“The problem is, I’ve seen your apartment. His painting, the sculpture. I saw how you reacted when I told you about him. There is some friend of yours trying to sell the story, and promising you on a silver platter, for an additional payment. Only an idiot would believe you had no relationship with my father, given all that, and I’m no idiot.”
“Aren’t you?” She couldn’t help the jibe, to cover the hurt dousing her in acid. She’d wanted to go to him. She’d wanted to lift up onto the tips of her toes and kiss him senseless, to press her body to his and silently implore him to do everything he’d just promised.
“You’re asking me to take a leap of faith, but it’s beyond me. I’m not someone who acts on trust alone. I need proof. Rock hard, solid evidence.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything,” she corrected after a moment. “I’m just standing here, telling you the truth. Whether you believe it or not, is up to you.”
He made a gruff sound, showing his frustration better than any words could. “Would you honestly expect me to make love to you knowing that you’ve been in his arms, welcomed him with your body?”
She looked away from him, the words he used invoking imagery of Anastasios welcoming her to his bed, of her body taking his, so she shuddered a little, from desire and need, rather than anything else.
“Have I asked you to make love to me?”
She felt his gaze rake her body, the way he looked from her head, lower, sweeping his eyes over her face with lavish fascination, then dropping to the slender column of her throat, her exposed décolletage, the generous swell of her breasts and narrow waist, the hips that were displayed by the white shorts, and her shapely, athletic legs. Her heart was in overdrive as he inspected her with a possessive heat that was completely inappropriate, all things considered.
Yet she didn’t move.
She didn’t argue.
She stood her ground, and her body gradually came to life. Her skin lifted in goosebumps, her blood pounded through her veins, her stomach twisted tightly and moist heat pooled between her legs, muscles there clamping in a silent, desperate plea. Her breasts throbbed, and her nipples tingled against the soft cotton of the halter neck, so that when his eyes raked back up her body and they hovered on the swell of her cleavage, his expression was one of obvious admiration, eyes steady on the hardened peaks. Warmth flooded her there, almost as if he was touching her, and in fact, her back swayed forward a little, as though he’d squeezed one nipple and sent her into overdrive.
“You have asked me to make love to you with almost every breath you have expelled, since the moment we met. I’m trying to decide how much of it is an act, and how much of it is real.”
“An act?” She repeated, still trying to make sense of his claim that she’d been unconsciously suggesting they become intimate.
“You are so good at this,” he said with a slow shake of his head, pushing away from the railing and moving towards her. “You simper and smile and seem like such an innocent. No wonder he fell for you.”
“Is that your way of saying you’re falling for me?”
He let out a sharp bark, instantly dismissive. “I do not ‘fall’ for women.”
“You just sleep with them,” she supplied, with disapproval.
“Yes.”
Her heart gave a strange, twisting ache, and she turned away, her breath uneven, and breasts aching.
“Perhaps we are very similar in this regard. Perhaps your act is to make men care about you, to smile and bat your long eyelashes, until they are too beguiled to notice that you are accepting offers of holidays to private islands and large lump sum endowments.”
It was like being doused in frosty ice water.
“I didn’t ask for any of that.”
“I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it.” His hands curved around her hips from behind, surprising her, and a moment later, he was moving them to rotate her back to facing him. “But here you are, on my yacht, and I can’t help but wonder, if you hadn’t met him, would you be looking at me, trying to catch me?”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “For your yacht?” She muttered, tears stinging her eyes. “You’d better believe I’m worth more than that.”
His smile was cool; his hands were warm, and as he stroked her sides, fireworks erupted through her body. “Not just for my yacht.” One hand left her side, lifting to her chin, to angle her face to his. “There’d be this, as well.”
His kiss was soft, a gentle exploration, as if probing her to see if this was something he could do, could imagine. Kisses, she realized, meant nothing to Anastasios. Where sex was a line he couldn’t ever cross, because he imagined she’d slept with his father, he clearly had no problem kissing her until she was incandescent with longing. The problem Phoebe faced was that as soon as he kissed her, common sense went out the window. Rational thought was gone, too.
“Is this how it works, Phoebe? Lunch, once a week, extravagant gifts and holidays. And in exchange, your beautiful body, and the pretense of your total adoration?” He broke the kiss just long enough to press the words to her lips, and damn it, she had no shield for such cruelty, despite what she’d endured—they fired as arrows, straight into her heart.
Sadness flooded her, dousing desire.
She pulled away with no difficulty.
“Nothing about what I shared with your father was an act.” She sniffed, tilting her face from his. “And if you would like to know why, I’ll give you the easy answer: he was ten times the man you’ll ever be. Never, in a million years, would he speak to a woman as you have me.”