“He didn’t.”
“No.” Apollo shook his head. “We are very alike, Raffa and I. A single betrayal is one too many.”
Her heart twisted hard in her chest. She lifted enormous brown eyes to his face, and they showed him everything: her hurt, her hopes, her apology. But he looked away, perhaps refusing to see it.
“She had the baby and then she left the palace. Goran didn’t want a child, and Elena signed her parental rights away to Raffa. He raised Amit when no one else would. No father could love their biological child more. But Amit will never be in line to the throne, and Raffa will protect him with his dying breath.”
A shiver danced down Eleanor’s spine. “There’s so much misinformation out there,” she said with a shake of her head. “The world is convinced that Raffa and Elena had a great love affair, that Amit was the byproduct. All my research…”
“The world isn’t privy to the true version of events, and never will be.” He interrupted softly. “My friend is as private as I.”
Eleanor nodded, but there was danger everywhere she looked now. Blame, resentment, and an air of hostility that had been completely absent for the past week. It was as if they were back on that first day once more, the article flaring between them like a beacon neither could navigate around.
“That smells delicious,” she said, over bright, wanting only to change the subject.
“Carlotta’s a good cook.” He turned the heat off and reached above his head for a plate, bringing it down beside the frying pan. “Your sister’s child – you said you don’t know who the father is?”
“No.” Eleanor shook her head. “I mean, Elizabeth knows, obviously, but she’s not saying and I have to respect that.”
“And he doesn’t know about the baby?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You think that’s fair?”
“I think… Elizabeth is smart and decent and if she thinks this is the best for everyone then she’s made the right decision. I support her.”
Apollo pulled a face, clearly showing his disagreement. Something else prickled between them. The air was tight with tension and, for the first night in several, they ate in almost complete silence.
Something had shifted. Where there’d been an easygoing friendship forming in the midst of all the passion, there was reserve now. Ice-like distance and, she hated to acknowledge it, disdain.
“You disagree with me?” She asked, after they’d eaten, and time had certainly moved on – but her thoughts hadn’t.
“About what, in particular?” There it was again. Coldness. Rejection. He knew what she was referring to but was making her say it.
She frowned. “Joshua’s father.”
He met her eyes. “I do. And I think you do as well. Loathe as you might be to speak against your sister…”
“I am,” Eleanor said with a soft smile. “And you would be too, if you knew her. Elizabeth is one of the nicest people you’d ever meet. We’re twins, you know, and I used to say that she got all the sweet and I all the sour.”
At this, Apollo frowned. “I wouldn’t agree with that.”
“Oh, you don’t know Elizabeth. Compared to her, I’m salty as anything.”
“Salty?” He repeated, the hint of a smile playing about his lips, and though it was a small gesture, it warmed her all the way through her soul.
“Oh, yes. Very salty.”
“You forget, Eleanor, I have tasted you all over. You are nothing if not sweet.”
Her blood flushed her body and her cheeks glowed pink.
His laugh was her reward. “I’ll never forget that. How innocent you are. You blush at the slightest provocation.”
“I don’t think that was slight,” she said breathlessly, her mind replaying all the times he’d kissed her all over and how good at it he was.
“Perhaps not,” he murmured, lifting her hand. “Well, Miss Jones. Is it time for bed?”
She stood, but there was uneasiness in her now. She couldn’t pinpoint what was making her feel that, but there was something in the way he was speaking that made her feel … cheap.
Disposable.
Meaningless sex.
She froze, midway to the bedroom, her eyes slipped shut. He’d said that in anger, the past had been thick between them then, and resentments that were three years old had been simmering beneath the surface. It had been a week since then, and though that mightn’t seem like long, they’d lived in one another’s pockets, shared so many moments. She’d be a fool to sweat over things he’d said before. Before they’d slept together, before everything had changed.
And just when she was beginning to doubt everything, to wonder at the sense of how completely she was giving herself to this man, he turned around and held out a hand for her, asking for her, needing her. And he smiled, the kind of smile that couldn’t be faked. The kind of smile that reassured every single figment of uncertainty that was shifting inside of her.
This was real. She could relax.
*
He read the article again, as he had been doing often since she’d arrived on the island. He read it as a talisman to reality – as a reminder of exactly who he was sleeping with, and why he needed to remember that Raffa was right.
It wasn’t because his best friend had been furious; no.
Apollo wasn’t a man to let anyone tell him what to do. But Raffa had simply reiterated what Apollo himself knew, and had forgotten.
Raffa had drawn Apollo back to reality – away from the bewitching spell Eleanor had, yet again, so easily cast over him. Raffa had reminded him of what Apollo had simply forgotten.
Despite his determination not to be sucked in by Eleanor Jones and her fascinating, ethereal, captivating beauty, he had been. Plain and simple.
He looked at her and he saw… no, he felt, as though the universe was inside of her.
He felt as though the past and present and future were all mixed together and the world was full of possibilities.
