CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

H E DIDN ’ T BELIEVE a word she said.

But this last, best battlefield did not require words. Words had done their worst. Now there was only the enduring truth of this connection he was certain neither one of them wished to feel.

The time for wishes was past, too.

He spread her out on his bed, aware of a great, glowing thing inside of him—as if the fact of her presence alone set alight something in him he wasn’t sure he could identify. It made sense, he assured himself. Once he had reluctantly accepted that there was no way out of this marriage, he had always assumed that this moment would come. Sooner or later.

Now it was here.

Apostolis could taste her in his mouth. And her kiss had been a revelation, again.

And now he had to wrestle with that great glow within, the greedy demands of his sex, and the simple fact that he had wanted her almost too long.

They all crowded together inside of him, as if jostling for position.

If he was someone else, Apostolis thought, he might well have found himself paralyzed now that this moment had arrived.

But he felt as if he’d spent his whole life getting ready for this. For her.

Jolie pushed herself up onto her elbows, shaking back that golden hair that he thought about far more often than he should. He did not let himself think too much about the things she’d told him, and not only because he didn’t believe her.

But because the very last thing he wished to think about just now was his father.

Or anyone else, for any reason.

Something that might have alarmed him under different circumstances.

“Are you having second thoughts?” she asked, back to that arch, mocking voice of hers that he found still set him on fire. As if he needed more encouragement to let the flames in him reach high. “Or is it...” She smiled, benevolently, which between them was akin to a sword strike. “It’s all right. It happens to everyone from time to time, or so I hear. Despite their best intentions, they just can’t manage to make the equipment work.”

“I think,” he said as he crawled onto the bed and sprawled himself out beside her, at last, “that I’m finished with all of this talking, Jolie.”

Before she could argue about that—because he knew that she would argue about that—he set his mouth to hers once more.

And this time it seemed impossible that anything, even the end of the world itself, would stop them.

Apostolis would see to it personally.

He kissed her again and again, taking note of when she kissed him back even more fiercely. Of how and when her lips clung to his. Or how and when she became more urgent, more demanding, pressing her body into his until he let her push him over to his back so he could hold her above him, feeling her body all over his, and this time, not while dancing on a terrace packed full of people.

This dance was far more intimate. And only his.

Her hands moved over him the way they had once before. But this time he could also feel the press of her soft breasts as she unbuttoned his shirt, tracking her way down the length of his chest until she could shove aside the sides of his linen shirt and bury her face between.

She made a low noise of pleasure, as if she’d been waiting to do that for a very long time.

He stopped her when she got to his trousers, hauling her up again then sitting up as he set her astride him. So he could help himself to the hem of the gown she wore and peel it up and then off her body, revealing her to him at last.

It was different than the times he’d seen her by the pool or sunning herself on a boat, in even the skimpiest bikini.

It was different because he was touching her this time. And she was spread open before him like an exquisite feast.

Best of all, the hardest part of him was pressed into the V of her thighs, and he got to watch the way the feel of him against her softest parts made her sigh.

Her eyes when they found his were so blue it hurt.

But this was the kind of pain Apostolis enjoyed.

Indulging the first of a series of near-ungovernable urges, he sank his hands deep into her hair. And allowed himself, for a moment, to catalog nothing.

To feel, first and foremost.

Because her hair was a warm silk, flowing over his hands. And when he curled his fingers, her head angled back, giving him access to the fine line of her throat. He skated his lips over her jaw, then found the throb of her pulse.

And he wasn’t sure which one of them groaned as she moved her hips against him, but the pleasure that shot through him was almost too intense to bear. Apostolis was certain it was the same for her.

Keeping one hand buried in all that hair, he used his other hand to smooth its way to the jut of her breasts, reaching between them to snap open the fastener to her bra. He tossed it aside and then, at last, helped himself to the plump curves he had only imagined before. He used his thumb to gently abrade one nipple while he set his mouth to the other. And he made sounds of appreciation as she melted against him, arching her back the way he’d imagined she would—to press her breasts into his mouth, his hand.

To stoke the fire that burned white-hot in both of them.

