Читать книгу: «One Kiss in... London», страница 2

Always Nico had won.

Except on duty.

Nico had not gone into the family business—he had chosen to go alone. At eighteen, to the protests of his family, he had headed for the mainland, worked as a junior in banking and then, when still that had not satisfied, he’d headed to America. He had faked a better résumé, and how impressed they had been with the young Greek man who could read the stockmarket. How painstaking building his own portfolio had first been, but then, with passion and determination, he had scanned global markets, invested in properties when prices had crashed, sold them when the pendulum swung back.

It always did.

How easily Nico saw that. Could not understand how others could not, for they sweated and panicked and sometimes jumped, where Nico sat calm, watching and waiting for new growth in the fertile ashes.

Each visit back home he returned richer and, despite the fights in private, his father was proud that always his son was better.

It would, though, Nico decided, be hard to match the rare beauty of Stavros’s bride.

Poor thing.

The thought jumped uninvited to the forefront of his mind as he watched her dance, not with her husband but to the tune of tradition. He watched her vie for her husband’s attention, but he was too busy talking with his koumbaros, irritated when she tapped him on the shoulder and told him they must now dance. He watched as Stavros ran his hand down her bottom and then said something into her ear.

And then he saw her pull away.

A flash of hurt, anger perhaps, in her eyes and Nico knew it had not been a compliment that had come from Stavros’s lips.

He was sure, because that was the way on Lathira, as Constantine would soon find out, that even on her wedding night she had been criticised.

It was death by a thousand cuts, the world she had entered, and he had just witnessed the first.

She would be part of Lathira’s social set—have lunch with the other trophy wives and then back to the gym the following morning to pay for it. They would seep the life from her till she was as polished and as hard as the rest, and Nico did not want to sit and witness even a moment of it. It had been a mistake to come. Nico did not do sentiment, did not enjoy weddings. All they did was cause a vague bewilderment—to share your life, your future, to entrust yourself to another?

He looked at the bride, who was not blushing but pale and visibly stressed, at his parents, who sat tense, at the couples that forced smiles and conversation, and he searched for something that might discount his theory that love did not exist. He looked around the room and there were two boys, raiding the table, laughing as they ordered cola from the waiters. Two brothers causing mischief, and he felt a twist in his soul that came from nowhere he could place.

‘I’m going to retire.’ He waited for the protest from his parents but the only protest he got was from the blonde whose name he couldn’t for the life of him remember.

‘Will we see you in the morning?’

‘Perhaps.’ Nico shrugged. ‘Or I may leave early.’

‘Come and see us on Lathira soon,’ his mother said. ‘It has been ages.’

‘I’m here now,’ Nico pointed out, because this visit had to count as one, for he would not be back for months now.

He wished he loved them.

As he walked out of the ballroom, Nico wished he was blind to their faults, but all he saw were greedy, ego-driven people.

He collected his room keys, was advised that his things were in his room, but instead of heading up there on a whim he turned and headed out to the streets.

Past the church and the taverna, along the road to the fishing boats and the fishermen who sat smoking and drinking on the beach. He followed a path that should not be familiar except he seemed to know where it led, and he walked, somehow at ease with the seamier side of town, past the late-night bars to the street that forked into cobbled alleys. He could hear breathing behind him and heavy footsteps but Nico felt no fear.

He saw the tired face of a hooker and the voice of a man behind him.

‘How much?’

He saw her face shutter as she named her price and Nico felt his heart still.

He looked down the alley to where she would take the man and he heard the words repeat in his head.

How much?

He felt dread, for the first time he felt dread and broke the conversation.

‘She’s already booked.’ He turned to the bloated, greedy face and told him she was taken. All he did was shrug and move on.

‘Since when?’ The hooker sneered.

He did not want her, but he didn’t want that man for her, either.

‘Go home,’ Nico said, and she swore at him in Greek, told him she was sick of do-gooders. Then her tirade stopped as he paid her plenty.

‘What are you paying me for?’

‘For peace,’ Nico said, even if he did not understand his own response. He just wanted to stop the trade, to wipe out one injustice.

