Chapter Six
IF HE DIDN’T think about what she’d said back at the restaurant, maybe Ares could pretend he’d misheard her.
But, from the way she’d been sliding him twinkly blue-eyed glances since they’d left the restaurant and returned to the tender and were now almost at the boat, anchored in the sea, he figured that unfortunately he hadn’t misheard.
What he had done was get them out of that restaurant so fast his head had been spinning, as if afraid she was going to go and start propositioning strangers there and then.
As if afraid she’d want to sleep with someone other than you.
The incendiary thought crept into his head and Ares mentally snarled at it.
He didn’t want her. She was too bright and sunny and royal and his friend’s little sister and totally out of bounds.
She was untouched, for crying out loud. He did not touch untouched people. He was too…dark. Cynical.
A man like him and a woman like her did not mix. He would take her brightness and dim it.
But even as he thought of that he almost shook with the enormity of the fact that she was innocent, and what it might be like to be the one to touch her, to rouse her, to make her gasp and moan and plead and clasp around him so tightly that—
‘So, I guess no clubbing tonight, then?’
Ares was pulled out of his feverish circling thoughts. The tender was at the boat now, and Cassie was reaching out to grab the ladder that they’d used to climb down from a platform that could be lowered at the back of the boat, while anchored.
‘No,’ Ares issued through his teeth. He was seriously considering his threat of putting her below deck and keeping her there.
But that would mean going down there and even that short visit earlier had been enough to make him sweat.
The last thing he wanted was for those far too bright and inquisitive blue eyes to notice. She already saw far too much.
She’d had him spilling about his family, who he never spoke about.
And her perceptiveness had surprised him.
How she’d put a finger on the fact that he’d never been encouraged to think of the family business as something he could be part of in a meaningful way because his parents had deemed him somehow not useful.
But far more disturbingly he now ached to be the first man to make her moan and clench as she had last night in the bar. If he’d realised then that Caius had spoken the truth and that she really might be innocent… Theos. It was too much.
For the first time in a long time, Ares was out of his depth and it was in a way he wasn’t prepared for.
Cassie secured the tender to the boat and climbed the ladder. The night was still and warm. From above him on the boat Cassie said, ‘That’s cool. I heard Mykonos is the place to go clubbing anyway. Maybe I’ll try there…’
For clubbing and a lover? Ares wanted to untie the tender again and sail as far away from this boat and woman as he could.
But he couldn’t. So he climbed up onto the deck.
Cassie was standing, with her shoes in her hands, bag slung across her body, hair down and wild around her shoulders.
She seemed to glow in the moonlight. It made something inside Ares’s chest feel tight and achy.
She said, ‘Well, goodnight, then, help yourself to one of the spare cabins.’
‘I’ll sleep up here.’
Cassie had been turning away and then turned back. She must have seen something on Ares’s face because she shrugged and said, ‘Whatever.’ She turned away again and disappeared down into the belly of the boat. Ares shuddered just thinking about it.
He looked out over the dark mass of the sea. Why did it feel as though what should be the easiest assignment on the planet—babysitting a princess—had just become the most challenging?
The next day, after a light breakfast that Cassie had brought up to the deck to eat, they set off again.
Ares had retreated to his taciturn self.
He’d disappeared below, presumably to shower and change because he had changed, into board shorts and a T-shirt, but he’d been so quick that Cassie had barely noticed his disappearance as she’d focused on plotting the next stage of the journey.
She turned around and he was back and changed. Only the fact that his hair was damp gave any sign that he’d showered.
His eyes were hidden behind dark shades and his jaw was as hard as ever.
Cassie sighed. He was like a formidable piece of rock.
And really, she’d not learned much about him last night.
She suspected there was a lot more to his break with his family than just a desire to make his own way.
No one joined an army to make a fortune.
They went into armies to escape something.
‘Where are we headed?’
‘Mykonos,’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘It’s famous for its clubbing scene. They call it the Ibiza of Greece.’
‘Fantastic.’
‘Oh, lighten up, you might even enjoy it.’
