Eligible Greeks: Tycoon's Revenge: Proud Greek, Ruthless Revenge / The Power of the Legendary Greek / The Greek Millionaire's Mistress

‘Thanos…? Tahlia murmured uncertainly when he pushed her legs apart. The knowledge that he was looking intently at the most intimate part of her body was shockingly arousing, and the dragging sensation in her pelvis, which had eased when he had withdrawn from her, uncoiled in a sharp tug of desire. ‘No!’

Too late she realised his intention, and gripped his hair, but his tongue was already probing between her silken folds the sensations he was arousing so utterly incredible that her cry of denial faltered.

‘Relax, and I will show you what you’ve clearly been denied by your previous lovers,’ he promised thickly.

Mortified, she tried to bring her legs together. But he held them apart and dipped his head once more, the skilled flick of his tongue making her whimper with pleasure. ‘You can’t,’ she pleaded. But he could, and did, and when his lips closed around the tiny, ultra-sensitive nub of her clitoris she sobbed his name and dug her nails into his shoulders, clinging to him as ripples of delight began deep inside her.

He moved swiftly to position himself over her, lifted her hips and drove his powerful erection deep into her, thrusting fast and hard and driving her ever upwards. And now she was almost there, at the place she had sensed the first time he had made love to her. He withdrew almost completely, and then sank into her so deeply that their bodies imploded simultaneously. She gave a startled cry as she experienced wave after wave of ecstasy crashing through her, causing her entire body to tremble with the power of a storm, before slowly ebbing away to leave her spent and utterly replete in his arms.

Dear heaven, she had never known it would be so…so awesome, so astounding. She could not find the words. She curved her hands around Thanos’s back, loving the feel of his satiny sweat-slicked skin beneath her palms. He was lying on top of her, his body lax and heavy, but she did not want him to move. The erratic beat of his heart thundering in unison with hers was strangely comforting. Was it possible that in the shattering moments of his climax he had experienced the same feeling that had swamped her—a feeling that their souls had united and soared to a place that was uniquely theirs?

It was just sex, she told herself—awesome, amazing sex. Although admittedly she did not have any other experience to compare it with. But surely it was nothing more than the pairing of two people who were held in the thrall of a powerful sexual chemistry? It would be stupid to allow her emotions to become involved, yet she felt a bond with him that went far beyond the physical intimacy they had shared.

Thanos finally rolled onto his back and stared blindly up at the ceiling, more stunned than he cared to admit by the power of the passion they had just shared, the feeling of oneness that he had never experienced with any other woman. It made no sense. He despised Tahlia, and his contempt for her had intensified when she had agreed to sell herself to him. But instead of telling her what he thought of her he had succumbed to the temptation of her fragile beauty and taken her to bed. Lust had made a fool of him, and now his hatred of himself threatened to choke him. He was no better than his father, he acknowledged bitterly. Kosta Savakis had fallen for the charms of an immoral woman and had abandoned his family for his mistress. And now he, Thanos, had sacrificed his self-respect and had sex with the woman who had broken his sister’s heart.

He had bought her, he reminded himself grimly as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, not sparing her a glance as he strode into the en suite bathroom. Tahlia was a whore, and he was paying a fortune for her. It would have been damnably disappointing if the sex hadn’t been good. He stood beneath the shower, but the powerful spray did nothing to ease his tension. Sex with Tahlia hadn’t just been good, it had been the best he’d ever had, he conceded. He was already hardening again, anticipation licking through his veins as he snatched a towel and roughly dried his body.

But when he returned to the bedroom he discovered her curled up beneath the sheet, one hand beneath her cheek, her long gold lashes making crescents against her flushed skin. Once again he was struck by her air of innocence, and something indefinable tugged in his gut when he saw a single tear slip silently down her face. The sight of her vulnerability shook him to the core, and in moment of absolute clarity his brain finally accepted what his soul had instinctively known when he had joined his body with hers. He was aware of a curious drumming in his ears, and realised that it was the sound of his blood pounding through his veins. His logical mind grasped at straws, recalling all the tabloid stories he had read about her torrid love-life, but when she lifted her lashes and he saw the hurt in her eyes his heart accepted the truth.

