Heiress's Defiance (11 page)

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.” She toyed with her fork, pushing food around without eating it. “I raised Cara, you know. I was her surrogate mother, except I didn’t really know how to be a mother, so I did a lot wrong. If she’s impulsive, it’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault, Lucilla. Your parents shoulder much of the blame. Your mother for abandoning her children, your father for letting you, a child yourself, raise a baby.”

She dropped the fork, her mouth suddenly
dry. “Why are we talking about me? I thought this was about you.”

“It’s about both of us. You lost your mother at fourteen, and it was difficult for you. I lost mine, too. But for a far different reason.”

He didn’t say anything else and she wanted to scream. “I told you what happened to mine. Are you going to return the favor?”

His eyes glittered in the lights that were turning on with the setting of the sun. “Are you finished eating?”

She looked down at her plate and knew she couldn’t eat another bite. “Yes.”

“Then I will return the favor. But not here.”

Christos flagged the waiter over. He paid the bill and then he helped her up and took her by the hand. She didn’t protest as he led her alongside the harbor to where the fishing boats were kept. They rocked gently in their moorings while men called to one another as they mended nets, adjusted ropes and readied fishing gear for in the morning.

Christos continued down the path beside the harbor until they reached a building. She didn’t realize it was a church until they went inside. He stopped and made the sign of the cross, which surprised her, and then led her forward into the interior. The church was small, but the windows were stained glass.
The dome soared above their heads, painted with frescoes that had faded over the years.

They didn’t stop, however. Christos led her into the cemetery and then over to what she realized was an ossuary. The skulls and bones of hundreds of people were stacked in neat rows one on top of the other beneath a half dome. The ossuary was behind bars to prevent anyone from getting inside. It was strangely beautiful to stand there and see the yellowed bones of people who had once been as alive as she.

“My mother is here,” Christos said, his voice soft and sad as he pointed at the ossuary.

Shock rooted her to the spot. Not that his mother was dead, which saddened her, but that she was a part of what Lucilla had assumed was an anonymous collection of bones.

Christos looked down at her. “In Greece, we do not cremate. We bury the dead in graves, but only for a while. There isn’t enough land, you see. Once someone’s time is up, they are put here unless the family is very rich and can afford a permanent grave. And I was not back then.”

“I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what else to say. She told herself that it was terrible his mother was dead, but what did that have to
do with running her company and getting him to leave?

And yet she couldn’t help but feel terrible for him. She had no idea where her own mother was—Was she alive? Dead? Where?—and she probably never would. Christos knew where his mother was—and yet he didn’t. That thought floored her. He could point to the ossuary and know she was there—but not where, not who.

His voice was anguished. “I think I killed her. Me and my father both. He did the physical work of breaking her, and I did the rest when I broke him.”

She reached for his hand and squeezed it hard. He was so warm and vibrant and alive—and yet he seemed far away from her right now. Lost in a hell of his own making. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know the right words to say to you, but I am sorry.”

He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. Heat flared deep inside. “I believe you are, Lucilla.” He tugged in a deep, ragged breath. And then the words tumbled out of him while she stood there and ached as if they were poison darts.

“My father raped her. I was not what she wanted, and yet she loved me, anyway. She married him to provide a life for me. And
I couldn’t stop him from hurting her, from beating her and breaking her spirit. Until one day I could. I was fourteen, and he’d just beaten her bloody. Her jaw was broken, her arm. I walked in too late. But I grabbed the first thing I could find—the club he’d just beaten her with—and I used it on him.”

“Christos—” She couldn’t stop the tears from spilling over this time. They slid down her cheeks, hot and wet and bitterly painful. She could feel the tremors moving over him, and she just wanted to hold him. But she wasn’t sure he would allow it.

“He never beat her again. You are right that I nearly killed him. I wanted to, believe me. But I stopped because she begged me to.” He dragged in a breath. “There is more I could show you. More I could tell you. But I find I no longer have the stomach for it.”

