by Julia James
His eyes were veiled again, lashes dipping over their obsidian depths. ‘And you did—I achieved my goal, triumphed in it. But I didn’t know.’ His voice changed again, and the contempt in it was naked—contempt for himself. ‘I didn’t know I had achieved it only because you were intoxicated that night—so intoxicated you yielded to me what you have guarded so long. Your virginity. And when you had, you hated me so much for what I’d done to you that you fled from me and would have rather risked your life than take my hand to save you. Because of everything I’d done to you for so, so long …’
He shook his head slowly, from side to side, as if he would negate everything he’d said. But how could he? Arrogance and anger had driven him for five years—and they had brought him here now. With everything he’d come to want in ashes at his feet. Burned by his own anger, his own arrogance.
He fell silent. The silence stretched between them.
Thoughts flowed into Thea’s head. Thoughts that should not be there. Emotions that should not be there.
He lifted his eyes to her.
‘I should ask your forgiveness, but how could you forgive me? How could anything I do make up for what I put you through?’ He took a ragged breath. ‘Go back to your Honourable Giles, Thea. Tell him that I threatened you and blackmailed you and behaved unforgivably to you. Go back and find your happiness.’
She swallowed, eyes shifting away, then back to him. The thoughts that should not be there, the emotions that should not be there, were still there.
She spoke, her voice low and difficult. ‘He’s marrying someone else. A family friend. I saw the announcement in a newspaper at Dover. She’s very suitable. Far more than me. I didn’t love him—I was only fond of him. That isn’t a reason to marry someone. It would have been wrong of me to marry him. But I wanted what you said I wanted—security, a place to belong.’ She looked away again for a moment. ‘I had no family—not any that I wanted—that anyone would want! So I wanted to marry someone who did. Giles knows all his ancestors, over hundreds of years—it was unimaginable to me. I didn’t want his title, or his country house, or his wealth. I wanted his family—his ancestors. Because I had none. That’s why I should never have agreed to marry him.’ She paused, then made herself go on. ‘And though I hated you for forcing me to see what I was doing I was lying to him about myself—about being Kat, deceiving him just as you accused me of doing.’
It was hard to say it, but she had to. It was true. As true as the other truth she was shielding from her head. The truth that Angelos Petrakos had forced her to face.
The final truth about herself.
The one that she could not deny. The one that had nothing to do with whether she had drunk wine that night in the mountain chalet, or whether she had been a virgin when she’d given herself to him, or with anything of the bitter past between them, the anger and the hatred.
The truth had been inside her since she had fled from Switzerland, and could not be denied. It was here now, as she stood looking at him—the truth that would last all her life.
But to what purpose?
Anguish crushed her.
She had discovered a truth in Angelos’s arms that she could never deny. But it was a hopeless truth—a truth that could only mock her …
To have come through so much! To have taken so long a journey, for so many years, through such hardships, such anguish and anger and bitterness, and find such a truth at the end of it!
There was a burning behind her eyelids. Hot and painful. She tried to keep her eyes closed, to quench the burning, but it would not be quenched. She could feel the burning liquefy, like molten fire, feel it squeeze past her eyelids, hot on her cheeks.
She heard him draw breath, speak—words she didn’t know. Then there were footsteps—rapid, heavy. Then his presence, tangible, in front of her.
And then his finger brushed the burning molten tears.
‘Thea—my Thea—’
His voice sounded broken, which was strange—so strange. So strange, too, the brush of his fingertip on one cheek and then the other. And stranger still the cupping of her chin, the tilting of her face up to him.
‘Don’t cry! I’ve hurt and harmed you so much! So much I cannot bear to think of it! When I saw you fall, slipping down the rockface, risking death rather than take my outstretched hand, I felt a horror I have never felt—never want to feel again in all my life.’
His voice was low, intense, his body so close to hers. Though her eyes were still screwed so tight shut she could feel his presence, his heat. His height and his breadth and the scent of his body. The warmth of his breath. His hands cupping her face, thumbs smoothing away the hot, molten tears slipping silently down her cheeks.
‘I ask for nothing—nothing. Least of all your forgiveness for what I have done. I deserve nothing from you—only your hatred for all I have done! But I beg you, from my heart, to believe me now when I say to you that the night you gave yourself to me I meant you no harm, no ill intent. Though you have every reason to think I did. That night, those days we were together, will be a treasure to me all my life. They showed me a truth about myself that I will carry to my grave—and you hold it in your hands, worthless though it can be to you. It is all that I can offer. My heart, my love—’
His eyes were gazing down into hers, ablaze, but her vision was blurred with tears. There was a ball of pain within her, squeezing tight, so tight …
He was speaking still, his voice shaken and vehement. ‘I have been monstrous to you—but I will beg forgiveness all my days. Don’t cry, my Thea, don’t cry. I will not let you cry. So brave, so beautiful, and I love you so much—so very much!’