‘You were a virgin, weren’t you?’ he said quietly.

She did not reply, but the sudden flare of colour on her pale cheeks filled him with guilt and remorse, and a whole host of other emotions he could not define.

Anger at his crass stupidity swept through him, and his throat felt as though he had swallowed glass as he rasped, ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_b9a0ba4d-f151-5c3c-ba16-c69588473ecc)

THE look of fury on Thanos’s face inflamed Tahlia’s temper and she sat up, glaring at him as she dragged the sheet across her breasts and pushed her hair over her shoulders. ‘What would have been the point?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘You thought I was an immoral slut who had seduced your sister’s husband as well as half the male population of London. Would you have believed me if I’d admitted that I was completely inexperienced?’

Somehow her defiant tone, and the way she hastily dashed her tears away with the back of her hand, emphasised her innocence—an innocence he had taken with all the finesse of a boor, Thanos thought grimly, regret searing him as he recalled his impatience when he had made love to her.

‘Probably not,’ he conceded honestly. ‘But Theos mou…’ He raked his hand through his hair, his frustration palpable. ‘Melina found you in bed with James Hamilton.’

‘I told you I didn’t sleep with him.’

But he hadn’t believed her. He had assumed, as Melina had, that Tahlia and James were lovers, Thanos acknowledged. And during the long hours he had sat at Melina’s hospital bedside his hatred of Tahlia had made him determined to seek revenge for the pain he had thought she had caused his sister.

‘How do you explain all the stories written about you in the tabloids?’ he demanded. ‘For the past few months rarely a day has gone by without a picture in the British newspapers of you and one of your seemingly inexhaustible supply of boyfriends at yet another social event.’

‘I only went to the parties to promote Reynolds Gems,’ Tahlia defended herself. ‘My father persuaded me to front an advertising campaign, and then he thought it would give a personal touch if people saw me wearing the company’s products. Those men weren’t my boyfriends. They were male models hired from an agency. It was all part of the image,’ she explained, when Thanos looked sceptical. ‘I was photographed by the press wearing couture gowns that were loaned to me by design houses and fabulous jewellery from the Reynolds Gems collection, escorted by a handsome partner. But there was never any romance. Most of the models were too in love with themselves,’ she added with a grimace.

‘So your party princess image was just a PR stunt?’Thanos gave a harsh laugh. He had certainly been convinced that Tahlia was a good-time girl, and he was still struggling to accept that he had unwittingly stolen her virginity. ‘What about the other married actor, Damian Casson? Do you expect me to believe that the photos of the two of you leaving a hotel together were also to promote Reynolds Gems?’

‘I don’t give a damn what you believe,’ Tahlia snapped. ‘Damian set me up to make his wife jealous, and as I already told you my solicitor has threatened the papers involved with legal action unless they retract their story of our supposed affair. I hate being in the public eye,’ she admitted. ‘But I would have done anything to help my father. I just wish all those hours I spent on the PR campaign had done some good.’

‘It would have taken a miracle to turn around Reynolds’ fortunes,’ Thanos told her bluntly. ‘Your father had made a catalogue of terrible decisions in recent years, and with the current economic crisis bankruptcy was almost inevitable.

‘It wasn’t his fault.’ Tahlia sprang to her father’s defence. ‘My mother has been seriously ill, and Dad was so busy caring for her that he couldn’t concentrate on running the company. He was terrified he was going to lose her…we both were,’ she said huskily, emotion clogging her throat as she acknowledged how afraid she had been that her mother would die.

That fear had haunted her every day of the past two years, and it was only now her mother was well again that she realised how much of a strain it had been to keep smiling and encouraging her parents to think positively when inside she had been racked with worry. Tears stung her eyes and she blinked furiously to dispel them. She had cried on the day her mother had been diagnosed, but since then she had suppressed her emotions and focused on helping her mother through her treatment. Now it felt as though a dam inside her had burst, and two years’ worth of tears were flooding out.

