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‘A bit of both, I suppose,’ she admitted truthfully. After all, she’d always been used to paying her way when she was with a man, to never taking more out of a relationship than she was prepared to put in. Emotionally as well as financially, she thought with a little stab of self-derision as she remembered how with Craig she had wound up giving everything and receiving nothing, coming out a first-rate fool in the end.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Leonidas advised. ‘I promise you I’m not likely to starve for the rest of my holiday. As for the boat, I hired it to take myself off exploring today. Your coming with me is just a bonus, so there’s no need to feel awkward or indebted in any way. If you want to contribute something, then your enjoyment will suffice,’ he assured her, and refrained from adding that most women he’d known would have taken his generosity as their due.
The island, when they came ashore, was beautiful. Lonely and uninhabited, it was merely a haven for wildlife, with only numerous birds and insects making their voices heard above the warm wind and the wash of the sea in the cove where they had left the boat.
There was no distinct path, and the climb through the surprisingly green vegetation was hot and steep, but the feeling of freedom at the top was worth a thousand climbs.
It was like standing in their own uninhabited world. In every direction the deep blue of the sky met the deeper blue of the sea. Looking back across the distance they had covered, Kayla saw the hulk of mountainous land they had left with its forests and its craggy coastline slumbering in a haze of heat.
There were huge stones amongst the grass—sculpted stones of an ancient ruin, overgrown with scrub and wild flowers, a sad and silent testimony to the beliefs of some long-lost civilisation.
‘You said you came to sort out some issues?’ Kayla reminded him, venturing to broach what she had been dying to ask him since they had left that morning. ‘What sort of issues?’ she pressed, looking seawards at the waves creaming onto a distant beach and wondering if it was the one where she had first seen him over a week ago. ‘Woman issues?’ she enquired, more tentatively now.
He was standing with his foot on one of the stones that had once formed part of the ancient temple, with one hand resting on his knee. The wind was lifting his hair, sweeping it back off features suddenly so uncompromising that he looked like a marauding mythical god, surveying all he intended to conquer.
‘Among other things,’ he said, but he didn’t enlarge on the women in his life or tell her what those ‘other things’ were.
Kayla moved away from him, pulling a brightly flowering weed from a crack in what had formed part of a wall. She was getting used to his uncommunicative ways.
She was surprised, therefore, when he suddenly said, ‘I used to dream of owning this island when I was a boy. I used to sit on that hillside...’ he pointed to a distant spot across the water, indiscernible through the heat haze ‘...and imagine all I was going to do with it. The big house. The swimming pool. The riding stables.’
‘And dogs?’ Kayla inserted, her eyes gleaming, following him into a make-believe world of her own.
‘Yes, lots of dogs.’
So he liked animals, she realised, deriving warm pleasure from the knowledge. Contrarily, though, she wrinkled her nose. ‘Too costly to feed.’ Laughingly she pretended to discount that idea. ‘And too much heartache if they get sick or run away.’
‘They couldn’t run away,’ Leonidas reminded her. ‘Not unless they were proficient swimmers.’
‘Haven’t you ever heard of the doggy paddle?’ She giggled, enjoying playing this little game with him. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were glowing from an exhilaration that had nothing to do with their climb. ‘So you were going to build a house with a swimming pool? And have horses? Racehorses, of course.’
He shot her a sceptical glance. ‘Now you’re wandering into the realms of fantasy,’ he chided, amused.
‘Well, if you can own the island and have a house with lots of dogs, I can have racehorses,’ Kayla insisted light-heartedly.
‘They’d fall off the edge before they’d covered a mile,’ he commented dryly. ‘I was talking about what seemed totally realistic to a twelve-year-old boy.’
Tugging her windswept hair out of her eyes, Kayla pulled a face. ‘But then you grew up?’
‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘I grew up.’ And all he had wanted to do was run as far away from these islands and everything he had called home as he could possibly get.
‘What happened?’ Kayla asked, frowning. She couldn’t help but notice the tension clenching his mouth and the hard line of his jaw.
‘My mother died when I was fourteen, then my grandfather shortly afterwards. My father and I didn’t see eye to eye,’ he enlightened her.
