Greek Mavericks: At The Greek's Pleasure. Maisey Yates

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      “How can you say that?”

      “It’s true. Elle, be realistic. What could I possibly want with a near-virgin who’s so cold she practically leaves icicles on my lips after a kiss?”

      His words struck her like a physical blow. None of this made sense. She couldn’t process it. But somewhere, in the middle of all the pain, all the anguish flooding through her like an unchecked tide, she found rage. The same rage that had propelled her into his arms in the first place.

      And she clung it to it with everything she had. “How dare you?” she hissed, low and hard. “My father did everything for you. He paid for your education. He loved you—”

      “No,” he said. “He never loved me. He wanted to possess my mother, at any cost. And he did so. His very own Biblical fantasy where she was his Bathsheba and he sent her husband out to die.”

      “What?”

      “Yes. My family was not always impoverished. Your father and mine were business partners, Elle. But they both fell for the same woman. My mother. She preferred my father. Your father bided his time, waited until he saw the opportunity, and then he used his sway with the board to vote my father out of the company. My father was ruined. Ultimately, he killed himself. My mother held out against your father’s pleas for him to join her in the US. As his mistress. He was of course married to your mother then.”

      “I...”

      “My mother agreed when I was eight, and we were starving. He established us in a home near his, and he came to visit often. From what I discovered later, he paid your mother off, then waited an appropriate amount of time before bringing my mother to the estate to be his wife.”

      “No... My father wouldn’t... He didn’t...”

      “He did. He’s a manipulative bastard who sees us all as nothing more than pawns. His actions caused my father to kill himself, it ruined my family. But I started to look into the history of my family. And when I found out why my father killed himself...why he was ruined...it all became clear.” He paused. “It was your mother who contacted me.”

      Elle’s mother who had long since abandoned the family. Whom Elle hadn’t seen in fifteen years. “My mother?”

      “Yes. She had seen me rising in business circles and she...she found me one night at a bar. I didn’t know who she was. Just another blonde who was after a night, I thought. But unlike most women, she didn’t want sex. She wanted to talk. She wanted to tell me just what your father was.”

      “She came and found you? After all these years, not speaking to me for any of them, she came and found you? Are you that much more compelling to both of my parents?”

      “In her case, I think she was compelled by revenge.”

      “Did she even ask about me?” Elle asked, despising the small sound of her own voice.

      He said nothing, and it was his silence that spoke loudest. Of course she hadn’t. She hadn’t contacted her in years, why would she be concerned now? “I can’t... I don’t know what to think. I don’t know how to process this.”

      His top lip curled. “Well, you will have plenty of time to process it while you stand in line filing paperwork to collect unemployment.”

      “Apollo... You can’t do this.”

      His expression was granite. “I am doing this. It was my plan all along, and I am keeping to it. I am simply shortening the timeline.”

      Her stomach tightened, her entire body seizing up. She thought she was breaking apart from the inside out.

      She had believed in him. Believed that he was the first person to see her for who she was. To want her for herself.

      That was the worst betrayal of all. The fact that he’d used her. Not even because he hated her, not even because he wanted revenge on her, but because he wanted it on her father. Yet again, she was nothing. Nothing more than the most convenient chess piece on the board.

      “Get out,” she said, shaking now, trembling inside and out.

      “It is my house.”

      “And it is my room. Leave me with what little dignity I have left.” He turned away from her, heading toward the door. “I can’t believe you. All the things you let me say. All the things you let me do. The bikini. As if I was... As if I mattered. But I never did. You’re not any better than my father. Even if what you say is true, every word of it, you haven’t risen above anything.”

      He turned back to her, his expression bleak. “I never wanted to rise above. I only ever wanted to drag you all into hell with me.”

      And with that, he walked out of the room, leaving her there, desolate and broken and certain she would never be whole again.

       CHAPTER NINE

      “IF YOU DON’T mind me saying, Mr. Savas, you’ve been impossible the past few weeks.”

      “I know you don’t mind saying it, Alethea,” he said, his tone hard as he looked at his computer screen, ignoring his assistant.

      “It’s true,” she said, turning on her heel and walking out of the office. Apollo didn’t look up until the door had been shut firmly behind her.

      Damned woman. She was always speaking the truth. He should fire her and hire someone stupid, beautiful and biddable.

      When he thought the word beautiful, only one face came to mind. Of course, that woman was neither stupid, nor biddable. And she was persistently in his head.

      Particularly in his dreams. He had woken up hard and reaching for her and she wasn’t there. Because he’d sent her away.

      It had seemed necessary at the time. Like he needed to put distance between them. But the longer he spent without her, the more he questioned that decision.

      After all, his issue had been his loss of control, but sending her away wasn’t any more controlled.

      He had removed temptation from his path, but he had not successfully destroyed his lust for her. Because of that, he was suffering now.

      There was no reason to do so, of course. She had nothing to do, nowhere to go. No job. He could have her back. Make her his.

      The memory of her—the warm weight of her, her sweet scent, the way she sighed and said his name—haunted him. His days, his nights.

      He was like an addict in desperate need of a fix. His hands shaking, sweat breaking out over his skin at the thought of tasting her lips. Feeling her softness beneath his palms.

      She was his own personal designer drug. One taste had only sent him headlong into an addiction he couldn’t shake.

      So maybe that was the problem. Cutting himself off completely would never work. It would only leave him wondering what it would be like to have her one last time. To lose himself inside her. To feel her delicate fingertips skimming over his back.

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