Claimed by the Sicilian Tycoon (Criminal Seduction #3)(17)

She swirled her espresso around her little cup, shooting him a look from under her lashes.


“So how does seeing me again fit into our discussion last night?”

“Discussion?”

“In the restaurant.”

“Ah.” He paused as he recalled exactly what it was she had been asking for, and how she had been asking for it. Andros hadn’t thought it through last night. The desire had been too intense, the need to sate himself impossible to ignore, but he thought about it now, and slowly shook his head. “It does not, at least not in the way you mean.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You want me to make you my mistress,” he said, making sure that he was not mistaken, that her intention was quite clear.

She nodded, leaving him in no doubt. “Yes.”

“I’ve never taken a mistress before,” he said. “Not in the sense you mean. People assume a billionaire foreigner is bound to have many, no? It never appealed to me though. I have neither the time nor the patience to devote to one woman.”

And that was simple truth. Though Andros had many women, one after the other over the years, he never kept them for long; there was no need. His looks, his riches, everything brought him an endless queue of them, and he was not arrogant about it—it was simply a fact. He knew that they plotted and schemed to not only get into his bed, but into his life as well. All of them in the end wanted marriage, and he was sure, no matter what she said, that Lyra was thinking along the same lines. She probably imagined that a mistress position was just one-step away from being a wife. Only Andros had no intention of marrying yet, and when he did it would be a woman from his own country. A sweet, charming Sicilian, who understood his background and his culture. That woman would give him lots of dark haired Sicilian babies and he would spoil and pleasure her.

Lyra was not that woman.

She never would be.

But how he wanted her.

“What you ask for is…” He shrugged. “Unexpected. Different.”

“I see.”

“Only you are different, are you not? This between us.” He waved a hand between them. “Is just as unexpected.”

“Do you mean out of the blue?” she asked. “Because you know, we both know, that it wasn’t.”

He nodded at her honesty, pleased to hear those words. Pretending that this was a chance occurrence would have angered him. Lyra, it seemed, recognized that. He found himself appreciating her bluntness.

“I am not talking about how we met,” he said. “Though that is something I will need more details on fairly soon. I don’t know what it is,” he added, frustration at that, as well as his lust filled state, prodding him. “I wish I did, but there is something about you, Lyra, that makes me want to devote an awful lot of time to you right now. Preferably with you naked and panting.”

She laughed softly. “Then you will do as I asked? Give me what I want?”

He shook his head. “I do not think so.”

“But you want me, so why not?”

“Because I do not take mistresses, difference or no. It is not something that appeals to me.”

“I see.” She sighed and drummed her fingers on the table. Andros wished he knew what was going on in her mind, what she was plotting. But then she spoke, and he realized that whatever he might have guessed at was far from what he heard. “Then I guess it is time for me to leave.”

“Excuse me?”

She shrugged. “If you want me, Andros, it has to be the way I said.”

She’d managed to shock him again. Andros did not like it. “Why?” he demanded.

“Because right now, in my life, that is what I need.”

“Need?”

“Yes,” she said. “I can’t just spend the next few weeks sleeping with a guy—even one as hot as you—as and when he demands, with no security attached. I need some sort of security in my life right now.”

“And you think this is the way to get it?”

“It is one of the ways. It’s the one I prefer over the others at any rate.”

Others? Andros felt anger fill him as he imagined what those other ways might be. He hoped to God she was not talking about other men because that was not going to happen. The thought of another man burying himself exactly where Andros wanted to be was unacceptable. He clenched his fists as his competitive instincts kicked in. Since he was young getting exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, had been what drove him. It was that drive that had allowed him to amass an eye watering fortune, to put himself in the absolute elite. And the fact was, he wanted Lyra. Why, he didn’t know, but there was something about her. Something that made him lose a little bit of judgment. She was just so f*cking hot. Everything about her screamed sex and pleasure. He wanted to f*ck her until he was sated. Until he tired of her. It wouldn’t take long, a few weeks at most…


“What are the other ways?” he demanded, his mind already planning ways to remove those obstacles.

She took a sip of her espresso, grimacing slightly as she did so. “You don’t want to know, Andros. Didn’t we talk about me keeping a little mystery?”

“Last night I f*cked you until you screamed.”

“And?”

“Mystery between us is nonsense now. Answer my question.”