She was rocking herself against him, making greedy little noises in the back of her throat with every tug on each of her proud nipples. And Apostolis felt the exact moment that she stiffened—

Then cried out as she began to shake against him.

Losing herself so completely that he actually questioned, for a too-long moment—if he could keep himself under control.

And he still had his trousers on.

He held her as she shook, whispering nonsense words in Greek as he kissed his way back up the length of her body, and combed his fingers through her hair again. He moved it back from that flawless face of hers, marveling at her beauty the way he always did.

But tonight he admired her fire even more.

And when she opened her eyes to look at him again, her eyes were a shade of blue so brilliant he should have been blinded.

Apostolis thought he felt a kind of scar begin to form, deep inside him.

He kissed her again, slowly. Deeply.

Taking his time, and mindful of that scar and her fire, he began to pour all the intensity and tension inside of him into her mouth. He rolled her over while he did it, so he could set himself to the sweet task of stripping the panties she wore from her body, a filmy little bit of lace that he tossed aside.

This time, when he made his way down her body, he gave her gorgeous breasts only the most cursory attention before he traveled on. He enjoyed the indentation of her waist before her hips flared out again. He took a detour to the shallow delight that was her navel.

And then, at last, making his way down between her legs, he found that she was even prettier than he’d expected she would be, lush and ready.

She was shaking, though it was not the same kind of shaking apart as before, more’s the pity.

“Apostolis—”

But something was growling in him as he shifted her legs wide open so he could wedge his shoulders in between her thighs. He let her legs dangle there over his back, and then he bent down, slid his hands over the sweet, soft curves of her bottom, and wasted no time licking his way deep into her. As if he was trying to eat her alive.

Maybe he was.

Because there were no words, there was only this.

The sweet truth of who she was. The salt of her, the tart delight.

The way she lifted herself to meet his mouth. The way her shaking changed again to something more rhythmic, a sultry circle of her hips. When he glanced up, she looked like a goddess. Her arms were thrown back over her head, her back was arched up, and her lips were parted as if she couldn’t quite take in the glory of what was happening.

Neither could he.

Apostolis built this fire carefully and thoroughly.

And when he was ready, he threw a little gas on it, using his teeth against her most sensitive center, and she screamed.

Jolie bucked against him as she shook on and on and on.

He rolled from the bed, stripping his clothes from his body and more than a little surprised to find that his own hands betrayed the slightest bit of unsteadiness. As if he was as affected as she was.

As if, something in him whispered, you’re not in control of this at all.

But there was no time to worry about things like that, not when she was naked and still quivering on his bed.

And this time, when he crawled onto the bed beside her, he tucked her beneath him. He propped himself up on his elbows, settled between her legs, and finally pressed the hardest part of him into all that sweet softness that he could still taste on his lips.

That he imagined he would always taste, always yearn for, always dream of—like the ghost of her was forming all around him as they breathed like this, together.

Her eyes were dreamy and lost. And he watched as awareness took her over, as her body shifted and flushed as she felt all that heat and thickness that waited there for her.

What he hoped she did not understand was that he was holding on to his control by the slimmest of threads.

Her breath shuddered out of her. She slid her hands up to hold on to his neck.

And Apostolis expected her to say something cutting now. To bring this back to the ground he knew well.

Jolie didn’t say a word. It was all blue eyes and that same expectant wildfire that burned in him, too.

And so, feeling less triumphant than he expected to and something far more like reverent, he thrust deep into his wife. His stepmother.

His , something in him asserted.

But she sucked in a harsh breath. And he felt the way her body flinched beneath him.

Apostolis froze.

Her eyes were closed, squeezed tight, and he waited without moving even an inch, aware of every single place she was clenched too tight.

“Breathe,” he told her quietly. Intently. “I apologize. I didn’t realize it had been so long for you.”

Slowly, carefully, he felt her settle beneath him. Only when she released the nails she’d dug into the back of his neck did he even understand that she’d pierced him in the first place.

But it wasn’t until she opened up her eyes that he relaxed, just slightly.

“Jolie,” he began, but stopped dead.

Because the way she was looking at him...

Her eyes were wide, and too bright with what he could not pretend he didn’t know were unshed tears. And she said not one word.

Still, he understood.

