by Caro LaFever
The mágissa hummed deep in her throat when he involuntarily punched his arousal into her stomach. The female, the fiendish female, rolled her hips against his in an invitation as old as the human race.
He gasped and groaned. The fire inside him burnt the last of his reason into a billow of smoke.
“Eínai kaló na deíte énan ántra kai ti̱ gynaíka sti̱n agápi̱.”
It is good to see…
His brain wrapped around the spoken words with no comprehension.
The witch tensed in his arms.
His grandmother chuckled softly.
A husband and wife…
The fire inside him froze.
In love.
No. Never. His brain roared back to life. Roared the rejection in his soul.
He released the witch from his grasp and stepped back. She said nothing. Merely stared at him, her blonde curls falling out of her ever-present braid. Had he done that with his rough hands? Her lips were plump and rosy. His rough mouth had definitely been responsible for that. Her dark gaze was awash with startled frustration.
A frustration he refused to share.
His giagiá stood by the door, gazing at them with kind, old eyes. “Den ypárchei típota gia na ntrepómaste, Aetos.”
His giagiá was wrong. There was plenty of reasons to be ashamed. He was ashamed to find himself capable of panting over a woman. Slathering slavishly in her arms. Ashamed to find inside him a passion he’d known with surety he would never feel.
“Giagiá,” he croaked. “Leave us.”
“I can see you need to be alone.” Her thick accent blurred the English words, making them almost incomprehensible, but the witch smiled her acknowledgment of his grandmother’s attempt at speaking in a tongue she understood.
The woman’s soft smile faded as the door closed, leaving them only with each other once more.
Silence thudded. Along with his heart.
He tried to find words, even thoughts. He tried to form his mouth into repudiation, into putting an end to this, an end to her.
Then, she did it. Made it worse. Made him desperate.
She smiled. An entirely different kind of smile than she’d recently given his grandmother. A Circe smile of seduction and sorcery and searing, scary charm.
With the survival instinct of an animal cornered, he forced his aching body to turn from her, walk away from her. Down the length of the table. Back to his laptop, back to reality. He sucked in a deep breath and realized her wildflower scent clung to him, enwrapping him in her spell even though he now stood far enough away from her to be safe.
He flipped open his laptop, ignoring her and her scent and her spell. He stared blankly at the report labeling her trouble. For his family, and certainly, for him.
A short, sharp silence followed.
“It was just a kiss,” she blurted.
Just a kiss? Could she be serious? Just a kiss didn’t turn and twist the insides of a man until he found it to be a futile exercise to find a remnant of himself that he recognized. Just a kiss didn’t have the ability to bring a man to his knees. Bring a man to the end of his reason.
“There will be no more kisses,” he stated.
His pride forced him to meet her gaze. The woman wrapped her arms around her in an act of protection while her eyes turned dark with wariness. Yet they blazed with unearthly fire. The fire he planned on staying away from going forward. Because now he knew the danger.
“Fine. Still, let’s be clear on who started the kiss.” Her words were tight and clipped. “It wasn’t me.”
She was wrong. Very wrong. She’d tugged and tortured him into the act. She’d laced and lined him with need so huge he’d been a slave to her and her allure. The passion she’d alighted inside him had nearly, nearly burned an entirely different reality into his existence.
Nearly.
But he’d survived. He’d managed to tear himself away.
Taking another deep breath in, relief washed through him. Her scent was gone. Her control over him was gone.
“Let’s get back to what is important.” He was relieved that his voice was contained and calm once more. “Your background.”
“Right. Let’s.” Her mouth tightened. “My father was a mobster. My brother, too. I am not.”
His fingers tapped on the laptop cover. “I’m supposed to believe this?”
“You can believe anything you want.”
“I choose not to believe you, then.”
A disgruntled grunt was her only response.
“I will have the plane readied for your departure to the States. And to the police.”
A bright spark of fear flashed across her face, much to his satisfaction. He wanted to stir in her as much fear as she’d stirred in him with her artful, tricky ways. “No,” she stuttered.
“Nai.”
“What about your family?” Her hands flew into the air, the long fingers fluttering. “What will they say?”
“I will take care of my family. As I always do.”
He noticed the flare of alarm in those violet eyes, noticed the color of her cheeks leech away. Relief surged, grew to envelop him in safety. Finally, he would be free of her. Finally, he would be secure in his usual habits.
Suddenly, everything changed. Everything about her changed. Her hands fell, her expression mellowed, her lips smoothed into another of her witchy smiles.
His heart beat; drummed. Sweat broke out on his sides.
“You can’t.” Her words were simple and solid. An indictment.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Aetos.” His name lingered on her lips and he froze as the same feelings he’d experienced when she’d first whispered his name flooded through him. He fought the storm, fought her magic. He glared at her. Waiting for her to strike.
She delivered. As he knew she would.
“You aren’t capable of taking care of your family.”
Chapter 10
Leonidas Kourkoulos stared at him with dark, determined eyes. “Thélete na to exi̱gí̱soume af̱tó se ména, ton engonó mou?”
