CHAPTER TEN
SHEWASWRUNGOUT. She was... On the edge of herself. But the truth was, she was bound to Dionysus whether she married him or not. If they had a baby... He was right. She had been fooling herself. Thinking that it would be so simple as to have his baby and pretend... And pretend. Even when she had first thought of carrying his child instead of Theseus’s she had felt the weight of that intimacy. Even before they had made love.
And now... She knew that she would never be able to pretend the child belonged to Theseus. Not forever.
She could lie to her father-in-law, but she could never lie to the child. She would never be able to cut Dionysus out of this.
She suddenly felt... Overcome with shame. What she had asked of him was deeply selfish. It had been on behalf of Theseus, but... Had it been?
Had she only been trying to justify her own decisions?
That was entirely possible.
Trying to prove that she had been relevant in some way. Was that what all of this was about? She wondered. She really did.
And the truth was, she wanted him.
If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have been able to give herself to him like this. She had always wanted him. She had been scared. And then a few moments ago she had managed to be angry enough to push that fear aside. And now she was...
Ashamed. Of her own behavior. Ashamed of how she had used Dionysus as a convenient object.
In a bid to avoid seeing him as a man.
There was no denying he was a man now. He sat there next to her, a perfect sculpture. His well muscled shoulders and arms a testament to his strength. His chest was broad, his waist tapered and solid. His thighs were thick and well defined, and that most masculine part of him was beginning to rouse again, so quickly after they had already come together.
She was sore, but she would take him again.
All these years...
It was tempting to believe that this was fate. But... None of this felt like fate. Because it had taken the death of Theseus, and the loss of her pregnancy for her to be here.
And those things could simply never feel meant to be. Perhaps that was what people told themselves when they were desperate to dress their lust up to something other than that basest of needs.
Perhaps that was why.
She couldn’t readily untangle what they were. But she felt good when she kissed him.
And she wanted more.
“Why do you want to marry me?”
“You asked. Or rather, you told me to.”
He chuckled. “Is that all, sweet Ariadne? Is that all I ever had to do? Crook my finger and make demands of you and you would come?”
He let the double entendre linger between them, she was certain that he meant it.
“I don’t want to be without you,” she said.
And that was true.
Real enough at least.
“Do you want me, or do you want the connection to my family?”
“I already have Katrakis Shipping. I have a connection to your family.”
But she couldn’t deny that his words got under her skin like the edge of a knife’s blade.
“And you’re right. About the baby. I wanted to give Theseus something that he didn’t get the chance to have. I don’t need to do that. Life can be cruel in some ways, but... I can’t right that wrong by enacting another wrong. Our child will know his father. And that will be you.”
“Good.”
“You said, though, that you didn’t want a child.”
“I never have. It turns out, though, that I would love to make one with you.”
“There is the making, but then there’s the raising.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” he said. “But you don’t either.”
“No. I don’t. We can learn. Together. Our child will be...” She lost herself then, because Theseus and Dionysus were not the same man. She knew it. But she had been lying to herself while she tried desperately to repair the situation she found herself in. And part of that life had been that because they were genetically indistinguishable from one another, the child would be the same as if he had come from Theseus.
But Dionysus was an entirely different man.
Dionysus called to the wildness in her. Together they were something different. Entirely.
“I will need you to help me raise that child,” she said. “Because you and I...”
She felt it again, that sensation she had when they had first arrived here on the island. That tapestry of memory. Not a single moment, but a feeling. The essence of what they were. The freedom they had found together.
Their first time together just now had been intense. Of course it had been. But suddenly she wanted more.
“Take me swimming,” she said.
He stood up off the bed and held his hand out toward hers, and she took it wordlessly. Slipping off into the night with him.
He knew the path by heart, and she trusted him.
He held her against his body, and then jumped. Then both of them went into the water, and they surfaced again, breathless, clinging to each other.
He kissed her, deep and long, wildly. They had nearly done this all those years ago. They had nearly done this yesterday.
