Theos, what was it about fatherhood that made the past feel more vivid and present than it had in decades?
Not just fatherhood. Marisa. The diametric opposite of his own mother but with the same power over her son in her hands.
He swallowed the poison away with more wine, determined not to ruin this evening by allowing thoughts about his mother and the past to intrude.
The main course over, staff cleared their dishes away. Marisa got to her feet. ‘I need to put Niki to bed.’
‘Stay for dessert?’ he coaxed.
She shook her head while unclasping the highchair straps keeping their son contained. ‘It’s way past his bedtime.’
Loving the way her silhouette played under the moonlight, Nikos looked her up and down. ‘Seema can put him to bed tomorrow night and you can stay with the grown-ups.’
She didn’t rise to the bait, lifting Niki from the highchair. ‘I like to put him to bed myself.’
‘You like to do everything yourself.’
‘Only when it comes to this little one.’ She leaned Niki towards Stratos so he could kiss his great-grandson goodnight then placed a polite kiss of her own to his wrinkled cheek.
Nikos watched her subtly brace herself before she carried their son to him. He took full advantage of her nearness, slipping an arm loosely around her back to keep her close. ‘Goodnight, moro mou,’ he said to his son as he smacked kisses over his face. When Marisa attempted to step away from him he trailed his fingers to her hips and slipped a finger into the pocket of her snug linen trousers. ‘Don’t I get a goodnight kiss, agapi mou?’
Her features tightened as her face made the tiniest of jerks before she found her composure and turned her flashing eyes on him. ‘Of course.’
He heard the breath she took before she lowered her face, their son in her arms making her movements careful. As her plump lips made light contact with his cheek he turned his face and their lips brushed. The moment of contact was fleeting but enough for him to taste the heat from her mouth. Heady warmth unfurled in him and coiled through his bloodstream.
Face bathed with colour, blinking rapidly, holding their son like a shield, she stepped away from him. When her eyes met his again there was dazed accusation in them.
‘Goodnight, agapi mou,’ he murmured, holding the stare. ‘Sleep well.’
She took another step back then inclined her head and turned. Moments later, she disappeared inside.
It took a few more moments for Nikos to pull himself together.
Shifting in his seat, Nikos topped up his and his grandfather’s wine glasses.
‘Your son is going to be a real character,’ his grandfather said with a chuckle.
Nikos smiled in response and took a large drink of his wine. His blood still pumped unexpectedly hard from the effects of the fleeting kiss.
‘I never thought I would live to meet a great-grandchild, least of all from you.’
Nikos was an only child but had a dozen cousins he’d run amok around Chora with. He kept in touch with a few of them and the rest he saw at the usual family events of christenings, weddings and funerals. ‘It was as big a surprise to me as to you.’
His grandfather’s gaze became serious. ‘You need to marry her.’
Nikos’s good mood ended with those five words. ‘That isn’t necessary.’
‘You won’t think that if she stops you seeing him.’
‘Marisa wouldn’t do that,’ he refuted automatically.
‘You don’t know that for sure. I raised you but she didn’t tell me about him, and don’t tell me she didn’t know how to, she had the means and money to contact me if she’d wanted, and she has the means and money to fight you if she decides to stop you seeing him.’
‘She loves him too much to do anything but what’s best for him.’ But his grandfather’s cynical words had set off a pounding in his head. Hadn’t similar thoughts already occurred to him?
‘Her opinion on what’s best might mean keeping him from you. What is best for him—and you—is having parents who are married.’
‘My parents were married. That was hardly best for me.’
His grandfather winced. ‘That wasn’t marriage’s fault. That was the drugs’ fault.’
‘They hated each other with or without the drugs.’ And neither had cared a jot for him, he thought with a stab.
‘They loved each other once. It was the drugs that ruined them.’
Nikos bit back his temper. He wasn’t prepared to fall into another argument about it. His grandfather had a more sympathetic view of the past. Nikos supposed that was Stratos’s love for his son still wanting to see the best in him despite all the evidence to the contrary.
‘I only remember them as being at war with each other. I’m not going to put Niki through that. We’ll formalise a custody arrangement when he’s old enough to be parted from her for periods of time.’
‘And when will that be?’ his grandfather challenged. ‘Do you see the way she is with him? She watches him like a hawk. It will be years before she allows you to have him without her.’
The ring of truth in his grandfather’s words reminded him of how the colour had drained from her face when he’d asked if Niki could come to Mykonos. The colour had only returned when he’d clarified he meant for her to come too. He remembered, too, her earlier reaction to him employing a nanny. By her own admission, Marisa liked to do everything for their son. She did not like her judgement on his welfare to be challenged.
But marriage?
‘You will have to hope she’s amenable to a formal arrangement,’ his grandfather added into the silence.
‘She will be.’ But Nikos’s words sounded unconvincing to himself.
‘I know you hate the idea of marriage but, remember, it doesn’t have to last for ever.’
