“I’m getting a female companion for him,” said Kas. “Every male needs one, I suppose. Spartacus gets lonely patrolling the property by himself and waiting for me to come out and play with him.” She gazed at him steadily as he took one of her hands in his. “Athena, I’m going to be very busy this next year or so with the company. My brothers keep doing too good of a job. We’re expanding by leaps and bounds, got three big projects going on. Three thousand miles separate us.” He dropped her hand and spread both of his, as though circumstances were beyond his control. He was searching for an easy way out.
Athena understood what he was trying to tell her.
This ends here. Before it begins.
“I’m busy, too. At the part-time rate I’m going, it’ll be two more years before I get my Bachelor’s in Fine Arts. Well,”—she shrugged and ignored the ache in the pit of her stomach—“I didn’t mean what I said before, about not liking you. I do like you, Kas, and I’m glad to have met you.” She squeezed his hand but he said nothing. No words of encouragement or invitation.
Well, so much for her plan to lose her virginity that night. Unless she got another sign, she wasn’t going to visit him. No way. She wasn’t going to throw herself at him. She was lonely but not desperate.
Kas’s dark eyes drilled into her, then he closed the short distance to envelop her in a bear hug. Wave after wave of emotions and images flooded her. He held her for a full minute—although she couldn’t be certain, for time tended to elongate while she “read” someone’s mind—before letting her go and stepping back. She stood there, dazed, unable to process it all, unable to speak. Her heart thumped and her ears rushed with racing blood. Well, blimey.
What could she do or say?
She knew what he wanted from her.
“It’s up to you, Athena. Totally up to you.” He lowered his head and kissed her, a dry, chaste kiss. He was holding back. But why?
He gazed into the darkness beyond their lighted area and shook his head. In disbelief? Self-reproach? As in, how stupid could he be for letting his guard down with her? She read the uncertainty and confusion in his mind, which was all the more surprising when he asked her, “You don’t have a boyfriend back in D.C.?”
For the first time all week, she thought of Martin Larsen, the gorgeous, blond male model in her painting class. Her lust for him had vanished. All thoughts of Tony had vanished, too. She couldn’t believe she’d ever wanted to make love with either of them.
“No, I don’t. Look, Kas, we can call each other now and then. Keep in touch.”
He said nothing for a moment before heaving a big, steamy breath. “I only call women when I want to see them. Know what I mean?”
“Like, booty calls?”
That got a raspy chuckle out of him. “Something like that. I don’t call to say, ‘Hi, I’m having pizza for lunch, what’re you doing?’ I’m just too busy to do stuff like that, Athena, and I’m not a kid. College boys do that, not me. If you want a college boy, you’ve got the wrong man.”
Athena didn’t know what to say to that. Already, Kas was making excuses not to stay in touch. She forced herself to shrug as if she could have cared less.
“No big deal, Kas. It’s okay if it ends here and now.” She formed her lips into a carefree smile. Inside, she felt her heart crack open.
He remained serious. “The time’s not right, y’know, but I’ll find a way. I know I’ll see you again. My mother says so, so it’s gotta be true, right?” He laughed, a bitterness edging his forced humor.
They stared at each other, turning shy with diffident grins. With a gesture, he suggested they walk back to the terrace. They walked in silence until they arrived at the base of the terrace’s stone steps. His arm suddenly wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her against his side.
“Mom says you paint portraits on commission. Like you did mine, only you didn’t charge her for it. I want to give you a check for your time and effort on my portrait.” He stuffed something in her jacket pocket despite her protests. “Stop it, this is also a down payment for something I want. I want to commission a portrait of Alex. You work from a photo, don’t you?”
She made one last feeble protest but he wouldn’t take back the check, gesturing in a “Stop!” motion. They paused on the lit, flagstone terrace under one of the carriage lamps while he pulled something else out of his pocket.
“I chose this photo of Alex. Now that you’ve met him and know his personality, I thought you could capture his…y’know, his…”
“His whimsical nature? His bon vivant attitude?”
Kas laughed shortly. “Yeah, something like that. Can you do that?”
