by Jane Porter
“Conciliatory.” She repeated the word, rolling it over in her mouth, finding it sharp and bitter.
He said nothing, just watched her, and she felt almost breathless at the scrutiny, remembering how it had been between them during their four weeks here on their honeymoon. It was in this villa she’d learned about love and lust, sex and pleasure, as well as pain and control, and the loss of control.
Drakon never lost control. But he’d made sure she did at least once a day, sometimes two or three times.
Their sex life had been hot. Explosive. Erotic. She’d been a virgin when she’d married him and their first time together had been uncomfortable. He was large and it had hurt when he entered her fully. He’d tried to make it pleasurable for her but she’d been so overwhelmed and emotional, as well as let down. She couldn’t respond properly, couldn’t climax, and she knew she was supposed to. Knew he wanted her to.
He’d showered with her afterward, and kissed her, and beneath the pulsing spray of the shower, he lavished attention on her breasts and nipples, the curve of her buttocks and the cleft between her thighs, lightly playing with her clit until he finally accomplished what he hadn’t in bed—she came. One of his arms held her up since her legs were too weak to do the job, and then he’d kissed her deeply, possessively, and when she could catch her breath, he’d assured her that the next time he entered her, it wouldn’t hurt. That sex would never hurt again.
It hadn’t.
But that didn’t mean sex was always easy or comfortable.
Drakon liked it hot. Intense. Sensual. Raw. Unpredictable.
He loved to stand across the room from her—just as he was doing now—and he’d tell her what to do. Tell her what he wanted. Sometimes he wanted her to strip and then walk naked to him. Sometimes he wanted her to strip to just her panties and crawl to him. Sometimes he wanted her to wear nothing but her elegant heels and bend over…or put a foot on a chair and he’d tell her where to touch herself.
Each time Morgan would protest, but he’d look at her from beneath his black lashes, his amber gaze lazy, his full mouth curved, and he’d tell her how beautiful she was and how much he enjoyed looking at her, that it gave him so much pleasure to see her, and to have her trust him….
Obey him…
She hated those words, hated the element of dominance, but it was part of the foreplay. They had good sex in bed, but then they had this other kind of sex—the sex where they played erotic games that pushed her out of her comfort zone. It had been confusing, but inevitably she did what he asked, and then somewhere along the way, he’d join her, and his mouth would be on her, between her legs, and his hands would hold her, fingers tight on her butt, or in her hair, or gripping her thighs, holding them apart, and he’d make love to her with his mouth and his fingers and his body and he’d arouse her so slowly that she feared she wouldn’t ever come, and then just when the desire turned sharp and hurt, he’d relent. He’d flick the tip of his tongue across that small sensitive nub, or suck on her, or stroke her, or enter her and she’d break. Shatter. And the orgasms were so intense they seemed to go on forever. Maybe because he made sure they went on forever. And by the time he was finished, she was finished. There was nothing left. She was drained, spent, but also quiet. Compliant.
He loved her flushed and warm, quiet and compliant. Loved her physically that is, as long as she made no emotional demands. No conversation. No time, energy or patience. Required no attention.
Morgan’s chest ached. Her heart hurt. She’d been so young then, so trusting and naive. She’d been determined to please him, her beautiful, sensual Greek husband.
Their honeymoon here, those thirty days of erotic lovemaking, had changed her forever. She couldn’t even think of this villa without remembering how he’d made love to her in every single room, in every way imaginable. Taking her on chairs and beds, window seats and stairs. Pressing her naked back or breasts to priceless carpets, the marble floor, the cool emerald-green Italian tiles in the hall…
She wanted to throw up. He hadn’t just taken her. He’d broken her.
“Help me out if you would, Drakon,” she said, her voice pitched low, hoarse. “I’m not sure I understand you, and I don’t know if it’s cultural, personal or a language issue. But do you want me to beg? Is that what you’re asking me to do?” Her chin lifted and tears sparkled in her eyes even as her heart burned as if it had been torched with fire. “Am I to go onto my knees in front of you, and plead my case? Is that what it would take to win your assistance?”
