‘Leave them.’ He keyed in the code for his turbo lift.
‘Absolutely not. No way am I letting the cleaner find my knickers and stuff all over your office floor!’ She ran back and started gathering them. ‘And don’t just stand there, pick up your own damn clothes.’
With a husky laugh, Sakis followed and picked up his discarded clothes. Then, because she really couldn’t stand to leave them, she gathered the strewn papers and placed them back on the desk. When his mocking laugh deepened, she rounded on him.
‘Next time, you pick them up yourself.’
He caught her to him and smacked her lightly on the bottom. When she yelped, he kissed her. ‘That’s for disobeying me again. But I like that you admit there’ll be a next time.’
She looked up and her gaze caught his. For the first time, she glimpsed a vulnerability she’d never seen before in his eyes. As if he hadn’t been sure she would let anything like what had happened occur between them again.
Desolation caught at her heart. She would pay a steep price for letting this thing continue but the need to be with him in every way until she left was too strong. Going closer, she raised herself on tiptoe and kissed along his jaw.
‘There’ll be a next time only if I get to go on top.’
* * *
Sakis jerked awake to the sound of a phone buzzing. Beside him Brianna was out cold, worn out from the relentless demands he’d made of her body. The same lethargy swirled through him, making him toy with the idea of ignoring the phone.
The buzzing increased.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he started to reach for his phone, but realised the ringing was from Brianna’s.
Getting off the bed, he hunted through their discarded clothes until he located the phone in her jacket pocket.
Palming it, Sakis hesitated again. Relief coursed through him when it stopped ringing. But, almost immediately, it started to buzz again. With an impatient sigh, he pressed the button.
‘Anna?’ A man’s impatient voice, one he didn’t recognise. Not that he had first-hand knowledge of the men who called Brianna, of course... A spike of intense dislike filled him at the thought of anyone who’d been given the permission to call her...Anna?
Sakis frowned. ‘You’ve got the wrong number. This is Brianna’s phone. Who is this?’
And why the hell are you calling at three a.m.?
Silence greeted his demand. A moment later, the line went dead.
Sakis pulled the phone away and searched for the number. It was blocked.
Dropping her jacket, he went back to bed and set the phone down on the bedside table. He tucked his arms beneath his head, unable to stem the unease that spiralled through his gut.
He had no grounds to suspect anything other than a wrongly dialled number. It could be pure coincidence that another man had called his lover demanding to speak to Anna.
And yet, Sakis was still awake two hours later, unable to shake the mild dread. When the phone pinged with an incoming message, he snatched it up before it could wake her.
With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he slid his thumb across the interactive surface. Again the number was blocked but the words on the screen iced his spine: