Pride & Surrender

by Jennifer Dawson

  The idea of Christos being scared of anything is foreign enough to me to probe deeper. “Like what?”

  Amara casts an evil smirk back at her son. “Perhaps I’ll bring out the baby pictures.”

  “Oh sweet Jesus,” Christos says, making me laugh so I relax fractionally.

  She leads me down a narrow hallway, and I’m thankful for the steady sound of Christos’s steps behind me. At the end of the corridor, she opens a door that leads to a veranda. Stepping onto the terrace is like stepping onto a Greek isle.

  White furniture, blue and white stone and tile accented with lush pink flowers and high hedges. A sitting area overlooks a small pond, and in the center of the space a large teak table sits under a billowy canopy. Transported to another time and place, it is impossible to believe an entire city sits on the other side of this haven.

  “Oh,” I breathe out in a hushed voice. “This is beautiful.”

  Christos comes beside me and slides his hand on my waist, placing a soft kiss at my temple while his mother lets me go and her son draws me close. “I knew you’d love it.”

  A sea of faces stares back at me, curious but welcoming. Christos walks me forward to the group and introduces me. Two sisters, their husbands and children surround me with warm smiles. My head swims as I try to remember names and faces as they envelop me like a long-lost friend. The warmth and casual acceptance soothing over my frayed nerves like a salve.

  Suddenly I stand in front of an older man with salt-and-pepper hair and black compelling eyes, so handsome I can only stare. The man could only be Christos’s father, so similar in looks and build it’s like staring at Christos twenty years in the future.

  What would it be like to grow old with him?

  As soon as the thought crosses my mind, I push it away. Why were these thoughts creeping in? I don’t want them. I don’t want any expectations. I’ve made up my mind to enjoy the moment, the time I have with him, and spinning fantasy about our future will only ruin that.

  “Juliet, this is my father Nickolas.” Christos presents his father as if he’s a gift.

  “So this is the lovely Juliet.” The older man grasps my shoulders and pulls me close, kissing me on each cheek. “Come, sit with me.” He gestures me over to a sitting area overlooking the quiet little pond.

  Christos pulls me onto the white loveseat while his father settles into a chair across from us, his mother joining us next to her husband so we form a circle while the rest of the party goes on behind us. Children laugh. The low buzz of conversation flits behind us like a bumblebee.

  Unable to relax after being wound so tight for so long, I sit rigid.

  Christos drapes his arm over the back of the couch, gently brushing the curve of my neck. I grasp my hands tightly in my lap and resist the urge to brush him away like a pesky fly. It isn’t that his touch doesn’t comfort me, it does, but his parents sit across from us with hope and interest bright on their faces, and I don’t want to give them the wrong impression.

  For all I know, I’ll never see them again.

  I attempt a smile that gets lost somewhere around the middle and dies on my lips. Remembering what Christos had said, I force myself to respond to the situation the way I would a business lunch. I straighten my shoulders and Christos’s fingers stroke over my skin. “Thank you so much for inviting me, Mr. and Mrs. Constantine. Your home,” I sweep my hand over the oasis terrace, “this garden, it’s beautiful. It’s hard to believe we’re in the middle of the city.”

  Amara, glances over her yard, her expression serene. “Yes, a little bit of home to keep us company. But please call us Amara and Nickolas, we might be strangers, but I am confident it is a temporary arrangement.”

  Beside me, Christos chuckles and runs a palm down my bare arm. “She’s very subtle.”

  I nod, wishing he’d stop touching me. With a forced smile, I say, “Thank you, I’ll try to remember.”

  “I understand you and Christos are in the same business?” Nickolas asks.

  “Yes.” I wonder when Christos has spoken of me. We’d been in each other’s constant company since he’d shown up at my office Friday afternoon, so when could he have discussed me with his family? “We’re competitors actually.”

  Nickolas’s dark eyes gleam while his face lights with delight. “Ah yes, that’s bound to make things very interesting.”