He didn’t move a muscle and yet the vast living room suddenly felt very small. “I do like you on your knees,” he said cordially, because they both knew that on her knees she could take him in her mouth, or he could touch her or take her from behind.
She drew a ragged breath, locked her knees, praying for strength. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said, aware that she was in trouble here, aware that she ought to go. Now. While she could. While she still had some self-respect left. “Although God knows, I’ve tried.”
“Why would you want to forget it? We had an incredible sex life. It was amazing between us.”
She could only look at him, intrigued by his memory of them, as well as appalled. Their sex life had been hot, but their marriage had been empty and shallow.
Obviously that didn’t trouble him. It probably didn’t even cross his mind that his bride had feelings. Emotions. Needs. Why should it? Drakon’s desires were so much simpler. He just needed her available and willing, as if she were an American porn star in a rented Italian villa.
“So on my knees it is,” she said mockingly, lifting the hem of her pale blue skirt to kneel on his limestone floor.
“Get up,” he growled sharply.
“But this is what you want?”
“No. It’s not what I want, not like this, not because you need something, want something. It’s one thing if we’re making love and there’s pleasure involved, but there’s no pleasure in seeing you beg, especially to me. The very suggestion disgusts me.”
“And yet you seemed so charmed by the memory of me on my knees.”
“Because that was different. That was sex. This is…” He shook his head, features tight, full mouth thinned. For a moment he just breathed, and the silence stretched.
Morgan welcomed the silence. She needed it. Her mind was whirling, her insides churning. She felt sick, dizzy and off balance by the contradictions and the intensity and her own desperation.
He had to help her.
He had to.
If he didn’t, her father was forever lost to her.
“I’ve no desire to ever see my wife degrade herself,” Drakon added quietly, “not even on behalf of her father. It actually sickens me to think you’d do that for him—”
“He’s my father!”
“And he failed you! And it makes me physically ill that you’d beg for a man who refused to protect you and your sisters and your mother. A man is to provide for his family, not rob them blind.”
“How nice it must be, Drakon Xanthis, to live, untouched and superior, in your ivory tower.” Her voice deepened and her jaw ached and everything in her chest felt so raw and hot. “But I don’t have the luxury of having an ivory tower. I don’t have any luxuries anymore. Everything’s gone in my family, Drakon. The money, the security, the houses, the cars, the name…our reputation. And I can lose the lifestyle, it’s just a lifestyle. But I’ve lost far more than that. My family’s shattered. Broken. We live in chaos—”
She broke off, dragged in a breath, feeling wild and unhinged. But losing control with Drakon wouldn’t help her. It would hurt her. He didn’t like strong emotions. He pulled away when voices got louder, stronger, preferring calm, rational, unemotional conversation.
And, of course, that’s what she’d think about now. What Drakon wanted. How he liked things. How ironic that even after five years, she was still worrying about him, still turning herself inside out to please him, to be what he needed, to handle t
hings the way he handled them.
What about her?
What about what she needed? What she wanted? What about her emotions or her comfort?
The back of her eyes burned and she jerked her chin higher. “Well, I’m sorry you don’t like seeing me like this, but this is who I am. Desperate. And I’m willing to take desperate measures to help my family. You don’t understand what it’s like for us. My family is in pain. Everyone is hurting, heartsick with guilt and shame and confusion—how could my father do what he did? How could he not know Amery wasn’t investing legitimately? How could he not protect his clients…his friends…his family? My sisters and brother—we can’t even see each other anymore, Drakon. We don’t speak to each other. We can’t handle the shame of it all. We’re outcasts now. Bottom feeders. Scum. So fine, stand there and mock me with your principles. I’m just trying to save what I can. Starting with my father’s life.”