No, he did not want to explain his behavior to his grandfather. He did not want to explain why he treated his pretend wife with such coldness.
Aetos shrugged and looked down at his laptop perched on his knees, trying to focus on the newest sales statistics from the L.A. and Chicago Tuckermarkets. The low murmur of his grandmother’s voice intermingled with two of his aunts’. A cousin’s soft laughter rose over the babble emanating from the TV. After four days of recovery, his grandfather was allowed as many visitors as he wanted. Which meant this particular hospital room had turned into Grand Central Station.
With Aetos Zenos right in the center.
Due to her manipulation. Her blunt truth. Her threats.
The fear, the inevitable, aching, suffocating fear clutched his throat. He fought past it, sucking a deep breath into his lungs. There was nothing he could do. She’d made it clear. He was going to be forced to endure this until his grandfather was released from the hospital in two more days.
He could handle two more days in his family’s company. In her company.
He could handle anything.
Aetos pinned his determined gaze on the figures scrolling across the screen in front of him.
“Epiléxate kalá,” his grandfather said.
He choked back a howl of furious laughter. The idea he’d chosen well when he’d picked the witch was worthy of an Aristophanes comedy. Choice? There’d been no choice. The suggestion he’d had any choice at all in her invasion of his life and his family was a joke so supreme it rivaled any tricks the ancient gods had played on the defenseless humans beneath them.
“Eínai mia ómorfi̱ kopéla.”
Lovely? She was lovely?
His grandfather was a fool to say those words.
She wasn’t lovely. She was treacherous. A treacherous weapon ready to slice into his soul.
If he let her.
Which he
wouldn’t.
He’d done it for the past three days. After their last confrontation, he’d stayed far away from her. Treated her with cold disregard. Said as little to her as possible.
The family had noticed. Worried looks had passed between them as they observed their prodigal son and his demon bride waging a silent battle. His giagiá had muttered and murmured under her breath as she patted the female’s hand in consolation and contemplated him with disappointed eyes.
None of them understood.
The woman was at fault. She was the one who’d thrown the words at him like steel blades. She’d been the one to force him into this no-win situation.
She, the witch.
She, the siren.
She was at fault. Not him.
Her accusation, the truth she’d flung at him before strolling nonchalantly out the hotel door, had been like a wash of acid on the skin of his heart. The burn had glazed him in an unholy blaze which had made him immobile for precious minutes. Minutes the woman had used to escape him and his plan to get rid of her. By the time he’d found her, she was safely enwrapped in his family.
You aren’t capable of taking care of your family.
He suddenly noticed the pain in his palm. The white-knuckled fist dug his nails into his skin.
Aetos slowly let his fingers fall open on his keyboard.
She was wrong. Utterly wrong. Her accusation wasn’t true. Her accusation was a lie. He sent money to his relatives regularly. He took care of any financial emergencies. He was here, wasn’t he? Here right by his pappoús’ side.
Because she’d forced him.
His fingers punched the keys in a rapid, rabid tattoo as the ever-present, fearful frustration pulsed inside him. He was trapped. By her.
He’d managed to corner her for one conversation three days ago. But he’d found to his utter disgust that it was he who was the cornered animal again.
One more brutal loss. To her.
“No,” she’d said, her back against the hospital wall. Yet her words and eyes told him he didn’t have her trapped. Quite the contrary. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You have no choice.”
She had the gall to laugh. “Actually, I do. I have all the choices.”
The hair on the back of his neck had prickled with instinctive dread.
Her amethyst eyes had looked at him with pity. “I hold all the cards, Zenos. Admit it.”
“No.” She’d used his last name instead of his first. The realization, along with her look, twisted inside, making his skin tingle with heated anger. “I have the money. So I have—”
“It’s always that with you, isn’t it?” The pity deepened until the color of her eyes turned the deepest violet-black he’d ever seen. “Money isn’t everything. In fact, it’s really nothing.”
“Money is power.” He spat the words, held onto his belief with a practiced fist. “Power is what makes things happen. The way you want them to.”
She sighed once more. With the pity that made him want to wring her long, elegant neck.
“What I want, and will have, is you gone. Gone far away from my family.”
“All right.” She shrugged.
He was stunned to silence. The witch gave in? Left him with no challenge?
“You win.”
The familiar rush of adrenaline when he conquered an enemy, won the prize, took the victory didn’t rise inside him. Instead, he felt hollow.
“I’ll just go,” she waved at the knot of his relatives hovering by the waiting room door, “tell them I’m leaving and why.”
“No.” His hand gripped her elbow, stopping her. “I’ll call the police.”
Her blond brows rose in disdain. “The Athens police are going to be interested in a home invasion in New York City? One that was supposedly committed by a woman you claim as your wife?”
Could he grind his teeth into the truth of her words until they were dust at his feet?
“Don’t be ridiculous. That’s an empty threat and you know it.” Her tone held complete certainty.
“I have security.” He pitched his voice low so the group of family members couldn’t hear his threats. Brutal intent spiked in each vowel and consonant, and he relished it. “They’ll do what I tell them to do.”