He walked the streets; he ran through the streets like a madman; the town clock chimed and he realised it was two a.m. He wanted away from this place and how it made him feel. He would be gone first thing in the morning, would go now to his room and order their best bottle of brandy, not the sickly ouzo that churned in his stomach still.

He walked briskly through the hotel foyer, bypassed the lift and took the stairs, two, three at a time, and when nothing could have halted him, something did.

A bride still in her dress, a half-drunk bottle in one hand, a crumpled heap on the stairs, crying.

‘Leave me,’ she sobbed, and he wanted to, did not want to sit on the stairs and ask her what was wrong, for he already knew.

Did not want to sit and tell her to hush, to dry her tears and to tell her to go back there, as his father would expect him to.

He did neither.

He took her by the hand and made her stand.

Felt her hot hand in his and he wanted all of her, wanted to hold her, to stop the tears, to comfort her.

‘Leave me,’ she begged. ‘I’ll be okay in a moment.’

She wouldn’t be, Nico knew that. The champagne might dim her pain enough to send her back, but no doubt she’d need it again tomorrow, and another night and another … to get through the hell that would be her marriage, because Nico knew the truth.

‘Come with me.’ He took her by the hand and he led her.

‘Come with me to my room.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘HE’S GAY.’

He hadn’t even got her through the door before she blurted it out, and Nico was surprised and rather proud that she did.

HAT she admitted what, after this night, she must never again say to another.

‘Why,’ was Nico’s only response to the revelation as he turned the lights on in his room and saw it for the first time, ‘have I been given the bridal suite?’

Tear-filled eyes looked around and she let out a slightly hysterical laugh—this, the room she had chosen when her father had booked the hotel, this, the room she had later envisaged being part of a magical night.

#X2018;Stavros changed the booking. He said that he wanted the two-bedroom suite. I thought it was so I could get ready away from him, instead he and his koumbaros …’ She was wretched in her grief, the sobs getting louder, and he went to the bathroom and came out with a wad of tissues.

Nico could not help but give a wry smile as he looked around. The maids must have assumed it was being used as the bridal suite and prepared the wrong room for the happy couple, for there were candles that had long since gone out, and petals on the bed, a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. The ice had melted and was now water.

‘When did you find out?’ Nico asked, wincing on her behalf when she answered.

‘Just before. When we got back to the room, when still he would not kiss me, when I begged … he told me …’ Constantine sobbed. ‘He even laughed that I hadn’t worked it out, that I hadn’t questioned why he never seemed to want me. I thought it was out of respect for this night.’

‘You had no idea?’ He had assumed she knew, that that was the reason for her hesitancy at the church. That she was going along with things, as so many others on the islands did.

‘I thought things would be different after the wedding.’ She still sobbed. ‘That he was nervous of my father … men always are. I knew I didn’t yet love him, but I thought it might grow, that we’d make it work.’ She was so, so humiliated, so embarrassed. The kisses she had pressed on her new husband seemed to have repulsed him. She switched from shamed to furious. ‘I’ll take a lover,’ she said defiantly, and Nico just stood there. ‘I’ll take ten!’ And Nico suppressed a smile, but when the tears came again he saw the real depth of her grief, heard firsthand what was really distressing this beautiful bride.

‘He knew.’ She sobbed. ‘My father knew. Why would he agree to that? He could have chosen better for me—he’s a prominent man, he’s the island’s lawyer, surely I am worth more than this? I believed him when he said that this was the best choice for me, that other ways end in divorce. I trusted him to make the best choice for me. Why would he choose for his daughter a man who could never love me?’

Nico was quite sure he could hazard an accurate guess.

By local standards this had been a lavish wedding. Clearly her father was one of the island’s wealthy—but how could a lawyer get rich when the people he served were poor? The celebrities in the south had their own legal teams, they would never choose the services of a local. Nico knew how things worked on Lathira, knew from his own family the lengths they would go to to get that next deal—it was why he wanted no part of it. He was sure it was no different here on Xanos. He could smell the corruption yet Constantine seemed to have no idea, and suddenly she was back to scared.

‘I shouldn’t have said anything about it to you.’ Panic flared in her eyes as she realised who she was confiding in. “If Dimitri found out that your father knew about Stavros … Oh, God …’ she whimpered. ‘He’s the one Dimitri always wants to impress …’

‘Constantine. Your secret is safe.’ His voice was clear and commanding, his words unwavering. So badly she wanted to believe in him, but surely she could not trust him. After all, he didn’t even know her name.

