“Cristo, you’re drunk.”
She blinked at him, shaking her head. “I am not.”
“You can hardly stand up straight.” He thrust his hands onto his hips, glaring at her with a belligerent impatience she should have found annoying. She should have found patronizing. She certainly shouldn’t have found it sexy and distracting.
His bare chest warranted her attention, though, and of their own volition, her eyes slid south, tracking across the ridges of his abdomen, perfectly defined, toned pectoral muscles. Running down one side of his chest, under his arm, were words, written in a foreign language. Her eyes traced the swirling ink and her gut seized tight.
“You had no right,” he said again, shaking his head, and the vehemence of his declaration had her looking at him through narrowing eyes.
“What do you care?” She muttered. “You wanted to have sex with me just as badly as I did with you.” Her lips tugged downward for a moment. “And I’m not drunk. I’ve had three glasses of champagne all night. I knew what I was doing.”
“And what was that, cara?”
“I told you, I wanted to have sex.”
“Yes. But why? What made you, a twenty five year old virgin, decide to screw some man she’d never met and will never see again?”
“Don’t you think it’s about time?”
He made a guttural noise and shook his head, watching her, studying her in a way that made her spine tingle.
“I just felt like it,” she added, finally, turning away from him and grabbing for her underpants. “You don’t need to worry. That meant nothing to me.”
“Good,” he said; clipped, short, concise. “I told you, sex is just sex. The fact it was your first time makes no difference.”
“Exactly,” she snapped, ruminating on the way he’d taken something enjoyable and turned it into an argument. She expelled a short breath and turned away from him, reaching for her couture gown and grabbing it up, pulling it over her head roughly.
But then, he was behind her, his hands on her hips, turning her around in his arms. His eyes met hers and there was something in them, a look she couldn’t possibly comprehend.
“So you are no longer a virgin,” he murmured, the words husky and low in his throat. “Does that mean you are finished with me?”
Something like desire swarmed her body, pricking her skin with goose bumps. She bit down on her lower lip, but didn’t speak.
“Because, Bella,” he said her name slowly, whispering it and tasting it all at once. “There’s a lot more fun to be had in bed, if you’d care to join me.”
She opened her mouth, knowing she was absurd to even think of agreeing, knowing this man had just snapped at her for surprising him with her virginity, and knowing he was everything she didn’t, intellectually, like in men at all. But, she admitted impishly, he could do very, very nice things with his body…
“You were angry with me a second ago,” she reminded him, crossing her arms over her chest.
A muscle throbbed low in his jaw, and he surprised her then, his expression shifting to one almost of tenderness. It did strange things to her already-vibrating stomach, making her feel as though a whole kaleidoscope of butterflies was rampaging her from the inside out.
“I was surprised.” The words were gruff. “That doesn’t happen to me often.”
She lifted a brow, watching him thoughtfully while her blood began to pound in her body, taking over her system, filling her with heat and awareness. “Seducing virgins?” She prompted.
He shook his head, taking a step closer, so his body brushed hers. “Being surprised.” He lifted her up then, cradling her against his chest as though she weighed nothing, carrying her back to bed and placing her against the crisp white duvet.
“You don’t like surprises,” she surmised, watching him, fascinated, as he brought his body over hers. Her pulse throbbed in the base of her throat, her eyes hungrily drinking him in. Inspecting him leisurely, like this, she saw now he had a kink in his nose, as though it had been broken at some point, and a scar ran across the base of his jaw.
She pushed up on her elbows, tracing the scar with her fingertip, her eyes following the progress as though it were the most important thing she’d ever done.
She wasn’t aware of the way his breath hitched in his throat, nor the way he studied her right back, his eyes roaming her face, trying to pinpoint exactly what it was about this woman that was familiar to him. That made him feel like he’d known her somewhere, sometime, somehow.
But then, her eyes slid sideways, locking to his, and her voice was thick in her throat. “Well, Vitalo,” his body tightened at the sound of his name on her lips. “What else is there to show me?” And the capability for thought fled from his body. All that was left was an animalistic need for pleasure and release from the beating drum of his thoughts and his body’s needs.
He ran his mouth down her warm, honey-coloured flesh, flicking one of her nipples with his tongue, reveling in the innocence of her response. It was an innocence he should have recognized sooner, only the discovery of a twenty-five-year-old virgin was nowhere in his wheelhouse. None of the women he knew had any pretensions to innocence and inexperience, and hadn’t done for years.
But now, he could see clearly – the way she reacted, the way her body had responded to his, with goose bumps and quivering all over, was a sign of her newness to this. He’d awakened her, and he wouldn’t be human if that didn’t hold a unique appeal. Lower, he ran his mouth, circling her belly button, moving his hands up her body, gliding them over her skin, one to cup her breast and one to part her thighs as he moved his tongue to the apex of her thighs, his tongue running over her seam so she jerked beneath him.
She tried to pull away, his intimate invasion almost too much to bear, he knew, but he smiled against her sex and found the sensitive cluster of nerve endings, tormenting her clit until she was crying his name out over and over, a hundred ‘Vitalo’s spilling from her lips like drops of gold, filling the room with passion and power.
