The Highest Stakes of All (10 page)

Although the mother wasn’t neglectful in material ways. The tot was clearly well-nourished, and her clothes were expensive if unsuitable.

But how much time did she actually spend with her, teaching her all the skills a growing child needed. Or simply talking—laughing with her? Making her feel loved and secure?

That’s what really matters, Joanna told herself passionately. And while I’m around I’ll make sure that’s what she gets. And it will help me, too. Give me some kind of purpose in this life that’s been forced on me.

She showered, dressed in a pair of white shorts and a jade-green tee shirt and went down to have breakfast. It seemed a more protracted meal than usual with Andonis hovering to ask if she would like a fresh pot of coffee—more hot rolls—grapes instead of nectarines.

Afterwards, he asked her if she’d enjoyed the honey that had come with the bowl of thick, creamy yoghurt, and, when she said in perfect truth that it was delicious, began telling her in detail how it had come from the bees his older sister Josefina kept on Thaliki.

After which Hara arrived, apparently to supervise the maids who were sweeping the other end of the terrace, and Joanna realised, lips tightening, that she was being watched.

Accordingly, she crammed on her hat, picked up her bag and set off ostentatiously in the direction of the cove. Once out of sight of the villa, she sat down on a convenient boulder, allowing some fifteen minutes to elapse before doubling back.

I feel like a character out of a thriller, she reflected, wrinkling her nose as she skirted the gardens and reached the olive trees without the alarm being raised.

She found her way to the house without difficulty, but there was no Eleni to be seen, playing in the garden or standing at the gate. In fact the whole place looked oddly deserted. She stood at the fence for a moment or two, listening to the silence, then tried the gate, only to find it locked. So that, she thought, would seem to be that.

Yet where could they possibly have gone—and so quickly? Had she been deliberately delayed over breakfast so that they could be moved on?

Ah, well, she thought with a soundless sigh. So much for my good intentions. She turned to go and paused as something seemed to flicker in the corner of her eye.

Was it her imagination or had a shutter moved at an upstairs window? She waited for a moment, gazing upwards, but all was still again, and with a small, defeated shrug Joanna went back the way she had come.

She spent the day quietly, reading in the shade of the terrace, trying not to think about Vassos’ return, and what it would mean.

He did not return in time for dinner, and as she ate her solitary meal Joanna began to hope that he would remain in Athens overnight.

When she went to her bedroom, one of the new nightgowns was waiting for her on the bed. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, she thought numbly, gazing in the mirror at the simple column of cream satin, slashed to the thigh and falling from a wide band of lace which veiled her breasts without totally concealing them.

Even she could appreciate that, although Vassos had clearly bought it for his own delectation rather than hers.

Only he was not here to see it, she reminded herself thankfully, as she climbed into bed.

She was woken by a hand on her shoulder, and Hara’s voice saying her name.

She sat up. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘All is well,
thespinis.
Kyrios Vassos has returned and is asking for you.’

She almost said, But it’s the middle of the night, remembering just in time that was probably exactly the point.

‘Not good to make him wait,’ Hara warned as Joanna slid reluctantly out of bed. She was holding a large shawl, fine and light as gossamer, which she wrapped briskly round the girl’s shoulders before ushering her out of the room and down the corridor.

She paused before a pair of double doors, knocked, then turned the elaborate iron handle, indicating that Joanna should enter.

He was standing by the open window, looking out into the darkness, glass in hand. He was not wearing the crimson dressing gown, she saw with relief, but a simple white towelling robe. His hair was damp, and there was a faint hint of soap and some expensive cologne in the air.

He turned slowly and looked at her.
‘Kalispera.’

She held the shawl closer. ‘Isn’t it a little late for good evening?’

‘I was delayed in Athens.’ He drank some ouzo. ‘Hara said you were sleeping. Were your dreams very sweet,
matia mou?’

‘I—I don’t remember.’ But an unwanted memory of what had invaded her rest the previous night brought swift colour to her face.

‘Then I shall feel less guilty about waking you.’

‘I doubt you even know what guilt is.’

