Oriel guessed that in Alexis’s excitement, having found the statue, he’d forgotten to double-check his partner was indeed bringing up the rear.
Damian swore violently and shoved his arms into his wetsuit. ‘I knew Spyros needed a close watch. Alexis, statue or not, what the hell did you think you were doing not waiting for him?’ he barked at the other diver, who stammered an apology. Damian grabbed his kit and scrambled to put it on. ‘Damned fool, he’ll have the narcs by now and be all over the place. Help me with this. I’d better get down there at once!’
‘I’ll come with you.’ Oriel had already flung down her T-shirt and was zipping up her wetsuit.
‘No, you stay here. It’s dangerous enough already.’
‘I’ve experienced narcosis, I know what to look out for.’
Damian threw her a speculative glance and then scowled. ‘All right, let’s go.’ He turned to Stavros, gesturing in the direction of Oriel. ‘I’ll take Despinis Anderson with me. Fit her with a fresh tank, will you?’
Moments later, the pair were dropping quickly to the seabed. As they swam, powerfully beating their fins, bubbles and sediment swirled around them in the murky grey-blue depths. At first they could see no sign of Spyros, and Oriel had to quell a sense of panic. What if he had swum in the wrong direction, left the security of the wreck and the line, which was their guide to the boat above? He could have swum out of sight by now, disorientated, moving further and further, carried on the currents or a rip tide right out to sea. She took a breath and steadied her nerves. Damian gestured that she should look on the other side of the wreck. She swam a little further, reluctant to lose sight of her dive partner even for a moment; she had come to trust him in the deep water like a beacon in a storm.
As Oriel swam round to the far side of the sunken wreck, her eyes pierced the glinting water, head moving from left to right, scanning every inch of the ground within sight. The mound of the argosy loomed to the right of her, every crevice and cave in the great fossilized hulk of the wreck a dark and threatening maw, which she felt might swallow her whole given the chance.
Her head spun sideways as she detected a movement in the shadows. A fat grouper with mouth agape emerged from one of the caves in what was left of the ship’s hull. Oriel’s heart was beating violently and she willed herself to breathe steadily, not to let panic take hold.
By now she had traversed the side of the boat and was coming round the bow. Still no sign of either Damian or Spyros. She knew better than to leave the security of the wreck, from where at least she knew she would be able to find the line to the dive boat above. She hoped that Damian hadn’t swum too far from the argosy. On the other hand, they had to find Spyros. The headstrong young diver must be out of air by now, surely?
Then her eyes caught a beam of light, irradiating the small pieces of coral and shards of pottery on the seabed a few feet away. She swam over: it was Damian’s torch, lying in the sand. Oh, where is he? Oriel cried silently. Her mind flicked wildly over the possibilities: he might have been in a fight with a giant eel, a tiger shark, something with tentacles … or perhaps, more likely, he had needed both hands to wrestle a violently out-of-control Spyros, the young diver’s brain made paranoid by the effects of narcosis so that he couldn’t recognize help when it was at hand.
She picked up the torch and continued to swim down Damian’s side of the wreck, methodically looking right and left and refusing to let panic take hold. Damian put his trust in me as his dive partner, she told herself. I will not let him down. I can’t behave like a frightened schoolgirl.
She’d done all the courses, every bit of first aid training – she’d been here before. Get a grip! she remonstrated with herself.
Then she saw them.
Damian was half carrying the young diver, who was flailing in his arms like a drunk. He was behind Spyros, holding him with both arms in a chest grip, and he was struggling in the direction of the line. Oriel swam hard to catch up, fins kicking the water desperately. Her mind was already calculating: Spyros must be almost out of air; he wasn’t convulsing yet, thank goodness, so they would still be able to do the required decompression stops.
She caught up with Damian at the line. He had wrapped his legs around Spyros’s torso, leaving his hands free to hold the rope and control buoyancy at the same time. He motioned in sign language for Oriel to bring up the rear, tapping his watch to indicate that she would need to monitor their decompression stops. It felt like an age before they reached the surface. Oriel could only wonder at the sheer power of Damian’s thighs, locked around the prone body of Spyros. She marvelled at his adept control of their buoyancy, maintaining a steady ascent without his arms having to take any strain. Initially, Spyros was still moving sluggishly but, halfway to the surface, he must have lost consciousness and then he became a dead weight, hard to manoeuvre, like a floppy rag doll. Between watching the clock and timing their ascent, Oriel had little time to panic or pray, but relief surged through her when the three of them broke the surface and she saw Stavros and Yanni bent over the deck rail, in the process of lowering a stretcher into the water.