He slid a finger into her as she fell apart so he could feel her muscles clenching and releasing, spasming with this new-found pleasure, and he kept his mouth close to her, tasting her, delighting in the knowledge that he had driven her so far over the edge she was incoherent and shaking all over.
Sex was power.
Pleasure was power.
And he felt powerful as he filled her body with all the sensations she could handle, and then he brought himself over her, the weight of his body pressed to hers, his mouth seeking hers, dominating her senses, demanding her total surrender to the madness that flared between them.
She whimpered into his mouth and he tasted her acquiescence and offered his own in return, reaching for the side table and pulling out a condom. He reached between them, sliding it in place as quickly as he could before thrusting into her once more, releasing a guttural cry as his own voice tore through the room. “Bella,” he groaned, his fingers tangling in her dark hair, his eyes seeking hers as he moved inside of her.
Her head tilted back, her breathing rushed, her chest moving quickly, each rise and fall a punctuation into the room. He dropped his head forward, capturing her lips, his tongue dueling with hers in time with each thrust of his arousal, deep inside of her.
She was so tight, so wet, he almost lost control, but Vitalo was nothing if not disciplined. Even in that moment, he kept a grip on his fevered needs, he reined in his desire to simply explode and he kissed her, tasting her release as she tumbled over the edge of pleasure into the wide, chasming abyss. He held her tight as she broke apart, and he waited for her breathing to slow before he moved again, driving her back to dizzying heights of need and want before finally succumbing to the drugging pull of their desire. This time, when her body was wracked with pleasure and desire, he followed her, chasing after her, holding her to him as his own orgasm tore through him, shredding him into a thousand little pieces.
Sex was the best remedy, and that had bee
n some of the best sex he’d ever had. He stared down at his lover, his virginal lover, and a smile spread over his face. He’d wanted to throw Kat from his mind, but he’d had no idea how easy it would be to do with this woman in his arms.
Spent, he rolled off her, staring up at the ceiling for several long moments before turning to face her. She was looking upwards as well, so her face was in profile, and he took a moment to analyse her delicate nose and haunting beauty. Her hair, chestnut brown and glossy, shimmered in the pale lamplight. As if sensing his inspection, she turned to face him, her smile enigmatic and mysterious.
“Well,” she said after a moment, her accent American, but softened somehow, as though she spent much time abroad. “That was unexpected.” Her laugh was beautiful, like a bell tingling in the breeze. Vitalo wasn’t a man who looked for permanence, but for the briefest of moments, he experienced a pang of remorse that he would, in the morning, return to his native Greece, that this woman would be a blip in his rear vision mirror.
He would have liked another night with her; maybe even two more. Her lack of experience fascinated him, and the temptation to teach her everything she could ever want to know about her body and its pleasure was a temptation he almost found too hard to resist.
But Vitalo was an expert at resisting temptation – as his decades-long obsession with Kat had shown him. All for the promise of a long-dead friend…
“Who are you?” She asked, pushing up on one elbow, fascinatingly un-self-conscious of her nakedness, given her inexperience with men. Although, the fact she had been a virgin didn’t mean she hadn’t enjoyed other sensual exploits. The thought was a darkness on the periphery of his mind; he pushed it aside.
“Vitalo Katrakis,” he said, and she frowned slightly.
“I feel like I know you.” She skimmed her eyes over his features with deep concentration.
Hadn’t he thought the same thing? “Perhaps we have been at a similar event, some time or another?”
“I guess that’s possible.” Her frown deepened. “I should get back,” she said, after a moment, her smile wistful.
And his regret grew. He reached out, curving his fingers around her wrist. “Stay the night.”
Her cheeks still glowed pink, and he ached to see her face crinkle with pleasure once more. But she shook her head. “I can’t. I have jobs to do.”
“Jobs?”
“Mmm. Mom will be looking for me.”
“Your mother’s here?”
She pulled a face. “My mother’s the bride,” she said carelessly, standing and turning her back on him, as though his whole world hadn’t just exploded, as though this woman he’d just slept with, the virgin he’d introduced to sex, wasn’t the daughter of Kat and Andrew Howard – two people whose lives he’d been intertwined with in the best and worst of ways.
Nausea rose in his chest and he sat up straighter, his mind spinning over the last ten years, and that relationship.
Bella.
Arabella. God, but Andrew and Kat had always called their oldest daughter Arrie. The diminutive name ‘Bella’ wasn’t what he’d have been looking for, even if he’d thought to look for their child. How old was she? Christ. She’d been a teenager, hadn’t she, when Andrew had died? A little younger perhaps? So there was, what – twelve? Thirteen? – years between them. Christ.
Panic made his skin clammy, his gut clench tight. Guilt, too. Mentally, he swore, every curse he knew, as what he’d done began to wrap around him, making breathing difficult.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the whole virginity thing,” she said, her smile relaxed, her expression one of rueful amusement. “I’d say ‘I meant to’ but honestly, I thought you might stop…”
His eyes were on hers, but he wasn’t seeing her now as his lover. He was seeing her as a mash up of Kat and Andrew, of his best friend and mentor, Andrew, and Kat who’d begged him to become her lover. Kat who’d fallen in love with a twenty five year old Vitalo and begged him to take her away with him.
