by Maisey Yates
“I’ll text you.”
“And I’ll find it. When should I expect you back?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“When I’m back.”
“So I won’t know if you’ve been backed into an alley by the paparazzi or if you’re just running late? That doesn’t work for me. Estimate a time or at least give me your location.”
“Are you...worried about me?”
“The baby,” he bit out, the word making his stomach ache.
“Well, of course. That’s what I meant.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Thanks. I’m... Thank you. I’m going to go. I’ll be back here by seven. If I’m not, I’ll text you.”
He nodded and watched her walk back out of the room, his stomach flipping over itself. Maybe he should be thankful for her refusal to marry him. What did he know about being a father? What did he know about being a husband?
All he knew was that he felt a need to be close to her. To protect her. And he knew, with a total certainty, that he would feel that way about the baby.
He meant to offer them protection. But he had no idea who would protect them from him. No, he would never harm them with his hands. But...
He had always pictured Ajax’s veins being filled with black poison. When he’d been a boy and he or Nikola would walk past him, it was a strong vision he’d had. That they were something different than men. That if you cut them, evil would pour out. They exuded it. How could it not be a physical thing beneath their skin?
And then he’d found out the truth.
If their blood was black, then his was, too.
Because it was the same blood.
Worse, he’d seen Ajax lose that legacy. Had seen him walk away and create a new life. He’d seen his mother, desperate to cling to the man she’d loved.
The men he’d always considered evil seemed to have no trouble binding people to them.
The same legacy had been coursing through his veins since birth, and yet no one had ever chosen to stay with him.
It made him fear that the only thing he’d inherited was the darkness.
* * *
The skin on Rachel’s arms prickled as a breeze blew across the water and over her. She and Alana had just closed up shop after assessing the damage, and Alana had gone with her boyfriend back to their apartment.
Rachel had just been standing out in front of the store, looking across the harbor at the yachts, at where blue sky met blue water, rich colors fading together.
She breathed in deep and the breeze set the hair on the back of her neck on end and brushed a tingling sensation over her, down to her fingertips. It wasn’t fear. But it was something she couldn’t ignore. Something urgent, little bursts of it popping through her until she turned her head.
And then it all made sense.
Alex was walking toward her, hands in his pockets. He was dressed casually, nothing like he’d been that day on the yacht, but still much more relaxed than Alex the Businessman. A pale blue shirt open at the collar and a pair of dark jeans.
“I’m glad to see you’ve not been buried beneath photographers.”
“Oh, well, thank heaven for the off-season. None of the locals would dare break their cool by raising an eyebrow at my presence, much less interrupt their day by setting the paparazzi on me.”
“Thank God for people far too blasé to care for a bit of scandal.”
She laughed. “I suppose.”
The moment was strange. Like that time a month ago in Greece playing over again. Different setting, different time. But the pull was there. Whether she wanted it to be or not, it was there. Engagement ring or not, it had been there. Conniving plot to seduce her to get revenge on Ajax or not, it had been there.
Even now, with the baby and all the baggage, it was there.
She knew he felt it, too. She could see it in those wicked blue eyes. He was thinking of sex and sin and all the wonderful things they’d done together. She didn’t know how she knew it, only that she did. Only that for some reason she had a connection with him that she couldn’t explain. One she didn’t want at all.
Why couldn’t he just be that jerk who’d seduced her? Or, if she couldn’t summon up the rage to think of him as a jerk, why couldn’t he just be the cause of her pregnancy? A distant figure until they had to work out a shared custody agreement? It’s not like he could do anything for her now anyway.
But there was more. She hated that there was more, but there was. This deep, sexual connection that somehow felt like...more. Why did it keep going with him? Why, no matter the depth of feeling she was willing to admit she had with him, did a small voice inside of her keep whispering it’s more?
Stupid small voice inside of her.
“Dinner?” he asked, another echo from the past.
“Yes.” She felt the yes slip off her lips and a deep ache slide down deep inside of her. Her body responding to the consent.
For dinner, you little hussy. Dinner. Down, girl.
He held his hand out, and she didn’t take it. Because if she did, she knew she was really, really sunk. She had no business touching him. No business even flirting with the idea of engaging in intimacy with him again.
The fact that he was a lying liar aside, they had too much going on to confuse it all with more sex.
As if things could get more confused, but whatever.
“Where are we having dinner?” she asked. Because it seemed to her they were just going back toward the hotel.
“I hate to see a perfectly good terrace wasted, so I thought we would dine at the suite.”
“You make it sound so fancy.”
“It is,” he said. “It’s very fancy. And dinner should be waiting for us already. And I will be having juice, along with you.”
“That’s...well, that’s awfully sensitive of you.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am,” she said, walking next to him, acutely aware of the way they both held their arms at their sides as they walked. Acutely aware of how they weren’t touching when their fingertips were so close.