“Your father isn’t worth it. But you are. Stop worrying about him, Morgan, and save yourself.”
“And how do I do that, Drakon? Have you any advice for me there?”
“Yes. Come home.”
“Home?”
“Yes, home to me—”
“You’re not home, Drakon. You were never home.”
She saw him flinch and she didn’t like it, but it was time he knew the truth. Time he heard the truth. “You asked me a little bit ago why I’d want to forget our sex life, and I’ll tell you. I don’t like remembering. It hurts remembering.”
“Why? It was good. No, it was great. We were unbelievable together—”
“Yes, yes, the sex was hot. And erotic. You were an incredibly skillful lover. You could make me come over and over, several times a day. But that’s all you gave me. Your name, a million-dollar diamond wedding ring and orgasms. Lots and lots of orgasms. But there was no relationship, no communication, no connection. I didn’t marry you to just have sex. I married you to have a life, a home. Happiness. But after six months of being married to you, all I felt was empty, isolated and deeply unhappy.”
She held his gaze, glad she’d at last said what she’d wanted to say all those years ago, and yet fully aware that these revelations changed nothing. They were just the final nail in a coffin that had been needing to be sealed shut. “I was so unhappy I could barely function, and yet there you were, touching me, kissing me, making me come. I’d cry after I came. I’d cry because it hurt me so much that you could love my body and not love me.”
“I loved you.”
“You didn’t.”
“You can accuse me of being a bad husband, of being cold, of being insensitive, but don’t tell me how I felt, because I know how I felt. And I did love you. Maybe I didn’t say it often—”
“Or ever.”
“But I thought you knew.”
“Clearly, I didn’t.”
He stared at her from across the room, his features so hard they looked chiseled from stone. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he said finally.
“Because you hated me talking to you.” Her throat ached and she swallowed around the lump with difficulty. “Every time I opened my mouth to say anything you’d roll your eyes or sigh or turn away—”
“Not true, either.”
“It is true. For me, it’s true. And maybe you were raised in a culture where women are happy to be seen and not heard, but I’m an American. I come from a big family. I have three sisters and a brother and am used to conversation and laughter and activity and the only activity I got from you was sex, and even then it wasn’t mutual. You were the boss, you were in control, dictating to me how it’d be. Strip, crawl, come—” She broke off, gasping for air, and shoved a trembling hand across her eyes, wiping them dry before any tears could fall. “So don’t act so shocked that I’d beg you to help me save my father. Don’t say it’s degrading and beneath me. I know what degrading is. I know what degrading does. And I’ve been there, in our marriage, with you.”
And then she was done, gone.
Morgan raced to the door, her heels clicking on the polished marble, her purse on the antique console in the grand hall close to the front door, her travel bag in the trunk of her hired car.
She’d flown to Naples this morning from London, and yesterday to London from Los Angeles, almost twenty hours of traveling just to get here, never mind the tortuous winding drive to the villa perched high on the cliffs of the coast between Positano and Ravello. She was exhausted and flattened. Finished. But she wasn’t broken. Wasn’t shattered, not the way she’d been leaving him the first time.
Count it as a victory, she told herself, wrenching open the front door and stepping outside into the blinding sunshine. You came, you saw him and you’re leaving in one piece. You did it. You faced your dragon and you survived him.
CHAPTER TWO
DRAKON WATCHED MORGAN spin and race from the living room, her cheeks pale, her long dark hair swinging. He could hear her high-heeled sandals clicking against the gleaming floor as she ran, and then heard the front door open and slam shut behind her.
He slowly exhaled and focused on the silence, letting the stillness and quiet wash over him, calm him.
In a moment he’d go after her, but first he needed to gather his thoughts, check his emotions. It wouldn’t do to follow her in a fury—and he was furious. Beyond furious.
So he’d wait. He’d wait until his famous control was firmly in check. He prided himself on his control. Prided himself for not taking out his frustrations on others.
