Sixa.m. What had Faye done? What the hell had she done? She was standing in the doorway of the main bedroom looking at Kostas’s naked form in the king-sized bed she now knew every Egyptian-cotton-sheeted inch of. And the man whose arse was right now looking like a perfect, muscular peach-cum-watermelon… she had navigated her way around him too. She put her fist to her mouth to stifle whatever noise might come out if she thought about anything too hard. Not that kind of hard. And thinking was what she should have done more of last night. A lot more of. Because in the cold not-yet-light of day, the situation was not good. She had had sex with a guest. A VIP guest no less. A twenty-five-year-old VIP guest. God! She wanted to howl like a coyote. Or should that be caterwaul like a cougar…
Suddenly that perfect arse and the rest of the body began to stir and she needed to get out of here. Back to her apartment where hopefully Saffron was still sleeping and not marking her absence, back to sanity if that had a chance of even existing any more. Except she couldn’t find her dress and she absolutely could not do the ‘walk of shame’ wearing the Hotel Margaritári bathrobe she currently had on.
‘Kaliméra,’ Kostas greeted, turning over, unashamedly bare and looking like he was very pleased to see her. Exactly like he had last night.
‘Please,’ Faye whispered, finger to her lips. ‘Go back to sleep. It’s early.’
‘And I am awake,’ he told her. ‘As are you.’
He was smiling. Grinning actually. Except she wasn’t really seeing it; she was too busy reimagining those expressions into the ones he had been wearing last night. The dark desire written in his gaze when he was looking at her. The way he bit his bottom lip, eyes shut, when he was particularly enjoying a certain type of pleasure…
‘I need to leave,’ Faye said. ‘There could still be glass on the patio. I have to make sure that’s taken care of before any guests are wandering around bare?—’
‘Bare?’ he interrupted.
‘Footed,’ Faye finished.
He smiled. ‘OK, I understand.’ He slid effortlessly off the bed and stood moving right in front of her, his erection a very firm reminder, front and centre, of exactly what they had enjoyed for hours. ‘You have used me for sex and now you want to go and forget it ever happened.’
‘No!’ Faye exclaimed. ‘No, not like that.’ Except she was immediately floundering in this conversation.
‘No?’ he queried, inching into her space, literally…
‘No… I mean… it was very… nice and?—’
‘Nice?’
Why hadn’t she said something better than ‘nice’? ‘Nice’ was such a ‘nothing’ word. And if there was one thing the sex hadn’t been, it was nothing.
‘Kosta, I?—’
He laughed then, this naked man who possessed muscles in places Faye didn’t even know muscles existed, and then he petted her shoulder like she might be a favourite aunt.
‘It is OK. I am playing with you,’ Kostas told her. ‘We are adults, no? We had a “nice” time together and today is a new day. That is all.’
She was caught between feeling relieved and feeling a bit like a prostitute. No, this was fine. It was a one-off. Casual, no-strings sex for grown-ups who had nothing in common apart from a physical attraction and needing a release. And there was nothing wrong with that as long as both parties were on the same page. And now her brain was feeding her this scenario in soundbites Keir Starmer would be lapping up for broadcast. Besides, she was supposed to be the real grown-up in this situation! She was the forty-year-old!
‘OK, good,’ Faye said, meeting his eyes finally.
‘Nice,’ he answered with a smirk. ‘So…’
‘So?’
‘You are leaving? Or…’
‘I am leaving,’ she stated. ‘But embarrassingly, I can’t find my dress.’ She pulled the bathrobe a little closer to her body.
‘Ah, OK,’ he said and, without saying anything else, he walked to the patio doors, opened them up and strode naked onto the balcony.
Within a few seconds he was back, her dress on a hanger in one hand.
‘So, I did not sleep as well as you,’ he told her. ‘I washed out your dress and hung it to dry. It is not perfect; sour cherry is one of the worst things to stain – I have experience in this – but it is better.’
She took it from him. ‘You did this… while I was asleep?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, after I had intensely watched you sleep and taken some naked photos to remind me of our time together I still could not find rest and?—’
‘What?’ Her heart dived down to her toes.
