LITMIR.BIZ

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by legal actions. Damen could destroy them. His demands for restitution would bankrupt the company.

      As her father baldly put it this morning—he couldn’t afford to pay Damen back. The wedding had to happen, and the marriage consummated.

      Which meant Kassiani had to seduce Damen tonight. It wouldn’t be easy. She wasn’t just a virgin, but a virgin with zero experience. Before the peck in the chapel, she’d only ever been kissed once before, a bumbling fumbling kiss that had been so wet and distasteful that she’d never wanted to kiss again.

      Compared to that wet, violent assault on her mouth, today’s chapel kiss had been rather exhilarating. When he’d tilted her chin up to kiss her, she’d felt a little shiver of anticipation, and he’d smelled lovely as his head dropped, his mouth brushing hers. His lips had felt firm and cool, and yet they’d somehow made her feel warm, and tingly. Her lips continued to tingle even after he’d lifted his head. She’d found herself wishing the kiss had lasted longer. She was curious as to what more would feel like, and with a longer kiss, perhaps she could process her thoughts and all the different sensations. Kass liked data and analysis. Information was immensely helpful.

      More information was needed now.

      How was she to seduce Damen when she had no knowledge of such things? Of course she knew what men’s bodies looked like. She didn’t live in the Dark Ages. She had a brother. She had a father. The internet was full of photographs, and movies, and she’d just have to piece together from movies what men would like.

      From what she recalled, men seemed to like stripteases. They liked lap dances. They liked titillation, including women on their knees, obedient and eager to please.

      Kassiani tried to imagine kneeling before Damen, her hands on his thighs, fingers moving toward the zipper of his trousers.

      The image made her feel peculiar. Heat washed through her, making her skin prickle, and her breasts peak. The hot ball of tension seemed to center low in her belly, pulsing a little between her thighs. She was nervous and excited at the same time. Her entire world had been turned upside down. She’d come to Athens five days ago expecting to attend her sister’s wedding. Instead she’d been woken by her father early this morning with the news that he expected her to marry Elexis’s groom. And Kassiani, so desperate to earn her father’s favor, had. Now instead of returning to San Francisco, she was to remain in Greece, and make a new life for herself as Damen’s wife.

      Kassiani shot a glance into the wood-framed mirror on the wall. She was still wearing Elexis’s wedding dress, and the lace panels that had been added were pulling at the seams. Even in a corset, even with the additional panels added to the dress, the gown was too tight. The fabric pulled in all the wrong places.

      Kass had never let herself dream about her wedding day, but if she was being honest, she’d say it certainly wasn’t the wedding that took place today, and she certainly wouldn’t have chosen this dress...a dress that made her look even curvier and stockier with all the lace panels.

      No, she would have chosen something simple—an off-the-shoulder white satin gown that minimized her bust and skimmed her hips, before falling into a long graceful skirt in the same clean white satin. There would have been no plunging necklines and no bustle and no ornate beading adding thickness and weight to the lace panels worked into the bodice and skirt.

      Kassiani placed a hand to the plunging neckline, running her fingertips lightly over her curves. Her breasts were beyond voluptuous. She’d always hated the thickness of her hips and thighs, as well as the shape of her belly, somewhat round as if she practiced belly dancing regularly, instead of the hours she spent on a treadmill walking, walking, walking, forever trying to reduce her form, wanting to be lean like her mother and sister. She would never be lean.

      Her exterior was what it was—it couldn’t be changed—and she was certain her new husband was disappointed, which was why she had to prove herself. She had to prove to him tonight that she fully intended to be a good wife. She’d find a way to satisfy him.

      But how?

      And what if she couldn’t get him to respond?

      Kass grabbed her phone and, while struggling out of her gown and layers of girdles and undergarments, researched men and arousal. Peeling her stockings off, she found quite a few sites offering numerous tips on how to please your man in bed, ranging from “Twelve Erogenous Zones That Shouldn’t Be Ignored” to a very useful and practical article on “How to Give Unforgettable Oral Sex.”

      Naked, she headed into the adjoining white marble bathroom and, careful not to get her hair wet—it was still coiled up in an elaborate updo—she used the body wash in the shower to try to rub some of the marks out of her skin, but the angry red marks created by the corset weren’t ready to fade. Leaving the shower, she wrapped herself in the white robe hanging on the back of the door, and then sat down on the edge of the bathtub and began reading everything she could about pleasing a man.

      She was still reading when she heard a firm knock on the bathroom door. “Are you hiding, mikrí sou gynaíka?”

      Her Greek was a little rusty, but not so rusty she didn’t understand his words. Are you hiding, my little wife?

      She jumped up and turned her phone off. “No.” Kassiani opened the door and faced him, tugging the lapels of the robe so that they better covered her chest. “I’m using your robe. I hope that is okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t think to bring any clothes with me.”

      “I don’t think either of us was thinking clearly.” He hesitated, and then shrugged. “This isn’t going to work. I’ll ask the crew to find something for you to wear and then my security will get you back to the villa at Sounio.”

      “Am I that much of a disappointment?”

      “You’re not a disappointment.”

      “Then why send me away without giving me a chance?”

      “Because I was engaged to Elexis, not you.”

      “But Elexis left and I was there.”

      “The Dukas sisters are not interchangeable!”

      “Because I’m not beautiful like her?”

      “Because you’re not hard like her.” He didn’t quite yell, but he flung the words at her with enough ferocity to make her flinch. He must have seen her reaction because he dropped his voice. “I wanted a wife who wouldn’t feel. A woman I couldn’t bruise. I don’t know you very well, Petra Kassiani, but my gut says you feel, and feel deeply.”

      Heat rushed through her, and shame, because he was right. She did feel deeply but she hated that aspect of her personality, far preferring her intellect over her emotions. “I understand the kind of marriage you want. I won’t ask you to romance me. I won’t expect flowers and poetry—”

      “Or tenderness? Or kindness? Or patience?”

      “I can’t believe you’re capable of all of the above.”

      “Well, I am. Trust me.”

      “You were marrying Elexis to help save Dukas Shipping.”

      “I was marrying Elexis to dismantle Dukas Shipping.”

      Her eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat. “I don’t believe you,” she whispered.

      “If you stay here, if you remain my wife and the agreements and contracts hold, there will be no Dukas Shipping in five years. It will all be Alexopoulos Shipping of the Aegean.”

      She stared at him, skeptical, but also wary. “Is this your way of making me throw up my arms and run back to my father? Am I to choose him and his business over you?”

      “I am nothing to you. You are nothing to me—”

      “I married you. You are my husband.”

      “But you do not know me. You should have no loyalty to me.”

      “I

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