by Maya Blake
Did babies his age laugh? I’d been robbed of the opportunity to find out for myself.
I tossed the document away and stood. Sudden weakness in my legs stopped me from moving. One hand braced on the polished wood surface, I sucked in a deep breath, attempted to bring myself under control.
Control was essential. Over my erratic emotions. Over my wayward wife and over the belief that she should take such actions without consequence. To deprive me of my own flesh and blood...
Why?
The deeply visceral need to know straightened my spine.
I found her in the smallest living room—the room farthest from my study and the one she seemed to have commandeered for herself and Andreos since her return. He lay on a mat on the floor, his fists and legs pumping with abandon as Calypso crouched over him. A few toys were strewn nearby, momentarily forgotten as mother and son indulged in a staring game of some sort. One that amused Andreos...my son.
So babies his age did smile. They also returned their mother’s stare with rapt attention until they were tickled, then dissolved into heaps of laughter.
Something stirred raw and powerful within me as I stared into the eyes that had seemed familiar to me from the start, even as I cautioned myself against full acceptance. The feeling intensified as I watched Calypso’s utter devotion, saw the bond between mother and son, the unit I’d been excluded from.
The unit I wanted to belong to—
Sensing my presence, Calypso’s gaze flew to mine, then immediately shadowed.
Theos mou, was I really that frightful?
‘You can be.’
I dismissed the uncanny sound of Neo’s voice in my head.
Too bad. I’d given her four days to settle in. Four days of swimming in the uncharted waters of her re-entry into my life with a son...my son...in tow.
It took me but a moment to summon Sophia, one of several household staff who’d been infatuated with Andreos since his arrival.
To Calypso, I said, ‘We need to talk. Come with me. Sophia will look after Andreos.’
Her clear reluctance lasted for the moment it took for her to spot the piece of paper clutched in my fist. Then she slowly rose.
About to head back to my study, I changed my mind and headed up the stairs.
‘Where are we going?’
The hint of nervousness in her voice rankled further.
‘Where we won’t be disturbed,’ I replied as evenly as I could manage.
‘But...’
I stopped and turned. ‘Do you have a problem with being alone with me?’
The faintest flush crept into her cheeks, but her head remained high, her gaze bold. ‘Of course not.’
Truth be told, perhaps my suite wasn’t the best choice. Amongst everything I’d imagined might happen when I finally located my wayward wife, discovering that the chemistry that had set us aflame on our wedding night still blazed with unrelenting power was the last thing I’d expected.
The fact that I couldn’t look at the curve of her delicate jaw without imagining trailing my lips over her smooth skin, tasting the vitality of the pulse that beat at her throat or palming her now even more ample breasts was an unwelcome annoyance that nevertheless didn’t stop my mind from wandering where it shouldn’t.
Did unfettered pleasure still overtake her in that sizzling, unique way it had during our one coming together? Did she go out of her head with unbridled passion at the merest touch? If so, just who had been stoking that particular flame in her year-long absence?
It took every ounce of control I had to contain my searing jealousy at the thought. Answers to those questions would come later. This was too important.
Without stopping to further examine the wisdom of the venue, I made my way into the room.
She followed, making a point to avoid looking at the bed as she passed through into the private living room. From my position before the fireplace I watched her take a seat and neatly fold her hands in her lap. Had her pulse not been racing in her throat I would have been fooled by her complete serenity.
‘He’s mine.’
Just saying the words dragged earth-shaking emotion through me, robbing me of my next breath. That a small bundle could do that—
‘I told you he was.’
There was a new defiance in her demeanour, a quiet, fiery strength that had been there a year ago but had matured now.
‘I’ve never lied to you.’
‘Then what do you call this?’ I tossed the report on the coffee table.
She paled a little, her throat moving in another swallow. And why did I find that simple evidence that she felt something so riveting?
‘You were always going to know your son, Axios. I simply took a little time before informing you.’
Rejection seared deep. ‘No. I should’ve been informed the moment you found out you were carrying my child.’
‘Why? So we could discuss it like a loving married couple? Or so you could treat it as another business transaction, like our arranged marriage? I’m sure you’ll forgive me for choosing neither option, since the former was a farce and the latter was unpalatable.’
The accusation scored a direct hit, making my neck heat with another trace of guilt. Over the last year I’d gone over everything that had happened in those twenty-four hours. Accepted that perhaps I could’ve handled things differently. But was this the price I had to pay for it?
‘I had a right to know, Calypso.’ My voice emerged much gruffer than I’d intended. And deep inside me something like sorrow turned over.
Her lashes swept down, but not before I spotted the sea of turmoil swelling in the blue depths. My nape tightened and my instincts blared with the notion that she was hiding something.
‘What if I told you that I didn’t know what I wanted?’ she asked.
A white-hot knife sliced through me at the thought that it would have decimated me had she taken a different route than bearing my son.
‘Calypso...’
Her name sounded thick on my tongue. I waited until she raised her gaze to mine.
‘Yes?’
