The Married Mistress

The bitter irony was that it wasn’t the sort of reunion he had dreamed of. There had been no other man involved in his imaginings, and certainly no one like Jason or the blonde-haired floozy in the red gown who was still upstairs on the landing, hanging halfway over the banisters, watching everything that was going on with an avid, open-mouthed curiosity.

But a true gambler had to play the hand that fate had dealt him. And these were the only cards he had, so he had no choice.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Well…’ Jason blustered, even more disconcerted than before. ‘Can’t you see?’

‘No, I can’t, I’m afraid.’ Damon’s tone oozed fake sincerity, apparent concern. ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to explain. Just what is it that’s puzzling you?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Jason’s temper was rapidly escaping from his control. ‘It’s you! You’re the problem! Just who the hell are you?’

‘Who the hell am I?’ Damon echoed, pretending to give the matter some consideration, though Sarah was fully convinced that he already knew exactly what he was going to say. ‘I thought you knew. But, as you obviously don’t, then I shall have to explain to you. I—’

He broke off, glancing down sharply as Sarah moved convulsively, just once, in the circle of his arms. He turned a brief, reproving frown on her, tightened his grip momentarily, warningly, and watched with grim satisfaction as she subsided back into rebellious silence.

‘I’ll tell you who the hell I am. You need to know anyway, seeing as this concerns you rather a lot. You see, kyrie Jason, I am the new man in the lovely Sarah’s life. In fact, I am the man who has just replaced you in this lady’s bed.’

And, hearing Sarah’s gasp of indignant fury, seeing her open her mouth to voice an outraged protest, he bent his dark head and silenced her in the most effective way he could think of—by taking her mouth in another of those long, passionate and ruthlessly demanding kisses.

CHAPTER TWO

BUT this was a very different sort of kiss.

This was no longer the beguiling, seductive caress of just moments before. It was a kiss of anger, of domination, of possession, which stamped her as Damon’s as clearly as if it had been a white-hot branding iron pressed to her skin.

And the truth was that Damon believed that she was his to do with as he pleased, until he decided otherwise. He had never truly been prepared to let her go. He had only let her walk out on him because she had given him no choice. She had waited until he was away, as he so often was, on business, and then she had packed her bags and fled from the island.

People just did not do that sort of thing to Damon Nicolaides. Certainly, women never did it to him. He made all the running where the women in his life were concerned. He made the first moves; he decreed how long a relationship lasted. And when he was tired and bored, when he felt that things had come to their natural end—as they inevitably did—then Damon was the one who walked away without a backward glance. Not the woman he was leaving.

Sarah had broken all those rules. And as a result she knew that Damon had never forgiven her—would never forgive her. He would hold the memory of what he considered to be her betrayal and the insult to his fiercely macho pride deep in the darkness of his unloving heart, and he would never let it go.

‘Damon…’ she managed against the demand of his mouth, struggling to make it a protest, hearing only the sigh of acquiescence in her tone. ‘I—’ 20

‘Hush, agape mou,’ he reproved, infuriatingly more in control than she had ever been, so that she heard in his words a fake softness. A gentleness that he could never have meant but that he managed to communicate with total credibility. ‘Leave this to me.’

‘But—’

Again she tried to protest, and again she failed as once more he kissed her into submission, this time stealing her soul away with a stunningly enticing caress, one that made her senses swoon and her heart sing with rare delight.

‘Leave this to me,’ he had told her, his tone redolent with a supreme confidence that she would do exactly as he instructed.

And, weakly, she knew that she would. There was nothing else she could do. The ability to act, along with any hope she had of even thinking straight, had evaporated swiftly in the heat of her instant reaction to him. Just his very closeness, to be held so tightly in the warm strength of his arms, crushed up against the hard wall of his chest, had been bad enough, depriving her of the control, the restraint that she had believed she’d acquired in her time apart from him. But the sensations sparked off by those kisses had made everything infinitely worse, buzzing round in her head, fizzing through her body, until she was incapable of thought.

Those three very different kisses had revealed so perfectly the many sides of Damon’s nature. In his make-up, the supremely gentle, irresistibly seductive blended so perfectly with the cruel, the almost brutal ruthlessness that was the opposite side of his personality. The negative to the positive, darkness as opposed to light. She had known them all in her short time with him, and at first she had believed that the gentle, enticing character had been the real man.

She had been very quickly—and very thoroughly—disillusioned. Life, and Damon’s father, had stripped her of her rose-tinted spectacles with ruthless efficiency. And from then onwards she had never been able to look at him in the same way.

‘You’re who?’ Jason demanded, the bluster in his voice showing how rattled he was.

‘The name is Damon Nicolaides,’ Damon tossed at him, clearly expecting, and getting, the instant start of response that always came with the recognition of his name.

‘Nicolaides?’ Jason’s voice shook.

Everyone knew who Damon was. Everyone.

His wealth and his international, jet-setting life put his name and his photograph into the society pages. His relationships with models and actresses, his friendships with film producers and media moguls kept him in the celebrity magazines, where his stunningly masculine looks made a huge impact on every female reader from sixteen to seventy. His money and power meant that he frequently appeared in financial columns, and his ability to constantly acquire more of both made sure that his reputation was as huge as his business empire.

‘Damon Nicolaides?’

He was clearly the last person Jason had expected to come up against in this particular situation. How the hell could she know him? The question was obviously in his thoughts, revealed in his stunned intonation.

‘That’s right.’

Sarah knew that tone of Damon’s voice well—too well. Careful, polite, controlled—but only just.

It meant that Damon was right at the edge of his patience. That he would not take pushing any further or any harder. Not if the person he was talking to was wise and wanted to avoid a full-scale volcanic explosion.

‘Jason…’ she tried, only to feel her body given a small, rough shake of warning by the man who held her.

‘Let me answer the questions, Sarah. It’s simpler that way.’

‘Simpler!’ she couldn’t help protesting. ‘For who?’

‘For everyone!’

The admonition that had been in the way he had shaken her was there again, more strongly this time, in the undercurrents in his voice, a note that sent a shiver down her spine in unnerved response.

This was the Damon she had seen in the past, when some member of his staff had angered him with a foolish mistake, or a journalist had proved too intrusive. It was the prelude to a much more savage outburst, one that made her shudder in fearful anticipation. She had only ever experienced that side of Damon briefly, but that had been enough. She never wanted to see it again.

‘Everyone?’

Damon bent his dark head again until his sensual mouth was level with her ear, the warmth of his breath stirring the auburn tendrils of hair that lay against her cheek.

‘Do you want me to get rid of him or not?’

Oh, yes, she wanted Jason out of here. Out of her house, and out of her life. And she wished he’d take Damon with him. But that, she knew, was not the slightest bit likely.

And so, grasping at what she could see was the only possible lesser of two evils, she clamped her lips tight shut on the furious protest that almost escaped her once more and forced herself to nod in silent acquiescence.

It was all that Damon needed. Satisfied that she had handed over control of the situation into his hands, he faced Jason again.

‘Was there anything else you wanted to know?’

Everything, if she knew Jason, Sarah thought. But he contented himself with one question, his voice wobbling on a note of disbelief.

‘You claim that you two are an item?’

‘Not claim,’ Damon retorted sharply. ‘We are.’