Penniless and Purchased

by Julia James

  Nikos—only Nikos…only ever Nikos in all the world for me…

  Her heart was full with emotion, the jewel in her palm rich and rare and so, so precious…

  ‘Sophie?’

  Her name sounded in the air, sibilant and questioning. Nikos was looking at her enquiringly, his chair half pushed back. The dining room was almost deserted, the candle burnt low. The couple in the glass had vanished.

  Or had they?

  She got to her feet, as Nikos did the same, and then he was there, ushering her out as they were bowed away by the waiter—the last diners to leave, she saw. And Nikos was at her side, falling in beside her, as they stepped through the open French windows into the garden beyond the conservatory restaurant. She felt his presence, his closeness. Felt the rightness of his place at her side.

  This is where he should be—where I should be…

  Like the couple in the glass. Together.

  ‘Are you cold?’ Nikos’s enquiry was solicitous as he walked beside her on the dimly lit path.

  Sophie shook her head. She wasn’t cold. The wine in her veins and the soft summer night warmed her. So did the heat in her blood. Was her pulse heavier than it normally was? Or was she just more conscious of the beating of her heart?

  More conscious of the tall figure at her side?

  What am I doing here? she thought. Surely she could not be here, with Nikos, having dined with him, talked to him, listened to him. Reality was prickling at her mind, penetrating the hazy miasma that had been cocooning her. Yet its entrance was unsure, uncertain.

  She glanced about her. What was real? The night air? The scent of honeysuckle teasing her senses? The fall of their footsteps on the path? The massed dimness at the edge of the garden?

  Nikos at her side?

  Could he be real?

  Oh, yes—oh, yes…He was real!

  Nikos—Nikos, Nikos…

  She tried to silence the voice in her head, for it had no right to cry out like that—nor reason, either. But reasons seemed a thousand miles away, and all that was left was a burning consciousness of his presence—a consciousness that became even more vivid as he paused at the top of a short flight of steps, looking upwards into the sky.

  ‘Look at the stars,’ he said.

  She followed his uplifted gaze. Overhead the heavens shone, pricked with gold, the faintest wisps of cloud scudding over them.

  ‘There’s Jupiter,’ he said.

  She gazed blindly. He raised his hand, to point, and as he did so his other hand closed on her shoulder, to alter her position slightly. Suddenly his breath was warm on her neck, and the stars blurred in her eyes. The warmth of his palm on her shoulder seemed like a brand. Imprinting her with his presence.

  For a moment, timeless and motionless, she stilled completely, every cell in her body piercingly aware of Nikos’s closeness, his touch, his breath, his scent, his very being. Emotion lifted her.

  Then, abruptly, the hand at her shoulder fell away.

  ‘The car park is just through here,’ he said. His voice was terse suddenly, and his pace as they walked towards the gate that led from the garden quickened. She felt the emotion that had lifted her hang, quiveringly, inside her.

  As he gained the car, opening the passenger door for her, Nikos set his jaw tensely. What was happening to him?

  What had been happening all evening?

  As he gunned the engine and manoeuvred the car out of the car park, he tried to get his head around it. The evening had had a clear, unambiguous purpose: to put the past behind him. To make him see, finally, that the past was over and done with. That Sophie had no power to arouse emotions in him. That he could gain immunity from her, from what she could do to him…

  Liar…

  The word shaped itself in his head and he brushed it aside, but it reformed again. From the corner of his eye he could see her sitting there beside him, feel her presence, her reality.

  Sophie…

  Everything about her seemed so vivid, so vital! Everything about her was imprinted on him. In every cell of his body. Emotion washed through him. Emotion that she aroused! Only she aroused. Only Sophie…

  Only Sophie…

  The car ate up the few miles as he closed the distance to Belledon. They did not talk—yet the silence spoke. His head was full—but not with words, not with thoughts.

