An Heir for the Millionaire Read Free Page A

the tanned Mediterranean skin, the jaw-droppingly good-looking features.
    And the eyes.
    Eyes to drown in.
    He had walked right past her with his entourage, unchallenged by the security guard, who had merely said in a respectful tone, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Anaketos.’ But just as he’d swung past her, sitting there staring at him, his head had suddenly moved minutely and brought his gaze to her. Abruptly, instinctively, she had twisted her head away…
    They had gone past, and she had breathed out again, not even aware till then that she’d been holding her breath.
    She had felt alive for the first time in a long, long time. As if she had woken from a long sleep…
    It had been stupid, she knew, to have done thereafter what she had done. She’d been a woman rendered incapable of behaving rationally, but she had done it all the same. She had let Xander Anaketos seduce her.
    And he had done it with a swiftness that had cut the ground out from under her feet. Before the week was out she had been flying to Geneva with him. How had he done it? She still did not know. She had done her best not to react to him whenever she had seen him, and even when he had paused by the reception desk to have a word with the security guard she had assiduously paid attention only to her computer screen. Yet on the day she’d been due to finish the posting, she had been summoned by phone to Xander’s executive office on the top floor, where he had coolly invited her to dinner that night.
    She had stared blankly.
    â€˜I’m afraid I don’t think—’ she had begun. Then stopped. Her chest had seemed tight. Xander Anaketos had been looking at her. She’d felt her toes start to melt into her shoes.
    So she had gone.
    And from dinner she had gone to his bed.
    Should she have done it? Done something she had never done before—slept with a man on her very first date with him? She had. She had gone to his apartment, his bed, as unhesitatingly as if she’d had no conscious thought. But then she hadn’t had any conscious thought about it. It had been instinct, an urge, an overwhelming, irresistible desire, that had made it impossible, utterly impossible, to say no, to stop the evening, to back away from him.
    So she hadn’t. She’d been able to do nothing but stand there, her whole body trembling with an intensity that she had never, ever experienced before, while Xander Anaketos walked across his vast apartment lounge towards her and slid one hand around the nape of her neck, caressing it lightly, oh so lightly, so sensuously, while his other hand slid long, skilled fingers into her hair and drew her mouth to his.
    She had drowned. Fathoms deep.
    Falling deep, deep into that wondrous, blissful world she still dwelt in now.
    Or did she? Again, the strained look haunted her eyes again. Living with Xander was bliss—but it came with a price. She had learnt swiftly to start paying that price. Learnt it the first time she had taken Xander’s hand in a spontaneous gesture of affection in public. He had disengaged and gone on talking to the person he’d been speaking to. She hadn’t done it again. Nor did she ever put her hand on his sleeve, or lean against him, or show any other similar demonstration of affection. She had learnt not to do so, adopting instead the cool composure that he evidently preferred. In private he was passionate—thrillingly so!—taking her in a sensual storm, time after time, leaving her overwhelmed with emotion. Yet even in that white-out of exquisite sensation, and in the exhausted, replete aftermath as she lay limp in his arms, she knew better than to say to him what her heart urged her to say.
    That she was, and had been even from their very first time together, hopelessly in love with him.
    But she could never tell him. She knew that—and accepted it. He was a man who was essentially a loner, she recognised. He had made his own way in