that intensity of experience again? Ari’s hand clenched around the crystal glass, the design digging into his palm as he looked unseeingly out of the plane window. Since when had sleeping with a woman been too intense for him? They were the ones left weak and dizzy and sated. Not him.
He closed his eyes and threw his head back. And then opened them again abruptly when all he could see was Lucy’s passion-glazed eyes as she’d looked up at him the moment he’d filled her, the moment he’d been completely sheathed in her hot moist warmth … It had felt … it had felt like nothing he could have imagined. He could remember the feel of her breasts pushing against him, their peaks as hard as bullets against his chest, could hear their heartbeats even now, thudding slow and unsteady, and then, as he’d started to thrust deeper and deeper, the beats had got faster … until—
Aristotle swore softly. He needed to numb that intensity.
His mouth twisted and he called himself all sorts of a fool for running away. So it was the best sex he’d ever had? That was it. It didn’t mean anything. It hadn’t touched any part of him that hadn’t been touched before. So why did it feel as if it had?
Ari blocked out that assertion. He was immune to feeling, immune to emotions. He’d started to shut them away when his mother had died, and then when Helen Savakis had come into his life, and then finally on that first night in a cold boarding school in England at the age of five. It was the last time he’d cried and now … His gut clenched. Now he only cried in his sleep. He reiterated it to himself: he didn’t do emotions.
Perhaps he’d sensed that Lucy did, and that was why he’d run. A sense of calm stole over him. That was it. She wasn’t like the women he went for … she was bound to be less versed in how this would work. He’d seen the look on her face that morning, slightly nervous, biting her lip … And suddenly he was right back to square one—a raging erection pushing against his trousers, thirty thousand feet in the air, and the only chance of alleviating it far behind him on Greek soil.
He just had to lay it on the line with her, that was all. Make sure she knew what not to expect. And then … then he would take her again, and these demons would not be hovering over his shoulders. Ari smiled cynically. Who would have thought he’d be growing a conscience now, after all these years?
Lucy had got over Aristotle’s abrupt and cold departure yesterday morning. She told herself stoutly that she was back on an even keel. But if she allowed images to surface for a second—She stumbled slightly in the street and a kindly old woman caught her arm and smiled up at her, saying something in Greek. Lucy smiled weakly and mumbled something back. So much for an even keel. If she even thought about the other night for a second she lost her balance … Self-disgust ran through her.
She spied a taverna on the other side of the street and made her way there, sitting gratefully in an empty chair. She ordered sparkling water and fanned herself with a menu, thinking that perhaps it was the heat getting to her. Who was she kidding? The heat was getting to her all right, but it had nothing to do with the sun.
And along with the heat was a lingering hurt—Lucy brutally cut off her thoughts there. She wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t.
She tried to focus on her surroundings, the pretty and quaint area of Anafiotika, a hidden gem of old Athens within touristy Plaka, just beneath the Acropolis. She’d climbed up there earlier, the exertion doing little to clear her head of the tangled knots. She took a sip of water, but with annoying precision her mind slipped back again to that excruciating moment when she’d woken the day before.
She’d felt so heavy, so lethargic, so replete. She’d lazily stretched and opened one eye before realising that she was naked, and that muscles ached where no muscle had been before. In an instant she’d been alert, and staring into the cool, wide-awake green eyes of Aristotle as he’d knotted his tie in the mirror.
She needn’t have worried about the embarrassment of the morning after as he’d coolly informed her he had to go to New York urgently on business, that he didn’t need her, and that he’d be back late on Sunday. It was almost as if nothing had happened. Lucy had even wondered for a paralysing moment if she’d sleep-walked into her boss’s bed and he was merely being diplomatic and ignoring the faux pas.
And then he’d gone, leaving her there, shell-shocked, the only evidence that anything had happened in the tremors that had started through her body along with the ache when she moved.
After he’d left her mind had gone to some numb place where she wouldn’t have to process what had happened, answer the questions that were piling up. Was that it? Had he just been scratching an itch? Would things revert to normal now? Was he that cold with everyone? Lucy had remembered the way he’d treated Augustine Archer and she’d doubled over in her steaming shower, feeling sick. How could she have let this happen with a man like that?
Because, she realised now, as the everyday hustle and bustle went on around her, she simply had not had a choice. He’d overwhelmed her—her response had overwhelmed her. And she was grateful for the space and time to process what had happened.
At that moment a group of handsome young Greek men passed her table, and they all turned to look Lucy over appreciatively as they backed down the street. One of them cheekily wolf-whistled. The shock of the attention when she wasn’t used to it made her freeze. She felt acutely self-conscious in her khaki shorts and V-necked black T-shirt. The waiter in the restaurant bustled over and shouted something at the boys. They ran, laughing, and he started apologising to Lucy, but she assured him smilingly that it was fine and put some money on the table, getting up to go.
She had to acknowledge as she walked away that it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience to be noticed like that. She’d hidden away for so long that she’d never had a chance to just play with situations like this.
The sun beat down and she tipped her head up to it for a moment. She felt an alien sensation of lightness, as if she were finally letting go of a weight. It was also a sense of freedom, and she desperately wanted to cling onto it. One thing she knew: if Aristotle thought they could take up where they’d left off when he returned, that sense of freedom might disappear. She’d indulged in the experience once; it would have to be enough. She knew too much about him, about his cold methods, and she knew that she didn’t have the hide of someone like Augustine Archer to be able to take it.
But she had a mortifying, sickening feeling that he’d had enough already, and it killed her to admit to feeling other than overjoyed at the prospect.
She set off back in the direction of the hotel. Just before she rounded the corner a flash of movement caught her eye, and she looked over to see Aristotle lounging against an ancient wall, hands thrust deep into jeans pockets, a faded white T-shirt making him look indecently handsome. Dark glasses hid those amazing eyes, but added to the overall devastating package.
It was so like something she might have conjured up out of a fantasy that she blinked and blinked again. Was it a mirage? He was dressed more casually than she’d ever seen him. He moved, strolled towards her. Stopped in front of her. Her heart stopped and kick-started again with heavy thuds.
This was no mirage.
‘You’re … back.’ Despite the drink of water, Lucy’s mouth felt like a desert.
Ari smiled a hard smile and in that second Lucy knew it was him. Despite his hardness something melted inside her, all her good intentions of moments ago disappearing like pathetic wisps of cloud.
He lifted his glasses onto his head. ‘I left New York in the middle of the night.’
