by Cat Porter
“Yes, that’s all that’s left of it. We’ll swim just below.”
We left the museum, passed the grand terrace with the huge statue of the lost sailor, and trekked down steps chiseled from the rock to the small lagoon where waves splashed on slabs of that unusual mica stone glittering in the sunlight. An elderly man and a young boy swam there under the shadow of the arched medieval stone bridge which led to a high promontory of red rock—an islet actually—where the castle ruins towered above us.
Adri greeted the old man and his grandson, I presumed, as they got out of the water, and he smiled and chatted with her. He was pleased to see her. The man dried off the little boy and himself with a towel, put on their flip-flops, and holding the boy’s hand, they climbed the stone steps, leaving us all alone in this lagoon of shimmering rock and choppy blue green sea.
Adri dropped her colorful canvas tote bag with our towels and water bottles, stripped off her short, burnt orange tunic as her long hair was swept up by the wind. A strapless, one piece, lime colored swimsuit with big gold hoops at each hip was tightly fastened over her long, curvy body.
I wanted my hands and mouth fastened on her just as tightly as that lucky lycra over her flesh. Images of the bound women from the Russian ship flashed in front of my eyes. Adri’s body bound and waiting for me. Anticipating my touch. Needing my—
Dionysus, you’re fucking killing me.
Don’t let up, you bastard.
Adri’s phone rang and she picked it up and read her screen. She texted back quickly and tucked the phone in the tote bag. She picked her way over the flat, slippery stones and slid into the swirling blue waters. I followed her, and the ice-cold water shorted my brain, my lungs crushed together. Sucking in air, I plowed through the surface. My skin prickled in the cool wind blowing over us. It was bracing and refreshing, better than a cup of Jamaican Blue coffee on a cold Chicago morning. I could see clear down to the bottom, to layers of rock and sand, schools of tiny fish darting past us. We plunged down below the surface. We swam in liquid sapphire.
Adri came up next to me, wiping the water from her face. “When I was a little girl, just like that boy, every morning my grandfather would wake me up early and we’d come down here for a quick swim then start our day. Right here, first thing, was always a must.”
“I can see why.”
“I hated having to wake up early, but it was well worth it.”
I dove underwater and swam through her legs coming up on her other side. My hands went to her sexy ass and pulled her in to me.
She rubbed at the goose bumped skin of my shoulders. “You’re cold?” Her legs encircled my middle, and my eager fingers crept under her bathing suit bottom, gripping flesh. Her eyes widened, fingernails digging into my neck.
“Not now.” I grinned, planting a kiss on the top of a breast, her cool skin wet, salty. “You?”
“No,” her throaty voice, just above a whisper. She adjusted herself in my hold, pulling herself closer to me, her hold tighter. If she’d shown one shred of discomfort I’d have let her go.
I don’t want to let go.
The winds blew over us as we bobbed in the water, nestled against each other. Her hand absently rubbed the back of my neck, her serious gaze holding mine.
“Was that Alessio who texted you before?” I asked, breaking the silence.
“Yes. He asked how you were.”
“Oh yeah? What did he say exactly?”
“What he always says, ‘Be careful, cara mia.’”
I pulled her in against my cock, and she let out a tiny gasp. I rubbed her body up and down mine, and her eyelids dropped, her lips parted.
“Are you being careful, Lovely?” I asked.
Her breaths grew ragged, a moan escaping her as my hand cupped an ass cheek, a finger trailing along her crack. Her eyes flared. “Not especially.”
“Neither am I. And I fucking like it.”
I bit the trim of her bathing suit top and suckled a curve of her soft flesh. She hissed out air, her body flexing, pressing into mine. My hand slid up her body—it needed that tit. Her eyes glinted at me all the while, and she plunged us underwater. I only tugged her close once more and we kissed, breaking through the surface of the cold blue water. The warmth of the bright sun poured over us, making our cool sapphire bath turquoise.
