The Mills & Boon Stars Collection

Lilah felt like someone beating her head up against a brick wall. Bastien didn’t listen to what he didn’t want to hear. He went full steam ahead, like an express train racing down a track. He saw what he wanted and he went for it, regardless of reason and the damage he might do.

‘Delilah... I would treat you well...’ Bastien murmured huskily.

‘What you’ve suggested...it’s out of the question—impossible!’ she exclaimed in a furious outburst of frustration. ‘Not to mention downright sleazy!’

Bastien lifted a lean tanned hand and scored a reproving fingertip along the strained line of her lush lower lip. ‘I am never, ever sleazy...’ He positively purred. ‘You have a lot to learn about me.’

Subjected to even that minor physical contact, she felt her whole skin surface break out in enervated goose bumps and jerked back a hasty step.

‘What I’ve learnt today, just listening to you, is more than enough,’ she stressed in biting rejection. ‘You talk as if you’re playing some amusing game with me, but what you’re proposing is offensive and unthinkable. And nothing you could hope to offer would persuade my father to accept a job that would literally sell me to the highest bidder as part of the deal!’

Bastien scanned her flushed and furious face and the sapphire-blue eyes shooting defiant sparks at him. ‘Only an idiot would suggest that you tell your father the truth and nothing but the truth,’ he derided. ‘All you would need to tell your family is that I have offered you your dream job, which will entail a lot of foreign travel and an enviable lifestyle.’

With a reflexive little shudder at that Machiavellian suggestion, Lilah snapped, ‘My goodness, you have absolutely everything worked out!’

‘But will you take the bait?’ Bastien breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘You have until ten tomorrow morning to make your decision and choose an option.’

‘You haven’t given me even one reasonable or fair option,’ Lilah condemned bitterly.

‘If you don’t give me your answer tomorrow I will sell,’ Bastien warned her with chilling bite.

Her narrow spine went poker-straight with the force of her resentment and her slender hands knotted into fists. It was far from being the first time she had been in Bastien’s company and had longed to knock his teeth down his throat.

In the smouldering silence, Bastien released his breath in a hiss of impatience. ‘It doesn’t have to be like this between us, Delilah. We could discuss this over dinner tonight.’

Lilah flung him a shaken and furious look over her shoulder as her perspiring hand worked frantically at the doorknob. ‘Dinner? You’ve got to be joking! Anyway, I’m already booked,’ she fibbed, refusing to give him the idea that she sat in every night.

‘To see who?’ Bastien demanded, pressing a hand against the door to prevent her from opening it.

‘That’s none of your business.’ Refusing to fight for control of the door, Lilah stood back and folded her arms defensively. ‘Nothing I do is any of your business. You may own Moore Components, but that’s the only thing you own around here.’

Dark eyes glittering brilliant as stars, Bastien flung the door wide for her exit. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that, koukla mou.’

Lilah hurried downstairs and straight into the cloakroom, needing a moment before she returned to work and faced Julie and her curiosity. She was shaking and sweating, and she held her trembling hands below the cold tap while snatching in a deep sustaining breath, praying for self-control.

Unfortunately Bastien had struck her on her weakest flank. The very idea that she could rescue her family from their current predicament had turned her heart inside out with hope and desperation. And what about all the other people whose lives would be transformed by the opportunity to regain the jobs they had lost? Jobs in a revitalised business which would be much more secure with Bastien’s backing? All their former workers would be ecstatic at the idea of the factory reopening.

But Bastien Zikos had put an incredibly high price on what that miracle would cost Lilah in personal terms. It was too much to think about, she thought weakly, anger still hurtling through her, tensing her every muscle. How could he do that? How could he stand there in front of her and outline such demeaning options? A one-night stand...or a one-night stand which ran and ran until he got bored? Some choice! What had she ever done to him to deserve such treatment?

Her temples thumped dully—a stress headache was forming. She was stressed, out of her depth and barely able to think straight, she acknowledged heavily. Hadn’t she felt very much like that when she was first exposed to Bastien’s soul-destroying charm?

Of course that charm had not been much in evidence just now, during their office meeting, she conceded bitterly. It had, however, been very much in evidence when Bastien had taken her for coffee at the auction house two years earlier.