He shrugged a shoulder. ‘Perhaps I discovered it today when I listened to Petros trying to make excuses for all the lies he told about you, Joanna
mou.’
He added grimly, ‘And about other matters.’

She looked down at the floor. ‘I feel almost sorry for him.’

‘After what he has done?’

‘Yes,’ she said in a stifled voice. ‘Because it doesn’t even compare with the misery you seem determined to inflict on me.’

‘You were brought here to make amends, Joanna
mou,’
he said, after a slight pause. ‘Perhaps I now wish to do the same.’

‘Then let me go.’ She stared at him in open appeal. ‘I swear I’ll say nothing about what’s happened. And if—anyone asks, I’ll pretend you only ever meant to frighten me.’

‘But I think I have indeed frightened you,
pedhi mou.
And hurt you also. I cannot let you go thinking that is how it must be between a man and his woman.’

‘I am not your woman!’

‘Not yet,’ he corrected softly. ‘But that is about to change.’ He looked her over again, his mouth curving in sensuous appreciation, then drank the rest of his ouzo and put the tumbler down before he walked to her, parting the folds of the shawl and pushing it from her shoulders.

She heard him catch his breath sharply, then she was lifted into his arms and carried across to the vast bed which dominated the room, and which she had been trying so very hard to ignore.

He settled her against the mounded pillows and lay beside her. He pushed her hair back from her face, his thumb gently stroking her cheek, then slid one narrow satin strap from her shoulder, kissing the faint mark it had left on her skin.

The band of lace had slipped, too, baring one rounded breast, and he sighed against its scented flesh as he bent to take her nipple between his lips and caress it softly to unwilling but involuntary excitement.

This time it would be different, she thought. He expected to get pleasure from her and—unbelievably—to bestow it, too.

But she could not allow that to happen. She had to somehow keep her resolve to give nothing—and ask for nothing.

He raised his head, said her name softly, then kissed her, his mouth moving on hers with delicate, deliberate restraint. Reviving memories of the delicate dream-like caresses of the previous night.

It was she thought almost like a warning—signalling his determination to lead her slowly to a submission that she would be ultimately unable to resist.

Her task was to convince him all over again that he was wrong. That he could not arouse her to yield to him.

Having first convinced herself.

His fingers found the long slit in her gown and slipped inside, skimming over the smooth skin of her thigh before moving persuasively, subtly, up to her hip where they lingered.

His kiss deepened, coaxing her lips to part for him, reminding her that she could not afford the slightest intimacy. But how could she go on resisting when his hand was beginning to trace the slender planes and angles of her pelvis? Eliciting a quiver of response deep inside her that shocked her by its intensity. And scared her, too, because it threatened to weaken her resolve.

And then, quite suddenly, the kiss was ended, the hand removed.

‘You are still fighting me?’ Lying on his side, he watched her, his expression quizzical. Against the white robe, his skin looked darker than ever. Barbaric. ‘Why?’

From somewhere she found the defence she so desperately needed. Forced the words from her throat. ‘Because I hate you.’

‘But I do not ask for love,
matia mou,’
he said softly. ‘Just to teach you to need my body as much as I want yours.’

‘That will never happen,’ she said huskily, after a pause.

‘No?’ His smile was slow. ‘You seem very sure.’ He hooked a finger under the other strap of her nightgown, pulling it down and baring her breasts completely.

‘And yet you do not seem completely immune,’ he added, teasing each nipple in turn with a fingertip, watching them lift and harden at his touch, and sending a tremor of that same sharp sensation lancing through her entire body. ‘Let me show you a little delight, my lovely one,’ he whispered.

He pushed up the satin skirt, his hand stroking her slim thighs, then parting them without haste to discover the molten sweetness they sheltered.

Joanna stifled a gasp as she felt the sensual glide of his fingers exploring her secret woman’s flesh, her first experience of such a seductive caress—and its devastating effect.

His fingertip found one moist silken place and teased the tiny bud it hid, making it swell and bloom under his touch to aching tumescence and her inner muscles contract in a scalding spasm of longing she’d never known could exist.

