Mistresses: In His Bed: The Billionaire's Trophy / Strictly Temporary / Whose Bed Is It Anyway?

In the hall below, Bastian was engaged in greeting dinner guests with his grandfather, Nessa and her bridegroom, Leonides. He frowned in surprise when he saw Emmie actually up and out of bed. And then ten seconds later, overpowered by one of the curious contradictions that continually afflicted him in her radius, he wanted to sweep her straight back between the sheets with him for company. In all his many years of freedom he had never met a woman who could hold a candle to Emmie Marshall with her golden hair bouncing on her slim shoulders, her big blue eyes bright as stars while a natural smile flashed like sunshine across her succulent pink mouth when Nessa saw her and grinned. Well, his sister certainly liked her; in fact Nessa was behaving rather as though he had got engaged again. It would do no harm to depress his sister’s expectations a little after the honeymoon and mention with regret that he had moved on. As he would have to move on, he told himself impatiently, and stop fantasising about riding Emmie’s perfect body with her legs locked round his waist, her beautiful face aglow with desire. His tall, well-built body already tense, Bastian shifted restively at the charge of unholy lust firing his every hormone to a needy flame. He had never wanted any woman as badly as he wanted Emmie at that moment.

‘So, you’re Emmie…’ A tall white-haired elderly man greeted her with a pleasant smile and a handshake. ‘I’m relieved that Bastian didn’t succeed in drowning you in his pool on your first visit,’ he confided. ‘I’m his grandfather, Theron Christou.’

During the meal that followed, Emmie struggled to eat. Nessa had insisted that she sit beside her and Leonides while Bastian was at the head of the table next to his grandfather. Even though she was hungry she was hopelessly on edge, her fingers curving to her wine glass for something solid to hold onto because every time she glanced up she met black-fringed dark golden eyes that sent her thoughts and her speech into a complete loop even as her heart hammered and her mouth ran dry, leaving her thirsty, constantly sipping and yet still overheated. She could not control the slow burn that travelled to her feminine core every time she met Bastian’s stunning eyes and, even worse, she could not suppress the sense of intense longing that constantly gripped her. This wasn’t her, this was not the woman she was, she argued angrily with herself. She had never been the type to get over-excited by a man or whose body yearned for the touch of one. Indeed she had often thought such promptings belonged more to fantasy than reality and now all of a sudden she was finding out how naïve she had been.

After dinner, the guests moved to a large room, furnished with a buffet, a bar and a DJ where many of the islanders were already arriving with gifts and good wishes for the bridal couple. Bastian banded a guiding arm to her waist and introduced her to what seemed like dozens of people. Her head swam with names unattached to faces, and the lush scent of his cologne spiced with clean, warm male set up gooseflesh across her skin. She had never been so aware of a man, of every fluid movement of his lean, hot body, the rich timbre of his dark accented drawl above her head, the ridiculously arousing feel of the long fingers flexing against her hipbone. Her breasts were full and taut below her clothing, the tips swollen and tingling, and down below in a place she rarely thought about she was tender and embarrassingly damp. It was sheer insanity to react that way to Bastian Christou but every time she connected with his lustrous dark eyes, rational thought vanished.

Desire could make anyone stupid, she reasoned as the evening marched on with the bride and groom very much the centre of attention. Bastian was a gorgeous guy and inexperience made her vulnerable to his indescribably potent sexual charisma. Maybe she had set the bar too high before taking a lover because she had wanted to find trust, honesty and caring with one special man. Maybe if she had been a little more sophisticated she could have laughed and ignored Bastian. As it was, she was wickedly, weakly conscious of his every move, every word, every glance and it felt as if she had a bomb ticking down to detonation inside her.

‘Let’s dance,’ Bastian breathed above her head, guiding her onto the crowded floor, and she shivered, feet hesitant to follow because she didn’t want to slow dance with him, didn’t want to take that risk of getting physically closer. But it was getting late and soon she would be able to retire to bed, duty done, she reckoned, as bendy and inviting as a concrete post when he tilted her hips towards his and closed his strong arms around her.