She was crying more, tears pouring from her, and with an oath he wrapped her to him, folded her against his body, cradled her and rocked her, his hand soothing on her hair, his arm tight around her waist, her face buried in his shoulder.
How long she cried she did not know. Five years of tears. A long, long time to cry.
He scooped her up, lowered them both down upon the sofa, and went on holding her, letting her weep, soothing her, kissing her hair, rocking her gently, murmuring to her in Greek, in English, all the things he had never said to her but which came from him now.
She stilled at last, no tears left in her, but he held her still, exhausted, drained, cradled across his lap. He kissed her eyelids.
‘My Thea,’ he said again.
She opened her eyes. Opened her eyes to see his, the truth pouring into her.
‘Is it true?’ Her voice was a whisper, her fingers clutching at his lapel.
He gave a smile. Crooked, unsure. Unsure of her.
‘True that I love you? Oh, yes …’ He took a ragged breath, his eyes questioning. Fearful of her answer lest it destroy him. ‘I loved you the night I made love to you—you whom I had desired for so long, who had become more to me, though I scarcely realised it, than any woman I had known. I loved you as I made love to you—though I did not have the words for it, only the emotion, though it was unrecognisable to me, having never felt it before. I only knew that I wanted to keep you with me from then on, never part with you.’
His voice changed, grew haunted. ‘But in the morning you were gone—and when I realised, saw the evidence of what I had done to you—taken your virginity, all unknowing—then I knew why you had fled from me, knew I had to find you. And when I did …’ Again his voice changed, tearing at his throat. ‘When I did—you risked death rather than letting me save you …’ He gave a shuddering breath. ‘So I know I can ask nothing from you.’
‘You have it, all the same,’ she said. Her voice was rich—rich with promise, with revelation. Her fingers tightened on his lapel as she gazed up at him. How could this be? she wondered. Moments ago she had stood accepting the devastation of the truth of what she felt, the revelation of her own heart, and thought only that it must mock her all her life. And now—
‘I love you,’ she told him. It was all she had to say—all he needed to hear.
‘How can that be?’ she whispered.
He kissed her softly, tenderly. With all his heart. ‘Can you forgive me what I did to you?’
Again the note of doubt, of disbelief was there.
‘You didn’t know, and I didn’t tell you why I wanted that job so desperately. And Angelos—’ She laid a finger on his mouth. As he would have spoken, her eyes troubled. ‘I did steal from you. I can’t deny that. And whether my fear and desperation were enough to justify it, I can’t answer—I daren’t answer!’
‘You’ve been through so much—all your life.’ His voice was ragged. ‘Faced so much, overcome so much, achieved so much. As Kat, as Thea—your courage, your determination, your integrity, shine from you! Dear God, how much I love you!’ He kissed her again hungrily, urgently, possessively.
And beneath his lips hers opened to him, desire lighting in her like a flame, kindling and quickening as she wound her hands around his neck, clung to his lean, strong body.
He swept her up, striding across the room, carrying her into the bedroom, lowering her down upon the bed’s wide, waiting surface.
‘Are you sure? Are you truly sure this is what you want?’
He had asked her the question before, but this time his fate hung upon it.
She gazed up at him. In her eyes a smile gleamed. Warming his heart.
‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed. ‘Oh, yes—my own, adored Angelos.’ She opened her arms wide to him and as he came down beside her she clung to him, whispered in his ear. ‘And not a single drop of any intoxicant but one.’ Her eyes softened, and she hugged him tight against her. ‘Love,’ she said. ‘Pure and potent love …’
He gave a low, soft laugh—and then there was no more need for words.
Only love, made whole, and pure, and everlasting.
Thea lay warm and nestled against Angelos. Happiness, as unbelievable as it was radiant, enwrapped her as closely as his strong arms wound about her. She gazed into his eyes as they returned her gaze, love light in them both.
She lifted a hand to touch his face.
‘How can this be?’ she asked wonderingly. ‘How can such happiness be?’
He smiled down at her. Tenderness and love filled his gaze. ‘I only know I don’t deserve it—not after all I did to you.
She laid a finger across his mouth. ‘No—it’s over now, all that bitter past between us. I won’t let it haunt you.’
‘I’ll spend my life making you happy, trying to undo what I did.’
‘It’s gone, Angelos—truly, it’s gone. And now we have this …’ The note of wonder was back in her voice.
It was in her heart, too, alongside the radiance of her happiness. How strange life was, she thought, that out of all the anger and bitterness love should have flowered.