H
E NEVER TALKED
about these things with anyone, and yet he was telling her. He’d told himself, when he’d concocted his plan to bring her to Greece, that he was doing so to protect everything he’d built. He’d intended to start in Kefalonia and then move on to Athens, to show her the dirt and squalor of his teen years. But he no longer cared about protecting anything. He only cared that she was crying and he’d made her do so.

She’d lost her mother at the same age he had gone to prison and effectively lost his own. By the time he’d been released at eighteen, his mother had returned to Kefalonia and died of a broken heart.

“Lucillitsa,” he murmured, bringing her into the curve of his embrace. She curled her fists into his shirt and cried softly. He stared over her head, at the ossuary, and his own eyes blurred.

Vlakas.
What had he been thinking to bring her here? He was a fool for doing so. It did nothing except upset her and scrape off the thin layer of veneer protecting his emotions. Anywhere else, he was impervious. But when he returned to Kefalonia, when he walked into this church—which he had not done in several years now—the pain was as raw and ragged as the first time he’d come.

They stood that way for a long time. Finally, she spoke. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m so upset.”

He rubbed her back. “Because you are tenderhearted, no matter that you are tough on the outside.”

She tilted her head back to look up at him. Her eyes were filled with pain and sorrow and he wanted to kiss those feelings away. He was angry with her for threatening him, his career and future, and yet as he stood here and held her, he could hardly remember that it was so.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Christos. I just wanted you to step aside and give me back my company.”

He stroked his thumbs over her cheeks, removing the wetness. Her lashes were spiky with tears and her eyes were so wide and earnest. He wanted her, though he should not.

“I am not the one who took it away from you,
glykia mou
.”

Her fingers tightened in his shirt and he knew he’d touched a sore spot. “I know. But I wanted it nonetheless. I need to prove to him …”

Her chin dropped and he found himself staring at the top of her head. In her own way, she was as lost as he was. She smelled so lovely, like flowers and sunshine. He stepped back and took her hand as something twisted deep inside him.

“Come, let’s leave this place.”

She glanced over at the ossuary, at the rows of skulls staring empty-eyed back at them, and pulled in a shaky breath.

“Of course.”

They walked back through the cemetery, through the church and out onto the street. Christos dragged air into his lungs, unaware how tight they’d felt in the cemetery until just now.

Lucilla’s hand tightened on his. “Are you all right?”

“Mostly,” he told her, his voice clipped.

He didn’t expect her to slip her arms around his waist and hug him tight, but that’s precisely what she did. He let himself hold her again, let his head fall until he could bury
his face in her hair and breathe in her sweet scent. His body began to stir. He sensed when her breathing changed, sensed when the heat that always simmered between them began to flare and grow inside her.

Her breathing came in short little bursts now and her fingers moved over the shirt on his back, smoothing it as if she needed something rhythmical to do.

He needed to kiss her. He needed it more than he needed his next breath. He tipped her head back with a finger and pressed his mouth to hers. She gasped, but then she opened and met his tongue with her own.

He could drown in this woman, he thought. He could sink so deeply into her that he never resurfaced. And right now he didn’t care. They kissed deeply, passionately, their tongues tangling, their bodies straining to touch as they wrapped themselves around each other. He shifted his hips against her, brought his aching erection against the V of her thighs, and exulted in her gasp.

But then he forced himself to step away, before he lifted her skirts and took her against the side of the church on a darkened street where anyone could happen along. She made a little noise—of frustration, of regret or self-recrimination,
he did not know. All he knew was that he wanted her.

“I’m taking you back to the villa,” he told her, his voice ragged with need. “And, Lucilla, I’m taking you to bed. If that’s not what you want, then you need to say so now.”

She sounded breathless. “And what would you do if I said no? Leave me here?”

His stomach clenched. “Of course not. But I would drop you at the door and keep driving.”

