Chapter Nine #2
In the split second which followed her murmured greeting, Odysseus took the time to compose himself, impatient with himself for allowing her to orchestrate this inexplicable change to his mood and trying to talk himself out of it.
There wasn’t anything special about her, he reasoned savagely.
She didn’t possess some other-worldly power which had made him feel as if she had touched his icy heart with the fiery heat of her passion.
It had been particularly good sex and that was all.
That was all.
He turned round. Theo , but she looked amazing, all the same.
Flushed and rumpled and utterly ravished.
He wanted to get straight back into bed with her, but something told him he needed to build up his resilience—and he wasn’t thinking about the physical.
‘I thought we could go down to the cove for a swim,’ he said abruptly.
‘A swim?’
‘Why are you looking at me as if I’ve just suggested a walk in a snake pit?’
‘Because I can’t swim,’ she stated baldly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I may be a linguist but surely you don’t need a translation for such a simple phrase?
’ A shadow of embarrassment had darkened her eyes.
‘I know it’s shameful to admit, in this day and age, but I can’t.
It was an extra-curricular activity at school in Venice and I was usually…
Well, I had to help my mum, because it was a big house and there was a lot for her to clean on her own. ’
Odysseus’s jaw tightened as he thought of her as a schoolgirl, scrubbing floors for his hateful grandfather. ‘I can teach you,’ he said.
‘First sex, now swimming—whatever next?’ she said, with a stab at humour. ‘But I don’t have a costume with me.’
‘I anticipated this,’ he said. Walking over to a drawer, he produced a package, which he tossed onto the bed. ‘Look on it as a wedding gift.’
He observed the tremble of her hand as she tore open the tissue paper and stared askance at a tiny pair of bikini briefs and an equally minuscule top. ‘I can’t possibly wear these,’ she breathed.
‘Sure you can. Why not?’
‘If you think I’m parading around in public wearing something as revealing as this, then you are mistaken.’
‘I wonder if you have any idea how potent the appeal of all that indignant innocence is,’ he murmured. ‘The beach I am planning to take you to is completely private. Not overlooked at all,’ he added softly.
‘I’m not even going to ask how you knew my size.’
His eyes glinted with unholy humour. ‘Probably best not to,’ he agreed, handing her another expensive-looking package.
Inside Grace found a light robe which matched the bikini and a gorgeous pair of sandals, which managed to be both delicate yet robust. ‘What else are you going to produce, like a rabbit out of a hat?’ she questioned, thinking that Christmas morning had never been like this .
‘How about this?’ he said, handing her a tiny box, and Grace’s heart missed a beat because it looked like…
Flipping open the lid, she saw a giant yellow stone set in a band of glittering white diamonds, reposing against a backdrop of indigo velvet and her heart skipped another beat. ‘Oh, Odysseus, it’s…’
‘An engagement ring,’ he said. ‘Go on. Put it on.’
With shaking hands, Grace complied, staring in disbelief as it sparkled like a rectangle of sunlight against her finger. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she breathed, holding it up to the light.
A forty-carat yellow diamond, cushion-cut, with VS2 clarity,’ he informed her, his prosaic words cutting through her delighted response.
She blinked at him, not really understanding him. ‘And is that relevant?’
‘It will be.’ His words were careful. ‘When you’re thinking about resale value.’
Which was a diplomatic way of putting it, Grace supposed, trying to ward off the crazy crash of disappointment that he was talking about the end of the marriage before it had even started!
But despite this brief swamp of self-doubt, Grace soon cheered up as they made their way towards the sea.
A flight of stairs cut into the rock led straight from the villa’s gardens to the sheltered cove, and she was startled to discover all manner of things had been put there, ready for their arrival.
A small table and chairs. A cool box containing bottles of water, lemonade, and champagne.
Chilled cherries, chocolates and grapes.
There were even neat piles of soft towels and two comfortable loungers, lying in the shade of the overhanging cliff.
She wondered which unseen servants had placed them there and who would give them the signal that it was safe to remove them again.
Most distracting of all was seeing Odysseus in this startlingly new guise, looking more relaxed than she’d ever seen him.
She watched hungrily from behind her dark shades—also new—feasting her eyes on the pair of black bathers which clung so definitively to his powerful buttocks and rocky thighs.
She couldn’t seem to stop staring at him and the mocking smile he threw her as he handed her a glass of sweet-sharp lemonade made her realise that he was perfectly aware of being her new obsession.
Was that why he walked into sea, letting the transparent water gradually submerge him, before diving beneath the surface and executing a powerful crawl?
Eventually he rose to the surface, shaking droplets of water from his black hair. ‘Come on in,’ he lured.
‘I’m quite happy here,’ she said self-consciously, aware that the teeny bikini left more of her body exposed than it covered.
But he was nothing if not persistent and after a while Grace plucked up enough courage to follow him, wading in up to her thighs with a predictable squeal, and he swam over to her.
‘The water’s good, isn’t it?’ he murmured.
‘It’s…incredible.’ She dipped down to her shoulders, then bobbed up again. ‘And you’re a fantastic swimmer.’
‘I know,’ he agreed, with a complete lack of modesty. ‘So why don’t I show you how it’s done?’
‘Odysseus, I am the least sporty person in the universe.’
But he paid her negativity no heed, wrapping his big hands around her hips. ‘It’s easy. You can stop any time you like. Just lie on your stomach. Neh. Like this. The salt in the water will keep you buoyant.’ His voice curled with something she didn’t recognise. ‘Try to relax.’
