Chapter Five #2
‘Well, well, this is most certainly a time for champagne!’ Melina said, clasping her hands together. ‘Non-alcoholic for you, of course.’ She spun on her heel, smiling up at her husband then, who finally broke the sternness of his gaze to regard Melina.
‘Yes, let’s go inside,’ he said gruffly, turning and stalking towards the door, Melina chatting happily at his side.
Rosie expelled a sharp breath, staying right where she was, pinned to Aristotle, even though their audience was almost in the house.
‘You did well.’ His voice was deep and gruff.
She turned to face him…which was a mistake.
They were so close that looking at him like this brought his lips back into focus, as well as memories of how it had been to be kissed by him again.
For four months, the memory of what had happened in the courtyard on Melina’s birthday weekend had been a nightly torture, a form of sensual drugging, because she’d been unable to escape the power of that recollection.
To feel the aching, yearning memory of being held by him.
And for a moment, those feelings had come rushing back to her.
But this was a man who’d taken her virginity for a dare, she reminded herself. She owed the twenty-year-old version of herself more than this—more than standing like some clingy limpet at his side, looking up at him as though he was God’s gift to women.
So why didn’t she move, then? Why did she stay where she was, her body seeking the warmth of his, her hip almost happy-dancing at the feeling of his touch through the fabric of her shorts?
‘They’re looking,’ he murmured, eyes flicking to the door. She glanced in their direction to see that yes, Glen and Melina had indeed stopped walking, and were standing arm in arm at the entrance of the house.
Her heart leapt to her throat as she turned back to Aristotle. This time, when her eyes landed on his mouth, she made no attempt to relocate their focus.
‘I’m going to kiss you again,’ he murmured, low, softly, so his lips barely moved.
She nodded slowly, one hand lifting to his shirt and catching the fabric between her fingers, scrunching it in her palm.
He dropped his head and brushed his lips over hers, slow and soft this time. As if he was reading her. But she didn’t want that—softness had no place with them.
Her hand gripped his shirt harder and her lips parted against his, allowing his skilful tongue to sweep inside her mouth and duel with hers, to dominate her in that way he had.
This time, his hand moved to her back and pushed her forward, so she felt the full force of his arousal through their clothes, pressed close to her sex, and she made a mewling noise deep in her throat as she lifted up onto the tips of her toes to give him better access to her mouth, to more ably convey the need that was flooding her.
Her hand moved from his bunched-up shirt to his shoulder, then curved behind his neck, finding the dark hair there and toying with it, before her other hand shifted to do the same thing.
Her breasts were pressed against his chest, soft to hard, and with the hand that was shielded from view of Glen and Melina he cupped one breast, until she whimpered into his mouth.
He broke the kiss then and dropped his hand, staring down at her with a look she could barely understand.
Surprise.
Shock.
Resentment.
It was enough to break the spell.
She quickly looked towards the door to see, with relief, that her father and stepmother had disappeared inside.
They were alone, that completely private display of passion still private, thank God.
She didn’t particularly want anyone to witness the way he could so easily send her tipping over the edge.
How pathetic was she, after all that had come before, to turn into putty in his hands at the slightest touch?
‘That shouldn’t have happened,’ she muttered, pulling away from him quickly, sucking in a deep breath and brushing her hands down her front, as though she could erase the effect of his touch so easily.
‘And yet, when we’re with them, it is inevitable.’
She closed her eyes. ‘I think my dad could do without seeing that.’
A mocking smirk shaped his lips for a moment, before he sobered. ‘Believe me, in the privacy of my home, I won’t be making this mistake again.’
Mistake.
Her heart twisted, and she was that twenty-year-old girl again, with stars in her eyes for the man she’d believed Aristotle to be, getting her heart torn to shreds by the cruel jibes of his so-called friends.
Entitled, spoiled rich kids who saw someone like her as beneath them.
