One Night to Risk It All (3 page)

Except it was easy to remember how it was to dance with him. How it felt to hold his hand as she walked barefoot down a city sidewalk. How she’d been different with him. More alive.

Happy.

So maybe it wasn’t so stupid that she felt half in love. It was scary, though. She’d been...not in love, but infatuated with a guy before, with hideous results. But that had been different. It felt like another lifetime. Like it had happened to another girl.

She’d changed over the past eleven years. In ways that were necessary, but in ways that had left her feeling like she was trapped in skin that had become far too small.

And sometime last night, she’d changed again.

She got out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom, taking care of early morning necessities and looking at herself in the mirror. She looked... Her hair was a wreck. She was pretty sure the dark mark on her neck was a hickey.

She smiled. She should not be enjoying this. But she was.

Real life could be dealt with later.

She pushed her hair back and walked out into the hotel room again, and stopped when she saw Alex’s wallet on the floor. It was open, from when he’d taken out the condom and thrown it onto the ground. After that incident, he’d procured protection from the concierge. Much to her chagrin.

Well, and delight, if she was completely honest. She’d absolutely benefitted from the acquisition of a box of condoms.

She bent down and picked his wallet up without thinking. It was an expensive wallet. Black leather with fine stitching. Like something her father, or Ajax, would own. Strange because his clothes were so worn. Because he worked on a boat.

Her eyes skimmed over to his ID. He had an American driver’s license. Which seemed odd. Because he was Greek, no question. Though, perhaps his employer was American.

Okay, snoopy. Not really your business.

And it wasn’t. They weren’t trading life stories so it wasn’t really fair for her to be looking at his personal property.

Before she could snap the wallet shut and put it on the table, she read his name. Not on purpose. But she saw it, and then all she could do was stare.

She knew his name.

And for a full thirty seconds, she didn’t know from where.

Alexios Christofides.

She heard the name in Ajax’s voice. A growl, a curse. He’d been nettling Ajax for months. Buying shares in his business, reporting him to the IRS for suspected tax wrongdoing, reporting him to environmental agencies. All false accusations, but things that had cost time and money.

He wasn’t a cabin boy, that was for sure.

And he wasn’t a stranger.

She’d been seduced by her fiancé’s enemy.

She thought the floor might shift beneath her feet and fall out from beneath her like sand, dropping her back into the past, in a moment so close to this one it made her want to scream.

Colin, so angry over her refusal to sleep with him, revealing who he really was. What he really wanted from her.

If you don’t want to put out, that’s fine. But I have all those nice pictures of you. A very compelling video. Of what you did for me. I don’t need sex. A little money from the media will be even nicer.

She’d thought she was smarter. More protected. Different.

She was the same foolish girl she’d always been. Worse, even, because this time the villain had succeeded in his seduction. He’d more than succeeded.

What she’d done with him...what she’d let him do to her...

“Alexios?”

The man in her bed stirred and Rachel tried not to pass out. Tried not to vomit. Or run screaming from the room.

She had to know what had happened. She had to know if he knew who she was.

Of course he does. Like he’s here by accident? You can only be a naive fool to a certain point, moron.

“Alexios,” she said his name again and he sat up, a wicked smile curving his face. When he actually looked at her, the smile faded.

As if he knew, even half asleep, that he wasn’t waking to the postcoital scene he was hoping to be a part of. As if he knew that his response to the name had been wrong.

He’d probably already forgotten which woman he’d been in bed with. Which hotel.

That made her want to be violently ill. Or just violent.

But for the moment, she had to stay calm. She had to get answers.

“Rachel,” he said, his voice as strong as whiskey and good sex, going straight to her head and making her toes curl. “You should come back to bed.”

“I don’t... No.” She put her hand on her forehead. “Not right now. I...”

His eyes met with her hands. Where her fingers held his wallet. He looked back up at her, one black brow arched. Something in his manner changed. In an instant, he changed.

He pushed his dark curls off of his forehead and for a second she thought she was looking at a stranger. A naked stranger.

Then she realized that was what he was. She didn’t know this man. Not at all. She’d fooled herself into thinking they’d shared something. That their souls had met, or some such idiocy. But they hadn’t.

It only underlined her stupidity. Her weakness.

