Bought For The Billionaire's Revenge. Clare Connelly

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ in the morning. Everything he’d touched had turned to gold.

      Marnie had contented herself with congratulating him in her dreams. Or reading about him on the internet—except when her heart found it could no longer handle the never-ending assault of images that showed Nikos and her. The generic ‘Other Woman’ he habitually dated. She was always tall, with big breasts, blonde hair and the kind of extroverted confidence that the Marnies of this world could only marvel at.

      In a thousand years she’d never be like one of them. Those women with their easy sexuality and relaxed happiness.

      As if to emphasise her point, her fingers drifted to the elegant chignon she’d styled her shoulder-length hair into that morning. A few clumps had come loose. She tucked them back into place with care, then replaced her manicured hands in her lap.

      Almost twenty minutes later the receptionist crossed the room purposefully. ‘Lady Kenington?’

      Marnie started, her face lifting expectantly.

      ‘Mr Kyriazis is ready to see you.’

      Oh, was he? Well, it was about time, she thought crossly as she stood and fell into step behind the other woman.

      A pair of frosted glass doors showed a dark, blurred figure that could only be him. The details of his features were not yet visible.

      ‘Lady Kenington, sir,’ the receptionist announced.

      On the threshold of not just the door but of a moment she’d fantasised about for years, Marnie sucked in a fortifying breath and then, on legs that were trembling lightly, stepped into his palatial office.

      Would he be the same?

      Would the spark between them still exist?

      Or had six years eroded it completely?

      ‘Nikos.’

      To her own ears her voice was cool and detached, despite the way her heart was stammering painfully against her ribs. Standing by the windows, he turned to face her at the receptionist’s pronouncement, the midafternoon sun casting a pale glow over him that focussed her attention on him as a spotlight might have.

      The six years since she’d last seen him had been generous to Nikos. The face she’d loved was much the same, perhaps enhanced by wisdom and the hallmarks of success. Dark eyes, wide-set and rimmed by thick black lashes, a nose that had a bump halfway down from a childhood accident, and a wide mouth set above a chin with a thumbprint-sized cleft. His cheekbones were as pronounced as always, as though the features of his face had been carved from stone at the beginning of time. It was a face that conveyed strength and power—a face that had commanded her love.

      He wore his dark hair a little shorter now, but it still brushed his collar at the back and had the luxuriant thickness that had always begged her to run her fingers through it. His dark eyes, so captivating, flashed with an emotion that seemed to Marnie almost mocking.

      With pure indolent arrogance he flicked his gaze over her face, then lower, letting it travel slowly across her unimpressive cleavage down to her slim waist. She felt a spike of warmth travel through her abdomen as feelings long ago suppressed slammed against her.

      Where his eyes travelled, her skin reacted. She was warm as though he’d touched her, as though he’d glided his fingertips over her body, promising pleasure and satisfaction.

      ‘Marnie.’

      Her gut churned. She’d always loved the way he said her name, with the emphasis on the second syllable, like a note from a love song.

      The door clicked shut behind her and Marnie had to fight against the instinct to jump like a kitten. Only with the greatest of effort was she able to maintain an impassive expression on her subtly made-up face.

      Under normal circumstances Marnie would have done what was expected of her. Even in the most awkward of encounters she could generally muster the basics in small talk. But Nikos was different. This was different.

      ‘Well, Nikos?’ she said, a tight smile her only concession to social convention. ‘You summoned me here. I presume it’s not just to stare at me?’

      He arched a thick dark brow and her stomach flopped. She’d forgotten just how lethal his looks were in person. And it wasn’t just that he was handsome. He was completely vibrant. When he frowned it was as if his whole body echoed the feeling. The same could be said when he smiled or laughed. He was a passionate man who hid nothing. She felt his impatience now, and it burned the little part of her heart that had survived the explosive demise of their relationship.

      ‘Would you like a drink?’ His accent was flavoured with cinnamon and pepper: sweet and spicy. Her pulse skittered.

      ‘A drink?’ Her lips twisted in an imitation of disapproval. ‘At this hour? No. Thank you,’ she added as an afterthought.

      He shrugged, the bespoke suit straining across his muscled chest. She looked away, heat flashing to the extremities of her limbs. When he began walking towards her, she was powerless to move.

      He stopped just a foot or so across the floor, his expression impossible to interpret. His fragrance was an assault on her senses, and the intense masculinity of him was setting her body on fire. Her knees felt as if they might buckle. But although her fingers were fidgeting it was the only betraying gesture of her unease. Her face remained impassive, and her eyes were wide with unspoken challenge.

      ‘You said you needed to speak to me. That it was important.’

      ‘Yes,’ he murmured, his gaze once again roaming her face, as though the days, months and years they’d spent separated were a story he could read in it if he looked long enough.

      Marnie tried to catalogue the changes that had taken place in her physically in the six years since he’d walked out of Kenington Hall for the last time. Her hair, once long and fair, was shoulder-length and much darker now, with a sort of burnt sugar colour that fell with a fashionable wave to her shoulders. She hadn’t worn make-up back then, but now she didn’t leave the house without at least a little cosmetic help. That was the wariness she had learned to demonstrate when a scrum of paparazzi was potentially sitting in wait, desperate to capture that next unflattering shot.

      ‘Well?’ she asked, her voice a throaty husk.

      ‘What is your rush, agape mou?’

      She started at the endearment, her fingertips itching as though of their own free will they might slap him. It felt as though a knife had been plunged into her chest.

      She flattened the desire to correct him. She needed to stay on point to get through this encounter unscathed. ‘You’ve kept me waiting twenty minutes. I have somewhere else to be after this,’ she lied. ‘I can’t spare much more time. So, whatever you’ve called me here to say, I suggest you get it over with.’

      Again, his brow arched imperiously. His disapproval pleased her in that moment. It eclipsed, all too briefly, other far more seductive thoughts.

      ‘Wherever you’ve got to be after this, I suggest you cancel it.’ He repeated her directive back to her with an insouciant shrug.

      ‘Just as dictatorial as ever,’ she said.

      His СКАЧАТЬ