It was just the reminder she needed to stiffen her spine with steel. ‘Let’s get this over with, Aristotle. I’m finding it exhausting, having to pretend I don’t hate you. The sooner we can get on with it, the better.’
She walked towards the house without waiting for a response.
Strangely, she’d never really thought of Aristotle’s life outside of the estate. He was rarely home, at his mother’s, and yet she never imagined where he lived. In her mind, when she thought of him, it was just him. Aristotle took up all of the space. Place was irrelevant.
However, if she’d given it any runtime whatsoever, she might have imagined him somewhere like this. In the penthouse of a ritzy modern building in the famously exclusive suburb of Kolonaki, high on Lycabettus Hill, with sweeping views of the city.
While she couldn’t fault the outlook, the penthouse itself was both austere and intimidating.
Oh, beautiful, of course, in that sterile, modernistic sort of way, like some kind of livable art installation, from the floor-to-ceiling windows to the expansive white marble-tiled floor, to the light fittings that were more like sculptures.
It was all so cold and impersonal, so unlived-in, despite the fact it was where he presumably spent most of his time.
Just getting into his apartment had required a security protocol worthy of some kind of embassy, from the biometric scanning in the underground car park to the armed security guards who’d stood sentry at the elevator doors, to the finger-pad access he’d used to get inside.
‘You don’t approve?’ he asked, shaking out of his suit jacket and draping it over the back of a chair. She watched the movement with a frown on her face, thinking that the mess seemed so wrong in here.
She looked around, frown deepening. ‘Does it matter?’
‘If it’s to be your home, you should probably like it.’
‘I didn’t think this marriage is about what I want at all.’
‘Don’t do that,’ he said, coming to stand in front of her, a big wall of muscly chest and temptation.
‘What?’ Irritation made her voice tremble. She couldn’t help it. She was tired and sore in the lower back, and the situation with her father and stepmother had been more emotionally draining than she’d anticipated.
Scratch that, the whole thing with Aristotle had been.
‘Don’t act like you’ve been bullied into this.’
‘I beg your pardon, that’s exactly what you’ve done.’
His eyes were awash with something—something real and raw that made her think he actually had real feelings locked deep inside his cold, controlling persona, but it was gone almost instantly.
‘We are both making sacrifices for our child.’
She ground her teeth, pain flaring at his description of their marriage, even when she knew it to be accurate. That was what they were doing.
‘We are making the best of a bad situation,’ he corrected, unknowingly making everything worse.
Maternal instincts fired to life. ‘Not one part of me thinks of this life as a “bad situation”.’
‘You know what I mean,’ he responded. ‘Do you want a tour?’
She looked around again, shivering involuntarily.
How could a man with red-hot passion in his veins live in an ice palace like this?
Though that view, she thought, her gaze sweeping across the cold tiled floor and staring out at the city, was magnificent.
Dusk had fallen, turning the sky into candy floss hues of pink and orange, and the Acropolis was glowing golden.
‘Rosemary?’
She glanced across at him. ‘Why do you call me that?’
‘It’s your name.’
‘But everyone calls me Rosie.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’
Something pricked deep in her chest as his expression assumed a deep, contemplative look.
‘You just seem like Rosemary to me.’
She pulled a face. ‘Why?’
‘Rosie is frivolous. Silly. You always struck me as someone intelligent. A thinker.’
Her stomach seemed to twist out of her body. She shook her head, dismissing what could only be described as a compliment. Her first ever from Aristotle?
‘Would you prefer I call you Rosie?’
Hearing it on his lips, in his accent, had her body grating with rejection.
He was the only person in her life who called her Rosemary and suddenly she liked that.
She shook her head once, maintaining a terse expression on her features even when there was a strange warmth—completely at odds with the barren iciness of this space—spreading through her.
‘I don’t care,’ she lied. ‘And yes, a tour would be great. I might as well see which part of this mausoleum I’m to call home.’