by Julia James
It was fading. Ebbing.
Panic took her. She thrust up her hips, again and again, but there was nothing there, nothing to thrust herself against, no hardness, no fullness. And as the dawning recognition of that, and the reason for it, came to her, so, welling up in her like cold, icy water, came something else—something she could not, must not, must not, let into her mind.
But it came all the same. Seeped in on the cold, icy water that was filling her veins now, replacing the hot, greedy pleasure she had sated herself on, which had faded now, ebbed away. Leaving her on the bleak, bare shore, bereft of all sensation.
Bereft of everything.
Except one thing.
The knowledge of what she had just done.
She shut her eyes. It was instinctive, imperative. As if by refusing to see there would be nothing to see. Nothing to know. Nothing to feel.
But feel she must. She could not escape.
Her body ached. Ached from being distended, strained. Ached from the overloading of her sensory capacity.
He drew out of her. She could feel it—feel him unclasping her hands, which went on lying there limply, her whole body flaccid, collapsed. She kept her eyes tight, tight shut. They burned beneath the lids.
Her body felt cold, so cold.
What have I done?
The question coiled in her brain.
What have I done?
But she knew. She knew the answer. She had done what she knew she would have to do. Unfinished business, Theo had called it. He was right.
‘Open your eyes.’
His words cut through her coldness.
She forced her eyes open. He was looking down at her, and his eyes were colder than she had ever seen them before in her life.
‘Don’t play your tricks with me again—not if you want your money. Understand?’
Then he was gone, walking into the en suite bathroom, shutting the door. She heard the shower start to run. Slowly, very slowly, she pulled the bedclothes over her.
A stone, hard and painful, blocked her lungs.
Theo’s hands curved tightly around the steering wheel of his car, and he pressed his foot down on the accelerator. The low, lean vehicle sprang forward with a throaty roar. Gravel crunched under its tyres as he headed down the drive, opening the gates with a flick of an electronic switch and turning out on to the road beyond, dimly lit by a tired, waning moon.
He drove fast. But not fast enough to outrun his memory. Hot, pulsing memories of the sex he had just had.
Black emotion filled him. A dish eaten cold? No, it had been scalding, molten hot! His mouth thinned. She’d tried to turn the tables on him, manipulate him. Call the shots.
He’d let her do it—this time.
This time—deliberately, knowingly—he’d gone along with her. Let her play the vamp, lure him upstairs, set the pace. He’d chosen to let her do so, wanting to see just what she would do.
And now he knew. Theos, now he knew!
It had taken all his strength—all of it—to get out of there the way he had.
Leave her the way he had.
When every burning instinct had wanted to keep him there…
Cold snaked down his back. What had happened in his moment of white-out had been nothing, nothing of what he’d intended.
It was just a reflex—nothing more. Nothing more than that.
Or an illusion. He hadn’t really felt her heart beat against his. Her arms tighten around him like that.
Deliberately he forced a hard, contemptuous smile to his lips. It had been just another trick of hers, that was all. One of the repertoire of tricks she’d tried out on him all evening, showing him her true colours, as he had known them to be since the moment he had seen those damning, condemning photos and discovered the truth about her
His hands clenched on the driving wheel as he pressed down yet harder on the accelerator, cutting through the night, back towards Athens.
He knew what she was. He didn’t need to know anything else about her.
And what he knew about her damned her. Damned her completely.
The way she’d been tonight only confirmed it—as if he’d needed any such confirmation about just what kind of woman he’d married. Victoria Fournatos was as shameless as she was adulterous, and she deserved no quarter. None.
And that was exactly what she’d get from him.
It was all she deserved.
He drove on, into the blackness of the night.
But he would be back. Oh, he would be back, all right. He hadn’t finished with her yet.
Not by a long way.
And next time he would stay absolutely, totally in control
It was essential he do so. Quite, quite essential.
He came again to her the following night. She was wearing a different dress this time. Red, with a halter neck and a short, swirling skirt. This time he did not dine with her. He’d eaten at a business dinner in Athens. She was sitting in the lounge, with the air-con on too high, watching an English language news channel.
As he walked in her eyes veiled immediately. She stood up.
Tonight she was different. She stood passive, not displaying her body, just standing there, not meeting his eyes, not posing as she had been last night.
Her passivity lasted the entire encounter. He took her upstairs, turning her around in the bedroom to unzip and remove her dress. She was wearing panties this time, little wispy things that made him instantly hard. He stripped off his own clothes rapidly, and took her over to the bed.
She lay quite still while he reacquainted himself with her breasts. Only their physical response to his caresses told him that she was becoming aroused. That and the parted lips through which her breath was coming in soft, quick breaths, and the blind, glazed look in her eyes.
His hands made a leisurely progress, stroking and teasing until her nipples were hard and coral-red, his eyes always watching her body’s reaction to him. Then, when he judged her sufficiently aroused, he let his hands slide downwards.
