by Trish Morey
He looked back at the bed, at the woman lying there in the beam of silver, her hair tangled across her pillow, her lips plump and parted, deeply asleep. She’d fallen into his bed as easily as she’d fallen for his ruse, just as he’d anticipated, but she’d been so much more than he’d expected too. So much more. She’d gone off like fireworks in his bed, responsive, explosive. And then she’d climaxed again, and again, and, by the wondrous look on her face, the last time had surprised her the most.
And he half wished Stavros Nikolides were still alive, so he could witness this moment. So Alexios could bodily drag him in here to see his precious daughter naked and supremely satisfied in the bed of his nemesis, the son of the man he had so badly wronged.
For that would surely kill him all over again.
Moonlight on the blackened caldera waters winked back at him, telling him his logic was flawed. Because if Stavros had been alive, he would have enacted his original plan, and Athena would never have been in his bed, and that would have been a travesty. Revenge this way was so much more satisfying.
There was more than one way for a father to pay, and make him pay he would.
The sins of the father...
He would make Stavros pay dearly.
He curled his hand into a fist, all the injustice he’d felt congealing into concrete within, and thumped it hard against the wall.
She stirred behind him. ‘Alexios?’ Her voice was husky with sleep. Surprisingly sexy. As she herself had been throughout the night whenever he had reached for her. ‘What are you doing? Can’t you sleep?’
‘I was thinking,’ he said.
‘About what?’
He flexed his fingers. ‘Tomorrow,’ he lied. ‘I was thinking about what we should do tomorrow.’
‘But... Don’t you have business to attend to?’
‘It can wait.’ He paused, arching an eyebrow. ‘Unless you don’t want to see me again? Are you going to fly away again, mikro peristeri?’
She kept him waiting, her teeth troubling her bottom lip, as if weighing it up. Before she said, ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’
And he smiled as he collected her in his arms and tumbled her back down onto the pillows. ‘Perfect.’
* * *
The sails had filled out in the warm breeze, the boat propelled across the bottomless waters of the caldera until they were far away from the newly arrived cruise ships and the well-worn tourist trails. Athena lay on the deck alongside Alexios, content to lie on her back and soak up the sun after a swim in the bottomless waters of the caldera.
From here the walls of the islands rose steeply around them, seemingly insurmountable, the jagged path up the cliff from the port seeming to defy the laws of nature and science. It was different to see the ring of islands that made up the crater’s edges from this aspect, the layers of pumice and ash that had spewed more than three thousand years ago from the erupting volcano so clearly visible in the distinctly coloured bands in the cliffs surrounding them.
‘What are you staring at?’ he asked beside her, rolled onto his side and following her gaze.
She nodded towards the soaring cliffs, thinking of the force of the eruption that had all but resulted in the destruction of the island as it then existed, all but obliterating the civilisation that had once called it home. ‘Sorry. I just never cease to be awed by this place. It’s hard to believe we’re sitting in the middle of a live volcano.’
Especially when the sun turned the surface of the sea to diamonds and the water lapped gently at the sides of the boat. Right now an eruption seemed impossible. Incomprehensible. But there was the evidence, all around them.
‘It must have been terrifying when it erupted,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine what it was like being here.’
‘Most people were long gone,’ she said, sitting up. ‘There were earthquakes, bad ones, over many years. Some people stayed, but many abandoned their homes here and took their families in their ships and fled to Anatolia and to Crete. The lucky ones went early and much further afield.’
‘Why lucky?’
‘Because it wasn’t a simple eruption. That would have been bad enough, but when the sea water rushed into the empty lava chamber, it triggered a tidal wave that travelled for hundreds of miles. The northern coast of Crete, with the fleets of the Minoan traders, they were all destroyed. It wasn’t just Santorini, or Thera, as it was known then, that was destroyed. A dark ash cloud encircled the earth, blotting out the sun and wiping out the crops for many years. Even escape to somewhere like Crete proved no escape, just a deferral of the end. It signalled the end of the Minoan civilisation.’
He sat up alongside her, a frown tugging his dark brows together.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘In real life I’m an archaeologist and the Minoan civilisation, in particular, is a passion of mine. I studied it at university and I tend to get a bit carried away about it.’
He curled his hand around hers, lifted it to his lips. ‘You don’t have to be sorry for being passionate. I was never good at history. I was never a good student. Tell me more.’
She smiled, warming to her topic. ‘You know some believe the legend of Atlantis started right here, more than three thousand years ago. A fabulously wealthy and cultured civilisation, drowned under the sea and lost for ever.’
He propped himself up on his elbows. ‘Do you believe that?’
‘I do. It accords with the ancient Egyptian records, and the writings of Plato. The Egyptians traded with the Minoans until their world was suddenly blotted out, and why would that have happened unless some terrible fate had overcome them? Besides,’ she added with a smile, ‘it makes much more sense than the theory about some mythical island somewhere in the Atlantic that disappeared without trace or explanation, don’t you think? Whereas a beautiful island, an advanced civilisation, as good as wiped from the face of the earth—what better candidate than the Minoan civilisation right here in the centre of the then known world?’
