The old man was no fool. He must have some inkling as to why Christo had chosen Thea as his bride.
Christo’s stomach clenched as Thea turned to look into the soul of him with mournful, over-bright eyes.
‘Why would you say that about your own son?’ she asked, sounding incredulous, though the slight tremor in her voice betrayed her. ‘He’s taking me to New York.’
‘Such pretty lies. You’re a clever girl. I knew you’d make him a good wife.’
Bile rose sour in Christo’s throat. The gall of it. This from the man who’d invited an enemy to slip craven fingers into his birthright. Into the company he’d earned with his own blood. Through each abandonment by his mother. Every rejection by his father. The debts Hector had incurred would take a lifetime to undo—if that Gordian knot could even be unravelled.
Christo had done his duty. This farce had gone on long enough. He strolled towards Thea. Touched her gently on the shoulder and ignored her tremble under his hand.
‘Koukla mou. Our flight’s this evening. We should leave.’
‘You must come again,’ Hector said, to Thea alone. ‘This old man doesn’t have enough company.’
She squeezed the parchment-thin skin of his father’s arm. Did she see through the cruel glint in Hector’s eye? Perhaps. But her voice was all sparkle and flirtation.
‘How can I resist? Your son’s overworked. Whenever you feel lonely, please call. No doubt I’ll be feeling lonely too.’
Her words tugged at parts of him long dead. Threatening to rouse them from the grave where they’d been safely buried. Lonely was being shunted off to other people to be cared for on school breaks. Lonely was having only servants to talk to for days. Lonely was recognising the one truth in your life. That your parents didn’t want you.
His father beckoned for the nurse. As she came to take the old man away he looked at Christo, his eyes filled with a wicked fire. He waggled his finger and cackled as the nurse wheeled him down the hall.
‘Don’t leave this one alone for too long, son, or she might run away too.’
Christo settled into the comfort of his limousine, the blood freezing through his veins. His father always did that to him—left him colder than the Arctic.
He looked at Thea and the chill thawed with a sliding heat. Her gaze dropped to his lips and a flush of colour swept over her cheeks. The throb of hunger started low in his gut.
Against his better judgement she intoxicated him. One moment all flash and fire, the next moment beautiful blushes. He could lean across the seat, right here, in this warm car filled with her scent of honey and spice. Slide a hand behind her neck and kiss her till she melted with wanting him. Call her out as the liar he knew her to be.
Which was all the reminder he needed to pull back from these delusions.
‘You played your part well. There’s no need to subject yourself to my father again.’
She cocked her head. ‘Why do you hate him?’
Christo undid the buttons on his shirt cuffs. Rolled the sleeves up. Thirty-one years of parental contempt layered tarry and thick. Nothing could wash that stain away. And then, when it had come time to take what was his—when what he’d been born to do had been so close he could have caressed it with the tips of his fingers—Hector had almost thrown it away. He didn’t care about Christo at all.
‘Fathers and their sons.’ He shrugged. These were weaknesses he’d never disclose, because weaknesses could be exploited. ‘That’s the way it’s been even before Zeus and Cronus.’
Thea stared out through the window, absentmindedly scratching at her knee. ‘Not in my experience. My brother and father are close. Partners in every crime.’
He stiffened. How much did she know about her father’s and brother’s activities? He suspected she despised both men. In that way, their views on their fathers were strikingly similar. The rest he could only imagine. Tito and Demetri were too careful. Even Raul had come up with nothing.
What would Thea share if she was asked the right way?
He watched her white-tipped nails digging into the flesh above the hem of her dress. Pricks of red bloomed under her skin.
‘Are you all right?’
He leaned over and placed his hand on hers. Thea’s slender fingers were cool and tempting under his. He drifted his thumb over the back of her hand. She turned to him, eyelids heavy and slumberous, her raspberry lips parted as if it were hard to breathe.
He looked back to where he touched her. Glorying at her silky skin, paler than his. Light to his dark. So tempting to slide higher. To stroke his errant fingers along the flesh of her inner thigh and watch those golden eyes glaze with need. See if she’d gasp and yield, relax her legs and allow him to explore all her honeyed dark places till she sighed his name and clenched around his fingers as she came.
He could do that in the back of this quiet car, with no sound bar her shallow breaths and the low thrum of the engine. Trapped in this tiny world of their own.
Time slowed, the moment pregnant with anticipation as his pulse pounded with desire. Did she feel it too?
As he looked up at her Thea’s eyes widened, her gaze flicked away and she jerked her hand from under his as if burned.
No, clearly not.
Christo sat back in his seat once more, ignoring the roar of blood coursing in his ears.
‘Something bit me.’ Thea smoothed the hem of her dress over the red mark on her thigh and clasped her hands in her lap, fingers twisting. ‘Anna says when we get to New York we’re staying in your apartment near Central Park. She seems excited.’
Christo accepted the brisk change of subject. It was safer this way, when all he craved was to touch. To push. His body didn’t listen to sense when