He could afford to give Morgan a few minutes, too. It’s not as if she would be able to go anywhere. Her hired car and driver were gone, paid off, dispensed with, and the villa was set off the main road, private and remote. There would be no taxis nearby. She wasn’t the sort to stomp away on foot.
And so Drakon used the quiet and the silence to reflect on everything she’d said. She’d said quite a bit. Much of it uncomfortable, and some of it downright shocking, as well as infuriating.
She’d felt degraded in their marriage?
Absolute rubbish. And the fact that she’d dare say such a thing to his face after all these years made him want to throttle her, which seriously worried him.
He wasn’t a violent man. He didn’t lose his temper. Didn’t even recognize the marriage she described. He had loved her, and he’d spoiled her. Pampered her. Worshipped her body. How was that degrading?
And how dare she accuse him of being a bad husband? He’d given her everything, had done everything for her, determined to make her happy. Her feelings had been important to him. He’d been a respectful husband, a kind husband, having far too many memories of an unhappy childhood, a childhood filled with tense, angry people—namely his mother—to want his wife to be anything but satisfied and content.
His mother, Maria, wasn’t a bad woman, she was a good woman, a godly woman, and she tried to be fair, just, but that hadn’t made her affectionate. Or gentle.
Widowed at thirty-five when Drakon’s father died of a heart attack at sea, Maria had found raising five children on her own overwhelming. The Xanthis family was wealthy and she didn’t have to worry about money, but that didn’t seem to give her much relief, not when she was so angry that Drakon’s father, Sebastian, had died leaving her with all these children, children she wasn’t sure she’d ever wanted. One child might have been fine, but five was four too many.
Drakon, being the second eldest, and the oldest son, tried to be philosophical about her anger and resentment. She came from a wealthy family herself and had grown up comfortable. He told himself that her lack of affection and attention wasn’t personal, but rather a result of grief, and too many pregnancies too close together. And so he learned by watching her, that she was most comfortable around her children if they asked for nothing, revealed no emotion or expressed no need. Drakon internalized the lesson well, and by thirteen and fourteen, he became the perfect son, by having no needs, or emotions.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy pleasing othe
rs. Throughout his twenties he had taken tremendous pride in spoiling his girlfriends, beautiful glamorous women who enjoyed being pampered and showered with pretty gifts and extravagant nights out. The women in his life quickly came to understand that he didn’t show emotion and they didn’t expect him to. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel, but it wasn’t easy to feel. There were emotions in him somewhere, just not accessible. His girlfriends enjoyed his lifestyle, and his ability to please them, and they accepted him for who he was, and that he expressed himself best through action—doing or buying something for someone.
So he bought gifts and whisked his love interests to romantic getaways. And he became a skilled lover, a patient and gifted lover who understood the importance of foreplay.
Women needed to be turned on mentally before they were turned on physically. The brain was their largest erogenous zone, with their skin coming in second. And so Drakon loved to seduce his partner slowly, teasing her, playing with her, whetting the appetite and creating anticipation, because sex was how he bonded. It’s how he felt close to his woman. It was how he felt safe expressing himself.
And yet she hadn’t felt safe with him. She hadn’t even enjoyed being with him. Their lovemaking had disgusted her. He had disgusted her. He’d turned off Morgan.
Drakon’s stomach heaved. He swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth.
How stupid he’d been. Moronic.
No wonder she’d left him. No wonder she’d waited until he had flown to London for the day. He had only been away for the day, having flown out early on his jet, returning for a late dinner. But when he had entered their villa in Ekali, a northern suburb of Athens, the villa had been dark. No staff. No dinner. No welcome. No Morgan.
He remembered being blindsided that night. Remembered thinking, he could go without dinner, could live without food, but he couldn’t live without Morgan.
He’d called her that night, but she didn’t answer. He’d left a message. Left another. Had flown to see her. She wasn’t to be found.