Chapter Four #3
Selwen couldn’t breathe. His eyes were much too dark for that, and oh, the way he was watching her as he told these things. As if they were intimate. As if this was intimate, this conversation in the open air of a pretty morning.
“I asked her to be my mistress,” Thanasis said. He inclined his head slightly. “And she agreed.”
Her mouth was dry. Selwen licked her lips and then regretted it when his gaze tracked the movement. Or maybe, she amended, that was not quite regret she felt. “What does that mean? What an archaic word.”
“How funny,” Thanasis murmured, that gleam in his gaze seeming to move inside her, too. “That’s what she said.”
Selwen didn’t like that. It made something seem to yawn open in the pit of her stomach. “When I think about mistresses I think about smutty historical novels where dukes pranced about, keeping their mistresses in London houses and their proper wives in the countryside.”
“I am not a duke,” Thanasis replied, mildly enough, though there was nothing mild about the way he was studying her. “I moved her into a flat in London. Not a house. If the distinction matters.”
“Your flat?”
“Not my flat, no.” Something in his gaze shifted. “I wanted to keep her far apart from the rest of my life. And yes, before you ask, this eventually became a source of tension.”
Selwen was finding it difficult to breathe.
It was like there was a band of something inflexible wound tight around her chest, and it kept cutting deeper into her.
She thought it might cut her in half. “I don’t understand any of this.
Why couldn’t you simply date her like a normal person?
Why not simply have a girlfriend? And what was her life, that she could simply… become a kept woman?”
“She was a student. She was doing an art history master’s program.
She had graduated with distinction from her undergraduate program and spent the time that I wasn’t with her studying.
And as far as I know, she found that not having to worry about bills or money was a relief.
Not having to concern herself with paying rent allowed her to focus on her studies. ”
“I suppose that is a benefit of being hidden away,” Selwen said, a little too hotly. “Like something to be ashamed of. Or you would have simply called her your girlfriend, taking her out to dinner and squiring her about, wouldn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t,” Thanasis said, another dark undercurrent in his voice.
“I don’t like public announcements, oblique or otherwise.
I have a paparazzi problem, you see.” His lips curved and this time, there was no trace of any humor in it.
Nothing the slightest bit wry. “Perhaps you’ve met my family by now, like my charming half siblings, each one of them filled with bile and spite.
They enjoy nothing more than planting stories about me in the press.
It is their dearest wish that the stories might prevent me from doing my job.
Not because they want the job, or any job, but because they know I enjoy it.
And they do not wish me to have anything in this life that I enjoy. ”
“What that sounds like to me is a whole lot of main character syndrome,” Selwen said with a sniff. “Has it ever occurred to you that some people don’t think about you at all?”
“Many people do not think about me at all,” he agreed, in that low, outrageously compelling voice of his. “But none of them are related to me. And as for Saskia, I think you’re missing a key point in this.”
He leaned forward then, as if he wanted to impress this part upon her. So much so that she was actually shocked he didn’t reach out and put his hands on her body.
“She liked me,” he said, and there was something quietly devastating about it. “She wanted to spend time with me as much as I wanted to spend time with her. I did not force her into my life. It was as if we collided, and once we did, the only way forward was with each other.”
Her heart was slamming against her ribs. She kept thinking of colliding . Of collisions— two comets streaking across the sky and becoming one.
She kept thinking of that darkly beautiful face of his, and of his fingers thrusting deep inside of her, and the intense magic of his kiss—
Selwen wasn’t sure when she’d last taken a breath. “You’re saying that as if it should mean something to me, but I don’t—”
“We met on Tuesday,” he told her, his voice as intense as his gaze, as dark and as sure.
“We had coffee on a Wednesday morning. By Wednesday night, I had already made her come apart some five times. Maybe more. By Saturday, we were like addicts, shambling about, sickened by the notion we might have to part. And so, we didn’t.
” He didn’t shift that gaze from her. “I found the flat. I moved her in. It took a week in total to sort these things out. When we did, we were together for two years.”
“And then she ran away from you,” Selwen managed to get out, though her voice was little more than a whisper.
Something hoarse and strange and yet she couldn’t seem to stop.
“She ran away, or took a train, is that what you said? And you thought she was dead. Maybe, you didn’t know her as well as you thought you did. ”
“I knew her,” he shot back, and something blazed in his dark eyes.
“I know that everybody thinks that it’s impossible for one person to know another.
Everyone has a secret life, they say. No one can truly know their lover, they claim.
But I’m telling you, whatever you call yourself now, there is not one part of me that Saskia did not know.
Not one part of her I did not know in return. I am as sure of her as I am of myself.”
“Then why did she leave?”
It was a stark question. It seemed to come from that pit inside of her that kept expanding with every word he said, and there was no small part of her that worried it would consume her whole.