He flickered his eyes to his grandfather. His marriage to Nikos’s grandmother, had been tragically cut short by her death from ovarian cancer four decades ago. Stratos had never said it in words but from the little he had said, Nikos had intuited the marriage had not been a happy one. His grandfather had enjoyed many lady friends since his wife’s death but had never remarried or lived with another woman.
By the time his grandfather retired to bed, the doubts Stratos’s words had sown had solidified his own fears into weights in his guts.
* * *
Too uptight to sleep, Marisa, baby monitor in hand, opened the glass door in her room and stepped out onto the balcony.
Putting the monitor on the wrought-iron table, she stepped to the balustrade and breathed deeply as she gazed out at the Aegean lapping on Nikos’s private beach in the near distance. If she inhaled hard enough the faint salty tang might clear her mouth of the taste of Nikos that no amount of minty toothpaste could eradicate.
A throb of heat pulsed in her abdomen. Their lips had connected for barely a second but that second had been long enough for their breath to meld together and for any hope of control to be shattered.
She wriggled her shoulders to fight the shiver lacing her spine as she replayed the sensual tone of his voice when he’d bidden her goodnight, and forced her attention on her surroundings rather than the melting mess she was in danger of turning into. Look at the stars! See how they reflected off the black sea. See how they shone so brightly. The Valencian suburb the Lopez estate was located in was renowned for its wealth and beauty but it had nothing on Nikos’s home. This had everything, beauty and peace.
What secrets were contained within its boundaries?
Many secrets. She was certain of it.
She’d intuited his childhood had been very different from the happy idyll of her own, but never had she guessed it had been bad enough that his grandfather had taken custody of him. He’d never even hinted at it. All she’d really learned about his childhood was that he’d lived and gone to school in Chora
until he was fourteen, when he was sent by his family, as he’d put it to her, to boarding school in England, and the names of his childhood friends, many of whom he was still in contact with.
She squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to drive Nikos’s image away. She’d come out here to clear her mind, not think about him even more.
But not thinking about him was impossible when she could feel his presence in the buzz of her veins and when so many old familiar feelings were blossoming and singing and anticipation quivered low in her pelvis.
When she opened her eyes, she noticed for the first time that the long, wide balcony stretched further than the limits of her room. Tightening the sash of her satin robe, she followed her curiosity to the end of it and discovered the balcony was shared with the room next to hers. The curtains running the length of the glass wall were drawn but that didn’t stop her taking a step back and then quickly padding back to her own half.
Tingles danced over her skin as instinct told her the adjoining room was Nikos’s.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS LATE when Nikos carefully opened the nursery door and tiptoed to the cot. Staring down at the innocent sleeping form, he lightly stroked his son’s soft cheek as his mind ran through the myriad ways Marisa could keep them parted if she so chose. It was all he’d thought about since his grandfather had vocalised the unease that had been steadily building inside him about Marisa’s power.
She did have the money and the means to make life as difficult as she wanted it to be for him to see his son. She loved their son in a way his mother had never loved him, and if his own mother could turn her back on him, what was there to stop Marisa from doing the same? Her wealth didn’t compare to his but when coupled with her protectiveness of their son and the imperious majesty she could turn on like a tap, it would make her a formidable opponent if she chose to fight him.
Nikos had never backed down from a fight in his life but those fights had never had a flesh and blood child at its centre. His own childhood had been wrecked by neglectful, warring parents and, though this situation was very different, he would do everything in his power to stop his son going through anything remotely the same.
However much the concept of marriage turned his stomach, it would give him greater authority and legal protection, and make the custody issue smoother when they eventually divorced. More civilised.
He bent over and kissed his son’s forehead. ‘Sleep well,’ he whispered.
Niki had been a part of his life for such a short time but already he knew that, for his child, he would do anything. Even marry his mother. And in the process stop her ever having the opportunity to take his son from him.
Now all he had to do was convince Marisa, and as he closed the nursery door behind him, his lips curved into a smile and his skin prickled with arousal as he imagined the most effective way of getting her agreement.
* * *
Marisa sat back on the plush heart-shaped seat in the corner of her balcony and took a deep breath to calm herself. Her heart had leapt into her mouth when the baby monitor’s green light had flashed to indicate movement in the nursery. She’d been on the verge of charging into the room when Nikos’s whispered voice had sounded through the monitor.
The cartel was defeated but the paranoia that had dogged her the last year lived on.
The semblance of peace she’d found on the balcony was further disturbed moments later when the door at the far end slid open and a shadow fell over the moonlit marble flooring.
Heart immediately striding into a canter, she hugged the satin robe she’d slipped over her short silk pyjamas tighter around herself and strove for nonchalance at Nikos’s approach. The canter became a ragged thrum when she spotted the bottle of white wine and two glasses in his hands.
‘I thought you were tired.’ A smile played on his handsome face. A smile that made her belly turn to goo.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘This should help you.’ He pulled up a chair by the table, positioned it close to her, opened the bottle and poured them both a glass. Gaze holding hers, he held one out to her. ‘Here.’
