‘One night won’t work for me,’ Nikolai admitted in a driven undertone.
Ella’s heart was thumping at what felt like a mile a minute behind her breastbone. Relief and dismay assailed her in equal parts. Naturally she was very relieved not to be asked to immediately deliver on the shameless proposition she had just made, but she was taken aback by the speed and power of his repudiation as well. What did he really want? What on earth more could he possibly want or expect from her?
‘Then I only have one other...suggestion to make,’ she murmured tightly. ‘You marry me.’
‘Marry you?’ Nikolai exclaimed after an unnervingly protracted pause while he studied her with incredulous force. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
She had finally got an honest and true reaction out of Nikolai Drakos, Ella realised, and a curious feeling of triumph mingled with her mortification. The idea of getting married had shattered him, scoring colour along those amazing high cheekbones, widening his stunning dark-fringed golden eyes. Evidently he had not been prepared for that idea.
CHAPTER THREE
‘IT WAS A purely practical suggestion from my point of view,’ Ella told him curtly.
‘You need to change your point of view,’ Nikolai retorted with sardonic bite.
Her face was burning with embarrassment and her hands had closed into tight little fists of restraint. If he couldn’t be more frank about exactly what he needed from her, then he could take the rough with the smooth and it would be his own fault. ‘I can’t. You would have to marry me to persuade my father that it was acceptable for you to write off his debts. He’s no freeloader.’
‘There is no way that I will marry you to get what I want!’ Nikolai cut in with a raw edge of impatience to his dark deep drawl.
‘Then that concludes our discussion,’ Ella stated without heat, simply desperate to escape the opulent hotel suite and forget that she had ever met him. As her father had said when he had put the family home on the line and lost it, well, at least he knew he had tried. Well, she now knew what it was like to try hard and still fail too.
‘Diavole, Ella!’ Nikolai bit out as she reached the door. ‘There has to be another way!’
Ella spun round. ‘No, there honestly isn’t. My father couldn’t live with the idea that his daughter would move in with some man to clear his debts.’
His melted caramel eyes suddenly flashed as brilliant a gold as sunlight. ‘You have the rare ability to make everything sound sleazy!’
‘No, you just don’t like plain speaking...unless it’s you doing it. And you talk in riddles. You asked me to be your mistress yet you say no to the chance to sleep with me.’
‘Obviously I want more from you than sex. I can get sex anywhere, any time,’ he assured her dismissively.
Frustration roared through Ella. ‘I’m not a secret heiress, am I?’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I thought I might be the sixth cousin of some distant relation who’s worth a fortune and that you had found out and that maybe—’
‘Your imagination is more inventive than mine. But in that situation a man would want marriage to secure his share of the inheritance. However, in this instance...’ Nikolai compressed his wide sensual mouth.
Marriage, even a fake marriage, was out of the question. Nikolai had never wanted to get married. From the little he remembered of his irresponsible parents, they had fought continually and spent their money on alcohol and drugs while neglecting their two children. He probably wouldn’t have survived early childhood without the loving care of his older sister, who had had a real live baby to look after instead of a doll. No, Nikolai would be perfectly happy to leave the world without descendants of his own. Nor could he imagine wanting one woman for the rest of his life and shunning all others. He barely repressed a shudder because he set a high value on his freedom of choice.
‘In this instance?’ Ella prompted.
‘I need you with me in London.’
‘But as I’ve already explained, you can’t have me without a wedding ring. You know, I don’t want to marry you either,’ Ella admitted shortly. ‘But if it makes my family happy and secure again, I would do it for their sake.’
‘I wouldn’t even consider it. I will deal with your family,’ Nikolai said flatly.
‘What on earth do you mean?’
What it really came down to was how far he was prepared to go in his efforts to punish Cyrus, Nikolai reflected. A fleeting image of his sister’s gentle smile, brought to the surface by memories of his background, froze him in place. There should be and there would be no limits to his desire for revenge. If others got caught up in the backlash, what was that to him? He could not afford to have a conscience. Ella was a pawn, nothing more.
