As if understanding her suspicions, he sighed heaving. “You weren’t the only one who was burned by what happened between us. I’d always had trust issues… what happened with you pretty much cemented them.”
Eleanor swept her eyes shut, and then something inside of her burst, so that she was treading water and pushing up to kiss him all at once, claiming his lips with hers, groaning into his mouth with the kind of primal, possessiveness that she’d never known she possessed.
“I’m so glad,” she sobbed, but it was a sound of happiness; of pure, unadulterated perfection. He pulled her through the water without breaking their kiss, and at the side with the white sand, he stepped out, lifting her easily, cradling her to his chest as though she were as light as a feather, and striding along the beach.
“Where are we going?” She groaned, kissing his chest, his shoulders, every inch of him that she could reach.
“The villa.”
“But there’s a perfectly good beach here,” she wailed.
He grinned down at her. “And no condom.”
“Ah.” She ran a hand down his body, then up to his side and tickled him, so that he made a grunting noise. “Witch.”
She looked over her shoulder. The villa was in sight. “You can’t carry me the whole way.”
“Watch me.” And he continued to walk, his eyes determinedly on the building, her hands clasped behind his neck. By the time they reached the terrace, they were almost dry, but not completely, so a mess of sand and water droplets was left in their wake.
“Good morning, Carlotta,” he called without breaking his stride, and Eleanor followed the direction of his gaze to see the housekeeper standing in the kitchen, her expression one of pure bafflement.
“Apollo!” Eleanor buried her face into his shoulder, heat staining her cheeks. “She’s going to think we’re …”
“Sleeping together?” He queried, wiggling his brows.
“Yes!”
“So?” He shouldered the door to his own room in, carrying Eleanor to the bed and dumping her in the middle of it. She laughed, and pushed onto her elbows to watch him cross back to the door and press it shut. He pushed his pants off as he prowled back to the bed, and then he brought his body over hers, his beautiful, buff body, and her breath was too thin to be able to take enough oxygen from it – she was drowning in the middle of his bedroom.
He kissed her then, his tongue sliding into her mouth, tasting her sweetness, and his hands ran over her body, seeking her flesh, needing all of her. He peeled her wet undergarments from her, exposing her to his hungry gaze, and then he kissed her hard, all over, dragging his mouth hungrily across her flesh, flicking her with his tongue until she was crying out with her need for release, begging him to take her.
He didn’t need to be asked, though. He sheathed himself in protection and slid into her beautiful, feminine core, his voice a guttural oath when her muscles tightened around his length. It had only been a day since they’d done this and he felt like it had been months.
“You are addictive,” he muttered, kissing her neck, her earlobe, tracing a line across her cheek to her lips. She pushed up on her elbows again, kissing him hard, and then she pushed at his chest, rolling him onto his back so she was on top of him.
The sight of Eleanor naked above him, her face enraptured, her breasts pink from where his stubbled jaw had grazed her flesh, was more of a turn on than he could say. The sheer possessiveness of his feelings nearly bowled him over.
She was his.
Not for ever, not even for much longer, but in this moment.
He dug his fingers into her hips, holding her on his length and then he bucked, filling her with his cock. She made a moaning sound and then she came apart at the seams, and he held her, pushing up to a sitting position so he could take one of her perfect nipples into his mouth as she crumbled in his arms.
It was perfection. But he wanted more. He waited until her breathing had returned to normal and then he flipped her onto her back, grinning at her sound of surprise. His hands caught hers and dragged them above her head, where he pinned them with one arm, trapping her beneath him.
Before she could protest, he kissed her, and he used his other hand to separate her legs. He drove into her anew, harder, faster, needing to dominate her and drive any thoughts of the past from her mind – from both of their minds.
It worked.
There was only this moment, this magic. He kissed her and together they tumbled over the edge of the cliff, as if jumping into a pond. He held her wrists above her head and she held all of him deep inside herself.
“I’m still having a hard time believing you’ve been single since we broke up.”
He shifted in the bed, his green eyes lancing her with their direct stare. Her cheeks were still flushed with pleasure, and her breasts were naked to his hungry gaze.
“Why?” His fingers caught hers, and he held them in his palm, staring at them as though they were the most delicate pieces of lace in the world.
“You’re just so… I don’t know. Virile?”
“Thank you,” he murmured, batting his lashes in an attempt at coquettishness that had her laughing.
“I’m serious!”
“So am I.”
She shook her head, sobering visibly. “You weren’t single because you were waiting for me, though.”
“No.” His eyes met hers and he saw the swirling current of emotions in their depths. Pain, regret, sadness. “I truly never wanted to see you again, Eleanor. I wasn’t waiting for you, hoping I’d find you in a foreign country and have the opportunity to kidnap you so I could have my wicked way with you at last. I presumed I’d meet someone one day and forget all about you.”
She dipped her head forward in a poor attempt to conceal her feelings from him. Didn’t she know he could read her even when part of her face was obscured? She was like a book, to him.
“But you didn’t.”
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “I’ve been busy, remember?”
“Right.”
“And you? Single, for three years?”