‘It’s Connie,’ she said. ‘People I know call me Connie.’

‘And if you knew me, then you would know that I do not speak with my father, other than about the food on the table or the temperature of the air. We do not speak of things.’

‘You might now …’

‘No,’ Nico said. ‘No.’ He said it again, and it was up to her whether or not she believed him. ‘I will say nothing,’ Nico said. ‘One day you might choose to, though.’

Her eyes jerked to his and she glimpsed that possibility.

Maybe when her father was gone, she could end this hell, but there was still her mother, her family, the reputation they lived and died by, and she simply could not do it to them, though Nico did not leave it there.

‘I do know how hard it can be.’

She shot him a disbelieving look. She couldn’t imagine anyone even attempting to put pressure on this strong, assertive man and getting away with it, but when he spoke next she realised that he just might understand.

‘When I grew up, it was a given that I would go into the family business. That I would live in a house a few minutes away with my wife and children, that the family would sit together to eat at night and weekends. My first son would be named Vasos after my father.’ She nibbled on her lower lip, his words painting her future, for even as Stavros had broken the news, he had told her that there would be children, that their first son would be named Dimitri. ‘I broke away. I have made my own business. I come home now and then but always it is to a row. I have no interest in marriage, and—’ his voice was definite ‘—I certainly never want children. It causes fights with my parents even to this day. I am their only son, their only child, and, as they tell me at every given chance, I am a bitter disappointment to them.’

She looked up at him and truly wondered how he could possibly disappoint. She had heard the envy in Dimitri’s voice when he’d spoken of the Eliades and their rich and successful son, but from the way Nico was talking, the pressure from home was exactly the same for him. Yes, maybe he did understand all she was going through, maybe he did know how impossible it was for her.

‘I’m an only child, too …’ Connie said, her voice faltering because she had never really discussed such things, but he nodded with understanding and tentatively she carried on. ‘So much is expected from me. So much of their happiness hinges on me.’

‘When you are in it,’ Nico explained, ‘you cannot judge it, you just know that something is wrong. When you break away …’ She closed her eyes because there was no chance of that, but Nico spoke on. ‘When you clearly see all you have to sacrifice to make them happy, maybe you will choose to be happy for yourself.’

‘Some sacrifice.’ She tried to be brave, to look at the bright side. ‘I will be living in Lathira, in a beautiful home, entertaining …’

‘The perfect wife,’ Nico interrupted. ‘You will lunch with your friends, dressed in your secret … A woman, a wife, perhaps even a mother … ‘And she started to cry a little, because he was right, it had all been worked out.

‘Stavros said that we will have children, that there are ways for me to get pregnant without …’ She choked rather than say ‘without touching me’ but Nico heard every unspoken word and could happily have crossed the corridor and thumped Stavros and then her father, too, for all they would so readily deny her. Of course there were ways for her to have children, to play perfect—he could see her future, could picture it, because so many people here lived mired in their secrets. He looked into her eyes and found out that they were, in fact, the darkest of blue and surely she deserved better. He wanted her to see she could have so much more than the life she was being forced into.

‘When you join your new friends at the gym, when you shop with them and you try on a dress and they tell you that you look beautiful, that if you buy that dress then Stavros will not be able to keep his hands off you …’ He saw tears fill her eyes again and perhaps he should stop, but this would be her truth. ‘Will you be able to admit to these so called friends that not once has he touched you?’

‘Please stop.’

‘Tonight you danced … What did he say that upset you?’

She didn’t answer and Nico walked over, and she wrapped her arms around her body as if to cover it.

‘What did he say?’ Nico quietly demanded, and she moved her hands down to her hips.

‘That this …’ she clutched her figure ‘ … could be improved.’

‘Tell him he is never to speak to you that way and mean it,’ Nico said, but as he looked at her he changed his mind, for surely she should not stay. ‘Tell him that you won’t live like this.’

‘I cannot.’

‘You could get an annulment.’ She screwed her face up at the impossibility, just too embedded in the ways of the island to take such a step. It wasn’t his job to save her, it wasn’t his place to insist she be strong, for after all he would be gone from Xanos in the morning.

