Papaioannou 01 - Ever Fallen in Love

by Katie MacAlister

  He laughed and kissed her soundly. “I’d just like to know what social mores and values he’ll learn from Jake’s kids.”

  “I heard that,” Iakovos said as he left the room with Harry, his arm around her.

  Theo followed suit, feeling remarkably relaxed for the first time in what seemed like eons.

  “We’ve put your security detail up in the guest cottages,” Harry told them as they went out onto the patio, the soft evening air filling Theo with a sense of happiness that was almost indefinable. It was something about the smell and sound of the sea, of the wind that ruffled Kiera’s hair—now once again back to its silky-curtain state—that made him simultaneously insanely happy and horny as hell.

  “Do you want to eat first, and then tell us what’s going on?” Iakovos asked when they sat down at a white metal table, solar lanterns dotted around the patio giving the space a soft glow. “Or tell us and then eat?”

  “Eat,” Theo said, aware that, along with his sudden arousal, he was also starving. “What we have to tell you is going to take a long time.”

  Kiera confined herself to several glasses of lemon water, juice, and tonic water while Theo consumed a goodly part of a roast dinner, letting the polite conversation that Harry and Kiera kept up wash over him.

  “Oh, I meant to ask you if you needed something for your knee. I gather you hurt it falling down?” Harry asked Kiera while Theo was finishing up a second helping of lemon herb potatoes.

  “That just kind of aggravated it. Well, so did the race. It was originally injured when Theo bashed my leg on the steps of the swimming pool after he tried to drown me.”

  Harry stared at her, a fork loaded with salad held immobile in front of her mouth. “He tried to ...” She looked at him and blinked, then set her fork down. “I think I need to hear this from the start. Wait, a race?” She glanced at Iakovos before turning back to Kiera. “Do you swim, too?”

  Theo laughed, suddenly remembering Jake’s tale of how Harry had handed him his ass in the lap pool. “I’d forgotten about that. I wish now that I hadn’t, because it would have reminded me not to be so sure of my superior male abilities.”

  “You’re not slow,” Kiera told him, a teasing light in her eyes that he loved to see. “You’re just not as fast as me.”

  “You told me that beating me almost killed you.”

  “Eh,” she said, waggling her hand. “I just said that because your superior male ego was wounded.”

  By unspoken consensus, the discussion about why they had descended upon Iakovos was held until dinner was over, and they were seated in the living room, Harry and Iakovos on one couch, while Theo pulled Kiera down next to him on another.

  “Right,” Iakovos said, glancing from Harry to Theo. “We have about half an hour before we have to put the kids to bed. Perhaps you’d like to tell us now why you’re here.”

  “Not that you aren’t welcome,” Harry said, digging an elbow into Iakovos. “Naturally, we’re delighted to see you again, Theo, and I’m so happy to know Kiera and little Peter, who looks just like Nicky did at that age.”

  “Go ahead,” Iakovos said, draping an arm around Harry’s shoulders. “Tell us everything.”

  Theo looked at Kiera. Her eyes were watchful, her lips pressed tight together. He knew that if he explained everything, she wouldn’t protest.

  “I don’t think I will, actually,” he answered his brother, brushing Kiera’s hair back from her cheek. “Tell you everything, that is. Not all of it is anyone’s business but ours.”

  Her eyes widened, and flickered to Iakovos before she leaned into him. “That’s not very polite, Theo. We’re guests.”

  “Fair enough,” Iakovos said, giving him a little nod.

  Harry raised her eyebrows and considered her husband. “You’re not going to object to that?”

  “For what reason?” Iakovos asked her. “He’s protecting his family. I’d do the same.”

  “I swear that one day I will understand you, and then you’re going to be sorry,” Harry told him.

  Iakovos smiled. “I live in fear, my wild one. Go on, Theo. Tell us the important points.”

  Theo quickly detailed the pertinent facts, leaving out the method of his meeting Kiera, and giving the explanation that her ex-boyfriend was unbalanced and sought vengeance against her.