From then on everything became a whirl. The crew helped to haul Damian and Oriel up on to the deck. Once on the boat, Damian ripped off his mask, chest heaving from his exertions, and shouted for extra oxygen for the boy, before directing Oriel to administer first aid. The rest seemed to happen as if she were on autopilot. She was on her knees beside the young diver in a moment, checking for breathing before engaging in resuscitation and chest decompressions. Above them, the sky was still a clear blue, the gulls wheeling in slow circles, but here on deck the pressure was intense, the air almost vibrating with it.
Later, Oriel could only wonder at the strange way the mood changed seamlessly, almost in a heartbeat, as Spyros groggily came to. Suddenly the crew was laughing, slapping him on the back and joking that he must have done a deal with the devil; either that or he had gills and his mother was a mermaid. Spyros himself even managed to muster some of his cocksure spark, boasting that his sponge-diving credentials really had made all the difference in the end, ‘I’m from Kalymnos, after all!’
Damian cast a glance at Oriel as the extrovert diver continued to laugh down the Grim Reaper. He rolled his eyes and an exhausted smile appeared on his face as he dropped down on to a bench, raking a hand through his dripping hair. Oriel grinned back, half elated now that the ordeal was over. This had been a close one, and neither of them ever wanted to experience an event like that again.
Damian cast a black look at Alexis and Spyros. ‘If you two ever do that again, I’ll drown you myself, got it?’ The two men nodded furiously. ‘Right, young man,’ he said to Spyros. Relief dispelled any trace of sternness he might otherwise have aimed at the rebellious youth. ‘Stavros has us on course for the port and we’ll get you to the clinic for a thorough check-up, although you have to thank Despinis Anderson here for her admirable skills in first aid, as well as helping me get your remarkably cumbersome body to the surface.’
At this, the whole team raised a cheer and Oriel blushed to the roots of her hair. Well, she thought to herself, if nothing else, this sorry escapade has brought me closer to the men I’m going to be working with, and that has to be a good thing. But what she barely allowed herself to acknowledge was the closeness she now felt to Damian. Yet it was so much more than that. Warmth flooded her with longing: she yearned to feel his arms around her, his burning mouth on hers. Maybe the almost primal urge she was feeling was simply a reaction to the intense moments of strain they had jointly experienced in the rescue but, whatever was the cause, her legs almost felt like giving way.
Damian was smiling at her and she blushed again. His eyes crinkled at the edges and the brightness of them intensified in the glare of the overhead sun. Then he broke the tension quite suddenly and turned to the crew.
‘What do you all say to a bit of lunch?’ he asked them with a grin. ‘I think we’ve deserved it, don’t you?’
There
was a loud noise of agreement from the men and Damian moved over to Oriel. Despite the hubbub of voices behind him, he lowered his own as he said: ‘You did well out there, Calypso. Thank you.’
‘So did you.’ Oriel’s clear green eyes gazed up at him, and she was lost for more words.
‘Maybe you would like to change before lunch. We’ll not be going down again this afternoon and we can head back early afterwards. We’ll take the artefacts to the warehouse to be catalogued.’ He searched her face as if wanting to say more but refrained, knowing they were not alone. ‘Come, there’s a place with more privacy below.’ His voice was even and Oriel felt that he was making a supreme effort to keep his distance, despite what they had just been through.
He showed her into a spacious cabin with en suite facilities. Again he had treated her with privilege and she was grateful to him. The crew’s quarters were completely separated from this part of the caique.