‘Then you do your best to survive your life.’ Nico gave a half-smile as he left her to it—it was not for him to persuade her otherwise. ‘Take your lover.’ He gave a shrug. ‘Take ten.’

‘I can’t …’ She closed her eyes in dread. ‘What if he were not discreet, what if people found out …?’

‘You care too much what others think.’

And then she cried, different tears now, not angry, or bitter, but she cried for all that would be denied to her, for a loveless, sexless future and all the hope she had pinned on this night. Her grief so deep, her pain so real it could not help but move him. He went over to the chair and wrapped her in his arms. He thought he would comfort her; he was unsure of his motives, but the feel of arms around her, the scent of him close and all she had suffered tonight had her mouth move to his. He felt her clumsy, desperate kiss on his lips and closed his eyes, not in passion but restraint.

He moved his mouth away, pulled his head back and heard her sob. He realised he had added to her humiliation as he did to her what Stavros must have done, so very many times.

He looked down at her hands, which were shaking in her lap.

‘Where is your ring?’

‘I threw it at him,’ she said. ‘I’m never putting it back on.’ And then he saw a tear slide out of her eye at the hopelessness of it all, for tomorrow, he was quite sure, it would be on. She would do her duty, to everyone but herself.

‘I’ll go back.’ She went to stand but her legs woud not obey and for a moment she sat. ‘Thank you.’ She gave a very wan smile. ‘Thank you for talking to me, thank you for your kind words, and I apologise for suggesting you might gossip …’

‘I am discreet.’

‘Thank you.’ She took a deep breath, as one would when preparing to dive into cold water. ‘I’d better go back.’

‘I meant …’ He should just let her go, it was no business of his, but the thought of her going back to lie in a bed alone, of Constantine crying herself to sleep, of all her wants unfulfilled, moved Nico when usually sob stories did not. ‘You said you were worried a lover may not be …’

Hope flared inside her and he must have seen it, because instantly he quashed it. ‘I will not be your long-time lover, I am no one’s escape …’ He saw her eyes shutter. ‘But I will be with you tonight.’

‘Just tonight?’ She wanted more than that: she wanted weekends in Athens and discreet meetings in hotels and phone calls and all the passion that had been denied. She wanted so much more than one night with him.

‘Only tonight.’ He looked at her, his eyes roamed the body he had been thinking about for hours now, the virgin bride, who would stay that way if not for him. ‘You come to my bed, I will show you what your husband denies you—all you miss out on if you choose to live this lie …’

‘I have no choice.’

‘Always we have choices,’ Nico said, and this was his—to choose not to examine his feelings tonight. His mind was black and here was light. The streets of Xanos had unsettled him, stirred emotions that he sorely wanted gone. He wanted diversion and here it had been delivered to him in the shape of a tear-streaked, beautiful virgin.

He stood and she took his hand and did the same. She stared at the room and it was the wedding night of her dreams—just the wrong man. Then she looked again, because if she was completely honest, dangerously, guiltily honest, Stavros would never have fulfilled that fantasy. Here now before her was the man of dreams, and he could be hers—but only for one night.

CHAPTER THREE

LOVE, like marriage, for Nico would never happen.

As she excused herself for a moment, Nico stood and looked out to the window, to the inky ocean and a sky devoid of stars or moon, and he knew he had been right in the decision he had made long ago.

Nico did not believe in love.

He had nothing to base that on—his parents’ marriage had been long and seemingly happy, his aunts uncles and cousins on the mainland were all wed. It had been assumed by his family that Nico would have long ago carried on the family name, yet the idea was alien to him.

In love you lost.

Where that belief came from he did not know, but it was as real and as ingrained as was the fact he rose with the dawn each morning. And Nico lost at nothing—so he chose not to love.

To give your heart, to commit, was unfathomable to Nico.

The only reason, as far as he could see, for marriage was to have children and Nico certainly did not want that. For to love and to lose, where a child was concerned, nothing could be more horrific and surely it was never worth the pain.

So his heart remained closed.

He turned and saw her as she nervously walked into the room, as close to a bride of his own as he would ever get.