She nodded, lifting a finger to his chest. “But for me, that was all about you.”
His pulse accelerated and his belly flopped like he’d just jumped from an aeroplane. “Oh, really?” He managed to make the question droll.
“You’re a pretty tough act to follow.” The words were delivered with a small laugh, as though she were making light of matters.
His frown was infinitesimal, his pleasure enormous. “But you said you were over me. In Ras el Kida.”
“I thought I was.” She shook her head. “No, I wanted to be. I told myself I was, but how could I be? I fell in love with you, Apollo, and apparently that doesn’t just go away.”
He fell onto his back and stared at the ceiling, his mind spinning over time. Eleanor shifted, moving her head to his chest, lying on top of him, and he stroked her hair on instinct. But her words were playing over and over in his mind, like little barbs of danger that he knew he wouldn’t heed.
This was temporary. He’d spelled that out to her again and again. Meaningless sex – that was what he’d offered. He wasn’t such an idiot that he could pretend that was all they were doing. He knew they were skirting danger, that their past was right behind them, that it would swallow them both if he didn’t take care.
Wasn’t that what he’d done? In laying clear ground rules for this? He’d made it as black and white as possible, to avoid hurting her. To avoid being hurt.
This was great, but it was just a stop-gap. A bandaid. A crutch, even, to help him move beyond his Eleanor obsession. She’d be gone soon enough, and then he could begin putting all this behind him, once and for all.
*
“Did you always want to be a journalist?”
Eleanor paused, mid-step, looking up at him. The beach swirled behind him, beautiful green waves crashing into a silvery thread on the white sand. His handsome face was relaxed; the question was ask
ed without agenda.
“No.” She kept walking, a smile playing about her lips. “When I was a girl, I wanted to be a marine biologist.” She looked longingly towards the beach. “I watched an American television show about a boy who swims with dolphins and my mind was made up.”
He grinned down at her and Eleanor’s heart stammered. “Not much opportunity to swim with the dolphins in London?”
“Not exactly,” she murmured. “But it’s still one of my favourite things to do.”
“Really?”
“Oh, no, not actually swimming with the dolphins. I’ve never got around to that. I mean watching marine life. I go to the aquarium wherever I can. In every city I’ve been to, just about.” She sighed. “The dolphins are beautiful but I also have a soft spot for the penguins.”
His laugh made her knees weak. “Why, may I ask?”
“Are you kidding? They’re adorable. And very, very smart and loyal. Plus, the father nurtures the egg, which I kind of like the idea of.”
“I see,” he laughed. The sun was high overhead and the day warm. “So what happened?”
She shrugged. “Elizabeth got pregnant. I’d always been good with words and I’d run the student newsletter at school. I got a cadetship with a local paper but it was owned by a bigger national and I was able to transfer to that pretty quickly.”
“You’re talented,” he said, the words obviously not laced with much pleasure.
“I guess so.” She bit down on her lip. “And I needed to work.”
“But now you freelance?”
“Yeah. I realized … I needed autonomy in what I write. I don’t want to have an editor forcing me to complete a story.” She looked up at him, wanting to apologise again, and knowing the words weren’t welcome. “I already had a good enough name to know I’d be able to sell stories, and the flexibility to work on what I want has been a godsend with Josh.”
“I can imagine.”
“Do you think you’ll see your nephew often?” She asked, blinking up at him.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, his eyes focused straight ahead. “I don’t go to Ras el Kida much.” And then, softening a little. “Something I’d like to rectify.”
“I remember you saying that you’re not close to Chloe.”
“No,” he said after a beat had passed.
“Something else you’re planning to rectify?” She asked.
He seemed to be waging an internal battle, and then he looked down at her, his eyes piercing for their intensity. “Yes.”
She sighed softly, turning away from him. If she’d never known him before, she might not have minded his closed-off manner. But she had known him. She’d known him to be honest and open and funny. She hated the way he could block her out.
“I’ve spent most of Chloe’s life pushing her away. And she’ll never really understand why – only that I didn’t make time for her.”
“So why don’t you tell her?”
“Because she still thinks our father was a saint.” His lips twisted sardonically and, for the briefest of moments, his eyes were colder than ice-chips. “Despite your article, she continues to believe Stavros Heranedes was a demi-god. I can’t tell her that I kept her away from him, from me, because I wanted to insulate her from the kind of amoral life he led.”
“But that was a kindness. You shielded her from a lifestyle that would have been impossible for her to reconcile.”
“Perhaps she should have had a say in that?” He said with a lift of his shoulders.
“When she was a girl? Impossible. The things you told me… the way your father was… you were right not to let her see it.”
“I’m glad you think so.” She couldn’t tell if he was speaking sarcastically, or if he was simply frustrated with himself. “In any event, Raffa is doing his best to effect a peace treaty between us,” he said, a small smile relaxing his face. “And I’m grateful.”
“Do you ever wish you’d had someone to look out for you?”
