Why did every time with her give him the sense that he was slicing through her with a blade? Every smile she gave him, so full of expectation, made his gut twist.
Because hurting her was inevitable.
“I need to tell you something.”
His expression was grim, while he waited for Raffa’s response.
“And?”
Despite the tension radiating through his frame, Apollo smiled. The single, curt word was so exactly like Raffa.
“I’ve talked to you about almost everything, Raf. You know more about me than most people. You know how I value your… counsel.”
“Is something the matter?” Raffa was instantly attentive.
“No, it’s… yes. I’m … seeing someone.”
“I see.” A beat passed while Raffa assimilated this information. Three years ago, that wouldn’t have caused even a small pause. Apollo had always been seeing someone. But sine Eleanor? Raffa knew how focused he’d been on Heranedes Enterprises, how little time he’d had for women. Apollo could practically hear his friend’s brain cogitating. “And you don’t sound happy about that.”
Apollo heaved out a heavy sigh and, of their own accord, his eyes drifted back to Eleanor. She’d stopped swimming. She was propped against the edge of her pool, so he could see only the wet pelt of her beautiful hair, and the tanned smoothness of her shoulders. Turn around, he willed her silently, needing to see her, knowing he would take strength from her gaze.
“It’s complicated.”
“You’ve been single a long time, my friend,” Raffa drawled cynically. “I wouldn’t think there’s anything complicated about it at all.”
Apollo’s smile was a ghost on his face. “It’s Eleanor Jones.”
“Eleanor Jones?” Raffa repeated, wondering at the significance before repeating the name with more intensity. “That damned journalist?”
Apollo wondered, for the second time, why the hell he’d made this call.
“You can’t be serious? She’s… after everything she wrote about your father? My God, you must be kidding me?”
“No.” It was a grim admission.
“How did this happen? You despise her. I have never seen you so gutted as you were by what she did. I have never seen you so angry, either! You hate her.”
“I know. I… do.” He expelled an angry, frustrated breath. “That is to say, I hate what she did. I know I’ll never forgive her for it.”
“So you’re, what? Sleeping with her to punish her? To hurt her in some way?”
“No.” He winced. “Maybe initially. I did want to hurt her.” His eyes drifted back to the water; she was still facing away from him. “She was in Ras el Kida. At the ceremony for Malik, working undercover for a newspaper.”
“What do you mean? Working undercover? Writing an article?”
“Yes.”
“On what, exactly?” A lesser man might have been terrified by the clear, resounding throb of fury in The Sheikh’s voice.
“Amit. The Ras el Kidan line of succession.”
Raffa issued every expletive in his native tongue, loud and fast. “You should have told me.”
“And had her thrown in prison?” Apollo challenged, his chest heaving at the thought now.
“She killed him, Apollo. That article came out and Stavros was dead not twelve hours later. His heart gave way in the face of the vile, ugly story she wrote.”
“She didn’t write it. She quit the paper and her editor used her notes.”
“She took those notes during an intimate relationship with you. She conned you! How can you defend her? And to me, of all people? Who loved your father as my own? Who loves you as a brother? I saw what her duplicity did to you – I picked up the pieces when no one else could. My God, she’s deprived my wife of a chance to ever know her own father…”
Apollo’s expression sharpened at that charge. “Oh, come on. That was Stavros’s fault and you know it. I won’t have that charge laid at Eleanor’s door.”
“You don’t know that!” Raffa interrupted with ice in his tone. “You cannot say with any conviction what would have happened had Stavros lived.”
Apollo’s chest burned. Arguing with his best friend was the last thing he wanted to be doing.
“I got her out of Ras el Kida and I’ve made sure she’s not going to write the article.”
“I would have done that. Hell, I would have made sure she never wrote another thing in her life. How can you be giving safe-haven to this woman? Let alone be sleeping with her?”
An unwelcome frisson of violent revolt crossed his spine. His friend’s threat was unwelcome; that he was speaking of Eleanor in those terms did something strange to his gut. And yet Apollo understood. Raffa was right – he was the only person who’d seen the devastation Eleanor had caused. He knew how bad it had been for Raffa to move beyond her betrayal. “It’s just sex. I know there’s no future for us. You’re not the only one who can’t get over what she did. But God, Raffa, there’s something about her…”
“No.” Raffa spoke the word with all the conviction of a ruler used to being obeyed. “If you entertain thoughts of a relationship with that lying, murderous whore, I swear, I will … I will find it impossible to see you,” he finished softly. “I won’t have Chloe exposed to that woman. I won’t have her anywhere near me, nor my family. And risk her syphoning out our secrets for the world’s consumption? You must be crazy, my friend.”
“I know.” Hadn’t he thought exactly that? Hadn’t he thought that this was a madness, a craziness? An absolute insanity?
Apollo jerked to standing, moving towards the window and looking out at her. In that moment, she turned, as though she felt his presence. Her eyes lifted to the window and she smiled, just as she had that morning when she’d woken to find him watching her. A smile of such goodness and perfection that his heart knew what his head refused to believe.
She would never hurt him.
