by Kali Anthony
Well, tonight it was all for him. She knew a thing or two about control, and this was a battle she’d win.
She looked in the mirror and fluffed her hair till it hung messy and wanton. He liked it long and loose, so he could bury his hands in it as he held her tight for a searing kiss. She shivered. No. This was about Christo. His pleasure, not hers.
She smoothed her dress. Black. Fitted. The fabric soft and silky against her curves. She’d decided against a bra. A teardrop gold pendant hung low in her cleavage. She turned to look at the back. Saw the way it hugged her rounded backside. It was her least favourite feature. Though Christo seemed to love it, from the way he’d grab her and draw her close as they kissed.
Thea smiled over her shoulder. She had an idea... She bunched up her dress and shimmied out of her underwear. Nerves fluttered in her belly. There. He’d know the minute he touched her. She’d soon see if he could stop himself tonight. He’d lose himself in her. She’d ensure it.
She’d organised a candlelit meal on her favourite terrace. Secluded, peaceful. She reached the beautifully appointed table and took a glass of champagne to quell her nerves. She had no doubt Christo would make her mindless with pleasure, but could she do the same for him?
Best not to think too hard... Simply act. Touch, tease, tempt...
‘Thea.’
She whipped around as the sound of his voice caressed down her spine. He tugged his tie through the collar of his shirt, winding it around his hand before tucking it in a pocket. Then he undid the two top buttons. She swallowed, her mouth dry.
‘Have some champagne.’
She poured for him. As usual, he feasted on her with his gaze. Scorched her with a head-to-toe appraisal that had her wanting to shed her clothes and bare herself to him.
How could he do this to her? Needing this man had never been part of their arrangement. Yet the ferocity of her desire seemed as natural as breathing.
He took the glass she handed to him and placed it on the tabletop, drew her close. His lips were upon hers before she could think. His tongue explored her mouth greedily as his hands slid over her body. She turned liquid, her core aching.
He pulled back, an eyebrow quirked. ‘Nothing under the dress?’ He chuckled, a low and throaty sound that wound through her on a fiery journey. ‘Koukla mou...’
She’d taunted him in the past to say those words with feeling. Tonight they were rough and coated with desire. The way she’d dreamed of them being said. And the need in his voice punctuated every syllable.
She slid her arms around his neck and looked into his face. The hunger smouldering there almost cut her off at the knees.
‘Have dinner with me,’ she said. ‘Let me take you to bed. Make love to you.’
‘I thought that was what we’d been doing.’
‘You know what I mean, Christo. You said you’d give me anything. Now I want to give you something in return.’
He brushed a lock of hair behind her ear and smiled. ‘Ah, the demon that’s been unleashed. My beautiful temptress. You should’ve been called Eve.’
‘I want you.’
She dropped her hand between them and brushed it across the hard bulge in his groin. His breath hitched.
‘I want this. One word and you’ll have me on my knees, showing you how much.’
‘Never kneel for me, Thea.’
Kneel for him? She’d worship him.
‘You’re worth more than you know.’
He hesitated, a look of something like uncertainty on his face. It was striking in a man she’d once thought was certain of everything.
‘I’m not—’
‘Shh...’
Thea placed a finger on his lips and stopped him. She wrapped her arms around his neck. He dragged her close and plundered her mouth. Drove her back till she hit the balustrade. His hand went to her left breast, teasing the nipple until it pinched and hardened through the soft fabric of her clothes.
She’d have him here. Now. Out under the stars. She didn’t care who could see. She’d never get enough of this man.
He groaned her name. Hitched up the back of her dress and smoothed his large, warm palms over her bare buttocks. Slid a hand between her legs and stroked her.
‘Wet. Perfect. Ready for me.’
‘Always. Please.’
Thea gripped the front of his shirt, crushing the smooth white fabric. If he didn’t do something soon she’d combust.
She fumbled with the front of his belt, trying to undo it.
‘Protection...’ he said.
‘No time. Don’t care.’
He took a step back and stilled her hands. ‘We do have time. You should care.’
He couldn’t do this to her again. She wanted to feel him naked against her. Hear him groan and shout her name as he found release, lost control, all because of her.
She stifled a sob. ‘I need to be yours.’
Christo bundled her into his arms and whispered fiercely in her ear. ‘We’ll go to my suite, and I will use protection.’ His thumbs grazed her nipples and she shivered. ‘Then I am going to bend you over and take you so deeply you won’t remember where you end and I begin. And you will never doubt that tonight you’re mine.’
This wasn’t going to plan, but she didn’t care. Christo didn’t believe her words, so she’d show it with her body. In bed, she’d prove how worthy he was.
He took her hand. They began walking towards the house. At the French doors leading inside he looked down at her tenderly. ‘Should I carry you?’
Carry her over the threshold? The meaning loomed large.
Yes.
But before she could answer Sergei rounded the corner with Anna. They stopped.
Christo glared at the interruption. ‘What?’
Anna looked at her toes. Sergei merely stared straight ahead. When he spoke, his voice was impassive.
