The only question in her mind was, did she make it easy on them, or hard?
Because she wanted them, had never stopped, and Leon’s statement that she was the right woman hit the nail on the head. Because she was, and they were the right men for her.
Chapter Four
Loukas’s hands tightened on the steering wheel the instant he looked into the rearview mirror and saw the neat Bentley pull up behind him. He flashed his lights and started to pull out onto the road. All the while, he fought to keep his attention on the streets and not on the woman driving behind him.
“I can’t believe we escaped that scene without being slapped.”
“Alexa always had too much control for that,” Loukas chided Leon.
“Not at eighteen she didn’t,” Leon retorted, sticking his head between the driver and passenger seat. He’d lost the “shotgun” call. “She was as bad as Aaron.”
“I resent that,” Aaron murmured mildly, head turned toward the window, his eyes taking in only God knew what.
“Resent all you want, it’s the damned truth. And you know it,” Leon mumbled.
“Maybe, but Alexa’s all grown up now, guys. Fuck knows what’s going on in her head.”
Aaron reached over, patted Loukas’s thigh, and squeezed slightly. “We’ll find out soon, Loukas. I think she learned control from our treatment of her. I think she had to turn into a stronger person because we weren’t there to fight her battles anymore.”
Loukas hissed, “I could kill that old bastard.”
“You say that every time we see Alexa at a party or in the news.”
Loukas glared at Leon in the mirror. “That’s because every time I see her, I’m reminded of what he did to us. Of what he made us do to her. And all the while, she’s been thinking only the best about her papou and the worst about us. He’s the one that did this to all of us.”
“I know you’re angry, Loukas. We all are. But he did it for her own good. We all know that. He wasn’t doing it to be cruel or mean. He’d have forced her to marry if that was the case. He was protecting her, so how can we hate him for doing something we want to do, too?”
At Aaron’s words, Loukas shook his head. “She doesn’t need protecting from us.” His hands tightened once more on the wheel. His knuckles began to ache from the pressure, but the ache was good.
“You need to calm down before we talk to her again. There’s no point going in there all accusatory. If anything, she’s not going to believe us, so we need to keep this nice and relaxed. Going in guns blazing will only make things worse.” Leon reached forward, placed a hand on Loukas’s shoulder, and clenched down. Carefully, he began to rub the taut muscle there, feeling the sigh as Loukas’s tension began to ebb. It was still there, and would be until Alexa was in their bed, but every little helped.
“Ten years. Gone. Wasted. We could have had kids by now.”
Aaron sighed. “There’s no point in looking back. And maybe, just maybe, this all worked out for the best. Antonis was right—Alexa was far too young to even contemplate this kind of relationship. She might have thought she was ready for what it entailed, but how could she be? At eighteen?” He shook his head. “On top of that, things are more settled with all of us. Back then, things were up in the air. We weren’t used to needing each other, or accepting the fact we did. We were still hung up on most of our families’ homophobia.” He turned his face from the window and studied Loukas’s taut profile and Leon’s more contented features. “Now, we’re tight, all of us. She’s a grown woman. She knows what she wants. She’s ready for it. And if that damn hotel of hers is anything to go by, she’s been telling us for years just how ready she is.”
Loukas growled, “I’m just glad you took her virginity. I don’t care how much of a throwback it makes me. We claimed her before she even realized she could be claimed.”
Aaron snorted. “Whatever you do, don’t say that to her. She’s probably wished like hell for years that I hadn’t!”
“Weird how that kept us going when you’re probably right, Aaron. She’ll have resented you for sleeping with her, then just leaving.”
“Leon, I think if Alexa had had access to voodoo dolls, I’d have been in a lot more agony over the years.”
His lover grinned. “She’s going to make us suffer, isn’t she?”
Aaron rolled his eyes. “Trust you to get off on that.”
“Not exactly. If she falls straight into our bed, then I’ll be happier than a chocoholic at Easter. But I always did like those flashing green eyes of hers.”
“You just liked arguing with her. Always gave you a hard-on, didn’t it?”