‘Why not?’
‘Why do we not get on with some people and yet gel so perfectly with others? Especially those who are supposed to be closest to us?’ He shrugged, his strong features softening a little. ‘Differing opinions? A clash of personalities? Maybe even because we are too much alike. Why aren’t you close to your mother?’ he outlined as an example.
Watching a lizard dart along the jagged edge of the wall and disappear over the side, Kayla considered his question. ‘I suppose all those things,’ she admitted, rather ruefully. And then, keen to shrug off the serious turn the conversation had taken, she said, ‘So, are you going to sketch me a picture of this house?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’ She had seen him scribbling in his notepad again, when he had been waiting for her in the truck outside Philomena’s, and wondered what he could possibly have been doing if he hadn’t been sketching. He’d also been speaking to somebody on his cell phone at the same time, Kayla remembered, but had cut the call short, leaning across to open the passenger door for her when he had seen her coming. She’d wondered if he’d been speaking to a woman and, if he had, whether it was the woman at the heart of his ‘issues’.
‘It isn’t what I do,’ Leonidas said.
‘No son of mine is going to disgrace the Vassalio name by painting for a living!’
Leonidas could still hear his father’s bellowing as he ridiculed his talent, his love of perspective and light and colour, beating it out of him—sometimes literally—as he destroyed the results of his teenage son’s labours and with them all the creativity in his soul. Art was a feeling and feelings were weakness, his father had drummed into him. And no Vassalio male had ever been weak.
So he had channelled his driving energies into creating new worlds out of blocks of clay and concrete, in innovative designs that had leaped off the paper and formed the basis of his own developments. Developments that had made him rich beyond his wildest dreams. And with the money it had all come tumbling into his lap. Influence. Respect. Women. So many women that he could have had his pick of any of them. Yet he hadn’t found one who was more disposed to him personally than she was to the state of his bank balance. Not beyond the pleasures of the bedroom at any rate, he thought with a self-deprecating mental grimace. In that it seemed he was never able to fail.
‘So what about you, Kayla? Didn’t you have any aspirations?’
‘I suppose I did but not like yours,’ she said, twirling the stalk of a pink flower in her fingers. ‘I think I was always practical and realistic. Besides, I was brought up with the understanding that if you don’t expect you can’t be disappointed.’
‘And because of that you never allowed yourself to dream?’
He was sitting on one of the larger stones, one leg bent, the other stretched out in front of him, and Kayla tried to avoid noticing how the cloth of his trousers pulled tautly over one muscular thigh.
‘Of course I did,’ she uttered, wondering why she suddenly felt as if she needed to defend herself. ‘But I’ve never been one for mooning over things I can’t have. Especially things which are totally out of my reach.’
He leaned back and crossed his arms, his muscles bunching, emphasising their latent strength. ‘And you don’t believe that everything is within your reach if you jump high enough?’
He made it sound almost credible, which seemed quite out of kilter, Kayla thought, with his laid-back attitude to life.
‘If you jump too high you usually fall flat on your face. Anyway, you’re one to talk,’ she commented, still hurt over his refusal to give her a glimpse into even the smallest area of his life. ‘You don’t even have a steady job.’
‘I get by.’
‘But nothing that offers real security or fulfils your potential?’
‘And why is it so important to fulfil my “potential”?’ he quoted. His eyes were dark and inscrutable, giving nothing of his thoughts away.
‘Because everybody needs a purpose. Some sort of goal in life,’ Kayla stressed.
‘And what is your goal, glykia mou?’
The sensuality with which he spoke suddenly seemed to emphasise the isolation of their surroundings, and with it the fundamental objective of each other’s existence.
‘To be happy.’
‘And that’s it? Just to be happy?’ He looked both surprised and mildly amused. ‘And how do you propose to achieve this happiness?’
Cynicism had replaced the mocking amusement of a moment ago. She could see it in the curling of his firm, rather cruel-looking mouth—a mouth she was aching to feel covering hers again.
