Page 23 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
Pavlos’s power here was far too great.
But Saskia couldn’t know that. “Are you so delusional that you think I would ask for help from the man who—”
“I would be very careful with any accusations, Saskia,” he said, quietly. Much too quietly. “Because I know exactly what happened on that beach. I remember precisely how you responded.”
“I wasn’t…”
She looked lost, there for a minute. It made his chest hurt.
“You have already accused me of predatory behavior. Toward a woman you don’t believe you ever knew.”
She frowned again, and he wondered if any of this was getting through to her. If somewhere, deep inside, there was even the faintest possibility that some memory of what it had actually been like between them was getting through—
But she shook her head, as if shoving it away. “You’re right that I don’t know what happened between you and your Saskia five years ago. But I do know that what happened between you and me the other night was wrong. I’m engaged to your father. That’s the beginning and the end of anything that needs to be said between us.”
It was the hardest thing he ever had to do—it felt as if he was tearing his own ribs out of his chest as he did it—but Thanasis nodded. “Agreed,” he said curtly.
Somehow.
And it was as if Saskia had been standing there pushing with all her might against an immovable wall, only to see it crumble. Her body shifted as if the wall had given way. She looked something like crestfallen.
It was terrible to watch. All Thanasis wanted to do was to sweep her into his arms. He wanted to comfort her. There had been a time when he was the only thing that could ever comfort her, even if he was also the reason she had been upset in the first place.
She had told him so herself, a million times.
But this Saskia saw darkness where there had only been light, love, and arguments that had gone round and round because both of them were stubborn. Both of them were passionate. If they hadn’t been, they wouldn’t have gotten together in the first place.
There are words for women like me,she had shouted at him that night.
Yes,he had shouted back.Mistress. I chose it deliberately. You used to like it.
Because it had once been its own source of heat between them. It had lent itself to all manner of games that they’d played until they were sated and silly with it.
Because both of them found power dynamics particularly exciting.
One night he had only allowed her to sayyes, sir.
One weekend, she had greeted him at the door naked and had stayed that way until Monday.
They had exulted in it, this archaic arrangement where he was in control—except she was the only thing on the planet that threatened that control. By her very existence.
They had been entwined with each other, irrevocably. She had told him she was leaving, but only to clear her head.To see a sky that isn’t yours,she had told him.If only for a little while. He had known she was coming back.
There was no other option. Not for either of them.
Maybe it had been toxic, but it had beentheirs.
How could he explain this to a woman who patently refused to believe it? Who wouldn’t understand what he was telling her, because if she didn’t remember anything that had happened before that night, she couldn’t possibly remember the blaze of their connection or the ways they’d exulted in it, sinking just as deeply into the dark as into the light.
He couldn’t explain it to anyone.
Having her back, but only a part of her, was an exquisite agony.
Thanasis was not certain he would ever recover.
“Whatever you think of me,” he told her when he was certain he could speak, in as even a tone as possible, “know this. There is absolutely nothing I would not do to help you. And there is very little that is not within my power. All you have to do is call.”
“I won’t,” she told him, but her eyes were wider than before, and glassier.
