Chapter One #2
‘Ares.’ She paused, fleetingly pleased with how steady she sounded. ‘I wasn’t aware you were in town.’
As if it weren’t more than two years since she’d last seen him. Since she’d walked out on their week-old marriage. The whirlwind romance they’d taken too far.
‘Obviously not.’
Her anger flared. Did he expect her to be at home pining after him? No matter that she’d been doing exactly that for too long to consider. As if he even cared.
That was the point. He’d never really, truly cared.
He’d deceived her. He was the one who had cheated.
Because it hadn’t been a romance for him.
It had been a calculated plan that ultimately had nothing to do with her.
She’d merely been the tool—the gullible fool who’d believed his seduction meant something.
‘Was it a disappointing date?’ The edge of his already sculpted jaw sharpened as a muscle tensed. ‘You didn’t invite him in.’
No. Ares Vasiliadis was the only man she’d ever invited ‘in’. But while he knew he’d been her first lover, he didn’t need to know he’d still been her only lover. He had nothing to do with her any more and had no right to pry into her personal life.
‘You were watching me?’ she queried coldly.
His mouth compressed.
Her suspicion flared. ‘The whole night?’
How was that possible? Why would he have? She was suddenly certain that her prickle of intuition had been bang on but he had no right to turn up late at night, unannounced and unexpected. Excitement battled with outrage. Why had he—what was he thinking?
She stepped towards him as outrage won and her anger roared. ‘It’s no business of yours who I spend my time with.’
‘No?’ He cocked his head and his slow smile was wolfish. ‘You think it’s not my business?’
‘Not at all.’ She tensed, knowing she was playing with fire because she recognised that flicker of emotion.
‘But of course it is,’ he said smoothly. ‘You are Bethan Vasiliadis, my errant wife.’
* * *
Ares shoved his hands into his pockets not just to hide his fists but to stop himself from grabbing her, pulling her close, pressing her against—
No. He would never do that ever again. Didn’t want to. He damned well did not want to.
They were done. They’d been done for years.
He braced, knowing his was the last face she’d ever wanted to see.
He was used to the barely masked loathing in her eyes.
It was a look he’d stonily stood before more times than he had dollars in the bank.
He drew on the cold rage that had fuelled him since he was thirteen years old and had been the unwanted illegitimate brat forced on his unfaithful father’s family, and stayed stock-still.
He would remain outwardly unmoved—always—in the face of rejection.
But seeing Bethan in person for the first time in for ever—he couldn’t stop staring.
His pocket Venus. How was she even more beautiful than he remembered?
Or was it just that he’d tried so hard not to remember that she’d always been a walking fertility symbol with her abundance of curves and softness and pouting lips that were made for him to possess—with his mouth, with his fingers, with his cock.
They were filthy, the fantasies that instantly flooded his mind.
What he’d do with her and her stunning mouth. Again. Now—
No. He would never do that ever again. Didn’t want to. He damned well did not want to.
‘I never completed the paperwork to take your name,’ she said sharply. ‘And I’m your ex-wife.’
Breathe in for four. Hold for four. Breathe out for four. Hold for four.
Box breathing, the doctor called it, to centre himself, calm the hell down when his pulse raced.
Not a heart condition, yet. Just needed to lower the stress levels.
Work a little less. Straighten out the kinks.
Bethan was definitely a kink. Actually, the impact of her was catastrophic.
Apparently she was still his physical weakness, not to mention his biggest mistake.
He’d made many mistakes over the years but none like the supreme mess that was the succulent woman before him.
He didn’t know why she did this to him. Why her?
Why only ever her? Well, he wasn’t succumbing to it this time.
Give him twenty-four hours and it would be over. For good.
‘Not good with paperwork, are you?’ he replied as patronisingly as possible because he knew she hated it. ‘Your legal name is indeed Bethan Vasiliadis. And in the eyes of the law you’re very much still my wife.’
His AWOL, soon-to-be ex, should have been ex a long time ago...wife.
He couldn’t hear for the pulse thundering in his ears as for the second time he uttered the word he’d not said in months and he sure as hell couldn’t count to four. His wife who’d been out with another man tonight. He gritted his teeth as bitterness burned the back of his throat. He did not care.