And were it somehow possible, were his heart to have chosen one for him, had he dared to even consider it, then surely she would be the one.

He saw her cheeks grow pink under his scrutiny, his eyes taking in the luscious curves, the untouched terrain of her body that for tonight was his to roam. He could feel her nerves, her excitement, the tension in the room that was all a wedding night should be—and surely now he could give in and hold her.

His head was full from the streets, images at the forefront that he wanted shadowed, and her mouth would be a sweet distraction. He crossed the room towards her, traced her naked arms, felt the rise of goose bumps beneath his fingers; and she was not just nervous, he realised, she was literally shaking with fear.

‘Maybe this is not what you want …’

She heard him about to retract, realised he had mistaken her nerves, but it wasn’t just nerves or inexperience that had her shaking, it was the overwhelming feeling of him close. It was the man who was holding her now, because he made her weak and he had not even kissed her. Feelings never encountered were rushing in, and as his mouth lowered to hers, as his full lips met hers, so clumsily she responded, rued her inexperience under such a skilled mouth. His moved so slowly and hers did not know how … and the taste of his tongue as it parted her lips was so sharp and cool, so intimate to feel, that her head moved back in startled surprise.

‘I haven’t …’ She screwed her eyes closed, embarrassed at her lack of skill, because no almost a virgin was she. ‘I’ve never been kissed.’

He looked down at her mouth, at lips that seemed made solely for that and could not believe they were his alone. ‘You haven’t kissed?’

‘Never. I have done nothing.’ She sobbed it out, for there had been no kissing, no touching, no petting, and she was angry for her own naivety, as if some honour had kept Stavros from so much as touching her. And there was shame for her spurned kisses, too, for, though she had tried to push it aside, though she had tried to tell herself otherwise, she had felt rejection over and over from her fiancé. She had clumsily flirted to no avail, had pressed lips and told herself as he had jerked his head back that her touch did not repulse, yet somewhere deep inside she had known that it had. ‘I thought tonight, I hoped tonight things would finally be different …’

‘And it shall be,’ Nico said, and he vowed, he would take care of her, would catch her up with her own body and take her from the age of eighteen to twenty-four in the hours allowed them tonight. He would show her all her body could be and leave her a woman by morning.

‘We will take things slowly,’ he promised. ‘I will show you each and every thing you have been missing. Now, for a first kiss …’ He tried to think himself younger, tried to picture a long-ago night that had never happened, ‘Perhaps we are walking back from the taverna at the market square …’

She smiled as she pictured that thought. ‘My house is just around the corner from there.’

‘Then I am walking you home …’ He could, he actually could picture it. ‘And I stop you.’ He took her wrist. ‘And I turn you to face me.’

He lowered his head and she was breathless in anticipation and then she felt his lips on hers, but more gently this time, a mouth that moved only slowly, a mouth that gave her time to warm, to feel, to accept the press and the gift of soft flesh from another. This mouth did not tighten or jerk away when she pushed a little harder still, and it was sweet but it was wanton, for how could it be not when she was drenched by the manly scent of him?

‘And then …’ Nico said, and she breathed as she moved from her first kiss, ‘when all night you have been wanting, when you have been out for dinner, when you have walked on the beach, but still you are wary, still you know not the motives of the other, when all you want is a taste of the promise to come.’ This, Nico decided, was the kiss he would give her were he young and first dating, were they sandy from walking on the beach. It was all new for him, too—for he had been swept into manhood on a surge of testosterone, had learnt at the altar of older woman, the cruise boats bringing them hungry and desperate for a few hours’ escape from their neglected lives. Loaded with sambuca and a night dancing on tables, they had climbed down to his outstretched hand and then fallen to him. Their kisses had been desperate and frantic, the sex hot and urgent, and it had left him replete for a while, but, like the tide as it turned, he had been left hollow after—till the next time and then the next.

Had she been there then, Nico decided, had it been her in his youth, he would have kissed her like this. Still softly he kissed her, his hands moving down her arm and to her waist. He held her from his centre as his tongue, slowly this time, slipped in, and this time she accepted it, this time she explored the smooth, moist flesh and relished the taste of him. He fought now to hold her from him, for he wanted to pull her hips into him. But not yet, he told himself, for right now it could be different. They would have all night for this, all night to kiss, because there, in the world they had now created, there would be the promise of more tomorrow.