  As he wound down the long drive to the house, took the curve around to the back and drew up outside the entrance to her quarters, he could feel the emotion in him strengthening. What it was he did not know, could not name. Knew only that it was strong and growing stronger. More imperative. More powerful.

  I should leave. Leave her and go. Get back to the inn and then, first thing, head back to London. The architect can wait. He’s not important. All that is important is for me to get back to London. Away.

  Away from Sophie…

  But even as the thought forced its way into his head he knew it for the lie it was.

  He cut the engine and the silence pooled. With a jerky movement Nikos opened his door, strode out around the car to open the passenger seat door. She got out quickly, shutting the door herself. Nikos walked up to the back door, unlocking it with his own set of keys for the property. It took a moment to find the right key, but then it yielded, and he pushed the door back, holding it open for her.

  He did not speak.

  Dared not speak.

  Dared not look at her.

  She approached slowly. There was a sudden wariness in her step. A sudden slow thump of her heart. All around was nothing but silence. Then the mournful cry of an owl pierced it momentarily.

  ‘Sophie—’

  The sound of his voice penetrated. Her eyes went to him as he stood in the dimness by the open door, waiting for her to go inside. Waiting to leave. To drive away. She paused. The air was chill now, after the warmth of the car, but it was not the night that chilled her.

  Knowledge came to her.

  I will never see Nikos again now.

  He would drive away and she would never see him again.

  She knew it with an absolute certainty. There would be no more accidental encounters, no more crossing of paths. No more.

  A terrible yearning swept through her. A yearning for what had never been, for what never would be. What never could be.

  With aching pain, she moved past him.

  ‘Sophie—’

  She paused minutely. She could not say goodnight, could not speak anodyne words. It was all beyond her.

  ‘Sophie, I—’

  She tilted her head—the barest acknowledgement. ‘Goodbye, Nikos.’

  Her voice was low, faint. She had meant to say goodnight, but a truer word had come. She started forwards again, into the interior.

  ‘Sophie—’

  Her name came from him again, but it was different now, and his hand was on her shoulder. Halting her. She turned.

  He was so close to her. Standing there in the doorway, his hand on her shoulder, pressing through the material of her blouse. He said something in Greek. She did not know what. Knew only that in the darkness of the night his face was stark.

  His eyes were burning suddenly, with a fire that came from deep within.

  Weakness went through her, making her breath catch, her heart seize. The warmth of his hand on her shoulder made her weaker yet. Her eyes clung to his. Clung in desperation, beseeching. Yearning.

  Oh, dear God—Nikos!

  Emotion filled her that she should be so close to him, and then anguish that this was, could only be, her final moment with him. That nothing remained—only this final parting.

  And then…

  Slowly, infinitely slowly, as if a weight were dragging at him, his hands slid from her shoulders to fasten around her arms. She felt his muscles tense, felt him draw her towards him. Her heartbeat had slowed. Her breath stopped. Time stopped. The unbearable past that had taken him from her once, the unbearable future that would take him from her for ever, all vanished, and th
ere was only this moment—now. This moment with him. The soft dark of the night, the dim points of the stars, the faint soughing of the wind in the distant trees, the haunting cry of the hunting owl—that was all there was.

  And Nikos. So close to her. So close.

  Holding her.

  Words came from him again, in his own language, low and rasped. She did not understand. But she did not need words to know what was in his eyes, his face.

  His lips.

  In a slow, slow descent, his mouth covered hers.

  Like silken velvet his mouth moved on hers, drawing from her a nectar sweeter than honey. The nectar he had tasted before, as sweet as this. The nectar that had been in her very first kiss—and in her last.

  And now in this.

  She opened to him. She could not do otherwise. Giving herself, all of herself, to this moment of bliss. Nikos kissing her. Nikos’s mouth moving on hers softly, slowly.

  As he had kissed her the very first time.

  Past and present fused in her head, her heart. The past she had submerged beneath layer after layer of desperately imposed barriers was now as real and singing in her consciousness as the bliss of the present.

