Page 8 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
He was sheer ruthlessness as he navigated his way through the crowd. She watched as whoever stepped up to talk to him fell away from him as if he’d struck them down with his gaze alone.
He was causing a commotion and it was clear he didn’t care and wasn’t trying.
When he moved closer, Selwen could see that his hair really was that black. His gaze was even blacker. He should have looked like a devil.
And she supposed he did, insofar as the devil was an angel fallen from grace.
Because this man terrified her. She could feel that terror inside her, like her own overheated blood. He was also the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.
She wanted to draw him. Sheachedto draw him. To capture, somehow, the powerful lines of his body, the power that seemed to emanate from him like a fact that no one dared deny, and the starkly sensual presentation of that face of his.
Selwen thought he would haunt her forever. She felt as if he already did.
All this, and he was looking at her with something like grief on that unbelievably perfect face of his, carved from stone and marble and yet very clearly made of flesh.
She had to look away from him then, because the announcement had been made. And Pavlos was standing besideher, accepting congratulations from his flock, none of whom looked as if they were actually all that happy for him.
They congratulated her, too, and she could see the sharp way they regarded her and was certain that if she didn’t pay closer attention, she might just get a talon in the back. More reason to not have parties like this, she thought.
“How extraordinary,” seethed a woman who she thought was his daughter, and who also seemed deadly. “To think of my father, marrying again after all this time. You do know, of course, that he treated his first wife shabbily. One mistress after the next, and never a care for her feelings.”
“Thank you,” Selwen murmured. “I’m sure we will be very happy.”
And for a while, she was lost in all these poisonous exchanges. The snide comments, the sharp little barbs. None of which felt particularly sweet, it had to be said, so she thought about her art instead.
She thought about that man’s astonishing, addictive face, and how she could use a charcoal to best exemplify the way those lines of his jaw—
“We must dance!” Pavlos cried from beside her.
He drew her out into the middle of the floor and then there was dancing, for a while. This was better than verbal barbs, by a long shot. Dancing was lovely, as it was always possible to drift off in the music and ignore everything else around her—though that wasn’t quite what happened. Not tonight. Not when, look though she might, Selwen couldn’t seem to find that younger man anywhere in the watching crowd.
After the dancing was done, and women who very clearly wanted to tear her hair out cooed over the ring that Pavlos had put on her finger, Selwen stole away the first moment she could and left Pavlos to his minions.
It had gotten late. She had been too anxious—excited,she had told herself repeatedly, though it hadn’t taken—to eat anything in the party. Her stomach grumbled as she moved through the maze that was this villa, winding her way around and around in what she thought was the right direction if she was headed to the kitchens.
But when she drew close, she realized her error. There was a party going on, after all. She was supposed to be the guest of honor, according to Pavlos, so she could hardly hide away in the kitchens and expect that none of his staff would rat her out.
She changed direction just in time, because she could hear footsteps approaching, and darted out the nearest door. Once outside, she breathed in deep as the soft Aegean air pressed in all around her.
It was cool tonight, but it felt marvelous against her skin after all that time in the ballroom. Too many people. Too much heat.
Selwen crossed her arms, wishing she’d thought to bring a wrap, but not enough to turn around and go find one. Instead, she followed the path that led away from the villa and out to the stairs carved into the hillside that led down to the beach. She could hear the sea. She could see the waves toss themselves against the sand and leave their lingering caresses on the way back.
She didn’t think. She didn’t glance behind her. She kicked off her notably impractical shoes and then she ran all the way to the bottom of the stairs. Then she crossed the beach, pulling up her dress to keep the hem safe, and stuck her feet in that gloriously warm sea, nothing at all like cold Watch House Bay.
All that before thinking to look around and see who else was there.
Because one moment she could have sworn she was alone with the moon and the waves.
And the next, when she turned, he was there.
The moonlight made him gleam, obsidian straight through, staring straight at her as if he wanted to eat her alive.
For a wild, wondrous, terrifying moment, she thought that she could think of nothing better than to sacrifice herself to this man’s appetites—
What waswrongwith her?
“What the hell are you doing?” he growled at her, and it felt, uncomfortably, as if he was reading her mind.