Momentarily she shivered with reaction, blindsided by the hard muscular steel of him against her softer curves, helplessly intoxicated by that sheer masculinity laced with the intimacy of his evocative scent. He tipped up her head and kissed her before she knew what he was doing, and the kiss from those firm male lips cut through her like a knife blade slashing through butter, burning and arousing wherever it touched. As her nipples constricted into stiff, straining buds a sliding sensation curled low in her pelvis, leaving her knees trembling and an inarticulate sound breaking from her throat.

Bastian lifted his proud dark head. ‘I want you, moraki mou,’ he husked.

The compelling beauty of his face at that instant inflamed her. She didn’t feel like herself any more: she felt wild, hungry, out of control, all the things she never allowed herself to be. That thought kicked off alarm bells in the back of her head but her body and the unquenchable craving for him that she couldn’t fight held her fast, pinned as close to him as his own skin. He was as turned on as she was and that knowledge was strangely soothing. The brutally hard ridge of his erection against her stomach was inescapable and shamelessly thrilling on a level she refused to think about.

‘You set me on fire,’ he growled almost accusingly. ‘I don’t do one-night stands—’

‘Neither do I,’ she sliced in breathlessly.

Dark eyes smouldered brilliant gold over her flushed face. ‘Tonight we break the rules—’

‘No…’ she framed feverishly and then he kissed her again, his hard mouth stealing her protest with a passionate intensity she could not resist.

He guided her through the crush of party-goers with a word here, a wave there, smoothly ensuring that nobody intercepted them and slowed their progress. She mounted the stairs by his side, ever so slightly dizzy, lower limbs a little clumsy and, away from the music, the noise and the bright lights, suddenly conscious that she was not quite sober. How much wine had she drunk? And she had not eaten much at dinner, she recalled vaguely. Drinking on an empty tummy after that huge brandy Nessa had pressed on her—how foolish could a woman be? But the burn of that scorching kiss was still on her swollen mouth, firing an unbearable ache between her legs and destroying her self-discipline.

A lean brown hand closing round hers, he pulled her into the bedroom she had vacated earlier. His hands cradled her face, glittering dark eyes heavily lidded with desire. ‘Once we get back to London this didn’t happen. It will be our secret,’ he told her arrogantly.

‘It’s not going to happen,’ she faltered, taken aback by that ruthless assurance that warned her there would be no future beyond the next dawn. ‘I’m not cheap—’

His fingertips grazed her delicate jawbone. ‘You want me.’

Madly, insanely, crazily, she acknowledged, still fighting to think straight.

One night, Bastian was bargaining with himself, one rare night of self-indulgence that smashed his usual boundaries. She wasn’t cheap? He had got that unsavoury message, wished he hadn’t and wanted the strength of mind to evict her from his bedroom but he could no longer fight his devouring hunger for her. He pulled off his jacket with impatient hands and ripped loose his collar before he reached for her and crushed her succulent mouth below his again. Gathering her up to him, he brought her down on the bed, stretching down a hand to flip off her high heels.

His hard, demanding mouth and the plunging stab of his tongue were like a drug Emmie craved, a need as powerful and natural as taking a next breath. In a minute she promised herself that she would stop him, call a halt, assert logic, but with every demanding kiss he demolished her mental misgivings. She was flat on the bed, rejoicing in his weight, which seemed to answer some of the longing clawing at her, when he lifted her up and ran down the zip of her dress.

‘Bastian…we—’ mustn’t, she intended to say but he enveloped her in the folds of her dress as he trailed it off over her head.

‘We must,’ he contradicted, second-guessing her words while burying his carnal mouth against the pulse beating raggedly at her collarbone, licking the salt from her skin with a wicked tongue, tracing a trail down to the shallow valley between her small high breasts, fingers already dealing with her bra, everything moving so fast she couldn’t keep track of it or call a pause.

‘I want to be sensible,’ she argued frantically, spooked by the out-of-control feeling she was experiencing.

‘Sensible?’ he exclaimed with incredulity, straddling her prone length to rip off his shirt with positive violence, buttons flying in all directions. ‘There’s nothing sensible about feeling like this. Some actions are driven by instinct, koukla mou.’

