When he didn’t speak, Alice grew quiet and a lift of his eyes to her face showed that she was anxious now. ‘Is it...okay?’
More frustration. It roared through him. He was being a self-obsessed idiot. She’d done the right thing. She’d approached this marriage with professionalism, just as he would have expected. This w
as a marriage conceived of for one purpose, and the better she played her part, the more likely it was to succeed.
‘It’s perfect,’ he assured her, his voice throaty, his eyes clouded with the intensity of his thoughts.
‘So what else were you wondering?’ she prompted, her eyes lightly teasing now.
His body hardened, and he pushed every thought from his mind with great care, acting purely on instinct as he stared at her intently. ‘Just how easy it is to remove.’
She smiled sweetly as she stood, straddling him, her legs on either side of his body, her head blotting out the sun.
‘Pull on the string, and find out for yourself.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘KALIMÉRA, KYRIA STATHAKIS.’
The words, spoken in his native tongue, were like little beads of sunshine rolling over her skin. Alice stretched, muscles that were not used to being so well used flexing in her body. She stifled a yawn, shifting a little in the enormous bed. Beyond the window, the vines of France were a heady, vibrant green. She shifted to face him, wondering at what point they’d decided she’d join him in his room, rather than keeping to the terms of their agreement—that she would have her own space; that they’d hardly see each other. In fact, in the five days since their wedding, they’d barely been apart.
Alice might have found that troublesome, except for the certainty that their essential terms weren’t changing. So they’d blurred the lines a little. So what? That was just wiggle room. Lots of wiggle room.
Neither of them was being silly about this. They both knew there were divorce papers signed in a lawyer’s drawer somewhere, waiting for Thanos to make the call to have them filed.
She shifted a little, her gaze lifting to his handsome face.
‘I like it when you speak Greek.’
He arched a brow. ‘Tóte tha to káno sychná. Then I will do it often.’
She smiled and placed her head flat against his chest once more, her fingertips chasing invisible circles over his taut flesh.
‘I could teach you.’
‘Greek?’
‘Mmm.’ She heard the agreement rumble through his chest.
‘I’m already learning Italian.’
The fingers exploring her spine stilled. ‘Are you?’
‘Sì. Ma non posso parlare bene. But I can’t speak it very well. E molto difficile.’
‘Why are you studying Italian?’ he asked in that tongue.
It took Alice a moment to put her answer into the right words. ‘So that I can speak like a native when I go there.’
His hand began to move up and down her spine once more. ‘You want to go to Italy?’ He was back to English.
‘Sì,’ she said, a wistful smile on her lips.
‘Italy’s beautiful, but it is no Greece.’
Alice laughed softly. ‘And you wouldn’t be at all biased?’
He shrugged, the action dislodging her head a little so she lifted her face to his, pressing her chin into his chest. ‘You will decide for yourself when we go there.’ His hand lifted to her hair, running through it, curling behind her head. ‘Why Italy?’