Leon grimaced. “Yeah. A case of ten-year blue balls is about to be over.”
“I suppose the blow job this morning didn’t count.”
Leon’s chuckle had both men’s mouths twitching in amusement. “Of course it did. It stopped me from bending her over in the elevator and fucking her there and then. It’s all right for you, Aaron. You had a taste…We didn’t have that privilege.”
Aaron grunted. “Some fucking taste. One night! She was scared shitless for most of it. Some fucking friend had told her my cock was going to split her in two.”
Loukas snorted. “I remember that. You were still hard as nails when you got back home.”
Aaron’s pained nod had both men sniggering.
Leon murmured, “I can’t believe we’ve finally done it. Ten fucking years, and they’re almost over.”
“Nothing’s over until Alexa agrees to this,” Aaron warned.
“Like she’ll say no,” Loukas bit out. “I won’t fucking let her.”
Leon pinched the shoulder he was still rubbing. “You will not turn into a dictatorial ass over this, Loukas. The last thing we need is you pushing her away. I swear to God, you think you can be director of the board in the bedroom as well, but we all know where Alexa is concerned, we’re putty in her goddamn hands. So stop with the bluster, and let’s just try to get our woman back where she belongs. Between us!”
Aaron cocked a brow at Leon’s strident tone, but shot a warning glance of his own at a pouting Loukas.
All three fell silent, letting the smooth journey down the coast road try to soothe some of their concerns. It was a hot day. The sun pelted down on the roof of their car, making the air conditioning chug fiercely to combat the sweltering temperatures. Beside the rugged coast, a coast each man had known all their lives, the sea glistened like liquid diamonds. The merging of aquamarine, navy, and cerulean created a sea like no other, on an island that was like no other.
They’d all lived somewhere else over the years—moved around Europe, spent a few months on sabbatical in America, even gone down to Australia for the surfing—but nothing compared to Cyprus. It was in their blood, in their very bones, and Alexa shared that sentiment.
Her mother was half Cypriot, through Alexa’s grandfather. He’d emigrated to England after the war, met an English woman, and Agathe had been the result of their marriage. Alexa’s grandmother had been the daughter of a poor earl, and her name and lack of wealth had brought Agathe to Antonis Corsakis’s attention—with his own self-made past, he’d wanted more for his son. A merger between the two families had been made, of the marital kind, and Agathe and Elias were one of the only couples Aaron had ever known to be content with their arranged marriage. Hell, content was an understatement. They were still loved-up, even though they were closer to sixty than forty.
In a way, he could understand Elias’s adoration. Agathe was a beauty, and Alexa shared her mother’s features. Chestnut hair, with a gleam so powerful it turned bronze in the right light. Shards of gold were interspersed in the mix, creating a dark tawniness that was truly unique. It curled about her shoulders, falling to mid-back level. This morning, it had been tucked into a chignon that had only augmented Alexa’s sharp cheekbones and the graceful arch of her neck. She had lips made to suck a man’s cock, eyes like clear green tourmaline, a pert nose set beneath a high brow wi
th a widow’s peak. Her body was made for a man’s attention. All ripe curves and long legs. But she wasn’t wispy. Her Greek blood shone through in her sturdiness, her strength.
Aaron had seen that on their first and last night together. She was put together in a way that made a man weep, all strong boned and muscled in a way that meant she would fuck him back. She had the strength to turn the cards on him, to make him suffer, to make him beg.
His cock hardened at the thought, and he clenched his fist against his thigh as he saw their house appear on the horizon. With all three of their unlimited funds, the fortune they’d spent on the huge plot of land was minimal. It was away from Paphos but close enough to suit all their individual needs. They’d left the terrain surrounding the house alone, let nature take control of the acres of rolling grassland that led onto a thin, sandy beach before the huge expanse of the ocean met it.
Their house was large enough for four, as they’d always planned. Rather than embrace the newer modern architecture they all favored, they’d built it for Alexa. The house was stone built, the roughly hewn faces of each cream, craggy brick on display. Vines crept over some parts of the building’s façade, each one pendulous with bright-green leaves. Large windows overlooked the sea, and at the back of the house, the distant Troodos Mountains loomed.
