Page 37 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
“How very Greek of you.”
He shrugged, and didn’t quite smile, though it was the closest he’d come in some time. “I cannot deny it.”
When they smiled at each other, he actually forgot what year this was. The only difference between this moment and any of the other ones they passed in this kitchen was that they weren’t touching. And he almost forgot that too. He almost reached over, got his hands on her, and let himself—
But Saskia stopped him from doing it by simple virtue of turning away and applying herself to the espresso machine.
He did not tell her that he could remember when they’d installed it. When he’d taught her how to use it. Or how they’d competed, in those early days, to see who could make the betterfreddo espressoorfreddo cappuccino.He remembered telling her that under no circumstances were anyellinikós kafés,traditional Greek coffees, to be made by anyone in the flat who was not Greek.
That almost feels a bit pointed,she had laughed.
It is a point,he’d agreed with intensity that was only partly feigned,of honor. Greek coffee not made by Greeks tastes like the Ottoman Empire.He’d shrugged when she’d laughed at that too.No one likes oppressive coffee, Saskia.
He could still hear her laughter. He could still see the smile she’d aimed at him, and the way she’d melted into him. What he didn’t understand was how he could feel all these memories around them, pressing in from all sides, and she couldn’t.
And when she slid him his coffee, perfectly made and precisely how he liked it, he wondered yet again just how much she really remembered.
“Tonight, we dance,” he told her. “There will be a car for you at noon and we will fly to New York.”
“New York,” she echoed.
“I was uncertain if you would know what to wear to such an event, so I came to help you choose the appropriate gown.”
“Gown,”she repeated, her eyes narrowing.
“You have an extensive wardrobe of formal attire, Selwen,” he told her, sipping at his coffee. “I don’t know how you missed it.” He inclined his head toward the clothes she was wearing today. It was nothing but a pair of jeans and one of those perfectly fitted T-shirts that look so simple and was thusexquisitely cut, in order to look so effortless. “I see you have found the rest of the wardrobe.”
“Why would your Saskia have had a closet full of formalwear?” she asked, and though she’d made herself a coffee, she didn’t drink it. “I thought you didn’t take her anywhere.”
“I didn’t take her anywhere she could be photographed,” he corrected her, mildly enough. “I didn’t take her anywhere there would be pictures taken, paparazzi articles written, or anything like that. But there are other places in this world where a person can, if he’s willing to pay for it, have his privacy.”
“If you say so,” she said, but something flickered in that dark tea gaze of hers.
He tossed his coffee back, watched her do the same, and he led her down the hallway to the bedroom again. This time he didn’t spare a glance for that bed, or those stout posters that he had tested too many times to count. This time he simply marched himself into the closet. It was a large walk-in affair, with more than one room. Thanasis didn’t point out that one of those rooms was his. He simply moved toward the back and found the area that held all of her gowns, and then he flipped through them until he found the one he wanted.
He laid it out on the center block and watched her stare at it as if she thought it might bite her.
“Do you not like the dress?” he asked mildly.
So very mildly, because the last time she’d worn this dress it had been their anniversary. Two years in. He had taken her to a private restaurant that could only be accessed through a series of tunnels and offered only private dining rooms. It had been a special night. Everything had been magical. They had feltfated.He had thought,this life is so beautiful.
It had been precious and he didn’t think that either one of them, that night, had known that there would only be a few months before they would end so abruptly. She might have beennursing hurt feelings. She might have been annoyed with him. But she was also in love with him.
He’d known that as well as he knew himself.
He’d thought about that night often in the years since he’d lost her, and more again now that she was back and thought ill of him, because how could she have turned against them the way that she had? Where had the magic gone? He had never understood.
But he hadn’t realized that today, he was testing her, until now. As he watched her face for clues as she stared at that dress.
“It’s lovely,” she said, which he was beginning to realize she always said. Because it was essentially meaningless. “If it fits as well as these jeans, it should look well enough on me too.”
“I have no doubt that it will,” Thanasis managed to say, remembering.
And when her gaze lifted to his, he was certain that she knew. That she remembered. That she knew exactly how he had helped her into this dress in the first place, and how he had left her shivering when he’d pulled her with him out to the car.
How they hadn’t made it to the restaurant, but had burst into flame on the way there. He’d pulled her over his lap and hiked this very same dress up to her hips, because he couldn’t bear not to thrust deep inside her. She couldn’t bear to not take those thrusts.
Two years in and they’d still been wild for each other.
