Xenakis's Convenient Bride(6)

The shirt was imprinted with a subtle design of the Greek flag in  stripes of white against the blue of the shirt, which was something he  might have chosen for himself if he wore T-shirts with logos.

"I expected 'Greece' is the word."

"I almost got the one that said 'Made on Mount Olympus,' but, you know, why state the obvious?"

"Careful, Calli. That sounds like you find me attractive." He shrugged  on the shirt, telling himself it was his competitive nature that made  him provoke her. Pursue her. She was a nanny, for God's sake. One who  was snobbishly turning down the pool boy. That made her an amusing  distraction, not someone worth obsessing about.

"Keep telling yourself that." She turned to reach for her helmet.

"You are telling me." He caught her arm, waiting for her gaze to flash  up to his. "Every time you look at me." He demonstrated by taking her  other arm and gently pressing her elbows back, giving her plenty of  opportunity to recoil, but she didn't, not even when her breasts nudged  his chest.

She caught her breath and set tense fingers on the sides of his rib  cage, even notched her chin in a signal of defiance, but she didn't tell  him to stop. A fine quiver made her lashes tremble. Her pulse fluttered  in her throat and she searched his gaze for his intention, but she  wasn't afraid. She was excited.

She was daring him.

This was why he was obsessing. A primitive, powerful hunger rose in him, answering the siren song she was singing.

"I know the signs of desire in a woman." He looked down at where her  nipples were hard beneath the soft cups of her bra. He wanted to bite at  them through the fabric. "They're painted all over you. Just as I'm  sure you felt me hard against your ass the entire ride down here. We  react to each other. Why fight it?"

He was hard again, steely and aching as he watched her lips part. His  ears buzzed, awaiting her words, but she only let panting breaths  whisper between them.         

     



 

The compulsion to plunder her mouth nearly undid him, but he tasted the  side of her neck first, liking the tiny cry of surprise that escaped her  as he ran his hot tongue over salty skin that smelled of coconut and  lavender. He delicately sucked, then nibbled his way up her neck. She  melted with each incremental bite of his lips against her skin.

By the time he got to her mouth, she was making a delicious noise of  helplessness, leaning her body into his, breasts pressing in soft  cushions against his chest. Her lips were as plump and responsive as any  he'd ever tasted. More. He was starving. Rapacious. She'd been driving  him crazy, invading his dreams every night and now, finally, she was  his.

Releasing her arms, he let one hand trail down to cup her ass and draw  her soft belly into the ache pulsing between his thighs. His other hand  went into her hair, tugging to pull her head back so he could feast on  her throat again, loving the way it made her knees weaken so she twined  her arms around his neck and hung helplessly against him, mons pushed  against his straining erection.

He wanted to back her into the shade and take her against the wall of  the clinic, but he could hear a car crunching on the gravel as it  entered the lot behind them. He forced himself to lift his head and  waited for her heavy eyelids to blink open, for her honey-gold eyes to  focus.

"Did you want to make another remark about my finances now, to put me in  my place?" He kept his tone light, but he never let anyone get away  with insulting him. Screw Sebastien's challenge. He was still a man and  he wasn't a weak one.

She paled beneath her golden tan and pushed out of his arms, gaze  dropping with shame. "This was a punishment? Well, didn't you teach me."

The scrape of bitterness in her tone dug like talons into his gut. She  covered her glossy black hair with the helmet, avoiding his gaze, but he  could see her thick lashes moving in rapid blinks.

He was used to sophisticated women who made the most of their attraction  and offered themselves without ceremony. Lately, since his  grandfather's wish that he marry had become known, there had been an  even bigger frenzy of pretty piranhas circling and luring, promising any  carnal act he requested if he would only put a ring on a finger.

