristanne to sort it out, which was impossible on the money she made scraping out the life of an artist in Vancouver. She had no choice but to placate Peter in the hope she could use her trust to save her mother from ruin. It made her want to cry but she did not—could not—show that kind of weakness in front of Peter.

“You don’t have to understand,” Peter had hissed at her, triumph and malice alive in his cold gaze. “You need only do as I say. Find an appropriately wealthy man, and bend him to your will. How hard can that be, even for you?”

“I fail to see how that would help you,” Tristanne had said. So formal, so polite, as if the conversation were either. As if she did not feel like giving in to her upset stomach, her horror.

“You need not concern yourself with anything save your own contribution,” Peter had snapped. “A liaison with a certain caliber of man will make my investors more confident. And believe me, Tristanne, you’ll want to ensure their confidence. If this deal does not go through, I will lose everything and the first casualty will be your useless mother.”

Tristanne understood all too well. Peter had never made any secret of his disdain for Tristanne’s mother. Gustave had put his empire in Peter’s hands at the onset of his long illness, having cut off Tristanne for her rebelliousness years before. He had no doubt expected his son to provide for his second wife, and had therefore made no specific provision for her in his will. But Tristanne was well aware that Peter had waited years to make Vivienne Barbery pay for usurping his own late mother’s place in what passed for Gustave’s affections. He had dismissed her failing, fragile health as attention-seeking, and allowed her debts to mount. He was capable of anything.

“What do you want me to do?” Tristanne had asked woodenly. She could do it, whatever it was. She would.

“Sleep with them, marry them, I do not care.” Peter had sneered. “Make certain it is public—splashed across every tabloid in Europe. You must do whatever it takes to convince the world that this family has access to serious money, Tristanne, do you understand me?”

On the Katrakis yacht, Tristanne looked away from the financier and back to Peter, whose gaze burned with loathing. And as easily as that, her indecision vanished. Better to burn out on Nikos Katrakis’s fire—and annoy Peter in the process by contributing using his avowed worst enemy—than suffer a far more clammy and repulsive fate. Tristanne repressed a shudder.

When she returned her attention to Nikos Katrakis, the dragon, his half smile had disappeared. Though he still lounged against the bar, Tristanne sensed that his long, hard-muscled body was on red-alert. She had the sense of his physical might, of tremendous power hidden in casual clothes. It made her throat go dry.

This is a terrible mistake, she thought. She knew it in her bones. She felt it like an ache, a sob. But there was nothing to do but go for it.

“I would like you to kiss me,” she said, very distinctly. And then there was no going back. It was done. She cleared her throat. “Here and now. If it is not too much trouble.”

Of all the things Nikos Katrakis had expected might happen during the course of the afternoon’s party, being solicited in any form by the Barbery heiress had not made the list.

A hard kind of triumph poured through him. He was sure that she could see it—sense it. How could she not?

But she only gazed at him, her eyes the color of the finest Swiss chocolate. A dark satisfaction threatened to get the best of him. He found himself smiling, not pleasantly—and still, she did not look away.

She was a brave little thing. Braver by far than her cowardly, dishonorable relatives.

Not that her bravery would help her much. Not with him.

“Why should I kiss you?” he asked softly, enjoying the flush that heated her skin, making her skin glow red and gold in the late afternoon light. He toyed with his glass, and indicated the throng around them with a careless flick of his wrist. “There are any number of women on this boat who would fight to kiss me. Why should it be you?”

Surprise shone briefly in her gaze, then was replaced by something else. She swallowed, and then, very deliberately, smiled. It was a razor-sharp society smile. Nikos did not mistake it for anything but the weapon it was.

“Surely there are points for asking directly,” she said, her distractingly strong chin tilting up, her accent an unidentifiable yet attractive mix of Europe and North America. Her dark lashes swept down, then rose again to reveal her frank gaze. “Rather than lounging about in inappropriate clothing, hoping my décolletage might do the asking for me.”

Nikos found himself very nearly amused, despite himself. Despite his urge to crush her—because she was a Barbery and thus tainted, because he had vowed long ago that he would not rest until they were all so much dust beneath his feet, because her spineless worm of a brother watched them, even now. He shifted closer to her, moving his body far nearer to hers than was polite. She held her ground.

He wished he did not like it, but he did. Oh, how he did.

“Some women have no qualms about displaying whatever assets they possess to their best advantage,” he said. He placed his drink on the bar. “But I take your point.”

He let his gaze travel over her—not for the first time, though she could not know it. But today he had the pleasure of letting her stand there and watch him as he did it. From the gentle waves of her dark blonde hair, to her disarmingly intelligent brown eyes, to the lithe figure she’d poured into a simple shift dress that appreciated her curves almost as much as he did, she was compelling—but more for the ways in which she was not quite beautiful than for the ways she was. The strong chin. The obvious intellect she did nothing to conceal. The faint evidence that she did not spend her free time injecting herself with Botox or collagen or silicone. The signs of tension in her neck and shoulders that she was trying to hide, that hinted at her reasons for such a request. He dragged his attention back to her face, pleased to see a hint of temper crack across her expression before she carefully hid it behind her polished social veneer.

