Chapter 3 #2
She got him a drink and then sat down next to him with a can of diet soda in front of her.
“We have a lot of details to iron out. I’ll let them know at work that I’m leaving.
I really don’t think they’ll be able to find a replacement by next week.
Could you delay your departure until the following week? ”
He could, but he didn’t want to. He needed to get out of this place and back to his world.
Back to the place where he was in control.
But Ava had asked him for little else and he’d seen tonight how necessary she was to integrating Theo into his life.
“Yes, I can do that. Tomorrow we’ll make arrangements for you and Theo to move into my house. ”
“Can’t we stay here?”
“I think Theo will be more comfortable with you, but if you decide to stay here that’s fine.”
She stood up and paced around the kitchen. “You can’t be a dictator about this. Theo and I can move into your place over the weekend. The school week is just too hard.”
He pushed to his feet, coming over to cage her body between his and the counter. “I’m not a dictator, Ava.”
“You act like one. I’m not ready to sign over all decision-making rights to you.”
“I’m not asking that.”
She smelled so damned good, he thought. He couldn’t resist lowering his head and inhaling. Wrapping himself in the sweet scent that was Ava.
She shook her head. “You are too used to getting your way.”
“Not true,” he said. He did like to get his way, but his life had changed and now he was living up to others’ expectations. It was true that with Ava he liked to feel in control. It made the entire situation more palatable.
“Liar.”
“That’s not very nice, Ava.”
“You don’t think I’m nice,” she said softly.
He wasn’t getting into that. “You feel nice, moro mou.”
He lowered his head and pressed his mouth against hers. Her lips parted and he tasted the saccharine sweetness of the cola she’d drunk. He brushed his tongue over the seam between her lips, keeping the contact light to prove to himself that he was still in control. But he wasn’t.
In his mind, he lifted her up on the countertop and pushed her legs apart so he could stand between them.
In his mind, he slipped his hand under her sweater and palmed the soft weight of her breasts.
In his mind, he was a man who didn’t care about the past and was free to give in to the passion that she called from him as effortlessly as the sirens lured sailors.
Ava wasn’t sure this was the best idea, but being in Christos’s arms was the one thing she couldn’t resist. The last few years had been hard as she’d struggled to find her place in the world with Theo.
But she was happy with who she was and didn’t know whether taking this leap—going to Greece with the one man who’d broken her heart—was the right thing to do.
His warm breath brushed her cheek, helping her believe this was right. Exactly what she needed. And then his mouth moved over hers and she stopped thinking. His lips parted and his tongue thrust past the barrier of her teeth, tasting her with long languid strokes.
She slid her hands up over his shoulders, clinging to him as his mouth moved over hers. She remembered this of Greece and Christos: the warmth of his skin, the possessiveness of his hands on her body.
His hands swept down her back, clutching at her hips and lifting her up against him. Off-balance, she clung to him as his mouth moved over hers. He lifted her up onto the countertop and stepped between her legs, spreading them farther apart with his hips.
The movement reminded her of where they were and that she didn’t exactly trust Christos. She lifted her head, stared down at him in the revealing illumination of the recessed fluorescent lights.
“I…I’m not ready for this,” she said, carefully trying to calm the flush of arousal running through her veins. She couldn’t resist running her fingers through his thick silky hair.
“You feel ready,” he said. He ran one finger down the line of her jaw to her neck, sweeping slowly down to rest on the pulse beating frantically at the base.
“That’s a chemical reaction,” she said, gathering her wits a little bit at a time.
“So?”
“Christos—”
He rubbed his other thumb over her lips. “I’ve missed the sound of my name on your lips.”
She shuddered and leaned into him. She rested her head on his shoulder, because she didn’t want to see his eyes and maybe glimpse the truth—that this was just a line to get her into his bed, except, when had he ever had to lure her there?
She’d wanted him from the first moment she’d stepped off the private plane on Mykonos and seen him.
Even Nikki had noticed and warned her away from her brother-in-law. Reminded her in that forceful way of hers that Ava’s responsibility was to Nikki’s children.
She stiffened in Christos’s arms and pushed away. “Are you really going to marry me or is that just a ploy to get me to cooperate?” she asked.
Christos kept his hands on her waist holding her steady even though she tried to draw away. “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”
“Christos—”
“Don’t question me, Ava. You’ll have to trust what I’ve told you. There is nothing you can say that will make me change my mind.”
“I can make this difficult for you,” she said, after a long moment. She hated that this issue of trust was between them. There could never be peace between them until he acknowledged he’d been wrong five years ago.
“You’re welcome to try, but I fight hard and always win.”
“Funny. I would have said our first match-up ended in a draw. Did pushing me out of your life and accusing me of infidelity feel like a win to you?”
He cursed. Then leaned down so close that their noses touched. “Don’t bring up the past or I’ll take Theo out of here and never look back.”
She felt a frisson of fear and tears stung her eyes. The thought of losing her son was more than she could bear.
Christos cursed again and drew her back into his arms. “Sorry.”
“For?”
“Being a bastard. I don’t want to talk about the past with you. I can’t forgive what you did or how things ended between us.”
His arms were gentle around her and she wondered at the contradiction of this man. She was afraid to trust and at the same time afraid not to. Despite the fact that he had that icy control over his emotions, she could feel the fire beneath the surface.
She blinked to try to stop the tears that were burning in her eyes, but they fell anyway, flowing down her cheeks.
“I’m not going to take your son away,” he said.
“We could have a DNA test,” she said at last. She’d resisted having one originally, because she’d gone to Christos a virgin; he should have understood that she would never give her body so easily to another. And she wanted his trust. What woman in love didn’t want her man to trust her?
“That’s not necessary. Theo is of Theakis blood, that is enough.”
She nodded against his shoulder, suddenly very tired. Christos tipped her head up and thumbed away the tracks of her tears.
Then he brushed his lips over hers. “Let’s start anew.”
She nodded. Yes, starting anew sounded good to her.
Christos left a short while later and she tried to tell herself that they’d resolved the past, but a part of her knew they hadn’t.
She hoped leaving it be would be enough, but experience had taught her that incidents from the past always came back to haunt her.