Billionaire Prince, Pregnant Mistress

“You might want to consider curtains,” he said with lazy self-assurance.

“You—you…” She pointed a finger at the door. “Get out of my home!”

Alex didn’t move. Instead, he tucked his hands in the slash pockets of his jacket and gave her a long look, starting at her feet and working slowly up to her face. She certainly wasn’t dressed like a woman waiting for her lover to come back. Not in a pair of baggy sweats that had seen better days. There was a hole in one knee, what looked like a burn in the shirt just below her collarbone. Her feet were bare, her hair a wild mass of curls.

His belly knotted.

Her hair had been like that the last time he’d seen her, a tumble of long, glorious curls falling around her heart-shaped face. She’d been wearing his robe; she’d been lost in it and somehow that had made her look even sexier, maybe because he’d known, intimately, what was beneath that robe. The delicate, golden-hued skin. The small, uptilted breasts. The slim curve of her waist, the surprisingly feminine richness of her hips.

Her face had been sexy, too. Glowing eyes. Dewy skin. No make-up, not even lipstick, though her mouth had been rosy and softly swollen from his kisses.

She had looked—what did the French call it? Déshabillé. As if she had just come from bed.

Which she had. His bed. His bed and his possession, and that memory was enough to do more than make his belly knot. It sent a bolt of pure lust straight to his loins.

He still wanted her.

It had taken the sight of her in a scruffy sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants before he’d permitted himself to admit it. What man wanted to acknowledge he still desired a woman who’d tried to use him?

One who was a fool, he told himself. And then he thought, no. Hell, no. That wasn’t it at all. Maria Santos owed him and that was her fault, not his. She had lured him into bed. Seduced him, though he’d thought he was the one doing the seducing.

She’d plotted everything, from that supposedly accidental meeting on the street to the moment he’d first kissed her. The only thing surprising about that night was that she’d been able to keep from smirking triumphantly when he’d asked her to come home with him.

She’d made a fool of him, and she still owed him for that. Owed him big time, as the Americans said. And until that debt was paid, the memory of his humiliation would continue to haunt him.

He had no doubt what it would take to expunge that memory.

Her, in his bed again. Moving beneath him. Coming on a long, explosive cry as he watched her with clinical detachment. There’d be no phony little cries. No subterfuge. He would make her want him, make her react to him.

And then he’d send her packing for the second, and last, time.

“Your five minutes are up, Prince Alexandros.”

Alex looked at her. Her expression, her body language, were defiant. She thought she was in charge.

That made him smile.

“You find this amusing?”

“Indeed.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’m going to count to ten. It’s your last chance. If you’re not out the door by then—”

“Safir et Fils is on the verge of collapse.”

She blinked. “Who?”

“Safir et Fils,” he repeated impatiently. “The French firm that was awarded the commission.” She was staring at him blankly. “Come on, Ms. Santos,” he said silkily. “Don’t try and tell me the name of the company that won a commission you were willing to prostitute yourself to get has slipped your—”

Her hand flew through the air but he was quicker than she was. He caught her wrist, dragged her forward and hauled her to her toes.

“Do not,” he said with quiet menace, “ever raise your hand to me again!”

“Let go of me!”

“Did you hear what I said?—”

“What a bastard you are!”

Her voice shook; tears glittered in her eyes and she was breathing hard. So what? He was unimpressed.

“Playing the righteous innocent will get you nowhere, agapi mou. You made a fool of me once but I promise you, it will never happen again. And do not call me names. I am a prince. I urge you to remember that.”

He almost winced. He sounded like an ass but how could he think while hot rage pumped through his blood? She was an excellent actress; he knew that. And this was another stellar performance. The damp eyes. The trembling voice. The patches of crimson on her face.

Her face. Beautiful, even now.

“Did you think you could get away with what you did, Maria? Letting me think you’d been carried away by passion when what carried you away was the greedy hope that sleeping with me would give you an advantage in the design competition?”

He paused. Maria stared at him.

Was he waiting for her to answer? What was the point? If she said he was wrong, he wouldn’t believe her. He hadn’t, that awful morning.

“Liar,” he’d said, in a voice cold as death, and then he’d hurled words at her in Greek that she hadn’t understood, though their meaning had been painfully clear.

Trying to make him listen now would not only be pointless, it would be demeaning.

The truth was, she hadn’t even known who he was that night. A prince? The son of Queen Tia and King Aegeus? As far as she’d known, he was just a man. A gorgeous, incredibly sexy, fascinating stranger whose smile, whose touch had made her breathless.

When he’d kissed her and the kisses hadn’t been enough, when he’d touched her and those touches weren’t enough, she’d forgotten everything—that they were in a public place, that she was a moral woman, that she had never been with a man before.

And when he’d whispered, Come with me, she had gone with him. How could she have done anything else?

Her world had been reduced to him. To his mouth. His hands. His hard, flagrantly aroused masculinity. She still couldn’t believe she’d let such a thing happen. You didn’t sleep with a stranger. She didn’t, anyway.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart? Is that busy little brain of yours trying to come up with an answer that will satisfy me?” His voice roughened. “Don’t waste your time. There’s only one thing that will satisfy me, and you know what that is.”

What he meant was in his eyes.

She saw it and stumbled back. He could see the beat of her pulse in the hollow of her throat. Good, he thought coldly. This time, at least, he had the advantage. Command had slipped from her hands to his and she hadn’t even heard the worst of what he’d come to tell her.

“Get out.”

She spoke in a papery whisper that he ignored. Instead, he turned his back and walked to her work table. Sketches were tacked to an enormous corkboard on the wall above it. Something that looked as if it had been molded from wax stood on a shelf.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said—”

“Didn’t you hear me?” He swung toward her, arms folded, feet crossed at the ankles. “Safir etFils are going under.”