‘I will tell your family that we’ve been seeing each other and that now we want to be together in London,’ Nikolai explained smoothly. ‘Your father cannot struggle to settle debts that no longer exist. He will not have the luxury of choice.’
‘You think it’s a luxury for me to be able to choose to be your mistress?’ Ella launched at him furiously, rage bubbling up through her slight body like a hot spring at the prospect of that indignity. ‘But I’ve already said no to that option!’
‘Which is wasting my time and your own! You can’t renegotiate the terms just because you don’t like them. I won’t let you. There will be no single night, no marriage either,’ he asserted in a harsh undertone, his lean, darkly handsome features forbidding in cast, his stunning eyes hard as black diamonds. ‘Either you come to London to be with me or I walk away. That’s the only choice you have!’
The raw tension straining the atmosphere sent a wave of dizziness through Ella. Consternation brought her defensive barriers crashing down. He had ruthlessly rejected her options. Her head swimming a little, she closed her hands over the back of a tall chair to force her body to stand steady. She stared back at him with a sinking heart. It was the moment she had been fighting to avoid since he’d first confronted her earlier that day. The ‘grit your teeth and deal’ moment when there was no room left to wriggle. Perspiration dampened her skin.
‘Your sole source of interest here should be the pay-off,’ Nikolai reminded her drily. ‘And learning to do as you are told.’
In the rushing silence, Ella wrinkled her nose. ‘If I don’t agree with something, I’m hopeless at doing what I’m told.’
‘But you can learn,’ Nikolai sliced in, his tone as glacial as ice water. ‘Don’t sign up for this if you can’t respect the rules.’
‘Perhaps you could tell me how I’m supposed to respect a man who wants me even though I don’t want him?’ Ella shot back at him in scornful challenge.
‘Do you always lie in preference to telling the truth about yourself?’ Nikolai enquired dangerously softly as he strode closer.
Ella found herself backed up against the door before she could grab the opportunity to make the swift exit she had originally planned. ‘I’m not lying—’
Nikolai rested the palm of one hand against the door and gazed down at her with hard dark eyes. ‘The worst of it is that you know you’re lying...but I don’t play that game.’
‘I want to leave.’
‘Not until I say you can,’ Nikolai fenced, so big he was like a wall blocking the rest of the room from her view and cutting out most of the light, so that for the first time she wished she were wearing heels to cut the ridiculous height differential between them to a more reasonable level.
Ella turned up her face, chin tilted at an obstinate angle, green eyes sparkling. ‘I could use my knee to persuade you.’
‘Why would you damage a part of me you hope to enjoy?’ Nikolai countered.
‘It would take an avalanche to crush your ego, wouldn’t it?’
‘If I was modest you would walk all over me with pleasure.’ Nikolai was entranced by the glorious green of her eyes against the smooth, fine grain of her porcelain skin. ‘But that’s not what you want from me, is it? You’d much prefer me to take your choices away and give you the excuse to be with me.’
‘That’s rubbish!’ Ella gasped, barely able to credit that he had made such an allegation. ‘I don’t want or need an excuse to be with you!’
‘Ne...yes, you do,’ Nikolai insisted, pinning her up against the door in blatant entrapment. ‘You want excuses and persuasion and, sadly, you’re not going to get them from me. That’s not how I am with a woman.’
‘Fascinating as this dialogue no doubt is to a man who likes to listen to the sound of his own voice, I’m not interested.’
‘Every time you lie to me I’ll punish you.’
‘Punish me?’ Ella parroted, blinking in bewilderment.
Nikolai bent down and scooped her up, disconcerted by how very light she was. Yes, she was small and slight in build but he was convinced she weighed too little to be healthy. Nikolai walked through the room into the bedroom with her in his arms. ‘You’ll like the way I punish you.’
‘What are you doing?’ Ella exclaimed as he swept her off her feet.