He turned to face her, arching a brow. As they walked, the water was coming in closer to the shore, and now it ran over their feet. The sense of cool was bliss. With silent but mutual agreement, they walked further into the sea, so that their ankles were covered completely. “I didn’t need anyone,” Raffa said with a shrug. “I’m different to Chloe.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. She’s always been quiet. Watchful. I think spending time with my father would have made her miserable.”
“Whereas you were fine with it?”
“There was a lot I admired about Stavros,” he said. “His perversions were just one part of his character. There were times where his dynamism and intelligence were utterly captivating. I learned so much from him.”
“And his perversions?” She asked gently, and for no reason except that she needed to, she reached for his hand, squeezing it in hers.
“What about them?” The words held a challenge, but Eleanor wouldn’t be silenced.
“You told me he organized a hooker for your birthday one year,” she murmured, looking up at him.
“A fact I was grateful you omitted from your notes. I was pleased not to have that detail of my life revealed to the world.”
Her eyes swept shut for a moment but it did little to blot the pain out. The conversation had sunk into the past, and recriminations and blame were lying there in wait.
“It was an unconventional way to grow up,” she said stiltedly.
“You could say that.” He stopped walking and to her surprise, cupped her cheeks in his broad, confident palms, holding her still for his inspection. “I was nothing like you. I’ve never known anyone like you.”
And from the depths of awkwardness and despair, she soared high into the heavens. Her smile was, unknowingly, breathtaking.
“I was fifteen and driven by my hormones.” In contrast, his own words were bleak, distracted. “I appreciate you must think I was weak-willed…”
She froze, her brain shifting, trying to process that idea. “How can you say that?”
“My father introduced me to his world as though it were normal. Sex parties, hookers, I thought money could buy whatever I wanted.” He grimaced. “Whoever I wanted.”
“But you grew out of it.”
His smile was self-deprecating. “No, I saw the world for what it was.”
“How? What made you change?”
“I got talking to one of the women at one of his parties. I say ‘woman’, but she must have been all of seventeen.” He shook his head and there was anger in the tight set of his features. “She was terrified. I looked around and saw it through her eyes. The drinking, the drugs, the lecherous old men. My God, how had I thought it was okay? Even for a short amount of time?”
“You were still a child yourself,” she promised, lifting up on tiptoes and pressing her lips to his in a spontaneous gesture of comfort. “How could you know otherwise?”
He shook his head.
“And you protected Chloe from it. On some level you knew it was wrong. And when you were old enough to move away from it, you did.”
He turned away from her, staring out to sea. “I still saw women as my own plaything,” he said. “I just changed the rules. I seduced them, I flirted, but ultimately, I was using every single woman I ever slept with.”
Her heart thumped inside of her and she refused to analyse that statement.
“And then I met you,” he said seriously. “And I knew I couldn’t sleep with you until I’d proven to myself that I could respect you. I didn’t want you to be just another woman in my bed.”
Her pulse was rushing through her, and she wanted to cry, for how beautiful the sentiment was.
“So I waited, and I dated you, and I opened up to you, because I wanted you to know what a flawed man you were falling in love with.” He shifted his head, pinning her with his swirling, green gaze. “I wanted you to see me, warts and all, and still want me.” He swallowed and his adam’s apple bobbed in his hair
-roughened throat.
“I didn’t know you were a virgin, but I knew you were different. I knew you were…”
He didn’t finish the sentence and yet she heard the word he hadn’t issued.
Special.
“Same,” she said gently, standing beside him without touching and feeling, bizarrely, more connected to him than ever before. “I used to wake up and smile, counting the minutes until I’d see you again. It was only six weeks, but you took over my whole life, Apollo.”
He turned to face her and their eyes met and Eleanor could have sworn she was floating. She looked back at him and when he smiled, her heart lurched and her stomach flopped and her whole body tingled with everything he hadn’t said, but she knew he felt – because she felt it too.
“There are no dolphins here, that I know of,” he murmured, and before she could guess his intentions, he’d bent down and scooped her up, lifting her to his chest and striding into the ocean. “But there is water and perhaps, if we swim for long enough, we might find penguins?”
She burst out laughing. “Not unless we swim to the north pole…”
“Let’s start with here and see where the mood takes us.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HE STARED OUT OF his office window, watching her swim, wondering that the hell he’d called Raffa for, and knowing the answer all at the same time. To the world, Sheikh Rafiq al Khalil was a powerful ruler of an illustrious, ancient desert kingdom, but to Apollo, he was, simply Raf. The man Apollo had turned to whenever he’d needed advice in the past.
And they were brothers now. So why was Apollo struggling to find words?
“Apollo? What is it?”
He cleared his throat, kicking back a little in his chair, so he could stare at the ceiling instead of Eleanor’s distracting figure, cutting through the water. She’d been on his island a week. Seven nights, seven days, and so much passion that Apollo recognized he’d become more addicted to her than ever. Not less. Nothing about his need for her was on the wane, but nor was he able to look at her and trust her. There was no future here, and he told himself that was fine. That she knew the score; he wasn’t doing anything wrong. So why did he feel like he was?
The Greek's Virgin Captive: She was wrong for him in every way but one... (Evermore Book 2) Page 12