Either instinct or appreciation kept her still, her dazed blue gaze welded to the smooth muscular planes of his magnificent brown torso. Heat hummed at the heart of her and the ache stirred again stronger than ever. her bra was gone and she hadn’t even noticed it going, was suddenly much more aware of the burn of his eyes over her bare breasts, the devastating touch of expert fingers rubbing against the unbearably swollen tips. Her spine bowed, her body reaching upward in a helpless arch as long fingers grazed down her leg and came to a sudden stop to retrace their path over the roughened stretch of skin he had detected.

‘What’s this?’ he breathed, glancing down.

Emmie froze, more naked and vulnerable in that moment than she would have been had she wakened to find herself walking nude down a street, and she turned paper pale. ‘I had surgery…years ago…there was something wrong with my leg,’ she explained jerkily. ‘You see, I’ve got some ugly scars. I’m not perfect—’

‘I don’t want or need perfect,’ Bastian declared hungrily, running a caressing but unconcerned hand over the marks he had discovered.

‘But I do want you,’ he breathed thickly, eyes hot gold below sooty lashes. ‘I’m as hard as a rock.’

Her pallor receded, her face burning with sudden colour as he sprang off the bed and shed his tailored trousers, the male bulge of arousal prominent in his fitted boxers. Shyness and uncertainty and apprehension engulfed her. She didn’t know what to do or how to behave and yet still he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. That lithe tawny body called to hers on a visceral level. Desire, she was discovering, incited much more overwhelming responses than she could ever have guessed. She had never dreamt she could want to touch a man so badly.

Bastian used his mouth to tease her rosy nipples, suckling and lingering to torment while he kneaded the full mounds of her breasts. Little involuntary sounds escaped her throat and when he ran a hand up her inner thigh she literally stopped breathing, the ache stirring again and overriding every other impulse. He raked a finger down over the tight, damp fabric of her knickers and she shuddered, intolerably conscious of the swollen damp flesh pulsing between her splayed thighs. Every reflex and hormonal reaction in her entire body seemed to be centred there.

‘A woman has never made me feel this desperate,’ Bastian growled in a tone of bemused disbelief as he tugged off the last barrier between them.

Emmie recognised that he was shaken up too and the fierce wanting that drove her no longer seemed quite so shameful. She stared up at him, loving the hard, angular bone structure that gave his features such charismatic strength, the smouldering eyes beneath the lush curling lashes, marvelling that mere days earlier he had still been a stranger. Nobody had ever made her feel the way he made her feel. He touched her where she frantically needed to be touched, a fingertip whispering over the bundle of nerve endings below her mound, and she jerked as if he had burned her, her entire body coming alive with electric reaction.

He snaked down her body with strong supple power and spread her thighs, and her fingers knotted into his luxuriant black hair to stop him before the first breathtaking sensation of his sensual assault engulfed her feverish body. her teeth chattered together, shock winging through her at the ferocious intensity of her own response. He explored her with his mouth and his fingers and she twisted and arched and gasped over and over again, lost to sensation, lost to the violent need he had incited. Hungry heat spiralled in her pelvis and rose to an excruciating height and she was quivering and moaning and rising closer to the climax she sensed when he rose over her and plunged deep into her.

Pain and pleasure combined with explosive effect. Even as the involuntary ripples of orgasm clenched round his hard shaft and pulsed wildly through her she cried out in pain and he fell still, frowning down with perplexed eyes at her dismayed face.

‘Don’t stop!’ she told him urgently, too mortified by her own cry to be willing to draw such stark attention to what she had just sacrificed. That was not something she was prepared to discuss and she dimly hoped that continuation and a more natural conclusion would stifle comment. She had not known that first time sex would hurt, suspected that she should have warned him in advance but could not imagine what words she might have employed with which to share her deepest secret.

For that reason, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut, her cheeks burning, and tried to concentrate on the extraordinary feel of him inside her as he shifted position.

‘Are you all right?’ Bastian asked tautly.

‘Of course, I am,’ she parried, for that fleeting pain had speedily receded, leaving her with only the erotic sense of his alien fullness stretching her and sinking deeper into her receptive body.

‘If I was too rough, I’m sorry…you feel amazing,’ Bastian confided with ragged emphasis, easing back with care before sinking into her again. His movement provoked a melting wave of honeyed heat in her lower body, making her heart thump fast and hard again. The excitement gathered like the eye of a storm inside her chest, every sensation intensified by his fluid rhythm.

