Takis stared at her and she saw the exact moment he grasped her meaning. He looked outraged. ‘Do you think I have a mistress in Athens?’
‘I don’t know what to think,’ she said flatly. ‘I might not have much experience of these things, of men, but I know you are a highly sensual man, and we are not...’ She flushed. ‘You are not satisfying your desire with me.’
‘So it stands to reason that I have another woman? I did not dump you at the villa,’ he gritted. ‘I have provided—’
‘So you keep reminding me,’ she cut him off. ‘But our baby will need more than material things. He will need a father who comforts him in the night and reads him stories. A hands-on father, not one who lives miles away and bangs on about how he provides and protects, when as far as I am concerned you do neither.’
He stepped closer to her, a dangerous look in his eyes that made her tremble, but with excitement, not fear. Takis seemed dumbfounded that she had questioned him, but it was vital for her to discover if he would be a caring father or if he would treat their son with the indifference her grandfather had treated her. Lissa had never really understood why Pappoús had disliked her, and she had certainly never dared to ask him. But for the first time in her life she was standing up for herself and fighting for what she wanted, for the marriage she wanted, and it felt good.
‘Is this another attempt to get my attention?’ Takis ground out. He was breathing hard and his eyes were like a terrible storm, dark and ominous. This was the man behind the mask, Lissa realised with a jolt. Takis was not the unemotional rock of granite that he wanted her to believe. His emotions were exposed, stark and savage on his face. She understood that he hoped if he looked menacing she would back down. She did not fully understand why he still needed to keep her at arm’s length, but she had come this far, and retreat was not an option.
She met his tormented gaze boldly. ‘If it is, what are you going to do about it?’
* * *
Takis hauled Lissa into his arms and slammed his mouth down on hers. He was willing to do anything to stop her asking questions that he did not know how to answer. He kissed her to prevent her from challenging him in a fierce voice and with an even fiercer expression on her face as she demanded to know what kind of father he planned on being.
He hadn’t planned any of this. He hadn’t wanted a child, or a wife, let alone a wife who forced him to ask himself the same questions she had flung at him. And he still did not know the answers. All he knew was that he wanted her beneath him, on top of him, any which way as long as he could bury himself in her molten heat.
He roamed his hands over her body, discovering her round curves, which distracted him constantly. Even when he’d removed himself to Athens after their wedding—so that he was on the pulse of his business, he assured himself, not because he had been running away—Lissa had been a distraction. He had spent his nights in a fury of sexual frustration, but he’d told himself it would pass. If he kept away from her, his desire for her would fade. And then he’d seen the photo of her in the newspaper and he’d seized the excuse to rush to Mykonos to claim his wife.
‘What kind of marriage do you want?’ he asked when he finally lifted his mouth from hers, but kept her body clamped against him. The rock-hard proof of his arousal straining beneath his trousers mocked his belief that he had any control where Lissa was concerned. And he no longer cared that she knew the effect she had on him when she smiled her beautiful smile that tugged on something deep inside him.
‘I want you,’ she said simply.
Her honesty was his undoing and demanded that he be honest with himself. He could not fight his need for her. Takis had prided himself on never needing anyone, but pride was a lonely bedfellow, and he was tired of always being alone.
‘Do you want me to do this?’ he asked thickly as he slanted his mouth over hers again and kissed her with fierce passion. He felt her tremble as he trailed his lips down her neck and pressed his mouth against the pulse that was beating erratically at the base of her throat.
His hands trembled with need as he unfastened the buttons on her blouse and traced his finger over her sheer, pale pink bra. ‘Pretty,’ he growled. Her blouse fell to the floor, followed by her bra, and Takis groaned as her breasts spilled into his hands. ‘Prettier,’ he said thickly as he rubbed his thumb pads over her dusky pink nipples and felt them swell and harden to his touch.
He looked into her eyes, which were deep blue pools, deep enough to drown in. She made him think of summer skies and laughter, and for the first time since he was a teenager he wondered if there was hope for him. He wanted to step out of the darkness into Lissa’s golden light.
Her skirt was made of a stretchy material that moulded the firm swell of her pregnant stomach. Takis was fascinated by her new shape, her sensual roundness where once she had been angular, and he could not get enough of her voluptuous breasts. He tugged her skirt off and his eyes roamed over her lace panties.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked her. He did not know how he’d bear it if she had changed her mind, but he needed to give her the chance to reconsider, because if he made love to her there would be no going back. She would be his. He would no longer be able to stay away.
‘I’m sure,’ she murmured.
His heart thudded as he pulled her knickers off and lifted her up, sitting her on the edge of his desk. He cupped her breasts in his hands and bent his head to take one rosy nipple into his mouth. She gasped as he suckled her, leaning back and supporting herself with her hands on the desk so that her body arched, and her breasts were presented to him like ripe, round peaches that he feasted on hungrily.
Her guttural moans ran right through him, all the way down to his shaft, and made him harden even more. His body was impatient, but it wasn’t surprising for he had not done this for months, not since the night he’d spent with Lissa at the Pangalos hotel. But even though he felt like he might explode, he was determined to control his hunger until he’d satisfied hers.
