HiddenDepths (10 page)

And Fredrico had bragged about Athena too. How his lovely
little niece had such a keen mind. Her spirit he wasn’t so fond of. Nor the
fact that once her mother died, she inherited the other half of the Stavros
fortune.

“She’s not dead! The girl’s not dead! Do you fail to
understand that, you stupid bitch?”

“Tottingham is a senile old fool. Why you paid him any heed
is beyond me.”

“It was true. Who else could this be? He said she was the
spitting image of Angelica. And of all things, she was working for Damien
Reynolds. I don’t know what that means, but it has to mean something.”

“You don’t even know it was her. They barely had a clear
picture of the girl. I couldn’t say it was her and neither could you.”

“It was her. Of course it was her. Why else would she have
disappeared right after Tottingham saw her?”

Frannie shrugged. “Athena always was a mystery. I don’t know
why she committed suicide either,” she lied.

“She didn’t commit suicide, you worthless cow! You know she
didn’t.”

“Calm down, Freddie. You’ll have another heart attack,” she
said deadpan, as if it wasn’t in fact her fondest wish.

“It was her working for Reynolds and it was her in that
dinky town in Montana when we finally found her—”

“Maine, Freddie. You never were very clear on American
geography.”

“Wherever! She left my man dead!”

“More likely some coked-up whore he picked up stabbed him to
death.” She took a deep breath. “Just leave it, Freddie.” She didn’t quite
understand why he wouldn’t. “Let Athena rest in peace.”

“I’m sending somebody back in. Now. Right away. I don’t care
how many of my men that bitch gets away from. I’ll have a hundred more coming
after her.”

“Well, you certainly do pay them cheaply, so I guess you can
afford it.”

“You’re cold, Frannie.”

He used to call that self-possessed. Both she and his
stepdaughter were calm and cool. And it drove Freddie wild in a way that was
not good.

When Freddie first began to beat her, on their honeymoon as
a matter of fact though they had been lovers for long before that, Frannie had
been stunned, not only at the savage fury but also at the calculated almost
professionalism
of it. He could have her writhing in pain without leaving a single mark on her.
She thought that made it better, because no one would know, but in fact it made
it so very much worse.

Because while he was busy not marking her, he was also not
marking Athena. Frannie had thought the girl was safe away at a Swiss boarding
school, but she hadn’t realized that Freddie on his so-called business trips
had been visiting Athena—and meting out the same “appropriate” disciplinary
measures he was meting out to his new wife. He started by taking her out of
school for weekend trips and then worked up to taking her out of school for a
whole semester, keeping her on one of his private Greek estates on the sea,
under lock and key with armed guards. For him. For his sick pleasure. It was
then that Athena supposedly committed suicide. Walked into the water and didn’t
come out. And it was then that Frannie realized her husband was an even bigger
monster than she had imagined.

She grieved at the time. For Athena. For herself. But some
small part of her had always suspected the girl wasn’t dead. Athena was a
survivor and smarter than her mother or Frannie herself had ever hoped to be. When
an email came one day, years ago, informing her that a set amount had been
deposited in a Swiss bank account for her and that she should leave Freddie,
she knew then that Athena was alive.

It was sweet of the girl. Really it was. But she’d made her
bed and she would lie in it.

The fury that rose up in Frannie now at that thought put the
portrait of Fredrico’s mother—the old bitch who thought her son could do no
wrong—very much in jeopardy, not to mention Fredrico himself. For the hundredth
time, she thought of how fine it would feel to bury his own letter opener in
his neck.

“So, what shall it be, Freddie? More tantrums or a nice
night out?”

“You inconceivable bitch. I don’t know why I don’t just
divorce you.”

Frannie shrugged. She had long since made her deal with the
devil.

“So, the opera then, dear?” she asked.

