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CHAPTER EIGHT
NAKED, ACHILEASSTEPPED onto the balcony. He hesitated a moment, glancing back at the bed where Effie was sleeping. She had fallen asleep in his arms, her soft body curled around his, and he wanted to sleep too. But everything kept replaying in his head.
Starting with what had just happened.
His heart was suddenly speeding.
Even now it blew his mind, and a part of him couldn’t quite accept what they had done. But the facts were clear and irrefutable. Effie had been a virgin when they’d walked back into the villa this afternoon and now, she wasn’t.
Now she was his.
He glanced back to the woman on the bed again.
Her hair was spilling over the pillow like warm buckwheat honey. Thinking about how he’d tangled his hands through it as she clung to him, and the noises she had made, turned his breathing inside out, so that he felt almost faint.
She had been sweet and pliable, like spun sugar, and her body had been a revelation. Small, firm breasts, a waist he could fit his hands around, and that throat...
Her first time: not his.
Although in some ways it had felt as if it was. There had been a newness and a nervousness in him he had never felt before, even when he’d lost his own virginity. The desire to give pleasure, to take care of her was not unique—for him, good sex was always about mutual satisfaction. But Effie had been his first time with a virgin, and he had found it impossible to keep his usual distance.
Touching her, watching her face soften, feeling her body open to his, had made him feel—
What?
He didn’t know. Other than anger, he shied away from emotions. More than one of his former girlfriends had accused him of lacking emotional intelligence. Maybe that was why he was finding it so hard to explain away these feelings now—feelings he couldn’t even name, much less process.
But his confusion was probably down to it being completely unplanned. Truthfully, he thought he’d blown the whole damn thing back in the restaurant. He had been so tense, had behaved so unreasonably, and Effie—well, she had been furious.
And his fury had matched hers.
He felt his spine stiffen as he remembered his blind, ungovernable rage.
Nobody had ever talked to him as she had. From an early age, his temper, and his implacable determination to win at any cost had meant that everyone—including grown men twice her size—had backed down, placated him, or simply turned a blind eye to his worst behaviour.
Not Effie.
She had called him out. Told him the truth. She had held a mirror to his face; and he hadn’t liked what he saw.
His chest felt tight against his ribs.
Confronting his failings had been hard, painful, shocking. But what had snuffed out his fury...the dark, impenetrable, all-consuming rage that clung to him like a shadow even on a cloudy day...was something else entirely. It was what Effie had told him about her father and her mother.
His fingers tightened around the rail.
When he was being rational, reasonable, he knew gambling was a sickness, and that therefore blame was inappropriate, but picturing Effie living in that situation made him want to rage at a higher authority.
Or punch something.
No wonder lying was such an anathema to her.
He stared out to sea, watching the waves break the surface, thinking back to their first meeting outside the Stanmore. Little Miss Nobody: that was what he’d called her then. And he’d been so sure of who she was. Small. Unimportant. A means to an end.
And, yes, she was small. But she was also talented and smart. Strong.
What she had done for her mother was nothing short of remarkable. Like him, she had turned her life around. His mouth thinned. The difference was, Effie had done it out of love—not anger and a desire for revenge.
He was glad. Grateful. So much of his life had been spent trying to push back the darkness he carried inside, and her strength, her purity of motive, was a tiny, flickering candle. It was making him question the man he had become. She was making him question the man he had become. The man he wanted to be after all this was over. On that basis Effie was way more than a means to an end.
