Kallie felt numb. More than numb. She’d known they’d always been close, but he’d always seemed so…self-sufficient. He’d always held something back. He’d never talked about his own family. Not really. For the first time she
could see how it could have been possible for her parents to judge him so harshly…if they’d felt they hadn’t known him that well.
It was so much worse than she’d ever known. ‘He must despise me.’
Thea got up to rinse her cup. ‘In truth, Kallie, he was too busy to hate anyone. He just got on with it.’ She came back and stood in front of her, tipping her face up with an old calloused hand, her eyes dark and bright with emotion. She looked pointedly at the ring on Kallie’s finger, the simple platinum band. ‘He’s married you, Kallie, for a reason…’
Thea was right, but there were two reasons. Revenge and desire. Guilt burned into Kallie like a brand. There was no way she could tell him the truth, because there was no way she could betray Eleni, risk her fragile health. And right now Kallie felt like she didn’t even deserve forgiveness. The facts were still the same. If she hadn’t gone out there to kiss him that night, when her instinct had warned her against it, none of this would have happened. And she had. So she was the one who had to deal with it.
She had a lot to think about over the next twenty-four hours. She and Thea were tentatively re-establishing their friendship. By the following evening, after dinner and when Thea had gone to bed, Kallie sat up, determined to wait for Alexandros to come home. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, or say. She felt as if a protective layer of skin had been ripped off and she didn’t know if she could hide it from him.
It got so late that Kallie felt herself falling asleep. Giving up, she went to bed. She’d see him in the morning, or perhaps he wouldn’t be back for another few days. She felt hollow at the thought.
Kallie woke with a start. She’d been having a dream of some sort. Her heart was racing and she felt hot all over. Bleary-eyed, she got out of bed and went into the bathroom to get some water. Everywhere was quiet. She immediately thought of Alexandros. Had he come home? She knew she’d only been asleep at most for a couple of hours. About to go and get back into bed, Kallie stopped and looked at the knob of the adjoining door. In her fanciful imagination, it seemed to glow slightly in the moonlit room. She hadn’t pulled the curtains earlier.
She felt herself walking towards the door as though compelled. He probably wouldn’t even be there, she assured herself. She touched the knob. Her breath was coming in shallow bursts…and she hadn’t even turned it yet! With a disgusted shake of her head at herself, she twisted it and the door fell back towards her, surprising her with how heavy it was.
The room was dark. She crept in. The bed was flat. No one there. In the half-light, like her own room, she could just make out shapes. It was stark and masculine. Fitting for someone like Alexandros. And yet there were paintings on the walls, not abstract, as she would have expected, but small exquisite studies, portraits…landscapes.
She suddenly felt like a voyeur and turned to go back to her own room, and in that very instant the bathroom door on the other side of the room opened, light spilled out and Alexandros walked out, rubbing his hair with a towel, stark naked.
She must have gasped, or something, because he stopped, every line in his body rigid, and looked up, seeing her instantly. He didn’t drop the towel, just stood there, unashamed and magnificent. She didn’t know how long they stared at each other. She was only aware of the drumbeat of her heart, the way her whole body seemed to be melting, igniting…
‘Kallie…’
He was real, wasn’t an apparition. Kallie finally moved. She turned and would have run back to her bedroom if she’d had the co-ordination, but she didn’t. She stumbled at the door and it slammed shut in her face, keeping her inside the room. She could have stamped her foot in frustration. No doubt he was thinking that she had heard him come back and was fulfilling her wifely duty.
Her hand had gone sweaty in seconds, the knob wouldn’t turn and she let out a small whimper of frustration. And then stopped. The carpet had muffled his approach but she could feel body heat behind her and she closed her eyes. And all she could see was him. Without even really looking, she’d made an imprint on her retinas of his body and it was all she could see now, every toned, muscled, perfectly formed part of him. Not an ounce of fat, not a blemish on that smooth, olive, silky skin.
