Page 28 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
She felt herself vibrating with some great emotion she didn’t understand. Temper, perhaps. Outrage. But it wasn’t personal. She wasn’t pleased with herself for putting herself in this position, but she wasn’thurt,either.
What she did not like was the fact that Pavlos did not seem to think that she could leave this island when she wanted.
She didn’t like that at all.
Selwen thought of the things she’d suggested—maybe more than simplysuggested—Thanasis had done to some version of her that was lost to her, and had to bite back a shudder. The truth was laid out here before her now, and starkly.
She could believe anything of Pavlos, in this moment. The scales had fallen from her eyes, but she hadn’t been protectingherself from the reality of him. She had simply been invested in the story he’d spun for her about the life they could live.
Or her own blinders, more like.
But staring at a man who had probably not even showered since being with another woman, a woman he employed and had likely been sleeping with all along, made her realize that Thanasis was nothing like his father.
She simply knew it.
She felt it inside of her, the way she felt her ligaments move when she did. The way she knew she breathed without checking in on the mechanics of the act.
She justknew.
“I’m not going to fight with you,” she told this man, this fiancé of hers she had never bothered to get to know. Had she thought it wouldn’t matter because she knew herself so little too?
But there was no time to dig into that, because Pavlos laughed again. When he moved further into the room she probably should have been alarmed.
Even if she was—and she refused to accept that she was—she held her ground. She lifted her chin up. She did not drop her gaze.
She refused to allow herself any hint of a reaction when he drew close enough to reach over and pinch her chin between his fingers.
Not all that gently.
“Don’t worry,” he told her, and there was something worse than simplycoldin his gaze. “You’ll learn.”
And then he kissed her.
It was not a nice kiss.
It was clearly meant to show her who was boss here, and she had the distinct impression that he wouldn’t mind too much if it made her cry, either.
All of that might have wrecked her, but it didn’t. It couldn’t.
Because something else was happening to her, like a great tide streaking across a sandy beach and washing it clean.
Though in this case, it was the opposite of clean.
Because this was the wrong mouth. This was the wrong man.
And when he finally pulled away, she clapped a hand over her mouth and did nothing but stare at him.
She could see that he was saying something, but she couldn’t hear him. His mouth was moving, his gaze was cold and dark, but she didn’t care.
Because she remembered.
She rememberedeverything.
She remembered who she was, at last, after all this time.
She remembered standing in that museum in London and being immediately aware of the man who came up beside her to stare at the same canvas that she’d already been baffled by.
Before he’d even spoken to her, she felt her entire body prickle into an awareness that she’d understood at once, even if she had never felt anything like it before.
