His eyes bored into her. ‘You were glad to be carrying my child?’
She touched the tips of her fingers to his warm cheek. ‘Knowing I had your child growing inside me gave me more comfort than you can imagine. I never intended to keep it a secret, I just wanted to get past the three-month mark before I told anyone other than my immediate family. I guess I was being superstitious about it but the fear of miscarrying was very real to me.’ Terrifying.
Even now she dreaded to think what she would have done if she’d lost her baby, lost that last link to Nikos in those dark times.
‘But then, when I reached the safe three-month mark, all the stuff with the cartel started. I found Rocco dead...’ She closed her eyes to clear the image of her beautiful dog, drowned in the pool. ‘I cannot tell you how frightened I was. I was terrified they’d learn about the pregnancy. By the time Niki was born, I’d lost my father to the cartel too and my life had turned into a nightmare. All I cared about—and I do mean all—was keeping him safe and protected from them. We turned the estate into a fortress that I hid our son and myself in as much as I could.’
Marisa watched Nikos as she spoke, watched as his face slowly tightened into stillness, his only reaction an almost imperceptible movement of his Adam’s apple.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t reach out to your grandfather,’ she whispered. ‘I should have done. I should have thought of him, and if I’d known how close you were and just how much he meant to you, I would have done. Please, tell him it wasn’t deliberate malice on my part and that I’m really sorry I hurt him.’
Lips taut, he bowed his head. ‘I will explain everything to him.’
‘Thank you.’
Nikos rested his head back and blew out a long breath of air, fighting the cauldron of emotions battering his guts at all she’d had to deal with.
He should have been there.
‘You remember the day you first saw me with Niki?’ she said, breaking through his thoughts.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and nodded.
‘That was the first time he’d left the estate since he was born. I had him at home,’ she added.
‘That explains why he’s so shy with strangers,’ he said, attempting a smile.
‘Probably.’ She covered his hand with hers and gently squeezed.
‘I did wonder why you hid yourself away even before your father’s death,’ he mused aloud, returning the caress.
Her face jerked. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I had you watched,’ he admitted.
Her eyes widened in shock.
‘The cartel sent me a photo of you,’ he reminded her, speaking evenly to fight the bile that always rose whenever he remembered the moment Marisa’s picture had suddenly appeared amongst the photos of his lawyer’s desecrated body.
Nikos had already been fighting a roll of nausea but that picture of Marisa, clearly taken using a long-range lens, had pushed him over the edge and he’d vomited for the first time in his adult life.
‘Felipe Lorenzi’s team helped me fake my death and protect my people, and I paid them to put a team together to watch over you too.’
Even beneath the make-up she wore, colour stained her face.
‘I had them keep watch over the estate and follow you closely but discreetly every time you left it, and report to me daily by email. I did the same with my grandfather.’ He managed a smile. ‘Wi-Fi was practically the only modern convenience that log cabin had. I needed to assure myself that you were safe. My biggest regret is that I didn’t ask them to watch your whole family as well when they left the estate.’ He swallowed back another wave of nausea. ‘I didn’t know your family had been dealing with the cartel too, not until after your father’s death.’
She continued to stare at him. He could see her thinking, putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. When she spoke, a tremor rang through her voice. ‘So, when we employed Felipe to fortify our home with his men and to work with us and the international security services to bring the cartel down, they were already working for you on the same thing?’
He inclined his head.
‘Then how did you not know about our son?’
‘For reasons of confidentiality.’ Nikos had confronted Felipe about his failure to mention in a single one of his staff’s reports about Marisa, the pregnancy or subsequent birth of Niki. ‘My instructions were to keep a watchful eye on you and to take action at any sign of danger. When your family then came to employ his team too, they were bound under strict privacy contracts. Would you have welcomed them into your home and entrusted your physical safety to them if you’d thought they would discuss your private lives with others?’
Lips clamped together, she hesitated then shook her head.
‘If the pregnancy or Niki’s birth had been relevant to any of the reports, I would have been told, but the subject never came up. God knows, I wish it had...’
‘Would it have changed things if you had known about him?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’ He clamped his jaws together. ‘Maybe it was for the best that I didn’t know. If I’d reappeared before they were taken down you would have been an even bigger target for them. But those months... Marisa, they were the hardest of my life. Physically. Mentally. When I learned the cartel had targeted your family, I thought I was going mad. The only thing that stopped me—’
He cut himself off, thrown back again to the sheer terror that had clutched his heart and how close he’d come to hiking through the mountains to get to civilisation and back to her.
He took a deep breath and continued. ‘Once I knew Felipe had taken responsibility for your family’s safety I could think a little straighter but it was still hard. I hate to think I would have endangered you or our son for the sake of my ego.’
‘It must have been hard for you being so far from the action and for all that time,’ Marisa intuited. Nikos was such a take-charge man she could imagine nothing more excruciating for him than being stuck thousands of kilometres away, unable to influence anything.