That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. She was supposed to not touch him and have all the attraction magically resolve. Her shell was supposed to protect her. All those years of self-denial. Of never letting her passion out. Learning to be risk-averse, learning to keep every emotion, every desire, every need shoved down deep and covered by a layer of smooth, impenetrable steel. All of that should have helped her now. Should have preserved her.
But it wasn’t and she couldn’t understand it. How eleven years of hard-won control had just suddenly melted as if it had never been there in the first place.
They walked into the hotel in total silence, then took the elevator to their floor. The double doors to the terrace were open, a wash of pink evening light painting the living area.
She walked through the suite and outside. The table was set for two, a bottle of sparkling grape juice in an ice bucket, wrapped in a linen towel as if it were fine champagne. And their plates were covered with a silver dome, everything set and ready.
As though Alex had wanted to make sure they weren’t disturbed.
“This is romantic,” she said, her tone about as dry as sand.
“Is it?” he looked around as though the notion surprised him. “I just asked for dinner for two and that we not be disturbed. For privacy’s sake, as we are discussing personal matters and you are a bit of a public figure. Romance never came into it.”
“Naturally not. Come to think of it, you aren’t much of a romantic, are you?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never had much practice with it. But I would like to think I romanced you that night we were together.”
“You seduced me. Completely different. I wasn’t looking for romance.”
>
“So you were looking for sex?”
“No,” she said. “But I think that’s why it worked.”
She sat down and grabbed the bottle out of the bucket, eyeing the cork warily. “It has a cork.”
“Yes.”
“These things freak me out. You do it.” She handed him the bottle and he took it, working the metal cage off the cork so that it popped up. She winced at the sound. “Gah. I always expect it to fly out and poke someone in the eye.”
He laughed. “Not likely. But then, caution isn’t a bad thing.”
“That’s certainly been my motto in life.”
He arched a brow as he poured her a glass of the sparkling juice.
“It has been. For...a while. Because...because bad things happen to you when you put yourself out there, you know?”
He nodded slowly. “No,” he said, the words at odds with the gesture. “I don’t. Because I never put myself out there.”
“So you never have girlfriends, do you?”
“No. One-night-stand stuff. Sometimes women who hang around for a couple of weekends. Nothing more than that.”
Strangely, it didn’t really bother her to hear him say that. She would have been more disturbed in some ways if there had been a woman in his life that he loved.
And she really didn’t want to know why that was.
Silly since she’d been in love before. Even if it had turned out badly. Sillier still because she didn’t love Alex and she didn’t want him to love her, either. But nothing about her feelings for him were logic-centered. None at all.
“That seems smart,” she said. “I mean, in some ways. It wouldn’t really work for me, I bet, because the guys would go to the press.” She hadn’t meant to tread that close to the truth of her past.
“It must be inconvenient. For my part, as rich as I am, only financial magazines seem to care.”
“It surprises me because your face would sell magazines.”
“I’m content out of the spotlight.”
Her heart bumped into her breastbone. “If you’re seen with me...I mean, when people find out...you’ll be in the spotlight. You know that, right? Your anonymity is sort of over.”
“I can deal with that,” he said, pulling the covers off of their dinner to reveal some sort of fish dish. It had crispy skin. And a head. Oh, Lord, it had a head. She didn’t mind fish, usually, but after spending so much time in Greece and then on his island, she was concerned she was going to grow gills.
“I love the sea,” she said. “I’m underwhelmed by seafood, to be honest.” She poked at it with her fork. “Daaaaang. It has a head.”
He laughed at her, then bent across the table and took her plate, and his, and put them back by a nearby tray. “Hold that thought.”
He went back into the hotel room and she couldn’t help but watch his butt as he went. She looked away and back down into her drink and she didn’t realize he’d returned until he spoke. “I ordered a pizza. What’s the point of all this pretension?”
She laughed. “A pizza?”
“I was promised it would be here in ten minutes.”
“Tell me there are no anchovies on it, because if there are, we haven’t solved any of my problems.”
“No anchovies. Promise.”
“Good. What did you get?”
“Pineapple.”
“I love!”
“Me, too.”
A strange sort of calm settled between them, and it felt more disturbing than the tension from earlier. This wasn’t like it had been a month ago. Not entirely. There was an edge of comfort, of domesticity to this that hit a nerve in her.
They tried to make clumsy small talk until they heard the knock at the door and he went off for the pizza, setting the box on their table.
She laughed. “So much for romance.”
He shrugged. “This is better. It’s real, anyway.”
“True.” She flipped up the lid on the box and took out a piece of pizza, chewing through the burn of the first bite. Worth the pain to get the cheese at the optimum point. “So,” she said, after she swallowed. “Do you get pizza often?”
