The Drakos Affair: The Pregnancy Shock

Alexei laughed. ‘So what? Live the life you want, not the life other people would lay out for you.’

‘If only life were that simple…’

Alexei closed a strong hand over hers before she could walk away. Glittering golden eyes assailed hers in stubborn challenge. ‘It is you who makes it complicated. I have more wealth than I could spend in a score of lifetimes. You need an independent home outside the village. You can build a house here and pay for it in stages. If you require finance I will give it to you. Your only other option will be to take up permanent residence in one of my family’s guest suites.’

‘But I’m hardly ever here!’ she protested.

‘That situation is about to change radically. My father is feeling his age and I have agreed to assume control of Drakos Shipping. I will be spending much more time on the island and you are my most trusted employee. So, cease this argument right now,’ Alexei advised impatiently. ‘You could make a proper home in this place. You know it makes sense.’

Her slender fingers flexed in the hold of his. His expectant gaze was on her, his domineering will bearing down on her like a powerful weight. She made a last ditch attempt to regain equality. ‘If I accept the site, you will have to accept part ownership of any house that I build. That would be the only fair solution.’

Gazing down at her with deceptively indolent eyes of dark gold, a wicked slanting grin slowly slashed Alexei’s wide sensual mouth. ‘If I were to own a share of your house, it would give my mother sleepless nights!’

‘But it would give me peace. I just couldn’t accept the site as a gift. It’s too valuable,’ Billie told him in an urgent rush. ‘You could explain the situation to her.’

‘It is no business of hers.’Alexei stared down intently into the vivid little face so familiar to him that he could instantly discard any awareness of her bruises. Sincerity shone in her clear green eyes while her coppery hair snaked in bold strands across her cheekbones. No woman had ever fought to come up with a way of accepting a gift from him while returning the value of it. He wondered why money had less of a hold on her than on others of her sex. He wondered why he had never noticed before that she had a soft pink mouth as firm and luscious as a ripe peach. Hunger stirred arousal and a familiar delicious heaviness formed at his groin.

Billie felt the change in atmosphere with every fibre of her being but could no more have stepped away than she could have stopped breathing. His gilded gaze was mesmeric in its power to hold her. Her mouth ran dry, frantic tension holding her fast. The pool of liquid heat forming in her belly was sending an electrifying surge of responsiveness through her entire body, pinching her sensitive nipples taut, creating heat and dampness at the secret heart of her.

Alexei closed his arms round her. Cupping her hips with an intimacy that shocked her, he drew her up against his hard muscular length and kissed her. It was a kiss full of a passionate demand that rocked her where she stood. It was like being hit by lightning as she sizzled like meat under a grill and her knees almost crumpled beneath her weight.

It was Alexei’s strong arms that kept her upright while he lightened the pressure of his intoxicating mouth and teased her reddened lips with tiny provocative caresses. Having reduced all resistance to rubble, he finally went in for the kill, dipping his tongue between her lips in a piercingly sweet invasion of her unbearably sensitive mouth and provoked a series of whimpering shivering gasps from somewhere inside her. It was the very first time she had experienced true sexual hunger and it was a raw need so powerful it rolled through her like thunder, blanking out all thought and control. For those split seconds she was both defenceless and aggressive, clinging to his lean hard physique, angling her head back to enable him, her entire body yearning for much more of the same.

‘Will I be the first?’ Alexei prompted in a roughened undertone.

‘Yes,’ she answered before she retrieved her wits and intelligence came back in a floodtide of anxiety and anger and regret. As she pulled free in response to those promptings the slivering pain of sudden separation from him cut through her as sharply as a knife.

Retaining a controlling grip on her slender hand, Alexei walked her back towards the car.

Billie hauled her fingers free of his. ‘No!’ she protested strickenly. ‘I don’t want this!’

Alexei stilled and sent her a frowning look of incomprehension. ‘What don’t you want?’

‘I don’t want to be another notch on your bedpost. Just roll back time a few minutes, please! The kiss didn’t happen, forget it. You’re my boss. I work for you…Neither of us wants to change that relationship!’

