by Caro LaFever
Natalie stopped to catch her breath.
But he continued as if driven to a certain place. A rocky ledge stuck out like a rugged spike, and he strode onto it and stood like a marble statue. Haltingly, she moved toward him until she came right behind his heated body. Her gaze traced the sweat on his neck, watched the heaving of his chest, noticed his fisted hands.
Unable to handle the impact he had on her, she tore her attention away and looked down.
At Athens.
The city spread before both of them in timeless glory. Endless beauty.
Whitewashed buildings filled the valley, while thrusting limestone hills glazed with greenery reared into the sky, looming above the teeming streets. The Parthenon gleamed from one of the ridges, the pillars proudly proclaiming ancient Greece’s majesty. In the distance, the blue sea sparkled in the sun, a few white puffs of clouds dancing in the bright light of the December day.
“Wow,” she whispered. “The view’s amazing.”
He laughed. Said nothing.
Nat couldn’t help herself. Without thought, her hand lifted and touched him. Her fingers stroked down his tensing back in a mute offering of consolation. “What is this place?” she said, watching the sun’s rays weave into his golden hair like a blessing and a welcoming. “Where are we?”
When he turned with a jerk, her hand dropped at the expression on his face.
His chestnut eyes were a stormy brew of brilliant rage and fiery-red pain. His olive skin no longer glowed with the vigor of their climb. He looked like he’d been staring down at a swirl of ghosts come to feast on his flesh. The body that entranced her with its athletic grace and masculine beauty stood before her as tight and taut as if he were about to jump to his death. In order to rid himself of the agony pulsing inside him.
“What?” She nearly gasped. “What is it?”
“Lycabettus Hill.” His accent curled around the words like a curse.
He didn’t answer her real question. He probably didn’t even realize her true question. “It’s beautiful,” she managed to choke out.
“Is it?” He glanced around, his eyes glazed. “Is it?”
“Yes, it is.”
His dark gaze landed on her face again as if he searched for a retreat, a place of refuge. Another hoarse laugh spewed from him, an ugly sound that surrounded her with its vicious torment.
She tried to find something, anything that would pull him away from this overwhelming despair. “So this is your favorite place in Athens?”
The laugh grew in outrage. “No,” he finally muttered. “Not at all.”
“Then why—?”
“This was my father’s favorite place.” His eyes were haunted.
Her hand reached for him in an instant need to take him in, soothe whatever awfulness roiled inside him. “Aetos.”
“No.” He stepped away from her touch and she bit back a scream, thinking he was about to teeter over the edge. Yet the demonic devil residing in him wouldn’t let him escape into the release of death. She sensed the tentacles of terrible memories holding him fast in front of her.
He wouldn’t let her reach for him physically. But maybe her words could make a difference. “Why did you father love this place?”
His gaze snapped to hers and the pain in them made her want to weep. “He liked it here because this was the place where…”
Natalie stood silent, waiting. Knowing now, no words of hers would help.
“…he punished me.”
Chapter 13
The color of her eyes dazzled him.
Could they actually be real? Be human? Aetos stared into the amethyst of her gaze and noticed for the first time how the sun shot bolts of silver starlight through the blue, blinding him, binding him.
“Are you okay?” The witch cocked her head, her moonbeam curls bouncing in the soft wind.
After his idiotic confession, one that had burst from him against his will, the female had immediately insisted they leave Lycabettus Hill. The pity in her eyes had made him want to punch something, making him a copy of his father. As a consequence, instead of doing the wise thing—getting off this damn hill—he’d told her he wasn’t leaving. Giving him another glance filled with her damned compassion, she’d suggested they sit here, in this cursedly familiar café and eat.
As if he could eat anything in this hellhole of memories.
Why had he come here? Of all places, of all memories. But he knew; deep down, he knew why. The memories of his mi̱téra had brought back emotion and feeling. His dead heart had thumped to life and the knowledge had scared him. He didn’t want emotions and feeling and heart.
So, he’d logically come here. Where they’d all been erased before.
Fool that he was, he hadn’t realized there were other emotions in wait on Lycabettus Hill.
Emotions he couldn’t deal with at all.
He tried to keep his focus on the Circe siren sitting across the table. As much as it galled him, he’d rather look at her than glance around and confront his father’s demons.
“Perhaps talking about it will help.” She offered him a soft, gentle smile.
He tried to be his usual self. Tried to follow her conversation and answer back with a sarcastic volley. Yet he couldn’t. There were no words meandering around in his awful pain.
Her lips firmed. And his gaze unwillingly fell to stare at another of her temptations. She had too wide of a mouth, he’d noticed many times. She never wore lipstick to highlight her wares as every other woman did. He’d made a note of that, too. On top of all these flaws, out of her mouth came words that consistently enraged him or froze him or set him to fire.
He should hate her mouth, not allow her mouth into his dreams and desires.
“If this is too much, we’ll go.”
“No.” He did hate her soft voice, her compassion. Refused it with every cell in his body. “I’m fine.”
The woman clucked. “Men.”
He should make a snide remark. Something awful about women. There were many, many awful things to say about females. He knew the awful lurking in women. But he couldn’t seem to reach those words, only feel the power of his hate roiling inside.