Last night, she’d felt like herself. Freed from all the layers of protection and expectation. Somehow slipped free of those well-meaning, soul-binding words spoken by her parents all those years ago. She’d felt real. Well, real Rachel was, it turned out, incredibly stupid. There was a reason she’d been kept in hiding.

“You know who I am, don’t you?” she asked.

He stood, the covers falling from around his waist, his body, his beautiful hard body, on display for her. And even now it made her heart leap into her throat. Like it was trying to climb out so it could get a look at the view.

“Why were you looking at my wallet?”

“It was on the floor. I picked it up. I thought, ‘nice wallet for a cabin boy.’ Clearly far too nice. So now you might as well tell me the truth.”

“I know who you are,” he said. “Imagine my surprise when you found me before I could find you. Imagine my further surprise when I realized I didn’t need a week or a special event to seduce you. You were a lot easier than I expected.”

“To what end?” she asked, her heart thundering, her hands shaking. “Why would you... Why...?”

“Because I want what he has. Everything. And I’ve had something very special to him now. Now we both know I’ve had you first.”

“You bastard,” she said, scouring the room for her clothes. “You...! This is
my
hotel room.” She stopped collecting her clothes and started getting his instead. “Get your clothes and get out.” She threw his shorts at him, then his shirt. “Out!”

He started dressing. “I don’t know who you think your fiancé is, but I know who he is.”

“And I know who you are! A... A... I can’t even think of a bad enough word for what you are. And you’re no kind of man.”

“You and I both know I am.”

“The ability to trick a woman into letting you put your hard penis inside of her does not make you a man!”

“Did I trick you? Or did I, like you, not tell you everything. I hardly forced you into bed.”

No, he hadn’t. And that meant it was her fault. Her stupid, stupid fault.

“But you...seduced me knowing that you would ruin my engagement. With the express intent of doing it!”

“And you thought my seducing you would leave it intact? Is that it? Or are you just pissed because I planned it?”

“Yes! I am pissed that you planned it. I thought we had something... I thought...” Her throat closed off, emotion, anger choking our her words.

“Such a virgin, Rachel,” he said, his tone dry.

“No, I’m not, and I think we both know it. Because of you!” And even before that she’d lacked innocence. Which meant she should have known, she
did
know. But he’d made her forget.

“Because of you,
agape,
” he said, tugging his slacks up and doing the button. “You made your choice. Don’t be angry with me because I outed you as being faithless.”

Before she could measure her response, his wallet was sailing out of her hands, skimming his ear, hitting the wall behind him. “Out!” she screamed.

She had just destroyed her engagement. The future of her family’s company. All for sex. Sex with a man who’d been using her. Tricking her. Trying to hurt Ajax...

Ajax, who hadn’t deserved this treatment at all. Who cared for her. And her father... After all he’d done for her...

She pressed her palms into her eyes, trying to keep the tears at bay. “Out. Out. Out,” she said.

“Rachel...”

“You ruined my life!” she screamed, flinging her arms wide. “I thought you were different. I thought you made me...feel something and you were just lying. I blew up my life for you and it was a lie!”

“I never promised you anything. You made a mistake. Unhappily for you.”

“Don’t call him,” she said, her stomach sinking. “Just don’t call him.”

“I don’t have to,” he said. “You won’t marry him.”

“One night with you and I’m going to leave the man I’ve been engaged to for years? I hardly think so,” she said. Only a few moments ago, she would have. Just a few short moments ago.

She would have exposed herself to scandal, exposed her family to it. She would have destroyed everything she’d spent years rebuilding for him. What had she been thinking?

And now...what had she done? What was wrong with her? She hadn’t thought, not for a moment. She’d been feeling. Lost in some inane fantasy that had no hope of ever coming true.

Now she was sitting here, all of it burned down, ash at her feet, the hero of the story revealed as a villain.

“Just go. And please don’t contact me. Please don’t call him, don’t... Don’t.”

“Now, why,” he said, his lip curling, “would I agree to that? I got exactly what I wanted. I am a man who makes careful plans,
agape,
and I don’t plan on changing them just because you shed a tear.”

He strode across the room, to the hotel door, and walked out. He didn’t even look at her again. Didn’t spare her one more glance as he closed the door behind him.

