she said, as he slowly withdrew, wanting to cling on, already missing him. But he was back, and then again, slowly accelerating, building the rhythm faster, until their ragged breathing became their accompaniment. And sparks born in the smouldering ruins of her latest climax flared into flame and flickered and danced under her skin, until with one final thrust from Alexios, accompanied by one triumphant cry, her world shook apart again, this time with his name on her lips.
It took longer to find her way back this time, her breathing ragged, her mind blanked from everything but the sudden realisation that all the stuff she’d ever believed about sex and how many times you could achieve orgasm in a night had been incinerated in the heat of their coming together, the ashes scattering to the waters of the bottomless caldera far below.
* * *
He stood at the window, looking out over the sleeping crater, a ribbon of silvery light bisecting the inky darkness and lighting a path direct to his room. Lights twinkled on the island across the water, likewise on the yacht, anchored in a bay, while all else was dark.
He looked back at the bed, at the woman lying there in the beam of silver, her hair tangled across her pillow, her lips plump and parted, deeply asleep. She’d fallen into his bed as easily as she’d fallen for his ruse, just as he’d anticipated, but she’d been so much more than he’d expected too. So much more. She’d gone off like fireworks in his bed, responsive, explosive. And then she’d climaxed again, and again, and, by the wondrous look on her face, the last time had surprised her the most.
And he half wished Stavros Nikolides were still alive, so he could witness this moment. So Alexios could bodily drag him in here to see his precious daughter naked and supremely satisfied in the bed of his nemesis, the son of the man he had so badly wronged.
For that would surely kill him all over again.
Moonlight on the blackened caldera waters winked back at him, telling him his logic was flawed. Because if Stavros had been alive, he would have enacted his original plan, and Athena would never have been in his bed, and that would have been a travesty. Revenge this way was so much more satisfying.
There was more than one way for a father to pay, and make him pay he would.
The sins of the father...
He would make Stavros pay dearly.
He curled his hand into a fist, all the injustice he’d felt congealing into concrete within, and thumped it hard against the wall.
She stirred behind him. ‘Alexios?’ Her voice was husky with sleep. Surprisingly sexy. As she herself had been throughout the night whenever he had reached for her. ‘What are you doing? Can’t you sleep?’
‘I was thinking,’ he said.
‘About what?’
He flexed his fingers. ‘Tomorrow,’ he lied. ‘I was thinking about what we should do tomorrow.’
‘But... Don’t you have business to attend to?’
‘It can wait.’ He paused, arching an eyebrow. ‘Unless you don’t want to see me again? Are you going to fly away again, mikro peristeri?’
She kept him waiting, her teeth troubling her bottom lip, as if weighing it up. Before she said, ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’
And he smiled as he collected her in his arms and tumbled her back down onto the pillows. ‘Perfect.’
* * *
The sails had filled out in the warm breeze, the boat propelled across the bottomless waters of the caldera until they were far away from the newly arrived cruise ships and the well-worn tourist trails. Athena lay on the deck alongside Alexios, content to lie on her back and soak up the sun after a swim in the bottomless waters of the caldera.
From here the walls of the islands rose steeply around them, seemingly insurmountable, the jagged path up the cliff from the port seeming to defy the laws of nature and science. It was different to see the ring of islands that made up the crater’s edges from this aspect, the layers of pumice and ash that had spewed more than three thousand years ago from the erupting volcano so clearly visible in the distinctly coloured bands in the cliffs surrounding them.
‘What are you staring at?’ he asked beside her, rolled onto his side and following her gaze.
She nodded towards the soaring cliffs, thinking of the force of the eruption that had all but resulted in the destruction of the island as it then existed, all but obliterating the civilisation that had once called it home. ‘Sorry. I just never cease to be awed by this place. It’s hard to believe we’re sitting in the middle of a live volcano.’
Especially when the sun turned the surface of the sea to diamonds and the water lapped gently at the sides of the boat. Right now an eruption seemed impossible. Incomprehensible. But there was the evidence, all around them.
‘It must have been terrifying when it erupted,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine what it was like being here.’
‘Most people were long gone,’ she said, sitting up. ‘There were earthquakes, bad ones, over many years. Some people stayed, but many abandoned their homes here and took their families in their ships and fled to Anatolia and to Crete. The lucky ones went early and much further afield.’
‘Why lucky?’
‘Because it wasn’t a simple eruption. That would have been bad enough, but when the sea water rushed into the empty lava chamber, it triggered a tidal wave that travelled for hundreds of miles. The northern coast of Crete, with the fleets of the Minoan traders, they were all destroyed. It wasn’t just Santorini, or Thera, as it was known then, that was destroyed. A dark ash cloud encircled the earth, blotting out the sun and wiping out the crops for many years. Even escape to somewhere like Crete proved no escape, just a deferral of the end. It signalled the end of the Minoan civilisation.’
He sat up alongside her, a frown tugging his dark brows together.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘In real life I’m an archaeologist and the Minoan civilisation, in particular, is a passion of mine. I studied it at university and I tend to get a bit carried away about it.’
He curled his hand around hers, lifted it to his lips. ‘You don’t have to be sorry for being passionate. I was never good at history. I was never a good student. Tell me more.’
She smiled, warming to her topic. ‘You know some believe the legend of Atlantis started right here, more than three thousand years ago. A fabulously wealthy and cultured civilisation, drowned under the sea and lost for ever.’
He propped himself up on his elbows. ‘Do you believe that?’
‘I do. It accords with the ancient Egyptian records, and the writings of Plato. The Egyptians traded with the Minoans until their world was suddenly blotted out, and why would that have happened unless some terrible fate had overcome them? Besides,’ she added with a smile, ‘it makes much more sense than the theory about some mythical island somewhere in the Atlantic that disappeared without trace or explanation, don’t you think? Whereas a beautiful island, an advanced civilisation, as good as wiped from the face of the earth—what better candidate than the Minoan civilisation right here in the centre of the then known world?’
He
