A Reputation For Revenge(86)

He saw the Russian’s hands move toward her breasts. With a savage growl, Nikos started to push roughly through the crowd. All he could think was that if Sinistyn kept touching her he’d kill the man in his own club.





CHAPTER FOUR

“THERE, WE’VE HAD our dance.” Anna panted, drawing away. “Please can we talk now?”

“The music’s not over yet,” Victor said, pulling her back close.

That was what she was afraid of—that this music would never end. Her skin crawled where he’d touched her. “But I need to ask you something important, Victor. A life-and-death favor.”

“Then you should be trying to please me now,” Victor replied, flashing his teeth in a grin as he moved his body against hers. He was handsome, Anna thought, amid the heat and the lights and the pounding rhythm of the dance music. She could see why her sister had had a crush on him since girlhood. Too bad he had such an ugly soul.

Aware that she was playing with fire, Anna wanted to run from him, far away from this dance floor.

But where would she go?

Besides, though he might have hurt business rivals in the past, he would never hurt her, she tried to reassure herself. She’d known Victor since she was eighteen years old, when he’d gone into business with her father and had personally asked Anna to become his secretary. True, she’d spent five years fending him off, but now she had no other choice but to ask for his help. If she didn’t want to be completely at Nikos’s mercy she needed a favor from the only man who could fight him and win.

“Victor—”

“Call me Vitya, like you used to.”

That was Natalie’s nickname for him, not hers. “Victor, please, if we could only—”

A hand suddenly gripped her wrist, pulling her away.

“Get away from her, Sinistyn,” Nikos said.

“Stavrakis.” Narrowing his eyes, Victor wrapped his arm around Anna’s waist, pulling her back so hard he almost yanked her off her feet. “You’ve got some nerve to come into my club and start throwing orders. Get out before I throw you out.”

“You? You’ll throw me out? Or do you mean one of your goons will do it for you?” Nikos drawled lazily, in a tone that belied the threat in his posture. “We both know you wouldn’t have the guts to do it yourself.”

Victor smiled at him, showing sharp teeth. He looked over the dance floor. Anna noticed his bodyguards hovering close by. Apparently, this gave Victor courage. “I don’t see Cooper with you tonight. It was a mistake to leave your guard dogs at home, you Greek—”

Anna physically came between them, pushing them apart. She felt sick. She’d thought Nikos would wait for his bodyguards, giving her at least thirty minutes to privately conclude her business with Victor. Having him come so quickly, and alone, had shot her plan apart.

“Please, let me go,” she said to Victor. “I need to talk to Nikos anyway. I—I’ll talk to you more later.”

For a moment Victor looked as if he were going to pummel the smirk off Nikos’s face anyway. Then he shrugged and said shortly, “As you wish, loobemaya. Go. Until later.”

He walked off the dance floor. Nikos looked as if he meant to deliver some rejoinder, but Anna grabbed his hands, forced his attention back to her. “What are you doing here?”

Nikos’s anger came back to focus on her. “The question, madam, is what are you doing here? Dancing with him? Dressed like that?”

“I can dress as I please—”

He interrupted her. “You will never see Victor Sinistyn again, do you understand?”

“No, I don’t. You’re not my husband. You’re nothing—”

With a growl, he dragged her off the floor, through the crowds and out of the club. She struggled, unable to escape his iron grip.

Outside, the cooling desert air felt fresh against her overheated skin. She took several deep breaths, trying to calm her fears as he retrieved his motorcycle from the valet.

This was going to work. It had to work. She’d use the threat of Victor to force Nikos to give her joint custody of her son. And set her free.

Tossing a tip to the valet, Nikos threw a muscular leg over the motorcycle’s seat. For a moment Anna’s gaze lingered on his body, on the way his snug black T-shirt accentuated the muscles of his chest and his flat belly, on the tight curve of his backside in the dark designer jeans.

“Get on,” he ordered, his eyes like ice.

Carefully, Anna climbed up behind him on the motorcycle. She gave a little squeak as he revved the engine and roared down the street without a word of warning.