  Latching onto this safe subject, I scowl up at Christos, momentarily taken aback by the intensity in his eyes as he looks down at me. My mind flashes to an image of me tied to my bed, spread and open to him while he hovers over me with that very expression. Heat steals over my skin.

  Wicked and evil, he grins. He knows what I’m thinking. He can see it in my eyes.

  Clearing my throat, I shift my attention back to Nickolas, whose lips quirk as though trying to contain his amusement. I refuse to become flustered. “Not very interesting, really, he always wins, so it’s not much of a challenge for him.”

  “Oh, I have a feeling you’re plenty of challenge for my son,” Nickolas says with a teasing lilt to his tone.

  “Yes, she is.” Christos runs his palm down my bare arm, pulling me close and kissing my temple.

  I want to stomp my foot and tell him to stop. Why does he have to be so familiar with me? He’s increasing my discomfort, he has to know that, but doesn’t seem to care. I dig my elbow into his ribs but he doesn’t even budge. “Besides, Juliet would hate it if I let her win.”

  Nickolas raises a brow. “A strong-willed, competitive woman is always a good thing. It will keep you on your toes.”

  Unable to resist the need to defend myself, I blurt, “I’m not competitive, he’s just annoyingly smug, and I feel compelled to put him in his place. I consider it my gift to the female population.” Horror flashes through me.

  Why in heaven had I said that?

  To my shock, before I can start spinning apologies, all three of them laugh.

  “Oh, I like you,” Amara says, a huge smile on her face. “You will be good for him.”

  I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

  Christos squeezes my shoulder. “You can’t help yourself.”

  Amara leans over as though making me her conspirator. She casts a fond look at Nickolas. “My husband and son are cut from the same cloth so to speak. Believe me, dear one, I understand. I too consider it my personal duty not to give my husband his way too often.”

  Nickolas casts a hooded glance at his wife before saying something in Greek.

  I glance at Christos with a silent question.

  He smiles. “He told her she’ll pay for her comments.”

  Same cloth indeed. From the look passing between them, I guess this is something Amara will gladly pay.

  His parents are nothing at all as I expected, but now that I’ve met them, they seem exactly right. Chic and a bit European, Christos makes a little more sense to me.

  Curious, I ask, “How did you two meet?”

  “Once upon a time,” Nickolas says, “I fancied myself an artist. I took a class and she was the model.”

  I had no trouble believing that. As stunning as Amara is now, she had to have been breathtaking, movie-star gorgeous as a young girl.

  “One look at her and I knew she was mine.” Nickolas reaches over and takes her hand before flashing me a wry smile. “Just as every other young man in the class believed.”

  I imagine their eyes catching across the room and them falling in love at first sight. A ridiculously romantic notion, but somehow, as they look at each other with such love, I have no trouble believing it.

  “Of course she wanted nothing to do with me,” Nickolas continues, disabusing me of the story my imagination had weaved.

  I blink at Amara, who laughs at my startled look, making a flush spread up my neck. She pats Nickolas’s hand. “I had other plans that didn’t include an arrogant Greek man.”

  “The other boys, she didn’t say yes to them either,” Nickolas says. “But for
me she had a particular dislike.”

  “Juliet, surely you can sympathize.” Christos chuckles.

  I ignore him.

  Amara rolls her eyes and scoffs, “Do you know what he did the first time he talked to me?”

  I lean forward, on the edge of my seat at this not-so-smooth telling of their romance. “What?”

  “He walked over to me after class, strutting through the room like a peacock.” She straightens in her chair, squaring her shoulders, transforming her features into an arrogant, dominant mask I’ve seen on her son’s face hundreds of times.

  The image, so startlingly realistic of husband and son, I laugh, not forced this time, but with genuine pleasure that tightens my stomach.

  She winks at me. “Ah, so you know this look?”

  “I do,” I say, unable to stop the camaraderie shared between two women who understand the ways of a certain type of man.

  Nickolas sighs and shakes his head at his son. “I believe we’re being mocked, Christos.”