Once he had disappeared, Oriel stripped and stepped gratefully under the shower. Temporarily freed from the turmoil Damian stirred, she enjoyed the coldish water trickling down her burning skin: it was revitalizing and she felt good as she mulled over the events of the morning. Throughout, Damian couldn’t have been more gentlemanly and considerate towards her. There had been no physical touching she could object to, no phrases in bad taste. Still, the looks that they had exchanged and the remark about the violets proved to Oriel that, like her, he was struggling to keep his desire under control. Now the shared experience of intensity in rescuing Spyros only added to the crackle of electricity between them.
She could hear Damian whistling as he moved around in the bathroom next door and she wondered whether he would bring down his barriers again once they were alone. What did she really want? She had never been stirred by a man in this way – not before Aegina, and certainly not since.
Oriel had often wondered at her motives that night. It was so unlike her to do something so promiscuous, and she always came up with the same answer. She had not given herself to Damian simply because she had just been let down by Rob, and not even in rebellion against her own conservative principles, but because she had felt a compulsive desire to be possessed by Damian himself. This mythological god had suddenly come to her out of the darkness as a gift from the sea, and it seemed to her now that he had appeared in her life for a reason: to teach her about herself. There had been something downright fateful about the whole thing, and now she wasn’t afraid to admit such a foolish thought. She had never forgotten the magic of that night and – although Oriel had felt devastated at his desertion – had never regretted it.
The magic was still there, the desire to be possessed by Damian just as overwhelming, if not more so – every nerve ending remembered his passionate onslaught on her aching body. But then he had disappeared without a word, without a backward glance. It had hurt her, but she had come to terms with it: what else could she have expected on a moonlit night from a stranger on a deserted beach? She had engaged in what was known as ‘casual sex’ and she had got what she deserved.
If Oriel was tempted by Damian’s body just as much as before, now her heart was dangerously beguiled, too. This could be a different situation altogether: love could be knocking at her door, couldn’t it? Still, she didn’t think that Damian would ever love her. Desire her, yes. She had no doubt that the fire that had consumed her all those years ago had been mutual. Men, unlike women, couldn’t feign passion.
How easy it would be to throw caution to the wind again and simply let herself be carried away, to stop thinking about tomorrow, live for the moment; to have a hot, no-strings-attached affair with Damian and damn the consequences. Wasn’t that what he was proposing when he had taken her in his arms the other night?
But for Oriel, the repercussions of such foolish behaviour would indeed be damning – devastating! Another night like the one they’d spent together on Aegina and she wouldn’t only be engaging her body, she would be giving him her whole being. Damian would have his fun and then, after the job had ended, she’d go back to England with a broken heart and he would continue his life on Helios, awaiting a new student conquest, no doubt. It was obvious: Damian’s presence in her life was only temporary, a fact to keep in mind. Always.
Oriel changed into a pair of white shorts and an orange halter-neck top. She tied her hair into a French braid and looked in the mirror. Still wet, it seemed darker, almost golden, and her eyes had a jade tinge in them that made them look almost turquoise. Without make-up and with this sort of hairstyle, Oriel looked about sixteen but then, with an all-male crew on board, she hardly wanted to emphasize her womanliness, even if a secret part of her wanted Damian himself to find her attractive. She put on a pair of flat white sandals and, after a last glance at herself, slipped out of the bathroom … and started violently as she bumped into Damian. He had shaved and his dark hair was wet from his shower. He wore a white T-shirt and a towel was hitched nonchalantly around the lower part of his body.
Oriel stood completely tongue-tied as his eyes slipped to her mouth, to her throat and slender bare shoulders with a sensual reminiscence that turned her limbs to water. They were standing only inches apart and Damian’s heated gaze was riveted on her. He smiled wryly. ‘The sun is in your hair, the sea is in your eyes and the roses are on your lips, mesmerizing Calypso.’ He lifted a hand as though to touch her cheek and then let it fall again. ‘How do you expect a man not to lose his head, eh?’ His voice sounded ragged, and he shook his head, adding almost gruffly: ‘We’ll be having lunch on deck. You go up, I’ll join you in five minutes.’ He moved past her through a door to the crew quarters, leaving Oriel standing there, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she fought to catch her breath.
Oriel went on deck to join the men, all of whom looked as if they had scrubbed up, their dark curly hair still wet. Even the giant Yanni’s bushy beard had a clean look about it. An appetizing spread had been set out on the table under an awning. They were already drinking either ouzo or retsina.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Stavros asked as she appeared on deck.
