Seduced into the Greek's World. Dani Collins

      The elevator doors opened, but neither of them moved. She stared into his eyes and he let her see the banked rage burning in his.

      The doors started to close, and he shot out a hand to catch them back. Waving her into the car, he leaned in and pressed the button. “Good night.”

      “Wait,” she insisted, holding the doors herself from the inside. “I probably kind of let him think—”

      “No, you didn’t,” he said flatly. “I did.” And he was so filled with self-contempt, with shame, he didn’t know how to deal with it.

      “What?”

      He looked away, regretting he’d said anything. But he couldn’t let her think he was calling her out for drawing that man’s attention when he was the one who’d put her in the actor’s line of sight in the first place.

      Inhaling to gather his composure, he stepped into the elevator and punched the button for the penthouse, folding his arms and bracing his feet as he faced her. The elevator began to climb.

      “I don’t typically care if the women I take to these things choose to leave with someone else. That guy knows it. Hell, most of the women I date come on to me for an introduction to a crowd like that. I don’t care,” he insisted, because until this evening, he genuinely hadn’t.

      “But tonight you did?” She was very somber, looking up at him with something that approached concern. As though she sensed he was facing a demon, which was as painful as actually looking into the hard light of self-reflection.

      “Tonight I saw how tawdry it is,” he acknowledged.

      The elevator stopped at her floor, making her take a half step for balance. The doors opened, but they stayed in the suspended elevator, the air so thick with tension it held no oxygen.

      “He embarrassed me,” Demitri admitted, teeth locked and trying to hold in the uncomfortable revelation. “He made me embarrassed of myself. You said you weren’t in the same league as the women I usually date, and that’s true.”

      She flinched, taken aback.

      “You’re well beyond anything they could aspire to,” he expounded. “Not as worldly, I’ll give you that, but you have the kind of standards the people I call friends wouldn’t even begin to understand.”

      “That’s not true,” she argued. Glancing out to the hall, she motioned that he should release the door. She seemed embarrassed, as though she wanted privacy.

      As he allowed the doors to close again, she clasped her hands before her, shoulders hunched and defensive, brow crinkled and looking mortified.

      The elevator began the rest of its climb.

      “I’m not worldly, that’s dead-on. But I don’t have any kind of great standards. I came to France kind of fantasizing about having an affair, just like you accused me this afternoon. I mean, obviously not really expecting anything to happen,” she stammered, wringing her hands. “But as I was dancing, I was letting myself think it could. I’m sure I gave him the wrong impression.”

      His brain went supernova, exploding in his head, sweeping out any other thought but that he could have her.

      “If you want an affair, Natalie, I’m your man.” His voice plummeted into throaty depravity, the want in him so quick and intense it tightened his airway.

      Her lashes quivered and her pupils expanded. “I... It was just a fantasy,” she insisted—voice, tone, protest thin and insubstantial.

      The elevator stopped again.

      He pinned the door automatically with the well-practiced step of his foot into the sensor and the rest of him in her space.

      She was off balance, breasts rising in a startled gasp as her hand went behind her, searching blindly for the rail.

      He braced his hands against the wall on either side of her head and took his time gazing on her wary expression, letting her get used to the idea. Some primal part of him deliberately forgot why he’d meant to let her go home alone.

      “The first time I saw you I thought you would have such soft skin.” He leaned close enough to draw in the scent of her flushed cheek, letting their body heat build in the tiny space he allowed between them. Seduction was about giving a woman time to feel the want, then providing the relief.

      “I’m not sure,” she whispered, but her gaze was on his mouth. Yearning parted her lips. “I didn’t mean for you to think...”

      Patience, he warned himself, practically trembling with the avalanche of desire building behind his wall of self-control.

      “I want this...” she whispered.

      He moved in with the skill of a man who always got what he wanted, not by force, but persuasion.

      Her mouth was a tender morsel that made his breath hiss out in gratification as he nuzzled it with his own. She responded hesitantly, then with openness, inviting his full possession, letting him guide her toward the sensual world he longed to explore with her. She was delightful, shy yet generous, eyes closed tight in pained pleasure. When a little sob of capitulation left her, when she brought her hands from behind her back to his chest and splayed them in a promising caress, he drew back just enough to speak.

      “Come with me.”