She shouldn’t. Definitely not. What she should do is wish him goodnight—again—and go back to her room and lock the door behind her.
They hadn’t been alone together, not properly, not just the two of them, since the night of his return.
She absolutely should not allow herself to be alone with him under the moonlight.
She took the glass from him with murmured thanks and put it to her lips. It was crisp and delicious. Much like the man her eyes were locked on.
He gave another stomach melting smile and relaxed into his chair. He was sitting so close to her his knees were inches from her feet. ‘What’s on your mind?’
‘Nothing important.’ Seeing his eyebrow rise lazily at her obvious lie, she added, ‘We share this balcony?’
‘Yes. My room’s next to yours.’
‘Oh.’
‘But you had already guessed that,’ he said knowingly. ‘You were waiting for me.’
The rush of heat to her cheeks was so excruciating she couldn’t find the words to deny it.
Because his words were the truth.
She’d hurried away from his end of the balcony back to hers and sat on this very seat with a cocktail of emotions racing through her blood. The strongest had been anticipation. She just hadn’t realised it until Nikos had vocalised it.
‘Don’t be embarrassed, agapi mou.’ He put his glass on the table and leaned forward to take her bare foot in his hand and gently pull it onto his lap. ‘I know it will be impossible for me to sleep knowing only a wall separates me from you.’
‘I...’ She tried to breathe. Tried to find the will to pull her foot away and drag her stare from his face.
Ever since Nikos had returned she’d done everything in her power to avoid his gaze. And this was why. Once caught in the depths of his light brown eyes there was no escape.
His fingers made feather-light circular motions over her toes.
Why wasn’t she resisting?
‘There’s no shame in wanting someone,’ he whispered. His circling movements reached her ankle. Flaming shivers licked her skin. ‘Or shame in admitting defeat.’
She tried to snatch air in.
‘We have both tried to fight the inevitable,’ he continued with that same sensual huskiness in his voice. A finger slowly traced up the inside swell of her calf. ‘It is like the tide fighting the moon.’
She wanted to deny it. Loudly. Scream that he was wrong.
But that would be her wounded pride screaming. Nikos had broken her heart then stamped on the shattered pieces for good measure. There was nothing left of her heart for him to damage.
Nikos saw the emotions play out over Marisa’s face. He noticed every pulse in her eyes, every ragged movement of her chest. He saw the flush of colour on her cheeks and the way her breasts strained towards him and the outline of her nipples pressed against the fabric of her nightwear. And he saw the fight she was waging against herself.
His fingers crept to the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. ‘Do you still have feelings for me?’
Her throat moved but still she didn’t speak.
He inched his seat a little closer, nudging her thighs apart with his knees as he swirled his fingers even higher. ‘I still have feelings for you.’ His fingers reached the hem of her silk pyjama shorts. ‘I try to forget you but there has been no one since you.’
Her breaths were coming in short, ragged bursts. When he slowly slipped a finger under the fabric of her shorts, her body trembled. He could feel the heat coming from the heart of her femininity and inched his thumb closer to the core.
She jolted, eyes widening.
‘I’ve imagined us together so many times,’ he whispered. He could see her trying to bring herself back into fo
cus, and ran his thumb up the lips of her pleasure until he reached her swollen nub. Her back arched, breaths now coming in pants.
‘I remember your scent.’
Keeping the pressure on her nub, he slid a finger inside her. Her head fell back. A soft moan escaped her lips.
‘I remember your taste. I remember how good we were together.’
With a trembling hand she pulled the sash of her robe apart and then unbuttoned her pyjama top, exposing the breasts he’d once carelessly thought had been designed especially for him.
Then, breasts swaying with the motion, using her elbows as support, she lifted herself upright until she had a hand clutching the collar of his shirt and her molten brown eyes met his.
‘Nikos...?’ His name sounded like it had been dragged out from deep inside her.
Nikos was so turned on that now he was the one struggling to speak. ‘Yes, agapi mou?’
She pressed her pelvis tighter against his hand and covered his free hand, lifting it and placing it on her breast. ‘Stop talking and take me to bed.’
And then, still holding tightly to his shirt, her head fell back and she shuddered violently.
* * *
The tattoo of Marisa’s heart drummed loudly in her ears as she fought for breath.
Her hand clutched Nikos’s shirt like a vice. The strength of the orgasm that had just erupted within her should have drained the arousal from her but the ache in her core still throbbed.
Leaning closer to her, he moved his hand out from under her shorts and slowly wound it around her back.
She met the hooded stare with a frankness she had denied them both these past weeks. His lips were tightly set, nostrils flaring as he breathed in and out. His body had gone rigid.
She inched her face closer to his until she felt the heat of his skin against her own and the musky scent of his skin and the faint scent of his cologne soaked into her senses. She rubbed her nose against his cheekbone and breathed him in some more, releasing his shirt to bury her fingers into the soft dark hair and dig the tips into the back of his skull.
The Secret Behind the Greek's Return Page 9
