Chapter Eight
WILLA WOKE FIRST.
For a moment, she didn’t know why. And then she heard it. Faint, but imperative, buzzing somewhere in the room.
An alarm? No, a phone. Her phone? No, her phone was downstairs, somewhere. Whereas she was upstairs, in bed with Ares.
Her cheeks burned as she repeated that to herself. She was here, in bed with Ares. He was next to her, his dark head beside hers on the pillow, his arm curving possessively across her waist.
She had forgotten to close the shutters fully, and breathing out unsteadily she lay in the soft, morning light, working through all the possible interpretations of this new state of affairs, and then he was shifting against her, his eyelashes fluttering open.
Her stomach tensed, half expecting to see regret in his grey eyes, but instead she saw confusion, then desire.
And she couldn’t help herself, she couldn’t stop the smile from pulling at her mouth as his hard body spooned around hers just as if they were the married couple he’d suggested they become.
‘You feel wonderful,’ he murmured against her throat, and he pressed closer, and she felt his cock twitch against the cushion of her bottom.
And then he was tugging her round, and his mouth found hers at the same time as the slightly roughened pad of his thumb found her already-hard nipple and her breath hitching, she let her eyes drift shut—
There it was again—
Her eyes snapped open as the buzzing sound echoed around the room, punctuating the soft thundering of her heartbeat, and gritting her teeth, she broke the kiss.
‘I think that’s your phone.’
His mouth was seeking hers again.
‘They can wait.’
‘It might be important. I heard it a minute ago too.’
Abruptly the ringing stopped. And then it started again.
He groaned, a V forming on his forehead. ‘It’ll be Ariana. She’s probably in bed, bored, and she’s forgotten the time difference. She can be very demanding.’
‘Family trait?’ she said softly.
He rolled away from her, then stopped, rolled back and kissed her hungrily, and she knew that it was stupid, she was being stupid and reckless letting her body open to his so easily, but he was so hard to resist. Even more so now after last night.
She felt a pang as he pulled away again, and then her pulse shivered as he stood up and she stared at the glory of his nakedness.
His cock was not fully erect, but it stood starkly proud of his body.
Her mouth felt suddenly dry. He was utterly gorgeous.
Muscular but not overdeveloped like some comic-book hero.
Just lean and hard and toned, and with all that tempting, smooth golden skin.
‘You’re making it very hard for me to concentrate,’ he said huskily.
He was searching through the clothes they had stripped from one another as they made their way across the bedroom, but now he turned to face her, and her pulse stuttered as his eyes met hers and she saw the breadth of his pupils.
‘Do you want me to help?’
She sat up, letting the sheet fall away from her body, feeling her skin tingle as his eyes narrowed on her breasts.
‘I think you know that isn’t helping,’ he said hoarsely, and she felt her nipples tighten again and a thrill of power as his cock stiffened. ‘Skatá. Where is my phone?’
Willa caught a flash of light from across the room. ‘It’s over there, under the armchair. It must have dropped out when we were getting undressed.’
Falling back against the pillows, she pressed her thighs together as she remembered the feel of his hands as he’d unpeeled her clothes from her body.
The sex was different last night. He had been different last night.
Before there was intensity to his lovemaking, a gentleness, too, that second time out in the olive grove.
But until last night he had never let down his guard.
Ares had found his phone, and she watched him answer. As he started speaking rapidly in Greek, her heart twisted.
At first, when he’d walked off and left her sitting alone on the terrace, she’d felt relieved. His marriage proposal—although, it had felt more like an assumption of marriage than a proposal—was so unexpected it had thrown her off balance.
But it was nowhere near as unbalancing as what had come next.
She had followed him down the beach, spurred on by frustration and fury at the cruel and disdainful economy of his accusations.
Her hands were shaking as she walked, her breath too.
She’d lost sight of him a couple of times, but she didn’t need to see him.
She could find him wearing a blindfold. His body pulling her to him by magnetic force or maybe something less scientific.
And then she had seen him sitting on the sand, his head bowed over his hands.
He’d looked lost, and in pain.
He was both. And it hurt to know, to see, to feel his pain.
No wonder he had been so easily convinced that she was playing him.
She could imagine how he must have felt finding her engagement ring like that.