Her tightness. Her tenseness. One small breath when anyone else might have screamed, and no matter that she’d found her pleasure twice already.

He couldn’t believe it.

He didn’t want to believe it.

“You are a virgin,” he said, a flat statement of fact.

She closed her eyes for another moment, giving him entirely too much time to wonder how anyone’s eyelashes could be so long, so thick. When she opened them again, the brightness that had been so ripe with tears was gone.

But there was still a softness there that hadn’t been there before.

A vulnerability he had not known she possessed.

That scar she’d left in him began to throb, as if it was lengthening, and cutting him deep.

He pulled back, slowly, and then thrust in again, so gentle it almost undid him. But he was focused on her. He watched her pull in a breath, then sigh it out a little.

And he felt the rest of her quiver.

Slightly, but it was there.

“I am told the pain is fleeting,” he said. “We will make sure that it is.”

“Are we a we now?” she asked softly, in a thick voice that sounded nothing like the Jolie he knew. “How lucky that there is physical proof that I’m exactly who I told you I was. No need for you to believe me in any act of faith. No need for you to concern yourself with the reasons why you might be predisposed to distrust me. You can just—”

“Quiet,” he whispered. “You do not have to take every opportunity to fight me, Jolie. Especially not now.”

And when she looked as if she might continue arguing, he kissed her.

It was different from before. It was...seeking.

Penitent, perhaps.

He kissed her over and over while holding himself perfectly still, so that when there was movement again, it was hers.

And he felt something far too close to relief in every slow, incremental movement she made against him. Moving her hips this way, then that. Lifting herself up, then lowering her hips once more.

Slowly, carefully, he let her learn him. He let her find her way back to pleasure.

He let her work herself into a new fire of her own making until she was frowning, not quite complaining, but digging her fingernails into him as if that could make him move with her.

When he did, when he finally took over and set a deep, hard rhythm, she came apart almost instantly.

Still he held himself back, keeping that same, steady, maddeningly slow pace. She flew apart again and then she was back, and wilder. Her eyes too wide and much too blue.

And she knew, now, how to meet his thrusts. How to prolong the drag, then strike sparks with the pump.

She was a marvel, and she was his.

Only and ever his.

And it was that thought, he was certain, that had him breaking from his rhythm. That let his hips find their own intensity as he threw her over the cliff once more.

Only then, at last, did he allow himself to follow.

Only then did he lose himself completely.

It was much later, well into the dark of the night, when she finally stirred beside him again. They had still not turned on a single light in the house and so it was only the moon, rising high outside the windows, that illuminated his bed.

And the way she looked at him was something like shy.

Once again, too many words and too many weapons crowded into him, making him feel tangled up with it all, but he ignored it.

He picked her up, enjoying the silk slide of her skin against his. In the bathroom, he still didn’t turn on any lights. He took her into his expansive shower and set her on the bench. He set the water pressure and the heat, and then he took his place on the bench, too, so that she was seated between his widespread legs, leaning back against his chest.

Then he took his time washing her. Taking care with her body. Worshiping her in an entirely different way.

And when he found traces of her virgin’s blood upon her thighs, he washed it away, murmuring words of regret as he did it.

But in Greek, which he wasn’t sure she entirely understood.

He risked a glance at her, leaning back against his chest with her face tipped up toward him, and found the glint of those clever blue eyes of hers.

“No need to parade the sheets through the village, then,” she murmured. “Lucky me. Or do I mean lucky you?”

A phalanx of retorts lined up inside him, but he tamped them back down. “I would think that you would be pleased that you possessed, this whole time, the means to prove yourself. What I do not understand is why you did not use it sooner.”

“Because I shouldn’t have to prove myself to you,” she said, but quietly. “Or anyone.”

“You would prefer that I continue to think the worst of you?”

“Apostolis.” She breathed out his name in a way that made him think she liked to taste it as much as he liked hers. Her gaze laughed at him, though she did not smile. “I already know the truth. That doesn’t change. So what does it matter what you think of me?”

He felt that glowing thing inside of him swell once more. And he didn’t like the way her question made him feel, so he shifted, letting her head fall back on his shoulder so he could kiss her once more.

