The Kalliakis Crown: Talos Claims His Virgin

‘It is my job to put you back under it without you gaining any new scars.’

‘But the scars I already have haven’t healed.’

There was no point in shying away from it. She’d seen enough psychologists in her early teens to know that she’d been scarred, and that it was those scars still preventing her from stepping onto a stage and performing with eyes upon her.

‘Then I will heal them for you.’

A shiver ran through her as an image of his mouth drifting across her skin skittered into her mind, shockingly vivid... Talos healing her in the most erotic manner. It sent a pulse of heat deep into her abdomen.

She blinked rapidly, to dispel the unbidden image, and was grateful when another member of the gym chose that moment to come over to their table and chat with him.

Passion was something she’d always avoided. After her parents’ divorce she’d spent her weekend and holiday visitations watching her mother bounce from lover to lover, marrying two of them for good measure, engulfed in desire’s heady flames, trying to recapture the magic of her first marriage. Watching her get burned so many times had been pain itself. The guilt of knowing she was responsible for her mother’s heartache—and her father’s—had only added to it.

Her father had never brought another woman home, let alone remarried. Though he would always deny it with a sad smile, the torch he carried for her mother was too bright to extinguish.

If it hadn’t been for that horrendous incident in front of her parents and their friends and its aftermath, when their child prodigy could no longer perform like the dancing seal she’d become, her parents would still be together today—she was certain of it. On the occasions when they were forced together, Amalie would watch them skirt around each other; her mother showing off her latest lover with something close to flamboyant desperation, her father accepting this behaviour with a wistful stoicism.

Amalie liked her quiet, orderly, passionless life. It was safe.

Talos Kalliakis made her feel anything but safe.

* * *

Talos rapped loudly on the cottage door for the second time, blowing out a breath of exasperated air. Just as he was about to try the handle and let himself in the door swung open and there Amalie stood, violin in hand and a look of startled apology on her face.

‘Is it that time already?’ she said, standing aside to let him through. ‘Sorry, I lost track of time.’

He followed her through to the cosy living room. The baby grand piano sat in the corner, covered with sheets of paper and an old-fashioned tape recorder. Next to it stood a music stand.

She looked what could only be described as lively—as if she had springs under her feet. In the four days she’d been in Agon he’d never seen her like this.

‘Would you mind if I give the workout a miss tonight?’ she asked, her green sapphire eyes vibrant and shining. ‘I’ve reached an understanding with the score and I want to solidify it in my mind before I lose the moment.’

‘You are making headway?’ It amused him to hear her discussing the score as if it were a living entity.

‘Something has clicked today. I’ve made a recording of the piano accompaniment—I am so grateful your grandmother wrote an accompaniment for the piano as well as for a full orchestra—and playing along to it is making all the pieces come together.’

‘Are you ready to play it for me?’

Her eyes rounded in horror. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘You’re going to have to play it for me soon,’ he reminded her. The countdown was on, the gala only three weeks and six days away.

‘Let me master the composition before we discuss that.’

He eyed her contemplatively. ‘You have until Friday.’

She’d accompanied him to his gym three nights in a row, her workouts intense and focused. Wanting her concentration to be used in figuring out the score, he’d deliberately steered any small talk between them away from the personal. Other than chauffeuring her to and from the gym, he’d left her to it.

A dart of panic shot from her eyes. ‘I won’t be ready by Friday.’

‘Friday will give us three weeks to get you performance-ready. I know nothing of music. It makes no difference to me if you make mistakes at this early stage; I won’t notice them. What concerns me is getting you used to playing solo in front of people again. We need to work on that as much as you need to work on the score itself.’

A mutinous expression flashed over her face before her features relaxed a touch and she nodded.

‘You can have tonight off, but tomorrow you go back to the gym.’

‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re a slave-driving ogre?’

‘No one has dared.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I want to get on—you can leave now.’

‘And no one has ever dared tell me when I should leave before.’

‘You must be getting old, because your memory is failing—I’ve told you to leave before, at my home in Paris when you barged your way in.’

‘Ah, yes. I distinctly remember you tried using physical force to expel me.’

His loins tightened as memories of her soft, lithe body splayed on his lap while he controlled the flare of fire and passion that had exploded out of her assailed him anew. He cast a long, appreciative look up and down her body, taking in the short black skirt over sheer black tights and the short-sleeved viridian-green shirt unbuttoned to display a hint of cleavage...

‘Would you like to use force to expel me now?’

She cuddled her violin to her chest as if for protection and took a step back.

‘Imagine how fit all those workouts will make you,’ he purred in a deliberately sensual tone, enjoying the colour heightening her cheekbones. ‘Next time you choose to fight me with your body you might have a chance of overpowering me.’

‘We both know I could train twenty-four hours a day, every day for a decade, and still not be strong enough to overpower you.’

‘If you would like to put that theory into practice you only have to say.’ He dropped his voice and stared straight into her almond eyes. Theos, she was temptation itself. ‘I’m not averse to a beautiful woman trying to dominate me. Something tells me the results would be explosive.’

Other than the colour on her face, she showed no reaction. For the briefest of moments Talos wondered if his assumption that the attraction he felt for her was mutual was wrong—then he saw her swallow and swipe a lock of hair from her forehead.

‘Enjoy your music,’ he said, stepping out of the room with one last grin.

As he shut the cottage front door behind him he ruefully conceded that trying to get a rise out of the beautiful musician living in his guest house had served no purpose other than to fuel the chemistry swirling between them.

He would need an extra-long workout to expel the energy fizzing in his veins.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_dffc6e8d-094e-5601-b258-324d4dccad01)

AMALIE DID SOMETHING SACRILEGIOUS. In a fit of temper, she threw the precious score onto the floor.

Immediately she felt wretched. It wasn’t the poor score’s fault that all the good feelings that had grown throughout the day had vanished. It was the composer’s rotten grandson who had caused that with his rotten innuendoes.

Focus, Amalie, she told herself sternly.

But it was hard to focus on the sheets of wonderful music before her when all she could think about was wrestling Talos’s clothes off him and seeing for herself if he was as divine naked as he was when clothed.