She was lost suddenly, breathless and drowning, then fighting her way back to the surface of her control with the last drop of will-power she possessed.

She heard him whisper, ‘I want you so much,
agapi mou.
Don’t make me take, when I wish so badly to give.’

His lips were gentle at the side of her neck, his hands sliding down to fondle her breasts with equal tenderness, touching them as if they were flowers.

She was aware of the throbbing heat of his erection, and her pulses were going crazy, desire clenching inside her like a fist.

How it must be …

He released her, turning away, and for a moment she thought he was leaving the bed, but one glance over her shoulder revealed that he was only removing his robe, then reaching for a drawer in the night table and making use of the contents of a small packet he’d extracted from it.

As he had told her, he still intended to make her completely his. And for one brief, desolate instant she remembered the beguiling sensuous web he’d begun to weave for her, before Vassos moved over her—into her—in urgent and breathtaking possession.

Making her realise that when his passion was spent, desolation was all that was left for her. And, what was worse, reminding her that she’d brought it entirely on herself.

CHAPTER TEN

I
T SEEMED
almost as if her body had been ready—even waiting—to be united with his. As if it was only the driving rhythm of his possession that could appease the throbbing ache now building slowly and insidiously far within her.

Tempting her to put her arms round him and offer her parted lips to the kisses she’d once denied him. To arch her body towards him, taking him ever more deeply into her in the ultimate surrender.

Above all to pursue and capture those incomprehensible but exquisite sensations that seemed to be hovering, tantalising her, just beyond her reach, and so discover for the first time the reality of passion’s physical conclusion.

And then, just as Joanna realised, stunned, that this might be an actual possibility, it was suddenly over. She heard him cry out hoarsely and felt his body shudder into hers. For a moment he lay still, his face buried in her breasts, his slackened weight pressing her into the mattress, and Joanna conquered an impulse to lift a hand and stroke his sweat-dampened black hair.

How can I even think of something like that? she asked herself incredulously. When I hate him? And when I’ve told him so?

Yet was that really what she felt? Or did she only hate the senses that had so nearly betrayed her?

Before I met him I never knew, she thought. Never imagined
—how it must be.

After a while Vassos moved, lifting himself silently away from her. He got up from the bed, picked up his discarded robe and walked across to a door she guessed must lead to his bathroom.

As soon as she was alone, Joanna hastily adjusted her nightgown, pulling up the straps of the bodice and tugging the skirt over her legs so that she was reasonably covered again. Then, heart racing, she waited.

He was not gone for long. When he emerged, she saw thankfully that his robe was now wrapped round him. He came back to the bed, not hurrying, and lay down beside her on his back, his arms folded behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling.

He turned his head slowly and looked at her. ‘I hope this time you experienced less discomfort, and that you did not find my demands too excessive?’

She touched the tip of her tongue to her dry lips. ‘No, I—I didn’t.’

‘Then that is a beginning at least,’ he said. ‘Even if not the one I hoped for.’

She took a deep breath, trying desperately to pull herself together. To regain control of her thoughts as well as her emotions. ‘May I go now, please? Or do you—want.?’

‘No,’ he said harshly. ‘You may leave.’

She slid off the bed, retrieving the shawl on her way to the door, enfolding herself in its softness, even keeping it round her as she climbed back into bed in her own room. It was far too warm a night for it to be necessary but she found it oddly comforting just the same.

But why should she need comfort? After all, she knew now the worst to expect and it was—endurable, wasn’t it? Or even dangerously more than endurable, she thought, remembering the seductive caress of his hands and lips as they’d gentled her body, coaxing her towards the threshold of delight. And if she had refused to cross it with him, she had only herself to blame. Or thank.

At any rate, it would not last for much longer. She was sure of that.

He’d made it clear that he had not found tonight particularly rewarding, she thought. So he would soon be looking for a more amenable girl to be—what had he called it?—a pillow friend.

She turned over restlessly, looking for a cooler place on her own pillow, which didn’t seem friendly at all, remembering, as she did so, the previous night and how he’d held her, lulling her to sleep in spite of herself.

