Chapter Nine
DRACO’S FIRST INSTINCT was to laugh. Athens’… Greece’s…premier party girl, a woman infamous for her wide and varied sex life, had just declared herself a virgin. ‘Say that again.’
‘I’m a virgin.’
The men Athena had been pictured with over the years flashed through his head, a collage of Athena and her myriad lovers pictured together falling out of nightclubs, on her family’s yacht, at parties, out shopping…
She wasn’t the only one of the Tsaliki offspring to shamelessly embrace her carnal nature—before he’d settled down, Alexis had been one of the biggest playboys in Europe.
Naturally, Alexis had been celebrated for his sex drive and conquests, while the whiff of old-fashioned double standards had seen Athena’s embrace of her sexuality spoken of and written about in unflattering and disapproving terms. That she’d been so blatantly unashamed about it had only added to the opprobrium.
‘I didn’t know you were that desperate,’ Tobias had said in The Playroom when Draco had been looking for her. He’d wanted to hit him for that, but Tobias had only been vocalising what so many people in Greek society thought.
His brain was starting to burn.
So much of the Athena the world thought it knew was a constructed facade, but a virgin? It wasn’t possible.
‘If you don’t want to sleep with me then just say so,’ he said roughly. ‘There’s no need to lie.’
Her leg flew forward, the sole of her bare foot slamming into his thigh before she twisted off the sofa and jumped to her feet. ‘Fuck you,’ she spat, her beautiful face contorted with pain.
She’d reached the end of the living area before he absorbed what had just happened.
‘Athena, wait!’ he called as he strode to catch up with her.
She ignored him and charged down the corridor towards the bedrooms at a run.
He reached her just as she was slamming her bedroom door shut, would have successfully locked him out if he hadn’t wedged himself into the gap and forced his way in.
One look at her stricken face was all he needed to know how badly he’d got it wrong, and he kicked the door shut and closed the gap between them to haul her into his arms.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, holding her rigid body tightly to him. ‘I should never have said that. I know you’re not a liar.’
She didn’t say anything, didn’t make any response at all, not an arm around his waist or a hand to his chest to push him away.
It was only when he felt his shirt dampen against his skin that he realised she was crying.
He held her even tighter and pressed his mouth to her head. ‘God, Athena, don’t cry.’
Her whole body shuddered before she sagged against him and buried her face into his chest with huge, gulping sobs.
His chest twisting painfully at her desolation, he scooped her into his arms and carried her to the bed. There, he sat with her on his lap and propped himself against the headboard so she could curl into him, and just held her close as she sobbed her heart out.
It felt as if she was sobbing his heart out too.
Athena didn’t know why she was crying. She’d expected incredulity, but Draco’s accusation of lying had cut something open in her, and now it was as if the floodgates of all the pain she’d spent a lifetime smothering had opened and she didn’t know how to close them, could only cling to him as if he was the life raft stopping her from drowning.
It took a long time for the heaving sobs to subside. When she was finally spent, her throat was raw and her heart wrung. Her whole body felt wrung.
But there was comfort there, too, in the tenderness of the hand stroking her back and the fingers gently combing through her hair, and she came close to crying again when the fingers stopped working their magic.
‘Here,’ he said quietly, having reached for the box of tissues on the bedside table for her.
Disentangling her arms, she took a handful and blew her nose noisily. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
He pulled her back to him and kissed the top of her head. ‘I’m sorry.’
It was a long time before she could bring herself to speak again. ‘It wasn’t you,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I knew you would struggle to believe me—it’s why I found it so hard to tell you. I wouldn’t have believed me if I was in your shoes.’
His fingers burrowed back into her hair. ‘Then what was it?’
She shrugged helplessly. ‘Everything. All the things I want to keep in the past coming back to haunt me.’ She tilted her head to give him an accusatory look.
‘Which, now I think about it, is your fault. I was having a lovely time forgetting everything and living for the moment but then you came along and brought with you all the old memories and all the old feelings. So yes, on reflection it was you who made me cry.’
The sad smile his firm lips pulled showed he understood she was trying to lighten the heaviness of all that had just happened. ‘Were you really having a lovely time forgetting?’
She helped herself to another tissue and wiped her nose.