  “It seems so.” Christos’s tone is amused.

  “And then,” Amara continues, disregarding the comments, plopping back against the back cushion of her chair. “And then, he did the worst thing imaginable.”

  Nickolas groans and scrubs a hand over his jaw as though he’s unable to bear the follies of his youth. “Please, darling, she’ll think horribly of me and we’ve just met the dear girl.”

  “Ha!” Amara rambles something off in Greek that makes Christos laugh but leaves me out of the loop. She wags a finger at me. “Some transgressions are unforgivable. So he walks over to me, thinking he’s…”

  She glances around and gestures. “What do these young people call it today?” Her expression brightens and she snaps her fingers. “Ah yes, I remember, like he’s sex on a stick, and examines me as if I’m a goat for purchase before he says,” she drops her voice several octaves, mimicking the tone of a man, her face alive and animated in a way that makes me want to photograph her again, “come with me.”

  I roll with laughter, slapping my knee with my hand as the uncontrollable waves of giggles overtake me. I can so picture it, so see the scene, feel how she felt, as I felt the first time I’d had a conversation with her son. Like her, I’d experienced the mixture of emotions in the face of an arrogant, far-too-handsome-to-be-true man who wasn’t used to taking no for an answer.

  “But it gets worse.” Amara leans back over toward me again with narrowed eyes. “Of course I refuse. But he tries again, this time telling me that while I’m very beautiful, I also have generous hips and thinks I’ll make a good mother.” She rolls her eyes at her husband, love and affection on her face despite the exasperation.

  “You do have lovely hips, my darling,” Nickolas says before looking at me. “You must understand, Juliet, different time, different culture. This was a compliment.”

  Amara snorts. “What a foolish man you are.”

  Warmth steals over me, taking me by surprise, making my guard slip, so I say quite without thinking, “Christos told me that I can’t beat him because I lack passion and couldn’t understand why I took offense.”

  Amara’s brows instantly snap together as a darkness clouds her face. “Christos!” She begins a tirade of Greek, arms waving as she yells at her son.

  While I don’t understand the words, her disapproval is plain and Christos starts to sputter under the onslaught.

  “Wait. Hang on, here, there’s more to—”

  More yelling.

  “No. Wait. I did not. You don’t understand,” Christos pleads through his mother’s rant.

  Amara doesn’t even slow, and I hide a smile behind my fingers, thoroughly charmed by Christos’s flustered protests.

  He turns and scowls, running his hands through his hair so he is rumpled, boyish and disgruntled. “Tell her, Juliet, tell her the entire story.”

  In that moment, the foundation under my feet shakes as my world tilts on its axis and the knowledge I’ve been fighting sinks in, shaking me to the very core.

  I love him. I’m irrationally, truly, deeply, passionately, insanely in love with Christos Constantine.

  Something shifts inside me, making room for the wealth of emotion brewing that threatens to overflow.

  Our eyes meet. Catch. Cling.

  He goes still, the green of his irises growing bigger as his pupils contract.

  I love this man.

  It wells like a tsunami, swelling with a force that threatens not only to drown me but sweep me away forever. The realization is brutal, raw and passionate, just like all my emotions with Christos. No gentle lapping of tides with him.

  I love him.

  I wait for the panic, the swell of fear to crush me.

  I sit in this private Greek isle oasis, his family in the background, the breeze blowing over my cheeks, rustling the strands of my hair, frozen in my anticipation and expectation.

  Christos’s gaze is probing, as though trying to reach into my mind and pull free my thoughts. He brushes his fingers over my hand.

  Electricity snaps between us.

  I brace for the rush of terror. The flood of fear. Tears. The urge to run.

  Only it doesn’t come.

  One thought wraps around me, enveloping me in comfort and warmth.

  I am home.

  10

  I stare at my townhouse, the soft light over the stoop beckoning me. My fingers tighten on my seat belt. We’d been silent on the way home. The car filled with tension so tight I can reach out and ping it.