The way, too, that he’d caressed and fondled her gently while she slept. The touch of his hands and mouth on her skin tonight had totally convinced her of that, she thought, her body warming. Denial might be convenient but it was also pointless.

She was suddenly stifling in the shawl—and in the nightdress, too, she decided, stripping herself of them both. Even the sheet across her body was more than she could stand.

She was not just hot, either—she was on fire, every pulse beating a tattoo that echoed the throbbing hunger filling her innermost being, and that even her comparative innocence could recognise was unsatisfied longing. A renewed awakening of her flesh that had been ignited the first time he had lain with her.

I can’t let myself want him, she told herself with a kind of desperation as her body twisted on the mattress. Not after the way he’s treated me—after every terrible, vile thing that he’s done. I must be going crazy even to contemplate it.

She sat bolt upright, trying to control the flurry of her breathing, to quell the tumult of her senses.

Sleep, she thought. Oh, God, I really need to get some sleep. Then, tomorrow, I can forget this madness and begin again.

But she soon found that was not going to be as easy as she’d hoped. Half an hour later she was still wide awake, staring into the darkness, the sheet beneath her damp with perspiration.

She put her hands flat on her breasts, touching them softly, tentatively. Feeling her nipples diamond-hard against her palms.

Is this how it’s going to be—this agony of need each time? This longing for him to make me in some way—complete?

The questions beat at her brain, or at the brain of the stranger she had suddenly become. This creature of sensations and yearnings she did not even recognise.

Yet the alternative was to go to him—offer herself—and that was unthinkable. Wasn’t it? Because what could she possibly say to him? What excuse could she give?

She gave a little shaken sigh. Maybe words would be unnecessary, and her presence, returning to lie beside him in the night, would be enough.

Moving like an automaton, she climbed off the bed, reaching down for the shawl, letting its soft folds settle round her nakedness.

She went to the door, but as she began to open it she heard not far away the quiet sound of another door closing and froze.

She peeped cautiously through the narrow opening and saw Vassos, clad in jeans and polo shirt, coming down the passage towards her. He strode past without even a glance in the direction of her room, and Joanna stood in the darkness, waiting until the sound of his rapid footsteps faded.

She went back to the bed and lay down, trembling, telling herself she should be thankful that she’d been spared the humiliation of arriving in his room to find it empty or—even worse—of bumping into him on his way out.

At the same time she found herself wondering where he could possibly be going at this time of night. And why.

But that, she thought, is not my concern. It simply means I’ve been saved at the last minute from making another terrible mistake. Persephone must have been watching out for me.

She pulled up the covering sheet and turned over, but it was more than two hours before she finally fell asleep, exhausted from the solitary vigil of lying in the darkness, listening for the sound of his return.

While some instinct she’d not known she possessed warned her that she waited in vain.

Joanna walked along the edge of the sea, small warm waves lapping round her feet. To a casual observer, if there’d been one about, she probably looked like a carefree girl in shorts and a sun top, happily enjoying a paddle in the sunshine.

Only she could know she was a seething mass of nerves.

It was a week since Vassos had walked past her and out into the night. Seven days and seven nights during which she’d been taught unequivocally just what it was to be the object of a man’s passionate desire. And the exquisite agony of forcing herself to seem indifferent to his lovemaking.

He sent for her each night—that went without saying. But he also came to her room in the drowsy afternoon siesta hours. Their encounters were prolonged and almost magically sensuous, with Vassos, at times, almost fiercely intent on wringing some kind of erotic response from her trembling, fevered flesh, and at others enticing her with a tender yearning that almost stopped her heart, as if his whole body had been created as an instrument for her pleasure.

And Joanna lay beneath him, refusing to show any sign of emotion, even in the extremity of surrender when her desperate senses screamed for satisfaction.

He wanted to win, she reminded herself when she was once again alone. He’d won her at cards, and now he wished to complete his victory. His touch, his kisses, had one purpose—to prove that she was indeed a woman like any other in his experience. And if she thought he meant more, then she was fooling herself.

In one matter he was utterly scrupulous, however. He always used a sheath which, she supposed ruefully, was a kind of caring, if not the kind she had secretly begun to crave from him.