After a casual exchange of names and information Bastien had taken out his business card to show her that his company logo was, in fact, a seahorse. The awareness that he also had a strong family connection to the pendant had made Lilah relax more in his company. Noting his sleek gold Rolex watch, and the sharp tailoring of his stylish suit, she had recognised the hallmarks of wealth and suspected that it was highly unlikely that she could hope to outbid him at auction.

She had teased him about the amount of sugar he put in his coffee and a wickedly sensual smile had curved his lips, sending her heartbeat into overdrive. Oh, yes. At first sight she had been hugely, hopelessly attracted to Bastien and had hung on his every word.

‘You still haven’t explained one thing,’ Bastien had mused. ‘If you value it so much, why is the pendant being sold at auction?’

She had explained about the jewellery her father had given her stepmother. ‘Now Vickie’s having a big clean-out, and I didn’t want to risk upsetting her by admitting how I felt.’

‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get,’ Bastien had censured drily. ‘Not that I’m complaining. Your delicate sense of diplomacy has worked in my favour. If the necklace hadn’t gone on sale I wouldn’t have known where it was. I’ve been trying to track it down for years.’

‘I suppose you remember your mother wearing it?’ she remarked.

‘No, but I remember my father giving it to her,’ Bastien had countered rather bleakly, his dramatic dark eyes veiled while his beautiful mouth had tightened unexpectedly. ‘I was about four years old and I honestly believed we were the perfect family.’

‘Nothing wrong with that,’ she had quipped with a big smile, trying to picture him as a little kid, thinking that he had probably been very cute, with a shock of black hair and brown eyes deep enough to drown in.

‘Irrespective of what happens at the auction tomorrow, promise that you will have dinner with me tomorrow evening,’ he’d urged, and had invited her to his hotel.

‘I’m still planning to bid,’ she warned him.

‘I can afford to outbid most people. Dinner?’ he’d pressed again.

And she had crumbled, like sand smoothed over and reshaped by a powerful wave.

Bastien hadn’t made the connection between her and Moore Components, and it had been a big surprise for both of them when her auction disappointment had been followed by an unexpected meeting with Bastien in her father’s office the next day. Dinner at Bastien’s hotel had been replaced by dinner at her father’s home, to which she had been invited as well.

When a phone call had claimed Robert Moore’s attention he had asked his daughter to see Bastien out to his car.

‘If you’re expecting me to congratulate you on your win, you’re destined for disappointment,’ Lilah had warned Bastien on their way down the stairs. ‘You paid a ludicrous amount for that pendant.’

Bastien laughed out loud. ‘Says the woman who bidded me up to that ludicrous amount!’

Lilah reddened. ‘Well, I had to at least try to get it. Why are you seeing my father?’ she had asked abruptly as they came to a halt in the car park.

‘I’m interested in acquiring his business and he wants some time to think my offer over. You work here. You could be my acquisition too,’ Bastien had said huskily, sexily in her ear, making the tiny hairs at her nape stand up while an arrow of heat shot straight down into her pelvis.

Unsettled by the strength of her reaction to him, Lilah had stiffened. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think Dad will sell up either—not when he’s riding the crest of a wave.’

‘That’s the best time to sell.’

Bastien had dealt her a dark, lingering appraisal that had made her toes curl even as her gaze widened at the sight of the limousine that had rolled up to collect him. She’d been impressed but troubled by the obviously large difference in their financial status and had resolved to look him up on the internet as soon as she got the time.

‘I wish your father hadn’t invited us to his family dinner.’ Bastien had sighed. ‘I was looking forward to having you all to myself at my hotel.’

Unease had filtered through Lilah. He was coming on very strong, and while initially she’d been delighted by that, she was unnerved by the suspicion that he might be expecting her to spend the night with him. An impulsive move like that would have been way outside Lilah’s comfort zone.

But at the same time still being a virgin at the age of twenty-one had not been part of Lilah’s life plan either. She just hadn’t met anyone at university who had attracted her enough to take that plunge. Lilah didn’t give her trust easily to men, and by the end of first year, after standing by and watching friends commit too fast to casual relationships that had ended in tears and recriminations, she had decided that she would definitely hold off on sex until she met a man who cared enough about her to be prepared to wait until she was as ready for intimacy as he was.