‘Regardless of this...disagreement between us, you will have my gratitude for choosing to carry our son for ever.’
Her eyes widened in stunned surprise. ‘Um...you’re welcome,’ she murmured.
Once again her gaze swept away from mine—a small gesture that disturbed and confounded me. And then that defiant bolt of blue clashed with mine and absurd anticipation simmered in my gut.
‘He’s here now. Can we not put what has gone on in the past behind us and move on?’
‘Certainly we can. As soon as you tell me what I want to know I’ll take great strides to put it all behind me.’
Again that mutinous look took her over, sparking my own need to tangle with it. To stoke her fire until we both burned.
‘Are you prepared to do that, Calypso?’
For several moments she held my gaze. Breath stalled, I awaited an answer...one answer...to quell the questions teeming inside me. But then that unnerving serenity settled on her face again.
‘It’s not important—’
‘Not important? You leave my home under cover of a blatant falsehood, then you disappear for a year, during which time you bear my son, and you think your absence isn’t important?’
‘Careful, Axios, or I’ll be inclined to wonder whether you actually missed the wife you bothered with for less than a day before walking away.’
I sucked in a stunned breath. A year ago she’d warned me that she wouldn’t be biddable. Discovering she was innocent had clouded that warning. But this kitten had well and truly developed claws. Sharp ones. I was tempted to test them. Intellectually and...yes...physically.
Unbidden, heat throbbed deep in my groin, stirring desires I’d believed were long dead until one glimpse of m
y wayward wife from a jetty in Bora Bora had fiercely reawakened them.
That unholy union of sexual tension and unanswered questions propelled me to where she sat, cloaked in secrets that mocked me.
Her slight tensing when I crouched in front of her unsettled me further, despite the fact that I should’ve been satisfied to see that she wasn’t wholly indifferent to me.
‘You want to know about the inconvenience your absence caused, Calypso?’
She remained silent.
‘Some newspaper hack got wind that my wife wasn’t in Agistros, enjoying her first weeks of marital bliss. Nor was she with friends, as she’d led everyone to believe. To all intents and purposes she seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth.’
A delicate frown creased her brows. ‘Why would that be of interest to anyone? Especially when you intended to banish me to Agistros for the duration of our arrangement anyway?’
‘You’re my wife. Everything you do is news. And appearing to have deserted your marriage was definitely newsworthy.’
She blinked. ‘Appearing to have?’
‘I have an outstanding PR team who’ve had to work tirelessly to put a lid on this.’
There was no hint of remorse on her sun-kissed face. Instead she looked irritated. ‘If you’ve managed to somehow spin my absence to suit our narrative then there’s no problem, is there?’
I allowed myself a small smile, one her gaze clung to with wary eyes. ‘You would like that, wouldn’t you? To escape every unpleasant fall-out from your actions?’
‘You don’t have the first idea of what I want, Axios.’
My name on her lips sent a punch of heat through me. Thinking back, I couldn’t recollect her ever saying it before Bora Bora. Not when she’d spat fire at me, not when she’d confessed her untouched state, and not when she’d been in the complete grip of passion. Certainly not when she’d asked me to take her with me to Athens.
There had been far too many times over the last year when I’d regretted not doing so—not because of that infernal hunger that had long outstayed its welcome, but simply because it would have curtailed her actions.
But the past was the past. There was still the future to deal with. And my new reality.
My son.
‘For the sake of probability, and if I were in the mood to grant wishes, what exactly would you want, matia mou?’
Wariness made her hesitate, but slowly defiance laced with something else pushed through. ‘I’d want a divorce. As soon as possible.’
Stunned disbelief rose in me like a monumental wave I’d once ridden on the North Shore, and then just as swiftly crashed on the beach of her sheer audacity and shock. It was all so very dramatic.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
Her pert little nose quivered as she inhaled sharply. ‘What’s so funny?’
Affront and defiance flushed her skin a sweet pink, drawing my attention to her alluring features. My wife was now all woman. An arrestingly feminine woman who’d just demanded...a divorce.
‘Why you, my dear, and your continued ability to surprise me.’
‘I’m glad you’re amused. But I’m deadly serious. I want a divorce.’
Humour evaporated as abruptly as it had arrived. Leaning forward, I grasped her upper arms and fought not to be distracted by her smooth supple skin or the need to caress her and reacquaint myself with her.
My once sound argument about staying away from her had backfired spectacularly. I’d left her on Agistros thinking that she’d be safe and I’d be saved from temptation. Look how that had turned out.
Even with sex off the table I should have kept her close. I could have prevented her fleeing. Instead I’d borne the subtle snipes of those who had been quick to point out my failure. Quick to compare me to my grandfather and test me to see whether I’d crack under the same pressure.
With Calypso gone I’d experienced a taste of what he’d gone through—sometimes even with members of my own family.
Now she was back...and asking for a divorce.
‘We seem to have veered a little off-track to be indulging in hypotheticals. You’ll recall that, according to the agreement, this marriage needs to last at least twelve months.’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘Twelve ongoing months. Not twelve absentee months.’
