Chapter Ten
Zervou laid in his bed, staring at his ceiling, while Ariadne slept in his arms. He had not slept a wink. Even as the morning light began to filter into the windows of the room, he was wide awake.
It was all very disorienting. This was not something he did. And getting rid of a woman after a healthy, enjoyable evening together had always been like second nature. Not something that required thought or effort.
This required both and a decision on just…what he was doing.
He didn’t mind crossing blurry lines. A fake relationship to lure her father into the light was not complicated by sex. If anything, it was a nice bonus. The moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d admitted that the potential was there.
But a woman falling asleep in his arms was not part of that bonus. It was not something that had ever even tempted him before. He enjoyed women and their company but was always happy to see them go. Happy to get his mind and life back to whatever the plan was at hand.
Last night, he hadn’t been able to force himself to rouse her. He’d spent far too long staring at the bruise on her ribs. The crooked line of her nose. The way her left hand—curled gently on top of his chest—was slightly puffier than the right—like it was swollen from landing blows.
He had watched her box, even if it had always been practice. He understood that the kind of athleticism she dealt with meant her body would be marred by the sheer physicality of what she did. Day in. Day out.
He could not seem to get a full handle on the actual mark of those things on her soft, beautiful skin.
It was an impotent kind of rage that reminded him of childhood.
Scrabbling by. Refusing that which he wanted.
And then finally breaking through, finding ease in the world around him.
All while everyone he loved refused any of it.
It was a feeling, a concern, a complication he would have walked away from any other time, no matter how alluring the woman, because he had plans to enact. Revenge to seek.
But he could not walk away from Ariadne. Not when she was at the center of that revenge he sought.
Yes, that’s the only reason you don’t want to walk away.
Ariadne shifted in his arms, clearly awakened by the tension that had crept into the muscles that held her still.
She yawned, blinked her eyes open. For a moment, their foggy brown depths met his, and all the discomfort swirling inside of him eased into something…
else. Something he had no vocabulary for and probably wouldn’t like it if he did.
Then she looked away from him. “Oh,” she said, sitting up and—unfortunately—pulling the sheet up to cover her. She ran a free hand through her tangle of curls as she looked out the window. “Morning.” She did not say this in greeting, more in observation of the time of day.
“Yes, it is morning, Ariadne. Early, though. Your first class is not until eight, correct?”
She made an agreeable kind of noise, still clutching the sheet to her chest, her gaze still on the windows.
“I will have breakfast brought up. And some more suitable clothes for your day.”
She made a sound, kind of like a sigh. “You should call me Ari. I suppose we are…friends, after a fashion.” She studied the discarded dress, then pulled the sheet off him and wrapped it around her as she got to her feet.
Ari. Friends. None of these things quite added up.
So he did not react to her words. Instead, he changed the subject. Next steps. “We will be going to Paris in a few days. A party that will garner more press than we’ve seen so far.”
“Paris.” She sighed a little. “How long?”
As though he was asking her to dig trenches in the arctic. “At least four days, I should think,” he gritted out. “I’m quite sure I can find you training facilities should that really be necessary.”
Her expression was neither grateful nor happy. She looked put upon.
He had to breathe through the anger trying to sneak into all the cracks of his persona. Because even if he had enjoyed last night, it was just a persona. Ariadne…Ari…was just a tool to get what he wanted.
Whether she appreciated his help or not was no matter. What was important this morning, though, was to make it clear that her sleeping in his bed was not something to confuse the matter.
How she accepted or didn’t accept his help was of no matter, because at the end of this, she would be no matter. And because he was a good enough man, he thought it only fair to warn her, lest she get ideas.
“I do not need to reiterate to you that this is not…real.”
She turned slowly. She stared at him, as if the words didn’t penetrate. As if they were some kind of surprise. He expected hurt or anger. Something negative. But instead, she did the most confounding thing he’d ever seen.
She threw her head back and laughed.
“I do not see what is so funny.”
But she just kept laughing as she disappeared into the bathroom.
He scowled after her. Then tossed the blanket off him, jerking on the discarded boxers and ignoring the rest. He would need a shower and quite a few cups of coffee to get his head on straight.
