He was wearing a grey pinstripe suit that draped his long, powerful frame as if it loved being there, and he looked absolutely sensational. Tall, dark, and tanned, with the kind of hard-angled, well-balanced features that just instinctively attracted women to him: the exotic curve of his cheekbones, the thin nose, the gorgeously sexy full, sensual mouth.
Her stomach was churning and her eyes were unwillingly glued to the slightly sardonic gleam in his. And Adrastos was smiling.
But, worse than all of that put together, Electa could see him naked again, after his conceited pose beside the bed he had dumped her on last night. And this was a guy who liked snowboarding down the Alps or skydiving off them. The same guy who swam umpteen laps of his swimming pool every day before breakfast and could pump iron without breaking into a
Electa couldn’t move. A deep chill of foreboding was settling over her. Adrastos was going to give up on her. He’d changed his mind because he was already fed up with her shrewish attitude. She could feel the change of heart bouncing off the grim hardness of his long, elegant stance.“Adrastos… Please…” She didn’t even care that she sounded pleading.“‘Please’, Electa?” he quizzed cynically. “Now, there is a word I don’t hear from you too often. Tell me, are you begging for your brother’s sake or for your own sake?”“I just don’t understand what’s the matter with you!” she cried. “I thought we had an… an agreement, but you’re sending me so many confusing signals I no longer know what I’m supposed to
Adrastos turned the Range Rover in through the gates of Kamari Leventis, his property in Santorini, and drove into a tunnel of trees. Darkness swallowed them up in a moment. The narrow driveway twisted and turned from there on, keeping them climbing steadily, as they had been doing since they’d left Fira behind. As the tunnel of trees eventually thinned out, Electa shifted on her seat for the first time since they’d swapped Adrastos’s private jet for his sturdy four-wheel drive. She had visited this place only once before, which felt oddly unnatural now, when this was after all her husband’s main home. He also owned an apartment in a beautiful building in the center of Athens, which they’d used to use a lot. But this fabulous estate, with its forests and neatly tended formal gardens, was almost a strange
Turning around, Electa crossed the bedroom and stepped beneath one of the plaster archways which stood on either side of the huge, deeply carved bed. The archway opened up into a spacious, custom-designed dressing room she could have fitted the whole of her London flat inside. She crossed the floor to where she remembered the bathroom was located, and by the time she’d run a bath in the huge porcelain tub, and indulged herself by soaking in it for ages, Electa began to feel more human again. Wrapped in the velvet-smooth white bathrobe she’d found hanging behind the door, Electa padded out of the bathroom, only to pull to a stop in surprise when she discovered that while she’d been soaking in the bathtub, her things had been unpacked and put away. He
Letting her go, he swung away from her to stride back across the bedroom, all arrogant distance and touch-me not-with-your-concession cool.“Wow… You think you’re so perfect, don’t you, Adrastos?” Electa flung after him shakily. “You think that because all your predictions about my brother have come true, it gives you the right to take the lofty high ground! Well, I have news for you,” she said as he stilled in the middle of the room. “You didn't behave better than Flynn was when it came to wanting your own way. Flynn was jealous of you. What was your excuse for turning our marriage into a battle in which only one of you could make me dance to their tune? Which one of you was the adult?” His shoulders flexed inside his white shirt as her final stab sank deep.“Boo-hoo! Poor Electa,” Adrastos struck back. &ldq
With a helpless moan, Electa squirmed against him, trying to fight the helpless meltdown she could feel taking place inside. His long fingers spanned her narrow waistline. He used them to press her up against him. Adrastos kissed her until her lips were hot and swollen, and he felt her meltdown start to show itself in the slackening of her tension.“Tell me you want me, zoi mou,” he instructed, seducing her heated lips with the words. Electa folded her fingernails into the solid satin bulge of his biceps and pushed, trying to give herself some space.“El, I will make you say it,” Adrastos warned when she snapped her lips shut.“You won’t…” Electa replied unsteadily, staring with defiance into the burning dark certainty blazing from his ey
‘What? He didn’t say what I just heard…’ Electa stilled like a frozen icicle topped by a flaming river of fire.“The tabloids misinterpreted what they saw,” Adrastos extended in a cold, flat voice. “So… this is my revenge… You owe me, Electa mou… You owe me for twelve lousy months of being labeled ‘a faithless playboy husband’. Now you will never know what I’ve been doing and who I’ve been doing it with since you walked out on me.”“So… that… what we just… That was your idea of revenge?” she whispered and lowered her head and turn her back.“I felt I had to.” Instant pain pierced her heart… Electa nodded her flame-bright head.“Well… I hope it gave you…
A few minutes later, he arrived in the opening, looking tall, dark, and dangerous in jeans and a white T-shirt, with his hair still ruffled and a scowl on his too-handsome face. Ignoring him, Electa continued her angrily research.“Explain to me why you need the bag,” he invited abruptly. Rummaging through a drawer, she slammed it shut and opened the next one.“I want my phone.”“Are you thinking of leaving me again, Electa?” Adrastos sighed out. “Hoping to call a cab? This isn’t London. Cabs don’t turn up in five minutes around here.”“If I was intending to leave you, I would have just gone… walked back to Athens if I had to.” Straightening up, Electa lanced him an icicle glance.“I can’t leave,&
She caught the sound of a door opening and then closing with a quiet click into its housing. Her heart skipped a beat as she lay there, listening to Adrastos’s quiet tread. The whole suite was shrouded in darkness because she’d switched off all the lights before she’d climbed into bed, so she lay listening to the rustle of clothing, then picked up the scent of brandy as he lifted the covers and slid next to her.“I know you’re awake,” he said slowly. Turning over, Electa peered at him through the darkness. He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, the covers riding low across his chest. And he looked so very somber Electa wanted to reach out and stroke her fingers along his unsmiling lips.“Listen, I’ve been thinking,” he declared quietly. “We don’t communicate about the right things. This must cha