Her eyes flashed. “And do what? Find a companion for the evening?”

He barely suppressed a groan. “Lucillitsa, I am a grown man, capable of dealing with an erection without needing to blindly use it on the nearest female. If you say no, I’ll live. But I won’t be happy about it.”

She stepped into his space again, tilted her head up to look at him as she ran her fingers over his jaw. “God knows I
should
say no. But I can’t. I want to be with you, Christos. As soon as possible.”

He grabbed her hand and hurried back toward the town square and his car. It was a few minutes walking, but they reached it in almost record time. He started the powerful engine and raced through the streets, heading
for the long climb back to his house that perched like a silent watchman over the sea.

Just a few minutes and she would be his again. He would possess her on his big, lonely bed with the sounds of the sea crashing into the rocks below. He would take her so thoroughly she would never forget this night.

Christos roared around a corner—and screeched to a halt. A herd of goats ranged across the road, bleating and staring into the headlights with spookily iridescent eyes. They were in no hurry to move, so he reversed and shot back down the road and up another that led to a secluded overlook. He shoved the car into park and got out. Then he wrenched open Lucilla’s door and pulled her into his arms before backing her against the side of the car.

His mouth dropped to her shoulder and she gasped. “What are we doing here, Christos?”

“I don’t want to wait,” he said, his fingers going to the zipper at her back. He tugged it down until the bodice of her dress fell free. Overhead the stars filled the sky like millions of fireflies winking against a velvet blanket. A slice of moon hung low in the sky, painting the sea with a pearly brush.

Lucilla’s breasts were pushed up high in the bra, their creamy swells inviting him to
lick them where they touched. He dipped his tongue into the hollow between them and then across one soft mound. She gasped and clutched his shoulders and he felt exultant inside. He reached behind her and unsnapped the bra, dropping it inside the car. Her breasts fell free, their crests budding tight, beckoning his mouth.

He cupped them in his palms, dipped his head to suck one perfect nipple between his lips.

“Christos … Oh, I can’t think when you do that….”

“Don’t think,” he murmured. “Don’t do anything but feel.”

He finished unzipping her dress and then let it fall. She gasped when it did, and he caught it, urged her to step out of it so he could toss it inside the car. Not that he wanted to take time for that, but she wasn’t going to appreciate him trampling her clothing in the dirt.

“You, too,” she said. “I want to touch you.”

Her fingers were on his buttons and he let her work them while he continued to make love to her breasts. She was so sensitive, so lovely. And then she shoved his shirt off his shoulders, and he let it fall, uncaring about his own clothing.

Her hands slid over his skin, touching and probing, and pleasure buzzed inside him. His body needed hers so badly, but he couldn’t take her roughly when he was already planning to take her against the side of a car. She deserved better, but he was unable to wait for the time it would have taken them to go the long way around to his house.

He dropped to his knees in front of her, framing her hips with his hands. Her panties were a tiny scrap of silk that he pulled down until she could step free. These he dropped, uncaring where they landed.

“Christos, you aren’t—”

“I am,” he said firmly, pressing a kiss to the curls at the apex of her thighs. He felt the shiver rack her body then and he knew she needed him as much as he needed her. He glided his hands up her inner thighs, parted her with his fingers and licked the bud of her sex as she cried out.

She fisted a hand in his hair. The other clutched the side of the Mercedes, presumably because her knees were weak. God, he hoped her knees were weak. He lifted one of her legs and propped it on his shoulder. And then he ran his tongue the length of her, tasting her thoroughly.

She began to moan as he relentlessly tasted
her, darting his tongue inside her, then around her clitoris until she started rocking her hips to get him where she wanted him. He tightened his focus to the tiny, sensitive button of flesh while she moved against him, her hand on the back of his head now, directing him. He clutched her bottom in his hands, held her firmly while he drove her toward the edge of her own personal cliff. He wanted her to come, wanted her to explode and scream his name into the night.

