Chapter Two #3
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 was wrong with her?
“What the hell are you doing?” he growled at her, and it felt, uncomfortably, as if he was reading her mind.
That same breathless, dizzy feeling surged through her.
“Yes,” she managed to say, the same way she had all night. “Thank you. I’m sure we’ll be very happy together. Is that what you want to hear?”
She could see his face too clearly, though the night pressed in all around. It was that moonlight pouring over him, making it impossible to look away, obsidian covered in silver. And so she saw the look that moved over his face.
It felt like fire when it echoed inside of her.
“What game is this?” he gritted out.
“It’s not a game,” she replied. Something in the way he looked at her, as if betrayed, made her want to shiver, though it felt more like exhilaration than anything else. “It’s an engagement party.”
He said a word that didn’t make sense. Saskia .
And Selwen realized, then, that he had spoken to her in English though he was very clearly Greek.
Maybe everybody knew that Pavlos Zacharias’s new fiancée was English.
Or spoke English, anyway. She couldn’t really speak to her nationality.
It said she was Welsh on her passport—or that she had been born there, anyway.
She didn’t like to think how Ffion had gone about getting her one of those, mostly by leaning on her long relationship with the officials in the little town, who Ffion had minded when they were children.
Best not to ask, her friend had said when she’d presented the passport. So she hadn’t.
“Come out of the water,” the man ordered her.
And the oddest thing was, she did.
Not only that, she wanted to obey him. She felt it move all over her, molten hot and sweet, as if her whole body was shivering into a different level of awareness—
Though this made no sense.
Just as it made no sense that she could feel that shivering deep between her legs, like a heartbeat all its own.
She moved toward him because she couldn’t seem to talk herself out of it. When she stood before him, her bare feet in the sand, she thought he would… do something. Grab her, maybe. Say something. Anything.
There was something almost exultant inside of her, as if she wanted all of the above. As if she just wanted him to—
But instead, he reached over and wrapped her hair around his fingers. He didn’t tug on it as she half expected, instead, he lifted those fingers to his nose with the hair wrapped round and inhaled.
Selwen watched as his eyes went unfocused. She watched his nostrils flare. And she was close enough that she heard that low, growling noise he made.
She felt it in that pulsing, hot place between her legs.
And she was transfixed as he leaned closer and took another deep breath, as if he was trying to inhale her skin.
She really shouldn’t have been allowing this. She didn’t know what this was, but it clearly wasn’t all right. She needed to say something.
But she didn’t.
He took another breath. He made another growling noise.
Between her legs, that shivering pulse got deeper. Lusher, somehow.
“I really—” she began.
But his hand shot out, and wrapped itself around the line of her jaw and her cheek. He hissed in a breath, a lot like he felt that same wild spark that jumped in her, too.
A spark that too quickly began to blaze.
“How is this possible?” he whispered. “How can this be?”
She didn’t know what he meant and she wasn’t even sure he was speaking to her, but his hand seemed to fit there, against her face.
It was like she was being electrocuted. That odd sensation poured through her, lighting her up until she felt as if she was being filled up from the inside out with too much sunshine to bear.
“Where have you been?” he gritted out, a stark demand. “Where the hell have you been?”
And then, impossibly, he bent his head to hers, and claimed her mouth with his.
Selwen had never been kissed. She couldn’t remember it. Either way, she had to believe that the anodyne impression she had of what kissing was couldn’t possibly be anything like this thing that he was doing.
This bold, brilliant, impossible storm between them.
She could feel everything that he was doing, the way he angled his mouth against hers, the side of his tongue, the press of his lips. He kissed her like he knew her, like he’d kissed her just like this a thousand times before.
He kissed her like she was his.
He kissed her and more astonishingly, she kissed him back, and when she felt his hands move down the length of her torso she leaned in closer to get more of that friction, that pressure.
Selwen thought she would do anything to keep feeling just like this.
She leaned in and his hand was beneath her dress.
She felt that lick of hard heat along her thigh and her body was doing things all on its own, leaning back, arching into him, like she was welcoming him home.
Then his hand was between her legs, and still he was kissing her and kissing her, and she was making noises she had never heard before, not from her—
“Saskia,” he said, his mouth against hers, “damn you, I thought you were dead.”
And when the storm broke over his hard hand and the way she clamped down to keep it where it was, she broke with it.