* * * * *

She dreamt about it now, whenever she fell asleep. The dark,
empty, dreamless sleep of her first days here had faded away and now she dreamt
about it. Not about her years back with Uncle Freddie. No, that life was locked
far, far away. But her more recent nightmares, not sufficiently under wraps in
her psyche as yet, came out to play when she fell asleep. She saw the small
apartment she’d hidden in for those few months, with its linoleum floors and
tiny windows, where she had come to think herself safe after a while. And she
heard the creaking of the floor that one evening signaled how wrong she had
been. And then the sharp knife she used to cut a loaf of fresh bread every
morning became something else…

“Hey. Hey.”

She bolted upright, feeling her stitches pull. Evan was
frowning down at her as he stood over the sofa in what he called his lighthouse
room. “Don’t do that,” he said vaguely, reaching a hand down under her braid to
massage her neck.

“Do what?”

He sat down beside her, extending his massage from her neck
to the shoulders she could feel were taut with the remnants of her dream. “Snap
awake like that.”

Her eyes slid closed as his talented hands worked out the
tension. “I didn’t mean to,” she mumbled.

“You keep doing it.”

It was her third day here. Or rather the third day after she
had finally become conscious again. And Evan had pampered her and fed her and
tended to her as if she was his own little patient, asking for nothing in
return, sleeping beside her at night as she healed. Though she was just now
becoming strong enough to take short walks, on his arm anyway, he left several
times a day to “work out”, Bingo running beside him. That was where he had said
he was going when she had fallen asleep on the couch, drowsy even as she
watched his figure become smaller and farther away on the beach below the
window, the dog’s bark lost to the insulation of this fascinating structure
that Evan had created for himself.

He was working on something else too, on the other side of
the island. A cottage, he’d told her, that had been in ruins and he was
beginning to restore. He promised to take her there to show it to her when she
was stronger.

These last few days with Evan were all so surreal. Like some
world she had conjured up with just the two of them in it, isolated, safe. She
wondered sometimes if she wasn’t really dead at the bottom of that boat she had
stolen in the Maine harbor, dripping blood to mix with the rain, and this was
some heaven she had been lucky enough to end up in when she died. Some reward
for all the broken bones and insanity of her adolescence.

“That feels so good, Evan,” she crooned as he massaged her
shoulders and she felt him freeze. Opening her eyes, she glanced over her
shoulder and the way he was looking at her made her want to make him feel good
as well.

Before she could question the thought, she turned around and
climbed onto his lap, sifting her fingers through his hair and rubbing the
crotch of her sweatpants against the erection beneath the fly of his jeans,
feeling the electric pleasure of it as he let out a slight groan.

She kissed him, just lips at first, then tongue, then
something else entirely. Something more, and he reciprocated, his hands on the
small of her back, rubbing slowly.

On the main floor of this lighthouse oasis Evan had built,
he had a huge library filled with every kind of book imaginable—classics and
mysteries and philosophy and fantasy. He had a wall of DVDs in his bedroom that
spanned a hundred years of films and more racks of vinyl records stacked up in
the corners of every room than she had ever seen in one place.

Evan Reynolds had something on his island for every
amusement.

But there was only one “amusement” Andrea wanted right now.
And to even call it an amusement felt like a misnomer. It should be called
sustenance. She needed it. She needed him. Her kisses turned frantic and his
hands slid to her shoulders to tug her away. He was hard and throbbing beneath
where she knew she was wet and opening for him even now.

Coming up on her knees, she started to untie her sweatpants
and, though he watched, his words didn’t match the intense look in his eyes as
he did so. “You’re not well enough.”

“I am too.”

He rubbed her back as she pulled her sweatpants slowly down,
and his hands slid down to pet each inch of her ass as she bared it, until he
brought one hand in front to dip between her thighs. She widened her stance as
he inserted a careful finger inside her and she used it, this one part of him,
to give herself a small modicum of relief, rotating her hips, riding him just
that little bit, though what she really needed inside her was kept safely
zipped up inside his jeans.

“Why are you doing this right now?” he asked, low.

“Because I want to.”

Sliding off his lap, she tugged her sweatpants completely
off so she was bare on bottom, the T-shirt she was wearing skimming the tops of
her thighs, and then she leaned over and went to his jeans, unsnapping.

