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‘I feel fine,’ he dismissed with a wave of his hand.
Her head shake was immediate. Impressive, even, considering most of his employees had all but cowered even as they stared at him with wide, marvelling expressions.
Was he a man who was feared?
Something suspiciously distasteful soured his mouth. But he dismissed it in the next breath. No point inventing unsavouriness where there might be none.
What was more interesting was the way Imogen’s gaze rushed over him, as if she was confirming for herself that he was indeed in shape, at least outwardly, before she responded. ‘Be that as it may, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s prudent to get a doctor’s opinion...’ She paused. ‘Unless you did that already. On the island?’
He frowned, then shook his head. ‘Petros and Yiayia—the old woman—saw to my recovery in the weeks after they took me in,’ he said.
‘So a doctor didn’t officially check you out? Weren’t you curious to rediscover who you were?’
He almost smiled at the hint of disapproval and bewilderment in her voice. But her eyes were roving over him again—did she even know she was doing it?—and that charge he’d experienced when he’d taken her hand and helped her off the boat returned, stronger. More visceral. Awakening senses he hadn’t even thought about, they’d been so surprisingly dormant.
But if he was to take back control of his life—and didn’t it feel as if he’d been holding his breath to do just that ever since he opened his eyes to feel Petros hauling him out of the grasp of a watery death?—he needed to control the demands of his raging libido.
For now.
‘Just because you stormed into a sleepy village to stake your claim on me doesn’t mean everything and everyone there was backward.’
Her eyes darkened with a flash of affront. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘But I do take your point. The medical attention I received when I was rescued was enough to put me on the road to physical recovery. That took the better part of four months.’ Memory rushed in, making his skin clammy and his gut tighten. Those first days, when pain had been his constant companion, and Petros’s questions had only drawn blanks, a part of him had offered to just...beif he was spared death.
Should he have made a better bargain? Perhaps.
‘As to my mental state...’ He paused, unsure why he was unwilling to mention the debilitating headaches that sprang up whenever he dug too hard into his psyche. ‘You are living proof that things work out the way they’re supposed to.’
Her eyes widened. ‘So you were relying on the...cosmos to work things out for you?’
He gave a low laugh, which also seemed to surprise her. ‘You tell me,matia mou. Has biding my time in the past worked to my advantage or not?’
She blinked, then swallowed. Then her gaze dropped from his in a searing display of avoidance that gave him the answer he needed. ‘I guess it has,’ she murmured eventually.
‘There you have it. I will see this doctor you wish me to. If that is what will please you?’ he tossed in, just to witness what her reaction would be.
Heat flowed into her face and she licked her bottom lip again—a gesture that pinpointed her nervous state, while driving him quietly insane—and nodded. ‘I do... I mean it will...for prudent reasons.’
He hid a grimace at that addendum. ‘Then we’ll get it organised in due course. But first...’ He looked around, then back at her, his eyebrow raised.
She jerked forward, clearing her throat delicately. ‘Yes. I’ll show you around, then I’ll let you rest while I get in touch with your doctor.’ She paused a few feet from him and he realised that without her shoes she was petite, the top of her head barely coming up to his chest.
A small, delicious morsel.
He gritted his teeth against the heat that pounded his groin and concentrated on the words she was speaking.
Yes, he was supposed to rest. When in fact relaxing in any way, shape or form was the last thing he wanted to do.
For the first time in his memory he felt alive. Truly alive. And with each breath he took, he felt the acute weight of everything he’d missed.
Still, he pursed his lips against protest and indicated she lead the way. From the flash in her eyes, Yiannis... Zeph was sure he’d riled her further.
And surprisingly...he wanted to keep doing it. Wanted to drag reaction out of her. Make colour continually stain her smooth cheeks. Make that bountiful chest rise and fall just so he could blatantly admire it.
Theós,he’d become an animal he didn’t recognise somewhere between leaving Efemia and boarding the yacht.
Or had he always been like this with her?
