Chapter Two #2
‘Genevieve.’ His voice was a command, a demanding, insistent plea.
He needed her to put an end to it. He was too far gone to listen to common sense, but if she said a single word to dissuade him, if she offered even a hint of opposition, then he would stand and walk away—right out into the storm, if need be.
Growing up as large as he was, Nikos had learned the truth of his strength from a young age. He could easily overpower almost anyone—man or woman—and he had never once used that strength to his advantage. Not in a fight with a man, and never, ever in sex with a woman. The idea repulsed him.
It was always a woman’s choice, a woman’s pleasure, a woman’s needs.
But it was with the greatest willpower in the world that he held himself still, in a kind of sexual purgatory, waiting for her to say something, to give him some indication of what she wanted, even when he knew he should deny himself Genevieve, no matter what.
Except, he knew what she wanted. He could see it in the tremble of her body and feel it in the finger that was still tracing the line of his jaw—it was whether or not she was ready to admit that, to either of them.
‘I will not touch you unless you ask it of me,’ he said, the words dragged from him as he pushed past the final barrier of his internal struggle. ‘You do not need to be afraid.’
‘I’m not afraid,’ she said, but her eyes dropped lower, and her hand pulled away. ‘Thank you for taking care of me.’
Her voice was suddenly meek and, despite her words, it seemed almost that she was scared.
He stood, and, true to his inner monologue, strode towards the door, pausing only to retrieve a handgun he kept on his bedside table, before making his way out of the house and into the storm.
Suddenly, it seemed like the most imperative thing in the world to get Genevieve off his island, to hell with anything else.
His helicopter was the beginning and end of that, and, even though he knew he could not take off until the storm cleared, he needed to sight the damned thing, like a talisman.
Only then could he take comfort from the certainty that she would be out of his hair just as soon as the storm passed.
That he could let her go without succumbing to temptation.
Without giving into a pleasure he didn’t deserve to ever feel again.
Genevieve’s clothes were saturated, so she’d tentatively sifted through his clothing—not that there was much of it—and removed a long-sleeved shirt and pulled it on.
She couldn’t just sit around half naked: not when her whole body was suddenly a livewire of sexual need. God, but this man was smouldering!
And all this time, she’d thought herself totally asexual.
That was an easy thing to believe, when her husband’s touch had left her cold.
At first, she’d thought pleasure would develop from intimacy, and then she’d at least hoped that some kind of emotional satisfaction would follow sex.
But it was never a solution, never anything other than an act she came to loathe.
Particularly once she knew he was sleeping with other women.
Women who were beautiful and confident, and no doubt vampy in the bedroom, who could be everything he wanted.
She had no idea if she’d always been like this.
A slavish dedication to her journalism degree had meant she’d never really dated before meeting James, and then he’d overwhelmed her with his attention, flattered her and seduced her with promises of the life they’d lead, so that the struggle she’d known since her father’s death had suddenly seemed like a distant dream.
Throughout their marriage, she’d come to accept that it was just her.
She’d even come to pity her husband, to be glad that he’d cheated.
At first, he’d kept the affairs private, and she’d pretended to turn the other cheek.
But when the headlines had started, and the media had begun to reach out to her for quotes, she’d had to face his infidelity head-on.
Genevieve was midway through making another coffee when the door blew in and, with it, Nikos—whatever his last name was—all wild and wet, just as she’d been when she’d first arrived.
His clothes were plastered to his body and her eyes fell to the gun in his hand.
She couldn’t look away as he stalked across the room, replacing the gun on the bedside table and saying to her, without looking in her direction, ‘It is only in case of wild animals.’
Of course it was. And it was a wise precaution, going by the noises she’d heard as she’d climbed through the forest.
Then he turned to face her and, without looking away, without offering an excuse, began to peel his wet shirt from his body, leaving him standing there in just a pair of shorts. Her eyes were as plastered to him as his clothes had been a moment earlier, and her mouth was suddenly bone dry.
‘The way off the island has been damaged by the storm.’
Her eyes widened and her pulse quickened. Getting off the island hadn’t even really occurred to her. That was to say, it hadn’t occurred to her that it wouldn’t be as easy as clicking her fingers and calling some kind of water taxi.