“So? Get rid of her. Forget about her once and for all. She has ruined enough of your days, Apollo. There are many more women out there – women who deserve you. Who won’t pose such a threat.”
And slowly, Eleanor lifted a hand, motioning with her fingers for him to join her, just as he’d done to her, a week or so ago.
His stomach rolled and his cock tightened in expectation.
Everything Raffa said was right, and yet Apollo already knew he wasn’t ready to heed his friend’s advice. Yet. That time would come though, surer than day followed night. He would end this – one day.
“I will,” Apollo heard himself agree, hating the way the words tasted in his mouth. “Soon.”
“Yes, soon. Have your fun, and then be done with it.”
Have your fun and then be done with it.
Apollo strode out to the pool, his mind still stretching over the conversation with Raffa. The problem was, he knew his friend was right. Whatever he was doing with Eleanor had moved beyond what he’d expected.
This wasn’t meaningless sex. But nor was it a prelude to anything more. There was no way he could keep her in his life – he had to end this. And the sooner the better.
But, God help him, the idea of relinquishing her filled him with a bitter aftertaste. How could he let her go?
How could he keep her?
“I thought you’d never join me,” she murmured.
His lips twisted unknowingly into a sneer of derision, but it was all aimed at himself. “Apparently I can’t stay away.” And he held his hands out to her, knowing she would join him, because she always did. Just as he always went to her when she needed him.
But that was just physical. Nothing more.
She pulled herself out of the pool with grace a mermaid would admire, and walked her wet, soft body into his arms. He swore as he kissed her. It was a kiss of utter desperation. His tongue warred with hers and his arms clamped around her back, gelling her to his body. He pulled her down to the ground with him, the sun-warmed tiles warm beneath his knees.
The bikini he’d chosen for her was tiny; he snapped the ties at the back, so that it fell off, revealing her full, generous breasts to his hungry gaze, and then, his mouth. Using his body weight to push her backwards, he dragged his mouth downwards, taking a nipple into his mouth and clamping his lips around it, rolling it with his tongue until she was writhing beneath him. She tasted like the salt water of his pool, and also, like herself. That sweet, vanilla flavor that was all Eleanor.
He shifted his attention to the other breast, but brought his fingers to the first, squeezing her nipple so that she moaned and arched her back, and then his mouth dragged lower still, finding the flimsy elastic of her bikini bottoms. He dragged them lower with his teeth and then slid a finger inside her womanhood, his eyes lifting to hers, almost mockingly, watching her face scrunch as wave after wave of pleasure assailed her.
The abandon with which she gave herself to this, the way she let pleasure saturate her being, meant everything to him. But it couldn’t. This was temporary. Transient. Final.
He couldn’t let it go on.
The devil rode at his heels, riding him, pushing him, as he lifted his body up and moved her legs apart, thrusting into her with all the desperation that their situation filled him with. She welcomed him as always; with open arms, with open everything. She was all his. She clung to him, holding him tight, and he wondered, as she began to moan beneath him, her body convulsing with pleasure, if he could just keep her on the island forever?
She could be his little secret; and he would be her whole world. He could fly her sister over from time to time, when he felt like he could share her.
And Raffa, Chloe, no one would ever know that he had, quite literally, slept with the enemy.
*
“You’re very grumpy today,” Eleanor murmured, much later that same day, when the evening was giving way to night and the air had taken on the balminess of sunny Mediterranean evenings.
“Am I?” he sipped his wine, one arm casually thrown over her shoulder as they sat on the terrace, watching the approach of darkness.
“Mmmm. You were distracted in the pool earlier, too.”
“I don’t recall that.” He tossed her a look that made her insides flop, just remembering the way he’d been. And yet, there’d been something different in the way they’d made love. On the edges of the pool, warmed by the sun, he’d taken her with a passion that was different, even for Apollo. He’d been… desperate. No. Angry? Something.
Eleanor frowned, trying to put her finger on exactly what he’d done to make her think that. She couldn’t, so she ignored the feeling.
“It’s hard to believe there’s a whole big world out there, huh?” She murmured, leaning into him, her head on his shoulder, contentment zipping through her.
“Just about fifteen miles that way, in fact,” he gestured in a direction which she knew held the nearest island – a far bigger island with hotels and restaurants. Occasionally, speed boats zipped past – close enough to see from the shore of Apollo’s island, but never near enough to threaten their privacy.
“It’s easy to forget,” she said softly, thinking of her home, Elizabeth and Josh with a clutch in the region of her heart. “I feel like we could be the only two people on earth.”
“Us, and the army of domestics who maintain the island,” he said with a grin.
“Yes, and them.”
“Tell me about your grandfather,” she invited softly, lifting her legs over his lap then, breathing in his masculine scent until goosebumps spread over her body.
“He was a good man,” Apollo said with a shrug. “Intelligent, hard-working, kind. He liked to build things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Chairs, tables. Furniture.” He lifted his shoulders and dislodged her legs, standing and shooting her a look that didn’t quite pass muster for apologetic. A butterfly flapped its wings in Eleanor’s belly. “Are you hungry?”
She shook her head.
“Well, I am. Starving.” He looked towards the kitchen. “Carlotta left some souvlaki and salad.”