Takis dropped to his knees and pushed her legs apart so that he could trace his lips along her inner thigh. She made another of those husky moans as he licked her moist opening and pushed his tongue inside her. He felt her fingers slide into his hair and shape his skull while he caressed her intimately until she was panting, and he knew she was close to climaxing.
‘I want you,’ she told him in that fierce way of hers that tugged on something inside him. Her eyes were huge and dark with desire and her blonde hair curled against her flushed cheeks. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he did not deserve her beauty, her smile. Takis knew it, but he could not help himself. He unzipped his trousers and freed his erection. He was harder than he had ever been, and he needed her now. He positioned himself between her thighs and pressed forward, sliding into her with a smooth thrust that drew a gasp from her.
‘Am I hurting you?’ he muttered, his mouth against her neck.
‘No, it’s just been a while since we last did this.’
He registered her words and knew he should feel appalled by the possessiveness that thundered through him, but instead he felt strangely humbled that she was his and his alone. He pulled back almost completely and then thrust again, deep into her velvet heat, into the sweet embrace of her femininity, and it felt like he’d come home at last.
Lissa wrapped her legs around his hips as he began to move, carefully at first, but when he sensed that her urgency was as great as his, he increased his pace and the intensity of his thrusts, taking them both higher. It couldn’t last, but he gritted his teeth and fought for control. His hands gripped the edge of the desk and he felt the moment she tensed.
‘Takis...’ She sobbed his name as he drove into her again and felt her shatter around him. And he came almost instantly, his orgasm sweeping through him so that he shuddered with the pleasure of it that had never been this intense with any other woman.
After a long time he withdrew from her and adjusted his clothes. ‘Are you all right? The baby...’
‘We are both fine,’ Lissa assured him softly.
There was a whole great mess in his head that he would have to face sometime, Takis acknowledged. But not now. He did not want to think of all those questions of Lissa’s that needed answers. Tonight he simply wanted to be with her, and so he swept her up into his arms and carried her up to his bed, where he made love to her again and again until they collapsed exhausted in each other’s arms.
Lissa fell asleep with her head resting on his chest. Takis placed his hand on her stomach, and his heart stood still when he felt the baby kick. He swallowed hard, unable to assimilate the feelings that stirred inside him. Was this tenderness, this ache beneath his breastbone when he imagined his son? He wished he could be a better man than he knew he was and a better father than the one he was afraid he would be.
* * *
‘Who is Giannis?’
Takis turned his head on the pillow and met Lissa’s cornflower-blue gaze. He had woken to a sense of contentment that he hadn’t felt for months. Perhaps even years. But he tensed when she said, ‘You were dreaming and called out the name Giannis.’
She rolled on to her side and propped herself up on her elbow, drawing the sheet over her ripe breasts that Takis would admit he was addicted to touching.
‘I apologise if I disturbed you. I occasionally have nightmares.’ He tried to sound casual, hoping that Lissa would not pursue the matter. But he should have known it was an unrealistic hope. He was learning that his wife was tenacious as well as fierce.
‘What are your nightmares about?’
Takis exhaled deeply. ‘Giannis was my younger brother.’ He answered her first question. ‘Half-brother, technically. We had the same father but different mothers.’
‘I remember you said that your brother died when he was a child. Was he ill?’
‘No.’ Takis swung his legs over the side of the bed and pulled on his trousers before walking over to stand by the window. Outside it was another beautiful day in Santorini, with the sun shining in an azure sky on to the turquoise sea below. But in his mind he pictured the barren grey mountains around his village, the scrubby grass that had sustained his father’s herd of goats. The blackened, charred remains of the place he had called home, although it had never been one. Not in the way the villa felt like home, but he suspected that might have something to do with the fact Lissa was here.
‘There was a fire. Giannis was killed in a house fire along with my father and stepmother.’
‘How terrible!’ Lissa’s voice was very soft. ‘How did it start? A house doesn’t simply burst into flames,’ she said when he swung round from the window and stared at her.
‘It was thought that my father dropped a smouldering cigarette on to the sofa before he fell asleep. No doubt he was drunk.’ Takis shoved his hands into his pockets and clenched them into fists. ‘His body was discovered by the front door so it’s assumed he must have tried to escape. My stepmother and brother were asleep upstairs. The fire was ferocious and swept through the house. They didn’t stand a chance.’
Lissa’s eyes were fixed on him. ‘You were the only one of your family to survive. Oh, Takis.’
He could not bear her sympathy. He did not deserve it. But suddenly he could not bear the secret shame that had weighed on him since he was sixteen. He knew if he told Lissa the truth, the gentle expression in her eyes would turn to disgust. Only perhaps then she would understand why she and their son were better off without him.
‘I was not in the house. I had abandoned my brother when I left the village a few days before the fire.’
Her brow wrinkled in a tiny frown. ‘You didn’t abandon him if he was with his parents.’
Takis snorted. ‘My father was a bully with a filthy temper and a habit of using his belt on me. As for my stepmother, Marina was much younger than my father. She was barely eighteen when she gave birth to my half-brother. I was eleven when Giannis was born. He was the cutest baby and toddler. When he grew older, he was my shadow. I was the person he wanted if he grazed his knee.’ Takis swallowed. ‘He adored me, and I him. But I betrayed his faith in me. I left him when he was five years old and I never saw him again.’
