‘Just now.’
‘OK, come on,’ Kostas said. ‘Let’s get away from this shit until we can see something.’ He didn’t say anything else; he just bent down and picked her up.
‘What… are you doing?’
‘Getting you away from the glass. Putting you somewhere where you cannot fall until I can get some light here.’
‘I… don’t know why the generator hasn’t kicked in. If… people don’t get their air-conditioning I will have to deal with no end of complaints… in the morning.’
‘Don’t think about that now.’
He placed her down on a sun lounger and that was when, even in the moonlight, he could see the blood on her. Her whole front was red. This was bad. But where was it coming from?
‘I’m an idiot,’ Faye said.
‘Yes, we can agree on that.’ As he sat next to her on the edge of the sun lounger, he was doing a visual reconnaissance of her body. But there was no time to dwell on enjoying that; he was searching for the origin of all this red. And then he sniffed. It wasn’t the scent of a wound, it was…
‘You bleed… sour cherry?’ Kostas asked. He grabbed a fistful of her cream-coloured dress then and put it to his nose, needing clarification.
‘That was what was in the jug,’ Faye said.
‘OK, I see the blood.’ It was on her arm. He needed something to put on it. But what? She was wearing nothing under that dress, that was clear, and he only had his underwear on…
He picked up one of her hands, trails of blood snaking down her forearm, and, using the whole of his tongue, he tracked a path over her skin, from just above her elbow and upwards, until he stopped and pressed his mouth to the wound.
* * *
OK, these sensations were now overriding any pain or disorientation. Kostas had licked her and now his mouth was suctioned to the side of her hand and it was seriously doing something to her. She started to let her mind wander. The last time anyone had put their mouth anywhere on her. Ice cream guy. The last time she had wanted someone to. Not really ice cream guy. And then she realised, this was the opposite of that. This was nothing like any of the last touches she’d had, this was a fantasy moment. One of those scenes spicy romance authors wrote about. The hot, gorgeous Greek basketballer and the older woman. Forbidden lust. And, right at that second, as his hot, sensual mouth was still performing some kind of sexy, blood-halting, oral Olympics on her skin, Kostas looked up, his green-blue-brown ocean eyes meeting hers. The gaze was nothing less than scorching, and Faye was feeling it full force as it flooded her entire body and started pooling somewhere usually only her Hello Nancy Lem got to visit. Oh God. What was happening? She found him hot. Undeniably hot. And suddenly she had this yearning to reach out and touch his hair with her free hand. In fact, her fingers were tingling with the suggestion as all her other parts throbbed, indicating that his ‘first-aid’ scenario was starting to turn into lust CPR. For her at least. She swallowed. Because that was the danger with any kind of feeling unless you were one hundred per cent sure it was reciprocated. It was all internal until it wasn’t. Until someone took a chance. Made a move.
His mouth left her skin, but his eyes stayed with hers and the silence elongated, stretching into the dark as her heart pounded in her throat. Was he feeling something close to what she was feeling? Should she? He was a VIP guest. Could she? It wasn’t picking out perennial plants at Dobbies. Touch his hair, thought the Faye who had nothing to worry about but the right here, right now. If it all backfired there could have been… a moth taking up residence.
And then his thumb, a hot, strong pad of manliness, was on her bottom lip. Why was he doing that? What even was that? No one had touched her mouth like that before…
‘Faye.’
His voice saying her name like that gave her goosebumps. The tone was guttural, heavy with intention. It seemed she wasn’t reading this wrong no matter how crazy that sounded to her brain. He was too young. This was too much like a mid-life crisis decision, wasn’t it? But…
‘Kosta.’ What was that voice she’d used? Sultry. Possibly alluring?
‘Fuck,’ he growled. ‘Do not say my name like that. You know what you do.’
She really didn’t know what she did, what she was doing, but whatever it was, it was making her tense and trembly. Had she ever been this tense and trembly in her life before?
And then, suddenly there was light; the small lamps that lit the pathways through the grounds came on, a few low lights from rooms in the complex. It was the perfect chance to put an end to this, the universe saying ‘enough of being insane, here are warning lights flashing you to halt’. Except…
He moved fast. His mouth on hers, and it caught her by surprise as much as it also felt like the only certain decision. And his lips were… smouldering, intense, his mouth a delicious open invitation to have desire she had long since forgotten about played with. A game. This was all this was. Fun. Frenzied. Forgotten as soon as the moment ended or she regained control of her mind. She really should do that. Now. But the kiss was… so good. Brain-spinningly good. So much so that it was possibly too hard to gain control of her mind at the minute. And then, with their mouths still together, slower now, deeper, Kostas picked her up again. The motion made them disconnect, their lips at least, and Faye realised she had been starved of oxygen. Light-headedness made her feel like she was delicately drifting. She put fingers to his bare shoulders, grounding herself.
‘Just so we are clear,’ Kostas said, eyes still fixed on hers, ‘I am going to take you to my suite, to my bed, and neither of us will be sleeping.’
‘Endaksi,’ she answered, shuddering delightfully at the thought. ‘OK.’
‘Fuck, Faye,’ he growled, tightening his hold on her.
‘Ne, parakaló. Yes, please.’
24
KOSTAS’S SUITE, HOTEL MARGARITÁRI, AVLAKI
