The Married Mistress

CHAPTER TWO

BUT this was a very different sort of kiss.

This was no longer the beguiling, seductive caress of just moments before. It was a kiss of anger, of domination, of possession, which stamped her as Damon’s as clearly as if it had been a white-hot branding iron pressed to her skin.

And the truth was that Damon believed that she was his to do with as he pleased, until he decided otherwise. He had never truly been prepared to let her go. He had only let her walk out on him because she had given him no choice. She had waited until he was away, as he so often was, on business, and then she had packed her bags and fled from the island.

People just did not do that sort of thing to Damon Nicolaides. Certainly, women never did it to him. He made all the running where the women in his life were concerned. He made the first moves; he decreed how long a relationship lasted. And when he was tired and bored, when he felt that things had come to their natural end—as they inevitably did—then Damon was the one who walked away without a backward glance. Not the woman he was leaving.

Sarah had broken all those rules. And as a result she knew that Damon had never forgiven her—would never forgive her. He would hold the memory of what he considered to be her betrayal and the insult to his fiercely macho pride deep in the darkness of his unloving heart, and he would never let it go.

‘Damon…’ she managed against the demand of his mouth, struggling to make it a protest, hearing only the sigh of acquiescence in her tone. ‘I—’ 20

‘Hush, agape mou,’ he reproved, infuriatingly more in control than she had ever been, so that she heard in his words a fake softness. A gentleness that he could never have meant but that he managed to communicate with total credibility. ‘Leave this to me.’

‘But—’

Again she tried to protest, and again she failed as once more he kissed her into submission, this time stealing her soul away with a stunningly enticing caress, one that made her senses swoon and her heart sing with rare delight.

‘Leave this to me,’ he had told her, his tone redolent with a supreme confidence that she would do exactly as he instructed.

And, weakly, she knew that she would. There was nothing else she could do. The ability to act, along with any hope she had of even thinking straight, had evaporated swiftly in the heat of her instant reaction to him. Just his very closeness, to be held so tightly in the warm strength of his arms, crushed up against the hard wall of his chest, had been bad enough, depriving her of the control, the restraint that she had believed she’d acquired in her time apart from him. But the sensations sparked off by those kisses had made everything infinitely worse, buzzing round in her head, fizzing through her body, until she was incapable of thought.

Those three very different kisses had revealed so perfectly the many sides of Damon’s nature. In his make-up, the supremely gentle, irresistibly seductive blended so perfectly with the cruel, the almost brutal ruthlessness that was the opposite side of his personality. The negative to the positive, darkness as opposed to light. She had known them all in her short time with him, and at first she had believed that the gentle, enticing character had been the real man.

She had been very quickly—and very thoroughly—disillusioned. Life, and Damon’s father, had stripped her of her rose-tinted spectacles with ruthless efficiency. And from then onwards she had never been able to look at him in the same way.

‘You’re who?’ Jason demanded, the bluster in his voice showing how rattled he was.

‘The name is Damon Nicolaides,’ Damon tossed at him, clearly expecting, and getting, the instant start of response that always came with the recognition of his name.

‘Nicolaides?’ Jason’s voice shook.

Everyone knew who Damon was. Everyone.

His wealth and his international, jet-setting life put his name and his photograph into the society pages. His relationships with models and actresses, his friendships with film producers and media moguls kept him in the celebrity magazines, where his stunningly masculine looks made a huge impact on every female reader from sixteen to seventy. His money and power meant that he frequently appeared in financial columns, and his ability to constantly acquire more of both made sure that his reputation was as huge as his business empire.

‘Damon Nicolaides?’

He was clearly the last person Jason had expected to come up against in this particular situation. How the hell could she know him? The question was obviously in his thoughts, revealed in his stunned intonation.

‘That’s right.’

Sarah knew that tone of Damon’s voice well—too well. Careful, polite, controlled—but only just.

It meant that Damon was right at the edge of his patience. That he would not take pushing any further or any harder. Not if the person he was talking to was wise and wanted to avoid a full-scale volcanic explosion.

‘Jason…’ she tried, only to feel her body given a small, rough shake of warning by the man who held her.