Lissa slid out of bed and wrapped the sheet around her to cover her stomach wherein lay another innocent little boy, who had no knowledge of his father’s cowardice, Takis brooded, conscious of a terrible ache in his chest.
‘Why did you leave?’ she asked.
He wondered why he was still telling her any of it. Perhaps it was so that she would stop looking at him with a light in her eyes as if she saw something in him, some goodness that he knew did not exist.
‘My stepmother tried to seduce me,’ he said tautly. ‘I was sixteen and thought I was in love with her. I convinced myself that she loved me, and so I kissed her. Marina had known that I was planning to leave the village and go to the city to look for work and make a better life. She wanted me to take her and Giannis along, and she threatened to tell my father that I had tried to force myself on her if I refused.’
He turned his head towards the window once again and the stunning view from his villa. Other men envied him his wealth and success, but he was empty inside, and until he’d met Lissa that emptiness hadn’t bothered him overmuch.
‘I felt a fool when I realised that Marina had been stringing me along,’ he admitted rawly. ‘My teenage pride was crushed, and I couldn’t bear to see her again knowing she had been laughing at me. So that night I left.’
He sensed that Lissa had crossed the room to stand beside him, but he could not bring himself to look at her. ‘I thought that Giannis would be safe. My father had some fondness for him and did not beat him. I had the crazy idea that I would find work, save some money and go back for Giannis when I could support him.’
Grief caught in his throat. ‘I promised him that I would go back for him. He begged me not to leave him, but I went anyway, and he died in the fire.’
‘You couldn’t have known what would happen. No one can see the future,’ Lissa said gently.
‘You don’t understand,’ he ground out, his shame a savage torment that had never left him in all these years. ‘I was in a temper because of what my stepmother had done. I left because I wanted to show her that I did not care about her, like she didn’t care about me.’
Takis made himself turn around to face the condemnation that he was certain would be in Lissa’s gaze. But there were tears in her eyes, not judgement.
‘What else could you have done but leave?’ she asked quietly. ‘You were sixteen. A boy not yet fully a man, and your stepmother took advantage of you. If you had somehow managed to take her and Giannis away with you, what kind of life would they have had? You told me that you slept on the streets when you first arrived in the city. How could you have taken care of a child when you lived rough and begged for food?’
She stepped closer and put her hand on his chest. ‘The fire was a terrible twist of fate, but it was not your fault that Marina and Giannis died. For twenty years you have believed you were to blame for an accident that you couldn’t have prevented. Isn’t it time you learned to forgive yourself, for our son’s sake if nothing else?’
Takis stared at her and realised with a jolt of shock that her tears were for him. ‘You asked me what kind of father I will be. My only experience of a father was the monstrous man who failed me every day of my childhood. I wasn’t there for my brother when he needed me. I failed Giannis. You can see there is a pattern here,’ he said harshly. ‘There is no guarantee that I will not fail my own child.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Lissa said softly. ‘I don’t believe that you are in any way like your father.’
‘How can you be sure? You do not know me.’
‘Then let me know you.’ She stood in front of h
im and held his gaze, that fierce light that he was beginning to recognise was a part of her shining in her eyes. ‘Stay here with me so that we can learn about each other, for our son’s sake.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TAKIS STAYED BECAUSE he could not bring himself to leave her. This woman who confounded him and amazed him more with every day that he learned something new about her. His wife was wise, Takis discovered. She understood there was a darkness inside him, and bit by bit he started to open up to her.
They lived at the villa, but not separately like when they had lived in the house in Athens before they’d married. Takis shared his bed with Lissa, ate his meals with her and spent all his time with her. They talked and laughed and made love endlessly, but he still could not get enough of her. Most days he worked in his study for a few hours and Lissa went into her design studio and made plans for the Aphrodite hotel.
Occasionally Takis had reason to go to his office in Athens, but he always returned in the evening, and when he climbed out of the helicopter and watched Lissa hurry across the garden to meet him it was like the first time he had ever seen her. That kick in his gut and the feeling that his life would never be the same again. Which, of course, it wouldn’t.
* * *
Soon Lissa was in the third trimester of her pregnancy and before long Takis would have a son. He did not know how he felt about that. He still avoided thinking about his imminent fatherhood or what kind of father he would be.
‘Life is about choices,’ Lissa told him. ‘I don’t believe we are born with our destiny mapped out in advance. We control our own destinies, as you did when you chose not to be a goat herder in a poor village and instead built a business empire. Just because your father was a brute, it doesn’t mean that you will be like him.’
Takis wanted to believe her, but sometimes in the middle of the night, when he lay in bed with Lissa curled up asleep beside him and felt his baby kick, he saw Giannis’s face and heard the little boy’s sobs. ‘Don’t leave me!’ It occurred to Takis that if he maintained a distance from his son when he was born, the child would not love him as Giannis had loved him, and so would not be devastated if his father failed him.
Nine Months to Tame the Tycoon--An Uplifting International Romance Page 13