He looked down, then back up, and she was hit, once again, with the full impact of his beauty. “Do you want to know a secret?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He leaned in, the look in his eyes intent. “After I left my...the compound, I didn’t have any money. So I slept where I could and ate what I could, and I still felt better about it because I wasn’t a part of that horrible place.”
“I can understand that.”
“But once I started making money, and I got my own apartment...I didn’t want to buy filet mignon or lobster. I’d had all that. Living in that house... It was the darkest pieces of glamor and excess. Junkies throwing up in the halls, people having sex in public. But then we’d sit down to some formal dinner like this insane family or something. Anyway, I never wanted to revisit that. I’d never just had a pizza. I ordered it almost every night for a...a long time.”
He looked down and took a bite of pizza, the gestures and expressions boyish now. It was strange; sometimes he seemed so young. Sometimes he seemed about a thousand years old. And she could relate, because sometimes that was exactly how she felt, too. Too young, too old and never just right.
“What did you have on the first one?”
“The pizza?”
“Yeah,” she said, her stomach tight. “I’m sure you remember.”
The left corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Yeah. Pepperoni. Black olives. It was New York style. Of course, at the time I’d only dreamed of New York. I live there now. The pizza’s much better than this.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I know. I spent at least half my childhood there. Most of my adult life. I’ve been fortunate to travel a lot from an early age.”
“I barely left the Kouklakis compound until I was fourteen.”
“What?”
“There was...nowhere else to go. And they didn’t really want anyone talking to us. Questioning us. There weren’t very many children. The ones that were there had to be careful. Careful to try and go unnoticed by anyone who might want to use us, people who came for parties and things. Careful about what we said. The wrong words could set the police down on Nikola and that would have been unforgivable. Death for certain.”
“He would have killed...children?”
“He would never have gotten his own hands that dirty. But he would have used someone else’s. I always knew that my life was in a tenuous place as long as I was there. I always knew.” He took another bite of pizza. “But I got free. I got pizza. It has a happy ending, yes?”
“Does it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s not over yet. Right now we’re just sitting here eating pizza. It’s not going to fade to black or anything.”
“True.”
“There are a lot of potential outcomes for all of this. And I’m not sure if any of them are wildly happy.”
He grunted, a short, frustrated sound seated in the back of his throat. “Because you’re looking for something I can’t give you. You could be happy if you just—”
“If I what?”
“—compromised. You were willing to do it for Ajax and you didn’t even want him. You weren’t having his baby. Well, you are having my baby, and you do want me, so I don’t see any reason that you shouldn’t want to marry me instead of him. What changed?”
She looked down. “I think I did. Or maybe I didn’t change, maybe I just became more afraid of what might happen if I kept living my life as someone else, someone safe, and less afraid of what might happen if I made an effort to find some happiness.”
“I think I made you pretty happy for extended periods of time in bed,
” he said.
She coughed. “Well, there’s that.”
“I want you, Rachel.”
“What...now?” She looked around them, at the blue-tinged air slowly falling darker as the sun sank below the horizon line.
“Every moment since the first time I saw you. And that’s not me lying to keep you here, that’s me telling you the truth. That’s me confessing. Frankly, I know this isn’t going to get me anywhere with you so you have to believe that it’s honest. Because I know that it doesn’t mean anything to you that the moment I saw you, I forgot Ajax’s name, and every thought I ever had about revenge. Because all I could think about was getting you naked then and there. Not romantic, maybe. But all I know is that it didn’t matter then who you were. I mean...not in the sense of who you were to Ajax, or the media, or what your marriage had to do with him acquiring Holt. It only mattered...who you were. Which I know sounds stupid, but in my head it made sense.”
Rachel’s heart was pounding hard, echoing in her head. She leaned forward, grabbed his collar and tugged him to her, kissing him on the mouth. She didn’t know what she was doing or why. Only that she couldn’t stop.
And along with her heartbeat, his words reverberated through her. It only mattered who you were.
He cupped the back of her head and pulled her in harder, taking the kiss deeper, his tongue sliding against hers, sending a wave of lust down through her body. Nothing was settled. And she shouldn’t be kissing him. Shouldn’t be making things confusing by throwing a match on their simmering physical chemistry.
But he’d said he wanted her. And everything in her responded to that. It fought to break free, to push past the boundaries she’d placed around herself, a neat little fence that kept her safe and hidden.
Because he wanted that part of her. He didn’t want her to hide it. Didn’t want her to keep it behind a locked door. Didn’t want her to keep her passion from him. And she wanted to give him that. Wanted to give it to herself, this moment of freedom. Another chance to grab it. To try and feel something.
She’d spent so long not feeling. This was like coming to the surface of the water and breathing in air, filling her aching lungs when she hadn’t even realized what she’d been missing.