His tongue was delicious, but it made her greedy for more, she now wanted the press of his mouth as it had once been, she wanted more urgency and her mouth demanded more. Her hands, in reflex, moved from loose limbed by her side up to his shoulders, up past his neck and into his hair. She sucked on the taste of him, and he took her away, to a date they had never had, but seemed now to exist, to hot peppered calamari bought at the taverna and eaten on the beach. So real was her dream she could hear the ocean as he kissed her, her feet surely not in stilettos but resting on sand. After a moment he halted her, his breathing a touch ragged, his words husky when finally they came.

‘Now I have to take you home.’

‘I don’t want to go.’ She did not, not back to her father. She wanted her next date, wanted to find out what Nico would do, how she might tempt him.

‘Now,’ Nico said, ‘I’ve taken you for dinner … twice,’ he added, and gave her a smile, a smile he had never given another, an intimate smile, not for the game they were playing, more for the dream they were sharing. He looked at his bride, who was not his but felt it, then at a dress more complicated than even this skilled lover had encountered. His fingers plucked the row of tiny buttons that ran in a line down her spine and she wanted to tell him they were for show only, but the feel of his fingers, probing, exploring, had her mouth close in pleasure as his lips lowered to her neck and he kissed the sensitive flesh there.

He loved this.

More than ever before, he loved the slow exploration of a woman, her pliant and wanting in his arms as his fingers probed the thick satin, as his other hand cupped her waist and then explored it, and, oh, the triumph of locating a concealed zip.

‘You would stop me,’ Nico said, as there just beneath the hollow of her armpit he found the hidden prize and started to slowly pull down the zipper. ‘You would stop me, or wriggle, or warn me …’ he said, as slowly he slid it down.

‘Why would I stop you?’ Constantine said as his mouth kissed her neck deeper, as she felt the breeze of air on her torso, then the warmth of his hand slipping in. ‘Why would I stop you when it feels so sublime?’

And words should not have such an effect, but so blatantly pleasurable was her response he had to hold her back, for to press her into him now would end the dream in a matter of moments. He wanted her on the bed, he wanted so badly to be inside her, and yet he made himself wait. It was a long, hard wait that was threatened for a moment as he made light work of her strapless bra and a breast dropped heavy into his palm.

His warm hands caressed her, and indescribable was the pleasure—hands that were not hers on her body, moving in ways she would never have thought of, and then when she thought it could not be any better, when his thumb pressed into her aching nipple, when he stroked it till it felt as if he was stroking right inside her, when surely it could not be more pleasurable, the lips on her neck slid down. The lips that were the first ever to kiss her moved wet and warm to a nipple that hurt in anticipation, and the blow of air from his mouth should have cooled, but it produced a heat from a place where heat had never existed and he kissed her breast as expertly, as hungrily and deliciously as he had kissed her mouth. Her fingers pressed and knotted into his hair and she worried how she might stay standing, how she had lived a life without knowing the pleasure of this, how nearly she had lived a life where this pleasure was denied her. He moved away from her breast to her face, and she wanted him back there instead of the cool air on her wet skin.

Then she didn’t want, because she got.

She got what Nico had wanted but had withheld for longer than he could have imagined. With one definite move, looking at her, awaiting her response, he drew her to where she belonged, against him. He pulled her deftly in and he met the giddy height of relief from wanting, because now his aching groin had the support of her warm body; but it did not satisfy, not even for a second, for instantly it demanded more.

He saw her eyes widen as she felt the solid length of his arousal, saw her lips close and a nervous, excited swallow as he pressed in harder again.

And again, till she was pressing now into him.

And they both tasted for the first time real teenage kisses, willing the other on to a sweet forbidden place. He shrugged off his jacket and it was Connie who dealt with his tie and then somehow they were moving to the bed. Nico kicked off his shoes; Connie frantically tore at his shirt buttons till he lay there beside her, his bare feet sliding between her stockinged calves, her naked breasts against his exposed chest. To have skin on skin deepened their kiss, till he suckled on her tongue in a decadent disclosure of what he intended next.