‘You sound almost hysterical.’ Hot golden eyes semi-screened by luxuriant black lashes, Alexei squared his aggressive jaw line. ‘Everything changes, nothing stays static—that’s life and you can’t control it. You can’t turn the clock back either. I want to take this attraction to its natural conclusion, moraki mou.’

‘Only because you’re not accustomed to any woman calling a halt…but I am calling a halt. I’m not like your other women…I don’t do casual,’ Billie proclaimed with proud vehemence.

‘The spark we fired between us is too hot to douse,’ Alexei delivered thickly, dark golden eyes locked to her like an incoming missile attack, making it clear that nothing she had said had impressed him.

‘It was just sex,’ she argued. ‘And sex you can get anywhere with women far more beautiful than I am, so forget it and me in that line!’

‘While I can still taste you in my mouth,’ Alexei murmured huskily, shooting her a shockingly sensual appraisal that burned through her like a hot burning coal. ‘I won’t forget how you made me ache.’

‘Stop it…’ Billie raised her hands to silence him in a rare physical show of eloquence. ‘Stop it! It was a stupid kiss, a mistake, but it’s not important and it’s never going to happen again.’

Alexei stretched out his arms without warning and hauled her back to him, reconnecting her to the lean, tensile power of his muscular thighs and the potent thrust of his erection. Holding her entrapped, he stared down at her with all the cool of a predator stalking prey who knew he had all the time in the world. ‘You can’t tell me it’s not going to happen again—that will only make me want you more.’

Awesomely conscious of the deep desperate longing still whirling inside her and crying out for satisfaction, Billie rested pleading green eyes on him. ‘You know this is wrong. You know you would much rather have me working for you than having sex with you,’ she told him feverishly.

‘But having you fulfil both functions could well be an amazing tour de force,’ Alexei countered with single-minded conviction. ‘I would cut down on the other women.’

Billie almost screamed in frustration because no statement could have told her more clearly how out of alignment they both were. He was not only not getting her message, but also stubbornly refusing to listen to it.

‘And that statement just shows how ill-suited we would be, because I wouldn’t accept you having any other women! I wouldn’t share you. No matter how many diamonds and treats you flung my way it wouldn’t buy you back your freedom at the same time as you were with me.’

Alexei dealt her a lingering appraisal, searching her still-dilated pupils and the revealing redness of her lips while a rueful smile shadowed his beautiful sexy mouth. ‘You’re trying to scare me off—it’s kind of sweet. But you know me better than that. When I want something I keep going until I get it. I don’t switch off to order.’

‘Was this all one big set-up, then? Is this why you’re offering me this magnificent site to build on? Were you trying to buy me?’ Billie flung at him in an emotional surge of accusation.

‘You know me better than that, moraki mou. In any case, I’m more likely to give a reward to a lover at the end of the affair rather than at the beginning,’ Alexei pointed out without an ounce of discomfiture.

Standing there in the sunshine, daring her censure, his lean bronzed features breathtakingly handsome, he could still take her breath away. Billie dropped her gaze and got into the car, wondering if the driver had seen that embrace, praying that he had not. If he had seen it, every member of Alexei’s staff would know about it within twenty-four hours. The Drakos employee grapevine was terrifyingly efficient and the slightest hint that she was more intimate with Alexei than she ought to be would be sufficient to destroy the respect of her coworkers and her reputation.

‘I’ve always been curious about you,’ Alexei volunteered as the car took them back to the harbour. ‘But I didn’t suspect that we might be dynamite together.’

Curious? Would he make love to her out of curiosity alone? Sadly Billie thought that, yes, he would, for novelty attracted Alexei, who with every passing year became more bored with the myriad choices he enjoyed. Why the heck had she admitted that she was still a virgin? It was like whetting the appetite of a big game hunter with the offer of the ultimate quarry. After all, she was different and his lovers, strung across every continent, were almost interchangeable, she reflected tautly. They were actresses, models or socialites, usually tall and blonde, always beautiful, sophisticated and aware that no woman held Alexei’s interest for very long. They entered his life and left it again without causing a single ripple in his routine.