I released her and she pushed back from me, eyes dancing as she wiped back her slick, wet hair. Our eyes locked as we circled one another in the water. I wasn’t being careful, I didn’t want to be careful. I liked her, I wanted her. I’d have her. But a tight coil spiraling in my veins told me this was different.
She was different.
“Come, let me show you the castle.” She lifted up out of the water, and I groaned at the sight of that delicious body of hers streaming with water, smooth skin gleaming in the sun. I’d never tire of the sight. We dried off with her thick towels.
As I tied my sneakers, I eyed the high arch of the stone bridge connecting the edge of the rocks where we stood to the islet jutting out into the sea. “Adri—”
“Yes?” She shoved her feet in sneakers she’d pulled out of her tote bag. “What is it? Are you afraid of heights? My mother is and would always refuse to watch us climb the bridge. Even watching makes her dizzy.”
“No.”
I didn’t have a fear of heights. But suddenly a fear of something had me in its icy tentacles. The fear of something happening to her. One slip off that bridge. One—Jesus Christ, shut the hell up. Stop. What the fuck is wrong with you?
“Don’t worry.” Her face softened as she slid on her dark brown sunglasses. “I’ve done it many times before. Since I was a little girl.”
“Have you brought many boys up there?” I asked.
“My brother.”
“Men?”
Her lips tilted up. “My grandfather, my father.”
A sudden brisk wind kicked up, groaning through the stones, whipping her hair between us. The Aegean winds wanted their sea goddess on their cliff rocks.
“Please, Turo, I want to show it to you.”
That coil of warmth unspooled in my chest at the gentle yet urgent tone in her voice. “I want to see it,” I said, and her face split into a grin. A red hot little ping pong ball shuffled through my insides at the sight.
She went on ahead of me, making her way up the steps made of stacked long, flat island stones. Her fingers gripped the smaller rocks that made up the base of the arch as she dug the toes of her feet in and pulled herself up. I followed her.
Up, up, up.
The bridge was small, the arch very steep, and there were no railings. I imagined there had to have been other bridges here to serve the Venetian Lord and his army who’d built this castle fortress, but only this one had survived.
We made it to the top, gulping in deep breaths as we straightened our bodies, which almost felt awkward and unstable there up high, the winds blowing, the bridge narrow. I took in the immensity of the sea. Everything seemed grander from up here.
“Quickly now,” Adri said as she stepped lightly going down the other side of the arch. She reached the stone platform at the base and held a hand out to me, and my pulse skittered. I took her in like a breath of sea air—hair flying, muscles of her legs flexed, shoulders tense, eagerness stamped on her face, and that long arm stretched out to take me with her.
Our escape, our adventure. Together.
I clapped my hand in hers and she firmly pulled me toward her. “Ready?”
Yes, yes, yes.
“Ready,” I replied.
We climbed up a steeper series of rock piles that were the fragments of the old castle wall and reached a tall metal pole where the Greek flag flapped persistently in the violent wind. Ambling over patches of thorny bushes and stones, we finally made it to the castle ruins. I took her hand in mine and we went inside. I wanted to feel her excitement, the urge to be connected to it physically, to her, was overwhelming.
Blasted high in one wall was a huge h
ole, an open window to the sky. We climbed up to a ledge just under it and swallowed in the view of the entire town laid out before us in one long expanse of whitewashed houses, accents of blue and terra-cotta, domed churches, the whitecaps of the turbulent water on either side.
Adri scrambled down off the ledge and up to another on the opposite wall. A tiny white lighthouse stood proudly on a slim chunk of broken rock, looking as if a huge axe had fallen upon it and sliced off large hunks of its foundation, narrowly missing the lighthouse itself.
“Another family donated the money to have it rebuilt after it was destroyed in the war. The rock was much larger before, this big chip was all that was left.”
“It’s a humble little thing, but noble.”
“And it does its job very well.”
