Page 50 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
Because it had to. “Don’t you understand?” she asked him, with all the urgency she felt inside of her. “I love you, Thanasis. I’ve always loved you. Even when I was lost to myself, I must have loved you just as fiercely, because I was clearly keeping a vigil all these years. I was mourning you all the while.”
She couldn’t read that look on his face, so she gripped him harder and she kept going. “And I do remember what happened that night. I’d worked myself up into a state and nothing you said or did could change it, because I wanted to be yours forever and you seemed perfectly happy to stay as we were. And the reality is, I was always coming back. I had no intention of really leaving you. How could I? I could no sooner leave you than I could leave myself. I had toactually leave myselfto stay away from you.”
Saskia thought there was moisture on her face, though she couldn’t bring herself to check, because that would mean letting go of him. And she was tired of letting go of him.
“I just love you, Thanasis,” she said, with all the love and sorrow, regret and hope she had inside of her. “I hope you know that. I love you so much.”
Slowly, he switched their arms so he could take her hands in his, and then he was the one gazing at her. And she couldn’t read a single thing on his face. He looked so stern. He looked so terribly forbidding.
She thought,this is actually happening. He’s going to end it after all of this and I have no one to blame but myself.
“You loving me is convenient,” he told her, in that dark, stirring way of his. “Because Saskia, I have loved you this whole time. I thought you knew. I loved you from my very first glimpse of you in front of that execrable painting. And every single thing I learned about you since then has made me love you more. There has never been a single moment that I have been the slightest bit ashamed of you, nor could there ever be. When I told you that I was trying to keep you safe, I meant it.From Pavlos.”
“I wish I never heard his name,” she threw out, almost like she was in anguish, but her heart was doing cartwheels inside of her chest.
He loved her.He said helovedher.
“Did you think that I had left you?” he asked, studying her face. And to her surprise, when she nodded, he laughed. He laughed so hard that she found herself smiling too. He laughed and he laughed, and then when he sobered, he pulled her closer. “I did not spend five years disbelieving your death, then grieving your loss, to leave you simply because you did not choose to tell me every single facet of your new existence. You do not owe me any explanation about your memory,fos mou. My only concern was that I had taken advantage of you when I could remember what you could not.”
“If you did, I can only hope that you’ll do it again,” Saskia said. She smiled. “And soon.”
Thanasis smiled back. He pulled her closer and kissed her, on her forehead. On each cheek.
And then, finally her lips.
But not the way she wanted him to. Not that all-consuming fire.
He set her back from him once more, and smiled when she scowled up at him.
“I wanted to come before you the man I should always have been,” he told her with all of that same ruthless intensity. “I spent all this time thinking that I could make this work. That I could spread myself between my father and myself and somehow be whole.” He shook his head. “But what I cannot do, what I will not do, is leave you some kind of bargaining chip in the middle. He might not have known that you were mine first, but he will know you are mine forever. And I will not have him within a breath of you, Saskia. Not ever again.”
“I don’t care about him,” she said at once.
“But I do,” Thanasis replied, and his dark eyes glittered with that temper that she knew only she got to see. “That is where I have been. I have separated myself from that waste of a man, at last. I have severed our business relationship. As expected, he dramatically disowned me on the spot, and I’m delighted. I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner. From this point forward, there is no relationship between us. He will never see either one of us again.”
And he was holding her so tightly that she moved closer, and made sure she was holding him, too. That they were holding each other.
“Thanasis,” she began, but he shook his head.
“That is not all,” he told her. “I had to find a way to forgive my mother, too. I have been so angry with her for staying. I have blamed her for putting up with him all those years when the truth is, I don’t know why she did it. Maybe she thought she was protecting me.”
Saskia thought her heart might burst. “Maybe,” she said softly, “you should forgive yourself, too. You were a child. Maybe you were angry at her because it was easier than the fear you must have felt, growing up in such a volatile environment.”
“I will become the man you deserve,” he told her, his voice a raw vow. “I promise you, Saskia.”
“I realized that the only reason I was interested in him is because he reminded me of you,” she told him then, urgently. “Not his personality, of course, but there were glimpses. You come from him, after all. Every now and again, I would see the ghost of you and it kept me happy. Happy enough to overlook everything else.”
“I do not wish you to have to overlook anything,” Thanasis gritted out at her. “I do not intend for you to suffer through anything, for anyone. You deserve the world, Saskia. And I intend to give it to you.”
“I love you,” she said again, and it tasted so sweet that she said it once more.
She thought she could say it forever, over and over and over, and never get sick of it.
He smiled at her then, and it was a real, rare, beautiful smile. If she hadn’t already been crying, she would have started then and there.
Then he stepped back.
And while she watched, not sure if she was shocked or delighted—or both at once—Thanasis dropped easily down to one knee. His eyes on her, he reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a small box.
