on her flat stomach, urging her to pause and look at him. “I kissed you because I wanted to.”
“You kissed me because you thought you were entitled to.” She snapped the buckle under her chin. “I knew what kind of man you were the day we met.” She grasped his finger, disdainfully peeling his hand away from her abdomen and discarding it. “I forgot once, but I won’t make that mistake again.”
“American?” The contempt curling her lips went into him like a blade, even sharper than the first time. “Not Greek enough for you?”
“A tomcat. Here for a good time, not a long time.”
* * *
Calli caught sight of a car, not her mother’s, but close enough to make her take the opposite direction out of town, not wanting to pass her father’s end again.
Besides, she found the southern end of the island more peaceful. Fishermen launched their small boats and grape growers eked out a living from the dry, rocky land. It was very desolate, but also very Greek. It was home.
She loved this island. She had stayed after her father threw her out for many reasons, money being the big one, at least at first. She hadn’t had the means to get off the island, let alone to New York, and hadn’t wanted to be exiled from her home along with losing everything else.
She hadn’t wanted to leave until she could go to America, but no matter how she tried, those goalposts kept moving. Takis had even tried to help her, but that had fallen apart. Meanwhile, he gave her a better job than anyone with her limited skill set could expect. The longer she stayed, the deeper her ties to him and Ophelia grew, rooting her here even more.
Staying had been a statement of defiance, too, as much as a lack of choice. Her father thought she had shamed him? So be it. She had stayed and lived in what appeared to be flagrant sin with a man much older than herself, continuing to shame him. He deserved to feel ashamed. She would never forget what he had done to her and her son. She wanted him to know it.
But soon she would have to say goodbye and make her way to New York. Once Ophelia left, Calli planned to leave, too.
She was terrified.
“He’s in a better place,” her mother had said, two days after Dorian was gone, when Calli had caught up to her at one of her cleaning jobs.
“Stop saying that! He’s not dead.”
Her father could shout that lie until he was blue in the face, but Calli knew. Brandon’s parents had offered her money to hand over the baby, claiming they had a nice family who would raise him to their standards, but she had to give up all claim to him. She had refused.
Then suddenly Dorian was gone and she knew, didn’t have proof but she knew her father had taken the money and sold her son to them.
“Why are you doing this?” she had cried at her mother. “Why are you letting him get away with it?” It was more frankness than had ever passed between them, so many things always left unsaid to keep the peace.
“Look at you!” Her mother had turned on her with uncharacteristic sharpness. “You’re a child. One turned willful and wild. What kind of mother would you make? And you want to bring up your baby in this?” She’d showed no pity as she waved at Calli’s swollen eye and cut lip, the bruises on her shoulders and back, the dirt clinging to her clothes and hair from sleeping on the beach.
It was true she didn’t want her son raised under the heavy hand of a hard, angry man like her father. She had learned an even uglier rage lived in him than she had ever feared or imagined.
“I’m going after him,” she had declared.
“Don’t. Those are powerful people, Calli. They can offer more, but they can take more. He is in a better place. Accept it.”
“What kind of mother are you to say that to me?” Calli had ducked the scrub brush that came flying at her, then had run out of the house to avoid a fresh beating on top of the one still throbbing black-and-blue under her skin.
She had numbly retraced this long stretch of ragged coastline on foot after leaving that stranger’s house, fighting her mother’s words. Calli had been a good mother, for the short time she’d been allowed to try.
But she’d been young enough to still put stock in the words of those who were older, those who seemed to know better. As she was forced into more and more desperate decisions simply to stay alive, she had started to wonder if her mother wasn’t right. She was a terrible person. Not fit to be a mother.
Now it was six years later and she had tried several times to locate her son, but things had happened to prevent her. Each small failure had reinforced that she wasn’t meant to have him.
He was in a better place without her.
But she would never rest until she knew that for sure.
It made moments like this bittersweet. As the road quieted and the cool, salt-scented air swept over her, she drank it in, trying to relax and live in the moment. To accept life’s hard turns and just be.
But that made her hyperaware of Stavros’s strong frame surrounding her.
It made her remember their kiss.
Think of Brandon.
That memory was a distant recollection of flattery and pretty lies that she had believed because she had wanted to. Those first stirrings of attraction were nothing compared to the way this man’s aura glowed off him and sank through her skin, slanting rosy hues through her without even trying. He set her alight in ways she hadn’t believed were possible.
She told herself the vibration of the bike caused her nipples to feel tight and her loins to clench in hollow need. She was hot because it was a hot summer day. She was flush against the front of his hot body while the hot sun beat down.
Still, it was all she could do to stop herself from inching back into the hard shape pressed to her butt. She knew what it was and it provoked an ache into her breasts and belly and the juncture of her thighs. It was maddening.
She told herself not to give him this power over her, but it wasn’t voluntary. It simply was.
And now she was forced to slow and extend this ride. Up ahead, the road was plugged with sheep, the herd thick between the thornbush-covered hillside and the rail that kept traffic from dropping off the short, sharp ledge to the scrub-covered shoreline.
On impulse, she made a sharp right onto the narrow peninsula that jutted out into the sea. Might as well be a decent hostess if they were right here. At least she could take a break from the physical contact.
Behind her, Stavros said something, a curse or a protest, she wasn’t sure. His hands seemed to harden on her hips, fingertips digging in, but not in a sensual way.
Worried about getting back to work?
“The sheep will be twenty minutes clearing the road. It would take that long to go back around the other way,” she called back as she wound along the goat track to the end.
The motion rubbed their bodies together even more and she was relieved to finally stop the bike and climb off. “At least there’s a breeze out here. And it’s pretty.”