Suddenly she was caught up in the same endeavour, fully a partner, no longer an uncertain onlooker. Her heart pounding like mad, she bucked and lifted her hips beneath him, meeting his thrusts, urging him on as the writhing electric excitement and the frenzy of need overwhelmed the last remnants of her control. She could feel herself reaching another height and she plunged over the edge with a startled cry of pleasure, quivering in the waves of ecstasy while he drove into her one last time. He vented a harsh groan of satisfaction and shuddered over her and she felt him spill inside her.

He shifted and pressed his mouth in a brief salutation to her damp brow. ‘That was an unforgettable experience, moraki mou…’

Unforgettable for her as well, Emmie acknowledged in a daze. Even though their intimacy had begun on a note of pain he had twice brought her to a climax and she was blissfully relaxed and adrift on a fluffy cloud of well-being. She squashed the misgivings already trying to infiltrate her. She wasn’t going to turn all girly and silly in the aftermath, she assured herself with determination. He had surpassed her expectations but all they had shared was their bodies, nothing more. Nobody fancied themselves in love, nobody needed to get hurt, least of all her. She was in full control of her emotions.

Bastian rolled back from her and studied her with frowning golden eyes the colour of burning amber. ‘So, what’s going on here?’ he queried, black brows pleating. ‘I don’t want to misjudge you and assume that this was some bizarre set-up.’

CHAPTER FIVE

TAKEN ABACK BY Bastian’s provocative statement, Emmie blinked away her drowsiness and lifted her head up off the pillow. ‘A…set-up? Bizarre?’ she repeated blankly in her confusion. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘By all means, tell me if I’m wrong,’ Bastian urged, wide sensual mouth tense. ‘But I believe you were a virgin.’

Emmie sat up, hugging the sheet defensively to her breasts. Suddenly, her face was literally burning with mortification, for she had been hoping that he either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t guessed what had been amiss with her. ‘Yes?’ she gritted in a so-what tone of discouragement.

‘Then why throw yourself away on me?’ Bastian asked flatly. ‘I’m not proud that you succeeded in enticing me into bed but I wasn’t expecting anything more from you than a typical shag.’

Emmie tensed in sheer shock and anger at his accusation. ‘Look, I did not entice you!’ she snapped back.

‘You’re so beautiful that you’ve naturally been enticing me from the moment we met at the airport,’ Bastian extended grudgingly and, recognising his pronounced discomfiture in the aftermath of his sexual satisfaction, he labelled himself a total hypocrite and sprang out of bed to distance himself from her. But he had done what he should not have done and now he had to deal with the fallout. She had proved to be a temptation he could not resist. But what he could not comprehend was that Emmie Marshall had also been a virgin. That did not make sense, nor did it match the characteristics of the adventurous and more experienced woman he had believed she had to be to work as an escort.

‘Believe me, it wasn’t intentional!’ Emmie fired back, thrusting back the bedding and snatching up the towelling robe folded over a nearby chair. She dug her arms into it and tied the sash tight, adjusting the lapels to cover every piece of skin that she could for the last thing she now wanted to be was naked in any way around Bastian Christou. A typical shag? Was that all her body had meant to him? Could he possibly be any more insulting?

‘I wasn’t expecting a hired escort to be a virgin. I don’t pay for sex either, I never have and never will, but I’ll naturally compensate you for your…er, generosity—’ Bastian selected the word with razor-edged care ‘—with diamonds and hope that they meet your expectations.’

Emmie had honestly believed that she could not feel any worse but now and without the smallest warning it was as if the bottom had fallen out of her world, leaving her hovering in sickening limbo. He truly did believe that she would want to be paid in some way for having slept with him! She was shattered and simultaneously cut to the quick by his view of her. Seemingly he saw her as barely one step removed from a hooker. A man didn’t normally offer a woman diamonds in reward after sex, at least not in her world. And this was the male she had chosen to sleep with? She could only despise her blind stupidity.

