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“You have asked me to make love to you with almost every breath you have expelled, since the moment we met. I’m trying to decide how much of it is an act, and how much of it is real.”
“An act?” She repeated, still trying to make sense of his claim that she’d been unconsciously suggesting they become intimate.
“You are so good at this,” he said with a slow shake of his head, pushing away from the railing and moving towards her. “You simper and smile and seem like such an innocent. No wonder he fell for you.”
“Is that your way of saying you’re falling for me?”
He let out a sharp bark, instantly dismissive. “I do not ‘fall’ for women.”
“You just sleep with them,” she supplied, with disapproval.
“Yes.”
Her heart gave a strange, twisting ache, and she turned away, her breath uneven, and breasts aching, as she moved to the edge of her seat.
“Perhaps we are very similar in this regard. Perhaps your act is to make men care about you, to smile and bat your long eyelashes, until they are too beguiled to notice that you are accepting offers of holidays to private islands and large lump sum endowments.”
It was like being doused in frosty ice water.
“I didn’t ask for any of that.”
“I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it.” His hands curved around her hips from behind, surprising her, and a moment later, he was moving them to rotate her back to facing him. “But here you are, on my yacht, and I can’t help but wonder, if you hadn’t met him, would you be looking at me, trying to catch me?”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “For your yacht?” She muttered, tears stinging her eyes. “You’d better believe I’m worth more than that.”
His smile was cool; his hands were warm, and as he stroked her sides, fireworks erupted through her body. “Not just for my yacht.” One hand left her side, lifting to her chin, to angle her face to his. “There’d be this, as well.”
His kiss was soft, a gentle exploration, as if probing her to see if this was something he could do, could imagine. Kisses, she realized, meant nothing to Anastasios. Where sex was a line he couldn’t ever cross, because he imagined she’d slept with his father, he clearly had no problem kissing her until she was incandescent with longing. The problem Phoebe faced was that as soon as he kissed her, common sense went out the window. Rational thought was gone, too.
“Is this how it works, Phoebe? Lunch, once a week, extravagant gifts and holidays. And in exchange, your beautiful body, and the pretense of your total adoration?” He broke the kiss just long enough to press the words to her lips, and damn it, she had no shield for such cruelty, despite what she’d endured—they fired as arrows, straight into her heart.
Sadness flooded her, dousing desire.
She pulled away with no difficulty.
“Nothing about what I shared with your father was an act.” She sniffed, tilting her face from his. “And if you would like to know why, I’ll give you the easy answer: he was ten times the man you’ll ever be. Never, in a million years, would he speak to a woman as you have me.”
“No, he’d just sleep around behind their backs.”
She bit down on her lower lip. “You have issues with him, fair enough, but you have no right to transpose those on me. I did not lie to you. I did not cheat. I did nothing but be a friend to, and appreciate the friendship of, your father.”
“It’s a pointless conversation,” he said after a beat. “As we’ve already discussed, I don’t rely on words and promises when making a decision.”
“I’m not asking you to make a decision,” she said, through gritted teeth. “You’re the one who kissed me, who touched me. You’re the one who keeps bringing up my sex life as though you have some kind of vested interest, so I’m going to make this very easy for you. I’m not available. I don’t want you to kiss me, I don’t want you to touch me, and I sure as hell don’t want to sleep with you. Just stay out of my goddamned way, katanoitó?”
Chapter 6
UNDERSTAND? UNDERSTAND? HE DIDN’T understand a single thing about what had happened, since the night he’d met her. He didn’t understand his behaviour, his desires, his anger, his hatred. He didn’t understand the way he was goading her, provoking her, he particularly didn’t understand the way he was insulting her.
There was a level of hypocrisy in his treatment he couldn’t fail to be aware of.
How many women had Anastasios slept with? And then bought beautiful jewelry for, or lavish clothes, as part of his dating ritual. Accepting such gifts didn’t make Phoebe a whore, so why the hell had he treated her like one?
He bashed his pillow for the millionth time, as the boat rocked gently back and forth, in a motion that usually lulled him to sleep. But sleep was impossible tonight. Their conversation was tormenting him, so too her nearness, so he dismissed the prospect of rest and stood instead, restless, as a caged lion might be. He prowled his room for several moments but the sense of unease didn’t lift. It wasn’t yet five in the morning, but he couldn’t stay locked up in here for several hours longer, despite the luxurious size of his bedroom. Grabbing a pair of shorts, he pulled them on his naked frame and quietly slipped out of his room, hesitating for only the briefest moment outside her door, then striding past, anger stoking to life anew in the pit of his belly.
His father had cheated on Maggie, but also, on them. He’d broken the bonds of their family. He’d been with Anna for a long time—decades—and kept it totally private, something all his own. He’d had another daughter, for God’s sake, and never once thought the family deserved an introduction to her. That she might want to meet her brothers, and vice versa. He’d made a mess, then refused to clean it up. Instead, he’d left that for Anastasios.
Phoebe, in the scheme of things, was an afterthought.
