Greek Affairs: In the Boss's Arms: Ruthless Greek Boss, Secretary Mistress / Kept by Her Greek Boss / Greek Boss, Dream Proposal

His eyes held hers and he just said quietly, ‘Take it down Lucy.’ It was so utterly shocking to be standing in front of her boss and have him speak to her like this, that Lucy found herself obeying him. With extreme reluctance she took out the pins from the back. She could feel her hair loosen and fall with annoying and heavily layered predictability around her shoulders and down her back.

Aristotle fisted his hands in his trouser pockets to stop them reaching out to feel the texture of that heavy silky mass of hair. It was darker than he’d originally thought, and luxuriously unruly, reaching down as far as her shoulderblades. He had an image of her reclining back on a sumptuous divan, tendrils of that glorious hair over her shoulders and trailing over her the tops of her bare—Get a grip, man! With a supreme effort of will Aristotle reined himself in and said gutturally, ‘That’s better. Now you look as if you’re ready for a function. Let’s go.’

With an easy and automatic courtesy which surprised Lucy, and she wasn’t sure why that was, he took her case from her white-knuckle grip and led the way out of the office. She stumbled as she followed his graceful stride down the corridor to his private lift. She had a moment of dithering, stupidly wondering if she should take the staff lift just a few feet further down, but as if reading her mind again Aristotle flicked her an impatient glance and she stepped in.

It was only when they were ensconced in the lift that the memory of the last time she’d shared such a space with him came back in all its glory.

She couldn’t help her reaction flowering. Too much had happened since then. Now she stood there, with her hair down, feeling as exposed as if he’d just run his hands over her naked flesh—especially when she recalled his look from moments ago, a look that had to have been some projection of her own awful, twisted feelings. The tall man beside her oozed with sexual heat. She could smell him and feel him. Suddenly she had the strangest sensation of holding something huge back … Wanton images hovered tantalisingly on the periphery of her mind and threatened to burst through, mocking her for a control that was beginning to feel very shaky.

Lucy gritted her jaw and looked resolutely up at the display as the lift seemed to inch downwards, willing it with every fibre of her being to go faster.

The effort it took to stay apart from Lucy in that lift, amidst a rush of memories of how she had felt pressed against him, which once again stunned him with their vividness, washed away Aristotle’s last resistance where this woman was concerned. He’d never experienced this level of sexual awareness before, and in truth frustration was a novel sensation when he was so used to getting what he wanted, when he wanted. He didn’t stop to question his decision or his motives for a second.

It was quite simple. He had to have this woman in his bed—and as a soon as possible. He would sleep with her. Then she would lose her allure and this bizarre spell she held over him would be broken. In three months he could let her go. Or less, if he got bored. According to her contract he could terminate employment with due notice; she, however, could not walk away unless she wanted to seriously sabotage her career. Because of the top secret nature of the merger she was tied to Levakis Enterprises until the whole thing became public.

Work, which he’d always strictly compartmentalised as separate from pleasure, would become pleasure—his pleasure. And Lucy’s too. He wanted her with him every inch of the way as he took her again and again to sate this burning ache. Somehow instinctively he knew that one night would not be enough, and it made him uncomfortable to acknowledge it.

Nevertheless, as the lift descended the final few floors, a fizz of anticipation ran through Aristotle’s veins and he felt truly alive for the first time in a long time. Even thoughts of the merger were receding into a background place. A dim and distant alarm bell sounded at the back of his mind, but he was too fired up to notice or dwell on it.

The lift juddered softly to a stop and the doors swished open. He stood back and gestured for Lucy to precede him, looking at her carefully as she did so. She was avoiding his eye with all the finesse of a guilty-looking six-year-old caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

She stumbled slightly stepping out of the lift, and Aristotle took her bare silky smooth arm just above the elbow. The frisson of pleasure that went through him nearly made him sway. He could feel the swell of her breast tease his fingers and a primal instinct to possess this woman coursed through him. The fact that she held herself so rigidly at his side didn’t put him off. She was as unmistakably his as—for now—he was hers.

A colleague of Aristotle’s had just walked away. Lucy watched him go with a feeling of mounting terror. She did not want to be alone with her boss.

They were standing side by side under the seductively soft lighting of the main ballroom in the exclusive London hotel when she heard his drawling query, ‘You don’t need your glasses? Or are you wearing contacts?’

She nearly choked on her sparkling water and lowered the drink carefully, realising without even making a reflex gesture to check that she had indeed forgotten her glasses. She could picture them right now, sitting on the vanity cabinet in the dressing room of the office. She flushed guiltily and sent a quick, fleeting look to Aristotle. Standing here in this milieu, with his tall, hard body just inches away, was making her nervous. It made her so nervous, in fact, that she didn’t stop the truth from spilling out.

‘They aren’t prescription glasses.’

She saw him frown from the corner of her eyes. ‘So why do you wear them?’

He sounded aghast, and Lucy had no doubt that he could not understand why any woman would knowingly want to make herself any less attractive than she already was. A sense of extreme vulnerability washed through her.

She shrugged minutely and avoided his eye. ‘I started wearing them when I was looking for work after college.’ She squirmed inwardly. How could she explain to this man that she’d grown sick and tired of prospective bosses ogling her sizeable assets rather than her CV? A memory made her shiver with distaste: her first boss, whispering lasciviously on more than one occasion that he liked big girls.

Ever since then Lucy had made sure to be covered up at all times, hair pulled back and glasses firmly on. Yet, uncomfortably, she had to acknowledge that she’d found working with Aristotle Levakis something of a relief in that she knew there was no way on this earth a man like him would look twice at her. That assertion suddenly seemed shaky.