‘By staying grounded and true to myself, and not ever attempting to be something I’m not,’ she uttered—croakily, because of where her thoughts had taken her. Afraid that she was in danger of sounding a little bit self-righteous, she added, ‘By appreciating nature. Things like this.’ She cast a glance around her at the wilderness of the island. At everything that was timeless. Untrammelled and free. ‘By creating a happy home. Having children one day. And animals. Lots of animals.’
‘And that’s all it’s going to take?’ Again he looked marginally surprised. ‘Setting up home and having babies?’
‘It’s better than being a drifter,’ she remarked, knowing she was overstepping the mark yet unable to stop herself, ‘without any ambition whatsoever.’
‘You think I don’t have ambition?’
‘Well, do you?’ she challenged, aware that she had no right to, as she pulled her hair out of her eyes again, yet driven by the feeling that he was mocking her values and finding them wanting.
‘You’d be surprised. But just for argument’s sake, what do you see me doing?’ How would you have me realise this ambition?’
‘You’re good with cars,’ Kayla remarked, ignoring the mockery infiltrating his question. ‘You could be a mechanic. You could even start your own business. With the prices they charge for servicing and repairs these days you could make a comfortable living.’
‘If I were a mechanic I wouldn’t be able to take time off to come to places like this for weeks at a time.’ His mouth compressed in exasperating dismissal. ‘And I certainly wouldn’t have met you.’
It was there in his eyes—raw, pure hunger. The same hunger that had been eating away at her ever since they had met and which now was taking every ounce of her will-power not to acknowledge.
‘You could save enough to be able to buy your own garage,’ she went on in a huskier voice. ‘Put a manager in. Then you could take time off once in a while.’
‘You think it’s that simple? A steady job? A mortgage on a business and—hey! You’re rich! That isn’t how it works, Kayla.’
‘How do you know if you don’t try? Anyway, it was only a suggestion,’ she reminded him, noticing how snugly his T-shirt moulded itself to the contours of his chest, the way his whole body seemed to pulse with unimpeded virility. ‘You have to have drive and determination too.’
He laughed. ‘And in that you think I’m sadly lacking?’
‘You said that, not me,’ she reminded him sombrely. ‘I was only trying to help.’
‘For which I’m very grateful,’ he said, with that familiar mocking curl to his lips. ‘But that sort of help I’m really able to do without.’
‘Suit yourself,’ she uttered, moving away from the ruin and gasping at the speed with which he leaped up and joined her as she came onto a plain of shorter grasses, interspersed with tall ferns and flowering shrubs.
‘And now you’re looking and feeling thoroughly chastened,’ he remarked laughingly, catching her hand in his while his fervid gaze played with dark intensity over her small fine features, coming to rest on the pouting fullness of her mouth.
‘You’re very perceptive,’ she breathed, hardly able to speak because of the wild responses leaping through her from his dangerous and electrifying nearness. ‘And for a man without ambition you certainly believe in getting what you want.’
‘You’d better believe it,’ he asserted softly.
Even in a whisper his voice conveyed a determination of purpose that none of the self-important types she had known had ever possessed, and it sent little skeins of excitement unravelling through Kayla’s insides.
‘As for my lack of ambition... As I said, you’d be surprised. But what might not surprise you right now is to know that my most burning ambition is to feel you lying beneath me and to taste those sweet lips again, agape mou. To make love to you slowly and thoroughly until you’re crying out for my length inside you. And I think at this moment you want the same thing—regardless of how unfulfilled or goalless you think I am.’
She wanted to protest but it would have been pointless, Kayla realised. She was already melting the moment his mouth came down over hers. She responded to it hungrily—greedily—her arms going around his neck, pulling him down to her as if she could never have enough.
Their kissing was hot and impassioned—a passion demanding only to be fed as, mouths fused, they sank together onto the sun-warmed grass. And Leonidas did as he’d wanted to do since he had arrived at Philomena’s house that morning: tugged firmly on the ties of Kayla’s blouse.
He gave a sigh of satisfaction when it fell open, revealing the pale lace and satin of her bra.
Slipping a finger inside, he revelled in the warmth of her soft skin before he pulled down the lace, releasing one modest-sized breast from its restraining cup.