But it wasn’t.
The past was all around them, like an enormous concrete wall, impossible to ignore, and utterly insurmountable.
He was indulging a fool’s fantasy by prolonging this. And he was no fool.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL,” she murmured, taking in the gleaming surfaces of the yacht from where she stood, in the centre of its bow.
He shrugged, nonplussed. “I have a larger one in Athens. But this suits the island.”
She pulled a face. “Show off.”
His laugh was her reward, and it warmed her from the inside out. “Not at all. I was just being honest.”
“I know.” She blinked up at him, smiling, then turned back to the view. The island was close – perhaps a few hundred metres from where the boat had brought them, but it looked so different from here. Perspective was an incredible tool.
She’d thought of the island as a prison, at first, and now she saw it as an anchor. The further the boat went from his house, the stranger she felt.
He put a hand in the small of her back and her heart turned over. It was a small gesture. Meaningless, even, but it wasn’t, because it was natural and simple, as though his touching her was something they both took for granted. She moved with him, further along the boat, to the front, where several white sun loungers were set up. A table was ready with iced-tea and fruit.
She arched a brow. “Carlotta, or you?”
“Eric,” he said, his smile somewhat rueful. “He takes care of the yachts.”
“How many are there?”
“Four.”
“One here, one in Athens…”
He nodded. “One in Sydney, Australia and one in Cannes.”
“So you just have this fleet of expensive boats dotted around the world?”
He shifted his shoulders. “It’s convenient.”
“Really? What do you use them for?”
“Entertaining?”
Her cheeks flushed pink. “This kind of entertai
ning?”
“From time to time,” he said, but then he pulled her into his arms, surprising her and, by the look on his face, surprising him as well. Almost as though he hadn’t expected to need to touch her – it had simply overtaken him.
“You know the answer to that,” he murmured, kissing the tip of her nose, and pleasure and relief flooded her.
There’d been no one else for him.
Because she was special to him, despite how he might fight that.
“What about before me?” She prompted, lifting his shirt from the waistband of his pants so her fingertips could graze his flesh. His eyes narrowed, but she didn’t stop.
“You know that too,” he said darkly. “There were many women.”
“And did you wine and dine them? Romance them on this beautiful yacht? Seduce them with candles and flowers and sweet words in Greek?”
His expression showed consternation. “I do not romance any woman,” he demurred, and went to take a step backwards.
But she forestalled him, wrapping her arms around his waist, holding him to her. “This feels pretty romantic to me,” she said softly, her heart, unknowingly on her sleeve.
His smile was curt. “It’s just a boat.”
She ignored the warning pang in the region of her heart.
“And in answer to your question, no. My prior lovers all understood what I wanted, what I could offer. Which, beyond a temporary stay in my bed, was very little.”
Eleanor swallowed past the knot in her throat. She was different. He’d said as much. “So what? You slept with them and that was it?”
“Why are you asking me this now?”
“I’m just curious. I have no experience and I don’t know that side of you.”
He lifted a brow. “How can you, of all people, say that?”
She frowned, not understanding. “Why would I?”
He reached behind himself and dislodged her arms. “I don’t understand what you mean.” He moved to the platter and picked up a slice of apple. She watched him eat it.
“I mean, I’m asking about who you were before me. I’m asking about the women that you slept with purely for the sake of sex. I’m asking about them.”
“You think you’re not one of them?” He prompted, his expression blank.
She startled, reaching behind her for support. “I … think… No. I’m not.” Her heart was racing. “And you know that.”
“Forgive me if I’m wrong, Eleanor, but we agreed from the outset that you were exactly that. A temporary lover. No?”
“No,” she shook her head, her eyes beseeching, her fingers quivering as she lifted them to her hair. She dragged them through its lengths, pulling the dark mane over one shoulder. His eyes followed the gesture, apparently fascinated.
“You’re forgetting our conversations.”
“I’m not forgetting anything. But that was… a week ago.”
He crossed his arms over his broad chest and she felt like a fool, suddenly. “What does it matter when we made the agreement?” He prompted, and the words were so cold and businesslike! She was floundering, lost for words. She looked back to the villa, needing a beacon more than ever. Needing a talisman to what they’d become.
“It matters because we were different people.” She frowned. “I mean, I wasn’t. I felt the same then as I do now, but you were so angry with me then.”
He expelled a long, slow breath. “You think I’m not still angry with you?”
Her chest heaved. “I…”
“I want you with a passion I can’t explain, but that changes nothing about what I think.”
She swallowed. The water beneath them was as still as a pond, but Eleanor seemed to be lurching. “How can you say that?”
“I tell the truth,” he said simply. “Always.” Unlike you. He didn’t make the comparison, but she felt it. She felt it low in her gut.
“I’m telling you the truth, Apollo, and you’re just not listening. You’re angry with me, and I understand that. But enough is enough. How long are you going to make me do penance? I stuffed up. You know as well as I do that I had no intention of that article ever hitting the press. I would never have knowingly done anything to hurt you.”
