“Don’t be foolish, Nikolas,” Aris muttered, needing to bring this to where he’d always wanted it to be with this family, to the personal level. “You think losing one contract, no matter how big, can break me?”
Nikolas shrugged his immaculate shoulders, the very picture of nonchalance. “It would be the beginning of a slow but sure end for you.”
Aris compressed his lips. The man seemed to be even more intractable than his father, and he hadn’t thought that was possible. “You have my replacements in place? Does anyone have the resources, the experience and clout, not to mention the vision and flexibility to accommodate your needs, fulfill your demands and showcase your products? You’d end up in limbo without me, and we both know it.”
“We’ll worry about that when you’re out of the picture.”
“Don’t fool yourself into thinking your father worked with me only because he was forced to. He knew I was the only one who could do his work justice.”
“Maybe. But I have always despised the hell out of you, and I’ve never been an advocate of ‘the devil you know.’”
“Let’s get personal on our own time and dime, Nikolas. We have tens of thousands of futures and billions of dollars in stock riding on our decisions. You made your point, I got it. Now enough. You know you’ll end up putting your hands in mine.”
“Not as long as I have anything to say about it.”
Aris jumped on that. “Your…siblings aren’t on board on this?”
“You know what, Sarantos? You should be hailed as a miracle worker. You’re the only thing my siblings and I agree on.”
He should have known.
Aris exhaled. “If you force me, I’ll fight you. You won’t like it.”
Nikolas’s Adonis face radiated pure pleasure. “Ah, finally. The threats. That’s more like it.”
Aris exhaled again. “I’m not here to threaten you. I’m here to ask you not to force me to do that. You may believe I’m indiscriminate in my need to be the lone man on top, but if I were, I’d have crippled you and made an example of you. And even if destroying you also toppled me to the bottom rung, I would have clawed my way back to the top. I did that the first time, after all.”
Nikolas’s smile died and he held Aris’s gaze. Unmoved, immovable. But Aris knew. Nikolas had been working to establish an equal importance in their dealings, something his father, no matter how much Aris had needed his collaboration, hadn’t managed. Aris had just assured him of how much he valued Louvardis, implied his intention of granting them that equal standing in their future contracts. Nikolas wasn’t shaking his hand yet, but he could feel the first signs of relenting, of appeasement.
Aris pressed his advantage. “Let me talk to your legal advisor on this contract. I’m sure we can come to an agreement.”
Next second, Aris almost kicked himself.
He shouldn’t have brought her up. Suddenly his imperturbable adversary became the irrational Greek brother who’d rather not have any male know his kid sister existed, no matter that she was one of Louvardis Enterprises’ head legal strategists.
Nikolas all but grew scales and breathed fire. “You’ll talk to me, or to the counselors I assign to deal with yours. She’s not available.”
“She’s actually right here.”
That voice.
That velvet melody, that siren song that had replayed in Aris’s mind in its dizzying range of expressions. Prim in formality, ragged in emotion, abandoned in pleasure, frenzied in climax then drowsy in satisfaction. It now reverberated in his bones with the force of a nearby explosion.
She was here.
Aris swung around, Nikolas and the world disappearing as his awareness narrowed to a laserlike focus, seeking her.
And his hopes that his memories of her had been exaggerated disintegrated like a wisp of cloud under a tropical sun. For there she stood, far beyond what he’d been telling himself for a year and a half had been his wildly embellished recollections.
Even though she was walking toward them with the French door pouring sunlight at her back, she looked every inch the moon goddess she’d been named for. Tall and sure and commanding, serene and voluptuous and hypnotic, in a white pantsuit that hugged each of those curves he remembered with distressing clarity owning and exploiting, as if to taunt him that he no longer could. Her waterfall of ebony tresses undulated like pure darkness with the languid rhythm of her approach, and those moonlit-sky eyes shrouded in veil-of-night lashes poured royal-blue steadiness and indigo neutrality over him.
It was the challenge of her unaffectedness that managed what even his most dangerous enemies had not. They rattled the shackles of the beast he kept subjugated within him, inflamed him into unchecked frenzy, sent him roaring.
At that moment he knew.
He didn’t still want Selene Louvardis.
He craved her.
It had been slow starvation that had been eating away at him, at his ability to rest, to relax, to replenish. He’d kept hoping he’d fatigue the hunger’s choke hold on him until it released him. He’d been waiting to be cured. That was why he’d stayed away. Not to observe the logic of evasion, but from fear he’d get confirmation that what she’d aroused in him was unstoppable, unrepeatable. Indispensable.
And he’d gotten confirmation. With just one look.
That look was also enough to make him reach a resolution.
No matter the price, to anything or anyone, starting with himself, he would have Selene Louvardis again.
She stopped a few maddening steps away, a slight incline of her head sending the heavy waves of her hair cascading over her shoulder. The rich mass gleamed like a raven’s wing against the whiteness wrapping her. His hands itched to weave through its luxury, to twist it around his hands, to secure her proud head by its anchor, to bend back that elegant neck for his passion.
And he would. He’d made up his mind. She would be his again.
For now he savored the abrasion of her disregard. It would only heighten the pleasure of her capitulation.
Ignoring his presence, his gaze, she focused on her brother.
“You have no call deciding what I’m available or unavailable for, Nikolas,” she said, her voice even, her expression a flatline. “But the only agreement I’ll reach here is with you. Any more ‘talk’ with Mr. Sarantos will be done through our legal teams.”
Before Aris could rouse himself from the grip of fascination to think of an answer, Nikolas’s phone rang.