‘Bastien’s really into you in a big way,’ Vickie had whispered in amusement after dinner at her father’s comfortable home that evening. ‘He watches your every move. And although I prefer men to be more grey round the edges, he is gorgeous.’

Before Lilah had been able to call a taxi, Bastien had offered to run her home. Within seconds of them getting into the limo Bastien had reached for her with a determined hand and kissed her with a hungry, sensual ferocity that had set her treacherous body on fire. She had pulled back, trying to cool the moment down, but Bastien had ignored her.

‘Spend the night with me,’ he’d pressed, his thumb stroking her wrist where her pulse was racing insanely fast.

‘I hardly know you,’ she had pointed out hastily.

‘You can get to know me in bed,’ Bastien had quipped.

‘That’s not how I operate, Bastien,’ Lilah had murmured, reddening with discomfiture. ‘I would need to know you really well before I slept with you.’

‘Diavelos... I’m only here for another forty-eight hours!’ Bastien had ground out incredulously, studying her as though she was as strange and incongruous a sight as a snowball in the desert.

‘I’m sorry. I can’t change the way I am,’ Lilah had told him quietly as the limousine drew up outside the terraced house where she lived.

‘You’re my polar opposite. I don’t get to know women really well. To be brutally honest, sex is the only intimacy I want or need,’ Bastien had breathed in a driven undertone.

‘We’re like oil and water,’ Lilah had mumbled, hurriedly vacating his car and heading indoors, to heave a sigh of relief as soon as the door was closed behind her.

In the aftermath of that uneasy parting tears had burned her eyes and she’d been immediately filled with self-loathing. She was guilty of having woven silly romantic dreams about Bastien. Hadn’t she just got what she deserved for being so naïve? He was only interested in a night of casual sex—nothing more. It wasn’t a compliment...it was a slap in the face—and a wake-up call to regain control of her wits.

Although Lilah had initially been attracted by Bastien’s stunning good looks, she had been infinitely more fascinated by his strong personality, and the seemingly offbeat way his brain worked. That same night she’d sat up late, looking Bastien up on the internet, and the sheer number of women she’d seen pictured with him had shaken her almost as much as his reputation for being a womaniser. Bastien Zikos slept around and he was faithless.

At first Lilah had been appalled by what she had discovered, but there had also been an oddly soothing element to those revelations. After all, what she had found out only emphasised that she could never have any kind of liaison with Bastien: he didn’t do relationships...and she didn’t do one-night stands.

Sinking back to the present, Lilah was dismayed to register that her eyes were swimming with tears. She blinked them back and freshened up, writing off her far too emotional frame of mind to the shocks Bastien had dealt her. She hated the way that Bastien always got to her—cutting through her common sense and reserve like a machete to make his forceful point.

‘You were a long time upstairs with the boss,’ Julie commented as Lilah dropped back behind her desk.

‘Mr Zikos wanted to discuss his plans for the business,’ she said awkwardly.

‘Oh...wow!’ Julie gushed, fixing wide, speculative eyes on Lilah’s flushed and taut face. ‘You mean he’s planning to keep Moore Components open? He’s not just going to sell up?’

Lilah cursed her loose tongue. ‘No, his selling up is a possibility too,’ she backtracked hastily, fearful of setting off a round of rumours that would raise false hopes. ‘I don’t think he’s actually made a final decision yet.’

With a regretful sigh, Julie returned to work. But Lilah found that she could not concentrate for longer than thirty seconds. Aftershocks from her meeting with Bastien were still quaking through her.

He might as well have taken the moon down from the sky and offered it to her, she reflected in a daze. Her family were suffering—just like everybody else caught up in the crash of Moore Components. The little half-brother and half-sister so dear to Lilah’s heart no longer had a garden to play in, and their more elaborate toys had been disposed of because there was no room for such things in Lilah’s little house. Her father was suffering from depression and taking medication. The day the factory had closed the bottom had dropped out of his world. Without work, without his business, Robert Moore simply didn’t know what to do with himself.

Lilah blinked back stinging tears. In spite of the troubled years, when her parents had been unhappily married, Lilah still loved her father very much. She had only been eleven years old when her mother had died very suddenly from an aneurysm. Her father had been very much there for her while she was grieving, but he was also a very hard worker, who had soon returned to work, slaving eighteen hours a day to build up his business.