‘Sometimes. But I never did forget. Not really.’ Wrapping her arm back around him, she pressed her cheek against his chest. ‘It was always there, festering away in my soul. My mother chose a house and money over me. That’s what it all came down to.
I loved her more than anyone. She was my whole world and she let my father pay her off in exchange for leaving me with him.
She let me be sidelined from her life without a fight, and I will never, never forget how she walked away without looking back at me while I was screaming at her and begging her not to leave me.
’ She swallowed. ‘I assume your mother’s told you all this? ’
‘Yes.’
Draco had imagined the emotional impact it must have had on her, but hearing it in Athena’s own words and hearing the raw pain in her voice told him he’d hugely underestimated how much it still affected her.
‘Did she tell you how I transferred all my love to her?’
‘She said you became her little shadow.’
A smile came into her voice. ‘I loved her very much. She’d always been a fixture in my life and I’d always adored her.
When she was there, I felt safe and loved.
My father was all wrapped up in Rebecca and her daughter, but Cora always made time for me.
She would never have chosen money over you, would she. ’
‘No,’ he agreed, even though it hadn’t been a question.
‘I was so lost and unhappy, and Cora just seemed to know what I needed, and she gave it to me, all the love and affection that had been taken from me, and it destroyed me all over again when she was fired. I missed her desperately and was still missing my mother desperately, too, and it all hurt so much that I just shut down emotionally. The world I knew and trusted was gone. My mother was gone, Cora was gone, my father had a new wife and another baby on the way, and on top of all that Lucie, Rebecca’s daughter, came to live with us for a while, too, and my father doted on her.
I’d gone from being the baby of the family and being loved and coddled by everyone to nothing.
The only time I ever got attention was when I acted out…
and so I acted out and over time the Athena everyone loves to hate was born. ’
‘It was deliberate?’
‘In part.’ She lapsed into silence before whispering, ‘I didn’t care if people hated me.’
‘It was better than letting them get close to you?’
She lifted her puffy, tear-stained face to stare at him.
‘Yes. Please don’t think I’m trying to play the poor little rich girl victim card.
I’ve had a charmed, privileged life and I’m starting to understand why Alexis wanted to pull me out of it and give me a reality check—I took it all for granted.
And my family does love me in their own way, and I do love them, but as a family we’re one big screw-up and I can’t say I wouldn’t have become the same person if that stuff with my mother and your mother hadn’t happened. ’
‘I can.’
She gave a tremulous smile. ‘That’s sweet of you to say.’
‘It’s not lip service, Athena. I keep seeing glimpses of the woman you were meant to be. She’s in there, but it’s up to you to let her out.’ He took a deep breath before admitting, ‘I’ve seen your drawings.’
She flinched.
‘They’re exquisite. That charcoal portrait you did of your nephew… I assume it was your nephew?’
She gave a jerky nod.
‘It’s beautiful and full of love. No one whose heart is made of stone could produce something like that.’
Fresh tears filled her eyes and she blinked vigorously to hold them back. ‘Stop making me cry! I don’t do tears!’
He smiled ruefully. ‘If you need to cry then cry.’
‘You told me to stop crying earlier!’
‘That’s because I don’t do tears either.’
She gave a burst of laughter and flung her arms around his neck, burying her face in the arch of his throat. For the longest time they just held each other until she said in a small voice, ‘Where do you want me to sleep tonight?’
‘As I said earlier, that’s a choice for you to make.’
‘Oh. It’s just that I thought…’
‘That I’d run a mile when you told me you were a virgin?’
She nodded. ‘I’m not who you thought I was.’
‘Would you call me an arsehole if I told you I was glad?’
‘Yes. Arsehole.’
Laughing, he held her even tighter and buried his mouth and chin in her hair. ‘All those men you were pictured with…weren’t you ever tempted?’
‘Never. Those men really were arseholes and I felt nothing for them. They were like my father and my brothers in their attitude to women—they didn’t care about me, they cared about who I was and what was between my legs, so no, I wasn’t in the slightest bit tempted.
I was having fun…or so I liked to tell myself. ’
‘But you weren’t?’
‘I think you already know the answer to that. I chose them as deliberately as they chose me.’
‘But how come the truth never came out?’