Anyone looking at him would assume he was a man at complete ease with the vows he was about to exchange.
They would not see the tight knots coiling in his guts that were at odds with what felt suspiciously like butterflies in his stomach.
He could not remember the last time he’d felt so...nervous?
He pushed that irrational thought away. What was there to be nervous about? Whatever happened in this marriage, his fortune was protected. Tabitha would be provided for in the event of divorce or his death but he had taken her at her word and made his will, their pre-nuptial agreement and the contract he’d had drawn up for the business iron-tight. His child and any other children they might have would receive everything.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out to read the email from his private investigator. It was an update on the investigations Giannis had instructed be done on Emmaline Brigstock and Tabitha.
He experienced the now familiar twinge of guilt about having Tabitha investigated too, although the investigation of her was very much secondary to her stepmother. He was being prudent. He’d been bitten badly before and would not be fooled again. If there were skeletons in Tabitha’s closet she had failed to tell him about, or discrepancies in her version of events of her past, he would learn them.
Tabitha had enchanted him from the first moment he’d set eyes on her. She had more power than she could ever know but he would not allow the spell she wove around him to entangle him any tighter than it had ensnared him before.
He sent a quick response, reiterating his desire for thoroughness over speed, and had just put his phone back in his pocket when the sound of loud chatter filled the air.
His family had arrived.
He greeted them warmly, sharing embraces and kisses with his parents, three of his four sisters, his three brothers-in-law and his handful of noisy small nieces and nephews.
As much as he would have preferred a wedding with only the two of them, his family would have been outraged to miss it. Tabitha was joining their family. She would become one of them. It was only right they be there to witness the union. And there was not a single member of his family who didn’t love a good party.
There had been a complete lack of surprise when he’d introduced Tabitha to his family as his fiancée. Tabitha had been as white as a sheet but they’d welcomed her as if they’d known her for years. In Niki’s case, she had. Her obvious bout of gossiping about his and Tabitha’s relationship had eased the path to acceptance. Tabitha came from a good family, was well-educated, beautiful, shy but friendly and already had Niki’s affection. That she was already carrying Giannis’s child was simply the icing on the cake.
His youngest sister had been the only one annoyed that he wasn’t having a traditional wedding. She’d pulled him aside to demand answers, which he had brushed off, using the same excuse he had with Tabitha—that he’d done the big, white wedding and saw no need for another.
‘And is Tabitha happy to be denied her own white wedding?’ she’d asked shrewdly.
‘She is in agreement with me.’
His sister had snorted in reply but wisely let the matter go.
He’d been the one unable to let it go. Until Niki had asked him the question it had never occurred to him that Tabitha hadn’t responded to his declaration that theirs would be a simple wedding.
As his family parted to take their seats and their chatter turned to hush, indicating that his bride was making her way up the pebbled steps to join them, Giannis reminded himself yet again that the only reason either of them was taking this step was for their child.
And then she appeared, Niki at her side beaming from ear to ear.
The ballooning of his heart pushed the air from his lungs.
Suddenly he was transported back to the night of the ball when he’d first glimpsed Tabitha on the stairs, when his pulses had raced and he’d been unable to tear his eyes from her.
Her beauty that night had dazzled him.
He’d wondered the next morning if she could be the one his family had urged him to find. He’d never had the chance to find out because she’d vanished. So much had happened since that early morning that he’d forgotten the question had played in his head.
Her eyes found his. A small, shy smile curved on her cheeks.
His heart stopped. It shuddered. It kick-started back to life.
The white cotton dress she wore was long and flowing and would look as at home on a beach as it did for this simple ceremony. On her feet were flat Roman-style sandals. Her long hair hung in loose curls around her shoulders and down her back. Her small hands, the once functionally short nails now elegant and polished, clutched a posy of flowers.
When she reached his side the mayor who was officiating the ceremony cleared his throat.
The vows they exchanged were as simple as the ceremony itself and, as Tabitha recited hers, cornflower-blue eyes never leaving his, Giannis’s throat closed as the truth hit him.
Tabitha deserved better than this.
She wanted nothing for herself other than the right to be a mother to her own child. She could have demanded anything and everything but her only thought was for their child to have the love of both parents. It was for love of their unborn child that she was committing her life to his.
She deserved more than this simple exchange of vows on the roof of his home, even if the location and views were as stunning as anywhere else on his island.
When it was his turn to recite his own vows, he gazed deeply into her eyes and made a silent vow to himself to be the husband she deserved.
He would never love her but he would give his last breath to protect her.
Tabitha had magic in her veins. When he kissed her to seal the vows they’d exchanged, he felt its power seep through his lips and into his bloodstream.
CHAPTER TEN
TABITHA HADN’T HAD a drop of the champagne the rest of the Basinases had consumed in vast quantities but she felt as drunk as if she’d downed a whole magnum of it.