Now, shorn of his once generous income and humbled, he felt less of a man—and at his age, with a failed business under his belt, who was likely to employ him? Although Lilah had told herself that she shouldn’t be thinking about it, she could not resist picturing her father returning to work with a new spring in his step.

She blanked out the thought.

Was she really prepared to become a mistress?

Bastien’s sex slave?

An extraordinary little chirrup of excitement twisted through Lilah and she was seriously embarrassed for herself. She was pretty sure Bastien wouldn’t be expecting a virgin. But what did that matter? It was not as though she was seriously considering his sordid options, was it?

Still mentally far removed from work, she sank back two years again into her memories and recalled the flowers Bastien had sent her the morning after that family dinner and her rejection of what little he’d had to offer her. He had shown up on her doorstep the following evening as well, displaying a persistence that had taxed her patience. When he had tried to persuade her to join him that night for dinner she had lost her temper with him.

Why had she lost her temper?

Remembering why, Lilah paled and then flushed a painful pink. Utterly mesmerised by Bastien, she had already started falling for him. Being rudely confronted with the reality that he was a stud, who only wanted her for sex, had been hurtful and demeaning. That was why she had lost her temper. She had been angry with herself because somehow he had contrived to tempt her with that single erotically charged kiss and had made her question her own values. She had resented his power over her and she had flung her knowledge of his bad reputation in his teeth and called him a man whore.

Lilah was still secretly cringing from that memory as she walked home after work. Attacking Bastien had been wrong. He was what he was, and she was what she was. They were very different people. Insulting him had been ill-mannered, pointless and immature. His dark eyes had glittered like black ice, the rage in his stunning gaze filling her with fright. But he had done nothing, said nothing. He had simply turned on his heel and got back into his opulent limousine to drive away.

A few weeks later an unexpected gift had arrived for her at work. She had unwrapped an almost exact replica of the seahorse pendant Bastien had won at auction. The only difference between it and the original was that the new piece lacked the engraved initial As on the back. Only Bastien could have had it made for her and sent it to her. That he had given the pendant to her in spite of the way she had spoken to him had shocked Lilah, and made her feel as if she didn’t know Bastien Zikos at all. She had asked herself then if she had imagined that dark fury in his eyes.

But now Lilah knew for a fact that she had not imagined Bastien’s rage, and she suspected that what she was being subjected to was ‘payback time’ in his parlance.

CHAPTER THREE

IN THE MIDDLE of the night, tossing and turning without sleep, Lilah crept out of bed and went downstairs to make herself a cup of tea.

Vickie was already there, seated at the kitchen table. ‘Great minds, eh?’ she framed round a huge yawn.

‘You couldn’t sleep either?’ Lilah stated the obvious.

‘It’s the constant worrying that keeps me awake,’ her father’s wife opined ruefully while Lilah boiled the kettle. ‘Some of the parents I was talking to at Ben’s school said Bastien Zikos was at Moore Components today... I was surprised you hadn’t mentioned it.’

Lilah stiffened defensively. ‘I didn’t see the point.’

‘I hate asking you this...but I was thinking...maybe if you get the chance you could ask Bastien if he has an opening for your father anywhere?’ Vickie said hopefully.

Lilah reddened. ‘If I get the chance,’ she echoed, feeling incredibly guilty for not telling the truth.

Bastien had been right on that score. No one would thank her for telling a truth that no one wanted to hear. And the truth was that she could wave a magic wand and fix everything for everybody. How could she live with that knowledge and stand by doing nothing? How could she live with seeing her father slumped in a chair, staring into space? It was all very well to be furious with Bastien, to take offence and walk out. but at the end of the day she had to be practical. He had, after all, offered her a miracle.

Everything back the way it was.

Hanging on to her virginity at all costs seemed a little pathetic in such dire circumstances, didn’t it? And, whether she liked it or not, she had always been attracted to Bastien. How could she hold out and justify herself when so many positive outcomes would result from her agreement? Bastien’s interest in her would be short-lived as well: his past history spoke for him. He never stayed long with a woman. She would get her life back again quickly and probably never come back home, she acknowledged unhappily. When Bastien got bored with her she would look for a job in London and make a fresh start.