‘Mr Callas. It’s your father.’
* * *
If time could stand still, he’d have chosen hours ago. Out on the terrace with Thea’s arms around his neck, her eyes burning into him. The words ‘You’re worth more than you know...’ on her lips.
But time had stopped here. In a darkened room, with an old man.
Christo sat in a chair by the bed. Wherever he’d gone now, at least his father looked peaceful. That was what the nurse had said. It had been a good death, whatever the hell that meant.
He’d sped here and he’d been too late. A private nurse had sat with him in his final moments. Laid him out. Christo didn’t know how he felt about that. It was as if his insides were hollowed out. His skin and bones a mere shell around nothingness.
He stood and walked to the door. The nurse hovered outside. ‘Once again, Mr Callas, I’m sorry.’
Christo nodded. ‘My father did things in his own way and in his own time.’
‘He left me a note to give you. For this moment.’ She handed over a white envelope and placed a hand on his arm. ‘It was my pleasure to look after him for you.’
She smiled. Patted him and walked away. Leaving Christo alone in the long hallway.
He strode out of the house as if death itself was chasing him. His chest heaved with the need for air. He burst out through the front door and bent at the waist, gasping for breath.
It was over. Time to go and start making arrangements. Try to maintain the lie of his father’s legacy.
Christo slid into the car he’d parked at the front of his father’s house and drove through the darkened streets. The whole world lay asleep, which was what he wanted to be too. Insensible to everything.
He drove through the gates of his home into the garage, where he sat for a moment. The white envelope taunted him from the passenger seat. He tore it open and read.
Dear Christo,
Now is a time to dwell on the living, n
ot the dead...
There were instructions for the funeral. Who to invite, who to forbid. Advice on the allowance made for his mother, which would keep her in some style, but would not be enough to make either her or her lover happy. There was some talk about his joy at his son’s marriage and his hope for grandchildren.
Hope. For a future which wasn’t Christo’s to have, not knowing how to love. Selfishness was the only lesson taught to him.
He crushed the empty envelope in his hand. Turning over the letter, he read the final page.
I know you won’t grieve for me. That I was not much of a father.
I can’t change how harshly I treated you, though the past is what made you the man you are now. But of all the hopes and regrets a foolish man has at the end, the one message that stays with me is this:
Never believe you weren’t wanted.
What did that mean? He hadn’t been wanted by his mother. She’d barely even acknowledged his existence once her future was secure. And as for his father—unloved by the wife who’d craved the money and not the man, searching for love again and again and in the process almost destroying Atlas.
The capacity to love didn’t run in his parents’ veins. Their blood had been passed to him.
And now he’d tried weaving Thea into his poisoned web of selfishness and subterfuge. He’d effectively held her captive. Then she’d offered to make love to him without protection. She had to know that meant the risk of pregnancy. That if she conceived their child there was no letting her go.
But now the reason to keep her had gone.
He dropped his head to the steering wheel. The gnawing ache of realisation filled him with endless torment.
He didn’t know how long he sat there. Only that his muscles were stiff and the world was cold.
A shadow crossed the driver’s window and the door cracked open.
‘You can’t stay here all night.’
Thea’s voice was a soft caress on his wounded soul. She took his hand and led him through the darkened house to his room, where she peeled off his clothes, stripping him layer by layer. Then she lay down on his bed. Inviting him to her. Inviting him home.
He fell into her. This woman who gave and gave. But if she stayed too long he would take everything, leaving her a husk.
The leaden weight of the evening crushed him. He couldn’t move. Wrapped in comforting arms which smoothed over his body, curling around him as if she was bandaging all the pain, he’d rest a while. Let the beautiful light of her soul illuminate all his dark places.
He still had time. Because just before his darkness extinguished her flame he would let her go.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A WEDDING. A FUNERAL. Christo knew what came next but had been putting off the inevitable. The will had been read, his mother’s hysterics managed and the estate divided. There was no reason to cling to what couldn’t be.
Coward.
He knotted his tie, tightening it like a noose around his neck. As he did so Thea rose from the bed naked and wrapped her body around his, wishing him a good day at work in the best possible way.
He slid his hand into her soft, warm hair. The silken strands held the exotic scent that was all her. He breathed her in. Each morning their ritual was the same. He’d get ready early, in the hope of leaving without seeing her, but something would always draw him back to the bedroom where they now spent every night. She’d ignited a hunger in him that wouldn’t be sated.
Thea tipped her head back and smiled. ‘Will you be home early tonight?’ Her voice was husky, holding the promise of another indulgent evening.
How could he be in the presence of such a woman? This goddess like Aphrodite risen from the ocean? Someone who gave and gave, when all he wanted to do was take?
But he’d made her a promise. One he’d keep.
He had no knowledge of how to love. His parents had seen to that. Obsession? Yes. Sex? For sure. But Thea deserved more. Her youth and her life had been stolen from her by her father, her brother and now him. She deserved to choose a man to love—not be sold to the highest bidder for another’s benefit. To be free from her cage. To have fun and go out, with her own money and resources.