The late-afternoon sun bathed the all-windows room in an
orange light, mellow and warm. As she carefully slid the zipper of his jeans
down and came between his legs, he widened them and she knelt on the plush shag
rug in front of the sofa, widening her own legs as well, feeling the cool air
between her thighs. Once she had his fly unzipped, she shoved the white cotton
of his briefs aside and took the hot, silky length of him in her grip as he sucked
in a sharp breath.

“Paying up?” he muttered.

She froze. “What?”

Clapping his hands over hers on his cock, he forced her to
slide them up and down the length. “Do you think you owe me this?”

She jerked on his throbbing cock, hard, and his ass slid a
little farther forward on the couch.

“What if I did?” she taunted.

He leaned his head back against the cushions. “I’d feel like
a shit.”

“But you’d still want it, wouldn’t you?” Batting his hands
away, she took over completely, dipping her thumb in the pre-cum leaking from
the tip of his very fine, very hard cock and spreading it over the thick head,
leaning down unthinkingly to kiss it. He gasped and his hands fisted at his
sides. He wasn’t even touching her, she realized, but she was more turned-on
than she had ever been.

“What were you dreaming about?” he got out in a tight voice.

“This,” she teased.

He shook his head. “Like hell. You were scared.”

Completely untutored, she opened her mouth and took as much
of him in as she could, though it wasn’t even half. He tasted salty and hot and
wanting.

As he groaned, his glittering green eyes hooded, she kissed
the head of his cock, preparing to take him deep again, and he asked, “Do you
think I helped you because this was all I wanted?”

When she would have engulfed him again, he pulled away and
stood up. Her mouth felt puffy and swollen from the girth of him and she asked
the most logical question given her circumstances. “Was I doing it wrong?”

He stared down at her. “Fuck. Who the hell are you?” he
muttered. “You’ve never given head?”

Rising to her feet, she reached for the sweatpants and he
yanked them away. “You haven’t, have you?”

“So what? So what does that prove?”

He shook his head. “Hell if I know.”

“So teach me.”

“I’m taking care of you, Andrea!” he said hotly. “Not
grooming you to be some kind of a sexual slave or something.”

She smiled, not able to help herself.

“What?” he snapped.

“Nothing.” She held out her hand for her sweats and he
handed them over this time. “It’s sweet,” she murmured, pulling them on.

“Fuck you.”

“Promises, promises.” She headed for the circular stairway.
“I’m making dinner tonight.”

She’d get back to the seduction when they both had a full
stomach.

* * * * *

That night, though, Evan tried to throw her off early on.

He changed into baggy sweatpants in the bathroom—that was
nothing new—but then when he came out he casually mentioned that he would be
sleeping in the guest room.

He couched it in a lot of concern over her stitches and
whatnot, but she knew it was just because he was finally admitting to himself
that he was frustrated sleeping next to her, or next to a woman’s body anyway,
and not being able to use it. Maybe that was all she was to him. A woman’s
body. She didn’t know what he was to her, but she knew how she felt. She had
slept next to him these past few nights, cuddled in his arms, and awoken to the
feel of his powerful erection against her bottom. She had savored the hot
excitement of his hard cock in her mouth this afternoon, however briefly. She
wanted him and she was frustrated too.

Especially since there was no need for either of them to be.

It was pitch black outside as Evan made his noise about
heading off to the guest room. Shaking her head, she pulled his head down to
her and kissed him, long and slow, licking his lips, thrusting her tongue in
his mouth. He kissed her back, so she supposed that was some kind of progress,
but he held himself in check too. Despite that she could feel the evidence of
his enthusiasm hard against her stomach, he pulled back, unwinding her arms
from his neck. “Good night, Andrea.”

“Stay with me,” she whispered. “Really stay with me.”

“Why?”

“Because we both want you to.”

He hesitated. “I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

“I’m the one who showed up shipwrecked on your shores and
barged into your life. I think I’m the one taking advantage of you.”