Small, he measured, moulding the soft pale mound to his work-roughened palm, yet perfectly in proportion to the rest of her and more than satisfyingly sensitive, he realised as he caressed the pale pink areola into burgeoning arousal.
She moaned softly from the excitement of what he was doing to her. She arched her back, aching for his mouth over the swollen nipple, and almost hit the roof when he suddenly dipped his head and granted her wish.
There was no one and nothing around them. Nothing except the wash of the waves on the beach below them and the wind that was teasing her hair into the finest strands of spun gold, inviting him to touch it, caress it, lose himself in the perfume that was all woman, all her own.
His lips were burning kisses over her breasts, her throat, the tender line of her jaw, finding and capturing her mouth again with the dominant pressure of his.
‘Leon...’
She breathed his name into his mouth, saying it as no one had said it in a long, long time. No one called him Leon these days. Only Philomena...
Far away from this idyll, back in London, in Athens and on the corporate world stage, he was known only as Leonidas. Leonidas Vassalio. Hard-headed businessman. Decisive. Practical. Ruthless...
The reminder almost dragged him back to his senses, but not quite.
Her hands had ripped open his shirt, and he gave a deep guttural groan at their caressing warmth over his bared chest, but they were travelling downwards—down and down—in a quest to drive him wild, break his control.
He sucked in his breath, every nerve flexing like tautened wire, until finally, when she touched that most intimate part of him, even through his clothes, he was lost.
He wanted to stop this madness. Come clean about who he was. Because how could he justifiably do this with her if he didn’t?
But as if sensing his reticent moment she was begging him not to stop, and her whimpers of need were all it took to bring about his final undoing.
If he told her who he was now he would be inviting her anger, and he couldn’t face that, he realised in meagre justification. Couldn’t ruin the mood and her artless belief in him no matter how much he knew he should.
It took little effort to remove her shorts, with her lace-edged briefs following them to where he’d cast them aside.
She was beautiful. A natural blonde, he noted with a soft smile of satisfaction as her legs parted before him and she lifted her body in a sobbing invitation for him to claim his prize.
It would be so easy, Leonidas thought, to remove his own clothes and take all that she was offering, assuage the fire that was burning in his groin. Just one thrust could take him to paradise...
He was hotter and harder than he had ever been in his life just from thinking about such damning pleasure, but through the torment of his stimulating thoughts a shred of sanity—of principle—remained.
He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t abuse her trust like that. Not while he still felt it necessary to deceive her. And yet she was slick with wanting, sobbing her need and her craving for release from this passion he had aroused.
She was lying with her face turned to one side and her arms above her head in a gesture of pure surrender. An angel, he thought, inviting him to share heaven with her. Or Eve, tempting him among the grasses of her sensuous Eden.
With torturous restraint he dipped his head and pressed his lips to the heated satin of her pulsing ribcage, his mouth moving with calculated precision over her slender waist to the flat plane of her abdomen and beyond. Very gently he parted her legs wider and slipped his arms beneath her splayed thighs.
Feeling his mouth against that most intimate part of her drew a shuddering gasp from Kayla. That dark hair brushing the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh was a stimulation she couldn’t even have imagined.
It was the most erotic experience of her life. She had been intimate with a man before, but it had never felt like this. This abandoning of herself so completely to a pleasure that promised to drive her wild.
He knew just how to tease and titillate, just where and how to touch, employing his lips and the heat of his tongue to start a fire building in her as he tasted the honeyed sweetness of her body.
She thought she would die from the pleasure of it, and her body tautened in breathless expectation as flames of sensation licked along her nerve-endings and produced a burning tingle along her thighs.
Her juices flowed from her body, mingling with the moistness of his, anointing his roughened jaw with everything she was—until the mind-blowing sensation proved too much and she cried out as the fire consumed her in an orgasm of pulsating, interminable throbs.
Her sensitivity increased until she couldn’t take any more pleasure, and she clamped her thighs around him, trapping him there, holding him to her in a sobbing ecstatic agony of release until the last embers of the fire he had ignited finally died away.