Heavy hands dropped to the bare skin of her shoulders and she couldn’t repress a shudder of reaction. He turned her to face him and she couldn’t resist. She kept her eyes closed, knowing if she moved even slightly that she’d come into contact with that hard body.
‘Kallie…’ A thread of something laced his voice—was it amusement? Irritation? ‘Open your eyes, dammit.’
She opened them. And was surprised to see that the room was lighter than she’d thought, the moonlight stronger. The lean lines of his face were starkly outlined, as was the need in his eyes. She couldn’t look down to see if he’d put on the towel, the thought of him naked nearly made her legs buckle. That tiny movement had him pull her into him. She felt the towel, but it was a feeble barrier against the hot, hard erection underneath. Her legs were trembling in earnest now, his arms the only thing holding her up.
Her own silky vest and lace panties were no sort of barrier either. She felt the door against her back and his arms slackened, hands coming around her face. He was crowding her, nudging her thighs apart with his own hair-roughened one. Like a deadly inevitability it washed over her. This was it. No going back. This is what she was here for, what had sparked between them when they’d first looked at one another again.
And suddenly it didn’t matter right at that moment why she was there, because all Kallie was aware of was his thigh between hers, and how she ached to feel more, experience him fully. She could have tried to run away but she might as well be running from herself. Maybe if he’d come out with clothes on…maybe this heated insanity wouldn’t have taken her over body and soul…But to have seen him naked…
With a guttural, broken moan of something in Greek, he bent his head and took her mouth in an onslaught so savage, so passionate that Kallie’s head almost exploded with the feeling. Electricity coursed through her body. Unable to resist the overwhelming need, she strained to meet him on tiptoe, wrapped her arms around his neck. She ached to be closer and welcomed his thigh between hers, trapping it. She could feel the moist expression of her lust between her thighs, moistening her panties, and moved subtly against him. The pulse between her legs beat for release.
He tore his mouth away and moved it down, trailing kisses along her jaw, down to her neck. Kallie’s head fell back and hit the door but she didn’t even notice the brief pain. All the muscles in her neck corded as she felt his hand move to cup one silk-covered breast, feeling, caressing through the fabric and then, with his thigh still holding her in place, his mouth touched her, surrounded the distended peak and suckled through the fabric. Her back arched and she could feel herself starting to splinter into tiny pieces. Nothing had ever prepared her for this wealth of feelings and sensations.
Before she could lose it completely he pulled back. Kallie opened glazed eyes and looked into his, which burnt with the glowing embers of his desire. For her. It was too huge a moment to take in. All she could do was…experience, feel.
She stretched up and took his face in her hands, bringing it down, and when his mouth touched hers again she sighed with deep satisfaction. Moving her hands down, she revelled in the feel of his skin, his broad shoulders, down over biceps, bunched from holding her waist, spanning it with his hands. Her hands moved all the way down until she came to the towel and she slid them around the back, underneath and snagged it off, her hands running over the taut globes of his bottom.
His big frame shuddered as his erection pressed against her belly. ‘Kallie, Kallie…this is all I’ve thought about…since seeing you…I want you so much…’
She kissed his neck, his shoulder, the words slipping out easily. She didn’t even have to think about them. ‘I want you too…’
‘Then why did you try to leave?’
She was breathless, half-incoherent. ‘I…I didn’t know you were here…I didn’t want you to think that I was giving in…’
Something about the way she said it, some kind of defiant independence, made her seem unbearably vulnerable. He had to drive it down. ‘Well, you’re here now. It’s too late to go back.’
He lifted her up in a graceful movement and carried her over to the huge bed, laying her down with surprising care. She lay back and watched as he rested on strong arms over her. Like his namesake, one of the fabled Kouros statues. For a split second clarity and sanity rushed in. This man despised her…was bedding her as a form of punishment. Yet how could it feel so good? Going against her instincts to just say nothing, Kallie felt something inexorable rise up within her.