Page 16 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
Today he was dressed more casually. Still in black, she noticed, and she approved becauseshecertainly felt like some level of mourning was called for. This morning it was a black T-shirt over a pair of casual trousers in the same onyx shade. He was not wearing shoes. He looked wildly, impossibly Greek, all that black hair and those impossibly dark eyes.
And he still looked at her in that same hot, insolent manner.
He was a fallen angel. There was no doubt about it. Selwen could think of no other explanation for how compelling he was, how breathtaking, when she knew exactly how dangerous he really was.
In the sunshine, the shocking beauty of his features was even more unpalatable than she’d recalled in the dark of her bedchamber. It was like her eyes rejected what she was seeing, out here in all this tumbling sunshine, because it didn’t make sense. It shouldn’t have been possible. How could he be very nearlypretty,yet so ruthlessly masculine that she could feelthe adrenaline inside her become a long, slow shiver. And then that shiver wound its way down between her legs, there where she stood before him, and bloomed—insistently—into a soft yet pressing heat.
“You owe me an apology,” she told him, because she was afraid that if she didn’t speak, she would simply…melt.
“I cannot imagine for what.”
He did not sound apologetic. He was lounging there in a chair, a laptop closed beside him on a small table. She felt unwieldy and strange in her own body and so made a small production of looking behind her, like she thought he must be staring at someone else.
But it wasn’t helpful. When she turned back, Thanasis merely lifted a dark brow.
And she now understood that he had seen her coming from a long way off. Something about that made that shivering heat inside her glow all the brighter.
“I decided not to tell your father what you did,” she said, though she had actually come to no such conclusion. She didn’t even know where those words came from. They simply exited her mouth without warning and then she was standing there, arms crossed and chin tilted up—belligerently, she could feel it—as she regarded this man before her.
Her beautiful nemesis.
“What makes you think that I didn’t tell him myself?” he replied, almost carelessly.
All of Selwen’s breath left her, as if he’d punched her, hard, in the stomach. She heard it go out of her in a rush, and the world spun a little, and then he was moving. He rose from his seat with an unnerving display of speed and grace and she didn’t know what he meant to do—
But she didn’t resist as he guided her up and onto his porch with him, then sat her down in the chair facing his.
When she could breathe again, Selwen found herself noticeably profoundly disappointed that guiding her to a seat was all he’d done.
And didn’t that tell her harsh truths about herself she didn’t wish to know?
“I didn’t tell him anything,” Thanasis told her after another moment—long or short, she couldn’t tell, because she was lost in that dark gaze. And now his voice seemed to match. “I only told him that I intended to stay here a while. And I do, Saskia. You and I have some history to work out.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” When his eyes flashed, she thought he might say something else, so she hurried on. “I don’t have any history. That’s the thing. There’s nothing to talk about.”
Thanasis regarded her for a long moment. She had the same feeling she’d had in the grand hall the other night, and then again on the beach. It was the disconcerting notion that he could see straight through her, when she couldn’t even see into herself. It was more than simply disconcerting. It made her skin feel like it no longer fit. It made her want to jump to her feet. Explode.
Run.
“I can see that you don’t remember me,” he said, in a voice that was too low. Too even. Selwen got the distinct impression that the words cost him. But she didn’t want to think about the possibility that this was hard forhim.
It made something inside her turn over, uncomfortably.
“You’re right,” she said quietly, and not quite as evenly. “I don’t.”
But that wasn’t the truth. Not precisely. She didn’t remember him, that was true. But she had spent the past two days lying in her bed in the gloom of the closed shades, staring at her ceiling and wondering if that thing she’d recognized in Pavlos from the start…was Thanasis.
Every time she’d thought such a thing she’d backed away from it, and quickly, because it seemed to settle in her so strangely. It had made her feel wired and odd and like she might, at any moment, break into pieces.
The trouble was, she’d been waiting forsomeoneto recognize her for years. She and Ffion had talked about the possibility of this, again and again, from the start.
The past has a way of turning up, this I promise you,her old friend had said.Sooner or later, you must expect that someone will know something about you, whether you can remember it or not.
Maybe I don’t want to remember,Selwen had said.
Ffion had nodded.Then enjoy the stories you hear about a stranger, let them entertain you, and move on. This is how I treat stories from my youth anyway, and I imagine Icouldremember, if I fancied mucking about in all that ancient history.
Ffion had possessed the gift of always managing to make things better, even if nothing reallywasbetter.