Relax? How could she possibly relax when he was touching her bare skin, especially when he put his hand underneath her stomach to support her, while encouraging her to kick her legs?
But, to Grace’s surprise, he was way more patient than she had imagined and her first brief attempt at striking out on her own filled her with a disproportionate amount of giggling pride.
‘See?’ he murmured. ‘I told you it would be easy.’
She didn’t answer because now he had slipped his finger inside her bikini bottoms, and the contrast of the water combined with the warm stroke of his finger was almost too sweet to endure. ‘Odysseus,’ she breathed.
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’
‘But what if…what if somebody sees us?’
‘Nobody can see us.’
And just like that, all her resistance drained away and Grace was at the willing mercy of what he was doing to her. Suddenly she seemed to be composed of all the elements—of fire and water, of earth and air—and at the centre of all this was him.
Him.
Strong. Powerful. Indomitable. The sunlight was glinting off his broad shoulders as he continued to work his magic, pleasure slowly building, layer upon sweet layer of it, until she was drowning in it. ‘Odysseus,’ she choked, and his hard kiss silenced her cry.
Slowly, she floated back to earth, and he taught her how to pleasure him beneath the cool waters of the Mirtoan Sea, peeling down his bathers and gripping his silken hardness, hearing his murmur of approval as she experimented.
And when he choked out his own low broken moan of fulfilment, Grace was filled with another sense of satisfaction because in that moment she felt like his equal.
They waded back to shore, flopping down on adjoining loungers, screened by the shadow of the overhanging rock and, after a while, he poured them both a glass of champagne.
As he touched the crystal flute to hers, Grace realised that she felt supremely comfortable.
Thoughtfully, she ate a deliciously cool cherry.
For the first time she could really believe that she was going to be his wife and that she was capable of fulfilling that role to both their satisfaction.
Yet despite the passionate sex and surprising patience the man she was about to marry remained an enigma.
She thought about his choices. His stated refusal to ever contemplate having a family of his own.
His marriage to her nothing but an expedient gesture.
What had made him so immune to the normal feelings and desires which drove other people? she wondered.
‘Odysseus?’ Tracing a finger down over his rock-hard belly, she felt him shudder. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Anything,’ he said thickly.
It was obvious he was expecting something sensual and she hesitated, loath to shatter the sultry mood which was binding them together with silken ties.
But she had to. It wasn’t just that she wanted to know him, there was some bone-deep desire inside her which needed to know. ‘What made you such a loner?’
Odysseus scowled as Grace’s unwanted question shattered his burgeoning hunger, because the answer was very simple.
And private. He’d lost count of the times women had tried to interrogate him like this over the years and it was always in a similar situation.
Glowing in the wake of yet another orgasm, they started erroneously thinking he was in the market for deepening their intimacy in other ways.
Inevitably, they went straight for the jugular by asking the intensely personal, which instantly sharpened his defences.
His mouth hardened because he had always refused to answer intrusive queries before, and didn’t see why that had to change now.
Consequently, the smile he gave was dismissive.
‘Is that really relevant?’ he drawled carelessly, sliding his hand down to straighten Grace’s skewed bikini bottom, making sure he stroked a slick fold of flesh along the way.
But although she shivered in response, his attempt to distract her failed because she propped herself up on one elbow and gave him a determined look.
‘I think it is, yes. I mean, I’ve told you plenty about myself, but you haven’t exactly reciprocated, have you?’
‘I told you plenty,’ he answered repressively.
‘I don’t think so.’ She shook her head so that the damp chestnut strands flew around her narrow shoulders.
‘Oh, you filled me in on the story about how you made all your money, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about the other stuff. The young you.
How you spent your Christmases. That kind of thing.
’ She hesitated. ‘Because I don’t want you to be like a stranger to me. ’
Odysseus’s scowl deepened. He knew it would be kinder to warn her off.
To tell her it wouldn’t make the slightest difference if he recounted the cheerless facts about his upbringing.
It wouldn’t change the way he felt. About women.
About life. About everything really, including her.
‘I’m not one of those men who enjoy opening up ,’ he informed her silkily. ‘That’s why I never do it.’
Still she refused to take the hint. ‘But we will soon be man and wife, Odysseus.’
‘Only on paper,’ he snapped.
‘What about when we go to Tuloranka and we’re staying with the King? Don’t you think it will look a bit…well, weird , if I don’t know anything about you? If something comes up in conversation, for example.’ She pursed her lips together. ‘Unless you want our marriage to look fake, of course.’
He opened his mouth to say he didn’t particularly care how it looked, until he reminded himself that the notoriously short-tempered King Kaliman might be irritated by a couple who were enjoying his hospitality under false pretences.
But there was another consideration which he hadn’t taken into account before, one which was only just dawning on him.
Grace had worked for Vincenzo Contarini and lived in his house for all those years.
She knew him better than pretty much anyone else and yet was seemingly unaware of the true depths of his cruelty.
Even though their Paris trip had been interrupted by the old man’s unreasonable demands, she had been prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Hadn’t his bodyguard reported back that she’d attempted to say goodbye to the old bully, but he had refused to see her?
She was tender-hearted, yes. But wasn’t it more accurate to accuse her of suffering from self-delusion?
His mouth hardened and a flicker of something cold and unrecognisable wrapped icy fingers around his heart as he stared up at the blue sky.
Perhaps it was about time he enlightened her about her ex-boss.