* * *

Lilah dressed for work with more care than usual, braiding her black mane of hair into submission and choosing a black pencil skirt and a silky cream blouse to wear.

The mere thought of finding herself in bed with Bastien brought her out in a cold sweat and turned her tummy over, so she refused to think about it. Sex was a rite of passage, she told herself impatiently. She was no different from any other woman and would soon become accustomed to it. No doubt practise had made Bastien most proficient in that department, and it was probably safe to assume that she wouldn’t find sharing a bed with him too unpleasant. Of course she wasn’t going to enjoy any of it either. Sex shorn of any finer feelings was a physical rather than mental exercise and she would detach herself from the whole experience, she told herself soothingly.

Detachment, after all, would hardly be a challenge when she hated Bastien with every fibre of her being. His options had taught her to hate him. Before yesterday he had simply been the womaniser who had once bruised her tender heart and whom she couldn’t ever have. Now he was the ruthless lowlife forcing her to seal a bargain with her body as if she was a whore.

A little shudder racked her at that view and she breathed in slow and deep, strengthening herself for what lay ahead. She was about to make a devil’s bargain, but she was darned if she would show an ounce of weakness in front of Bastien.

When she walked into the office, Julie gave her a curious appraisal. ‘Mr Zikos has phoned down to ask for you already. I explained that you’re never in before nine because you leave your kid brother at nursery on the way.’

‘Thanks,’ Lilah breathed, hanging up her coat with a nervous hand.

Bastien had said ten o’clock, but he was clearly jumping the gun. Of course he had no patience whatsoever, she reflected ruefully. He tapped his feet and drummed his fingers when forced to be inactive for any length of time. He was edgy, bursting with frenetic energy, always in need of occupation.

She smoothed her skirt down over her hips as she mounted the stairs. Her hands weren’t quite steady and she studied them in dismay. Why was she getting herself into a state? Hadn’t she already decided that sex would be no big deal and not worth making a silly fuss over? It wasn’t as though Bastien was going to spread her across the office desk and have his wicked way with her this very day...was it?

Her face burned, her stomach performing a somersault at that X-rated image. She wanted Bastien to do the deed in pitch-darkness and complete silence. She didn’t want to have to look at him or speak to him. She wished there was some way of having sex remotely, without any need for physical contact, and it was on that crazy thought that she entered what had once been her father’s office.

With a single gesture Bastien dismissed the team hovering attentively round him and set down the tablet he had been studying.

‘You’ve asked for me but it’s not ten yet,’ Lilah pointed out thinly. ‘It’s only ten minutes past nine.’

Bastien straightened, brilliant dark golden eyes lancing into hers in direct challenge. ‘My internal clock says it’s ten,’ he contradicted without hesitation.

‘Your clock’s wrong.’

‘I’m never wrong, Delilah,’ Bastien traded thickly, his long-lashed gaze roaming over her as intently as a physical caress. ‘Lesson one on how to be a mistress: I keep you around to stroke my ego, not dent it.’

Lilah froze where she stood, wide sapphire eyes travelling over him with a hunger she couldn’t control. She scanned the exquisitely tailored designer suit that delineated every muscular line of Bastien’s broad-shouldered, lean-hipped frame as he stood there facing her, with his long, powerful legs braced. Something clenched low in her body when she clashed with his gaze and her legs felt strangely hollow.

Her attention welded to his darkly handsome face, she stopped breathing, reacting with dismay to the treacherous stirrings of her own body. Her breasts swelled, constrained by the confines of her bra, while the sensation at her feminine core made her press her thighs together hard.

‘I’m no good at stroking egos, Bastien,’ she warned him.

Bastien dealt her an unholy grin. ‘I’ve got enough ego to survive a few dents,’ he asserted. ‘Where do you think your true talents will lie?’

‘You’ve taken my answer for granted, haven’t you?’ Lilah exclaimed. ‘I haven’t said yes yet, but you’re convinced I will.’

‘And am I wrong?’ Bastien traded.

Her teeth gritted together. ‘No, you’re not.’

‘So, are you going for option two or option three?’ Bastien enquired lazily, leaning back against his desk in an attitude of relaxation that infuriated her.