The shock. The repeated sense of betrayal.
For a man like Ares, so certain, so proud, so beautiful, it would have been less of a shock than an earthquake shaking the foundations of his world, his identity.
And of course, that initial revelation was only the start. Afterwards, you had to react, to continue living even though you were bloodied and blinded by pain. She had focused her energies on work. Ares had tried to go through with his wedding.
Because he still loved Zoe?
Her fingers tightened around the sheet. It suddenly hurt to breathe.
It was another reason why she couldn’t marry Ares.
Or maybe it was the same reason as not wanting to be his burden but just looked at from a slightly different angle.
She had lived her life feeling like an outsider.
Six months ago, that feeling had been explained, and she had left Santa Catalina rather than live a life of pretence.
But if she married Ares, knowing he loved Zoe, she would simply replace one set of lies for another.
And spend every day being reminded that she was not entitled to love, just a duty of care.
Of course, Ares hadn’t said he loved Zoe.
Probably he couldn’t or wouldn’t admit that out loud to Willa, so he transferred the emotion to his parents.
But why else had he shouldered the burden of guilt?
He could have thrown Zoe to the wolves. He’d had every right to do so.
But instead, he had taken the blame. He had let the world, his parents, his family think he was a commitment-phobe, a heartbreaker who left women at the altar.
Of course it had backfired.
Lies always did.
They had unseen repercussions that crossed time and oceans, rippling outwards, on and on, multiplying and swallowing up everything in their path.
And the only way to escape was the hardest to take: to tell the truth.
It sounded so simple. Something you would say to a small child.
But some truths were just too destructive, too toxic to inflict on others.
It was why opening Pandora’s box was rarely given a positive spin.
Sometimes it was better for everyone to keep the lid tightly shut.
‘S’agapó, ta léme.’
Ares tossed his phone onto the armchair, tension visible in every line of his superb body.
She wanted to ask him why. It was the kind of thing you did as a couple. But were they a couple? They were having sex and sharing a bed, and he had sort of proposed but—
‘Problem?’
He glanced down at her, his shoulders filling the room. He seemed to have forgotten he was naked, or perhaps he didn’t care. Which was understandable, given that his body was nothing short of miraculous.
‘It’s Ariana.’
He wasn’t upset. Not hurt. Just angry. Her stomach lurched sideways with panic. ‘She hasn’t got married, has she?’
‘What? No.’ He shook his head. ‘Thankfully, even my sister is not that impulsive. She is, however, back in Greece.’
Willa frowned. ‘I thought you texted her yesterday. Wasn’t she in Mexico then?’
‘She was. But when I asked if she could talk to you, she thought it would be better to do it in person. She flew out of Oaxaca yesterday afternoon and arrived back in Athens about a half an hour ago. She wants to meet around four.’
‘Won’t she be feeling a little jet-lagged?’
‘My sister is a seasoned traveller. She’ll have slept on the flight. But we don’t have to do it today. Ariana is used to having my attention, but if you want to do it tomorrow or the day after—’
Tomorrow? The day after?
The lump in her throat was back. She had been here before on a different island, in a different sea, living a different fantasy. But you couldn’t fight reality. The day after was a fantasy.
Of course, that wasn’t to say she wouldn’t miss all of this. Not the luxury. That was great, but she had grown up with wealth. Admittedly, not this level of wealth, but she knew the downsides.
By all of this, she meant Ares.
It wasn’t just that the sex was transformative. She had meant what she’d said on the beach. He was a good man. Determined and loyal and kind. And brave. It would have cost him to reveal something so shaming as Zoe’s infidelity. She knew because she couldn’t reveal her shame.
She couldn’t bear for him to see the real Willa.
The daughter of a woman who had gotten pregnant by her lover and told her husband he was the father.
It sounded so overwrought and melodramatic using language like that.
And maybe it was. It was also one step removed from her, but once Ares knew, he could never unknow the truth.
She couldn’t bear to be just another heavy burden to another good man. And what else could she be?
Her stomach cramped as she remembered Robert’s face. It had been a word cloud of bad feelings. Shame. Sadness. Hurt. Regret.
So why ruin things with Ares? She was in a good place with him. It would never get any better than this.
Now though, she needed to face up to reality.