She was wet already, the delicate tissues plumped and swollen. He let his fingers glide in their satin folds, watched her bite her lip, the blind, glazed look becoming more unseeing. Her fingers, lying inert on either side of her, bit into the softness of the bed. A low, helpless moan escaped her constricted throat.
He moved over her.
This time he controlled the pace. Controlled it absolutely. He parted her thighs and paused at the entrance to her body. Then he began to inch himself into her, his control total. He saw her eyes flare, and when he had filled her completely knew that her pupils were at maximum dilation.
Then he began to move in her, slowly, skilfully, building a rhythm, his body under his complete control. Her body, too.
With the same absolute control he gave her her first orgasm, and then, as it subsided, he gave her a second. Each time he watched her skin flush, her breath freeze, felt her heart rate burst, felt her internal muscles flux wildly, drawing him in yet more deeply. Each time he let her subside, let the sweat dew on her body, the pulse at her throat slow down again.
Only then, finally, did he take her one last time, with himself, to that same point of sensation.
Only then, in his own pleasure, did he stop watching her.
When he had climaxed he left her immediately.
He could not bear to be in the same house as her.
Let alone the same bed…
Vicky lay, staring upwards. The ceiling seemed to be revolving. It was an illusion, she knew, caused by the fire in her bloodstream.
She lay unseeing as the room moved around her. She was still in the same position he had left her in. She had not moved a muscle. He had gone some time ago, walking out of the room fully dressed, not looking at her. She had been spared that, at least.
But nothing else.
Nothing else at all.
Revenge—that was what he wanted, and that was what he was taking. But for her it was something different.
&nbs
p; It was exactly what he had planned for her.
Humiliation.
Cold ran through her, and a despair so deep within that she did not know where it came from.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this!
How—how had it gone so wrong? She had been so sure that she could do it—could be exactly what she had to be in order to take from this what she needed to take.
I was going to turn the tables on him—not let him do what he wanted to me—humiliate me and take his revenge on me. I was going to be exactly the kind of woman he likes—sexually sophisticated, dedicated to sensual pleasure, wanting nothing more from him than physical sensation. I was going to stay in control and call every shot.
Instead he had turned the tables back on her. Seen through her pathetic attempt to resist him. To retaliate against him.
And now resistance and retaliation were impossible.
Now…Her eyes bleached with despair. Now there was only survival.
Getting through to the end.
Fear bit into her, like a stab in the belly. When would the end come? She had never bothered to ask just how long Theo intended her to stay here, because what would have been the point? He might not have told her, and it would simply have shown him how much she longed for the ordeal to be over. And that in itself would have given him a satisfaction she would never, ever willingly grant him.
But how long would he keep her here? How many nights had she still to endure?
Her fingers clutched into the sheets. There was nothing, nothing she could do. She would endure as long as she had to endure. Until Theo had finally finished with her.
Because only then would she, too, be finally finished with him…
Whatever the price she had to pay to do so.
Night after night he came to her. In the daytime, when the bright sun beat down, she was like an automaton. She got up, ate breakfast on the veranda, sat and read, swam in the sea from the shingle beach, up and down, back and forth, over and over and over again. She ate lunch and read. Drank coffee. Watched the sea, its tireless constancy marking the sameness of her days.
Then, by night, she went upstairs to her bedroom and adorned herself for Theo Theakis.
Every night he came and took her to his bed, gave to her body a physical pleasure that she could not bear to remember, either in the light or the dark, and then, when it was over, he left.
Leaving her slowly bleeding from wounds she could not stanch.
On the seventh night he emerged from the bathroom, fully clad in his business suit once more, and placed a piece of paper on the bedside unit.
‘Your money,’ he said. Then he walked out.
CHAPTER NINE
VICKY sat in the bed, looking at the piece of paper in her hand. The money she needed. The money she had come to Greece to get.
Well, she had it now
She went on staring at the piece of paper, with the curtly written signature on it, the zeroes of the figure in the box.
She could hear the sound of him walking down the stairs, out of the door, his monstrous car revving loudly, then swirling away down the drive—away, away, away.
When she could hear him no more she slowly placed the cheque back on the side table, then lay down, drawing the bedclothes over her. She should sleep, she knew. Tomorrow she would be taken back to the airport, put on a plane, despatched to London. To get on with her life. And she could, now. She had her money, after all.
Think of the future. Think of when you start helping Jem restore Pycott. Think of the work ahead and the things to achieve. Think of the first schoolchildren arriving, the new hope they will have. Think of that. Think only of that.
Don’t think about anything else.
You’ve got the money—be glad of that at least.
Closure.
That was the word, the word psychologists used to describe how essential it was for people not to have things hanging over their head emotionally. Closure to seal one part of life from another. The past from the present. The present from the future that was yet to come.
She had come for closure, but for her there could be no closure—not yet.
What Theo had done to her in his bed ensured that.