Or maybe she was worried that she wanted it to do exactly that.
“I said I knew her, and she knew me. I didn’t say we didn’t have our troubles.
” Thanasis looked away for the first time in this conversation and Selwen felt something move over her, some prickle of foreboding.
Especially when he rubbed his hand over his face.
“As time went on, Saskia found the secrecy and privacy that I insisted upon grueling. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy what we had, but she did not wish to hide it.
” Selwen watched as his jaw tightened. “I didn’t understand it at first. But she became convinced that I was ashamed of her.
” He shifted his gaze back to Selwen then, and once again she felt pinned into her seat. “Saskia was an orphan.”
And there was no reason at all that those words, spoken about a woman Selwen didn’t know or couldn’t remember, should pierce her the way they did.
“Her parents died when she was very small,” Thanasis told her, and she couldn’t tell if there was something ruthless or sorrowed in his voice, then.
“She was raised in care. A local vicar took an interest in her and helped her get a place at university. Sadly, he also died not long after. When I met Saskia, she was all alone in the world. And she believed that this meant I thought that she was not good enough for me.” His nostrils flared slightly, the only sign of high emotion she could see.
“She thought I was hiding her instead of protecting her.”
Selwen felt her own chin rise again, as if she expected she might have to fight about this. Ancient history. A story about a woman she would never know. “What were you protecting her from?”
He leaned in again, his face stark and stripped down with something like temper—but nothing in her suggested she recoil.
Quite the opposite. The only word she could think of to describe how she felt was exhilaration, but that couldn’t be right. She bit the inside of her mouth, hoping the pain might sort her out, but it didn’t seem to do anything except hurt.
“This,” he bit out. “I was saving you from this , Saskia. That terrible man you have decided to marry, the weight of his ego and his vanity and all his nasty little minions who will stop at nothing to drag you down to their level, tear you apart, and make you wish you’d never met any of them.”
“I am not Saskia,” Selwen managed to get out, though she could barely hear her own voice over the pounding of her blood in her veins. “And your father has never been anything but kind to me.”
“I am pleased to hear that,” Thanasis growled. “But he is not a kind man. And this is not a kind place. And you are spectacularly na?ve if you imagine you have the tools to navigate it.”
“I’m doing just fine, aren’t I?” she shot back. “In point of fact, you’re the only unkind person I’ve met on this island.”
“My poor sweet fos mou ,” he said, with a dark laugh, “I have not even begun to be unkind. But I assure you, if you do not put a stop to this madness, that is the very least that I can promise you.”
Selwen stood up then, in a rush. She felt flustered, and something far worse than that.
There was that soft heat, betraying her.
She could feel it between her legs, and everywhere else.
Worse still, she had the strangest sensation that she was being torn apart.
As if every word he said was a hook in her flesh, her bone—tearing her in a different direction.
She was surprised she was still in one piece.
It was possible she only hoped she was.
“Maybe,” she said quietly, “this is exactly why she left you.”
“She didn’t believe me,” he threw back at her, getting to his feet as well, and then they were too close, standing there on the porch where anyone could see them, but Selwen didn’t back away.
“We had a row. She told me she was going somewhere else to collect her thoughts and she didn’t want me to know where.
I didn’t think she had a place in mind. She said she was going to take the train north and stop when she felt like it, and I would simply have to deal with that until she returned. But she never returned.”
“Or maybe that’s what she had to tell you so she could escape. Have you ever thought of that?”
“I think about that all the time,” Thanasis growled at her. “But regardless of Saskia’s intentions, what happened is that there was a train derailment. Her body was never found. It was five years ago. Where were you five years ago, Selwen? Where does your memory start?”
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t think.
And then he made it worse by stepping forward and wrapping his hands over her upper arms, so he could put his face directly into hers.
“How did you end up in Wales, Saskia?” he asked her, his voice dark and rich, a threat and an invitation, all at once. “How did you stay hidden all this time?”
And everything inside of Selwen seemed to crash and burn. But she shook her head. She looked up at him and she could still feel too much. That longing for him that horrified her. This wild notion that she needed to touch him. The dizzying truth that his hands fit her shoulders perfectly.
She shook her head again. “I don’t know if I’m your Saskia,” she said.
“You are.”
Selwen swallowed. Hard. “This is what I do know. When Ffion found me by the side of the road, I had no idea who I was. All I knew was that I wanted to hide.”
She stepped back and without thinking, lifted a hand to her hair. “I cut off all my hair. I dressed in hoods and dark, loose clothing. I stayed close to home. I lived in that village for five years and I never made friends. I didn’t want to make friends.”
He whispered something beneath his breath, another Greek endearment or curse. She didn’t want to know which.
She took another step back. “I have to assume that this picture you painted for me isn’t true, even if you think it is. Because if I am your Saskia, Thanasis? Then I was running. From you.”