She took the photograph. “I’ll do my best. When do you need it?”
Kas shrugged. “Whenever. Maybe in time for my mother’s birthday in June.” He raised his hand and touched her face. A vision came with the caress: A long, wet kiss, filled with more passion than she’d ever known in her life. He was strong and holding back for her sake. The push-pull of his conflicted emotions made her dizzy.
“Let’s go in before I lose control.”
“Wait.” All of a sudden, she realized why he was holding back. She looked back at the huge structure that was the two-storied garage. “I want to see you tonight. I can’t leave without seeing you one more time.”
He frowned, and she thought she’d made a huge blunder but he said, “Okay.”
She exhaled her breath as she looked over his shoulder. “Is your place the one on the left or right? As you face the front?”
For a long moment, he stared back at her. His face was a confusion of warring emotions. For an awful moment, Athena thought he was going to change his mind. She would feel mortified the rest of her life if Kas rejected her then and there.
An almost wistful smile broke through, making him look years younger. “The right. The left is Alex’s. Lay off the ouzo so you find the right one.”
“When?” she asked him.
“About a half-hour after everyone goes to bed. Gotta clean up my place. It’s a mess.”
“Okay.”
“You sure about this?”
She nodded. They grinned at each other. He kissed her. This time, not so chastely. This time, she felt his passion crash with her own, like colliding storm fronts. Their deep, wet kiss left them both breathless. They stared at each other as if recognizing something new in each other and yet at the same time, something very familiar.
As she followed him inside the family room, a sense of warmth and peace engulfed her. Despite everything, this was so right. Finally, she understood. Her visit was like the time warps she read about in sci-fi books and saw in the movies. She’d gotten a glimpse of a future life but the future wasn’t ready for her.
Or she wasn’t quite ready for it.
Not yet.
Still, she’d steal what she could from this magical, time-warped evening. Her adventure with Kas Skoros might have to last a very long time.
And keep her warm on many a cold night to come.
Chapter Thirteen
In her second-floor guest room in the Skoros mansion, Athena looked closely at herself. Feeling flushed with excitement, she bracketed her face with her hands. Good lord, what was she doing? About to have sex with someone she barely knew, about to lose her virginity with a distant cousin’s son? Was she mad?
She smiled into the mirror. No, she wasn’t mad. She knew exactly what she was doing and why. Never in her nearly twenty years of life had she ever felt such a strong passion for a man. But it was more than that. There was a connection between them that she couldn’t explain, and it had nothing to do with Lorena’s off-the-wall prediction about her and Kas ultimately getting together. Without doubt or question, she trusted him. And more importantly, she sensed in a deeply intuitive way that he was meant to be in her life in some form or fashion that she couldn’t yet understand. He would always be forthright and honest with her, even though he might break her heart. Whatever came along, she felt ready
for it. Even heartbreak was better than this…void in her life.
She smoothed down the heavy Irish knit sweater she wore with her everyday, faded jeans, took down her ponytail, and fluffed up her hair. A freshening of coral lipstick and she was ready. There wasn’t time to take a shower. Maybe they’d take one together…later, afterwards. A shiver ran up her spine. Oh yes, she’d love that. What would his long, muscular body look like under a spray of water? Exactly like she’d seen earlier that day when he stripped off his wetsuit. She’d noted the damp, dark chest hair that arrowed down his slim belly and disappeared into his skimpy Speedos. From the bulge in his Speedos earlier that day, she knew he was what her mother would call endowed. His legs and arms were long and rippled with hard muscles. If she could sculpt instead of paint, she’d make a statue of him that would rival the David.
Grinning, she left her room and found the back staircase that ran down to the rear of the kitchen by the laundry room and maid’s quarters. The Skoros had a live-in housekeeper who was a jill-of-all-trades, but primarily cooked for the family and supervised the housecleaning service. The woman’d left the kitchen night-light on, thank goodness, before retiring to her rooms—Athena guessed—somewhere on the third floor. The back staircase was lit by a dim night-light also, helping Athena navigate that side of the mansion more easily. She walked through the large kitchen and the laundry room, arriving at the rear door of the mudroom, which opened to the flagstone path leading to the garage. The two red lights on the alarm system wall panel stopped her.