His stomach clenched hard.
Kat who he’d been determined to obliterate from his mind by having sex with any random woman he could find – and he’d chosen her daughter.
Disgust, guilt, self-recrimination flared inside of him.
“You’re angry again?” She murmured, her face dropping and his guilt exploded to a whole new level.
“No,” he rushed to assure her, pushing out of bed and closing the distance between them. He had to live with what he’d done, she had no idea who he was nor why this was problematic. She didn’t need to carry this angst.
“No,” he said again, his thumb lifting her face to his, his eyes boring into hers and wishing now he didn’t see so much of her father in their almond-shape. “Not angry.”
But he was angry. Furious, all with himself. He’d spent ten years trying to do the right thing by his friend, a man who hadn’t lived long enough – thank God – to know that his wife had wanted to leave him. He’d spent ten years honouring Andrew’s memory and now he’d unceremoniously slept with the man’s oldest daughter.
Bella had zipped up her dress and was straightening her hair. Her mascara was a little smudged but even before his eyes she pulled out a compact and began to neaten her face. He watched as she erased every physical trace of their love-making and he resisted the impulse to swipe the mirror from her hand and take her back to bed.
That could never happen again.
He could never see her again.
This had been one of the biggest mistakes of his life.
He spun away from her, stalking towards the window. It was dark now, the stunning view of the Mediterranean muted, the visage given over to inky concealment.
“I feel like I should thank you,” her voice was soft and breathy, from behind his shoulder.
His chest felt like it was being ripped apart. “Don’t thank me,” he demurred, turning around, fixing her with a level stare. “I don’t deserve it.”
Chapter 2
BELLA STARED AT THE name on the shining silver board, her pulse racing faster than she knew to be wise, and yet she couldn’t calm it. She couldn’t still her breathing. She traced her eyes across, from Katrakis Industries to the number beside – forty seven, and then took a step backwards.
The bay of lifts behind her were busy – people coming and going constantly. She turned towards one, saw the upwards arrow and moved into it, her fingers unsteady as she pressed the button for the forty seventh floor.
It wasn’t just nerves that had her body in overdrive, though of course there was anxiety. But it was also the prospect of seeing Vitalo again – the man who’d driven her wild and filled her body with a new notion of pleasure, who’d redefined her in countless ways and then gone on with his own life, a man she’d sworn she wouldn’t see again because that’s not what that night had been about – for either of them.
And yet, here she was, nine weeks later, in the foyer of a high rise in Athens about to drop a bombshell in his lap.
Her hand curved protectively over her still-flat stomach, and she fought a wave of nausea that had more to do with her anxieties than the pregnancy she’d only just learned about.
The lift shot up, and her eyes banked downwards. The journey was mercilessly long, making stops on several floors before finally pinging at the building level dedicated to Katrakis Industries.
She held her breath as she stepped out, unsurprised to find herself enveloped immediately by corporate luxury. White leather sofas banked against one wall, enormous, modern floral arrangements and a square desk in the centre of the high-ceilinged foyer showing four receptionists – three women and a man, all dressed in navy suits and white shirts.
“I’m here to see Vit – Mr Katrakis,” she said as she approached, the words soft, her expression unknowingly haunted.
The man looked up. “Your name?”
“Bella Salbatore,” she said, using her married name out of habit, without even realizing she was doing it. She’d spent so m
uch time with her Godparents, the Salbatores, after her father’s death, she continued to use the name even now, years after her divorce.
“Ms Salbatore,” the man frowned, scanning his iPad. “Do you have an appointment?”
She lifted her eyes to the view framed by the floor to ceiling windows, shaking her head in a small demur. “No. But I need to speak to Mr Katrakis. It’s urgent.”
The man’s expression assumed a look of disconnect. “I see.” He flicked the iPad. “Mr Katrakis could see you in ten days. I can schedule you in after lunch on the eleventh?”
She startled, the very idea she might not be able to see Vitalo one she foolishly hadn’t contemplated. “It has to be today,” she insisted, clearing her throat. “It’s important.”
“Everyone who sees Mr Katrakis does so on important business,” the man pointed out. “And his schedule today is full.”
“Would you just… tell him I’m here?” She murmured, smiling weakly in an attempt to engender the man’s sympathy. “And see what he says?”
The receptionist stifled a sigh – poorly – then nodded. “Fine. Take a seat and I’ll let you know.”
Bella cast a glance towards the sofas but shook her head. “I’d prefer to wait here.”
The man shrugged and picked up the phone, speaking into it in Greek. His face was impossible to read as he spoke and Bella only realized, when the call was disconnected, that she’d been holding her breath.
“Mr Katrakis says he can see you, but he has only two minutes before he has to leave. He said he could spare you more time on the eleventh, if you’d prefer to take the original appointment.”
Something like fear curdled inside of her at this clinical and cold rejection. What had she expected? Red carpet and trumpets?
No, not that, but at least a little civility.
“This won’t take long,” she murmured, swallowing past the lump in her throat and straightening her spine.
Only another eighteen years or so, she added silently.
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