‘Oh, but there must be a way—’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Of course.’
‘Okay, good.’
‘When the storm clears, I’ll arrange it.’
‘But can’t I call someone now?’
He raised his brows. ‘There is no point. No one can reach the island until this clears.’ He gestured to the window.
‘How long have you been here?’ she asked, looking around before her eyes jerked, of their own volition, back to his body.
‘Three years.’
She gasped. ‘How on earth can you live like this? You must be crazy.’
Yet, he didn’t seem crazy, so much as…broken, like some kind of Greek Heathcliff, all tortured and seeking solitude as a result of that torture. She couldn’t say why she felt that, only that the image was set in her mind and couldn’t be loosened.
He looked around. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘It’s just very sparse.’
‘It doesn’t bother me.’
‘What do you eat?’
He lifted his shoulders. ‘There is plenty of food.’
‘Tuna?’
He simply held her gaze, without answering, then said, ‘I’m going to get undressed, Genevieve. If my nakedness offends you, please look away.’
She knew she should look away. Turn her back, give him some privacy, or suggest he use the bathroom.
But instead, she stayed right where she was, incapable of doing anything but stare as his big hands pushed into the waistband of his shorts and slowly nudged them lower.
She wasn’t surprised by his masculinity now—it was burned into her brain—but it overheated her in all the same ways it had before.
She just hadn’t realised it then—too many feelings were jamming against her waterlogged mind.
His legs were so broad and muscled, as though he ran, every day. She stared at him, completely overwhelmed by the attraction that was flooding her veins.
‘Would you like to touch me, Genevieve?’ As he asked the question, he took a step towards her, so her eyes lifted to his face, drugged by the silver-grey of his eyes. ‘Would you like to feel my body?’
Yes, every cell in her body screamed. She wanted that. She wanted that badly. No, she needed it.
She gasped at the realisation that this was so completely out of her control.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ he suggested, voice blanked of emotion, even when she could see the intensity in his features and knew that he was not unfazed by this at all. ‘I will stand here for one full minute. You can touch me, or you can walk away. The choice is yours.’
And he came to stand so close their toes brushed, and her body surged with white-hot need at his proximity.
‘I don’t know you,’ she said, tremulously, catching the way his lips pulled in an almost ghoulish smile, revealing his straight white teeth.
‘Does that mean you cannot want me?’
She bit into her lip, not sure how to answer that. She’d always presumed romance and connection were prerequisites for good sex, but that had been far from the case in her marriage.
And that was what finally convinced her to act. It was almost as though she’d been handed this opportunity on a silver platter: to explore a side of herself she’d always felt wanting. That she’d been ashamed of, in her marriage, because she couldn’t rouse even a hint of sexual interest.
And here was a stranger, offering himself to her, with no strings, and no need for any personal information to be exchanged.
God knew her heart was far too battered, her trust too often betrayed, for Genevieve to ever seek out another relationship.
The little girl who’d once dreamed of white picket fences and a brood of happy little children at her feet had died a long, slow, tortured death in the face of her husband’s cruelty—Genevieve would never want those things again, and certainly never trust another person to deliver them to her.
‘What does it mean if I do want you?’ she asked, needing him to spell it out though.
‘It means nothing,’ he answered. Words that were music to her ears.
Slowly, she let her hand shift outwards, to his hip, first, curving around the firm, muscled flesh there, warm despite the fact he was wet from the storm. His breath hissed from beneath his teeth.
‘Not like that,’ he ground out, and she jumped back, the criticism evoking every single atom of failure that had thrived during her marriage.
But he stepped after her, taking her hand, and pressing it more firmly to his side.
‘Do not be shy, Genevieve. I am yours to touch and take, as much as you want tonight. For as long as the storm rages, we can indulge this fantasy. After that, we need never see one another again. Yes?’
With her heart pounding in her ears, she nodded, and this time, when her spare hand reached for his other hip, it was like the creaking open of a gate, the pushing open of a door—on the other side, she didn’t know what she’d find. Only she knew she couldn’t wait to find out…