Only one woman had ever dented Alexei’s ego and it had been Lauren who shared that story with Billie. According to island gossip, Alexei had fallen for Calisto Kolovos, the daughter of a rich manufacturer, when he was twenty-one years old. But all along Calisto had had another boyfriend: Xavier Bethune, a much older man who had been a good deal richer and more powerful than Alexei who, in those days, was still dependent on his father. Calisto was said to have married Xavier for his money and, ever since then, Alexei had had a heart of stone when it came to women. Billie was not naïve enough to believe that she could change him. She wanted more than sex from him and, if that was not forthcoming, valued her job more than any short-lived sexual fling that would only last long enough to satisfy his curiosity.

They boarded the yacht together. Tension was simmering like a hissing, boiling pot between them. ‘Alexei…don’t do this,’ Billie urged half under her breath as they crossed the deck.

‘Don’t do what?’ he drawled smooth as glass.

‘It’s not fair to put me in a position like this.’

His bold profile froze.

‘I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t,’ she continued awkwardly. ‘I like my job. I want my life to stay the same.’

No woman had ever made a plea to his sense of honour on such terms and it infuriated him that Billie had done so; he felt she should somehow sense that the innate sense of integrity he possessed had the power to make him back off. Dark deep anger burning below the surface, for he was a man very much accustomed to getting his own way, Alexei murmured icily, ‘I find it hard to believe that that is what you want.’

Billie looked towards the sun and wondered how much it resembled the male ego in size and brilliance. Alexei was a hugely powerful and wealthy man, made irresistible by his Greek-god looks and notorious reputation. Women had always wanted Alexei Drakos and it was a truth he had learned so young that her surrender could only seem inevitable to him. ‘In the circumstances—my working for you,’ she extended with care. ‘I don’t want anything to change.’

‘So, if I sack you, I can have you,’ Alexei pronounced flatly.

‘You don’t really want me, you know you don’t. I’m not your type,’ Billie reasoned in a feverish undertone.

‘Make arrangements for a flight to Monaco for me and then take the next couple of days off,’ Alexei instructed just outside the office, startling her. ‘You were assaulted last night. You need recovery time. Naturally you can stay on board Sea Queen.’

And, that fast, she registered that he had listened to her at last. The strangest and most contrary sense of disappointment washed through Billie’s taut figure. The excitement of the chase was over. He had loads of eager female connections in Monaco. Quickly, Alexei would move on, find a more willing woman and forget that he had ever thought she might be worthy of a fling. Her heart felt as if it were being hurled from a cliff down onto jagged rocks. She ignored that fact, her weakness; she had done what had to be done and it was time that she lived a more full life and found a man of her own to be with. In the course of her work, she had turned down many invitations because she had yet to meet anyone who could equal Alexei. But she would have to stop being so picky. By turning away from Alexei, she reminded herself firmly, she kept her excellent job and would hopefully also retain a good working relationship with him.

Alexei was less content. Since when had he, a Drakos male, allowed himself to be upstaged and outmanoeuvred by a female? But she had appealed to his conscience and, although it went against the grain to admit it, she had talked a good deal of sense. Wasn’t that why he employed her? Common sense and calm distinguished Billie and until he had taken that kiss he would have sworn that nothing would faze her. But sex had splintered the calm and put her into retreat. She wasn’t his type, he reminded himself impatiently while he showered later that day on board his private jet. She was just an employee and only in the very early days of creating his empire had he slept with women he employed. There were excellent reasons for respecting boundaries and, even as it was, Billie was always breaking through them and crossing the line. Was that why Billie was the only person in his life who had the power to make him feel human and real? She wasn’t in awe of him, or his wealth or his status. When he had watched her eyes close in dreamy receipt of his mouth he had got a kick out of that susceptibility. At that moment, she had been with him every step of the way.

His brow furrowed. Why the hell was he even still thinking about her? His common sense and practicality did not seem to be the equal of hers, he registered grimly. His libido had him over a barrel. He would have sacrificed their working relationship in a second, had she been waiting in the cabin bed for him…and to hell with the immorality, inconvenience and poor long-term outlook of it all!

Three months after that day, Billie went out on a date with a charming Italian businessman called Pietro Castronovo. He took her out to dinner in a very fancy Florentine restaurant where she toyed with food that was too rich for her taste and tried to respond to his flirtatious chatter.