* * *

Option three, option three, Bastien willed Delilah to tell him. That would be the most profitable option for him. He would sell the current site, relocate the factory to the outskirts of town and in doing so take advantage of several lucrative government grants aimed at persuading companies to open up in areas of high unemployment. For him it would be a win-win situation, because he would gain Lilah, an immediate profit to cover all outlay and a cost-efficient business.

‘You have no shame, have you?’ Lilah hissed, like oil bubbling on too high a heat.

‘Not when it comes to you,’ Bastien agreed. ‘It’s the only way I’m ever going to get you, because you’re stubborn and contrary and you have a very closed little mind.’

‘I am none of those things,’ Lilah rebutted angrily.

‘Stubborn because the minute we saw each other we were destined to be together but you immediately fought it. Contrary because you feel the same way about me as I do about you—instantaneous lust—but you deny it. And a closed mind because you believe a life of self-denial is innately superior to mine.’ A wolfish smile slashed Bastien’s lean strong face. ‘I can’t wait for the moment when you realise that you can’t keep your hands off me.’

Lilah gave him a look of withering scorn. ‘You’ll get old waiting for that.’

Straightening up to his full commanding height, Bastien strolled forward, fluid as a predator tracking prey. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense. Option two? Or option three?’

‘Three... Although I should warn you, you’ve picked the wrong woman.’

‘Three...’ Bastien’s accent made a three-course meal of the word as he savoured it with immense satisfaction. ‘In what way are you the wrong woman?’

Lilah shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. ‘I haven’t got the experience you’ll probably expect,’ she told him stiffly, deeply disturbed by his increasing closeness and fighting the revealing urge to step back out of reach.

‘I’ve got enough experience for both of us,’ Bastien purred, dark eyes flashing gold as he stared down at her. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you haven’t indulged that side of your nature very often?’

‘Haven’t indulged it at all,’ she countered curtly, lifting her chin, standing her ground, refusing to feel embarrassed. ‘I’m a virgin.’

Bastien actually backed away a couple of feet, his lean chiselled features setting into rigid angles of shock while his eyes flared more golden than ever below the thick canopy of his black lashes. ‘Is that a tease?’

Lilah gave him a grim glance. ‘No, it’s not. I just thought I should warn you in case it’s a deal-breaker.’

‘Are you telling me the truth?’ Bastien prompted in a roughened undertone, prowling closer again and circling her like a stalking panther. ‘You’re a virgin?’

Colour ran up below her pale cheeks but she held his fierce gaze. ‘Yes.’

‘If you’re telling me the truth it’s not a deal-breaker—it’s the biggest turn-on I’ve ever had,’ Bastien confessed, thoroughly shocking her with that assurance.

Bastien was disturbingly conscious that for once he was not uttering a mere soundbite for effect. He had never been with a virgin. When he was a teenager his partners had all been older, and when the age range of his lovers had begun to match his own maturity he had never dallied or even wanted to dally with a sexually innocent woman. For a start, he had never been attracted to young, immature girls. In addition he did very much like sex, and he had no time for those who would stick limits on a physical outlet he saw as both natural and free.

Yet something strange was happening to his views while he looked at Delilah, because he was discovering that when those same limits were applied to her and her innocence he was happy with the idea...and even happier at the prospect of becoming her first lover. He didn’t understand why he felt that way, because he had never been a possessive man, and nor had he ever been remotely unsure of his own skills in the bedroom and afraid of comparison.

A frown settled between his brows while he attempted to penetrate the mystery of his own gratification at her announcement—until the obvious answer came to him. What he found appealing had to be the sheer novelty of the experience she offered him...of course she would be something different, something new, something fresh!

‘That’s disgusting,’ Lilah told him furiously. ‘How can you admit something like that?’

Uncomfortably aroused by his thoughts, Bastien wanted to reach for her and demonstrate exactly how he felt, but he knew it wasn’t the right moment. The nervous flicker of her bright blue eyes, her very restiveness, warned him that if he gave her sufficient ammunition she would take off in a panic like a hare bolting for its burrow.

‘I will want you to sign a confidentiality agreement,’ he told her levelly, sticking strictly to practicality. ‘That’s standard. It means that you will never be able to talk about our association in public or in private.’