She desperately did not want to cry in front of Thanos, and she stared down at the sheets while she tried to regain her composure. But the weeks and months of worry about her mother’s health, and her fears that her father could lose his company, combined with the emotional trauma of giving her virginity to a man who despised her, had shattered her tenuous hold on her self-control, and she buried her face in her hands in a frantic attempt to muffle the sound of her weeping.

Once the storm had begun, it raged out of control. She did not know how long she cried, and was only vaguely aware of the mattress dipping as Thanos dropped down onto the bed beside her. She stiffened when she felt his hand on her shoulder, unbearably embarrassed by her breakdown but unable to check the sobs that still tore through her body. Her chest hurt, and her head felt as though it were about to explode, but the hand on her shoulder slid up her neck to massage her nape in a soothing motion that gradually calmed her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she choked at last, scrubbing her eyes with the back of her hand and staring fixedly into her lap, so mortified by her outburst that she could not bring herself to meet his gaze. ‘I’m not usually so pathetic.’

The hand on her neck continued its gentle stroking, and when she dared to glance up she discovered that Thanos had donned a black bathrobe and was sitting so close to her that she could see the tiny lines that fanned around his eyes. He was watching her impassively, but she was startled to glimpse the faintest hint of compassion in their depths.

‘What was wrong with your mother?’ he asked quietly

‘She had breast cancer. It was a particularly aggressive form of the disease, and her initial prognosis was not good.’ Tahlia took a shaky breath, shocked by the ferocity of the storm that had ripped through her. ‘She had surgery immediately to remove the tumour, followed by intensive chemotherapy which left her desperately weak.’ She swallowed, wondering why she was confiding in Thanos, but the words kept tumbling out.

‘At one point it seemed that she would not survive the treatment, but somehow she found the strength to keep fighting. My father did everything he could to help her; he went to every chemo session with her, and we took it in turns to sleep in a chair by her bed every time she went into hospital. It’s strange how those few hours before dawn seem to last for ever,’ she said in a low tone. ‘You can’t sleep, but you dare not move away from the bed, and as the first light glimmers between the blinds you pray that this is the day there will be some improvement, a turning point.’

‘Yes.’Thanos’s voice was harsh, and she jerked her head up, catching her breath at the agony etched on his face. ‘And every evening, when all hope has gone from that day, you pray that tomorrow will bring the sign you have been waiting for. And so it goes on, day after day. In Melina’s case, week after week.’

Tahlia’s hand flew to her mouth. How could she have been so crass as to bring up the subject of hospitals when Thanos’s sister had been in a coma for weeks? She tensed, expecting him to be angry with her again, and accepted that in all honesty she could not blame him. Since she had learned about the accident she had been tormented by guilt that she should have run after Melina—although it was difficult to imagine what she could have said to the young Greek woman. Even if she had managed to convince Melina she had not known James was married, nothing would have changed the fact that he was a liar and a cheat.

‘I can only imagine how awful it must have been,’ she said softly, her heart clenching as she pictured Thanos’s vigil at his sister’s bedside. ‘Did other members of your family come to the hospital to wait with you?’

He shrugged. ‘I have no other family. My parents died when Melina was five years old, leaving me to bring her up. At first my aunt helped to look after her, but she was elderly and passed away a few months later. Then it was just the two of us.’A nerve flickered in his cheek and he looked away from Tahlia, battling to bring his emotions under control. ‘There were times when Melina showed no sign of coming out of her coma and I feared I would be the only surviving member of the Savakis family.’

He must have felt so alone, Tahlia thought gently. As powerless as she had felt as she had watched her mother struggle with the illness that could so easily have ended her life. Instinctively she placed her hand over his, but when he stiffened she realised how stupid her action had been. Thanos now had irrefutable proof that she had not been his brother-in-law’s mistress, but she was sure he still blamed her for Melina’s accident. She expected him to reject her sympathy, and she made to snatch her hand back. But to her shock he curled his tanned fingers around her paler ones and held her prisoner.