“Oh, okay,” Eleanor ignored the next butterfly that stirred to life inside of her. She was being paranoid. Everything between them had been amazing. A week on the island and she knew that they were pushing past the barriers he’d wanted to erect.
The article would always be a black spot for them, a part of their history that they’d both struggle to make sense of. Her guilt would never recede completely.
But they’d gone beyond that – they were so much more to each other now. Her body lived to feel his; she lived… for him.
The realization of how completely dependent she was on Apollo could have been terrifying, were it not for the certainty that he was equally dependent on her.
The confidentiality agreement he’d asked her to sign seemed like a ridiculous blip – as if it were something that had happened to two other people. She barely thought of it anymore.
She watched him walk into the house and then, on a small sigh of contentment, followed after. He was wearing jeans and a simple grey shirt but he looked like a fashion model. She preferred him in nothing whatsoever, of course, but if he had to wear clothes, she loved him like this. Dressed down and casual. On the few times he’d been obliged to take the chopper to Athens, he’d worn suits, and instantly he’d become distanced from her. Unavailable and intimidating.
He’d worn suits often in London – he’d been working every day. She’d become used to the sight of him, looking like the epitome of a corporate CEO. Which, she supposed, he was. She walked into the kitchen, unable to pull her eyes away. Even the way he mixed salad did funny things to her stomach; desire kicked through her.
Would it always be like this?
“Tell me about Amit,” he prompted, his eyes lifting to meet hers, piercing her with their beautiful intensity.
It took her a moment to understand what he was saying. “Your nephew?”
His lips twisted. “My best friend’s … son,” he corrected.
“But your sister is his step-mother?”
A muscle jerked in Apollo’s cheek and then he turned towards the fridge. “No. She hasn’t adopted him.”
“But she married his father. Surely an adoption is merely a formality?”
Apollo pulled a plate of chicken from the fridge and placed it beside the stove top, before lighting a gas flame. He covered it with a shallow, square frying pan.
“Raffa is not Amit’s father.” He fixed her with a steady gaze and then reached for the chicken, adding it to the hot pan so that it seared upon contact.
“What?” She moved closer, surprised by this revelation. “But that’s not possible…”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’ve researched it.” She didn’t see the way his expression tightened. She was lost in her thoughts. “He’s the son of the Sheikh and Elena – his first girlfriend.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Elena became involved with another man.”
“Who?” Eleanor was askance. “Are you sure? There’s been nothing about this in the press.”
“I have a more direct source,” he pointed out, and now a warning frisson surged through her, as she immediately sought to backpedal.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” she said with a soft shake of her head. “You asked about the article and my reporter instincts just swept me away.”
He ground his teeth together, his jawline squared. “Yes.”
Uh oh. Something was bothering him. “I was… making conversation as a woman, not as a journalist.”
He nodded, but it was a movement filled with tension.
“Apollo?”
His eyes met hers for the briefest moment and then he turned back to the chicken, reaching for some tongs so he could flip it.
“What’s going on?”
“Raffa has a half-brother,” he said after a beat, not looking at her. “His name is Goran, and he’s a piece of work. Vindictive, churlish, mean-spirited
. Jealous as all hell of Raf.”
She ignored the fact he hadn’t answered her question, telling herself she was being paranoid, imagining a darkness lurking beneath the surface that wasn’t really there.
“How is this true? If there was a second heir to the Ras el Kidan throne, everyone would know about it…”
“Goran is the product of an affair. He’s not legitimate and was never acknowledged as a son, let alone an heir.”
Eleanor drew in a breath. “That’s awful,” she shook her head sadly. “He must have been devastated growing up.”
“He’s a pig of a man,” Apollo insisted.
“Yes, perhaps he is.” Eleanor tilted her head to one side. “But imagine what it must have been like for him – knowing his father didn’t want him!”
“He was raised in the palace, brought up with the best of everything.”
“Don’t be asinine,” she murmured, softening it by putting her hand over his and squeezing. “Having a palace and servants and everything money can buy doesn’t make up for not having parents who love you. You know that.”
His eyes were hooded when they shifted to hers. “Because of my father?”
“Because you had a far from ideal upbringing,” she agreed, gently.
“True.” A muscle throbbed in his cheek as he returned his attention to the chicken. He flipped it once more. The aroma was tantalizing, despite the fact Eleanor would have sworn she wasn’t hungry.
“So what happened? He stole Elena from the Sheikh?”
“Yes, more or less. Raf was away in the military. Goran thought he’d twist the knife in his absence. He seduced Elena, and promised her the world. She was young. Naïve.”
“Did you know her?”
Apollo’s nod was curt. “We were friends.”
“But she didn’t know about Goran?”
“Nobody did, except me and Lakim, another of Raffa’s inner-circle. It’s a very tightly held secret.” He leaned his hip against the bench, waiting for the chicken to finish cooking. “In any event, she became pregnant. It was the end of any hopes she’d cherished of marrying Raffa. From the moment she became involved with Goran, it was the end, but she still hoped he might forgive her.”
The Greek's Virgin Captive: She was wrong for him in every way but one... (Evermore Book 2) Page 13