When had it started to blossom? she wondered. Oh, she had long felt the power Angelos had over her—not the malign power he had wielded, but that overwhelming male power that drew her eye endlessly to him, that made her quiver with awareness of his presence, awakening her nascent female instincts—but it had taken the lonely beauty of the mountains they had shared, those firelit evenings together for her to start to see him as a person other than the forbidding, distant stranger who had so persecuted her.
And then, in the ecstasy of his arms, it had blazed to life, possessing her even as he had possessed her body and she had given herself to him.
A shadow passed over her eyes.
‘If I hadn’t run from your bed that morning—’
His arms tightened around her as he heard the distress in her voice. ‘If I had given you reason to trust me, you would not have fled,’ he told her. He kissed her gently, soothing her. ‘My beloved Thea,’ he murmured.
The shadow in her eyes glinted into a smile. ‘So I am Thea now, finally?’
His eyes smiled in return, but his voice as he answered was sombre. ‘But you are Kat, too—Kat who overcame what she had been born to, who had more courage and guts in her little finger than I have in my whole body and made something of herself from the nothing she was born with. And then made herself Thea after all I did to her …’
Her eyes glinted again, seeking to draw him away from dark memories that were not needed now, nor ever would be again now that all had been healed by love.
‘Kat was very lippy, though,’ she murmured.
Now, at last, his mouth curved into a reminiscent smile. ‘Oh, she was indeed,’ he agreed. ‘But I have to admit,’ he mused, ‘that was part of your charm …’
‘Novelty value? After all those flunkeys kow-towing to you?’ she probed wickedly.
‘Very possibly,’ he said dryly. ‘But,’ he went on—and his voice had changed, was serious now—’Kat stood up for herself, and so did Thea. Whatever I threw at them.’
Again she laid a finger across his mouth. ‘No—the past is over.’
He caught her finger with his lips and kissed it, and then kissed her mouth.
‘Only the future matters now,’ he told her, and cradled her yet closer against him. But though his arms were strong about her, his voice, when he spoke again, was uncertain—hesitant. ‘Your name is yours, and yours alone to choose, but …’ He paused, then took an indrawn breath.
Thea could see the sudden tension in his face, the uncertain wariness in his eyes.
‘Would you consider,’ he went on, ‘taking another name? Would you consider taking the name Mrs Angelos Petrakos?’
She stilled, looking up at him. Then, out of nowhere, his features blurred.
His head dipped to hers, his mouth to hers.
She clung to his mouth, her hands winding up around his neck, holding him to her.
‘It’s a wonderful name,’ she said. ‘The best I could ever have!’
He pulled back from her a fraction, love blazing from him. For a moment they only gazed at each other. Then words were no longer necessary.
EPILOGUE
MRS ANGELOS PETRAKOS stood at the rail of the deck and glanced up at her husband. Love turned over in her heart. Angelos smiled down at her. The sea breeze ruffled his hair, and the rays of the setting sun bronzed his skin. Before them, the azure hues of the Aegean were turning molten, and the lights in the harbour on the distant shore were gleaming in the growing dusk. Warmth enveloped her—and not just the warmth of the Greek summer.
The soft chug of the yacht’s engine sent a low vibration through the hull as the boat made its slow way along the coastline.
‘Are you sure you want such a remote honeymoon?’ Angelos asked her. ‘We could easily put into port, if you prefer.’
Thea smiled. ‘I think your private island sounds idyllic,’ she told him.
‘I hope you like it,’ he said, that note of uncertainty still in his voice.
‘I like anywhere that you are,’ she said, and leant against him, feeling the lean strength of his body supporting her.
She lifted her glass of champagne to her lips, and Angelos did likewise.
‘Drink it slowly,’ he advised her. ‘It’s heady stuff.’
She laughed. ‘I will. I’m still very, very cautious about alcohol. But I do think—’ her eyes gleamed ‘—that on my wedding day I should risk a glass of champagne.’
He bent to kiss her. ‘And perhaps for breakfast tomorrow?’
Thea shook her head. ‘Orange juice,’ she said firmly.
He smiled fondly. ‘Then orange juice it shall be. Everything in the world that you want that is in my power, shall be.’
Her eyes lit with emotion. ‘Oh, my darling Angelos—I have very simple needs. I need only one thing in my life, now and for ever.’ She paused, fighting the sudden tightening of her throat. So much anger and bitterness and hatred and tears had gone by, and now all that dark past was over—truly over. Her life was beginning again—anew, afresh—and at her side was all she wanted. All she wo
uld ever want.
‘I only need you …’ she said.
He raised his glass to her. ‘You have me for ever,’ he promised her. ‘And my love for all eternity.’
‘And you have mine,’ she vowed.
She touched his glass with hers, and they drank a toast to each other, to their love together. A long, deep sigh escaped her, rich with happiness. Angelos’s arm wrapped around her shoulder and they stood, side by side, gazing out across the sea towards their future together.
* * * * *
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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