‘Let me answer the questions, Sarah. It’s simpler that way.’

‘Simpler!’ she couldn’t help protesting. ‘For who?’

‘For everyone!’

The admonition that had been in the way he had shaken her was there again, more strongly this time, in the undercurrents in his voice, a note that sent a shiver down her spine in unnerved response.

This was the Damon she had seen in the past, when some member of his staff had angered him with a foolish mistake, or a journalist had proved too intrusive. It was the prelude to a much more savage outburst, one that made her shudder in fearful anticipation. She had only ever experienced that side of Damon briefly, but that had been enough. She never wanted to see it again.

‘Everyone?’

Damon bent his dark head again until his sensual mouth was level with her ear, the warmth of his breath stirring the auburn tendrils of hair that lay against her cheek.

‘Do you want me to get rid of him or not?’

Oh, yes, she wanted Jason out of here. Out of her house, and out of her life. And she wished he’d take Damon with him. But that, she knew, was not the slightest bit likely.

And so, grasping at what she could see was the only possible lesser of two evils, she clamped her lips tight shut on the furious protest that almost escaped her once more and forced herself to nod in silent acquiescence.

It was all that Damon needed. Satisfied that she had handed over control of the situation into his hands, he faced Jason again.

‘Was there anything else you wanted to know?’

Everything, if she knew Jason, Sarah thought. But he contented himself with one question, his voice wobbling on a note of disbelief.

‘You claim that you two are an item?’

‘Not claim,’ Damon retorted sharply. ‘We are.’

As if to prove his point, he pulled her closer, one steel-hard arm coming round her to hold her just where he wanted her, staking his claim. One ear, one cheek was against his chest, muffling her hearing. But she caught Jason’s dumbfounded response.

‘And you agree with this, Sarry?’

Another silent nod was all she could manage. Just let Damon get rid of Jason, she prayed inwardly, and then she would get rid of Damon. If she could. Damon in one of these stubborn, determined moods was as immovable as a rock, and every bit as hard.

‘So when did you two meet—and where?’

‘The art gallery reception last night,’ Damon stunned her by retorting immediately, and totally unexpectedly. ‘You must have noticed that she didn’t come home. Or perhaps not…’

The movement of his head told its own story. Sarah didn’t even have to look to know that he had directed his black-eyed gaze across the room and up to where Jason’s bedroom companion still lingered, watching everything, silently agog with curiosity.

So silently that Sarah had almost forgotten she was there.

‘I’m sure you were otherwise engaged.’

Damon was fast losing patience now. The sordid little drama he had interrupted might have amused him for a while, but its appeal was strictly limited, and it was evaporating rapidly. He wanted Jason and his trollop out of the house as fast as possible. If they didn’t move now then he couldn’t guarantee that he would be able to keep a strict hold on his temper. And if it slipped from his control then he couldn’t be answerable for the consequences. Things could get really messy.

And the worst part of it all was having to admit just what was affecting him most. Which certainly wasn’t this sleazy rat and his cheap little tart, that was for sure.

‘I wasn’t here last night! My name’s Andrea, by the way.’

It was the other woman who spoke, and Sarah felt a shock of instant recognition at her tone, bringing with it the kick of some primitive reaction deep down inside her. Even fresh from another man’s bed as she was, this Andrea had still responded to Damon’s forcefully macho appearance with a predatory interest that put a husky purr of sensuality into her tone. Wriggling slightly in the iron-hard hold, Sarah could just peer upwards to where the voluptuous woman was leaning over the banisters, displaying an ample amount of what she clearly thought was enticing cleavage.

But Damon appeared far from enticed.

‘You’re here now,’ he flung up at her. ‘And I’d much prefer it if you weren’t. So get some clothes on and get yourself and your lover out of here—fast! Or I won’t be answerable for the consequences.’

Andrea pouted petulantly at his tone, but she read it well enough to know that he meant exactly what he said. Flouncing into the bedroom, she must have tossed on clothes at speed, pushed into action by the threat in Damon’s tone, because it was only minutes before she reappeared, fully dressed in a tight white shirt and the miniest of miniskirts, the red satin robe slung carelessly over one arm. Clopping inelegantly down the stairs in white sling-back stilettos, she marched over to the small group in the hall.