‘It was horrendous. Felipe must have known I would struggle to be so far from you...from everything...and that’s why I was given a log cabin in the middle of nowhere that needed constant maintenance.’ He managed a grin. ‘It’s hard to spend your days brooding when there’s trees to fell and water to collect if you want to drink or clean yourself.’
Oh, God, tears were forming. Marisa could feel them stabbing into her eyes and she blinked rapidly to stop them falling, using her hand as a fan to dry them.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
She smiled to assure him she was fine but didn’t dare open her mouth, not until she had control of herself.
The deprivation he’d put himself through. The isolation.
Eighteen months of his life.
She’d never thought of it in those terms before or considered how tough it must have been for such a gregarious man to give up everything that made life a joy and hide in the shadows, or considered how selfless his actions had been.
He’d done all that, in part, for her. And he’d paid for her to be watched over. He hadn’t just faked his death and forgotten about her, as she’d thought, he’d paid a crack team of ex-special forces to watch over her and keep her safe, long before she’d even known the murderous cartel existed.
Did that mean that he had cared for her?
But if he had, then why had he, before he’d discovered their son’s existence, been happy for her to learn of his resurrection on the grapevine? If you cared for someone, you didn’t treat them like that.
Could things be any more confusing?
As she fanned her hand in front of her face, her engagement ring glinted. It was an art deco style, pear-cut champagne diamond set in rose-gold. When he’d produced it, she’d had to work so hard not to let the joy burst out of her.
Marisa absolutely adored champagne diamonds. Loved the colours and the way they changed under the light. And she loved rose-gold over normal gold. And she loved anything art deco.
The man who wanted to marry her so he could always be a part of their son’s life had given her the engagement ring of her dreams.
* * *
The driver stopped outside a typical Mykonos building; whitewashed Cycladic style, set along a narrow cobbled street but which differed from the other bustling streets they’d driven through by the sheer number of people queuing like overdressed bunches of grapes for admission. It was all very different from when she’d waited for him earlier, drinking coffee on the club’s beach terrace.
When she stepped out of the car, the flash of cameras in Marisa’s face announced the paparazzi’s presence.
In an instant, Nikos was at her side, taking her hand and sweeping her past the enormous bouncers, who parted in surprisingly nimble fashion to admit them.
Inside, the feel and vibe of the place were exactly what she expected from her experiences at his other nightclubs. Bodies packed like sardines, drinks in hand, swaying under multi-coloured strobe lights to the pumping beat. A Manolas nightclub was not somewhere you went for conversation. It was a place you went to dance the night away to the best DJs in the world.
The VIP section of his Mykonos club was reached by a set of wide stairs that formed a semi-circle around the main dance floor. More bouncers guarded the entrance to it. One unhooked the red tasselled rope barrier and nodded a respectful greeting as they slipped past them.
The inner sanctum was far less crowded than the ground floor and she recognised many of the faces in it even if she didn’t know them personally. They all seemed to know her, though, or of her, and as she sipped champagne, flashed her engagement ring at anyone who asked, and had shouted conversation with one of Nikos’s cousins, she relaxed.
She’d always relaxed in Nikos’s clubs. In her university years she’d often gone on girls’ weekends away to Ibiza and always they had dressed up and hit Manolas. They’d all agreed it was their favourite club because they felt safe there. Plentiful bouncers and more discreet undercover security in the crowds had stopped drunken wandering hands going too far, and then there had been the freedom of knowing your drink wouldn’t get spiked thanks to the strict no-drugs policy. Having your bags searched and having to empty your pockets at the entrance was a small price to pay for that kind of safety.
It had never occurred to her to question why Nikos enforced such a tough policy on drugs, not even when they’d formed a relationship, and, as she cast her gaze around the heaving dance floor, she thought again of everything it had cost him to stop the cartel from filling this place and all his other clubs with their narcotics and help stop anyone else falling into the kind of addiction that had turned his parents into monsters and ultimately killed his mother.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asked, speaking into her ear to be heard.
She smiled and rose up on her toes to plant a kiss to his mouth. That was something he often asked. If he didn’t care for her, why would he want to know?
As the night went on and the partying got more raucous and Nikos stayed glued to her side, she found herself asking the same questions—if Nikos really only wanted to marry her for their son’s sake, why did he care so much about what she thought? Why had he gone out of his way to choose the perfect engagement ring for her?
And, if he didn’t care for her, why had he gone to so much effort to keep her safe even before he’d known their son existed?
‘Let’s get some air,’ she shouted after the midnight hour had struck.
Hands clasped, they headed out to the huge VIP terrace.
Avoiding the smoking section, they settled on a secluded sweetheart seat and let the sea breeze cool their skin. Outside, the noise levels were far more favourable for conversation but Marisa was content to listen to the laughter from the revellers on the ground floor beach terrace and the snatched chatter of others partying on their own.