Instead of closure, something else was swelling inside her—something powerful, unstoppable. Something that was seeping through her, blotting through all her body.
And she knew exactly what it was.
And exactly what she was going to do about it.
She was packed and ready to go by eight in the morning. She had slept eventually, a heavy, dreamless sleep, and now she was calm, very calm, and that was good. As she painted on her face her hand did not tremble. When she was done she eyed herself objectively. Her full face of make-up did not go with the casual clothes she was wearing, but that didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be wearing them for long. They would not be suitable for her purpose.
Before she set off downstairs she checked her wallet one last time. Yes, the cheque was still there. She gazed at the dark, incisive handwriting, the strong scrawl of his signature. For just a moment she felt the emotion that had started to build up in her last night lash out, but she leashed it back in.
Not yet.
Soon.
She stood up, lifted her backpack, and headed out of the room. Along the corridor the shut door of the master bedroom looked back at her blankly. As blank as her own expression. Downstairs she took her leave of the staff, not looking any of them in the eye. She didn’t like to behave like that, but for her own sanity she knew she had to. Then she walked out to the waiting car. The warmth after the perpetual air-conditioned cool of the interior made her shiver—or something else did. She looked back at the house.
A love-nest. That was the coy expression that used to be in vogue. Well, nothing to do with love had happened in there this week.
She shivered again, and got into the car. But as it started to move off she leant forward.
‘I’m going into Athens,’ she said to the driver.
He nodded, incurious, and she leant back.
It was strange, very strange, to see Athens again, to sit in one endless traffic jam after another and catch glimpses of the familiar outline of the Acropolis crowned by the Parthenon. Even though she did not want to, she felt herself react. Felt emotion start to run in her veins. She stopped it because she could not allow herself to do otherwise.
And because it was the wrong emotion.
There was only one emotion she was allowing herself now. Only one that was right and proper for the occasion.
Her first port of call was the bank. She’d opened her own account before they’d married, arranging to have funds placed there from her own British bank account in London. It was irrelevant that her uncle would happily have bankrolled her, and that as Theakis Theo had opened a separate account for her at his bank. She trusted only her own bank, her own name.
It did not take long to pay in the cheque Theo had left for her. But paying it in did not achieve the closure she needed. She had known it would not. Not now. Something much more was needed.
For that, she would need an outfit. One that suited the face she wore and the sleek styling of her hair. She ordered the driver to deposit her at the premises of one of the designers she had most favoured when she was Theo Theakis. The vendeuse was new, and she was grateful, but she kept her dark glasses on all the same. Nor did she linger over her decision, emerging less than fifteen minutes later wearing a classic shift dress in mint-green, with an off-white handbag and sandals to match. As she left the shop she took one last glance at herself in a full-length mirror.
She gave a small, tight smile to her reflection. Oh, yes, Theo Theakis was back in town all right!
And she wanted more than the money she was owed. Much more.
Now it was her turn for vengeance. And she would make sure it really, really hit Theo where it hurt. In his giant-sized masculine sexual ego.
Back in the car, she phoned his office. The voice that answered wa
s familiar—it was Theo’s aide, Demetrious. Vicky spoke crisply in English.
‘This is Theakis here. Put Theo on the line, please.’
There was an imperceptible pause. Then, ‘One moment, please, Theakis.’ The aide’s voice was as neutrally incurious as it had been on the flight over. He came back on the line a moment later.
‘ Theakis, I’m so sorry. Theakis is in conference.’
The voice was smooth—apologetic, even—but Vicky knew that it was pointless to repeat her request. This time around was not going to be an action replay of her vigil in Theo’s London offices. This time she was calling the shots. Starting right now.
‘Oh, dear,’ she answered. ‘That’s a pity. Would you let him know I’m going to be lunching at Santiano’s, if he’d like to join me there? Thank you so much. I’m in the car at the moment, so he can reach me on that number.’
She hung up and sat back as the car continued to wind its way round Athens’ infamously traffic-laden streets. Santiano’s was the biggest hotbed of gossip in Athens. Everyone who wanted to be seen went there, and it was a favourite haunt both of gossip columnists and the paparazzi, waiting to see who was lunching with whom. And, of course, a lot more than lunching…
If the former Theakis was seen there, back in Athens, tongues would start to wag straight away. Even without the slightest shred of evidence the columnists would be speculating on whether she was going to be getting back with Theo Theakis again. A momentary pang went through her—if Theo called her bluff, then it was inevitable that Aristides would find out that she was back in Athens. She didn’t want him hurt—not any more than he had been already.
But that was thanks to Theo anyway, she reminded herself mercilessly. There had been no need for Theo to tell Aristides why he was going for a divorce. No need to upset him the way he had, by telling him about those incriminating photos! He could just as easily have trotted out the story they had agreed they would tell her uncle all along—that the marriage had simply not worked out, and they were parting amicably.