Claimed for His Duty. Tara Pammi

      Blinking at the glare of light from a crystal chandelier overhead, she took in the dark oak floors and the blue sea outside the window.

      Instead of the din, so nerve-racking that she swayed, utter calm reigned.

      On shaking legs, she stepped out, dripping water everywhere. Her shoulders shook with the effort it took to keep standing.

      A towel came straight at her with a resounding, “Cover yourself.”

      She buried her face in the plush cotton, taking the few seconds of privacy it afforded to shore up her defenses. But the contemptuous note in his tone pricked, as if a needle had punctured her skin and drew blood.

      Fighting the urge to stay behind the towel, she straightened her spine and threw the towel back. “I’m wearing a dress, thank you. It’s your fault if it reveals more than it covers,” she said, brazening it out.

      The plush cotton landed on one arrogant shoulder and she saw those broad shoulders tense. Felt his perusal as if he had laid those big hands on her...

      Which was the strangest, scariest thought she had to have ever had.

      “I see that you still don’t know what is good for you then, Leah.”

      Gathering her wet hair in one hand, she squeezed the water out. Forced an indifference she didn’t feel in the least. Because the reality of her reaction to him was too scary. “More like an allergic reaction to you. I’d rather catch pneumonia and die than be saved by you.”

      He reached her suddenly, a wall of fury and contempt that narrowed her very world to him.

      Fear and confusion and so many things that she had battled over the last decade deluged her.

      The overhead monster lighting illuminated his stark features—a sharper slap to her senses than the ice-cold water, but it was the tawny eyes that knocked the breath out of her.

       Calista.

      Calista had had those same eyes, except they had been kind, quick to smile, always in search of the next thrill, luring men into her orbit like a spider did with her web.

      Her gut twisted into that insidious, painful knot that crept into her when she didn’t make a conscious effort to turn her mind to something else, something other than Calista and that night.

      It didn’t help. Nothing did. But amidst the shock of seeing him again, something else penetrated through with an insidious clarity as he neared her.

      Set against the severity of his face, the lush lashes and the glittering eyes stood out like an oasis in a desert. Rendering the man impossibly gorgeous, darkly stunning.

      His scent was alien, yet alluring.

      Leah breathed in a lungful before she could stop, a feverish shiver taking hold of her limbs that had nothing to do with her wet dress.

      “Stavros, I—”

      Long fingers crawled up her nape into her scalp, tilted her up, while the other hand clasped her jaw loosely.

      He studied her every feature with such thorough appraisal that her insides turned into gooey pulp.

      No one had even touched her in so long...it had to be why she could feel his touch like a brand on her skin...why such heat was pooling under her skin and rushing to the fore.

      Why she wanted to sink into his rough touch more than she wanted to breathe...

      Until she realized what he was doing.

      He was checking if her pupils were dilated, wondering if she was high.

      She stared into his glittering gaze, noted the concrete set of his jaw. Saw a shadow of something in his face that hurled the words past her throat. “I’m not high, Stavros.” It came out as a whisper, an entreaty, and Leah recoiled at that pleading tone.

      When he didn’t relent, she grabbed his wrists. Every cell in her rose to attention as the whorls of hair there tickled her palm, as a shot of electricity sparked in the air.

      “I remember the last time you said those words...” He sounded as if he was far away, in another place, another time.

      Leah jerked his hand away, the heat from his body potent in its draw. Her skin tingled, every muscle in her rearing to get closer to him to soak up that deceptive warmth. She would freeze to death before she sought anything from him. “I’m telling the truth, Stavros.”

      I have never touched drugs, she wanted to scream, like she had the night when Calista had died. But he hadn’t even acknowledged her teary words.

      His teeth bared in an entirely cold smile. “Ditching your security detail, lying to Mrs. Kovlakis, appearing on Dmitri’s yacht of all places—which is infamous for its wild parties, and knocking back drinks, forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.”

      How unfailingly polite he was... He had done that before too, even as he had ruined her life.

       You can either marry me or you can go to jail, Leah. The choice is yours.

      “It got your attention, didn’t it?” she said, realizing too late she had given herself away. Not that she had meant to keep it a secret.

       CHAPTER TWO

      “WHAT?”

      Stavros loosened his grip on Leah, struggling to get himself under control, struggling to get his neurons to fire again.

      Guilt roiled through him, a heavy pulsing weight in his gut, something he had managed to subdue into a dull ache. But one look at Leah was enough to unman him again.

      He took a step back as a sharp scent combined with the scent of her skin teased him softly, the cold from her arms clinging to his fingertips.

      Frowning, he muttered a curse.

      For the first time in his adult life, he lost the razor-sharp concentration that had made him a force to be reckoned with in the business circles of Athens. For several seconds.

      “What did you say?”

      She glared at him. “You, Stavros. You were the prize in this tacky show. If you had returned a single phone call, if you had read even one of my numerous emails to you... So, of course, I had to lower myself to your standards, didn’t I?”

      “My standards?” He was beginning to sound like an idiot and yet, it seemed his brain’s higher functions had fractured.

      An ominous thud started somewhere in the regions of his heart. His gaze swept over her with a swift greed he had no chance of curbing. The gold silk dress was almost the color of her skin that had a golden tone that no amount of spray tan could manufacture.

      The result was that the dress moved sinuously against those high breasts, dipped at her waist, painting an erotic picture of almost nudity that had knocked him for sixes when he had first spied her at the bar.

      Any traces of the curvy, awkwardly brazen girl he had married were gone. Instead, the woman who stood there—the delicate contours of her face rendering her infinitely fragile, her body bordering on scrawny, which made her breasts stand out even more—was a complete stranger.

      “This is what you expect of me, isn’t it? So I delivered. And here you are, in front of me, for the first time in five years as if I had conjured you with a spell.”

      A spell, as preposterous as it sounded, could be the only thing that could explain how dumbfounded he was.

      Her long brown hair was plastered to her scalp and sprayed her face with drops of water when she rubbed it roughly. And every move was touched with an elegant sensuality that, he knew, was more innate than manufactured.

      He had handled her so roughly just now, blinded by fury and fear. And any time he felt that unbalanced, his temper took a nasty