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“Yes,” she agreed, so readily. Socalmly, not even trying to pull her hair from his grasp.“Except you want me,” she said, reaching out to trace the evidence of this fact, without ever taking her gaze from his eyes.
“This isallI want from you,” he growled.
“Then take it, Lysias.”
Was it challenge? Was it surrender? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He took her mouth with his in angry demand. Fisted his hands in her hair to hold her still while he took whathewanted. Whathedesired.
But she met him there, in this fiery insanity between them. Where all rational thought burned away into only their bodies. He ripped her trousers away from her, even as she worked his belt free.
He didn’t bother with her shirt, didn’t want to see the evidence of where she’d been injured. Didn’t want to believe her capable of being hurt. He backed her against the wall, so that she stepped out of her pants and underwear.
The breeze rippled through his hair, and he didn’t care they were outside. All he cared about was possession. The deep, dark thing that beat within him, twining with the anger and the other emotion he refused to acknowledge. But it gave everything claws. Teeth.
He pulled her leg up to wrap around his waist but held her there so he could look at her. Where she was wet for him. His gaze raked up to meet hers.
She breathed heavily, but she only looked at him. With softness in her gaze, even as he was rough with her.
“You want me like this?” He could see that she did,feelthat she did. And yet he wanted to hear her say it. As if that would give him permission to take whatever he wanted, however he wanted.
“Yes. There isn’t a way I don’t want you,” she said, and it didn’t sound soft, it sounded strong. Like she was the one in control.
Never.How dare she sound so calm. So perfectlyrationalwhen he wanted to rage against everything that swirled inside of him. Everything she brought out in him. Everything he’d buried so deep it lived with the shadows and monsters of his nightmares.
So he took her. Her back against the wall, her legs wrapped around him as he plunged. He gave her no quarter, no rest. And she didn’t ask for any. Simply begged for more, shattering over and over again. Her nails dug into his back. She set her teeth to his neck. She said his name, sobbed it. As night fell over them.
But it did not matter how rough he was with her, how much he’d hoped to drive some wedge between what they were and the feelings she’d unwisely left clear in her eyes.
Even as he carried her inside, bent her over the bed and slid into her from behind. Even as he made her saypleaseover and over again, until he finally roared out his release, his fingers digging into her slim hips.
Even with all that, when all was said and done, she still curled up next to him and fell into a quiet sleep.
With her hand fisted over his heart as if she held it there.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ALEXANDRAWASN’TSURPRISEDto wake up alone. Even though she knew Lysias had stayed with her for a portion of the evening, it seemed impossible to think he’d actually face the aftermath in the waking hours if he’d only faced them with sex the night before.
She sighed and looked up at the ceiling. She didn’t know what he thought he’d been doing last night. Driving her away from him? Proving some point about emotions? All he’d managed to do was strip away everything until she couldn’t deny one simple truth.
She loved him.
What a strange series of events. She knew that it was foolish for a girl such as her to think she knew anything of love, that love could bloom in a matter of days, but... She just did. She wished to help him, to avenge him. She wanted to spend time with him—inside and outside of their bed.
The Lysias who forgot about his revenge was a caretaker, as if he couldn’t help himself. An avenger too. She’d seen an Athenian paper yesterday in the sitting room with a pile of newspapers from all over. On the front page had been a picture of Vasilis Pangali in handcuffs.
The man who’d sent her attacker. SheknewLysias was behind it—because no one else could possibly be.
And yet she knew Lysias did not fancy his moral code above anyone else’s. She loved him because she understood him. Everything he must have endured to rise to the top and still remain cognizant of the lows he’d come from. He was wholly himself and not afraid to enact what he believed in.
Except when it came to love.
She thought, perhaps foolishly, that he might love her too if he could get past the fear that held him in its grips—that he hid with fake masks and revenge plots.
It seemed a rather big if, considering that fear had clearly driven his need for revenge across two decades. That his fear lived deep within an old trauma he could not seem to face.
She rolled onto her stomach, surveyed the world outside the large windows and doors that led to the balcony. The sun had begun its rise, but it was still early yet, so the world glowed a dim gold as the sea moved in the distance.
She had no doubt Lysias was out enacting plots and plans. She likely wouldn’t see him again until evening. Like last night.