  As soon as Theo described the escape from his island, and subsequent journey to Greece, Iakovos leaped up, his face furious. “And you came here? To my home? Where my children live? Christ, Theo, did you even think about the danger you were dragging after you?”

  Theo was on his feet the second Iakovos started yelling. Kiera made a distressed noised and rose, as well, her eyes worried. “Of course I wouldn’t deliberately endanger your children. Do you think I’m a monster? There’s no reason the bastard should follow us here; thus, no one is in danger.”

  “You don’t know that!” Iakovos snarled, getting into Theo’s face. “You have no idea what this maniac is capable of.”

  “Theo.” Kiera’s voice was reed thin. He felt her grab the back of his shirt.

  “I have a good idea of the lengths he’ll go to, yes. I’ve had two detectives looking into his past, and he’s only once left New Zealand, and that was to go to California for four months. That was almost five years ago. Christ, Jake, do you think I’m so heartless that I’d risk Harry and the kids?”

  “What the hell has Kiera done that this man is determined to get his hands on her?” Iakovos demanded.

  “Golf balls,” he heard Kiera whisper behind him. “Baseballs. Billiard balls.”

  He turned and saw the fear making her lovely eyes dark. “Basketballs. Love, don’t do this.” He brushed his thumb across her cheek.

  She glanced beyond him to where Iakovos was pacing back and forth in front of them. “He’s angry, and he has every right to be. This is my fault.”

  He pulled her into his arms, hating the way she struggled to keep from shaking with fear. “Jake isn’t angry, not really, not at you or even me. This is all bluster.”

  “The hell it is,” Iakovos snapped.

  “Stop scaring my wife,” he told his brother in Greek. “The man she’s running from abused her horribly, both physically and mentally. I don’t want to tell you to stop yelling in your own house, but dammit, stop yelling. She doesn’t like it.”

  Iakovos glared first at him, then at Kiera; then to Theo’s amazement, he apologized. “I’m sorry for losing my temper, Kiera. I don’t hold you to blame for the actions of what must surely be a madman.”

  Kiera separated herself from him, but kept one hand firmly on the back of his shirt. “I feel awful about this, I really do, although I’m starting to believe that what you said is true, and Misha has gone mad. I don’t know why he insists I have a flash drive. Maybe it doesn’t really exist, and he’s just gone off the deep end, and has decided I’m the one who is causing him all the problems in his life. I just don’t know.”

  Iakovos frowned, but Theo knew it was not directed at either Kiera or him. “Tell me again what you had when you left him.”

  She described her possessions. “There’s nothing there. Not only have I worn the clothes and washed them repeatedly in the nine months since I escaped, but I’ve searched the duffel bag numerous times. Even assuming either Misha hid something in it, or I inadvertently got the flash drive snagged on it, or tossed into it without my knowing, there’s nothing there.”

  “We’ll examine your things in the morning,” Iakovos decided. Theo wanted to bristle at the implication that they were so inept they could miss something as big as a flash drive, but at the same time he had wanted to go through Kiera’s bag himself. “Sweetheart?” he asked her, leaving the permission up to her.

  She made a helpless gesture. “You’re welcome to look at everything, but there’s nothing there. There’s just nothing there.”

  “If you don’t have this flash drive that your ex wants so badly, then it has to be some other reason he’s making such an
effort to terrorize you,” Harry told Kiera. She slid her gaze over to Theo. “I wonder if it could be as simple as jealousy. Maybe he’s so bent out of shape that you and Theo found each other that he’s being vindictive in hopes that it will drive you apart.”

  A little blush rode Kiera’s cheeks, but to his surprise, she answered the question despite her obvious embarrassment. “I don’t think so. Theo and I only met a couple of weeks ago.”

  Harry looked from her to Theo, and then to Iakovos, laughing as she squeezed his arm. “Well, he’s definitely your brother.”

  Kiera looked confused.

  “I told you that Papaioannou men make up their minds quickly,” he told her with a cocky smile.

  “It only took Yacky and me a few days to know we were meant to be together,” Harry told Kiera.

