Page 13 of Greek's Temporary Cinderella

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.

I don’t need this, and I don’t want it—I don’t, I don’t, I don’t!

She had enough to cope with—oh, so much more than enough.

She stretched up, replenishing the packets of pasta and rice. The tangled mess of her thoughts and emotions was writhing now, like a nest of snakes, and Leandros’s voice was in her head, over and over and over again.

‘I want you to come back to me.’

She closed her eyes in anguish. She must not listen to those words—must not heed their power...their tainted temptation to claim again in any way, on any terms, what she once had had.

Leandros desiring her...

As she still desired him...had always done...would always do...

The knowledge was impossible to deny.

In her mind’s vivid eye she saw him again as he had been at that fateful party to celebrate Chloe’s engagement—and then as he had been only a handful of days ago, striding back into her life. Saw that he still possessed exactly what he had always possessed—the ability to kindle in her that flame of desire.

But I forfeited my right to desire him.

Her eyes shadowed. She had no right to him...to anything of him. Not any more...

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