He prowled towards her, his gaze heavy on her face, the accusation there lancing her heart. “You should have told me you were a damned reporter!” And for the first time in their relationship, he shouted at her. The words were ripped from his soul as though under torture. He swallowed, and fixed her with a level stare, but his chest was heaving with the force of his breathing. “You lied to me with every breath during those six weeks.”
“I didn’t lie about this,” she murmured desperately, grabbing his hand and putting it on her chest, where her heart was hammering hard. “Everything we were, everything we are is true.”
A muscle throbbed low in his jaw. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in. “Sex?” She prompted, nauseous at the thought that he could so easily simplify their relationship to that simple physical need.
He nodded slowly and then his fingers found the straps of her dress, and his eyes held hers, mockingly, as he pushed the straps lower. Was he mocking her? Or himself? She couldn’t have said. She couldn’t speak. He pushed the dress down, revealing her breasts, and then lifted a hand, cupping one, so she sucked in a sharp breath as pleasure warred with anger.
“You think being angry precludes wanting someone?” He demanded, and he brought his mouth closer to hers, whispering the words so near to her lips that she moaned softly, desire lashing her from the pit of her belly.
“You think that because you’re angry and hurt right now you don’t want to screw me?” His eyes held a challenge. He padded his thumb over her nipple and she swayed forward, so that her womanhood brushed his arousal and she groaned then, low in her throat.
It was all the invitation he needed. He dropped his mouth to her other breast and rolled his tongue over her nipple, flicking it, teasing it, until she was feverish in his arms.
“Sex is sex,” he promised darkly, pushing her dress all the way down, and her underwear with it, so she was naked on the deck of his yacht, and she didn’t even care.
His hand trailed down her side, over her hip, and then curved to the apex of hair at her thighs. She shivered at the intimate contact, and when he slid a single finger deep inside of her, she bucked, hard, her whole body reacting to his touch.
“If that’s true,” she stammered, the words weakened by the desire that was flooding her system. “How come you haven’t been with anyone since me?”
He stilled for a moment, and she waited, but then he moved his fingers faster, and she cried out, as pleasure began to explode low in her abdomen, like the rolling of a wave, moving faster and more urgently until she was ready to burst. She dug her fingernails into his shoulder and he held her clamped around the waist, tight to his body, and just as she was going to explode, he pulled away, just for a moment, his eyes like ice in his beautiful face. He pushed his trousers down, revealing his powerful arousal and he pulled her towards him.
“Don’t mistake the fact that I have been busy with any sense of me pining for you,” he threw the words at her, but he lifted her against him, carrying her to the loungers and sitting on the edge of one. He drew her down, straddling him, thrusting into her so that the pleasure he’d expertly aroused moments earlier finally found release. She bit his shoulder as she came, so that he swore and laughed, a husky sound of disbelief.
“You have been pining for me,” she contradicted, as the waves receded and the first vestiges of thought found their way to her.
“I have been working,” he demurred, and he held her tight to his body, and his mouth found her breast, teasing her nipple between his teeth as he thrust himself deep inside of her. One hand rose to her hair, and his fingers tangled in its lengths, holding her right where she was, where he needed her.
She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t say anything.
She simply felt. But it was like a cyclone of emotions, running rampant through her body.
“You’re lying. To me, and yourself.” The words were breathy, pushed from between clenched teeth, as another assault of passion splintered her being.
“I will not make the same mistake twice.” The dark words broke through the fever pitch of desire he’d invoked, so she stilled, watching him. His cheeks were slashed with dark colour and a passion to match her own clouded his eyes.
“What do you mean?”
He thrust again, and she grabbed his shoulders, already the tidal surge of desire was threatening to drag her with it.
“I will replace you, Eleanor, just as soon as this is over.”
And he lifted his mouth to hers, kissing her, so that the insult and promise of that last threat was locked inside of her, being swallowed by a heart that would never again be the same.
It was always hot between them. Sex was, most definitely, not their problem. But that had been something else entirely. So much anger, so much passion, so much need to simply be with her, to remind her that sex was all they were, had left Apollo with a sense of exhaustion.
He’d spilled all of himself inside her, and now he held her close, breathing in her scent, ignoring the words they’d said. Words that were buried in the back of his brain, words that he would think about later.
Only she pulled away from him, and when she stood up, even Apollo had to see that something was wrong. And the cloud of post-sexual haze dissipated. She stared at him as though he were the devil. Naked, and so heart-breakingly beautiful. Her hair, that stunning long, brown hair, was tussled. He’d done that. And seeing proof of his possession made him hard all over again.
“I want to go home,” she said, looking around for her dress. She bent to scoop it up, and her body was a study in lithe athleticism.
“You’re annoyed,” he said, sighing heavily, bringing himself to standing. Hell, he hadn’t even undressed himself properly, he’d simply unzipped his pants and dragged her onto himself.
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