In the buzzing silence, Bastian noted her pallor and the tightness of her delicate bone structure. ‘Have I got this situation wrong? You did say quite plainly upfront that you weren’t cheap—’

‘But that didn’t mean that I put a price on my body like a whore!’ Emmie shot back at him wrathfully, a shudder of mortified rage writhing through her tall slender figure as she stood there, stiff with disbelief. ‘I meant that I don’t do casual sex, that’s what I meant! I wasn’t talking about money or jewels or anything of that nature!’

‘Since I’ve clearly offended you, I apologise,’ Bastian fielded curtly. ‘But what else was I to think when you made that comment about not being cheap? You’re an escort, whose company I paid for. It didn’t take a fertile imagination to leap to the conclusion that you would expect some further form of remuneration for including sex in our arrangement…’

And that was the exact instant in which Emmie finally recognised what a dreadful, indefensible mistake she had made in going to bed with him, for not for one moment had he forgotten that she was an escort whose time he had purchased. Not for one moment had he truly buried his suspicions about exactly what being an escort might entail. She was the one who had forgotten the barriers between them; she was the one who had somehow crucially forgotten that he was paying for the role she was playing. Humiliation and regret touched her deep.

‘I already told you that I wasn’t an escort!’ she slammed back at him fierily, golden hair tumbling round her flushed cheekbones. ‘But you wouldn’t believe me!’

‘I saw your photo on that website. I phoned up and I booked you. If you weren’t an escort, how would that be possible?’ Bastian demanded drily, unimpressed, a tall commanding figure for all his state of undress.

‘It’s not that simple,’ Emmie parried, her shoulders bowing as a wave of sudden weariness engulfed her. She sank stiffly down on the sofa by the far wall, as far as she could get from him and still be in the same room. Nothing but the unlovely truth would suffice, she registered dully. She did not have a choice: she had to tell him the truth to clear her name.

Emmie breathed in deep and lifted her head high, refusing to be apologetic about what she could not help. ‘My mother owns the escort agency—’

‘Your…mother?’ Bastian said incredulously, striding into the dressing room to tug a pair of jeans and a T-shirt out of the built-in closets that lined the walls. Her mother ran an escort agency? He was astonished and appalled by that startling piece of information.

‘Yes, my mother,’ Emmie confirmed between compressed lips and then went on to explain a little about her background and how her elder sister had raised her and her siblings after Odette had put her younger daughters into foster care. ‘I hadn’t seen Odette since I was twelve and when she rang out of the blue and said I could live with her for free while I worked unpaid for your company, I leapt at the opportunity. It wasn’t just that I needed a low-cost place to live…’ She hesitated and her cheeks warmed, her eyes veiling to conceal her vulnerability. ‘I thought it would be a great way to finally get to know my mother as well.’

Wincing at the troubled note in her voice that she could not hide, Bastian zipped up his jeans. ‘Did you know about the agency before you moved in with her?’

‘Of course not, and the minute I did move in and she told me about it she immediately began nagging at me to work as one of her escorts,’ Emmie admitted ruefully, trying not to stare as he hauled on the tee, dragging it down over his amazingly muscular bronzed abdomen. Embarrassed colour stung her face with unwelcome heat. ‘She was very annoyed when I took a job as a waitress instead—’

‘You work as a waitress as well?’ Bastian prompted with a frown of a surprise, his attention lingering on the soft full curve of her delicious mouth, which was still swollen from his kisses. That fast he wanted her again, that fast it was a challenge to concentrate on what she was saying, and he paced restively across the room, exasperated by his overactive sex drive and yet awesomely unfamiliar with the modest art of listening to a woman talk and actually recognising her distress.

‘Five nights a week. I needed the money,’ Emmie pointed out reluctantly. ‘But I suspect that my mother was counting on me agreeing to work as an escort for her when she asked me to move in—in fact that’s probably the only reason she invited me to live with her in the first place. She took the photo from my camera to put it on her website. I didn’t know about it. I would never have agreed to that.’

‘So, if you weren’t working as one of your mother’s escorts, what the hell are you doing here with me?’ Bastian demanded bluntly, dark eyes glittering suspiciously as he searched her pale tight face, judging her sincerity, recognising her discomfort in confiding such things about her mother. As a son who had often been embarrassed by parental behaviour, Bastian had sympathy enough with her on that score.