He was staring at her face, his dark eyes lit with pleasure and the flames of something much hotter.
‘Do you have any idea how animated you look when you talk like this? Your whole face is alight, even the flecks in your eyes sparkle like golden chips in the light.’
She looked down, suddenly embarrassed. ‘I warned you. I get a bit carried away.’
His fingers took hold of her chin, turning it back towards him. ‘No, don’t be embarrassed about being passionate. You make your passion contagious. In fact, I think I know exactly how that volcano felt before it blew.’
And he drew her chin closer at the same time he dipped his head and his mouth met hers.
Something fluttered in her heart as she gave her mouth to his. Something small and indefinable, but like the brush of butterfly wings against her eyelashes. Something insignificant and yet of such import that it seemed her whole world had subtly shifted in a way that had nothing to do with the currents beneath their vessel.
His lips toyed with hers, gentling, caressing, warm breath intermingled, overlaced with the salty scent of the sea, before, slowly, he pulled gently away.
‘Happy?’ he asked, smiling down at her.
And Athena blinked as she looked into his beautiful face. Not because of his question, but because of the answer bubbling up inside her. Because she was happy, honestly truly happy for the first time in what seemed for ever. Because she felt as if she was truly alive. ‘I am.’
‘You sound surprised.’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe just a little.’ She gave a blissful sigh. It was the island, she told herself, for Santorini had once again proved to be her refuge and her saviour. There was a reason she loved this place.
His hand took hers and she felt that zing of excitement, that thrill of connection, she felt every time he touched her, before he lifted it to his lips, and turned it and kissed he
r palm, his hot tongue stroking it, his dark eyes filled with the promise of dark deeds, sending a delicious thrill coursing through her.
‘I like your bikini,’ he said, his eyes scanning the length of her body without his head shifting, his voice low and thick and vibrating with so much desire it was impossible not to feel aroused. ‘I’m going to enjoy peeling it off.’
Her nipples peaked and hardened as his eyes lingered at her breasts even while his fingers toyed with the tie at her hips, the electric touch of his fingertips setting sparks beneath her skin while his lips came down to meet hers, their heat enough to melt any thought of resistance away. The white bikini had been an impulse decision when he’d suggested sailing today and she’d told him she hadn’t brought a swimsuit. A good one as it turned out. He’d taken her to a boutique and she’d been rifling through the racks of one-pieces when he’d offered her a clutch of bikinis. She’d almost said no outright—she hadn’t worn a two-piece since she’d been that cocksure teen A-lister baring almost everything she had to bare on the Amalfi Coast—but something in his eyes had made her reconsider and agree to try them on.
And that very first one, the white one—she’d seen the heat and hunger as his eyes had roamed her exposed flesh, a hunger that had made her insides tremble with the promise of the forbidden. Not some spoilt son of a newspaper tycoon or shipping magnate looking at her with an overactive libido and clumsy technique, but a man, looking at a woman, and wanting her.
As he wanted her now.
He broke away from the kiss, the curled hairs of his sun-warmed chest kissing her bare skin as it rose and fell with his ragged breathing. ‘We should take this downstairs,’ he said, his heated breath on her face, like an invitation. And in the flutter of her answering heart, she knew it wasn’t just the island that made her so happy. It was this man beside her and the way he made her feel. As if she was special.
As if she deserved to be happy.
And after the despair of the last few weeks, of the shock of learning her estranged father had died, and the remorse she felt for a relationship gone badly wrong, and then the guilt on learning he’d forgiven her without ever letting her know, this man made her feel things might have changed, that her life was on the up.
She went willingly as he tugged her to her feet. Went willingly down through the hatch to the freshly made bed in the spacious cabin lined with glossy timbers with brass fittings. And here he finished what he’d started, tugging at the tie between her breasts, brushing the thin straps over her shoulders and letting her bikini top fall to the floor, before his hands moved to her thighs, untying the bows at her sides until that scrap of material similarly fell to the floor.
He didn’t reach for her straight away. His eyes drank her in and, while she stood naked before him, she saw the movement in his throat as he swallowed, and witnessed the smouldering heat of his eyes.
Emboldened by the memory of a night of carnal pleasure reinforced by what she saw in his features, she reached for him, one hand cupping his length through his swimming shorts, the other sliding beneath the band at his hips so he was encircled by her fingers from in front and behind.
Breath hissed through his teeth as his head fell back. ‘Theos!’ he uttered. ‘What you do to me, Athena.’ Before his hands found her waist and he half lifted, half tossed her to the bed, his black bathers swept down his legs before he joined her.
‘What do I do?’ she asked, liking this new power she now had, and half intoxicated herself at the feel and sight of him, rigid and bucking and wanting her.
He growled, pinning her arms beside her head as he positioned himself between her legs. ‘You make me want to do this...’
She had no time to react. No time to pay heed to that niggling thought in the back of her head. No time before she felt him, easing into her heated body.
