Cassie vowed there and then to never reveal why she wanted a tattoo. It was way too personal and poignant.
He looked at his watch. ‘Is that it? I’m afraid your brother would have my hide if I let you get a tattoo but we could find a club here and by tomorrow be on our way back to Sadat. I’m sure you’ll fit the rest of your wish list in over the years.’
Cassie pushed down the pang that he was so eager to be rid of her. It had no place here. That rebellious spark moved through her. She gathered her nerve, sat back and said casually, ‘There’s something else. I’m a virgin and I really want to have sex before I become queen and have to get married.’
For a second Ares didn’t react. His wine glass was at his mouth, he’d just drained it and then suddenly he was sitting up and coughing and spluttering as the wine hit his throat and went down the wrong way.
His reaction helped lessen Cassie’s sense of exposure for revealing that. But…he was the one who’d crashed her party and he wasn’t going to stop her.
Ares took a gulp of water and glared at her. ‘Did you just say…?’ He sounded a bit hoarse.
Cassie helpfully provided, ‘That I want to lose my virginity? Yes, I did.’ She had to laugh at the mix of horror and shock on his face. She winked at him. ‘The tattoo probably doesn’t look so bad now, does it?’
Chapter Six
IF HE DIDN’Tthink about what she’d said back at the restaurant, maybe Ares could pretend he’d misheard her. But, from the way she’d been sliding him twinkly blue-eyed glances since they’d left the restaurant and returned to the tender and were now almost at the boat, anchored in the sea, he figured that unfortunately he hadn’t misheard.
What he had done was get them out of that restaurant so fast his head had been spinning, as if afraid she was going to go and start propositioning strangers there and then.
As if afraid she’d want to sleep with someone other than you.The incendiary thought crept into his head and Ares mentally snarled at it. He didn’t want her. She was too bright and sunny androyaland his friend’s little sister and totally out of bounds. She was untouched, for crying out loud. He did not touch untouched people. He was too…dark. Cynical.
A man like him and a woman like her did not mix. He would take her brightness and dim it.
But even as he thought of that he almost shook with the enormity of the fact that she was innocent, and what it might be like to be the one to touch her, to rouse her, to make her gasp and moan and plead and clasp around him so tightly that—
‘So, I guess no clubbing tonight, then?’
Ares was pulled out of his feverish circling thoughts. The tender was at the boat now, and Cassie was reaching out to grab the ladder that they’d used to climb down from a platform that could be lowered at the back of the boat, while anchored.
‘No,’ Ares issued through his teeth. He was seriously considering his threat of putting her below deck and keeping her there. But that would mean going down there and even that short visit earlier had been enough to make him sweat. The last thing he wanted was for those far too bright and inquisitive blue eyes to notice. She already saw far too much.
She’d had him spilling about his family, who he never spoke about. And her perceptiveness had surprised him. How she’d put a finger on the fact that he’d never been encouraged to think of the family business as something he could be part of in a meaningful way because his parents had deemed him somehow not useful.
But far more disturbingly he now ached to be the first man to make her moan and clench as she had last night in the bar. If he’d realised then that Caius had spoken the truth and that she really might be innocent…Theos. It was too much.
For the first time in a long time, Ares was out of his depth and it was in a way he wasn’t prepared for.
Cassie secured the tender to the boat and climbed the ladder. The night was still and warm. From above him on the boat Cassie said, ‘That’s cool. I heard Mykonos is the place to go clubbing anyway. Maybe I’ll try there…’
For clubbinganda lover? Ares wanted to untie the tender again and sail as far away from this boat and woman as he could. But he couldn’t. So he climbed up onto the deck. Cassie was standing, with her shoes in her hands, bag slung across her body, hair down and wild around her shoulders. She seemed to glow in the moonlight. It made something inside Ares’s chest feel tight and achy.
She said, ‘Well, goodnight, then, help yourself to one of the spare cabins.’
‘I’ll sleep up here.’
Cassie had been turning away and then turned back. She must have seen something on Ares’s face because she shrugged and said, ‘Whatever.’ She turned away again and disappeared down into the belly of the boat. Ares shuddered just thinking about it.
He looked out over the dark mass of the sea. Why did it feel as though what should be the easiest assignment on the planet—babysitting a princess—had just become the most challenging?
The next day, after a light breakfast that Cassie had brought up to the deck to eat, they set off again. Ares had retreated to his taciturn self. He’d disappeared below, presumably to shower and change because he had changed, into board shorts and a T-shirt, but he’d been so quick that Cassie had barely noticed his disappearance as she’d focused on plotting the next stage of the journey.
She turned around and he was back and changed. Only the fact that his hair was damp gave any sign that he’d showered.
His eyes were hidden behind dark shades and his jaw was as hard as ever. Cassie sighed. He was like a formidable piece of rock. And really, she’d not learned much about him last night. She suspected there was a lot more to his break with his family than just a desire to make his own way. No one joined an army to make a fortune. They went into armies to escape something.
‘Where are we headed?’
‘Mykonos,’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘It’s famous for its clubbing scene. They call it the Ibiza of Greece.’