Rachel sank onto the floor, her knees giving out entirely. And it was then she realized that she was still completely naked. But it didn’t matter. Putting on clothes wouldn’t make her feel less exposed. Wouldn’t make her feel less...dirty.

That’s what it was. She felt dirty.

She’d betrayed Ajax.

That was the truth no matter who Alex really was. But his betrayal was like salt in her wounds, as they would be salt in Ajax’s.

Ajax...

She would have been prepared to end the relationship if there had even been a chance that...

That Alex wasn’t a lying, horrible, hideous bastard. But there wasn’t. He was. And that meant she had to go back home. The wedding had to go forward. Her life had to go forward. As if this hadn’t happened.

This was why she’d avoided passion. This was why she’d avoided doing things that were risky, and crazy. Because when she took chances, she got hurt. Because when she trusted, it came back to haunt her. On her knees, her chest burning so bad she could hardly breathe, she remembered exactly why she’d taken to hiding herself.

Never again. She would go back to Ajax, to safety. And if Alex told him about tonight, she would beg for his forgiveness. She stared ahead, eyes dry and burning like her insides.

She would forget the heat and fire she’d discovered tonight. She would forget Alexios Christofides.

CHAPTER THREE

H
E
’
D
TOLD
HIMSELF
he wasn’t going to the wedding. He’d told himself so as he’d boarded a plane in New York that was headed for Greece. He’d told himself so as he’d reclined in first class, accepting more glasses of wine than he normally would during travel.

He’d told himself so as he drove from the airport to the Holt Estate, where he knew the wedding was being held.

Everyone knew where the wedding was being held. It was international news. The wedding of enigmatic businessman and heartthrob Ajax Kouros to the beloved Holt Heiress. Photos of the event would cost a premium, the world waiting with bated breath for information, for a glimpse.

It had been shoved in his face on every news publication since he’d left Corfu. Since he’d been thrown out of Rachel Holt’s bed.

Rachel.

He couldn’t think of her without aching. That soft skin, that smile. The way she’d made love with him, all enthusiasm and clumsy motions. She had been inexperienced—well, non-experienced—but she had
wanted
him.

Never in his life had he been wanted like that. Not just in a sexual sense.

At some point over the course of that night he had forgotten. That he wasn’t just Alex. That she wasn’t just Rachel.

He had been a man, who wanted a woman. Not a man twisted and bent on revenge.

But her sweet voice piercing his sleep with
Alexios
had brought him straight back. And then it had all gone to hell. He hadn’t enjoyed that moment. Hadn’t enjoyed her realization that he was Ajax’s enemy.

That fact had surprised him. And then when she’d asked, with tears in her eyes, that he not tell Ajax, he damn well hadn’t done it.

And what was the point of going to all that trouble to have Ajax’s woman if he didn’t let him know it? He’d clearly passed the point of seducing her up the aisle so he could rob Ajax of his acquisition of Holt, a fact he’d learned was contingent on the marriage, so at the very least he could stop their marriage and deprive him of the company that way.

And yet he hadn’t made the call.

It was a mystery to him. As was the fact that he was now at the Holt Estate with an expertly forged invitation. A forged invitation that allowed him to be one of the few guests admitted early to enjoy canapés and a tour of the grounds.

He’d had his personal assistant start working on the invitation a couple of weeks ago. Merely a precaution. And it had turned out to be a good thing, since he was here.

He hadn’t been planning on coming, but it was always nice to cover your bases. If there was one thing Alex knew for sure, it was that life had no place for the lazy or the honest.

It was best to be hardworking and morally flexible.

He handed the invite over to the woman standing at a podium. She was dressed all in black, her blond hair pulled back into a neat bun. Everything about the décor, from the ribbons to the flowers, was restrained. Elegant. Nothing unnecessarily frilly or romantic.

The picture of the woman Rachel seemed to be in the media, but not the woman he’d met that sun-drenched day in Greece.

He was filing that away. It could be useful information.

The woman scanned a code on the back of the invitation—that had been the tricky part, but his PA was friends with an acquaintance of Ajax’s PA, which made getting in to reproduce the sequence on the codes possible—then smiled at him brightly when it made a nice sound that gave him the impression it had been approved, and gestured behind her.

“Follow the path to the garden. You’ll find that refreshments are already being served, Mr. Kyriakis.”