The vows they’d exchanged...
Somehow they’d contained far more meaning than she’d expected.
In truth, she’d expected the ceremony to feel like a farce but it hadn’t. She’d meant every word she’d said and, from the look in Giannis’s eyes when he’d spoken his vows, he’d meant it too.
Afterwards, they stayed on the terrace and shared a feast with his family.
Her family.
They didn’t say it in words but they didn’t need to. The Basinas family accepted her as one of their own. Their acceptance filled her heart to the brim.
For hours they talked, laughed, ate and drank. Toasts were made, blessings given for their marriage and the safe delivery of their child and childhood escapades revealed, all the while Giannis’s small nieces and nephews ran around chasing each other and playing pranks on any family member they could.
This was the family life Tabitha had dreamed of when she’d been a child, the family life her father had wanted for her. When the full moon rose high in the night sky she looked up at it and wondered if he was up there too, looking down at her. If he was, she knew he would have a smile the size of that moon on his face.
But it wasn’t just his family. It was Giannis too. She hadn’t seen him so at ease since the night of the ball, not just with his family but with her too. Every time she looked at him his eyes would pulse and a knowing smile tug at his lips.
Anticipation laced her veins but there was dread mingled with it too.
For all the unexpected joy she’d found in their ceremony and small celebration, she just could not shift the image of Anastasia from her head.
How could she share Giannis’s bed knowing he’d shared it with the love of his life before her?
Eventually it was time to call it a night. The small children were rounded up, all protesting wi
ldly that they didn’t want to go home, that they weren’t tired, even while their little faces stretched with the yawns they couldn’t fight.
And then the front door closed and they were alone.
After all that boisterous noise the silence was stark.
She gazed at her husband, the only sound her rapidly accelerating heartbeats.
He locked the door then slowly stepped towards her. ‘You enjoyed yourself?’
‘Very much.’ She attempted a smile. ‘I never knew you were such a troublemaker as a child.’ His sisters had recounted many of his escapades with glee.
He stood before her and caught a lock of her hair in his hands. ‘Did I ever tell you why I hosted the ball?’
‘Wasn’t it to find a wife?’
He brought the lock to his face and inhaled. Shivers cascaded up her spine. ‘That was part of it. The ball itself came about because of a debt owed from my school days. When I was fifteen I broke into the headmaster’s office and superglued all his furniture to the floor and all his stationery and books to his desk and shelves.’
‘Why?’ she whispered in fascination.
‘One of the other boys dared me to. In those days I could never resist a challenge. The headmaster knew it was me but couldn’t prove it. I was on my final warning. If Alessio hadn’t given me an alibi, I would have been expelled.’
‘You hosted a ball as repayment for an alibi twenty years ago?’
‘A man must always pay his debts, matia mou. Without that alibi, my life might have taken a very different path.’
Giannis had always been a risk-taker. Being the only boy of five children probably had something to do with it. His sisters had always been good. Apart from Niki but, seeing as she’d looked up to him as her role model, that probably explained her own mischievous behaviour.
He’d delighted in driving his sisters to distraction, especially Katarina, the only one older than him and thus the bossiest, by climbing the tallest trees and buildings, stealing the gardener’s ride-on mower for illicit joyrides, and then progressing to their father’s car and stealing cigarettes, defiantly smoking them one after the other until he’d made himself sick. Anything they said he shouldn’t do, he’d made it his business to do.
That had included marrying Anastasia, he now realised.
His sisters had all hated her on sight. They had never said it in words but the Basinases were a close-knit bunch and he’d been able to read his sisters’ feelings all too well.
Their disapproval had only added to Anastasia’s allure.
Skimming his fingers down the swan of Tabitha’s elegant neck, revelling in the way her lips parted and her breathing shallowed, he ruefully considered what his reaction would have been if they’d disapproved of her.
Tabitha had an unidentifiable something that was far greater than mere allure, something that sang to all his senses, a conductor tuning them into harmony. The desire ringing from the cornflower eyes was more intoxicating than the strongest of spirits.
She could have no greater appeal. Not to him.
It was not humanly possible for him to desire her more than he did.
The past week spent attempting to master that desire had been torturous but, he felt sure, successful.
The spell she wove on him was nothing but an illusion and now he would prove it.
He would make love to her and when it was over the earth would still be on its axis.
Trailing his fingers down her arm, he took her hand in his and tugged it gently. ‘Time for us to go to bed, Kyría Basinas.’
Fingers entwined, they climbed the stairs in silence to the room that now belonged to them both, sexual chemistry thick in the air surrounding them.
But, when they reached the door, she hesitated at the threshold.
He brought her hand to his lips and stared into the eyes brimming with uncertainty. ‘Is something the matter, matia mou?’
She stilled, teeth sinking into her bottom lip, her stare now filled with something he didn’t recognise. ‘Did you share this room with Anastasia?’
