His Mistress for a Million by Trish Morey Page B

actress Cleo was as stiff and unyielding as a block of cement. As a mistress, she’d been a total failure. And she would continue to be, until she got over this problem she had with being with him. He tossed the car keys Petra had given him onto a dresser where they slid straight off and fell with a clatter to the tiled floor. Behind him she did the startled thing again, jumping as if he’d just thrown the keys at her. And the quicker she got over it, the better. ‘What do you think I mean?’ He tugged off his already loosened tie and shrugged off his jacket.
    Pointless!
    She stood there in the doorway to the bedroom, knowing only that he was furious. Meanwhile Andreas had kicked off his shoes and peeled off his socks, tossing them into a corner. The shirt was next, exposing once again that muscled chest to her gaze. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. She was transfixed.
    ‘Couldn’t you have even pretended to be my lover? Why do you have to jump like a startled rabbit every time I touch you?’
    ‘Because you do startle me. I can’t help it!’
    He swore under his breath. ‘We should have slept together last night. Instead we wasted a perfect opportunity to get comfortable with one another.’
    His trousers hit the ground and he kicked them carelessly aside. She wanted to resent him for his arrogance, for his knowing that the hired help would pick them up, for his wealth that allowed him to be that way, and most of all for assuming that she would abandon the one condition she’d set on this arrangement. But he made it so hard, too hard, when, instead of mustering a defence, she was busy admiring his lean powerful legs and the way his muscles played under his olive skin with the action.
    Her mouth was dry, her blood thick and thumping slow. ‘I don’t understand. I told you I wasn’t prepared to sleep with you.’
    He looked up at her then. ‘No, you didn’t. You said no sex. I told you there would be times where we would have to share a bed and you made no protest.’ He looked up at her, her feet still stuck to the floor in the doorway. ‘Go on, then, get undressed.’
    Her mouth went dry. Get undressed . She could be in a doctor’s surgery, awaiting an examination, but then the order would be a request and it would be gently and considerately done, with a curtain provided for her modesty and discretion. Here, she was somehow expected to take off her clothes and climb into bed with Andreas glowering at her, dissatisfied and unrepentant. ‘Andreas, I…’
    But he was already leaving the room, striding barefoot through a door to a room she could see brimming with marble and gilt. Seconds later he returned, stopping dead when he saw her still there, rooted to the spot. ‘You’re planning on going to bed fully clothed? At least I won’t have to put up with that flannelette armour.’ The black silk pouch that was his final barrierhit the floor next, leaving him gloriously naked before her. He was beautiful clothed, carrying himself with an authority and presence that turned heads, but naked he was magnificent, broad shoulders that tapered down to a tightly packed waist and lean hips. He was so beautiful, just the sight of him caused her blood to sizzle. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard against a throat filled with cotton wool as he flipped down the covers and slid into the bed.
    ‘Last night,’ she began. ‘Last night I had my own bed. Why can’t I now?’
    ‘Last night we were in London. I told you we might have to sleep together, to keep up appearances. Given there is only one bedroom in this suite and the fact my offices are here, it wouldn’t look good if word got out that my latest mistress was sleeping on the sofa, because I certainly don’t intend to. Don’t worry, I’m sure I can resist you.’
    She didn’t doubt it. But sharing the same bed as him, lying alongside his naked body when she already knew how his touch turned her flesh alight, she only wished she could be so