Consequence Of The Greek's Revenge

‘But... Don’t you have business to attend to?’

‘It can wait.’ He paused, arching an eyebrow. ‘Unless you don’t want to see me again? Are you going to fly away again, mikro peristeri?’

She kept him waiting, her teeth troubling her bottom lip, as if weighing it up. Before she said, ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

And he smiled as he collected her in his arms and tumbled her back down onto the pillows. ‘Perfect.’

* * *

The sails had filled out in the warm breeze, the boat propelled across the bottomless waters of the caldera until they were far away from the newly arrived cruise ships and the well-worn tourist trails. Athena lay on the deck alongside Alexios, content to lie on her back and soak up the sun after a swim in the bottomless waters of the caldera.

From here the walls of the islands rose steeply around them, seemingly insurmountable, the jagged path up the cliff from the port seeming to defy the laws of nature and science. It was different to see the ring of islands that made up the crater’s edges from this aspect, the layers of pumice and ash that had spewed more than three thousand years ago from the erupting volcano so clearly visible in the distinctly coloured bands in the cliffs surrounding them.

‘What are you staring at?’ he asked beside her, rolled onto his side and following her gaze.

She nodded towards the soaring cliffs, thinking of the force of the eruption that had all but resulted in the destruction of the island as it then existed, all but obliterating the civilisation that had once called it home. ‘Sorry. I just never cease to be awed by this place. It’s hard to believe we’re sitting in the middle of a live volcano.’

Especially when the sun turned the surface of the sea to diamonds and the water lapped gently at the sides of the boat. Right now an eruption seemed impossible. Incomprehensible. But there was the evidence, all around them.

‘It must have been terrifying when it erupted,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine what it was like being here.’

‘Most people were long gone,’ she said, sitting up. ‘There were earthquakes, bad ones, over many years. Some people stayed, but many abandoned their homes here and took their families in their ships and fled to Anatolia and to Crete. The lucky ones went early and much further afield.’

‘Why lucky?’

‘Because it wasn’t a simple eruption. That would have been bad enough, but when the sea water rushed into the empty lava chamber, it triggered a tidal wave that travelled for hundreds of miles. The northern coast of Crete, with the fleets of the Minoan traders, they were all destroyed. It wasn’t just Santorini, or Thera, as it was known then, that was destroyed. A dark ash cloud encircled the earth, blotting out the sun and wiping out the crops for many years. Even escape to somewhere like Crete proved no escape, just a deferral of the end. It signalled the end of the Minoan civilisation.’

He sat up alongside her, a frown tugging his dark brows together.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘In real life I’m an archaeologist and the Minoan civilisation, in particular, is a passion of mine. I studied it at university and I tend to get a bit carried away about it.’

He curled his hand around hers, lifted it to his lips. ‘You don’t have to be sorry for being passionate. I was never good at history. I was never a good student. Tell me more.’

She smiled, warming to her topic. ‘You know some believe the legend of Atlantis started right here, more than three thousand years ago. A fabulously wealthy and cultured civilisation, drowned under the sea and lost for ever.’

He propped himself up on his elbows. ‘Do you believe that?’

‘I do. It accords with the ancient Egyptian records, and the writings of Plato. The Egyptians traded with the Minoans until their world was suddenly blotted out, and why would that have happened unless some terrible fate had overcome them? Besides,’ she added with a smile, ‘it makes much more sense than the theory about some mythical island somewhere in the Atlantic that disappeared without trace or explanation, don’t you think? Whereas a beautiful island, an advanced civilisation, as good as wiped from the face of the earth—what better candidate than the Minoan civilisation right here in the centre of the then known world?’

He was staring at her face, his dark eyes lit with pleasure and the flames of something much hotter.

‘Do you have any idea how animated you look when you talk like this? Your whole face is alight, even the flecks in your eyes sparkle like golden chips in the light.’

She looked down, suddenly embarrassed. ‘I warned you. I get a bit carried away.’

His fingers took hold of her chin, turning it back towards him. ‘No, don’t be embarrassed about being passionate. You make your passion contagious. In fact, I think I know exactly how that volcano felt before it blew.’

And he drew her chin closer at the same time he dipped his head and his mouth met hers.

Something fluttered in her heart as she gave her mouth to his. Something small and indefinable, but like the brush of butterfly wings against her eyelashes. Something insignificant and yet of such import that it seemed her whole world had subtly shifted in a way that had nothing to do with the currents beneath their vessel.

His lips toyed with hers, gentling, caressing, warm breath intermingled, overlaced with the salty scent of the sea, before, slowly, he pulled gently away.

‘Happy?’ he asked, smiling down at her.

And Athena blinked as she looked into his beautiful face. Not because of his question, but because of the answer bubbling up inside her. Because she was happy, honestly truly happy for the first time in what seemed for ever. Because she felt as if she was truly alive. ‘I am.’

‘You sound surprised.’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe just a little.’ She gave a blissful sigh. It was the island, she told herself, for Santorini had once again proved to be her refuge and her saviour. There was a reason she loved this place.

His hand took hers and she felt that zing of excitement, that thrill of connection, she felt every time he touched her, before he lifted it to his lips, and turned it and kissed her palm, his hot tongue stroking it, his dark eyes filled with the promise of dark deeds, sending a delicious thrill coursing through her.

‘I like your bikini,’ he said, his eyes scanning the length of her body without his head shifting, his voice low and thick and vibrating with so much desire it was impossible not to feel aroused. ‘I’m going to enjoy peeling it off.’

Her nipples peaked and hardened as his eyes lingered at her breasts even while his fingers toyed with the tie at her hips, the electric touch of his fingertips setting sparks beneath her skin while his lips came down to meet hers, their heat enough to melt any thought of resistance away. The white bikini had been an impulse decision when he’d suggested sailing today and she’d told him she hadn’t brought a swimsuit. A good one as it turned out. He’d taken her to a boutique and she’d been rifling through the racks of one-pieces when he’d offered her a clutch of bikinis. She’d almost said no outright—she hadn’t worn a two-piece since she’d been that cocksure teen A-lister baring almost everything she had to bare on the Amalfi Coast—but something in his eyes had made her reconsider and agree to try them on.

And that very first one, the white one—she’d seen the heat and hunger as his eyes had roamed her exposed flesh, a hunger that had made her insides tremble with the promise of the forbidden. Not some spoilt son of a newspaper tycoon or shipping magnate looking at her with an overactive libido and clumsy technique, but a man, looking at a woman, and wanting her.

As he wanted her now.

He broke away from the kiss, the curled hairs of his sun-warmed chest kissing her bare skin as it rose and fell with his ragged breathing. ‘We should take this downstairs,’ he said, his heated breath on her face, like an invitation. And in the flutter of her answering heart, she knew it wasn’t just the island that made her so happy. It was this man beside her and the way he made her feel. As if she was special.

As if she deserved to be happy.

And after the despair of the last few weeks, of the shock of learning her estranged father had died, and the remorse she felt for a relationship gone badly wrong, and then the guilt on learning he’d forgiven her without ever letting her know, this man made her feel things might have changed, that her life was on the up.

She went willingly as he tugged her to her feet. Went willingly down through the hatch to the freshly made bed in the spacious cabin lined with glossy timbers with brass fittings. And here he finished what he’d started, tugging at the tie between her breasts, brushing the thin straps over her shoulders and letting her bikini top fall to the floor, before his hands moved to her thighs, untying the bows at her sides until that scrap of material similarly fell to the floor.