She swallowed and my fingers moved, some compulsion driving me to glide my fingers up her neck, trace the colour flowing back into her cheeks. She made a sound under her breath, bearing a hint of those she’d made on our wedding night.
Before I could revel in it she pulled back abruptly. My hands dropped back to her arms.
‘My father hasn’t contested the agreement,’ she said.
‘So you took the time to check on his activities?’ Disgruntlement rumbled through me at the thought.
Her flush gave me my answer. ‘What are you saying, Axios?’
‘I’m saying the clock stopped the moment you walked out. But, fortunately for you, your father is no longer in the picture. For one thing he can’t prove that you’ve been an absentee wife—unless you apprised him of your intentions?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ she muttered, her eyes not quite meeting mine.
I’d long suspected that while she might have avoided contact with her father, her mother was a different story. But Iona Petras had remained resolutely closed-lipped about the whereabouts of her daughter.
‘Good—then the ball, as they say, is in my court.’
She met my gaze boldly, read my clear intent and gasped. ‘You mean you have the power to give me a divorce but...?’ Her voice dried up, a telling little shiver racing through her body.
‘But I won’t, sweet Calypso. Not until a few things are set straight.’
‘What things?’
‘For starters, my PR company didn’t make all the problems go away. While I frustrated the news media enough to make them chase other headlines, my competitors and my business partners were another story. Your absence fuelled enough rumours about instability to stall my latest deal.’
A peculiar expression that resembled hurt crossed her face. ‘So this is about stocks and shares again?’
The disparaging note in her voice grated. ‘Why? Did you want it to be something more?’
She stiffened. ‘No.’
Her firm, swift denial rankled, but again I dismissed it. ‘There will be no divorce. Not until I’m completely satisfied that there will be no permanent fall-out from your actions. And not until we’ve thoroughly discussed the impact this will have on Andreos.’
She stiffened. ‘Does it occur to you that I might be doing this for him? That this arrangement might not be the best environment for him?’
‘Then we will strive to make it so. You’ll get your divorce, if you wish it. It could be as early as a month from now or it could be the year you were supposed to give me. In that time, wherever I go, you and my son will go also. He will be your priority. But when called upon you will be at my side at public functions and you will play the role of a devoted wife. And you will do all of that without the smallest hint that there’s dissent between us.’
Her sweet, stubborn chin lifted in a clear defiance. ‘And if I don’t? What’s to stop me giving the newspapers what they want? Telling them the true state of this so-called marriage?’
Why did her rebellion fire me up so readily? In truth, very few people got to display such attitude towards me. Neo tried me at the best of times, but even he knew when to back down. The rest of my family fell in line, because ultimately I held the purse strings.
But it seemed my errant wife’s fiery spirit turned me on. Made me want to burn in the fire of it.
I caught her chin in my hand, my thumb moving almost of its own volition to slide over the dark rose swell of her lower lip. She shivered, this time unable to disguise her
arousal. I intensified the caress, a little too eager to see how far she was truly affected. Blue eyes held mine for another handful of seconds before they dropped. But her breathing grew more erratic, her pulse hammering against the silken skin of her throat.
I held still, my groin rudely awakening as the little eddy of lust whipped faster, threatened to turn into a cyclone.
‘You really wish to defy me? You think that now you and your family have received what they want they can simply sit back and enjoy the spoils of their ill-gotten gains? Do you think that I will let you get away with it?’
She glared blue fire at me. ‘I won’t be ordered about, Axios. I won’t be dictated to like one of your minions!’
‘I would never mistake you for a minion. But a little hellcat, intent on sinking her claws into me? Definitely.’
For a charged moment she returned my stare. Then her gaze dropped to my lips.
A sort of madness took over. A breathless second later our lips met in a fiery clash, the hot little gasp she gave granting me access to the sharp tongue that seemed intent on creating havoc with my mood and my libido.
Caught in the grip of hunger, I slicked my tongue against hers, took hold of one hip to hold her in place. She attempted to smother her moan, attempted not to squirm with the arousal I could already sense. I needed more. Needed confirmation of...something. Something that bore a hint of the torrid dreams that had plagued me almost nightly for a solid year. Something to take away the disarming hollowness that had resided in me since I’d got the call in New York that my wife had fled Agistros.
My teeth grazed the tip of her tongue when it attempted to issue a challenge. This time she couldn’t hold back her moan. Couldn’t stop herself from straining against me, from gasping her need.
And when she did I took. Savoured. Then devoured.
Her moans fuelled my desire, and the scramble of her hands over my chest, then around to my back facilitated the urgent need to lay her on the sofa so I could slide over her, to once again experience the heady sensation of having Calypso beneath me.
Her nails dug in deeper as I lowered myself over her, felt the heavy swell of her breasts press again my chest. The recollection that she’d borne my child, that she still nurtured him, was a powerful aphrodisiac that charged through me and hardened me in the most profoundly carnal way.