Nice alias. Seeing as he’d lived his entire adult life with one, he knew a good one when he heard it.

“Thank you.”

He followed her instructions, and the neatly groomed path, to the back of the house. It was expansive, with rows of chairs set up facing an altar and the sea. Everything was white. Crisp and pure.

Again, very like the Rachel the media was so fond of. Nothing like the woman he’d experienced.

The woman he’d experienced hadn’t seemed so pure when she’d been with him. Legs wrapped around his hips, her breath hot on his ear as she’d moaned her pleasure.

Heat washed over his skin. Prickles of sensation that bloomed from his neck and down his arms. He flexed his fingers, tried to shake off the sensation. It wasn’t as though Rachel was the first woman he’d had.

There were any number of options available to a young man who found himself out on the streets and unsupervised from the age of fourteen. If nothing else, hooking up had often given him a bed to crash in, and he’d had no complaints about that.

So why on God’s depraved earth was he so fascinated by a night of sex with a virgin? He couldn’t fathom it.

Perhaps it was extra satisfying because he had taken her from Ajax. Because he’d robbed him of what he had been surely saving as a wedding night prize. Why else would he have left her untouched?

Just thinking about the man, being this close to him, made his stomach burn. If he hadn’t decided years ago that assassination was a bad plan, he would have been considering it now.

Well, he was imagining it, but he wouldn’t really do it.

He was a bastard—life had made him that way. But he wasn’t entirely cold-blooded. Unlike Ajax.

Unlike their father.

No matter his position now, Ajax had been there, just as Alex had been. A young teenager who had taken advantage of the excess on offer.

The women, like Alex’s mother, who would have done anything for their next fix. Who were slaves in every way. Victims. Living in poverty while surrounded by opulence. Kept on a leash of addiction, and in his mother’s case, a strange attachment to the master of the manor.

A twisted thing she’d called love. The kind of love that, when severed, had left her to bleed out onto the floor. A crimson stain in Alex’s memory that he could never wipe away.

Years and success wouldn’t change that. Wouldn’t bring her back. And yet Ajax stood at the top now, unaffected. With a family. A woman who had always appeared, to Alex, at least, to love him.

He looked unscathed, unspoiled. Ajax could pretend at respectability all he wanted but Alex knew the truth.

Because the truth was in him, too. But at least he never played as if he was anything other than a bastard. Ajax played as though he’d walked through it all and come out clean.

Alex
knew
he would never be clean.

He curled his fingers into fists and looked up at the house. There was a small group of people headed inside, led by a woman wearing black, which was clearly the uniform of the event staff.

He started in their direction, melting into the back of the group. Everyone was rapt, paying close attention to what the woman was saying about a fresco on the exterior wall that had been moved from an old church. Blah blah. He didn’t care.

Greece was old. Like that was news.

He’d spent nights in more crumbling ruins than he could count. He was a fan of mod cons. As long as they didn’t come at the price of living under the roof of a violent, sexually deviant psychopath.

Yeah, he’d preferred the ruins to that. He preferred the street to that. Starvation and cold and everything else that came with it.

He had run from that life. From all that it represented. He would not become a part of it.

He followed them into the house and as soon as they rounded the first corner, he separated from them and headed up the stairs. No one stopped him. Because he looked like he belonged. A right he’d earned, if only recently.

This was his world now. He was no longer someone who could be stepped on by the rich and powerful.

He
was
the rich and powerful. He went where he liked, he did what he liked.

“I have something to give the bride,” he said to a passing servant. “Where might I find her?”

“Miss Rachel is in her suite. Down the hall and just to your left,” the woman answered without blinking.

Because he looked the part. He spoke with confidence. And as a result, no one questioned whether or not he belonged.

He nodded once and continued on down where the woman had indicated.

He hadn’t been going to come. But he was glad he had.

* * *

She’d never prayed so hard for her period to come in all her life. She’d never prayed for it to come. She’d taken it for granted. The cramps, the teariness. It had started when she was fifteen and it had gone on, regularly, for all the time since. Just a little signifier that it was the middle of the month. Nothing more.

Well, not right now.

Now the absence of it was about to send her into a panic attack. She’d been walking around her bedroom in her bra and panties for the past twenty minutes, a tampon on the nightstand, right next to an unopened pregnancy test.