Cassie smiled to herself. She could feel the way Ares was bristling behind her. Was it wrong that riling him felt so right?
He sat on one of the benches in her peripheral vision, legs spread. She didn’t have to look to know his bare legs were as muscled and strong as the rest of him.
When he didn’t make any attempt to converse she asked sweetly, ‘How was your night on deck?’
‘Fine.’
‘Is that a security thing? To keep an eye out?’
He huffed and said, ‘Something like that.’
Cassie rolled her eyes and shut her mouth. She needed her wits to navigate through the Cyclades. Mykonos was on the other side of Naxos and Paros, so she focused on that for now and tried to block out the brooding muscled man-mountain sitting far too close for comfort.
When they approached the island, Cassie dropped the anchor in a sheltered spot and busied herself getting the tender into position.
‘You’re going onto the island now?’
Cassie turned from the small lower deck and looked up. ‘Yes, that’s my plan.’ She smiled sunnily. ‘You’re welcome to join,’ knowing full well he’d have to come with her.
‘What’s your plan?’
‘Well, some lunch to start with, I’m starving, and then shopping. And then, later, clubbing.’
Ares didn’t smile. ‘Sounds delightful.’
After Cassie had secured the boat, and they were in the tender heading towards the old port, she tried her best not to be so aware of Ares.
It annoyed her that he appealed to her so much.
He was like a dark cloud. A dark sexy stormy cloud.
And she hated that she felt the urge to make him smile, look happier.
Because that pushed way too many buttons.
She’d spent her life trying to make her parents smile and be happier and it hadn’t worked.
To know that nothing you’d done had had a positive effect on the people around you in spite of your best efforts was not nice. It was why she’d oftentimes felt invisible. And yet she couldn’t join Ares where he was, her inner spirit was just too buoyant no matter how much she might try to deny it.
When they had secured the tender, Ares said, ‘Where to now?’
‘Mykonos town.’
He hailed a cab and they were being spirited away from the port within minutes. Cassie realised that she hadn’t paid for anything yesterday and Ares had just handed the driver some euros.
She said, ‘I don’t expect you to pay. I’ll give you what I owe, and for dinner last night.
’ He’d all but run her out of the restaurant after she’d told him she planned to lose her virginity.
She still couldn’t believe she’d had the gall to say that.
But it had been worth it for the look of shock on his face.
The fact that he’d populated her dreams last night made it slightly less worth it. Because he was welded to her side for the foreseeable future and so the chances of her actually getting to lose her virginity with anyone seemed to be challenging in the extreme.
Unless you lost it to him, whispered a little voice. As if Cassie didn’t already have that incendiary moment from their first night branded onto her brain for ever. Moaning into his mouth as she pushed herself into his hand.
‘Are you all right? You’ve gone very red.’
Cassie saw the town centre approaching and said to the driver in a panic, ‘We’ll get out here, efharisto,’ and she all but jumped out of the car as it was still moving in a bid to get away from that dark incisive gaze.
She strode forward into the shopping district and pulled a baseball cap onto her head, praying Ares would leave it alone.
An hour later, as Ares sat on a bench outside a boutique, sipping a small and perfect espresso, he had to acknowledge that he hadn’t had this kind of time off in…ever, and, while it was disconcerting, it wasn’t unenjoyable.
No wonder so many of his peers preferred babysitting royals and celebrities. This was positively civilised. If a bit mind-numbingly boring. Shopping bags were scattered at his feet. And Cassie had just entered the umpteenth boutique.
She’d said a short while before, ‘I know you must think this is so typical but, for what it’s worth, I never get to just…shop. I’m supplied with clothes by a stylist.’
She’d sounded so defensive and had been looking up at him from under the lip of her baseball cap in a way that had made him want to bend down and capture those plump lips against his, and press against her. So he’d said curtly, ‘I’m not thinking anything.’
For a second she’d looked almost stricken but then those bright blue eyes had flashed and she’d said something like, ‘Yeah, right, silly of me to assume so.’ And she’d disappeared into another shop.