‘I believe this is yours.’

She tossed the robe onto the floor at their feet, then turned to the still staring Jason and caught hold of his arm.

‘C’mon, Jace,’ she said. ‘It’s time we were out of here.’

‘I should listen to the lady, Jace…’ Damon laced both the nickname and the word ‘lady’ with the stinging bite of acidic sarcasm. ‘It is time you were going.’

‘But—’ Jason began, then looked straight into Damon’s deep black eyes and clearly thought better of what he had been about to say.

‘OK,’ he muttered. ‘I’m coming.’

But there was something in his voice that told Sarah he was not finished yet. That he had more to say—or do—before he left them in peace.

Instinctively she tensed in Damon’s arms, waiting, wondering…

But whatever she had feared never came.

The slam of the door behind the departing pair was a sudden shock to her system, jarring every nerve in her tense body and making her head jerk upwards from its secure pillowing on Damon’s hard chest.

‘It’s OK.’

Lazily he stilled her, soothed her with a stroking hand down over her hair, her shoulder, her arm.

‘They’ve gone.’ He looked down at her, grinned into her warily watchful green eyes. ‘It’s safe to come out now.’

‘I wasn’t scared!’

Desperately, Sarah tried to gather together some of the tattered strands of her shattered self-esteem so as to meet the smile in his eyes with some degree of composure. He looked too damn pleased with himself by half.

‘I wasn’t!’ she repeated more emphatically, to answer the tormenting question that was clearly in his thoughts, lifting the corner of one jet-black eyebrow in mocking inquiry. ‘I was simply—held prisoner by you.’

To emphasise the point she twisted in his still restraining arms, attempting to pull herself free. At first, for a heart-stopping moment, she thought he was going to resist, forcing her into either an ungainly and undignified struggle or a humiliating submission. But then, suddenly, he released her with an abruptness that had her swaying uncomfortably on unsteady feet, stubbornly refusing to reach out a hand and cling on to the strength of his arms for support.

The fact that he so obviously knew exactly what was going through her mind only added a hundredfold to her discomfiture. She hated the way that the gleam in his eyes brightened, the tiny quirk upwards at the corner of his lips revealing his amusement.

‘So now you’re free,’ he drawled softly.

‘Yes,’ Sarah managed, adding because she felt she had to, ‘Thank you.’

‘My pleasure.’

He was bending as he spoke, reaching down to scoop up the red robe from where Andrea had tossed it moments before.

‘This is yours, I believe.’

Sarah turned a glance of loathing on the inoffensive article that Damon held out to her. It was impossible not to notice the contrast between the strength of the blunt, strong, tanned fingers and the fine, slippery material that seemed totally insubstantial in the firm grasp. But the thought of touching either made her shiver inside.

Slowly she reached out, took hold of the crimson silk, then gave in to her inclinations and, crushing the garment mercilessly, she crumpled it into a ball and flung it with all her strength as far away from her as she could manage.

‘I don’t want it! Not after she’s worn it! I couldn’t bear to touch it again.’

Damon’s dark eyes followed the bright sliver of material as it sailed through the air in a graceful arc and fell to the ground once more. Then his gaze swung back to Sarah’s face, looking deep into her eyes.

‘I’ll buy you another.’

‘No need—I…’

The words died away as she realised not just what he had said but the implications behind it. Clearly Damon planned to stay around, for a while at least. And that was not something she was comfortable with. Certainly not after the scene he had just witnessed, and the interpretation he had obviously put on it. And, even worse, after the discovery that she had made about herself.

‘I can get one myself. I earn a good salary at the art gallery; I can afford to buy myself a nightgown…’

She was speaking only to fill the silence, she knew. And to distract her own thoughts. There were too many things she didn’t want to think about—didn’t dare to think about—and for now it was so much easier to concentrate on the immediate present and what was happening in it.

After all, there was more than enough to face up to there. Sarah drew in her breath sharply and let it out again on a silent sigh. Jason might have gone—and Andrea. And quite frankly she was more than glad to see the back of both of them. But Damon was still here. And getting rid of him was a different prospect altogether.