  Holland Park, after the open-air opera, walking along, hand in hand, his fingers laced with hers. Nikos pausing in the shadowed pathway to turn her slowly towards him, to murmur her name, and then, as her eyes fluttered shut, to do what she had been longing, aching for him to do—kiss her…

  It was as if that moment had come again—as if this was the first time all over again. As if her heart were singing, soaring as it had then, her body and soul filling with the sweetest bliss.

  Then, in that distant, long-ago past, he had drawn back regretfully, reluctantly, and she had gone on standing there, dazed and dizzy with delight, gazing up at him, lips parted, her heart soaring heavenward on wings of wonder.

  ‘I must take you home,’ he’d murmured then, and had walked with her, slowly, his arm around her shoulders, their bodies touching. They had meandered homewards, slowly, back towards her father’s house. His car had been parked there, and though she had invited him in for coffee—daringly, hopefully—he had ruefully shaken his head.

  ‘I can’t,’ he’d said. ‘Or I will want to stay…’

  All he’d done was tilt up her chin and drop the lightest, slightest kiss upon her lips. Then he’d let her go and turned away, walked back to the car, pausing only to lift his hand in a final goodnight and call softly, ‘Go in, Sophie.’

  And she had, though it had been like tearing herself away, and when she had shut the front door she had leant back against it until she’d heard his car drive away, and then she had drifted upstairs, floating on air to her bedroom, aching with all her being for him.

  As she ached now. Now that she was in his arms again—now that the bliss of his kiss was soaring in her veins—now that the low, hectic beat of her heart, the pulse of her blood, were binding her to him—now that the warm, sensuous pressure of his mouth was drowning her senses.

  She gave herself to it absolutely, completely. Not even trying to fight, trying to resist. The past flowed into the present, becoming one.

  He guided her to the staircase and up the narrow stairs, into the dim, encompassing darkness that awaited there. To take her into his arms again. The darkness enveloped them, but he did not need light to tell him what he knew—that her soft, slender body folded to his, that her tender, rounded breasts pressed against him, that her sweet, generous mouth was like honey beneath his. Nectar.

  Did he speak? He did not know. Nor if he spoke Greek or English. Knew only that his hand had slipped around the nape of her neck, cradling her head to his as his other hand slid down the long wand-curve of her spine. He was kissing her still, deeper, and yet each kiss only engendered a greater hunger, a wilder desire for her. His fingers were at her blouse—that cheap, unlovely blouse that should never have sullied her honeyed-body—peeling the material away from her, careless of buttons just as he was careless of zips or fasteners, only to ease her skirt from her, let it slide and cascade to the floor, where he could lift her out of it and lower her gently, carefully, down upon the waiting bed.

  He followed her in a daze, his own garments and her remaining ones shed somehow, anyhow. Irrelevant how they fell, or where. All that was essential was to lower his bared body onto hers, gleaming like pearl in the velvet dark, to graze his lips along that opalescent skin, the delicate bones below her throat, the hollow at its base. Then, with the lightest, most feathered touch, he skimmed the swell of her tender breasts, heard her murmurous cries, felt her breasts swelling to his touch of lips and fingertips, felt their peaks cresting beneath his sensuous suckling, heard those cries again, husky from her throat.

  Her fingers wound in his hair, splaying out over the contours of his back, and his body hardened against hers, filling him with a desire so steep, so absolute, that he moved on her, seeking, questing, parting her thighs with his and lifting himself to her arching hips. Her throat was extended, her head thrown back, the pale tresses of her loosened hair flowing like a banner as he kissed her again, deeper and yet deeper still, as she opened to him with tiny, breathy cries, pleading for him as he slowly, carefully, sheathed himself within her yielding body.