This one stood before him with her bare, fraught expression and mouth  still pouted by their kiss, wearing an unassuming wardrobe over a body  that looked fit from sporty exercise, rather than sculpted by starving  herself and bankrolling a plastic surgeon. When she had kissed him back,  it hadn't been the toying provocation of a woman trying to lead a man  by his organ. She'd been hot and wanton, completely swept away-as he had  almost been.

He put his hand on her flat stomach, urging her to pause and look at him. "I kissed you because I wanted to."

"You kissed me because you thought you were entitled to." She snapped  the buckle under her chin. "I knew what kind of man you were the day we  met." She grasped his finger, disdainfully peeling his hand away from  her abdomen and discarding it. "I forgot once, but I won't make that  mistake again."

"American?" The contempt curling her lips went into him like a blade,  even sharper than the first time. "Not Greek enough for you?"

"A tomcat. Here for a good time, not a long time."



Calli caught sight of a car, not her mother's, but close enough to make  her take the opposite direction out of town, not wanting to pass her  father's end again.

Besides, she found the southern end of the island more peaceful.  Fishermen launched their small boats and grape growers eked out a living  from the dry, rocky land. It was very desolate, but also very Greek. It  was home.

She loved this island. She had stayed after her father threw her out for  many reasons, money being the big one, at least at first. She hadn't  had the means to get off the island, let alone to New York, and hadn't  wanted to be exiled from her home along with losing everything else.

She hadn't wanted to leave until she could go to America, but no matter  how she tried, those goalposts kept moving. Takis had even tried to help  her, but that had fallen apart. Meanwhile, he gave her a better job  than anyone with her limited skill set could expect. The longer she  stayed, the deeper her ties to him and Ophelia grew, rooting her here  even more.

Staying had been a statement of defiance, too, as much as a lack of  choice. Her father thought she had shamed him? So be it. She had stayed  and lived in what appeared to be flagrant sin with a man much older than  herself, continuing to shame him. He deserved to feel ashamed. She  would never forget what he had done to her and her son. She wanted him  to know it.         

     



 

But soon she would have to say goodbye and make her way to New York. Once Ophelia left, Calli planned to leave, too.

She was terrified.

"He's in a better place," her mother had said, two days after Dorian was  gone, when Calli had caught up to her at one of her cleaning jobs.

"Stop saying that! He's not dead."

Her father could shout that lie until he was blue in the face, but Calli  knew. Brandon's parents had offered her money to hand over the baby,  claiming they had a nice family who would raise him to their standards,  but she had to give up all claim to him. She had refused.

Then suddenly Dorian was gone and she knew, didn't have proof but she  knew her father had taken the money and sold her son to them.

"Why are you doing this?" she had cried at her mother. "Why are you  letting him get away with it?" It was more frankness than had ever  passed between them, so many things always left unsaid to keep the  peace.

"Look at you!" Her mother had turned on her with uncharacteristic  sharpness. "You're a child. One turned willful and wild. What kind of  mother would you make? And you want to bring up your baby in this?"  She'd showed no pity as she waved at Calli's swollen eye and cut lip,  the bruises on her shoulders and back, the dirt clinging to her clothes  and hair from sleeping on the beach.

It was true she didn't want her son raised under the heavy hand of a  hard, angry man like her father. She had learned an even uglier rage  lived in him than she had ever feared or imagined.

"I'm going after him," she had declared.

"Don't. Those are powerful people, Calli. They can offer more, but they can take more. He is in a better place. Accept it."

"What kind of mother are you to say that to me?" Calli had ducked the  scrub brush that came flying at her, then had run out of the house to  avoid a fresh beating on top of the one still throbbing black-and-blue  under her skin.

She had numbly retraced this long stretch of ragged coastline on foot  after leaving that stranger's house, fighting her mother's words. Calli  had been a good mother, for the short time she'd been allowed to try.

But she'd been young enough to still put stock in the words of those who  were older, those who seemed to know better. As she was forced into  more and more desperate decisions simply to stay alive, she had started  to wonder if her mother wasn't right. She was a terrible person. Not fit  to be a mother.