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‘Do you think I did it for the damn money? Well, I didn’t!
I wanted the money for Jem, but that wasn’t the reason I did what you wanted me to do! I did it to show myself—to show you!—that I could be just like all those bloody other women! I could have totally meaningless sex with you—the only kind you like! The only kind you want! I did it so I could make myself immune to you. To make myself hate you, big-time! And, my God, it should have worked! After everything you did to me, said to me, and that very last nightmare time of all—my God, I should have hated you! You were so vile to me, and horrible, and…and…’
She couldn’t go on. Couldn’t do anything. She had told her terrible, shaming secret, the one she shouldn’t tell anyone—anyone at all. And she had told it to the very worst person in the world to tell.
‘I should have been immune to you,’ she whispered.
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t immune to him. She would never be. That was the power he had over her, the power that terrified her.
She took a deep, shuddering breath.
Looked at him. Looked right at him.
‘Just go, Theo,’ she said. Her voice was cracking. She was cracking. Cracking into fragments. ‘Just go.’
But he didn’t go. He stepped forward to her again, to where she had shrunk from him. He said something to her in Greek. It might have been Greek for idiot—she wasn’t sure. Her Greek wasn’t very good any more. If so, she wasn’t surprised. The word suited her. It was what she was. An idiot. A fool. A moron. One after another the words tolled through her brain, each one breaking her into smaller and smaller fragments. Her tears had stopped now. All run out. She was just a sodden, dripping mess.
Like her life.
She heard him say the word again—the one that probably meant idiot. Elithios. That was what it sounded like. Did he have to keep repeating it? She knew she was that—an idiot. Who else but an idiot would have done what she had?
She started to cry again. It seemed to be the only rational response in the circumstances.
Then Theo’s arms were coming around her. She was being crushed against him, his arms like steel bands around her. It made her cry more. The tears soaked into his shirt, because there wasn’t anywhere else for them to go. He hugged her more tightly, saying more things to her she couldn’t understand. Then he slid his arms from her and she nearly toppled off the high stool, but he caught her, held her face between his hands.
‘Idiot,’ he said, in English this time. His eyes looked into hers. ‘I thought myself a clever man—and all the time I was an idiot. Blind to what was right in front of me. Blind to everything—except one thing. One thing.’ His gaze searched hers. ‘This,’ he said.
He kissed her. Warm and close and for such a long, long time. Then his lips left her mouth and kissed her eyes.
‘Matia mou,’ he told her. ‘My eyes. My lips. My heart. My wife.’
He kissed her mouth again. This time it was warm, and close, but more—more than that. She felt the flame light in her body
Then she was being lifted off the stool and carried, still being kissed.
Fear sprang in her.
‘Theo! No—please! I can’t do this! I can’t. I can’t!’
He crossed the short distance to the bed, its duvet crumpled from where she had thrown it back, sleepless and tormented, an hour ago.
‘You can,’ he said to her, and lowered her down. ‘You must. And so must I.’
He took off his jacket and tossed it aside, and then his dress tie and shirt. Then the rest of his clothes.
Then he came down beside her. ‘It’s imperative,’ he said to her, ‘that we do this. Or the idiocy in our blood will take us over for ever. And we must not allow that, either of us. Not any more. Never again.’
He parted her bathrobe, spreading wide the material.
‘My most beautiful one,’ he said. Then he lowered his head and kissed each breast.
She shut her eyes. There was nothing she could do. Nothing at all. All will was gone. There was nothing left except sensation. Slow and sensuous and sweet. As sweet as honey…the honey that was easing through her veins.
His body was warm to her touch. Warm and strong. He murmured Greek to her, words she did not know, had never known, never heard. But they were honey in her ears, as his touch of her body was honey in her veins.
Slowly he kissed her, slowly he aroused her, slowly he entered her, holding her and cradling her, taking her with him on the journey he was making, to a land he had never visited before. Nor she.
They went to the land together, and found that distant shore, which was so close, so very close, after all. As close as their bodies to each other.
