Page 13 of The Billionaire's Demand

And just lay there. For a long, long while.

Anguish consuming her.

CHAPTER FOUR

LEANDROS LAY SLEEPLESS on his bed at the hotel. On the other side of the city was Eliana...

He was still shocked by the brutal reality of just how low she had sunk. The cramped, run-down studio flat, the whole shabby apartment block in the back end of town—was that really what she had come down to?

Well, he could get her out of there. Lift her back up to something more like the life she had once lived.

He frowned. Why had she not bitten his hand off when he’d made her his offer? Did she have anything better in mind? His expression hardened. Well, if she did, she wouldn’t be getting it from him. He’d been totally upfront with her—she wasn’t going to get the chance to have any illusions about what he was offering.

And there was nothing sordid about what he was offering. He wanted an affair with her, a temporary liaison that would give them something each of them wanted. She got a ticket out of that dump of an apartment, and he—well, he got what had been getting under his skin ever since that damn night in Athens all those weeks ago.

He stared, hands behind his head, up at the ceiling of his hotel room, but what he was seeing was not that. It was the image of Eliana, sitting opposite him at the taverna, without a scrap of make-up, in those chain store clothes, her hair pulled starkly off her face—and yet with the same unforgettable beauty that she had always possessed.

His mind slipped further back...back to that holiday he’d reminded her of, their week in Crete. Happiness had consumed him. He’d stepped into another world, with Eliana at his side. The week had been magical—and intensely frustrating too. For her kisses had been an incitement for so much more—and yet she had always drawn back. His only consolation—and it brought a twist to his mouth even now—was the fact that she had found it as hard to draw back from him as he had from her. She’d wanted him—and he’d done his damnedest to show her just how much he wanted her! Done his damnedest to show her just how much she wanted him in return even as, breathless and bemused, she’d pulled away from his embrace in the shadows of that quiet cobbled street in the old part of Chania, where their hotel—a converted merchant’s mansion—had lain a few metres beyond.

‘Let me come to your room tonight...’ His voice had been husky as he’d moved to reach for her again.

She’d held him at bay. ‘We agreed. Oh, Leandros, don’t make it harder for me than it already is. I want so much to wait for our wedding day...our wedding night...’

There’d been a catch in her voice, her eyes glowing partly with pleading, partly with the desire that he knew had quickened in her as he’d kissed her as seductively as he’d known how.

And he’d honoured her plea—knowing how important it was for her.

His expression changed again, became etched in bitterness. Now, with the acid lens of hindsight, he knew just why it had been so important for her.

So she could go a virgin to Damian’s bed.

Had she kept her virginity deliberately from the off? In case something happened to prevent her from marrying him? Would she have given herself only when his ring was on her finger, her access to the Kastellanos wealth secured?

Well, now there would be no ring—and all that she would get from him materially, as he had informed her over dinner, would be the couture wardrobe he would provide, and whatever piece of jewellery he chose to bestow upon her when he had sent her on her way, which she would be able to sell to fund her in Athens.

When I’ve had enough of her.

And then he could get his life back and be free of her—finally. Finally free.

She will never haunt me again, neither in dreams, nor in waking. I’ll be done with her and her power will be gone.

A nerve ticked in his cheek, and he felt his hands clench behind his head as he went on staring sightlessly at the blank and empty ceiling overhead.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, watch where you’re going!’

The angry outburst from a shopper was lost on Eliana as she made a muttering apology. Her mind was not on restocking shelves. It was like a tangled skein of wool—knotted and impossible, riven with emotions, a tormented mess. It had been like that all week. Ever since the bombshell Leandros had lobbed at her—as if turning up at her apartment hadn’t been bombshell enough.

Through the tangled mess in her head one phrase kept going round and round and round. She kept hearing his voice saying it.

‘I want you to come back to me.’

It was incising itself into her ceaselessly, remorseless, by day and by night. Not letting her go. Tormenting her. She’d tried to overlay it, to smother it, to deafen it with the words she’d said to him, dragged out of her numbly as she’d sat opposite him in the restaurant.

‘Thank you, but no.’

She wanted to hang on to them—needed to hang on to them...was desperate to hang on to them. But with each passing day they were getting fainter and fainter.

Oh, dear God, why had Leandros come back into her life? Why couldn’t he have stayed out of it? Just gone on ignoring her existence as he had for six long, bleak years.

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