Forcing himself to look down at the menu and away from her distraction, he wondered what he could possibly order that would go down his aching throat.
“Aetos.”
His name yanked on a fine, gossamer thread of need deep down in his gut. The way she said it, spoke it. The way she wrapped her lips around it and him. Making him yearn and want.
Gamó̱to ti̱s. Oh, nai. Damn her.
“You need to talk about this.” The mágissa kept flying around him on her broomstick. “Tell me about your father.”
A rough, raspy laugh escaped his control.
“Tell me what he did to you,” she continued her inexorable flight into his past.
The Greek writing on the menu danced before him. Danced with hysteria and glee. Jumped and frolicked over his memories.
“Tell me.”
Another challenge. Another dare. One he found himself unable to respond to. There was nothing in him to rise and conquer her or her words or his recollections.
“Aetos.”
He closed his eyes.
“Telling me will help you.”
The old stark fear, smothered in years of bitter rage, roared to life. With it, the last remnant of his armor was resurrected. The armor he’d carefully crafted during many encounters and many lessons with women.
“Tell you, gynaíka mou?” He managed to stare into her witchy eyes and smile his contempt of her sorcery. “Lay my soul before you and let you pick over the carcass?”
Those eyes of hers turned dark, yet not with her usual anger towards him. They were dark with her hateful compassion. “No, you—”
“Tell you so you can write that story of yours and tell the world all about Aetos Zenos and his ugly past and horrible scars?”
She stared at him. The low hum of conversation surrounding t
hem faded. The sun drifted behind a cloud and a cold whiff of wind wafted across the sweat on the back of his neck. The gossamer thread inside of him snapped.
Kalós. Good.
He did not want this. Whatever this was. He did not want the threads of her wrapping around him in a female spell he’d learned long ago would destroy him. He wanted nothing from her. Not her eyes gazing at him or her mouth saying his name or her infernal curiosity and compassion.
At that instant, the woman, in her infinite goddess way, used another one of her tricks. Another one of her lures.
She breathed.
His male gaze dropped from her eyes and her lips to her breasts. The delicate, slight curve of her breasts rose and then fell with the breath. There was nothing special about them. Nothing impressive that would cause a man to be interested in seeing what lay beneath the simple pink cotton shirt she wore. Nothing that should draw his gaze.
The gossamer thread turned to a whip inside him. A lash of lust twisting around his gut and his groin. The sun broke free of the clouds and blazed with sudden heat onto his skin and a line of sweat sprang like beads on his brow.
“Échete apofasísei?” The waiter’s words chopped through his turmoil like a falling axe.
Had he decided?
Nai, he’d decided many times about this witch. Yet none of his decisions ever seemed to matter to the final outcome.
His defeat.
The woman sitting across from him smiled one of her usual witchy smiles. The kid waiter had no hope. He sunk into her enchantment without a whimper. The two of them chattered on about this and that while he sat numb and sullen.
Like every time he’d sat here with his father.
Being told he was no good, told he wasn’t enough.
The last time came to him. The last time he’d climbed those stairs, following his father, shivering with anxiety and resentment and fear. Invariably, the fear. Every time they walked to the top of Lycabettus Hill, he’d been subjected to a harsh lecture. Every time, his father detailed the myriad ways he’d pay for his failures. Every time, he’d go to bed with a bruise or injury.
The last time, he’d been nine. Still impossibly in love with his father and still hoping, desperately, he’d find a way to earn his approval.
“Your mother is dead.”
The words echoed around him now as if they’d clung to the whitewashed walls, waiting for him to return to hear them again.
“Dead?” he’d whispered. A childish plea. A plea his father’s rigid face and damning gaze rejected. His mother had been gone for several days, yet this had become her usual pattern. During the last few years, she’d spent less and less time with him, more and more time…away. He’d gotten used to it. Used to having her only for a few precious hours. He’d gotten used to walking home from school alone. But dead? “When? How?”
His father had ignored the questions as he’d ignored his son for most of his existence. Instead, he’d carelessly twisted the glass of wine in his hands, looking away from his son and out onto the city lying below them. “I am remarrying.”
Aetos still remembered how the sun slanted across their table at that moment. He remembered the smell of lamb and garlic and the way his father never met his eye after their conversation ended. Ever.
“I went ahead and ordered.”
Her soft voice shocked him out of his reverie. He jerked his head around, met those discerning female eyes, and swung back to stare down at the city. Just as his father had, twenty-four years ago.
“I hope that’s okay.”
“Fine.” He’d cried then. Wept as only a child could do. His father had taken him home and beat him. As only a father could do.
Soon after, Phaidra had entered his life. His friend. Replacing the mother he’d lost.
The ultimate female betrayer.
“I ordered a variety of appetizers.” The siren’s voice came rushed, as if trying to cover over the tense, hostile aura surrounding their table. “Mezedes, the waiter said. He recommended it.”
Aetos managed to shrug his acceptance. He wouldn’t be eating any of the food anyway. Let the female have what she wanted.
“I thought you could order the wine.”