He felt her stiffen—and then she did precisely that, her body jerking as his name broke from her lips. It filled him with satisfaction—and an overwhelming urge to be inside her while she shattered around him the next time.

He shot to his feet and unzipped his trousers, freeing himself. Then he lifted her against him. She wrapped her legs around him as he pressed her back against the car. Her body was still shuddering when he found her entrance and thrust inside her.

Her inner muscles clamped down on him as he swallowed hard and tried not to lose himself with the first thrust. He found his control—barely—and then pulled out of her before slamming back in again.

Lucilla moaned as he repeated the motion.
His blood pounded in his ears as the tension gathered low in his spine. She rolled herself forward, sought his mouth as she wrapped her arms around him. He kissed her, their teeth clashing almost painfully with the force of their joining. He gentled the kiss, but he did not gentle his possession of her body. She was so hot and wet and warm, and his skin was on fire with the need to make her call his name again.

But somewhere along the way he lost his control, his body giving in to the sensations rioting through him. He felt as if his skin was about to curl into a crisp as he slammed into her, deeper and harder than before. He held her hips hard, pressed her against the Mercedes and used her body for his pleasure.

And for hers, he realized when her muscles tightened and she cried his name once more. It was almost a sob, a plea, and his heart filled with the need to cherish her, to worship her. He thrust into her several more times—and then jerked out of her at the last minute, spilling himself on her thigh.

Lucilla had never had sex like that in her life. It had been so raw, so edgy—so necessary to breathing and living—that thinking about it
on the long car ride back to his villa had her wound into knots by the time they arrived.

They hadn’t spoken in the aftermath. He’d handed her the dress, helped her pull it up and zip it. She’d forgone the bra, and it seemed as if her panties were lost for all time somewhere on Kefalonian soil.

Christos had yanked his trousers up and zipped them, then found his shirt and tossed it into the back of the car. He’d kissed her once, swiftly, then swatted her lightly on the bottom and helped her into the seat before going around to his side.

They coasted into the garage of his home and then went into the darkened house. Her brain whirled. What had she been thinking to have sex with him again? Was she crazy? And, even more insane, when could she do it again?

She wanted to drop her head into her hands and groan. Everything she desired for her career and her family was within reach if she would only walk away. But she couldn’t. God help her, but from the moment she’d stood beside that ossuary with him, she’d lost her strength of will to walk away.

He stopped in the moonlit living room and turned to her. She stood there with her bra
and purse in her hands, her stomach clenching, and waited.

“I apologize for being rough,” he said, and she put her fingers over his mouth to stop him. She’d loved every moment of what he’d done to her. He’d taught her things about herself, about her body and her pleasure, that had been more of a revelation than she would have thought possible at this point in her life.

“Please don’t ruin this night by apologizing. I think what just happened between us is probably the most honest we’ve been with each other. I liked it. A lot.”

He swept her against him and took her mouth, gently this time. Just that light, sweet kiss sent the butterflies swirling again as she relived the beautiful strength of his lovemaking just minutes ago. As long as she lived, she would never forget the Greek night spread above them like a sheltering cape or the sound of his voice when he uttered her name in his moment of crisis.

“I want more, Lucillitsa. As much as you can give me for the rest of the night.”

She tried not to focus on that one phrase—
the rest of the night
—while her heart managed to beat faster and ache all at the same time. He was confusing, this man, and somehow so very necessary at the same time.

“I want more, too.”

She thought he might lead her to his room and gently undress her, but he swept her into his arms and carried her through the house, up the stairs and into the large master bedroom. He set her down and undressed her quickly, then undressed himself, and they fell onto the bed in a tangle of arms and legs and hot, wet kisses. This time he sheathed himself, and then he was inside her, stroking into her as perfectly as he had before.

Only this time—this time—she felt the sweetness of their joining all the way to her heart.