Neither had been used at this point. One month since her night with Alex. One month of alternating between cursing his name and lying in a dark room just staring at the ceiling, unable to cry because tears were a release she wouldn’t allow herself. A rush of emotion, too uncontrolled for the likes of her.

And then her period hadn’t come. Even after it had passed fashionably late, she’d still been praying the floodgates might open and forth would come the crimson tide, and that the pregnancy test could remain unopened. But no such luck.

Tampon or test. She was going to be opening one of them in the next few minutes.

And it was rapidly becoming clear which.

She was already six days late. This little song and dance between her and those two items had been going on since the first morning.

She finally reached down and grabbed the pregnancy test.

And suddenly the world just sort of tipped to the side and she saw herself clearly, standing there, almost ready to marry another man while she was potentially pregnant with Alex’s baby.

And she knew there was no way she could get married today.

Her hands started shaking, her throat going dry.
Oh...Jax, please forgive me.

So now she was just going to have to...tell him. Right before the wedding. But there was something she had to do first.

“Okay,” she said to the little white-and-pink box. “Let’s do this.”

Her bedroom door swung open and she whirled around, clutching the box to her breasts in an instinctive attempt at modesty. Until she realized she was advertising that she was holding a pregnancy test and whipped it behind her back, her thigh crossing over the front of her other thigh in an attempt to hide that she was in very brief panties.

Then she froze, because she realized who her intruder was. For almost a full second, she was frozen, caught by those arresting blue eyes. Again.

It was almost like all that thinking about him had just...conjured him here. But at the worst possible moment.

His hair was shorter. His body wrapped in a custom-made suit and not in those thin, faded work clothes she’d first seen him in.

How strange to think it was the other Alex that had been a disguise, while this was the real him. It hardly seemed possible.

Then suddenly, she was hit by the bright, clear smack of reality. She hated Alex.
Hated
him. It was her wedding day. He was here. And she was afraid she was pregnant with his baby.

“What the ever-loving hell are you doing here?” she asked.

He seemed frozen. As she’d been only a moment before.

“At least close the door,” she said, realizing that anyone who walked by was going to see her standing there in her undies.

He obeyed, stepping into the room.

“I am
naked,
” she hissed.

“You’re not.”

“Close enough.”

“Not anywhere near close enough.” He was looking at her. Intently. As though he was trying to gauge the opaqueness of her underwear.

“Stop that! And what are you doing here?”

“I am here for your wedding,
agape.
”

“Weird. I don’t think Ajax penciled his mortal enemy onto our guest list,” she said, her fingers curling tightly around the pregnancy test still hidden behind her back.

She was trapped. Standing there in lacy bridal undies, unable to do anything for fear he’d see the test.

“He might have. Did you look to see if I was listed under Enemy or Mortal?”

“I was looking in the
A’
s for As—”

“I won’t let you marry him,” he said, his voice turning into a feral growl.

“What?”

“You don’t know what he is.”

She lifted one shoulder, the casual gesture at odds with her internal panic. With the fact that when he’d burst through that door he’d blown through her carefully cultivated, calm façade, yet again. “I’ve known the man for more than fifteen years. I think I know who he is.”

“You’ve never even slept with him.”

“I’m gonna,” she said, edging away from him toward the bathroom, “tonight.”

He strode toward her, blue eyes like chips of ice. He put his arm around her waist and hauled her up against his chest. “You will not.”

“Yes, I will,” she said, words pouring out of her now, with no thought of control or decorum or any of the other stuff she was usually so attached to. She was lying, because before Alex had come in, she’d decided she couldn’t do it. But she wanted to...hurt him if it was possible. To cause him some kind of discomfort because he sure had caused enough for her. “I’m going to have sex with him—” a shiver of displeasure coursed through her at the thought “—tonight. I’m going to let him inside of me. I’m going to do all the dirty naked things with him that I did with you!”

And then he leaned down and kissed her. As if he had every right to do it. As if she didn’t have a wedding scheduled to happen in just four hours. As if she hadn’t told him that she hated him and never wanted to see him again.

As if there was no reality. No Ajax. No vengeance gone wrong. No angry words. As if there was nothing more than passion. Fire and heat. She wrapped an arm around his neck, the other still behind her back, and parted her lips, let him slide his tongue against hers.