  “Speak for yourself, woman,” Iakovos said, trailing his fingers along the back of Harry’s neck. “I knew I wasn’t going to give you up after you spent one night in my bed.”

  “Which is why it took you almost a year to tell me you loved me,” she said, grinning at him.

  “You knew full well I was madly in love with you,” he answered, and leaned forward like he was going to kiss her, evidently remembering in time that they weren’t alone.

  “See?” Theo told Kiera. “This is the sort of role model I had growing up.”

  “If so, then I need to thank your brother for teaching you well, because you didn’t wait a year to tell me how you feel.” The look she shot him was so heated that he had to remind himself that if Iakovos could restrain himself from kissing his wife, then Theo could do the same.

  “Oh, to hell with it,” he said, throwing manners to the wind, pulling Kiera onto his lap, and kissing her with a thoroughness that she deserved. She’d been sick, he told himself, and he hadn’t been able to worship her as was her due while she had been unwell. He owed it to her to remind her just how much he loved her.

  “And this, I think, is where we leave,” Iakovos said, Harry laughing openly. “Come along, sweetheart. Let us put those four hellions you gave me to bed, so that we might retire and engage in those acts that Theo is quite likely to perform right here in the living room unless he remembers just how public a place it is.”

  “I’m so glad we got you snipped,” he heard Harry say as they left the room. “Because if we hadn’t, and we do all the things that Theo clearly wants to do with Kiera, we’d be likely to end up with another half-dozen children.”

  “Bed?” Theo asked, pulling his tongue from where she’d been sucking on it.

  “Oh, please,” she said, her breathing ragged, and her eyes molten with desire. “We should probably check on Peter first, though.”

  He touched her lower lip, the soft curve of it captivating him. He loved her lips. He loved her mouth, especially the way she moaned into his when he kissed her. He loved everything about her, not the least of which was the fact that she had so completely embraced the son he hadn’t known existed. “Would you be happier if we moved him to our room to sleep?”

  She thought about that for a few seconds, obviously reluctant to hand over the care of Peter to someone else, even someone trusted by his brother and Harry. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not like he’s a newborn who needs to be fed during the night. He sleeps pretty well, and so long as we tuck him in, and get him up in the morning, I’m perfectly happy to have him sleep with the others.”

  “We can consider this a second wedding night,” he said as they stood up, and, suddenly possessed of a wild urge, swept her up in his arms. “I shall ravish you appropriately, or as appropriately as I can given that my hamstrings and calf muscles are still recovering from that damned race.”

  She giggled when he feigned a limp. “Serves you right. Theo ...”

  “Hmm?” He stopped outside the nursery door, letting her slide down his body until her feet were on the floor.

  “Your brother ...” She bit her lip.

  “Is many things, but no, he’s not really angry with us. We yell a lot in my family when we’re excited. It’s when he goes cold and quiet that you know he’s truly angry.” Theo thought back to a night nine years in the past. “Trust me, I’ve seen it firsthand.”

  She cast a curious glance up at him but said nothing when they went to tuck Peter in. Harry and Jake’s twins had their own room, while the two youngest shared a bedroom off the nursery playroom. Peter was parked in a crib in that same bedroom, where even now Iakovos and Harry sat with all four children huddled together on one bed while Iakovos read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to them.

  Kiera shot them a glance when they went over to the crib where Peter was sitting chewing on the beak of the giant kiwi. “Do you think we should do that?” she whispered to Theo.

  “Read to him?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He thought about it. “I don’t see how it could hurt, although I don’t know how much he’d understand. We’ll start doing that when we’re in our own home.”

  Her eyes were shadowed. “Will we be going back to New Zealand?”

  “Yes.” He held Peter, and leaned down to kiss the tip of her nose. “Unless you preferred to live here? In Greece, not specifically in Jake’s house.”

  She looked thoughtful. “Oh. That would be ... it’s pretty here. I like the sheep island, though.”

  “No reason we can’t spend time in both places. I have my eye on an estate that I’ve heard will be going up for sale soon. It’s no private island, but it’s a nice property a few miles down the coast, right on the water, with a private access road to keep all your deranged ex-boyfriends from the house.”