The mágissa didn’t even flinch. “You’re going to have me dragged from your grandfather’s hospital room in front of all your relatives?”
“I’ll wait until you’re back at the hotel.”
“Where Rhea is now sharing my bedroom. Since you aren’t. She said I must be lonely because you’re not with me.” Her sarcastic smile sent him into a rage.
His hand slapped the wall by her head and for the first time, the female acknowledged a hint of anxiety or wisp of fear.
Her cheeks had blanched.
The wildflower scent had swirled in his brain.
But he’d disregarded it, the danger. The inevitable itch he experienced whenever she was around him scratched beneath his skin, egging him on. He leaned in. “What is this, gynaíka? An invitation? Are you lonely without me in your bed?”
She snorted. “You wish.”
Wishes. Wishes were for children. For boys. Wishes were things he’d indulged in when he’d been fifteen and naïve enough to believe in goodness. In women. “I have no wishes.”
Her lush mouth had drooped; her long, gold-tipped lashes fell over her big eyes and then lifted to uncover the damned compassion again. “I feel sorry for you. Very sorry for you, Zenos.”
There’d been some other conversation. Some other directives from the woman. None of it had actually penetrated his brain. Not until hours later. He’d been too involved in punching down the emotional demons she’d set alight in his dark, dimmed soul. Too frantic, too tangled in beating back the spidery spears of memory poking into his gut, gouging him with their poisonous pricks.
Thus, he’d allowed her to escape once more.
Yet that night. That night when he’d sat alone and silent by his grandfather’s side, staring at the green light indicating his pappoús still lived. That night he’d realized.
She’d won again.
He couldn’t force her out of the hotel with his relatives observing in horror. He couldn’t announce to his giagiá that the woman she’d fallen in love within a few short days was in reality an impostor and a criminal. He couldn’t get on a plane right now and take this female demon back to her punishment, leaving his family alone at this time.
He couldn’t do it.
And she knew it.
“Ó, ti ypostí̱rixe gia na mi̱n eínai si̱mantikí̱.” His pappoús’ voice rumbled from the bed.
Had he truly argued with the witch? His grandfather might think they’d merely quarreled, but the reality was completely different. What had really happened was she’d laid down her female law and he’d complied like a male slave forced into obedience.
A rage rose inside him, so pure and unholy he was amazed it didn’t blast through the room like a nuclear bomb. He realized his palms hurt once more. However, this time, he found no ability to unclench his fists.
“Prépei na syncho̱roúme o énas ton állon kai na procho̱rí̱soume.” His grandfather’s eyes were deep wells of wisdom. Yet what he said was complete folly.
Forgive her? Move on?
Forgive her for compelling him to confront the fact he didn’t fit into his family? A realization he’d known when he’d left his homeland, one of many things that had driven him away. An ache he’d forgotten, put aside during the years, much to his relief.
Forgive her for forcing him to acknowledge he couldn’t take care of his family? Not in any way they wanted. The brutal truth had hit him over and over in these last days. His relatives smiled when he paid a bill, but their eyes told the true story. They wanted more. More from him. More of him than he had to give.
He had nothing to give. Nothing of importance. Only money.
Forgive her? Move on?
There was no way he could move o
n from this boiling fury she’d lit in him. Move on from the blistering heat of lust she’d ignited in him. There was no way he could find his way back to the place he’d been before she slammed into his life. Back to the peace of his work. Back to the endless women who never challenged him or torched his emotions or demanded his attention.
Move on?
“Emprós loipón,” his pappoús said, waving his big gnarled hand toward the siren. “Pi̱gaínete na ti̱ filí̱sei kai ti̱s. Tha sas syncho̱rí̱sei.”
Go to her? Kiss her?
Fall deeper into the trap she’d set for him?
Even though everything inside him screamed of the danger—the mention of her caused his gaze to slip. Slip and slide and stride from his control to land on her. Every moment in these last four days, he’d struggled to keep his focus on what was important. His business. His family. Not her. Never her.
Gamó̱to ti̱s. Damn her.
She sat, patiently listening to one of his nieces as she chattered about school. She wore her usual uniform of tight jeans and a simple top. Her hands lay on her lap, relaxed. Her face was serene.
No makeup to highlight her attraction. No glittering jewelry to draw the eye.
None of the usual female tricks he was familiar with and bored with.
Her long hair was pinned to the back of her head, a bundle of moonbeam beauty his fingers, hands, skin tingled to touch. After their last brutal confrontation, another notched win on her belt, she’d appeared each day with her long braid twisted into a mess on top of her head. As if to proclaim she was innocent and pure of any tricks of seduction. As if by pinning her hair down, she could show she hadn’t had any intention of pinning him down.
What a farce.
What a ludicrous farce.
As a female, she would know. She would know she’d planted herself inside him like a demon seed from Hades. Surely she knew. She was only biding her time, waiting for their one kiss, the Circe smile of hers, the way she strutted, all to work her magic on his male libido. Calculating that her charms would worm and dig into his flesh until he couldn't sleep or think.