And now, it was like the culmination of that need, of those moments, all coming together.
They were fire.
They were inevitable.
Except, they very nearly hadn’t been at all.
Because she had been afraid.
She had very nearly sacrificed everything to that fear.
Their skin was slick, and he moved his hands over her curves, driving her forward in a frenzy.
To be touched like this, held like this, it was the single most incredible feeling that she could possibly think of.
To be held. To be wanted.
She let layers of her fear fall away.
She had never let herself want this. But she did.
She wanted it down to the very depths of her soul.
She wanted this and him and everything.
Her heart beat fiercely, desperately. Dionysus.
She would never mistake him.
“Dionysus,” she said it out loud. Like a prayer, an incantation. A plea for him to never disappear.
And he devoured her. Just as he had promised. Consumed her, left her aching and needy down to her very core. To her essence.
She clung to him, wrapping her legs around his hips, as he hauled them both up out of the water, and laid her down on the sandy shore.
“I always knew you were the enchanted thing here,” he said. “When I bought the island, I tried to recapture the magic. I did my very best. And it... It suits me. But it has never been magic. Not since we were here.”
Suddenly, she felt overwhelmed. By the truth between them. The reality of what they could’ve been.
She had asked him if he loved her.
He had.
Had she loved him too? Had she clung to Theseus because he was easier.
Because he represented safety, while Dionysus was the unknown. He still was.
But she had tried safety, and it had gotten her nothing.
And now she was wholly consumed by him.
She wrapped her legs around his hips and canted them upward, urging him to claim her. To take her.
“Good girl,” he whispered against her mouth as he thrust his hips forward, in one slick glide, claiming her with his mouth, his hands, his iron masculinity.
She moved against him, chasing release. But chasing something even more dear, that connection that she had felt only ever with him.
And as he moved, the years fell away. As they clung to one another, they were all there was.
And she let him drive them both over the edge.
Their cries filled the night air. He was right.
They were the magic.
And this place was theirs.
She sat up afterward, brushed at some of the sand on her skin. Leaned in and kissed his shoulder before leaning her head against it. They sat like that, saying nothing. She moved her fingertips over his chest, relishing the feel of him. The way that she could touch him. She was trembling. Because the enormity of this moment was blooming inside of her and growing larger and larger, a chasm of desire that she could not entirely rationalize.
She had been dishonest with herself, that was the thing. For so much of this time, she hadn’t allowed herself to fully see, to fully know exactly what he meant to her. She had suppressed it, pushed it aside.
And now she wanted to mourn for entirely different reasons.
For the fact that they could have known each other, and hadn’t. For the fact they had wasted all these years.
Maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe he was right.
But then what was it? She couldn’t rightly say.
It was far too difficult to know.
“I will buy you a ring as soon as possible.”
“It can’t be public,” she said, hating herself for saying it, because this was supposed to be their moment. Because it was supposed to be them, only them, here in this sacred place. And not logistics and machinations, and all the things they had to do because of his father.
His father.
All of this was because of him.
This whole mess.
No. Much of it is because of you.
The realization stung. But it was true. Her own cowardice was not a small part of the mess that had been made here.
“I’m going to buy you a ring and you can wear it in private. But you will know that you’re mine.”
“I won’t forget,” she said.
She was branded with it. All the way down to the bone.
“Let’s go back.”
She almost didn’t want to. She wanted to stay here. Naked outside, wild and free.
She felt tender. Like a shield of protection had been stripped away from her, revealing her vulnerabilities, not to him as much as to herself.
But it was confronting.
And she felt quite strongly that she had been through enough recently. She’d had enough character development.
Or maybe she hadn’t.
The world had changed around her, but perhaps she had changed herself sufficiently.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s go back.”
They went back to the house and showered. He ended up taking her again when they landed in a heap of tangled limbs in his bed.
She clung to him all night.
She didn’t sleep.
When the sun rose the next morning she was still in Dionysus’s arms. And she knew that it was the first day for everything would be different.