Bethan’s doe eyes widened and her full lips parted.
Surely she was not surprised? No way could she still claim to be na?ve.
Almost two and a half years ago he’d fallen for her sweet routine and while she mightn’t be as greedy, she was as untrustworthy as everyone in the ‘family’ he’d been encumbered with when forced to take the Vasiliadis name himself. She’d bailed the second she could.
‘No,’ she muttered fiercely.
None of this evening’s events should bother him.
He should be pleased she’d been out on a date.
It would make their impending divorce even easier.
But he hated it and hated himself more for hating it and to stop himself tumbling into a stormy vortex he needed to wrest back control over something. Anything. Ideally her.
Yes, that thought hit him satisfyingly hard.
Right now he wanted her to pay for the hellish evening she’d put him through.
For the months—years—of hell she’d put him through.
For her being as bloody bewitching as ever.
But most of all for the fact that she was defying him once more.
But Bethan Eagle—Bethan Vasiliadis—wasn’t avoiding this moment a minute longer.
His rage had been roiling all day. He’d arrived at her poky flat just as she was walking out of it and into a waiting car.
He’d followed on auto. Where was she going, dressed like that?
Back when he’d first met her she’d barely worn any make-up but tonight she’d perfectly applied shading to make her eyes sparkle more, her lips even redder.
Had that effort been for herself or for someone else? Someone who wasn’t him.
She’d walked into a restaurant. Ares had had his driver idle so he could see into the window.
From the car he’d watched her scan the room, then smile as a man had stood.
The jerk couldn’t drag his eyes from her as she’d joined him.
Two hours of torture had followed as Ares watched and waited.
His driver probably thought he was mad. He didn’t care.
They’d been seated at a table in the front window so the entire date had been visible.
He wasn’t being a stalker, he merely needed to speak to his ex about completing their damned paperwork.
But watching that goodbye scene just now had shot his already sketchy blood pressure through the roof.
Her date had clearly wanted to get closer to her.
If he’d made a move Ares would have bolted out of the car and done fuck knew what.
Not from jealousy. No. But because Bethan had looked flighty as hell.
Ares knew her tells but she’d been babbling and so fidgety her discomfort ought to have been obvious to anyone.
Fortunately the jerk had given her space—which meant he wasn’t a jerk and he’d left at exactly the right time.
Which wasn’t what Ares would have done. He’d have reached for her.
Caged her in his arms. Soothed her anxiety with his hands.
Yeah, Ares was the jerk here. Always had been.
Always would be. He would do whatever it took to get what he wanted—because that was what he’d had to do when he’d been left alone to fend for survival in a family more poisonous than a nest of vipers.
But what made him the biggest jerk was that Ares could barely control his ‘want’ where Bethan was concerned.
Her beautiful dress clung to her bountiful curves.
Curves that needed a man to handle. They’d been his once.
He’d been the first to unwrap her. To taste her.
To make her tremble, sigh, scream with pleasure.
His stomach churned at the thought of her letting some other guy do that.
His old arrogance would have him believe that she never would’ve sought nor found such pleasure in another man’s arms. But he was wrong.
Here she’d been, out with someone else and, while she might not have invited that guy in, who knew how many someone elses there had been since he’d seen her last?
‘I’ve not been your wife for years,’ she argued, rubbing salt into the wound she’d ripped open.
‘I think you’ll find the courts might disagree.’ He stepped closer.
Satisfaction trickled through him when she didn’t back away the way she had from that other guy.
‘I’d assumed that, seeing you’ve not bothered to initiate a divorce, you were happy to remain married to me,’ he added.
It had suited him to be unattainable all this time. To thwart the intentions of his unwanted family. And now it suited him to punish her. Just a little. It was nothing on the torture she’d put him through.
Her jaw dropped. ‘You thought I was happy?’
Her arrow hit the target. Yeah, that had been his mistake. He had thought she’d been happy.
‘You were happy in my bed,’ he snapped. Because she had been and he needed her to admit at least that small truth.