I turned toward the horizon. The infinite Aegean stretched out before us, a never-ending sweep of churning cerulean blue filled my vision. The ancient sea of fables and epic tales.
“Must have been something to live up here all year round,” I said.
“The Venetians built three castles on the island. This one was built by the governing Lord, the Doge’s nephew.”
“If the Doge of Venice gave it to his own nephew, Andros was important to him.”
“Marino Dandolo,” she said in a perfect Italian accent.
“There’s a colorful name.”
“He was a colorful character. Mean. Didn’t last long. Decades of infighting followed his demise.”
“Fool.”
The wind howled softly through the stones. We sat down next to each other in the ruins. The ruins of so many battles and wars. Now, for us, this castle was a refuge of raw tranquility. A temple.
We sat close, our arms pressed against each other’s, our legs. Like children spellbound by the sea. Up here, I was a million miles away from everything I’d built around me over the years. Like this castle fort, all my twisted truths, my white lies, the blood staining my hands, were stones piled high, creating walls. Walls with gaps, holes, the wind tearing through. Walls that were subject to assault, walls that crumbled, walls that had not withstood the truths of time and the ravages of war. So many wars.
“Turo?”
“Hmm?”
“What are you thinking?”
I let out a breath. “How I love listening to your stories.”
And I did. That elegant, exotic voice, the way all her features—eyes, mouth, hands would engage in the telling. Was it Adri’s way? Was it a Greek thing? From what I’d experienced so far, they were a dramatic people, very expressive. But it was obvious how connected she felt to the stories. They were important to her.
“I love that you enjoy them,” she said quietly.
I leaned into her. “Tell me another.”
“I’ll tell you my favorite.”
“Shame we don’t have wine.”
“But then how would we ever climb down?” A soft giggle escaped her lips. Those lips. I wanted to drink wine from those lips.
My mouth touched hers. A brief, soft kiss. Salt and sweet air and humid earth.
Her hand wrapped around my arm. “We’ll have a lot of wine this evening, I promise.”
“Good. Now, tell me your favorite story.”
She turned back to the sea again. “My great-great-grandfather, Stefanos, had fallen in love with a girl here in town. She came from a fine family in the silk worm trade. Natalia was her name. She had Venetian blood in her family and was quite wealthy. Stefanos’s family had several small merchant boats, but they weren’t as wealthy or as cosmopolitan. Natalia’s family worked with the Ottomans, so they enjoyed many privileges. Stefanos’s family did not. Furthermore, Stefanos was a bastard son. But none of that stopped him from asking for her hand in marriage.
“Her father refused him, so the two lovers met in secret. The night before he left on his ship she gave him a special gift to use in battle and to remember her by because he might get killed, might never come back.”
“What was the gift?”
“A dagger.”
“A dagger?”
“A two hundred year old family heirloom from Venice. A simple thing, it’s been said. No jewels or fancy sheath, only an engraved silver handle on a sharp blade. Stefanos took it and wore it in his great wide belt along with his pistols and sword.”
“And he took the dagger with him to war?”
“Yes, and the naval battle was a success—out here in the straights between Andros and Tinos. He survived that battle and many more with that dagger. But in the meantime, Natalia had been married off to another man. A much older man who was a very wealthy silk worm farmer and exporter like her father. When Stefanos finally came home, Natalia had just given birth to her second child and was dying. He wasn’t allowed to see her, of course, but he did anyway. The legend goes that he climbed up into her room and she died in his arms.
“They loved each other, and yet they hadn’t been allowed to be together, and now death separated them forever.” She heaved a sigh. “Eventually, after the war, Stefanos went on and married another girl, but Natalia’s family realized the dagger was missing. They accused him of stealing it. He denied it and kept it hidden. It was his precious treasure, his connection to his great love. But they threatened him, his life, his business, his new family.
