Free The Savakis Merger by Annie West Page A

billionaire’s plaything for the night!

    Yet she had no choice. She couldn’t, wouldn’t turn her back on her cousin. No girl deserved to have her life blighted as Callie’s had been in a contract marriage. Not where all power rested with an older, powerful husband who saw his wife as a chattel, not a real person with feelings.

    That thought steadied her nerves.

    ‘You look stunning,’ he murmured. ‘You know how to dress to please a man.’

    Bitterness twisted in Callie’s belly. Alkis had chosen this, as he had all her evening dresses. He’d selected expensive outfits that showed off his wealth and too much of her flesh. Though impotent, her husband had enjoyed making her flaunt herself, despite her protests, or perhaps because of them. He got a perverted kick out of parading her half-naked before other men. As if their thwarted desire compensated for his own inability to consummate the marriage.

    He’d revelled in the sight of their tongues hanging out as they undressed her with their eyes. But it hadn’t stopped him lashing out at her in private for supposed infidelities.

    Oh, she knew all about dressing to please a man. That was why she hated this dress. It made her feel tainted.

    ‘I thought you’d appreciate the dress.’ He was like the others, interested only in her body.

    ‘Tell me,’ he purred in a voice that rubbed like velvet over her bare flesh,
    ‘are you wearing anything under that?’

    Callie’s forced smile froze on her lips as a shiver of trepidation swept through her.

    Fear threatened to puncture her carefully constructed mask of indifference. For this wasn’t like before, when they’d come together in a joyous rush of mutual desire. This was something beyond her ken. There was an edge of danger to this situation. He looked so…predatory, as if he wanted to gobble her up with one snap of his jaws. There was nothing warm or gentle about the hunger in his face.

    A frisson of stark panic sped down Callie’s backbone.

    ‘Would you prefer it if there wasn’t?’ Surreptitiously one slim heel slid back on the flagstones, till she realised what she was doing and forced herself to stop.

    She’d made up her mind to do this. If she didn’t please Damon it would be disastrous. This way her family would retain their home and Angela would be free to marry Niko.

    Only Callie would be stripped of her dignity, and her privacy. Her mind shied frantically from the thought.

    Yet after all she’d endured, she’d survive this. One night. One long night. Then she’d be free.

    ‘I like the idea of you coming to me naked beneath the glitter and the haute couture.’ He shrugged. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I’m sure you’ll find a way to satisfy me.’

    Callie’s throat closed on a spasm of horror. How long could she keep up the pretence of indifference? Already she was torn between the desire to curl up and hide and the need to have him show again the tenderness that had obliterated all her defences.

    No! She couldn’t think like that.

    Tenderness wasn’t on Damon’s agenda. He looked alert, aware, hungry.
    His stance was a hunter’s, ready to attack.

    ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ He’d been silent so long her nerves stretched thin.

    ‘Of course.’ He stood aside and gestured for her to precede him into the lamp-lit sitting room. ‘Welcome.’

    Said the spider to the fly. Callie shivered at the carnivorous edge to his smile. Her steps were reluctant but she forced herself forward.

    If she didn’t do this she’d regret it for the rest of her days. She would rescue Angela. As she’d wished so often someone had stepped in years ago to save her from making the worst mistake of her life.

    That knowledge gave her the strength to slip past him, chin up, eyes straight ahead. She faltered as she caught his scent, warm and intoxicating, and felt a whisper of desire shiver into life. But anxiety extinguished it as she stepped into the shadowed room.

    She felt