Her shoulders, which had relaxed in the moments she had watched Jason and Andrea walk away, now tensed again. Her throat tightened so that she had to swallow hard to ease the dryness there, and her chin came up as defiance flared in the green depths of her eyes.

‘What are you doing here, Damon?’

‘I came to see you, of course, my darling…’

‘That’s not what I mean, and you know it!’ Sarah put in hastily and sharply, terrified of hearing that emotive word ‘wife’ on his lips.

Once she had been proud and happy—so happy—to be his wife, even if for his own reasons Damon had insisted that, for a while at least, they told no one the truth. But now their brief, painful façade of a marriage was something she desperately wanted to forget. To obliterate from her mind, if she couldn’t erase it from her past.

‘I want to know why you’re here—in London.’

‘I have business in town. Important meetings.’

It was not the truth, at least not the full truth, Damon admitted to himself. But the truth wasn’t something he was prepared to admit to. Not yet. Perhaps not ever at all.

He had had a meeting planned—one with Sarah to discuss their marriage, or what was left of it. The thoughts that had been in his mind as he’d arrived at the house such a short time before now came back to haunt him, mocking his gullible beliefs and the naïve hope that had been uppermost in his mind then.

He had given Sarah enough time to calm down, he had told himself. After six months of living on her own, stubbornly refusing to see him, returning every one of his letters unopened, surely she was now prepared to listen?

She would listen, he had told himself. No matter what he had to do to make her. He would talk—and she would listen. Somehow he would make her come back to Greece with him. To Mykonos. Where he would show her what he had done. And then…

He hadn’t got any further than that.

‘I see—business. Of course. What else?’

Sarah’s voice was cold and tight. If he didn’t know better, he’d have said she sounded disappointed. Which might have pleased him when he had first reached the house—when he’d still had hopes and illusions of a future. Before the appearance of Jason and his obvious familiarity with Sarah’s bedroom had shattered those illusions.

‘You know me, ghineka mou,’ he shot back. ‘Always busy, making deals, signing contracts.’

‘Acquiring land?’ Sarah returned with even more bite in her tone. Whatever disappointment she had been feeling a moment before, if disappointment was the right word, it was now totally submerged under the angry bitterness that blazed from her eyes. ‘Built any nice extensions to your hotels lately, Damon?’

‘Not since you left, my love,’ he returned, his tone dripping saccharine-sweetness. ‘And, as I recall, you never signed the papers agreeing to the one that I wanted.’

‘No, I didn’t, did I? That must have made things rather awkward for you.’

Damon’s smile in reply to the barbed comment was grim, tight, totally without any warmth.

‘No more awkward than they were already, agape mou. I told you then that your ownership of that land was not why I married you.’

‘I know what you told me, husband, dear, but I also know what I believe.’

Let him think that what had driven them apart was the piece of land that the Nicolaides Corporation coveted most on all the island of Mykonos. That was the reason she had given him for leaving in the letter she had left behind, the one she had clung to when he had come after her in a towering rage, demanding that she return at once. That and the fact that she had grown tired of their marriage, bored with life on the small Cyclades island. And it was one she would far rather have him believe than the actual, the hatefully painful truth.

‘Admit it, it was remarkably inconvenient for you that I discovered that the land my grandfather had left me was just the part of the island that you wanted. Especially when the old man had declared to your father’s face that he would rather die than sign the land over to anyone from your family.’

Her grandfather had been half Greek on his mother’s side. Through that line he had inherited the land on Mykonos. The land in question lay between two of the Nicolaides Corporation’s smaller hotels, and it had been a long-held ambition of both Damon and his father to link the hotels into one spectacular resort by building across the empty space. But Alexander Meyerson’s mother’s family had had a long-running feud with the Nicolaides clan, one that he had held fast to in spite of the increasingly huge amounts offered in exchange for the tiny portion of the island he owned, much to Aristotle Nicolaides’ increasing frustration.

So when Damon had learned that Sarah, as her grandfather’s only heir, would now own the land on Mykonos, he had come looking for her.

And she, poor blindly besotted fool that she was, had made matters so much easier for him by falling head over heels madly in love.

