Page 31 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
A familiar fire now, though she hadn’t understood why it had affected her the way it had then.
Still, she’d been on that beach when he’d kissed her, and he certainly hadn’t done it because of her personality, had he? He’d been kissing a memory. She had too, little as she’d realized it at the time.
So really, if she looked at it that way, they were back to square one.
The same square one that had put her on that fateful train.
The car pulled up to the private entrance of the lovely building in Chelsea, tucked away on a wide street within walking distance of the King’s Road, that she knew all too well.
But his driver left nothing to chance. He didn’t wait to see if she could find her way to the place where she’d lived for two years. He guided her inside, up the private stair to the old flat, and when she walked inside Saskia was surprised to find the place smelled exactly the same as she remembered it. No mustiness to indicate that it had sat just like this for five years.
Everything was exactly as she’d left it when she’d raced out the door that night, making sure to slam it with all her might behind her.
Suddenly she found that she wasn’t breathing all that well after all.
Saskia swallowed hard. She walked further inside, not even tossing her bag on the table in the foyer the way she always had when she’d lived here, because she couldn’t quite believe that this was happening.
And when she made it into the lounge, she found Thanasis standing there, waiting.
For a moment, they simply stood still on opposites sides of the room, their gazes locked together.
Saskia wanted to sob. She wanted to bawl her eyes out, sink down to her knees, and let all of the emotion that was charging around inside of her release at last.
She wanted to hold tight to Selwen and her memories of Ffion. She wanted to tell Thanasis everything that had happened since the last time she’d seen him as herself. She wanted to run to him, she wanted to run away, and she remembered everything now—
But she’d forgotten how itfelt.
To be around him like this, fully aware that she loved himso muchand so disastrously.
She had forgotten that it was possible to love like this.It’s like a cancer,she had shouted at him that last night.Every day, it takes over more of me, and what will be left, Thanasis? What will become of me when there’s nothing ofmeremaining?
You know perfectly well I don’t want that,he had replied, calmly, because he’d been playing the part of the rational, reasonable man that night.
A role they both knew he could not always claim.
You don’t know what you want,she had thrown at him.And in the meantime, while you flutter about in indecision, I amdying.
The only deaths you suffer are the little ones, Thanasis had retorted, moving closer to her right here in this room. He’d gotten his hands on her and they’d both sighed a little, because that always led to the same place.Over and over and over again,fos mou.And yet you complain?
I knew that you could make me come the moment I met you,she’d told him, tipping her chin up and perfectly happy to staybelligerent.What I didn’t know was whether a man like you could love anything.Then she’d leaned in close and bared her teeth at him.I still don’t.
He had responded to that in typical fashion, right there on the soft rug that covered part of the polished wood floor. If she let herself think too closely about it, she could still feel the aftereffects of that wild claiming, charging through her. Making her feel, as always, that she would fight and kill and die to keep hold of this man no matter what he did or didn’t do in return.
That was exactly why she left.
Standing here now, across from him in this hushed room filled with so many memories, she could see that he was remembering the exact same thing.
“Welcome home,” he said, in that low voice that never failed to take up residence in her bones.
She wanted to rip into him. She wanted to paint that archangel’s face of his. She wanted to toss herself into the air with the full knowledge that he would catch her when gravity took hold.
God, the things she wanted. She thought they might tear her apart.
“I apologize, Selwen,” he said after a moment, when all she did was stare back at him, her heart a rampaging beast inside her chest. “I forget that you would not remember having lived here.”
Saskia opened up her mouth to tell him that it was fine, that she did remember, that she was finally herself again now. Not Selwen. Not that poor waif of a Welsh girl who, if she had to guess, she would have said had been unknowingly grieving this.Him.
Not because he had been terrible to her, because it wasn’t as simple as that. But because that much love had nowhere to go. That was why it had sat in her like grief for five whole years.
