Page 33 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
He led her down the hall to the guest bedroom that he’d used as an office sometimes, when he’d stayed here long enough that it required he check in with work. It was still set up that way, and her objection to that was simply that the room looked like itcould be anywhere. There was nothing particularly noteworthy on the walls. There were no identifying characteristics.
So no one could tell, she had understood at some point, whether he was in London or across the planet.
That was how committed he was to keeping this thing between them private.
There were closets along the hallway and when she looked back over her shoulder, she could see the door that led into a bright and happy eating kitchen on the other end. She could remember cooking in there. He’d been absolute shit at it and she had taken great pleasure in teaching him some of the hallmarks of her university years. A quick Bolognese. Packet ramen. Omelets made of anything they might have on hand.
Over time, they’d developed a few easy dishes they could both make to feed each other when they didn’t want the intrusion of the outside world, not even in the form of a food delivery.
She turned back around again, deliberately not thinking about how paranoid she’d originally become once she’d understood that he really did not intend to take her out, ever—unless costumes were involved—concentrating instead on that outrageously masculine back of his as he led her down to the final room. The bedroom.
God help her, but the things they had done in this bedroom.
The four-poster bed was made out of remarkably heavy wood, and she knew that because they had certainly done their best to send it skating this way and that across the floor. But it had always held firm.
It was a beautiful bedroom, and Saskia tried to focus on that. She supposed that what Selwen would notice was the seating area arranged around another fireplace. Not the bed. Not the expansive bathroom suite that took up more square footage than the whole of Ffion’s little house in Pembrokeshire.
She moved for the doors that led outside to the narrow terrace that wrapped along the side of the flat, accessible from the bedroom and kitchen. She didn’t have to look out to know that there was a whole outdoor dining and lounging area set down on the kitchen side, tucked beneath a hard canopy top to keep the weather out. There was a pergola a bit further along and she knew there was a hot tub tucked away beneath those vines. What she could see right now, without memory to help her, was the private seating area off the bedroom. It was enclosed in glass so that it was entirely possible to lie naked and tangled up with Thanasis, the rain coming down all around them, yet so warm and so loved that it was as if they’d become one.
With each other. With the weather.
“Lovely,” she said again.
“Not very much like a prison, is it?”
She turned, slowly, and studied Thanasis as he stood there. He was standing over by the bedroom door, giving the distinct impression that he did not wish to crowd her or to make her feel stuck back here with him in any way.
But he also didn’t look particularly happy about it.
“A beautifully appointed prison is still a prison, Thanasis. It doesn’t all have to be concrete cellblocks and metal doors.”
“Forgive me,” he said at once, though there was a fire in that dark gaze of his that she recognized. His temper. That temper had always exploded when he was with her, and she’d loved that. Because she’d been quite certain that she was the only creature on this earth who could make Thanasis Zacharias lose his shit.
But he wasn’t losing it now. And she had to remind herself that Selwen wouldn’t like it much if he did. Selwen would see that as evidence that she was right about him. “And what do you need to be forgiven for this time?” she asked.
“I did not bring you here to litigate a past you can’t remember,” Thanasis said after a moment, his voice calm. Hisgaze anything but. “Not only would that be churlish, it wouldn’t get me anywhere. And you don’t know this about me, Selwen, but I’m not a man who likes to tread water. I prefer a destination.”
Saskia wanted to laugh at that. Selwen wouldn’t know that she should. She settled on a sniff. “If that were true, I’m not sure why you bothered to answer your father’s summons to attend his engagement party. Much less obey.”
He leaned against the doorjamb, his dark eyes moving all over her, and he seemed to be in no hurry to conceal the fact that he was doing that. “You wanted to leave there in a hurry. And I’m guessing that he did not offer you any transportation options. Does that mean that the engagement is off?”
“As far as I’m concerned, it is.” She pursed her lips, trying to decide how to go about talking about this. “You warned me. I didn’t believe you. But it seemed that the longer we were engaged, the more he seemed to forget all of the things that we’d agreed on.”
“My father has never met a boundary that he did not try to crash through at the first opportunity,” Thanasis said. “I’m only sorry that you had to experience this yourself.”
“You’re not sorry at all. You’re the one who told me what would happen.”
“I told you what I thought would happen, yes. I’m sorry you had to experience it.”
Standing this close to the very bed where they had worked out entirely too many issues in their relationship, over and over again and yet had never solved a thing, was not doing anything good for Saskia’s head. It felt like she was lost between the past and the present, and the only real thing was him—
But she knew where that led.
She threw open the door to the terrace and stepped out, pleased that it was still raining. She could stand in the glassenclosure, ignoring the cozy couches and chaises that she also knew entirely too well, and watch the drops that hit the glass and the patterns they made. Back in the day, she’d painted those patterns.
Thanasis came up behind her, but he didn’t put his hands on her. He moved to stand beside her instead, clasping his hands behind his back as he too gazed out at the rain. At the buildings across the way, bright white even on such a gloomy day.
“There isn’t much rain in Greece,” Saskia found herself saying when, surely, she hadn’t meant to speak. “Or anyway, I didn’t see much rain while I was there. I believe I actually missed it.”
