If she’d been more capable of voicing words, she might have contradicted him, but her whole body was alight with passion and heat, and her mouth couldn’t possibly cooperate, so she simply closed her eyes and let the feelings wash over her, again and again, as another orgasm built, and she almost wept at the intensity of the feeling. Pleasure saturated her, and her whole body was singing. She clung onto him as wave after wave of release made her whole body tingle and explode. Then he let out a deep guttural cry in Greek as his own orgasm wrapped around them like an almighty explosion.
Afterwards, only the sound of their heavy breathing filled the cabin, almost completely drowned out by the lashing rain and rumbling thunder. The lights flickered, as though they were tempted to go out, but then stabilised. Genevieve idly traced circles along his arms, blinking up at the man who’d just made wild, abandoned love to her—a man whose last name she didn’t even know!
It was so completely out of character, and so absolutely outside the agreement she’d formed with James, an agreement he had the power to hold her to by the sheer amount of debt she was in to him. In exchange for his continuing to pay her mother’s medical bills—which were all in Genevieve’s name—and not disclosing sensitive information about Genevieve’s father that she had foolishly shared early in their marriage, she had sworn she’d stay silent and single, not doing even one interview about his infidelity andneverbeing seen in public with another man. At least, not until he’d remarried, and was ready to finally let her go. His damn ego simply wouldn’t permit the narrative that she’d moved on first. Despite the knowledge that she’d broken that promise, she couldn’t help but smile, like the cat that had got the cream. She couldn’t help it. For the first time in her life, she’d felt real sexual pleasure, and she finally understood how life-changing it could be.
Nikos, though, was pulling away from her, his body when he stood a study in tension. ‘Excuse me, Genevieve,’ he said, without a backwards glance, as he made his way to the bathroom and closed the door. A moment later, the shower started, and Genevieve’s heart sank at the obvious, offensive rejection. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but after what they’d just shared, and how he’d made her feel, it hurt, way more than she wanted to admit. She turned her face, tilting it towards the window, and found herself praying for a break in the storm, so that she might have a chance to leave, before she did something really stupid and asked him what she’d done wrong.
Chapter Four
ALL HE COULDthink of was Isabella. From the moment the madness of sexual conquest had faded and sanity had returned, his wife had been there, accusing, angry. Hurt. His failings as a husband had wrapped around him, almost choking him with the cold reminder of how he’d let Isabella down. How often he’d ignored her, how much he’d destroyed her, without realising it.
In the same way he’d denied himself the pleasures of his business, his home, his life, he’d chosen celibacy, after Isabella’s death. Why should he experience this sort of pleasure, after what he’d denied her?
He hadn’t wanted solace, comfort. He hadn’t wanted any hint of happiness. What else explained his existence here, on the edge of the earth, living in the most austere fashion, totally without reward for his hard work? He’d built himself up from nothing, and was now one of the world’s richest men, yet he enjoyed no fruits of his labour. Every part of his life was now a question of basic survival, of extreme denial.
But what he’d just done with Genevieve wasn’t about survival, even though, at the time, he’d felt as though his life depended on making love to her.
He let the water pour over him, eyes closed as memories sliced through him. He tried his hardest not to think of Genevieve—it seemed like even more of a betrayal of his late wife. But for almost the first time in his adult life, Nikos was out of control. His thoughts wouldn’t obey him. They kept throwing Genevieve into his mind, reminding him of her voice as she’d cried his name, of how tentative she’d been at first and then how wild. How good she’d felt. How paradoxically insecure she was.
A thousand questions arose within him, questions he wished he didn’t feel. Because if he knew one thing about himself, it was that he didn’t like unsolved mysteries. And with the storm trapping them both in the cabin for heaven knew how long, getting to the bottom of this woman’s contradictions was tempting beyond compare.
She hadn’t even realised she’d fallen asleep until an enormous roll of thunder woke her up. Disorientated at first, she rolled over and gasped at the sight of the man sleeping in the bed beside her, all bare chest and dark hair, parted lips and long, dark lashes. She had no idea what time it was—her phone was somewhere on the bottom of the ocean, and her watch had stopped working courtesy of the waterlogging it received—but there was a hint of light in the cabin, suggesting dawn was upon them.
Her stomach rolled as Nikos shifted and recollections flashed through her mind like some kind of strange film. His touch, his seduction, the way he’d made love to her. The pleasure he’d given her! Pleasures she’d never known possible, much less thought to want for herself. She pushed out of the bed gingerly, her whole body heavy with a sense of what they’d done. It wasn’t painful, exactly, so much as different. She felt stretched and aware of herself in ways she hadn’t been before. Even her nipples tingled as she walked across to the only window of the cabin, and the fabric of his shirt—which she’d hastily pulled on the night before, as he’d showered, like some kind of protective mechanism—brushed against her.