It was a simple house—two stories, nothing fancy, just good, solid Greek architecture, but inside, where they’d embraced the crude, roughly hewn, stone walls by using natural colors and fibers, with huge brick fireplaces for winter, they’d made it a home.
It was ridiculous, because Aaron knew they were fighting for their life with Alexa, and yet, he was nervous about her reaction to the house. He wanted her to love it. Wanted her to know that this was their gift to her. Hell, their bedroom had an ancient restored mosaic on the goddamn wall. Not because they got off on having a goddess watching over them as they had sex, but they knew how much Alexa loved the history of the island. How much she reveled in the past.
Various outbuildings were dotted around the house. One was the garage, another a large office where Loukas worked from home when he didn’t have to fly off to Athens. Aaron himself had a studio where he crafted his jewelry, and Leon had a painting studio that overlooked the sea.
As they drove through the gates, on the brink of arriving home, he realized the time was soon approaching…the time for battle. The Jag’s wheels crunched over the stone gravel of the driveway, whistling to a halt at the roundabout loaded with heavy florid blooms that stood in front of the house. Within seconds, Alexa had also pulled up.
He jumped out of the car, intent on seeing her reaction to the house. The heat hit him like a punch to the solar plexus. The deep chill of the car made the warmth of the midday searing. Beneath his feet, the sun-saturated pebbles burned. Overhead, the sky gleamed so brightly it hurt his eyes and made them water. The crazy thing was, he was accustomed to this weather. Most tourists weren’t. He didn’t know how they coped when the temperatures soared to one hundred degrees plus.
He shrugged off the heat and watched as Alexa climbed out of her car, purse in hand. She looked up at the house as she moved, and even behind her sunglasses, he felt her surprise at the style.
The Antakis family had been wealthy once, but the house was like a farmhouse. Not the mansions they were all accustomed to, with their ingrained luxuries. Not that their home wasn’t luxurious in its own way, but it wasn’t the in-your-face sort. After the fire that had had the Antakis family leaving for the mainland, one that had destroyed three-quarters of the building, they’d had no choice but to try to maintain as much of the old carcass as possible and construct around the traditional foundation.
“I never expected you to live anywhere like this,” she murmured as she approached, her eyes still on the building.
“The three of us had to agree to disagree on some matters,” Leon said, a wry twitch to his lips that mocked how huge an understatement his comment was. “It helped that we all knew what you liked and disliked.”
She frowned at that. “Why did my taste in buildings help?”
Leon removed his shades and squinted up at the house. “Who else was this for if not for you?”
Aaron watched as Alexa blanched at his words. She staggered back, falling into the car’s hood, then shrieking at the scorching brand of the metal. Loukas growled, grabbed her to him, and goose walked her into the house. Aaron looked at Leon and rolled his eyes, but Leon just winked.
The instant Loukas had the door open, the bliss of the chilled air from the A/C beset them. Not a one of them didn’t sigh in relief, but they were too busy listening to Loukas’s blistering of Alexa. “I swear to God, I don’t know how you kept in one piece without us!”
Leon fully expected her to snatch her arm from Loukas’s grasp, maybe to punch him in the arm as the Alexa of old would have done. But Aaron was right. She’d grown up. Instead, she laughed, immediately dousing Loukas’s bluster.
“I managed. Just, Loukas. Although, how else do you expect me to react when the three guys who abandoned me tell me the house they had built was done to suit my tastes? Talk about contrary…but then, you didn’t leave me by choice, did you? It was Papou’s fault.” The vulnerability in her tone had his jaw clenching.
Her grandfather had been one of her idols, and taking him down from the pedestal she’d made for her papou wasn’t going to be pleasant. He wished there was an alternative, but if they kept quiet, then they lost her. None of them were selfless enough to contemplate that.
Leon stepped forward, taking a hold of her arm. “This talk isn’t for the hallway. Let’s go into the salon.”
