Page 130 of Dagger in the Sea

“Shall we go?”

At the crowded bar, Greek music thumping loudly, Adri ordered a Bombay gin and tonic with lime, and I had the same. She recognized a friend and then another. The two girls didn’t seem like the jet set type. Local girls, one of whom had a boyfriend with her. Introductions were made, and I got us all another round of drinks. The music went from Greek pop and dance to a more Middle Eastern beat. The women got excited, and Adri brushed my cheek with her lips as she and her friends jostled to the packed dance floor.

With their hands twisting in the air, their hips gyrating, they flowed to the eastern rhythm. Suggestive, sensual, exotic. The boyfriend, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, left our table and got on one knee before them and clapped to the beat. Was this the Greek way to declare your admiration for a dancer’s expression of her mood? Of her spirit?

Adri’s sensual movements were right under that beat, stroking it, feeling it, flipping it. Her lips moved with the words of the song as she pivoted her gorgeous body. My heart jammed in my chest.

She was so beautiful. No, beautiful wasn’t even the right word. Alluring. She had attitude and elegance in one. A free spirit singing, dancing, laughing. Completely uninhibited. No photographers to pose for, no paparazzi to dodge. No fashion police to impress. Only genuine joy. A tiny part of me, the selfish, egotistical part, hoped that I’d had something to do with freeing her spirit, tapping that joy in her.

Her eyes hooked on mine from the dance floor.

Joy for me.

Beguiling. Bewitching. That magnum of pink champagne had blown and the spray stung my skin. I had seduced her yet she was seducing me on a whole other level hour after hour, day after day, orgasm after orgasm, gentle kiss after hard suck. Adri was a creature of the bright sun and the velvet night. She evoked a new desire I never thought I had in me.

To bond and not let go.

It would end, though, it had to. And soon.

My eyes closed, and I soaked myself in that image of her, that feeling coming off her, off her soul’s pleasure entwining herself in that exotic sensual music. I willed myself to never forget it, searing it on my soul.

I tugged a hand through my hair and took in a breath. The dance floor was filled with gyrating bodies, seats had emptied. The bar was jammed. And at the end of it, reality crashed on my private party. Standing at the bar, brown leather jacket guy sipped on a drink, watching Adri.

A flash went off behind my eyes, adrenaline bursting in my veins, and I charged over to him, cutting through the boisterous crowd. I slid in behind him, wrenching an arm around his neck, pulling him back against me.

“Who the fuck are you?”

His head twisted, eyes flaring, fingers digging into my arm, Greek curses flaring.

“Who sent you?”

“Turo!”

I blinked. Adri stood before us, breathless, hair flying. “Let him go.”

“What? Why?” I gritted out. “He’s been following us for days now.”

“He’s on my mother’s security team. She must have sent him. Eh, Stavro?”

The man muttered in Greek. She put a hand on my arm. “Turo, please.”

I released him from my chokehold and he sputtered, rubbing a hand around his throat, eyes blazing. She spoke to him in Greek, this Stavro of Liana’s, as she wrapped an arm through mine. I tried to catch my breath, I didn’t realize I was out of breath. My skull banged in my head. Adri took my hand in hers, another hand stroked the side of my burning face, and Stavro faded into the din of voices, the pounding music, the smoke.

“It’s all right. It’s all right.” Adri’s arms snaked around my middle and up my back, bringing our bodies together. Her steady heat silenced the drums beating in my head, the violins shrieking, the lights flashing. Those blue gray eyes gleamed back at me, and there was only her. Only her.

I took that beautiful face in my hands and touched my lips to hers.

“Oh, Turo…”

Her voice mirrored my ache, and I deepened the kiss wanting to obliterate it, be consumed by it, by her. She opened her mouth to mine, and we drank. We drank the wine.

* * *

Back at thehouse we settled on the divan on the stone terrace at the back which overlooked the peninsula of the town with the castle ruins at its tip, the small lighthouse beyond in the vast blackness of the sea.

The lit whitewashed surfaces of the houses with their terra-cotta tiled roofs spread out around us like white building blocks. The deftly lit huge arbor of fuchsia bougainvillea, a thick wall of pine and cypress trees, and several lemon trees made this small garden very private. The jasmine had awoken as it did every night and shimmered through the thick air. The heady fragrance of the night flower bush was even more intense. The candle flames flickered pale yellow light from their large lanterns over the gray stone flooring, and the lights we’d switched on in the narrow lap pool, created a liquid aquamarine jewel at our feet.

“I have something special for us tonight.” Adri went into the house and returned moments later with a vintage glass wine decanter filled with a pink red liquor and two glasses. She set the tray down and poured for us.

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