“The day his wife gave birth to their first child, a son, he came here to this cliff with the dagger. It didn’t belong to anyone but him and Natalia, and he wasn’t going to give it back, wasn’t going to give in. That dagger had symbolized all his hopes and dreams for a future in a free, united Greece with the woman he loved. So he came here to that spot—” she pointed to the edge of the cliff down below. “— and threw that dagger in the sea.”
Her voice caught. Her words, the vivid images she’d painted drifted into the wind, to the wild blue water below us, beyond. I squeezed her hand in mine and she squeezed back.
Adri said, “For me, throwing that dagger in the sea was his declaration of love for her, but also for life itself. He was a realist. He marked an end to that past and also marked a new beginning. When I was little, I always imagined that he must have wanted to keep it, to hang on to that part of himself that was Natalia, even though he would never have her. But he knew he needed to let go of that broken dream, that lost future, and move forward.”
“Jesus said, ‘Let the dead bury the dead.’”
“Yes, you must carry on, and not dwell on that which is no more,” she said. “At funerals, Greeks say to each other ‘Zoí se mas’—‘To us, Life’. We’re reminding each other that our grief becomes remembrance as we carry on. Life doesn’t stop for the living, and the dead are beyond us, elsewhere. Stefanos knew that clinging to the past was useless. He was alive, and he had to live that life.
“The dagger had brought him victories but now it also symbolized his greatest tragedy. To return it to her family would have been a form of defeat and would have exposed them both and potentially harmed Natalia’s children. No good would have come of it. Now he had a new wife and his own child he needed to honour. He had a future to build.”
“He let the dagger go on his terms,” I said.
“You understand, don’t you?” Her eyes softened.
“I do.”
“I like to think Stefanos was a terribly soulful romantic, and this was his way of keeping her close. I always imagined him coming out here late at night or at sunrise, and standing just down there at the edge, pleased that his beloved Aegean was preserving their dagger, keeping it safe, right here, by his home. That was comforting, satisfying. That was enough.”
“That was a different kind of victory.”
Her eyes glimmered, filling with water. “Yes,” she breathed.
“And then he was all in with his new life?” I asked.
“By all accounts he was a loyal husband, good father, and obviously a very astute businessman.”
“Good man.” I sniffed in air. “Did a vendetta begin between the two families after that?”
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“How very Greek of you.”
“It’s the Italian in me. It comes out once in a while after the Irish has its say.”
“Ah, the Irish are soulful poets and musicians just like the Greeks.” She wiped her fingers through the side of my hair and my scalp prickled at the contact. “There was no vendetta, but there was a lot of hostility for years between the families. But that stopped when the silk trade was destroyed and Stefanos encouraged them to start over by investing whatever they had left into their own shipping business. The island was making a name for itself, and it was now or never for them.”
“He had vision.”
“He did.”
“And did Natalia’s family do it? Did they succeed?”
“They ended up becoming a strong merchant marine company, but not strong enough. Years later, Stefanos’s sons bought them out.”
I laughed. “Good for them.” I stroked her hand.
“Yes, good for them.”
“And how did Stefanos do in the end?”
“He lived a very long and healthy life. He had four sons and two daughters. He and his brother created a very successful maritime company, employing islanders, traveling the world.” She fingered a pile of small stones at her feet. “He threw that dagger into the sea and went on to create something new and vitally important for his family and his island. His country even.”
“Which still prospers today.”
“Yes.”
“And the dagger? Was it ever found?” I asked.
“Never. Men in the family have always dove down to try to find it, it’s a secret tradition, a rite of passage. But the waters here at this cliff are deceptively clear, yet deep and moody blue. Calm, then wild. Lots of underwater rocks and caves. It’s never been found.” She grinned, a pleasant memory flickering across her face.
“What is it?”
“I tried, once.”
“Of course you did.” I rubbed her hand in both of mine.
Her eyes flared. “But I hope it’s never found.”
“Why? Wouldn’t you like to have it?”