‘How is your mother now?’

‘Completely recovered—thankfully. Actually, her recovery is a miracle—even her consultant says so,’ Tahlia said with a ghost of a smile. ‘Dad was overjoyed when we heard the news.’ She swallowed the lump in her throat as she recalled how her father had wept tears of relief when he had phoned her with the news. ‘That’s why it seemed so…so cruel that on the same day Mum was given the all-clear Dad learned that Carlton House was in danger of being repossessed by the bank. He took out a mortgage on the house to finance Reynolds Gems,’ she explained when Thanos frowned. ‘My mother has no idea of the situation. She thinks they are going to enjoy a wonderful retirement in the house that has been in her family for generations. And that’s exactly what’s going to happen,’ she added fiercely. ‘My parents have been through two years of hell, and now they deserve to be happy. Dad was so relieved when he heard that Vantage Investments were prepared to buy Reynolds because it meant that he could pay back the bank loan and the mortgage, and Carlton would be safe…’

‘And that is why—after you learned that Vantage is a subsidiary of Savakis Holdings, and I made it clear that I had no intention of saving Reynolds Gems—you agreed to sell yourself to me?’ Thanos suggested grimly.

Tahlia bit her lip, sensing his renewed anger. ‘Yes.’

‘Theos!’ he exploded, aware of a curious hollow sensation in his stomach. ‘Why didn’t you tell me your parents were in danger of losing their home?

Tahlia gave him a puzzled look. ‘Why would you have cared? You made it clear that you would never help my father. Time was running out, and I knew I would never find another buyer for Reynolds before the bank seized Carlton. The only thing I had to trade was my body,’ she finished huskily.

The silence that fell between them simmered with tension. Thanos could not bring himself to look at Tahlia as guilt at the way he had misjudged her surged through him. Far from being an immoral slut, like his father’s mistress, it seemed that she was a devoted daughter who had been desperate to help her parents. her motivation in agreeing to be his mistress had not been to ensure her own financial security but to prevent her parents from being evicted from their home. And she had made the ultimate sacrifice, he thought bleakly. She had given him her virginity, aware that his motivation for taking her to bed was to seek revenge for a crime she had not committed.

He closed his eyes, shutting out the image of her pale, tear-stained face. In the name of heaven, what had he done?

‘How did you meet James Hamilton?’ he asked abruptly.

Tahlia shot him a startled glance. ‘A friend of mine was starring in a play, and James was a member of the cast. We got chatting when I went backstage after the performance, and he…swept me off my feet.’ She shook her head, remembering the buzz she had felt when James had singled her out. ‘He was handsome, charming, funny…My mother was desperately ill, and I was sick with worry about her, but when I was with James he made me forget my fears for a few hours. I hadn’t dated anyone in the years since Michael died,’ she explained quietly. ‘I was devastated by his death. He was so young and vibrant. We weren’t lovers, but our friendship had been developing into something deeper, and I was heartbroken to lose him. For a long time after he died I blamed myself. I had thought he was suffering from the flu virus that was going around the university campus, and by the time I realised that it was something much more serious it was too late. Michael died a few hours after being admitted to hospital.’ Her eyes darkened with pain as she remembered the horror of that day.

‘When I met James, he was so energetic and full of life—just as Michael had been—and I felt that nothing bad could happen while I was with him.’ She bit her lip. ‘It never crossed my mind that he could be married. He even took me back to his flat a few times, and it was a typical bachelor pad—there was no sign that Melina lived there.’

‘She didn’t,’ Thanos said heavily. ‘I bought her and James an apartment in Athens for a wedding present, and she remained in Greece while he went to England for two months to star in that play. When his contract was extended Melina flew to London to join him. She was immediately suspicious that he was being unfaithful, but instead of confiding in me she read the text messages he’d sent you on his mobile phone, discovered that James had arranged to spend the weekend with you at a hotel, and decided to confront you.’