Blackmailed By The Greek's Vows. Tara Pammi

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      Nikolai’s hot, alcohol-laden breath fluttered over the expanse of her chest. But it was the silver gaze drilling holes into her back that pebbled goose bumps over her skin.

      A sound like a swallowed curse emanated from behind her. She ignored it, just as she tried to ignore her pounding heart.

      “What are you doing?”

      It had been nine months since she’d seen him. Nine months since he’d spoken to her. The hope that he would come after her had died after the first month. She swallowed to keep her voice steady. “Checking for a bump.”

      “Why?”

      She snorted. “Because he’s my friend and I care what happens to him.”

      Tina stared down at Nikolai’s picture-pretty face and sighed. He was her friend.

      He had gotten her the entry-level job in a fashion agency when she had returned to Milan from Paris, her tail tucked between her legs and ready to admit defeat, and found her a place with four other girls in a tiny one-bedroom hovel.

      Not out of the generosity of his heart, but because he’d wanted to see her humiliated, wanted to enjoy how she’d come down in the world. Maybe even to get into her pants.

      Whatever his motivations, Nikolai was the only one who’d helped her out, the only one who hadn’t laughed at her pathetic attempts.

      Unlike the man behind her, whose mocking laugh even now pinged over her nerves. “You have no friends. At least not true ones. Shallow women flock to you for approval of their clothes and shoes. Men flock to you because they...”

      Truth—every word was truth. Humiliating, wretched truth.

      But it hurt. Like something heavy was pressing down on her chest. “Don’t hold back now, Kairos,” she said, smarting at the stinging behind her eyes.

      “Because they assume that you’ll be wild and fiery in bed. That you will bring all that passion and lack of self-control and that volatility to sex. Once your friend here gets what he wants, he will be through with you.”

      If she’d had any doubt what he thought of her, he’d just decimated it.

      She had fallen in love with a man who thought she was good for sex and nothing else.

      A need to claw back pounded through her. “I’m shallow and vapid, si, but what you see is what you get. I don’t make false promises, Kairos.”

      The silence reverberated with his shock. “I’ve never made a promise to you that I didn’t keep. I promised your brother to keep you in style when I agreed to marry you and I did. I promised you on the night of our engagement that I would show you pleasure unlike anything you’ve ever known and I believe I kept that promise.”

      I never said I loved you.

      His unsaid statement hung in the air.

      No...he hadn’t said it. Not once.

      It had all been her.

      Stupid, naive Valentina building castles of love around this hard man.

      She found no bump on Nikolai’s thick skull and sighed with relief. His head lolling onto her chest, he fell asleep with an undignified snore. She’d have gagged at the sweat from Nikolai’s flushed head trickling down her meager cleavage if all her reactions weren’t attuned to the man behind her.

      The small hairs on her neck stood up before Kairos spoke. “Leave him alone.”

      Ignoring him, she rose to her feet, and planted her hands under Nikolai’s arms.

      “Move, Valentina.”

      Before she could blink, Kairos hefted Nikolai up onto his shoulders and raised a brow at her.

      He had carried her like that once, the hard muscles of his shoulders digging into her belly, his big hands wrapped around her upper thighs, after she had jumped into the pool at a business retreat in front of his colleagues and their wives because he’d ignored her all weekend.

      He’d stripped her and thrown her into the cold shower, rage simmering in his eyes. And when he’d extracted her from the shower and rubbed her down, all that rage had converted into passion.

      She’d been self-destructive just to get a rise out of him.

      She looked away from the memory of that night in his eyes.

      Masculine arrogance filled his eyes. “Now that the poor fool has served his purpose, shall I throw him overboard?”

      “His purpose?”

      “You used him to make me jealous—laughing at his jokes, dancing with him, touching him, to rile my temper. It is done, so you don’t need him anymore.”

      “I told you, Nik is my friend.” She jerked her gaze to his face and flushed. “And I did nothing tonight with you on my mind. My world doesn’t revolve around you, Kairos. Not anymore.” She wouldn’t ask whether his temper was riled.

      She wouldn’t.

      With a shrug, he dumped Nikolai on the bed like a sack of potatoes.

      Nik’s soft snores punctured the silence. If she weren’t so caught up in the confusing cascade of emotions Kairos evoked, the whole thing would have been hilarious.

      But nothing could cut through her awareness of six feet four inches of pure muscle and utter masculinity. She pressed her fingers to her temple. “Please leave now.”

      “Enough, Valentina. You’ve got my attention now. Tell me, did you really sign up with the escort service or was that just a dramatic touch to push me over the edge?”

      “Are you asking me if I’ve been prostituting myself all these months?” She was proud of how steady she sounded while her heart thundered away in her chest.

      “I thought perhaps no first. But knowing you and your vicious tendencies, who knows how far you went to shock me, to teach me a lesson, to bring me to heel?”

      She walked to the door and held it for Kairos. “Get out.”

      He leaned against the foot of the bed, dwarfing the room with his presence. “You’re not staying here with him.”

      She folded her hands and tilted her head. The sheer breadth of his shoulders sucked the air from the room. “I’ve been doing what and who I want since the day I left you nine months ago, since I realized what a joke our marriage is. So it’s a little late to play the possessive husband.”

      Hadn’t she promised herself that she’d never stoop to provoking him like that again?

      She cringed, closed her eyes at the dirty, inflammatory insinuation in her own words.

      But she saw the imperceptible lick of fire in his gaze, the tiny flinch of that cruel upper lip. At one time, the little fracture in his control would have been a minor victory to her.

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