She’d forgotten about the alarm and she certainly didn’t know the disarm code. Frustrated, she wondered what she could do. Climb the back staircase and wake up the maid? Hardly. Call Kas on his cell phone…except that she didn’t know his number. Wrestling with her disappointment, she decided to go back upstairs and explain to Kas in the morning what happened. He’d think she was a silly twit—
The exterior door opened, and a tall, dark figure turned and punched in the code, disarming the system. When he emerged into the dim light cast by the night-light, Athena smiled with relief.
Kas.
“Sorry, I just remembered the alarm and that you wouldn’t know how to turn it off. The last thing Betty does before going to bed is turn everything off and the alarm on.”
He closed the distance between them and pulled her into a strong embrace.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come, so when I saw you there—“
He lowered his head and kissed her, this time hungrily. Their lips meshed, and mouths opened. With her mouth and tongue, she drank his moisture and did a lusty dance with his tongue. His mouth tasted of minty toothpaste and while half her mind regretted not having brushed her teeth, the other half reveled in all the sensations his kiss evoked in her. His hands squeezed her hair and backside simultaneously. Her own hands threaded through his thick, dark waves, and then moved downward to cup his butt cheeks. Just as she thought, firm and muscular like the rest of him.
“Let’s go,” he growled.
“Yes,” she breathed out. Her head spun, so she gratefully clung to him as he wrapped his arm around her shoulder.
The night was clear and quiet except for one hooting owl and a whimpering Spartacus who wanted to join them but was ordered to stay put. Moving up the outside stairs to his room above the garage happened in a drunken blur of time, but soon they were entangled in each other’s arms and legs on his bed in a small bedroom tucked away at the rear of the apartment.
The soft flannel sheets smelled fresh and caressed her skin as he undressed her, gently extricating her hair when it caught on one of his shirt buttons. She was down to her bra and panties—she’d worn black ones, thank goodness, not her virginal whites—when he paused to whip off his button-down shirt and unzip his khakis. His mouth had never strayed from a trail of kisses up and down her body, evoking tingling sensations which left her panting and wanting more contact with his flesh.
“God, ’Thena, you take my breath away.” A brief silence ensued while he shed his pants. His arousal was evident in the animal-print cotton briefs he wore. He frowned and hesitated as if he’d read doubt in her face, but he said nothing.
She rushed to reassure him. “Kas, I turned it off—“
“I don’t care—turn on your clairvoyance. Read me all you want. Doesn’t take a psychic to know what I want.” That made her laugh and when he joined in, she relaxed. Kas accepted her for who and what she was. That, in itself, washed over her like a warm bath.
She lay back on the bed, no longer feeling shy or wary. The act itself might hurt, but she didn’t care. She could deal with the physical pain…and the emotional pain, if it eventually came to that. Little by little, the tension inside her released.
Ready to take the risk, she said with emphasis, “I want this, too.”
“God help me, I shouldn’t care,” he rasped as he placed one knee beside her, the other leg still balanced on the floor, “but I want to know why. Why me?”
She smiled. “I trust you. I want to do this with you.”
Kas exhaled a short, soft laugh. “Good enough reason for me.”
They reached for each other, his smiling face lowering to nestle in the crook of her neck.
Oh yes, this—whatever it was between them—was going to be fine. She closed her eyes and her mind, and surrendered to her normal, five senses. Her fingers left the nubby softness of his sheets and rose to explore his shoulders, his naked back, trailing down to his briefs and slipping underneath the waistband. His hands were exploring her in much the same slow, gentle way. The tenderness of his stroking coaxed her to relax even more, so she closed her eyes. His touch, sometimes light, sometimes pressing, made her skin shiver with pleasure. She sighed, then as his fingers moved to cup her mound and move deeper inside her, she moaned.
His cell phone rang shrilly. Jolted back, she opened her eyes.
A girlfriend calling to check in? An emergency?