‘How you must have cursed those lawyers who wrote and let me know about my luck before you’d had time to get me to sign on any dotted lines.’

‘It was certainly, as you said—inconvenient,’ Damon growled, his stunning features setting into a dark frown. ‘But it was not necessarily fatal. Or it need not have been if you had only stayed to talk things over with me, or come back…’

‘Come back!’ Sarah couldn’t hold back the exclamation of shock and disgust that was pushed from her lips by his outrageous declaration. ‘Come back to a marriage that had never been a real one right from the start? That was built on nothing but lies and deceit? A marriage that you had been determined not to let anyone know about because you were ashamed of it?’

‘Not ashamed!’ Damon flung at her. ‘It just would have been…difficult to make our marriage public at that point.’

‘I’ll bet it would! Well, perhaps in the end I ought to thank you for that. After all, you spared me a lot of humiliation and the adverse publicity that I might have had to put up with if people had found out that we were married. Now all I have to do is wait for the legalities to be sorted out and we can be divorced as quietly as we were married. Excuse me.’

She tried to sweep past him, only to have to come to an awkward halt as he blocked her way, coming between her and her path across the hall.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Upstairs.’

‘Why?’

‘Is it any business of yours?’

‘Humour me.’

Seeing the stubborn, unmoving set of his face, the taut line of his hard jaw, she sighed her exasperation, knowing only too well that he had no intention of letting her pass until she told him something.

‘I want to go and strip the sheets off the bed that—that Jason and his fancy piece used!’

Distaste curled her lip, tasted bitter on her tongue.

‘I have to put them in the wash immediately—though if I’m honest I’d prefer to burn the damn things!’

To her relief Damon sidestepped neatly, moving out of her way, but as she mounted the first of the stairs she realised that he was right there behind her, following close on her heels.

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No!’

But he totally ignored her protest and just kept on coming.

‘Damon…’

She whirled on the stairs until she was facing him. Looking down into his handsome face, she saw the determination stamped hard on it, the unyielding set to his jaw.

‘I don’t need you!’

Just the thought of having this man, the man who had been her husband for such a brief time, follow her into her bedroom spoke of an intimacy that she was totally unwilling to allow herself to recall. I don’t want you, she should have said. But the words had other, much more disturbing implications that meant her voice would not actually speak them with the conviction she needed.

‘It’ll be easier with two,’ Damon returned, and just kept on coming so that she was obliged to skip backwards hastily up the stairs if she was not to have him collide with her.

‘I’ve done it by myself many times…’

‘I’m sure you have.’

Another step upwards necessitated another couple of hasty jumps back and away to avoid a crash.

‘But I’m here now, so there’s no reason for you to have to do it alone today.’

‘Damon, it’s my room!’

Exasperation, a touch of breathlessness from the undignified scramble up the staircase, and a shockingly sensitive awareness of the man below her put a betraying shake into her voice. The physical strength of his chest and shoulders was emphasised from this angle, the gleam of the sunlight on the dark waves of his hair made it shine like glossy silk, and the flash of white teeth as he grinned up at her was startling against the olive skin of his face.

‘Sarah, it’s my house!’ he retorted, with an infuriatingly deliberate echo of her own tone, her own emphasis.

And what could she say in response to that? There was no answer she could give him. At least not one that he would accept, pay any heed to. It was his house, and that was the fact. She hadn’t wanted to take anything from him, but she had desperately needed a roof over her head. And for all she knew Damon had already built on her disputed land. He was perfectly capable of ignoring any morality in the case and just going right ahead.

With inelegant haste she hurried up the remaining stairs and arrived safely on the landing, facing him with determined defiance.

‘You said I could live here!’ she protested, and shivered as she saw a dark tide of change cross his face, shadowing his eyes.

‘I said you could live here,’ he acceded. ‘Not you and sundry assorted hangers-on.’

Now was the time to tell him the truth, Sarah knew. The time to point out that, no matter how it had seemed, Jason had had neither her agreement nor her permission to be in the house. At least not in her bedroom, and certainly not in her bed.

So why did the words stick in her throat? Why could she not just fling them in his face and be done with it?