She cocked a brow but nodded politely. “Gladly.”
They walked down the cool corridor, with its one wall of crumbly local stone, the other with a crisp white patina. Small clusters of photographs in thick black frames were set along the wall. Some of Aaron’s family, others of Leon’s, and Loukas’s. On the floor, cool terra-cotta tiles led them to a large room with a wall of windows that looked onto the sea.
At first glance, the sheer proximity of the ocean was the only thing anyone could absorb. It was so close as to almost be in the room. But then, the peaceful space the three of them had designed themselves set in. A thick cream rug took up a huge amount of the floor, a driftwood coffee table sat squarely in the middle of it, and around it, two L-seater sofas were arranged in a cut-off rectangle. Behind them, a huge piano was perched close to the glass, and different console tables housed various knickknacks from all of their lives. Above the large hearth, which currently housed a stack of driftwood Aaron himself had picked up from the beach, sat a picture. And when Alexa saw it, she froze in her tracks and closed her eyes.
Leon curled an arm about her shoulder, understanding her distress. “Hush, love. Don’t get upset.”
She blinked, and the clear green orbs of her eyes were fogged with tears. She strode up to the hearth, but on the way passed numerous decorative tables, and each one held her transfixed for countless seconds. They let her study the objects, content to show her, silently with their shrine to the past, that their feelings had never died.
On each and every surface, there was a picture. New or old, with them, without them. At her fourteenth birthday party, Alexa in her first daring “adult” dress. At eighteen, when she’d been at Loukas’s twenty-first. There were photos Agathe had sent them, ones they’d taken at events they’d all attended. But the one above the hearth was of all four of them.
They were in the garden, the grounds of Leon’s family home. It was a black-and-white shot that Agathe had taken when she’d been visiting Leon’s mother, a close friend. The very artlessness of the pose was what gave the image its power. Beneath a crooked olive tree that Leon’s family insisted was a good three thousand years old, Alexa sat pride of place beneath the shade. Even at sixteen she’d had presence. All strong lines, her beauty evident even with the flush of youth.
Around her, loosely but nevertheless circling her, were Aar
on, Loukas, and Leon. She was in the center, and each man was leaning into her space, surrounding her like she was a queen and they were her courtiers.
As Alexa approached the fireplace, she pressed a hand to her mouth. “Where did you get this?” she whispered.
“Your mother sent it to us.”
At that, she spun on her heel. “My mother?” she barked.
Loukas nodded. “Most of these pictures were taken by us, but the ones that weren’t, Agathe sent them to us.”
Alexa blinked, then gasped. “She knew? She knew about Papou’s command and didn’t say anything?”
Leon held out his hands, urging her to stop. “We don’t actually know what Agathe knows. All we do know is that on each of our birthdays, she’d send us a present. That gift was always a photograph.”
“Did you never ask her if she knew about Grandfather’s demands?”
Aaron grunted. “Of course we tried. But she would never say anything. Just told us to enjoy her present.”
Facing away from them, she perched on the back of the sofa and stared up at the picture over the hearth. Anyone with eyes could see what was going on in the photo. Sure, the four were young, closer to twenty than twenty-five, and the girl was on the cusp of leaving her teens, but they were in love. It was obvious for the world to see.
“When did she send you this?” she whispered.
“Two months ago. For my birthday,” Loukas answered, striding to the bottom of the room where Alexa sat. He perched beside her, sucked in a deep breath—on the hunt for inner courage—and bravely put his arm around her. When she didn’t try to shrug him off, he held her close to his side and replied, “Your eyes are telling you the truth. Even if you don’t want to think badly of your grandfather, that photo hides nothing.”
She looked up at him, tears rimming her lower lashes. He couldn’t help himself. He slowly, carefully lowered his head and pressed his mouth to her cheekbone. Dotting a gentle kiss there, he whispered, “We loved you then, and we love you now.”
Old Enough to Know Better [The Corsakis Hotel 2] (Siren Publishing Menage Amour) Page 4
