a little rude, Kyros?’
‘Not really.’ His mouth curved into a half-smile—the kind that usually warned people that it was pointless to waste their time arguing with him. ‘Look around—see for yourself. People are drinking enough to ensure they have headaches by midnight and the more adventurous have already started dancing. In other words, Alice, everyone is doing their own thing. No one knows me—and why should they want to?’
Alice grabbed a vicious-looking purple cocktail from a passing tray and drank a potent mouthful. ‘Oh, please don’t be disingenuous, Kyros. Despite the fact that you’re woefully underdressed compared to everyone else, every woman in the garden noticed you walking in and every man is watching you out of the corner of their eyes to see what you’ll do next. Or rather, where’re you’ll strike.’
‘Strike?’ he echoed.
‘Like a predator,’ she said, before she had time to think about the wisdom of her words.
‘Then let me put their minds at rest,’ he said softly, cupping her elbow within the palm of his hand. ‘I am not interested in any of the women here—except the one whose perfume is invading my senses. Is it rose?’ he questioned.
‘Jasmine,’ she said automatically as the cocktail fizzed its way round her bloodstream.
‘Ah, jasmine. Sweet and intoxicating.’ Just like her. His thumb began to idly stroke at the satin texture of her skin and he felt it prickle into goose-bumps beneath his touch. ‘What I want is a few uninterrupted moments alone with you—catching up as ex-lovers do. To see what the world has done to us both in the intervening years.’
‘I don’t think—’
‘Then don’t think,’ he drawled dismissively. ‘You’re curious. I’m curious.’ The pad of his thumb now traced a featherlight line down to her wrist where he could feel the thready flicker of her pulse and see the dark blue tracery of veins beneath the fair skin. ‘Very curious.’
Had he deliberately couched his words to sound like a sexual invitation? Probably. She wanted to tell him to stop touching her—just as she wanted to tell him to stop dipping his voice like that, so that it resembled rich, creamy chocolate which was gliding sweetly over her skin. But no words came—all that came was a terrible awareness of the aching emptiness inside her.
But maybe in a way, he was right. Maybe she needed to fill in the yawning gaps of her imagination with a few facts because he must have left scores of broken-hearted women behind. Women just like her. And wouldn’t it be good for her to hear that? To understand that what she had shared with him had not been unique or special. It might be painful—but if she could see their relationship as it really was, rather than what she had wanted it to be, then mightn’t that help take Kyros off the pedestal where he stubbornly seemed to stay, no matter how fervent her efforts to remove him?
‘Okay. Why not?’ she questioned carelessly, but quickly moved away from the temptation of his touch before beginning to walk away from the marquee.
The garden was long and they stopped by a quiet, shaded spot near to where the dark river water lapped against the bank—far away enough not to be bothered by stray guests or the insistent music, but Alice found that she was trembling, even though the summer air was thick and warm and scented with flowers.
He gestured to a bench which curled all the way round the trunk of a tree. ‘Let’s sit here.’
Though hard, the seat was oddly intimate and Alice was uncomfortably aware of how close his thigh lay to hers—and how she had to keep surreptitiously tugging at the hem of her satin dress to stop her stocking tops from showing.
‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ he said lazily. ‘I have no objection to looking at your legs.’
‘Well, I do,’ she said, when he plucked the cocktail glass from her suddenly boneless fingers and put it on the grass nearby.
‘You don’t need that,’ he said flatly.
‘Says who?’
His mouth curved into a mocking smile. ‘I do.’
The gesture was both autocratic and yet thrilling—and Alice was appalled at herself for thinking so. Was it because he was Greek that he seemed so utterly masculine and in total command of the situation? That he could get away with the kind of domination she wouldn’t dream of tolerating from any other man—or was it simply because he was Kyros?
‘As high-handed as ever, I see,’ she observed.
‘Ah, but women like a man to take control.’ In the fading light, his eyes gleamed. ‘You always did,’ he added deliberately.
Especially in bed. The unspoken words seemed to filter their way through the gathering gloom towards her, pulling her back to a time of erotic awakening at Kyros’s hands.
When they’d met she had been a virgin—something which had delighted him. A woman’s virtue was the most precious gift that she could give to a man, he had assured her as he had removed the underwear from her trembling body with the dexterity of a man who had done so many times before.
With a passion which had dazed her, he had taught her everything he knew—and it seemed that his knowledge on this particular subject was encyclopaedic. Kyros was an expert in the art of love-making, ‘Because it is an art, agape mou,’ she recalled him murmuring as he had pulled her down onto his lap. How jealous she had been of all the women who had come before her—the women he had practised his art on. And what of the ones who had followed—what of those?
She wasn’t going to go there. They weren’t here to talk about intimacy—because that would only highlight unwanted emotions like envy and regret. Once again, she smoothed the hem of her dress.
‘I thought we’d already decided it was a little late in the day for fake modesty?’ he murmured.
‘Fake modesty will go once you ditch the caveman comments,’ she said, and he laughed. ‘So let’s have this catch-up you’re so keen on, Kyros. What exactly are you doing these days? Where are you living?’
‘On Kalfera. Where else?’
Alice had only ever seen photos of the stunning island where he and his twin brother had grown up and to her unworldly eyes it had looked like some kind of faraway paradise—with its sapphire seas and blazing white sands. Kyros had always spoken of returning there, but somehow she had thought that it might feel claustrophobic after London. She had thought that he might want to be free of its bitter memories. For hadn’t he once told her—on the one and only time she’d ever seen him slightly drunk—of the mother who had walked out on him and his twin brother when they were barely four years old?
And she remembered tentatively bringing up the subject another time—and the way he had shot her down in flames, telling her never to mention it again.
She watched him now—the shadows which caressed his sculpted cheekbones. ‘I thought you might find island life too small and insular—after all the freedom you enjoyed while you were studying.’
‘I choose to live on an island—that doesn’t mean I’m marooned on it,’ he said sarcastically. ‘I can move between the mainland and rest of Europe whenever it suits me.’
‘And how