But she laughed as she pushed him away, and surprised him by turning around so she could straddle him on the bench.

“Maybe you should ask yourself why it is that nature did not provide men with a similar, handy little lie detector test. Is it that men are more trustworthy? Or less, rendering everything they say moot before they say it?”

“I am not the liar here.”

“While I am sure you will find a way to make sure that I still am,” she replied. “Now that I cannot use my innocence to shame you.”

But then, to his surprise, she reached down between them and busied herself with stroking the length of him.

Already at attention, he grew harder, thicker at her touch, and then had to grip the edge of his seat as she rocked up on her knees and guided him into her heat once more.

And then she took them both on a wild, glorious ride that had them both shouting out their pleasure as the hot water pounded down all around them in the dark of his shower.

It was much later when he found himself wide awake, staring at the moonlight that fell across his room and caught at all her blond hair as she lay there, tucked up beneath his arm.

As if she had always been meant to fit just like that.

Apostolis found he was having trouble breathing. There was a tight band across his chest and it had nothing to do with the arm she’d thrown over him.

Jolie had been a virgin. She had been a virgin, and that meant so many things that he was almost reluctant to look at.

The band around him pulled tighter and tighter.

It got no looser as the night wore on.

He held her as she slept and found himself going over every single interaction they had ever had, looking for clues that this was possible. How had he missed it? How had he misread her so completely?

By the time the sun rose over another perfect blue-and-gold day, he had moved over to the window. He heard her stir in the bed behind him and turned, rubbing a hand over his chest to make sure that the last of that band that had clamped so tight all night had finally loosened its hold on him.

He was relieved to find that it had. Because he had discovered the solution.

Jolie sat up, pushing all that hair back from her face. That wild blue gaze of hers settled on him warily.

He watched her, aware of a kind of spiraling fury that rose in him, because she was still so damned beautiful . She still looked like a dream, every dream he’d had. A bit of tousled elegance in his bed after such a long night.

It was entirely possible that this woman was going to be the death of him.

But if that was true, he had every intention of taking her with him.

And he had five years to work on the perfect exit strategy.

That wariness in her gaze intensified when all he did was stare at her.

But if he expected her to let the tears he’d seen in her gaze the night before take her over again, he was mistaken. He’d expected her to cringe away, but she sat up instead.

Until she was very much giving the impression that he was the one currying her favor here.

He expected her to say something. Anything. Instead, she waited. And did not pull the sheet up over herself, but simply sat there, the glory of her lovely body on display.

He suspected she knew that very well.

Perhaps he was not the only one who woke determined to find new weapons.

“I was up all night castigating myself,” he told her.

“Were you?” She tilted her head slightly to one side as she considered him. “You seem to have come through it well enough.”

“I could not imagine how it was that I could have thought you so wicked when all this time, you were as pure as the driven snow in every respect.”

Perhaps wisely, she did not respond.

“But then,” he said softly and with intent, “after I sifted through what I know to be true and all the many stories you’ve told me over time, I remembered.”

“That your father was a monster and he made everyone in his orbit miserable?” she asked lightly. “Isn’t that what you said to me once?”

“That is a foregone conclusion.” He moved closer to the bed so he could stand above her. Or maybe he just liked it when she had to tip her head back like that to look at him. Maybe there was something in him that took entirely too much joy in how defiantly she looked at him, even now. “But that does not explain the money, does it.”

He had the satisfaction of watching a kind of electric shock go through her at that.

At last, he thought with great satisfaction, they were back on familiar ground.

“Nothing to say?” he taunted her in a low voice. “No explanation?” He shook his head as if her response made him sad, when it was the opposite. “I suppose I will have to hunt these answers down myself.”

Jolie surged up, coming onto her knees, and she was flushed once again. With temper, he supposed, though he liked that much better than the unbearable notion that he had hurt her.

She pointed a finger directly into his face and she did not waver as she made an entirely anatomically impossible suggestion of what he could do with his anatomy.

In her clearest, coldest, most outrageously serene voice.

“Tempting,” Apostolis murmured, and then he hauled her up and into his arms. “When this is so much easier. No yoga positions required.”

And then he bore her back down onto the bed and threw them right back into the heat of their battle.