But those memories were there, too. The way he’d disappeared after they’d finished, pulling away from her and showering, for God’s sake, rather than staying and…
And what?
Cuddling?
Well, in that sense, he was just like James. He’d never favoured any kind of tenderness. The only times they’d held hands had been when they’d been attending an event and photographers had been there. One of the youngest senators in history, having taken office just a month after his thirtieth birthday, he was obsessed with cultivating the perfect image, and Genevieve, with her long political pedigree, had been a part of that. In public, he was a doting husband. But it was in such contrast to the way he was behind closed doors, that she had started to bitterly resent the false acts of closeness. It was so performative, so empty.
Nikos was nothing like James. Where her ex-husband was superficial and obsessed with power, Nikos was a man who lived on the land. She had no idea if he’d ever had a job, or if he was a wildling, cast here by the gods, to live out his life alone and desperate. But the thought of him in a suit almost made her laugh out loud, let alone attending one of the society events her husband regularly frequented. Nikos, this caveman, making small talk?
She leaned forward and wiped one of the glass panels, removing the condensation. There had been no abatement in the storm. The sky was a leaden grey and the rain continued to fall as though the heavens had turned the tap on full power. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been in a storm of this magnitude.
Quietly, careful not to wake him, she pivoted and looked around the cabin, seeing it now through fresh eyes. Last night, she’d been in a state of shock, exhausted from her hike to the cabin, and thrown completely off track by the chemistry that hummed between herself and Nikos. Now, after however many hours’ sleep, she felt closer to rested. Closer to calm. It enabled her to notice things she hadn’t the night before. Like the small table to the edge of the kitchen. There were two chairs, which intrigued her. Why have two chairs, if not to host another person? Did that mean there was someone else on the island? Or someone else who came to the island regularly enough to necessitate a second chair?
A frown tugged at her lips as she continued scanning the room, landing on a shelf with books and files. A curiosity, which she put down to her journalism training, had her pacing softly towards it, with one glance cast over her shoulder to be sure he was still sleeping.
What kind of books did a man like Nikos read? To her disappointment, they were almost all in Greek. With the exception of a John Grisham novel and, to her amusement, a recipe book, the rest might as well have been written in ancient Sanskrit for all they’d offer any entertainment for her. As for the files, she was dying to reach out and flick through them. Surely they’d give her some insight into who he was, and what he was doing here? Maybe he was some kind of scientist, researching the natural eco systems of the island? That would make sense, she supposed. For all they’d barely spoken the night before, she could tell he was an intelligent person. It was in his expression, his turn of phrase, his quickness of reply. Her finger pressed to the spine of one of the binders, but she knew, even as she touched it, that she wouldn’t pull it out and invade his privacy by looking through it. Investigating a story was one thing, but this was his life, and these were his secrets.
If he wanted to tell her what he was doing, he would.
If he didn’t, well…it would be no worse than or different from the way he’d quickly run away the night before to shower her off him. Colour stained her cheeks as she remembered the pain of that. The insult. What had been such an immersive experience for her had clearly been, on some level, disgusting for him. Or regrettable, at least. It was impossible not to feel James’s rejection all over again. The husband who’d never enjoyed sex with her, who’d found her lack of arousal completely disappointing.
So why had Nikos let last night happen? He didn’t seem like a man who’d get swept away by passion. To live out here, like this, he must have had incredible willpower and determination. Or have been slightly crazy, she thought with a half-smile, looking around again and startling when her eyes glanced across the bed and she saw that he was now awake, watching her with an expression she couldn’t interpret…but which set her pulse alight.
‘I was just looking,’ she said, dropping her hand away from his files.
He stayed very still, unsettling her with the intensity of his gaze.
‘I was curious,’ she said, with a small shrug. ‘About the kind of man who would choose to live like this.’
But it was all so strange. Last night, something older than time had drawn them together, stripping away any barriers, any constructs of society and conditioning, so they were simply two people, existing in the world for the sake of pleasuring one another. The sense of estrangement now was unbearable.
She stepped away from the bookshelf as though it had bitten her, rubbing her hands in front of herself. ‘I’ll put another log on the fire,’ she murmured. Though the cabin had grown cooler overnight, that wasn’t really at the root of her icy feeling. It was the rejection she felt, the sense that he was wishing her gone again.