And then there was no time for anything but the sheer joy of their coupling as he filled her. Sensation radiated through her, wiping thought and logic and any hint of rationality away. While the boat rocked, the deep blue waters of the caldera slapping at the windows, accompanied by the rhythmic sounds of their lovemaking.
Her last and only thought as they tumbled together over the edge again was that a girl could get used to this.
His harsh curse brought her out of her post-coital bliss. ‘What is it?’
He pulled away roughly. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t use a condom. Are you safe?’
Athena blinked. If he only knew. She hadn’t had sex with anyone for years. ‘Yes.’
He groaned a sigh of relief, relaxing back onto the bed and pulling her close, spooning his body against hers. ‘You see what you do to me?’ He pressed his lips to her shoulder. ‘Thank God one of us was thinking about protection.’
Oh, she thought, that kind of safe. Surely, there was no chance. Her cycle had never been regular, but still it had to be too early...
And she could hardly go back on what she’d said now. He’d made her feel desirable, even wanton, and she didn’t want to admit the truth and sound naïve and unsophisticated. She was twenty-seven, of course he’d assume she’d take precautions. So instead she picked up his hand from where it was wrapped around her breasts, and lifted it to her mouth. ‘Thank God,’ she said, sending a little prayer that she was right as he snuggled her closer and pressed his mouth to that sensitive place where her shoulder met her throat, making her mewl, and pushing any hint of concern to the back of her mind.
* * *
It was almost too easy. Alexios gazed down at her, stretched out on the deck with her head resting on her folded arms and looking boneless and utterly spent. The sun was sinking lower in the sky and soon the boat would come to ferry them back to the shore, and to the Venetian palace at Thera where Alexios had invited her once again for dinner.
This time she hadn’t hesitated, but then, he hadn’t expected her to. In no time he’d bent her to his will and she was as good as his. Soon he would give the signal to Anton to prepare the paperwork that would hand her father’s precious fortune to him.
So much easier than dealing with her father. So much more satisfying.
She looked so innocent lying there. So sweet and so blissfully unaware of what he had planned.
He sighed, admiring the way the white bikini showed off her curves, leaving her slim waist on show; remembering the look on her face when she’d climaxed—her body hitched, her blue eyes open wide and almost shocked, her lush mouth halted, mid gasp. And then her head had been flung back as she’d exploded around him.
It was almost a shame it had to end.
The noise of a motorboat cut through his thoughts. The boat he’d summoned to take them back to the shore. She stirred at the approaching sound, rolling over and stretching out long arms like a cat rising from slumber. ‘Is that our boat?’ Even her sleepy voice sounded like a purr.
He knelt down. ‘I’m afraid it’s time to go, mikro peristeri.’
She smiled up at him, snaking an arm around his neck and pulling his lips towards hers. ‘I’ve had the best day, Alexios. Thank you.’
‘I’m glad,’ he said, as he smiled into her kiss. But why wouldn’t he smile? Because whoever said revenge was a dish best served cold hadn’t been doing it right.
Revenge served hot, with an all too willing participant like Athena, was revenge worth taking.
He felt the warmth of her sun-kissed skin against him, he tasted the sultry heat of her mouth, and he felt himself grow hard.
This was right.
This was the very best kind of revenge.
CHAPTER FIVE
ATHENA LAY IN Alexios’s big bed, sleep evading her. By rights, she figured, after a day out on the caldera alternately swimming and making love, she should be sleeping like a log. But she’d dozed on and off throughout the day, snug and content, and she was too wound up to sleep.
She looked sideways, at the dark
silhouette of the man sleeping beside her, his arm still looped lazily behind her neck, his fingers draped over her shoulder, still holding her close even in sleep.
She nestled her head back into the crook of his shoulder on a sigh. Was it only yesterday that they’d met?
It hardly seemed possible to feel so comfortable with anyone so quickly, not when she was usually so guarded, and yet it had been so easy with this man. He seemed to have a way of getting under her defences and breaking down her barriers. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spent two consecutive nights in a man’s bed. Now it seemed hard to imagine sleeping by herself, going to sleep without strong arms around her, waking up alone. It occurred to her that she would miss it.
Inside her chest, she felt that flutter of butterfly wings sensation again, except this time it was enough to make her breath jag.
What was happening to her? For years she’d survived—even prospered—without a man in her life. No doubt she would again.
And for all his assurances, telling her there was no woman in his life because he was driven and a workaholic, it was hard to believe he’d spent the last however many years living like a priest. He was too good-looking. Too charming. And in bed, way too much a man to have spent all his days and nights alone.
Which made her wonder—was this just one more in a long string of temporary affairs to him? Despite Alexios’s protestations, did he make a habit out of picking up random women wherever he happened to be situated, flattering them all the same way? Bedding them all the same way?
She swallowed down on the bubble of disappointment that accompanied that question. She had no right to be disappointed. He was nothing to her. She was nothing to him. Still, in spite of her doubts and unanswered questions, she wasn’t ready for this to end just yet, whatever ‘this’ turned out to be. Even if this was only ever destined to be a brief affair.