Fingers playing absently with the buttons of his shirt, she only realised she’d undone one and had slipped her hand under it to encircle a nipple when he huskily said, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Touching you.’ She tilted her head to stare into his eyes. ‘Do you want me to stop?’
His eyes gleamed. ‘No.’
‘Good.’ She stretched her leg and then casually hooked it over his lap. A large hand rested on her thigh, right at the hem that had ruched up to skim her bottom. Marisa leaned into him and pressed her face into his neck. ‘You smell amazing.’
Moving her hand from his nipple, she pulled it out from beneath his shirt and slowly trailed her fingers down his stomach to his belt.
When her fingers gently traced over the length of his erection, straining beneath the confines of his chinos, Nikos tightened the grip on his glass of bourbon. There was something incredibly seductive about her touch and the way she kept nuzzling her nose into his neck, arousing him despite the revellers spilling out in all directions.
How far was she prepared to take this?
How far was he prepared to let her take it?
She lifted her face to lick the lobe of his ear. ‘I haven’t thanked you properly for my ring, have I?’
She gently cupped his erection again before her fingers crept back up his chest. He didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed, then found himself swallowing as she moved her thigh just enough that her knee pressed against his excitement.
‘When we get back, I’ll thank you properly,’ she breathed, rubbing her nose over his cheek then capturing his bottom lip with her teeth. She nipped it gently at the same moment she encircled his other nipple.
He tightened his grip on her thigh, fighting the heady urge to slip his fingers beneath the material.
Just at the moment lust was about to override propriety, she unhooked her leg, jumped to her feet and tugged at his hand. ‘That’s enough air. Let’s dance.’
Stunned at the change of pace, he stared at the beautiful face alive with more delight than he had seen in...since he’d come back to her.
‘You want to dance?’ he managed to croak.
She pulled her lips together before another wide smile lit her face, and she leaned over to speak in his ear, giving him a wonderful view of her naked breasts in the dip made in the material. ‘Not really. I want you to take me home.’
He just stared at her. Somehow, her smile widened even more.
‘Have I stopped you thinking, mi amado?’ Wickedness flashed in her eyes before she slipped her hand over his buttocks and ran her tongue over his lips. ‘Now you know how you make me feel.’
Then she stepped back again and waved the phone he hadn’t even felt her filch from his back pocket at him.
Nikos snatched it from her and called his driver.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE MOMENT THEY were alone in the private cabin of his car, Nikos turned off the microphone connecting them to the driver and pulled Marisa in for a kiss he’d thought he might explode from waiting for.
Whatever burning arousal her teasing had done to him, it had had the same effect on her. In a medley of tongues and ferociously moving lips, she straddled him, her hands going straight to the buttons of his shirt and practically ripping them apart. At his waist, she yanked on his belt and then, with a grace that was almost poetic, she dropped to her knees on the cabin’s spacious floor. Undoing his chinos, she grasped the sides and tugged them down past his hips and then, finally, freed him from the torturous confines.
There was no hesitation. Her head dipped and she took him in her mouth.
Theos, but the sensations were incredible. Mind-blowing. The way she ran her tongue the length of it, the way she squeezed...
He groaned and closed his eyes, reaching for her hair to thread his fingers through.
&nb
sp; What was it about this woman he reacted to so viscerally? How did her touch burn him in a way that no one else’s did?
When she danced back up his body to straddle him again, he clasped the back of her head and kissed her deeply, a kiss broken as he moaned into her mouth at the encompassing pleasure that filled him as she sank down on him.
The relief of having Nikos inside her was so great that Marisa held onto it for as long as she could. Already there was a quickening building inside her and she tried her hardest to fight it, wanting to savour the pleasure.
Then, as she finally began to ride him, throwing her head back in ecstasy when his mouth closed over an aching nipple, she realised this was a pleasure she would enjoy for the rest of her life and, bucking onto him, she cried out the rapture erupting through her every pore.
* * *
Marisa lay with her head on Nikos’s chest, listening to his heartbeat. She loved the solid thump it made against her cheek, the way it seemed to sink through her skin and become a part of her.
‘Are you awake?’ she whispered.
It had to be at least three in the morning. After their frantic drive home, they’d rushed through the villa to his bedroom and done it all again. She should be shattered but she was still buzzing from the adrenaline of the best night out she’d had in possibly for ever.
‘That depends on what you want,’ he murmured sleepily, tightening his hold around her.
‘Nothing. Well, nothing for a few more minutes,’ she teased.
Stroking her back, he laughed. ‘I think I might need a few more minutes too, agapi mou.’
She gently nipped at a flat, brown nipple.
‘You’re sex mad.’ There was admiration in his voice.
‘Sex mad for you,’ she corrected.
‘As long as it’s only for me then carry on.’
She dragged herself over his chest so her breasts crushed against it and she could look at his gorgeous face. ‘You do know it is only you, don’t you?’
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