  She pinched him, but he could see she wasn’t averse to the idea.

  They took turns holding Peter, Kiera singing softly to him so that she didn’t disturb the bedtime reading, and then when he started sucking his fingers, they tucked him in, and turned off the light nearest the crib.

  They returned to Theo’s room, where he did indeed fulfill his promise to ravish Kiera.

  “I thought your calves and hamstrings were out of action,” she said in a breathy voice when he stripped her naked and gently pushed her on the bed before all but tearing off his clothes and following her down. “Ooh, Theo! Really? You’re going all masterful tonight?”

  “Absolutely, my lovely wife.” He eyed her long legs, dipping his head down to kiss a hot path up one of them. “Tonight is all about making you writhe and moan out my name. Shall we start here?”

  Suddenly, her legs tensed, her thighs closing around his hand. “You’re not ... you’re not planning on doing oral sex, are you?”

  Worry was evident in her mind. “I was, as a matter of fact.” He studied her face. An interesting parade of emotions passed over her face, fear, distaste, and curiosity. “I take it you don’t wish to?”

  She made a vague gesture with one hand. “I knew this was going to have to come out sooner or later. I ... I’m not comfortable ...” She cleared her throat and looked at his shoulders rather than his face. “Misha used it as a way to punish me. Not what you were going to do, but the reciprocal.”

  He mentally swore, and added a few more tortures to the list of things he wanted to do to that bastard when he found him.

  “I told you that I would never ask you to do anything you weren’t comfortable doing,” he told her, stroking her inner thigh. “That will always be true, Kiera. I would like very much to taste you, taste the true essence of you, but if that makes you uncomfortable, then I simply won’t.”

  “If you did ...” She made another vague gesture. “Would you want me to do the same? To you?”

  “No,” he said, gently spreading her legs. “Someday perhaps you’ll feel like it, but even if that never happens, I’ll be more than satisfied with you, my swift, adorable gazelle. You didn’t mind me touching you there before; shall we start with that and see if you are comfortable with more?”

  “That sounds wonderful. And I like touching you, Theo. I don’t mind touch
ing your penis. The other is just ...”

  “Then we won’t do that, although I will admit that the thought of your fingernails scraping up my scrotum like you did the first time we made love has me almost wild with the need to lie back and let you do just that. But first, let’s try a few things here.”

  He loved how responsive she was to him. A few days before, she’d admitted in an embarrassed whisper that she had never been as quick off the mark as she was with him, and he delighted in watching her body’s response to his hands and mouth. He nibbled on her belly and hips while allowing his fingers to caress all the sensitive inner parts of her, and when he sank a finger into her heat, he thought he might just have to throw his good intentions to the wind and take her right then and there. She writhed beneath him, her hands clutching the sheet as her chest heaved.

  “Tell me if you want me to stop,” he murmured into her pubic bone, kissing a path down the crease of her thigh. He waited a few seconds, letting his whiskers tickle the insides of her thighs. She didn’t protest, so he gently touched the delicate folds of her secrets, the taste of her reminding him of the salty tang of the Aegean. She tasted hot, and wild, and he was infinitely grateful that she’d trusted him enough to allow him this pleasure.

  When her hips started jerking convulsively, he moved up her body, taking her legs with him while he paused to kiss each of her breasts, but he couldn’t stop himself. He slid into her warmth, the drawing feeling in his thighs and balls telling him that he didn’t have much time. He nipped her on her shoulder when she bit his neck, her hands running up his back, her nails scraping in a gentle but arousing manner. He breathed on her lips. “Do you want to taste?” he asked.

  She looked away for a moment, then shyly turned back, her lips parted. He savored her mouth even as he pumped into her, allowing her to taste herself on him, the combined heat of her mouth and body too much for him.

  “Tell me—”

  “Theo!” She screamed his name loud enough to make his ears ring, bucking beneath him, her inner muscles gripping him with a strength that never failed to amaze him.