“What the f—?” His face raised up, contorted in disbelief.
“Are you on call with the sheriff’s office?” Her breaths came in hard pants as she sat up on his bed. He nodded and reached into his jeans’ pocket.
“The unmarried guys volunteered to cover the holidays. I just can’t believe the timing—“ He answered the call and grew silent, his bare chest heaving up and down. One hand let go of her and raked through his hair. “You’re sure, Mom? I’m-I’m in bed—Okay, call 9-1-1. I’m coming, I’m coming.”
His dark brown eyes swiveled to her, looking over her nearly naked body until his gaze met hers. Whatever it was, it sounded serious. He gulped for breath before swinging his legs around and thrusting them into his trousers.
“Emergency, Athena.”
“Who?”
“My father. Heart attack, or something like it. Alex is over at his fiancée’s, I’m the only one here—“
“Of course,” she blurted and stood up. They both turned aside as they redressed in a hurry.
As he led her out his front door, he seized her around the waist.
“Later tonight, if it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just heartburn from too much food and ouzo.”
“Yes, we’ll see.”
They held each other and kissed, then broke apart.
Wishful thinking on his part.
There was no later rendezvous.
She, Chris and her mother joined Lorena and Kas for a tense, all-night vigil at the hospital in nearby Roseville while the elderly Philip Skoros fought for his life and surgeons operated on two of his main coronary arteries. By four o’clock, the entire Skoros clan had arrived. Four hours after that, when the family learned that the patriarch was recovering from surgery, Kas took a break and drove Athena, her mother, and Chris to the airport.
He bade her goodbye with a quick peck on both cheeks and a soulful stare. He whispered, “Next time we meet, Athena, we’ll finish what we started.” Then he turned to leave. She watched him drive off.
Her mother said nothing to her as the thre
e made their way through the security check lines. She didn’t have to. Sitting beside her on the plane, their shoulders touching, her mother knew exactly what the elderly Skoros had unwittingly interrupted. That magical night was all Athena could think about, but it was no one’s fault what happened. As Lorena had foretold, the time just wasn’t right. And wouldn’t be for some time to come.
Though she and Kas resisted the notion, a part of Athena was beginning to believe in fate.
Lousy, fucking fate.
Maybe there was just no fighting it.
Chapter Fourteen
Athena was back at work on Saturday, although her head floated in a fog. Her heart was still in California, her mind somewhere in Limbo Land. It seemed her thoughts were consumed by her last night there, the resplendent Thanksgiving dinner, her short-lived sexual encounter with Kas, everything she’d seen through his touch, their mutual desire. Processing it all was mind-boggling.
By noon, her boss, Fergy, had noted her lack of concentration and commented on it. She finally shook herself and tried to focus on what coffee drinks she was making, instead of forgetting to put the caramel in the caramel macchiato or the hazelnut syrup in the hazelnut latte. By closing time, her eyes felt crossed, she had a jet-lag headache and, brrr, it was snowing outside.
Dammit to hell! Freaking snow! She longed for California’s sunny warmth.
She longed for Kas’s strong arms around her, crushing her to him. She longed for his passion, his kisses, his caresses. It was such a cliché of romance novels, but she found herself sighing a lot and gazing dreamily into space.
Athena knew she’d lost her mind. Her mind and her heart. Knew, also, that she had to snap out of it. She had work at school to make up and another commission to begin. Still, a big chunk of her remained in California.
Kas’s father, Philip Skoros, had recovered but was still hospitalized. Two of the arteries going to his heart had been ninety percent “occluded,” to use their medical term. Surgery the very night of the elderly man’s admittance—stents put in those arteries to open up the passageways—had saved his life. Lorena expected a full recovery and was greatly relieved, as was the entire Skoros family. Kas had texted her the same news but had added nothing personal. Still, Athena now had his cell number and a way to communicate with him. She’d replied with hearty good wishes and an invitation, “Call me anytime.” She wondered if he would. Would Kas ever give her a booty call? She doubted it. Those were reserved for his girlfriends close by. Even if he never called her, that wouldn’t keep her from thinking about him.
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