As if to compound the feeling, from the corner of her eye she could see Aristotle turn subtly, so that he had his back to the room full of people. She even saw one person in the act of approaching falter and turn away, as if he’d sent off some silent signal she couldn’t see. She couldn’t resist sending him another quick look. He had an expression on his face that caught and held her, and she couldn’t look away.

His eyes flicked down to her breasts—in exactly the way she’d seen men do all her life, ever since she’d developed out of all proportion in her early teens. But instead of her usual feeling of disgust and invasion, to her shame and horror she could feel herself respond. Her breasts grew heavy, their tips tight and hard. For a cataclysmic moment she actually felt the novel desire to know what it would feel like to have this man touch them. Shock at the sheer physicality of her reaction made her feel clammy.

Aristotle’s eyes glittered. A whisper of a smile hovered around his mouth and then he said, ‘And did it work?’

Shame and chagrin rushed through Lucy. Was she really so weak? With one look this man was felling all her careful defences like a bowling ball sending skittles flying.

Her voice sounded strangled. ‘I found that, yes, it did work.’

Until now.

Lucy felt like a trapped insect, flat on its back and helpless in the face of a looming predator. Determined to negate her disturbing reaction, she looked away and said crisply, ‘Plenty of people wear glasses for cosmetic reasons. I would have thought that you’d approve.’

His voice was curt. ‘Your CV and your work ethic speak for themselves, Lucy. You don’t need to bolster your image by making it more businesslike.’

Too-tight skirts, yes. Glasses, no. Aristotle swallowed a growl of irritation at his wayward mind.

Lucy looked back. She was more than surprised at his easy commendation of her ability. So far it was only the fact that she hadn’t been let go that had given her any indication of how well she was doing her job. She had to fight the urge to cross her hands defensively over her chest, but that was ridiculous. He wouldn’t be looking at her like that. He’d just been making a point.

She inclined her head and said, ‘Fine. I won’t wear them.’ She bit back the reflex to say sir. The last thing she needed now was for him to repeat his request to call him Aristotle. What she did need was for this evening to be over as soon as possible and to have a whole two days away from this man, to get her head together and clear again. Especially when the prospect of spending three weeks in Athens with him loomed on the horizon like a threatening stormcloud.

A few hours later Lucy breathed a sigh of relief when the car drew to a smooth halt outside her apartment block in south London. She’d tried to insist on taking a cab from the hotel, but Aristotle wouldn’t listen. Then she’d tried to insist that he be dropped home first, but again he’d been adamant.

She reached for the door on her side and looked back to say a crisp goodnight. Her ability to speak left her. Aristotle was lounging in the far corner like a huge, dark avenging angel. A surge of panic gripped her and she felt blindly for the door handle, all but scrambling in her haste to get out and away. But just as she opened the door, extending one leg out of the car, the awful sound of ripping material made her heart stop. An ominously cold breeze whistled across the tops of her thighs.

She looked down and her jaw dropped when she saw a huge rip extending down the side of her dress from mid-thigh to hem. Only peripherally was she aware that it must have snagged on something. Her white thighs gleamed up at her in the gloom.

As all this was impacting on her brain, she heard a coolly sardonic, ‘You don’t seem to have much luck with clothes, do you?’

The sensation of wanting the ground to open up and swallow her whole had never seemed more strong than at that moment. She heard Aristotle say something unintelligible to his driver and then he got out. Lucy couldn’t move. She was terrified that if she did something else would rip and her entire dress might fall off. But then Aristotle was standing there, looking down at her with a mocking smile and extending a hand.

With the utmost reluctance she put her hand in his and felt the world tilt crazily as he pulled her up. With her other hand she scrabbled to hold her dress together. Her face felt as red as a traffic light. Aristotle now had a light grip on her arm, and Lucy noticed that he held her bag in his other hand.

That, and the way he was looking at her now, made her feel extremely threatened. It was the way he’d been looking at her that morning in the office.

She felt jittery and stiff all at once, and tried to get her arm back.

‘It must have caught on something. I’ll be fine from here. You must be impatient to get home.’

But Aristotle ignored her and easily steered them towards the path, not letting go for a second. Lucy’s blood was starting to fizzle and hum in her veins. She tried again while keeping a desperate clasp on her ruined dress. ‘Really, Mr Levakis, my door is just here.’

She even dug her heels in, but he called back to the driver, ‘That’s all, Julian. You can go. I’ll get a cab from here.’

‘You’re sure, sir?’ The driver’s surprise was evident in his voice.

‘Yes. Goodnight, Julian.’

And with that, before Lucy could formulate a word or acknowledge the escalation of pure mind-numbing panic in her breast, she was being led to her door and Aristotle was looking down at her with his trademark impatience.

‘Your keys?’

Lucy spluttered. The driver was pulling away from the kerb, making her even more panicked. ‘Mr Levakis, really, you don’t have to do this. Please. Thank you for the lift, but you shouldn’t have let Julian go. You’ll never get a cab from here …’

He looked down at her, those green eyes utterly mesmerising. ‘I thought I told you to call me Aristotle. Now, your keys? Please.’

Much like earlier, when he’d told her to take down her hair, Lucy found herself obeying. She knew on some dim, rational level that it was just shock. She awkwardly dug her keys out of her handbag, while trying not to let the dress gape open, and watched wordlessly when Aristotle took them and opened the door, leading them into the foyer and to the lift. He looked at her again with a quirked brow and Lucy said faintly, ‘Sixth floor.’

As the lift lurched skyward Lucy felt somehow as though she must be dreaming. She’d wake any moment and it would be Monday morning and everything would be back to normal. But then the lift bell pinged loudly and Aristotle, her boss, was looking at her again expectantly. She had no choice but to step out and walk to her door a few feet away.