“What can you bring to a kiss that another cannot?” he asked, as if he was unimpressed with what he’d seen.

She did not retreat, or turn bright red with shame, as others might have. She merely crooked one delicate eyebrow, challenging him. Daring him.

“Me,” she said. Her expression added, of course.

Nikos felt desire flash through him, surprising him. Shocking him. He had not expected it—he should, by rights, despise her by association. But Tristanne Barbery was not at all what he had imagined she would be. He had expected her to be attractive. How could she not be? She had been schooled in the finest finishing schools in Europe, polished to the nth degree. He had looked at her in photographs over the years, and had found her to be natural, unstudied, though it was impossible to tell if that was a trick of the lens. He knew now that photographs could not do this woman justice. She was too alive—too vibrant—as if life danced in her, like a fire.

He wanted to touch it. Her.

And then he wanted to ruin her, just as Althea had been ruined and his father destroyed. Just as he, too, had been ruined, however temporarily. Never again, he vowed. Not for the first time.

“You make another good point,” he agreed, his voice low as he fought off the dark memories. He reached across the space between them and pulled a long strand of her hair between his fingers. It felt like raw silk, soft and supple, and warm. Her lips parted slightly, as if she could feel his touch. He felt himself harden in response. “But I am not in the habit of kissing strange women in view of so many,” he continued, his voice pitched for her ears alone. “It has a nasty habit of ending up in the tabloids, I find.”

“I apologize,” Tristanne murmured. Her clever eyes met his, daring him. “I was under the impression that you were renowned for your fearlessness. Your ability to scoff in the face of convention. Perhaps I have confused you for another Nikos Katrakis.”

“I am devastated,” he replied smoothly, his eyes on hers. He moved closer, and something inside him beat like a drum when she still did not step away. “I assumed it was my good looks that drew you to me, begging to be kissed. Instead you are like all the rest. Are you a rich man’s groupie, Miss Barbery? Do you travel the world and collect kisses like a young girl collects autographs?”

“Not at all, Mr. Katrakis,” she replied at once. She tilted her head back, and raised her brows in that challenging way of hers. “I find rich men are my groupies. They follow me around, making demands. I thought to save you the trouble.”

“You are too kind, Miss Barbery.” This time he traced the ridge of her collarbone, her taut, soft skin. He felt her tremble, just slightly, beneath his fingers, and almost smiled. “But perhaps I do not share what is mine.”

“Says the man on a yacht filled with more guests than he can count.”

“I have not kissed the yacht, nor the guests.” He inclined his head. “Not all of them, that is.”

“You must share your rules with me, then,” she replied, her lips twitching slightly as if she bit back laughter. He did not know why he found that mesmerizing. “Though I must confess to you that I am surprised there are so many. So much for the grand stories of Nikos Katrakis, who bows to no tradition, follows no rule and forges his own way in this world. I think I’d like to meet him.”

“There is only one Nikos Katrakis, Miss Barbery.” He was so close now that her perfume filled the space between them, something subtle, with spice and only the faintest hint of flowers. He wondered if she would taste as sweet, with as much kick. “I hope it will not destroy you to learn that it is me.”

“I have no way to judge what it will or will not do,” she said, her eyes bold on his, “as you have not yet kissed me.”

“Ah,” he said. “And now it is an inevitability, is it?”

“Of course.” She cocked her head to one side, and smiled. It was even more of a challenge, and Nikos had not become the man he was today by backing down from a challenge. “Isn’t it?”

This was not what he had planned. Spontaneity was for those with less to lose, and far less to prove. He owed the late Gustave Barbery and his odious son, Peter, payback on the grandest scale, and he had spent the last decade making certain the opportunity would present itself, which it had, again and again. A push here, a whisper there, and the Barbery fortunes had taken a tumble, especially since the old man’s illness—but he had not intended to involve the girl. He was not like the Barberys. He was not like Peter Barbery, who had seduced, impregnated and abandoned Althea with so much cold calculation. He refused to be like the Barberys! But then, he could not have predicted that his arch-enemy’s sister would approach him in this way.

Or—more intriguing and far more dangerous—that she would tempt him to throw away the iron control he had worked so hard to maintain. He was not averse to using her or any other tool he could find that might lead to her family’s destruction. But he could not have anticipated that he might want her—desire her—in spite of it all.

“I believe you may be right,” he said quietly. Her bold expression faltered, just for the barest of moments, but Nikos saw it. And something in him roared in triumph. She was not as unaffected as she pretended to be. He did not care to explore why that should please him.

He reached over and slid his palm around to cup her nape. The contact sent electricity surging through him, desire and a deep hunger following like an echo. Her eyes widened, and her hands came up to rest on the hard planes of his chest.

He let the moment draw out, aware of the interested eyes on them from all corners of the yacht’s entertainment deck, knowing that no matter what game she thought she was playing, she had no idea who she was dealing with. She had no idea what she’d set in motion by approaching him.

But he knew. He had already won this long, cold battle. She was simply the final straw that would destroy the Barbery empire once and for all, just as they had nearly destroyed him once upon a time.

He had finally done it—and yet instead of reveling in his hard-won victory, his attention focused solely on the rich, lush curve of her lips.

He pulled her to him and fit his mouth to hers.