Taken aback at both the question and her first ever mention of his dead wife, it took a few seconds for him to realise why she was asking it.
‘Anastasia hated Santorini. She loved the city life. She didn’t spend one night here. No woman has shared this bed with me.’
While it sank in that Tabitha had insecurities about his first wife, and what the implications of that could mean, something happened that distracted his thoughts entirely.
Right before his eyes, Tabitha grew in stature and a light came into her eyes that didn’t just shine from them but infused the whole of her in a warm glow.
Before he could register the change, she put a hand to his chest then stepped forward and rested her cheek on it and breathed deeply.
She was inhaling his scent...
Then she tipped her head back and gave him a smile of such knowing radiance, every cell in his body tightened.
Gently she pushed him across the threshold and kicked the door shut behind them with her heel. And then she slid her arms around his neck and pulled his head down so she could kiss him.
Heat licked through his veins, his physical awareness—always there, always a part of him around her—flickering at the first brush of her lips to his. When her tongue darted into his mouth and she pressed herself tightly against him, the flickering turned to full arousal.
Hunger exploded in him and he wrapped his arms tightly around her. His hands delved into the silky tresses, fingers coiling in it as he devoured her...and she devoured him.
Tabitha was the one to steer them to the bed, to push him onto it, the one to break the kiss, to run her lips over his cheeks and down his neck as he had done to her, scorching his flesh with every mark from her mouth and tongue. It was her fingers that worked their way down the buttons of his shirt and then pushed it apart, pulled it down his arms and threw it onto the floor. It was her hands pushing at his chest until he was laid flat on his back, breathing deeply, wondering where this vixen had suddenly appeared from.
She put her mouth to his ear and bit the lobe gently. ‘Don’t move,’ she whispered before reaching out an arm to turn on his bedside light.
He had no intention of moving anywhere.
Giannis had anticipated this night in detail, over and over, imagining her breasts in his mouth, his fingers caressing her, inside her, his mouth tasting her, exploring every inch of her so thoroughly that every part of her was as familiar as his own reflection was to him.
But never had he anticipated that she would be the one making the moves. Taking control.
Every inch of his body throbbed with anticipation, heat thick through his loins and veins.
She jumped off the bed with all the grace of a dancer, bounded to the main light switch by the door and hit it. Immediately the light in the room went from full illumination to dusky, casting them both in shadow.
Tabitha stared at the man she’d committed her life to, drinking in his devilish beauty, then bent over to remove her sandals. When they were off, she pinched the skirt of her dress in her fingers and brought it up and over her head.
The suck of air he took only added to the heady thrills zipping through her veins.
Their wedding might not have been the one of her dreams but she felt as if she’d slipped into another Giannis-filled dream. The relief at being told no other woman had shared this room with him had been dizzying, unleashing an enormous wave of emotion she could never find the words to explain. That wave had filled her entirely and suddenly she had found herself emboldened to act on her desires, and emboldened to express in a language they both understood everything she felt for him in that moment.
She wanted him, this beautiful Greek man who could sear her skin with nothing more than a look. She wanted him so much that there were times she could hardly breathe
for her longing.
Hooking her arms behind her to undo her lacy bra, she pulled the straps down her arms and threw it onto her discarded dress.
The seductive appreciation in his hooded eyes sent arrows of bittersweet longing shooting from her breasts to her pelvis and gave her the courage needed to remove the last item of clothing and stand before him naked.
Giannis swallowed. His greedy eyes devoured every detail.
The incredible womanly body he’d relived every inch of every night since they’d conceived their child was there before him. The differences the pregnancy was making were there too, subtle but to his eyes obvious.
They only made her more beautiful.
The full breasts were larger, the hips a little wider...the stomach a little rounder.
He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was but his throat had closed.
He couldn’t speak.
He didn’t need to.
She must have read his thoughts for she smiled then walked slowly back to the bed, climbed onto it and straddled him.
Impossibly, his arousal grew, the ache in it a pain he was unable to relieve.
Gazing down at him, she placed her hands on his chest and let her fingers drift over it.
He reached out an arm to touch her silky skin but she stopped him and shook her head. ‘Not yet,’ she whispered.
And then she leaned forward and kissed him deeply. Her breasts brushed lightly against his chest, a tease of sensation he craved so much more of. When he tried to wrap his arms around her she shrugged him off and nipped his bottom lip. ‘Not yet,’ she repeated sternly.
She bestowed him with one more kiss on his mouth and then her lips trailed down his neck again. But this time she didn’t stop.
This time she continued her oral exploration, tongue and mouth kissing and licking every inch of his chest, his nipples, down to his abdomen, her fingers working on his trousers, which she pulled down with his underwear and threw unceremoniously onto the floor.
This time she was the one to feast her eyes on him, lashes sweeping, a look of wonder on her face as she gazed at his jutting erection.
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