Chapter Seven #3
He leaned against the doorjamb, his dark eyes moving all over her, and he seemed to be in no hurry to conceal the fact that he was doing that. “You wanted to leave there in a hurry. And I’m guessing that he did not offer you any transportation options. Does that mean that the engagement is off?”
“As far as I’m concerned, it is.” She pursed her lips, trying to decide how to go about talking about this. “You warned me. I didn’t believe you. But it seemed that the longer we were engaged, the more he seemed to forget all of the things that we’d agreed on.”
“My father has never met a boundary that he did not try to crash through at the first opportunity,” Thanasis said. “I’m only sorry that you had to experience this yourself.”
“You’re not sorry at all. You’re the one who told me what would happen.”
“I told you what I thought would happen, yes. I’m sorry you had to experience it.”
Standing this close to the very bed where they had worked out entirely too many issues in their relationship, over and over again and yet had never solved a thing, was not doing anything good for Saskia’s head.
It felt like she was lost between the past and the present, and the only real thing was him—
But she knew where that led.
She threw open the door to the terrace and stepped out, pleased that it was still raining.
She could stand in the glass enclosure, ignoring the cozy couches and chaises that she also knew entirely too well, and watch the drops that hit the glass and the patterns they made.
Back in the day, she’d painted those patterns.
Thanasis came up behind her, but he didn’t put his hands on her. He moved to stand beside her instead, clasping his hands behind his back as he too gazed out at the rain. At the buildings across the way, bright white even on such a gloomy day.
“There isn’t much rain in Greece,” Saskia found herself saying when, surely, she hadn’t meant to speak. “Or anyway, I didn’t see much rain while I was there. I believe I actually missed it.”
“The sun can make up for a lot of sins,” Thanasis said, in what sounded like agreement. “But not all.”
He was so close. Even when she hadn’t known who he was to her, she had felt this compulsion between them.
She had felt it the moment he’d stepped into the villa.
He had done nothing to draw attention to himself and yet she’d found him there immediately, standing in the doorway as if he’d called her specifically.
Here, in this flat where they had built a life together, she could feel all of their history pressing in and yet still, none of that was as magnetic as he was.
She had never been any good at resisting him.
Please, she chided herself. You never tried.
It caused her actual, physical pain not to close the distance between them. She wanted more than anything to simply turn to him as she always would have in the past. Press herself into his side, slide her arms around his waist, anything.
She had only felt safe and whole right here, in his arms.
And she supposed that she ought to feel terribly sad that nothing had changed. That she had spent five years forgetting he existed, completely unaware of him or this place or the years that they’d spent together, and it was still the same.
She could feel her body changing when it was near him. She could feel herself ripening, softening, readying herself for any part of him he might wish to give her.
Saskia could feel herself heating up, from the inside out, and there was nothing the least bit sad about it.
“The flat is yours,” he told her. Briskly, she thought. She had to think that meant she was getting to him, too. “Stay here as long as you like.”
She studied him, though she could only do it from the corner of her eye or he would see it.
From this angle, she had that particular view of his perfect jawline she had sometimes thought was responsible, entirely, for her inability to stay angry at him.
Then there was the sooty brush of his lashes, far too long for a man, but they only made him seem hotter, somehow.
More dangerously ruthless.
This close to him, she was sure that she could almost smell him. If she leaned closer, she would surely be able to catch those hints of his scent that had used to drive her wild. Something spicy. A hint of citrus. The kind of musk that could as easily be vetiver or simply… him .
“That’s very kind. You have already done too much.” She sounded wooden. Probably because she felt wooden, because really, why was she letting this go on? She had returned to him. She could put her hands on him and tell him she remembered.
That she remembered everything.
Yet Saskia knew that if she did, he would be inside her almost before the words left her mouth. She knew that if she told him, all the dams would break and it would be a mad rush and she had no idea if they would ever come up for air again.
She wanted that so badly she could taste it.
But she still didn’t say anything.
“You took nothing with you when you left.” He turned toward her, that dark gaze something like assessing as it moved over her face.
“I told you that already. What that means, however, is that all of your things are here. The closets are filled with your clothes. The study is filled with your books. And any trinkets you might see in this flat are entirely yours, picked up by you, sometimes with me and sometimes without. I will not taint that by telling you which is which.”
“I can’t possibly wear the clothes of another woman,” she said, severely, because apparently she was really committing to this thing.
“Then you’re more than welcome to open up your wallet, which you left right there on the bedside table, and help yourself to any of the numerous credit cards you find in there. Buy yourself a whole new wardrobe, Sas—” He caught himself. “ Selwen. It is all yours. Do as you wish.”
She wanted to cry, so she made herself huff a little bit instead. “I’m sure that I don’t need that kind of charity. I’m sure that I don’t—”
He leaned in, and there was something so stark on his face that it made her think that she really was going to cry, right then and there. And once she started, how would she stop?
“Selwen. You have no one in this world save for me. And I’m sorry for you, I am.
But that does not change your circumstances.
You have already told me what you think of me.
” His mouth curved into something too bitter to be a smile.
“At length. And I am hoping that removing you from my father’s clutches will go some way toward repairing that image you hold.
But even if it doesn’t, none of this matters to me without Saskia.
You don’t have to remember her to be her.
” His dark eyes were on her, all heat and longing, loss and grief. “All of this is yours. It always was.”
“But—” she began.
And he reached over and put his finger on her lips.
Shushing her, she was aware.
But she was also aware of that great roar of fire that burned like a furnace deep within her. The way every part of her changed, and began to hum in that awareness. That reaction.
She saw twin flames of that same fire in his gaze.
And she was as sure as she could be without being inside his head that he could see it on her, too.
“I didn’t bring you here to make things worse,” he told her, though his voice was too low. The edge in it too deliciously rough. “And I won’t. Suffering my presence doesn’t go along with living here, Selwen. I promise you.”
And it was a good thing that he had his finger over her lips, because otherwise she might have been tempted to tell him that suffering his presence wasn’t what she was after at all. Everything inside of her was a mess, but one thing was clear.
It was impossible not to want him.
“If you need anything, you have the number to my personal mobile,” he told her, his voice gravelly.
He took his finger away and she felt her lips part of their own accord, though she didn’t really think she was breathing.
She wasn’t sure she could.
For a moment, they stood there, the rain beating against the glass as they made their own heat, and that fire between them that seemed to blaze higher and higher by the second—
And she really thought that with their faces so close, he could easily, simply, bend his head and—
But he didn’t.
Thanasis simply looked at her like he had that same complicated ache inside him, and then he left her there.
All alone in this flat, as if the five years and whole other lives that had separated them had never happened at all.