That was what she’d planned and that was what he’d give her. No matter how much the thought squeezed his heart till it almost stopped beating.
He dropped his mouth to hers and claimed it. Her lips were soft and drugging and she sighed, opening to him. His tongue slid in to taste her. Pure nectar. As sweet as honey. Her breathy sigh chased away all common sense as her body taunted and tempted him. He returned the kiss as if it was his last day on earth.
She moaned. ‘Do you have to go to work at all?’
Yes. Today was his most important day. The day when he’d try to be the man Thea deserved.
She’d thank him. Maybe not now, but in the end.
‘I have meetings. Don’t wait up for me tonight.’
One more night with her and he might not do what needed to be done.
He pulled Thea in for a last, lingering kiss. The bright glow of her beauty warmed him. When he let her go that light would be gone. Darkness would take over again. It was what he knew, so he’d welcome it like an old friend. They could reacquaint themselves over a bottle of cognac in a lengthy future of lonely nights together.
He called his driver and left for his first and most important destination of the day.
The ostentation of the Lambros Bank’s headquarters disgusted him. But it was where the story of Christo and Thea would end. When he’d called for a meeting Tito and Demetri had asked him to come here. No doubt they wanted to impress, to instil fear. It wouldn’t work. He feared no one. Especially not these craven men. His only aim was to ensure that by the end of today Thea had everything she deserved.
He strode into the building and punched the lift button for the top floor. Their arrogance was laid out in front of him as the lift doors slid open on the pompous gilt and antiquities adorning the executive suite’s foyer. There he sat in a cold leather chair. Waiting as he knew they’d make him.
He didn’t care. It gave him a few more moments to cherish the gift of Thea. He twisted the wedding ring on his finger, felt the smooth gold warm under his touch. Still shiny and new. Witness to the privilege of being her husband. Of doing this for her.
‘Mr Callas?’ An immaculate blonde woman greeted him with a smiling mouth and unsmiling eyes. ‘They’ll see you now. Sincere apologies for the delay.’
There was nothing sincere about the look on her face. He followed her dismissive gesture through a wooden door into an office of cream marble and garish gold. Tito Lambros sat at a massive desk which looked as if it had been hewn from a solid piece of stone. As cold and hard as the man behind it. Demetri was perched on its front corner like a bird of prey waiting to strike. A large painting hung behind Tito, full of darkness and violence.
Christo raised an eyebrow. ‘Jesus casting out the moneylenders. By El Greco, I believe?’
‘I didn’t know you had an interest in art,’ Tito drawled.
Christo cocked his head, his voice full of menace. ‘I’ve acquired an eye for hidden treasures.’
‘As indeed this was. Locked away for centuries. A private collector found himself in some difficulty, so I helped. Or rather his sale of the painting to me did.’
‘A strange picture for a banker to own...’
‘You think? It’s an attempt to get rid of us, and yet we’re still here. It shows that in the end we always win.’ Tito gave a slow and evil smile. ‘I see it as a telling reminder to those who want to believe otherwise.’
Christo smiled back. Ah, the fall would be so sweet when it came...
He took a seat, without being invited.
‘Once again, I’m sorry about your father,’ Tito went on. ‘Of course it means Atlas Shipping is now yours. To succeed wit
h or fail. It would be a shame for my daughter if it were the latter.’
His daughter. Even now Tito hadn’t relinquished her. That would change soon.
‘Thea hasn’t anything to fear from me.’
He’d failed her once. He would never fail her again.
He turned to Demetri. ‘You took something of hers. A necklace her mother gave her. I want it back.’
‘That cheap trinket?’ His lips curled into a sneer. ‘I misplaced it.’
‘Then that carelessness will cost you,’ Christo said, his voice sharp and cold as a steel blade.
‘My son’s only careless with meaningless things,’ Tito said. ‘Luckily I have it.’
He opened the drawer next to him, pulled out a slim gold chain with a pendant and tossed it across the desk. Christo caught it in one hand.
‘But you didn’t come for a necklace. Why are you here?’
Now the game would be played—a game he planned to win.
Christo slipped the pendant into his suit pocket and lounged back in his chair. ‘You lied. Thea wasn’t a willing partner in this marriage. I’m granting her a divorce.’
Demetri pushed himself up from the corner of his father’s desk. ‘That’s not what was agreed. You owe my father.’
‘Atlas Shipping owes your father’s bank. Personally, I owe him nothing. Except contempt.’
‘How dared you? That loan—’
Thea’s father lifted two fingers and Demetri was silenced.
‘That loan was a noose, designed to throttle me at the appropriate moment,’ Christo said. ‘But now Atlas’s loan repayments are up to date. I rectified that oversight of my father’s. And by the end of the week the loan will be repaid in full.’
Tito regarded Christo over steepled fingers. ‘Paying back early means penalty interest—which you can’t afford. It’ll ruin you or take you close.’