‘Yes, please. I’ll have a small glass of ouzo.’
‘Ah, you know our national drink then?’ Yanni noted, looking pleased as he tossed back a glass of the clear liquid.
Oriel didn’t hear Damian approaching from behind and she almost gasped when his hand lay suddenly and heavily on her shoulder.
‘Despinis Anderson knows our country well,’ he told them. ‘Is that not so?’
Oriel half turned to look up at him and met the glimmer of enigmatic amusement that had leapt into his eyes.
‘And such a fascinating country it is,’ she said with a smile, trying to sound natural.
‘To Despinis Anderson, then,’ said Yanni, filling the glasses of the crew who seemed to have a new-found respect in their gazes as they smiled at Oriel.
‘She can rescue me again any time,’ grinned Spyros, causing a raucous cheer from the rest of the men.
The crew all called out, ‘Yassas!’, clinking glasses exuberantly before they began a barrage of jokes at Spyros’s expense once more.
Damian dropped his hand from Oriel’s shoulder, but not before sliding it the length of her back, then he thrust both hands deep into the pockets of his denim shorts and moved away from her. ‘Let’s sit down and have lunch, I’m starving.’ Again, Oriel felt his eyes come to rest on her as they all found a place along the benches on deck.
The air was sweet with a long stretch of empty, melting blue sea and sky, looking as if both were merged together in one sapphire expanse. Shimmering with a white-gold haze, the not-too-distant landscape of Helios looked mysterious and otherworldly, almost like a mirage. Oriel was jerked back to earth by Damian presenting her with a violet that was split in half along the length.
‘The poor man’s oyster,’ he told her as he squeezed a twist of lemon juice over the gelatinous, purple-veined pulp. ‘Here, try one. I can assure you it tastes like heaven.’ Oriel caught the devilish
glint in his eye, his gaze dipping for a second to her mouth as he handed it to her. She almost blushed again at the awareness between them, but held his gaze steadily. She had always had a predilection for shellfish – oysters, mussels, sea urchins – and if one of them was on the menu, she was sure to order it. Now would be no different, she determined.
‘Thanks, I’ll have a go,’ she murmured, smiling and taking the small crustacean from him. She scooped out the shiny orange flesh with the special spoon that was next to her plate and popped it in her mouth. The men all clapped and hailed her, admiring her lack of squeamishness, obviously not realizing that she was well travelled and an old hand at sampling all sorts of different food. Then there was total silence for a moment; Oriel felt like an exhibit at the zoo as all their stares focused on her while they awaited her verdict.
The texture was luscious, the flavour strong and briny: heavenly, just as Damian had described it. Oriel smiled. ‘Nóstimo, delicious, really delicious.’
There was a very Greek exclamation of ‘Ópa!’ and another round of clapping and appreciative sounds, then they were all passing around the small dishes of mezedes, the bread and the lemon. This little interlude seemed to have broken the ice and soon there was a hum of voices around her, a composite sound, deep and masculine, which she was welcome to join in and she did. Everybody was relaxed and at ease.
Still, Oriel couldn’t help but be most conscious of Damian. From time to time she felt the power of his gaze upon her, setting her pulse beating uncomfortably faster. Through her lashes she watched him talking to his men and saw the friendliness with which they all responded and the admiration in their eyes whenever he voiced an opinion. When Damian spoke, the others listened.
After lunch, the Ariadne headed back and soon the marina with its little jetty was in sight. The scene looked sleepy, no one about except for a couple of fishermen sitting outside the taverna enjoying a late lunch and a skinny cat chewing on a fish head on the slipway. They slid on to their mooring almost noiselessly, barely disturbing the gull roosting on the canvas of a neighbouring yacht, its beady eyes keeping a sharp watch on the water. While Damian went ashore to call Yorgos from the telephone in the taverna, ordering him to fly Spyros to the mainland for a health check, Stavros monitored the other divers, who were engaged in logging and packing away all the items retrieved from the wreck that morning. The boxes were then unloaded on to the quay and carried to a windowless wooden building not far from the taverna.
Aphrodite's Tears Page 17