  The thickness in the car isn’t the normal sexual tension that connects us like a live current. Nor is it the threatening tension of our past. No, this is new—the tension between two people who know that what they are about to do will change everything.

  The purr of the engine dies, plunging the car into silence. My thumb hovers on the button that will free me from the belt, but I can’t quite make myself push it. I swallow hard.

  I know what he’ll do to me when we go to my bedroom. How I’ll be helpless, at his complete mercy. But unlike before, I can no longer convince myself it’s only an act. A game two people play.

  Now I know I’m in love.

  There’s no hiding the truth from him, he knows. I can feel it in his touch, see it in the way his eyes roam over me.

  In one fraction of a second everything has changed.

  And even though I tremble with a mixture of fear and anticipation of the unknown, I’m not afraid.

  His hand settles over my fingers clutching the strap. “They loved you.”

  My breath stutters in my chest. “You were right, I had a great time.”

  I had too. Dinner had been filled with fantastic food, wine and conversation. His family welcomed me into their folds as though I’d been sitting at their table forever. They filled my head with stories of the man next to me both funny and touching so that over the course of the evening I’d become drunk on him, and his life, as much as the wine I’d consumed.

  The pad of his finger covers mine over the red button and presses until my seat belt slides free from the latch. I want to hold it there, tight over my chest, but let go. He takes my hand and raises my fingers to his lips, planting a soft kiss on each one. “It’s time, Juliet.”

  I look at him, so darkly handsome, and butterflies take flight in my stomach. “Okay, Christos.”

  His gaze travels to my mouth, then comes back to my eyes. “I want to kiss you. I’m dying to kiss you, but I can’t right now.”

  A couple of months ago I would have assumed he meant he didn’t want me, but I don’t jump to any conclusions now. Instead, I raise one brow in silent question.

  “Not until I have you on your bed, stretched out and open before me.”

  Those few words fill me with heat and make me ache for release. Never in a million years would I have believed I’d get wet at the idea of being tied up and helpless, but the evidence of my arousal hums in my body.

  Or maybe it’s Christos? In all black, covered
in half shadows from the glow of the moonlight, he couldn’t look more dangerous. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. I want it and him.

  “Do you know why, Juliet?” His voice drops, turning husky. “Why I can’t kiss you?”

  I shake my head as my breath quickens in anticipation of his answer.

  His fingers squeeze mine. “Because I cannot trust myself. Once I start touching you, it’s impossible for me to stop. I am so desperate for you right now, if I kissed you, you’d be on top of me, riding my cock in under five minutes.”

  My nipples bead almost painfully at his words. “Yes, Christos.”

  “You want this, don’t you? I can feel it in the way you’re practically vibrating.”

  We haven’t touched, but the car fills with the thick, heavy scent of sex anyway. “Yes, Christos.”

  “I want to give it to you.” Again, he clutches my hand tight in his. “I can’t kiss you right now because I need the bonds as a reminder to stay in control so I can give you what you need.”

  My cunt tightens at his words as though wanting them to fill me up. Wet, slick heat coats my inner thighs as my breath comes fast. I want to say I love him but I can’t push the words out, so instead I settle for another admission. “I need it, Christos.”

  He groans, a low, tortured sound. “You think I have power over you, my Juliet, but you have no idea the power you have over me.”

  My lips part on a gasp and it hits me like a ton of bricks.

  I believe him.

  It isn’t that I’d thought he’d been lying before, but I had the kernel of doubt. That little voice inside my head telling me not to trust him, not to let go, not to surrender, but now that voice is quiet. Without the constant buzzing in my ear, I can hear the truth.

  I do have power over him. It’s different than the power he has over me but nonetheless profound or earth-shattering.

  “I’m in love with you, Christos.” The words leave my lips before I even know I was going to say them. Saying them is the first real risk I’ve taken in as long as I can remember and it feels good. Freeing. Right.

  I didn’t want to hide anymore.