He texted instructions to his staff as he walked across the hall to the guest bath, since she was in his. When he was done with his shower, a mug of steaming coffee waited for him in the adjoining room.
He sipped it, not sure how he had ended up in the guest room and not his own. Still, when he stepped back into his own, the staff had set out breakfast on the patio as he’d instructed.
He poured himself another cup of coffee and drank it looking out over Corfu. Except he didn’t see the buildings or the sea. He was thinking of last night.
He could not get a handle on this strange phenomenon. He was not used to physical pleasure lingering, twining with other feelings he could not parse. He was certainly not used to women laughing at him—in or out of the bedroom.
Ariadne—Ari—prompted so many different feelings he was struggling to find the right compartment for them all.
Some were familiar: his frustration any time she seemed put upon by his offers of help.
After all, he’d lived with that all his life.
Sexual chemistry was also no stranger. He had been attracted to many a woman, acted on it in whatever ways he desired.
It was just this underlayer of something else.
Perhaps it all stemmed from the fact that there were some things she accepted from him without that put-upon air. She hadn’t complained about the clothes or the meals. And really, he supposed, with the trips her only complaint was related to work, not being too proud to take help.
He could deal with that. He could even understand it. She was very dedicated to her work.
He thought of the bruise on her rib and tried not to scowl. Who in their right mind dedicated themselves to pain?
She stepped out onto the patio. Her damp hair was carefully braided tightly to her scalp. She wore athletic shorts and an overlarge T-shirt. Her feet were bare, her jewelry gone—no doubt since she was going to the boxing gym soon to handle her morning class.
She surveyed the table he sat at. “Oh, is breakfast real?” she asked, feigned innocence in the raise of her eyebrows.
He scowled at her, despite a glimmer of humor at her impertinence. “It is an important distinction, glikí mou. You would not be the first woman to misunderstand a situation.”
She lowered herself into the chair opposite him. “Perhaps the common denominator is not a woman’s misunderstanding but you.”
For a moment, he simply couldn’t think. There were no retorts in his mouth. Nothing in his brain.
Perhaps the common denominator is you.
Ridiculous.
She sighed, the sound overly content as she put an arrangement of food on her plate. Not as much as he’d like to see her eat—choosing fruits and yogurts over the more decadent pastries—but again, she had a commitment to her profession. She was feeding an athlete’s body.
Like the morning in Mykonos, she did not take any coffee or juice. Just drank ice water. He wished to see her glut herself on everything at this table and even opened his mouth to say so, but her perhaps the common denominator is you stopped him.
He was no one’s common denominator. He drank his coffee and ate a piece of bougatsa as if in protest of her choices.
She hummed happily to herself as she ate and watched the sun finish its rise above the sea.
“This is like a totally different Corfu,” she said thoughtfully, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “Quiet. Clean. Beautiful.”
“Yes, perhaps you should stay here for the foreseeable future.”
Wariness crept into her gaze, the way she held her shoulders. A little tighter. “Stay here?” she said, not looking at him.
“A next step in our little playacting.”
“Stay here for the optics, but I would have my own room, yes?” She moved her gaze to his. Direct. Intent. But for a flicker of a moment, he thought he saw that careful mask of hers slip.
The question, the slight hesitation and that tension still in her shoulders did something to ease some of his frustrations. She may have laughed at him, but she was not quite so flippant about last night.
“If that is what you require.” He smiled at her over his coffee. “But, of course, my bed is always open.”
She made a vague kind of noise, her gaze going back out to sea. She didn’t finish the yogurt on her plate, and this bothered him. Didn’t an athlete’s body need fuel? “I have to get to my first class. I don’t suppose your Lurch is about to drive me?”
He rose. “I will drive you.”
“Are you certain that is wise? Why, we’ve just spent the night together. Shouldn’t you make sure to put some distance between us so I don’t misunderstand?” She batted her eyelashes at him.
Teasing him.
He did not know what to do with it. No one teased him. No one had ever dared tease him. Perhaps when he’d been young and it had been mean-spirited, but those boys had paid.