Because he had no right to interfere in her life. He had given up any rights to that when he had betrayed her trust and treated her as a thing, a chattel, something to be used for his own ends, not as a true wife of his heart.

Wife of his heart!

Hah! That was a joke. A very sick, very black sort of joke. One that slashed at her heart, her soul, like a rusty knife, reopening old wounds that had barely even begun to heal.

She had never really been Damon’s wife, not in the truest sense of the word—not in any sense of the word, except perhaps the sexual one. She had been his wife in bed and nowhere else. He had wanted her physically. There was no way he could have hidden, or faked, the passionate desire he had felt for her. And that must have made the rest of his scheme so much easier for him to carry out.

The pain that came along with the rush of memory drove all thought of common sense from her mind and instead had her spitting at him in blind rage.

‘And I suppose that you’ve been living a pure and celibate life for the last six months!’

He actually looked taken aback by her attack. It even silenced him, and she watched him withdraw into himself, shutters coming down behind the gleaming jet eyes, hiding his thoughts from her.

‘Nothing to say, Damon? I thought not. Ever heard of the saying about pots calling kettles black?’

‘I know the saying, yes. But I do not see its relevance to the current situation.’

He had the nerve to look innocent—and it was unnerving just how innocent he could appear, with his deep, dark eyes wide open in apparent ingenuousness.

For a brief second Sarah closed her own lids against the pain of memory. Against the hated recollection of the moment that Aristotle Nicolaides had revealed the truth about his son’s relationship with Eugenia Stakis. About the marriage that had been planned for so long and that would unite the fortunes of the two Greek dynasties as well as the two lovers. In a moment, he had explained just why Damon had insisted that this pragmatic, purely business deal of a marriage should be kept secret from everyone.

But of course Damon didn’t even know that his poor deceived wife had any knowledge of his machiavellian behaviour and so he still thought he could get away with pretending he was blameless.

‘Of course you don’t.’

Opening her eyes again, but carefully avoiding meeting any lying glance that Damon might send in her direction, she swung away, turning her attention to the rumpled bed before her.

‘I didn’t give Jason free run of my house!’ she said abruptly, covering the savage bite of misery with a sudden rush into action as she snatched up a pillow and shook it roughly out of its pale gold case. ‘And I certainly wouldn’t even have given him a key if I’d known the use he was going to put it to.’

‘But, as you’ve made only too plain, the way you’ve lived your life this past six months is no business of mine.’

Damon’s voice had grown colder by the second. Now it sounded positively glacial, sending icy shivers sliding down Sarah’s spine.

She managed some unintelligible murmur that he could take as agreement or not as he wished and dumped the denuded pillow on the floor, flinging the cotton case after it. It was as she reached for the crumpled sheet that a sudden recollection of how she had felt as she’d stood outside on the landing and heard the sound of Jason’s voice attacked without warning, making her sway weakly, fingers clenching on the bedding until the knuckles showed white.

‘Sarah?’

Damon must have been watching her every move because he stepped forward, reaching her before she had even realised herself that she was no longer steady on her feet.

‘Sarah!’ he said again, his voice rough with some emotion that she couldn’t begin to name.

There was anger in there, but at who? And it was blended with a whole range of feelings that made her head whirl just trying to separate them.

But she was weak enough not to resist when he gathered her into his arms, held her close against him, her cheek resting on his shirt, one hand cradling the back of her head.

‘Sarah, the bastard isn’t worth it! Don’t waste your tears on him.’

Tears?

Somehow Sarah edged a hand up to touch her face and find that Damon had spoken nothing less than the truth. Her skin was wet with tears that she had been unaware of letting escape, her eyelashes spiked into damply clinging clumps.

They were the tears that had been threatening ever since she had pushed open the bedroom door a crack and seen Jason—the man who had said that all he wanted was to heal her broken heart—naked in bed with another woman. She would feel better if she could let them fall. If she could simply give in to her feelings and, abandoning all restraint, weep her heart out on Damon’s supportive shoulder.

It was a dangerously tempting prospect and one she was having to struggle fiercely against, because if she did start crying then she knew the interpretation that Damon would put on it. The only interpretation that he believed was possible.