  She could not move. Dared not. Because if she did something impossible would happen. She would feel a bliss more than it was possible to feel. So she could only lie there, his body filling hers, hers enwrapping his, their muscles quivering. Her hands were caught at the wrists, lifted either side of her head. Her whole being was poised, balanced so finely that it was as if the very edge of a tsunami had welled out of the ocean deeps. For a timeless, exquisite moment she was held so still it was as if she were a statue of marble or ivory, hung in a moment of time that seemed eternal. She gazed upwards, her eyes wide, her lips parted—up into the face above her, whose dark, dark eyes held a question that was impossible to deny.

  Then, with a susurration of her name, he moved.

  And her body answered him.

  She cried out. She could not help it—could not stop herself. Cried out as the drowning sweetness flushed through her until every cell was honeyed, every pore dissolved, and her whole body was drenched. The sweetness went on and on and on. He was there too, his body surging into her, and she heard him cry out with her. And then it was ebbing—ebbing away. The sweetness drained from her until all that was left was the utter exhaustion of her limbs, only lassitude. His body was heavy on hers, and he rolled them sideways so that she was in his arms, and he in hers, their bodies still melded, still complete. Her eyelids were so very, very heavy, her body sweet and warm. She folded against him, clasped to him, her hair swathing him, her head against his shoulder. Her breathing slowed, her heartbeat slowed, her eyelids fluttered shut and soon she was still, sleeping in his embrace.

  Dim light pressed with skimming fingertips against her eyelids, fluttering them open. For a moment she was alone, as she had been for so long, and then, as if in a mirage, she realised she was in Nikos’s arms.

  And they had made love.

  Happiness welled through her. How it had happened she did not care—nor why. It had happened, that was all, and she was here, and he was with her. Her hands could press against the warm, hard wall of his chest, feel the rise and fall of it, feel the soft rhythm of his breath. She could open her eyes and see, in the dim dawn light, the beautiful contours of his face, his sable hair feathering on his brow, his long, long lashes swept down over his eyes.

  And know, with a wonder that was like a piercing pain, that she was experiencing something that she had never, ever experienced in her life.

  I never lay in his arms, I never woke in his arms.

  But this time—this time that had been granted to her!

  This is how it should have been—

  Her mind tried to sheer away, to block out the terrible memories that suddenly, instantly, were there inside her head, vivid and anguished. Humiliating and poisonous.

  S
haming.

  Cold iced through her. The warmth of Nikos’s arms was gone. Blindly she stared out into the room.

  And slowly, very, very slowly, as if a terrible, unbearable weight was crushing down on her, she knew what she must do.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘YOU do realise there’s a recession, don’t you?’

  The voice of the woman in the Job Centre was sharp, impatient. Sophie knew why. She’d walked out of a perfectly good job, for no reason the woman could see—a jaunt to the countryside hardly counted—and now she was back again, wanting another job just like that.

  ‘I’m willing to take anything,’ Sophie said, her voice low.

  Anxiety pressed at her. Although the cheque from Nikos was buying her blessed time, she had to start earning again as soon as she possibly could.

  But she should not have thought of that cheque.

  Nor of Nikos.

  Like a guillotine, her mind slammed shut. A steel door rammed down across her memory. It took every ounce of her strength to hold it in place.

  Focus—that’s all you have to do! Focus on the only thing that matters now: getting another job. Any job.

  The woman at the Job Centre was scrolling down her computer screen. ‘There really is very little,’ she said, disapproval still emanating from her. ‘If you could type it might be different, but as it is you have no marketable skills.’

  Sophie knew. Had known it for four bitter years. No marketable skills, and no time to acquire any. No time to do anything other than work all the hours she could, for whatever wages she could.

  The woman sat back, defeated. ‘You’ll have to come in tomorrow. There may be more then. All that’s on the database is casual bar work, and you said you didn’t want that.’

  No, Sophie didn’t want that. She’d tried it once and found the inevitable sexual harassment repellent. Since then she’d stuck to shop work, which could run on into the evenings. But now she knew she had no leg to stand on in being picky about bar work. Not after she’d been prepared to work as an escort…