from sex before battle and it was a good one. Sex weakened even the strongest of men, and Alexei was never weak—not any more. Not since the cheating witch he had married had disappeared from his life.
‘Put her through,’ he told his assistant softly.
In her poky London apartment, Victoria waited to be connected, clutching onto the telephone with a palm which was becoming clammier by the second. She was dreading this more than she could remember dreading anything—but maybe she would be immune to him by now. Immune to his potent sexuality and his unrealistic expectations of her as a woman and as a wife. Because she was not his wife, not any more—except in name—and even that wouldn’t be for very much longer. She was no longer bound to him—she had been freed from the stifling prison of marriage to the formidable Greek. What Alexei thought was no longer her concern.
Just stick to the facts, she told herself as she stared at the pile of bills which just seemed to grow higher by the day. Tell him what you want as quickly as possible, and let that be an end to it.
And then at a last there was a click, and she heard a voice clip out one single, cold word. ‘Ne?’ A familiar and threatening voice, and one which made the surface of her skin prickle and the beat of her heart begin to thump madly beneath her breast. Immune to him? As if.
‘Hello, Alexei.’
Black eyes glittered at the sound of her soft English voice, but he kept his voice as neutral as if he were talking to any other enemy. ‘Ah, so it is you,’ he said tonelessly. ‘What do you want?’
No, Hello, how are you, Victoria? Not even an attempt at social niceties—but what had she expected? Solicitous enquiries after her health from the man whose vicious parting words to her had been, ‘You’re nothing but a cheap, common tramp, and I rue the day I ever married you!’?
‘I … I need to talk you.’
‘How fascinating,’ he said, his voice deadly soft, like a tiger moving silently through the undergrowth towards its helpless and unknowing prey. ‘About what, precisely?’
Victoria closed her eyes. The words of her lawyer came back to her.
‘If you’re after a swift settlement, I would be cautious in how you handle him, Mrs Christou.’ And his even more disturbing follow-up. ‘Your husband has the upper hand. Not because he’s in the right, but because he’s rich. Very rich.’
He was right, of course. Rich men always won, because they could afford to employ lawyers to play long and obstructive games for them. And Alexei was richer than most. Millionaires were ten-a-penny in today’s world, but Greek shipping billionaires did not exactly grow on olive trees. The last thing in the world she wanted was a protracted fight over money. Just as her lawyer had said … she must handle him carefully.
Victoria opened her eyes and stared hard out of the window at the grimy grey chimneypots of the London skyline. She was far enough away to pretend that she was talking into an answering machine, not to the charismatic Greek she had married.
Yet the simple words she had rehearsed over and over remained stubbornly stuck in her throat. Or was she simply reluctant to say them—knowing that once they had been uttered it really would be over? Because wasn’t there a tiny part of every woman who wanted to hold on to their marriage—even if it had been a bad one? Everyone wanted to hang onto the fantasy, the dream of happy-ever-after.
‘I …’
‘Why, Victoria—you seem almost nervous.’
She could hear the cruel mockery in his voice. Keep cool, she told herself. ‘Not exactly nervous,’ she corrected him. ‘More like apprehensive—and are you surprised? We haven’t spoken in so long.’
‘I know we haven’t,’ he said, stifling a moan—for the brunette was inching her fingers to where he had already been hard but was now harder still. He watched as the light gleamed on the scarlet of her fingernails and tried to shift the image of Victoria from his mind. Of her coming to him pure and untutored and him teaching her everything he knew about the art of love. He shuddered.
‘Alexei?’
The voice at the other end of the phone broke into his confused thoughts and he groaned as he pushed the woman away. She sank back on her knees and stared up at him with a look of reproach, her scarlet lips shimmering as they folded into a faint pout. He shook his dark head and the pout intensified. But how could he have her do that to him when all her could think about was Victoria? Damn her! Damn her!
‘Alexei?’ Victoria frowned as she thought she heard him steady his breathing. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Ne.’ He smiled at the brunette. The kind of smile which said, When I’m finished with this damned phone call, then you can take me in your mouth and suck me dry. ‘But I am busy.’
So nothing had changed. Alexei Christou—a man with a mission and a tunnel vision which blinded him to everything other than making the Christou empire the biggest shipping company in the world. At least, that was what the papers said. Victoria had only seen his lust for power in its embryo stages—when it had devoured his life and excluded her, and begun the slow process of the disintegration of their marriage.
‘What is it that you want?’ said Alexei impatiently, giving a barely perceptible shake of his head as the brunette slid her fingers between her thighs and began to rub herself. Wait, he mouthed, and she pouted again.
‘There are matters we need to discuss. Did you get the letter?’
‘And what letter is that?’ he enquired disingenuously. ‘I receive many letters in the course of a working week. So many, in fact, that I can barely recall some of them. Refresh my memory for me, Victoria. What did it say?’
Don’t let him intimidate you. You’re no longer nineteen and madly in love with a dream. You’re an independent businesswoman—even if you’re not a terribly successful one. She gave a thin smile … understatement of the century.
‘You know very well what it said. It was a letter from my lawyer,’ she said flatly, ‘telling you that I intend to file for divorce.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It’s pointless ignoring it, Alexei—it isn’t going to go away.’
‘You want a divorce?’ He gave a soft, taunting laugh. ‘What makes you think I’ll give you one?’
‘Give me one?’ she echoed. ‘It isn’t your gift to make! You don’t have a choice!’
They had married young—Alexei had barely been out of college at the time, but his power and authority had grown in the intervening years. There were few people—in fact, not one—who would have dared to speak to him in such a way. His face darkened—and yet didn’t he feel the delicious thrill of conflict? Wasn’t there a tremor of excitement at the thought of doing battle—especially with her? For, deep down, didn’t the corroding thought remain that he had never really crushed her—as she deserved to be crushed. The woman who had cuckolded him with another man!
‘There is always a choice, Victoria mou. But what is this sudden rush? For seven years we have been apart, and you have shown no signs of wanting to be legally free of me. Why now? Have you decided to marry ….?’ He said something harsh in Greek which caused the brunette to look at him in shock. ‘To marry your lover?’ he finished in English—making the word sound as if it had nothing whatsoever to do with love. And it didn’t. It was all to do with possession—and even now the thought of his wife having another man do to her the things he had once enjoyed filled him with a murderous rage.
‘Is that why you want a divorce, Victoria? To please the man who has replaced me? Is it the same one you broke your marriage vows with? The one you took into your body before our marriage was a year old?’
Victoria swayed, a horribly familiar nausea clutching at her stomach—but she didn’t bother trying to correct him. He wouldn’t believe her