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Nikolai was confounded by that too because she was not his usual type. He went for tall, curvy blondes and Ella was tiny, skinny and almost as bare of curves as a teenaged boy. So, he had no understanding of precisely why he had developed a throbbing hard-on the instant a slight movement made her tiny, unfettered breasts shift below her T-shirt. Now he could see pointed nipples poking through the thin fabric and his body was eager to see a lot more of that slender but highly feminine body of hers. However, that was sex, nothing more, and he had many more convenient options in that line, didn’t he? Diavole, why was he thinking such thoughts? What was the matter with him? He had never allowed himself to be driven by what lay south of his belt.
‘You want me to be your girlfriend...?’ Ella mumbled in wonderment, barely crediting that they were truly having such a conversation.
Nikolai winced. ‘I don’t have girlfriends... I have sex.’
‘So, you’re a man whore,’ Ella pronounced before she could think better of it, for in her experience there were only two types of men available. One type was open to the possibility of meeting the one and commitment while the other type only wanted to sleep around with the maximum possible number of women.
His dark-as-jet eyes flashed like golden flames. ‘Don’t apply that label to me!’
‘Oddly enough I wasn’t trying to be insulting. I just meant that you only want sex and I know there are women like that too, so, although I shouldn’t have said it, I was simply stating a fact.’ Ella finally fumbled to a perspiring halt, her skin dampening below her clothing while she inwardly acknowledged the foolishness of saying anything he could find offensive. ‘I’m only trying to interpret what you suggested as an option—if not girlfriend...?’
‘Mistress,’ Nikolai slotted in cool as ice.
Ella blinked, thinking he did not just say that...did he? Such a delightfully old-fashioned role for such a modern man. But then what did she know about Nikolai Drakos? She turned away from him, wandered over to the window and was surprised to see a big glossy dark limousine complete with driver parked outside. The limo could only belong to him, which meant that Nikolai was rich and privileged and that the concept of having a mistress to cater to his sexual needs might not seem as much of an anomaly to him as it was to her.
Unhappily, shock had welded Ella’s tongue to the roof of her mouth because he was sexually propositioning her and nothing could have prepared her for that possibility. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous...ironically, he was! Male heads didn’t tend to swivel when Ella walked down the street because she had neither the length of leg nor the curves usually deemed necessary to attract such attention. Why on earth could he be making her such an offer?
‘But we don’t even know each other,’ she framed dazedly. ‘You’re a stranger...’
‘If you live with me I won’t be a stranger for long,’ Nikolai pointed out with monumental calm.
And the very sound of that inhuman calm and cool forced her to flip round and settle distraught eyes on his lean, darkly handsome face. ‘You can’t be serious about this!’
‘I assure you that I am deadly serious. Move in and I’ll forget your family’s debts.’
‘But it’s a crazy idea!’ She gasped, having failed to get him to acknowledge that reality and floundering against his restrained silence. It was obvious that he was determined to behave as though such a proposition were an everyday occurrence.
‘It’s not crazy to me,’ Nikolai asserted. ‘When I want anything, I go after it hard and fast.’
Her lashes dipped. Did he want her like that? Enough to track her down, buy up her father’s debts, and try and buy rights to her and her body along with those debts? The very idea of that made her dizzy and plunged her brain into even greater turmoil. ‘It’s immoral...it’s blackmail.’
‘It’s definitely not blackmail. I’m giving you the benefit of a choice you didn’t have before I came through that door,’ Nikolai Drakos fielded with glittering cool. ‘That choice is yours to make.’
‘Like hell it is!’ Ella fired back. ‘The choice you’re offering is totally unscrupulous.’
‘When did I say I had scruples?’ Nikolai asked almost conversationally. ‘I want what I want and I want you in London to take out and show off.’
‘But...why?’ she interrupted, helpless in the grip of her desire to know that answer. ‘Why pick me? I said no that night...was that all it took to fire you up? For you to suggest this?’
‘I’m not going to answer those questions. I don’t need to,’ Nikolai told her without apology. ‘My motivation is my own. Either you want to consider the option I’ve offered or you don’t. It’s entirely up to you.’
‘But a mistress...!’ A driven laugh fell from Ella’s convulsing throat because she was struggling to accept that he could have confronted her with such an insane choice. ‘Don’t you understand that even if I wanted to say yes I couldn’t?’
He frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘My father wouldn’t live with himself if he knew I was sleeping with a man just to get him out of trouble! No, the mistress option is a total impossibility as far as I am concerned.’
‘That’s for you to decide.’ Nikolai settled a business card down on the desk. ‘My phone number. I’ll be staying at the Wrother Links Hotel until tomorrow.’
‘I’ve already made my decision and it’s a no,’ Ella hastened to tell him.
Nikolai flashed her a slow wicked smile that radiated charisma. ‘Think about it properly before you say no but if you discuss it with anyone else, I’ll withdraw the offer,’ he warned her smoothly. ‘It’s a strictly confidential option.’
‘You know, you can’t simply ask a woman you don’t know to live with you,’ she bit out, fit to be tied at his sheer nerve and nonchalance.
Black curling lashes screening his shrewd gaze, Nikolai shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘I believe I just did.’
‘But it’s barbaric!’ she exclaimed. ‘A complete cheat of a supposed offer!’
Nikolai sent her a gleaming sideways glance. ‘No, the real cheat was you kissing me the way you did last year and then saying no and acting as if I had grossly insulted you,’ he murmured with lethal quietness.
‘You did insult me!’ Ella flung back, her cheeks hot as fire while she wondered if her refusal that night had started off his whole chain reaction. What else could possibly be driving him?
Nikolai straightened lazily as he opened the door. ‘If you take offence that easily, maybe it’s just as well that the answer is no.’
Strangely that wasn’t what she wanted to hear and she didn’t understand that truth, nor the feeling that his departure was somehow a low point rather than something to be celebrated. She watched the limo drive off, her thoughts miles away, trailing back down the timeline to the moment she had first met Nikolai Drakos...
* * *
Her stepmother’s best friend, Ailsa, had been a wedding planner and when one of Ailsa’s part-time workers had taken ill, Joy had insisted that Ella step in. Ella could have declined but she had been too well aware that if she crossed the older woman Joy would throw a tantrum and rain down misery on the whole family. And she had always hated listening to her stepmother torment her father with nasty, sneering comments. When Ella had arrived at the country house that evening she had been startled to be asked to park cars rather than wait tables as she had dimly expected. And, truth to tell, with an advanced driving test under her belt and a love of fast cars, parking the luxury models driven by the wedding guests would have been fun, had her foot not slid off the pedal of that McLaren Spider, causing the wing of it to be grazed against an overhanging bush.
Nikolai had started