He compulsively glanced away from the city and into her eyes—a windstorm of blue mixed with the deep purple of the grapes he’d learned to cultivate, cut, and crush when he’d fled Phaidra. And his inheritance. And everything he’d ever believed of himself. Fled to his grandparents and their tiny little farm with the insignificant olive grove and the inconsequential vineyard. The place where he’d found a way to paper over his wounds, learned to bide his time.
Where he’d learned to—
“I know this place holds bad memories for you.” Her cheerful smile was forced. “But memories can fade. They also can be replaced with better ones.”
Some memories don’t fade, he could vouch for that after today. In fact, now that he’d endured the walk through his past, he didn’t want them to fade or be replaced by happier ones. If he replaced them or if they faded, he might forget the lessons they’d taught him.
She plowed on, a determined glint in her eye. “This place is beautiful.”
His fingers tapped in a restless drum on his leg.
“Take a fresh look, Aetos. I glance around and love everything I see.”
“I knew you would.” The truth of his statement stunned him. He had known. He’d known as soon as he’d made the decision to come to the top of this hill and confront what couldn’t be confronted; the witch would fall in love with this place.
“Did you?” She cocked her head once more, surprise on her face.
“Nai.”
The kid waiter stepped to his side with an inquiring look. Aetos stared back. What did he want? His formerly nimble brain had deadened with all the ancient recollections blasting his conscience.
“The wine,” she said from across the table.
He was supposed to order the wine.
Nothing came to him. He knew thousands of wines, was somewhat of a connoisseur, if only because of his background. Still, none of the fancy French champagnes he’d tasted in Paris or the oaky chardonnays he’d sipped in Napa Valley floated into his frozen brain.
He felt foolish. Incapable. He hadn’t felt this way since he’d left Greece. In the U.S. he’d found himself, found his way to respect and approval. He’d realized he wasn’t a fool or a worthless son who would never amount to anything. He’d recognized himself to be capable of anything he put his mind to.
However, here where he’d grown up, where he came from—he was nothing but a fool once again.
“Order something Greek,” she suggested.
Order wine from his wretched homeland. Order wine that would bring even more bitter memories to the fore. “Retsina.”
The waiter looked at the witch and smiled one of those silly male smiles only certain women could elicit and left.
“What’s retsina?”
A bitter taste of the true Greece. A land of unforgiveness and treachery. His home. “You’ll see.”
The food came. Mountains of it, as if the female had decided she would order everything on the menu to tempt his appetite.
Tempt him.
Plates of freshly sliced tomatoes and bowls of glistening kalamata olives. Dolmadakia, grapevine leaves stuffed with rice, and kolokythoanthoi, zucchini flowers filled with feta and garlic. His mother had loved dolmadakia. His grandmother had often made kolokythoanthoi.
Psomi. The thick-crusted, chewy bread he’d adored as a kid. And the final stroke, golden virgin olive oil and tzatziki to dip the bread and appetizers in.
Unwillingly, his mouth watered while his memories ate at him.
He hadn’t eaten Greek food since he’d left. He’d stayed away from the Greek cafés sprinkled across the streets of New York City like a pixie dust of flashbacks he’d had no interest in pursuing. Instead, he’d dined in French saloons and Italian cafeterias and American chophouses. The smells of lamb and g
arlic, the sight of ripe tomatoes, the rich colors of olives: all of it he’d shied away from. He’d known what would come of looking, tasting, absorbing.
Torment.
“Eat,” she urged, her Circe smile gutting him.
She dived into the mezedes with gusto. He’d noticed this, too. The woman was basically a stick, but she loved food. Unlike the dozens of women he’d fed in order to get them into his bed, she never dallied with her meal, pushing it around the plate, pretending she was eating. As in every other area of being female, she didn’t fit the mold. Every morning, she ate heartily at the breakfast table, the only time he ever spent any significant time with her. He noticed she always pounced on the trays of sandwiches his caterers provided at the hospital. Now, as usual, her long fingers immediately grabbed for the food. One of the kalamata olives popped right into her lush, wide mouth.
Her eyes closed as her head went back and she made a witchy sound in her throat. The sound hit him right in the solar plexus and made his groin ache.
Mágissa.
She returned her attention to the food, ripping off a piece of crusty bread and dipping it into the cucumber yogurt spread. As a kid, he’d eaten tzatziki at every meal he’d shared with his mi̱téra. His mother had insisted on making it herself, a traditional family recipe, over his father’s strenuous objections.
“Wow,” she said. “This is fabulous bread.”
He stared at her long, elegant neck as she swallowed.
The desire inside him chugged faster, battering against his hate for her.
“Come on.” She gave him another gentle smile which somehow no longer burned his pride, but rather, burned and heated his skin. “Eat. You haven’t eaten anything today. Not even at breakfast.”
Her instant blush surprised him. As well as the knowledge she’d been aware of his eating habits. The female had been watching him as intently as he had her.
Need surged inside his body. Mutual need?
“I’m not hungry.” Not for memory-laden food, at least.
“Sure you are.” The flush on her alabaster skin turned her from a marble goddess into a vivid picture of womanly beauty. A living, breathing call to the very core of his masculinity.