She was not proud of such blatant weakness, but she could not deny it, either. Whenever he was around she found she was watching him almost obsessively from behind the screen of her sunglasses, drinking in every inch of the lean body she’d once shrunk from.

But it was just sex—that was all, she assured herself almost feverishly. Nothing more. So there were no deeper feelings involved. How could there be when he would always be the man who’d kidnapped her in order to take her for revenge?

Yet he had somehow, against all the odds, made her want him in return so much that her mind seemed to ache as well as her body.

Sometimes, in the night, when she was back in her own room, she heard again the approach of his footsteps in the passage and sat up, lips parted breathlessly, staring at the door. Willing it to open. And, by some miracle, for everything to change.

But it never did. Instead Vassos simply walked on, leaving her still wondering. And sometimes crying inside.

Although she could admit now, in the brilliant sunshine, there were other matters apart from the strictly personal also preying on her mind.

For one thing, it had occurred to her that since her arrival no one, least of all Vassos himself, had mentioned his wife in any way.

And her visits to his bedroom had revealed at a glance that he wasn’t treasuring as much as one solitary souvenir of the woman who’d once shared it with him.

It was almost, she’d decided, puzzled, as if the late Mrs Gordanis had never existed.

Perhaps, she thought, aware of a swift pang, he had loved her so much that he could not bear to be reminded, even marginally, of the happiness they’d enjoyed together.

In addition, there was also the matter of the mysterious house in the olive grove, and its occupants, although Vassos’ continuing presence had offered her no opportunity to return there and see if Eleni and her mother had returned—if, of course, they had ever been away.

But he’d left that morning to fly to Athens on business, so she would be alone for ten days or more, as he’d sardonically informed her. And she was going to need something to distract her in his absence—if only to protect her against missing him too much.

She folded her arms round her body, shivering a little in spite of the heat. It was still a shock that she could even admit to such feelings—or confess inwardly that she’d hoped against hope that he would invite her to accompany him on his trip.

As it was, she’d made sure she was awake especially early that morning, going out on to her balcony to listen for the sound of the high-speed launch that would take him across to Thaliki.

And she’d remained standing there long after the engine noise was no longer audible, staring at the azure glimmer of the sea in the distance over the top of the pines. Stared until her eyes blurred, and pressed a finger against her trembling mouth in case she called ‘Don’t leave me. Don’t go,’ into the empty air.

Just as a few hours before, when he lay against her in the aftermath of his climax, she had almost begged him, Don’t send me away tonight. Let me stay with you. Make love to me again. Share with me what you feel. Teach me to be your woman at last.

But she had bitten back the words, because she still couldn’t acknowledge, even to herself, that withholding her body had been useless. That from the very beginning, when he’d been no more than a pirate smiling at her from the deck of a yacht, it had been her heart that was really in danger.

And each time she lay in his arms, listening to the soft Greek words he whispered to her as his hands roamed her flesh with sensual expertise, she became more deeply lost in a longing that was so much more than physical.

Terrified that one night she might even whisper the words that must forever be taboo between them.
I love you …

‘I didn’t want this,’ she whispered in wretchedness. ‘I
don’t want this.
Because I’ve no idea how to deal with it. Or with him. Or what I shall do when he decides to end it.’

But at least she no longer feared that he would pass her on to another man, as he’d originally threatened to do. That, she supposed, was something she had to be thankful for.

And another positive move would be to stop tormenting herself like this over a situation that she could not change and instead try to assuage her own loneliness and heartache with another attempt to help a solitary child who needed a friend.

She walked out of the water, wincing a little as her feet encountered the hot sand, balancing quickly on one leg and then the other in order to resume the espadrilles she was carrying.

As she did so, she realised she was not alone. That one of the security guards was stationed in the shade of the trees, watching her. As she walked up the beach towards the track he straightened, throwing away the cigarette he’d been smoking.

Now, where had he sprung from? she asked herself, annoyed.

His name was Yanni, and he was the only one of Vassos’ watchdogs that she’d come to dislike. The others faded away politely at her approach, but Yanni always grinned insolently when he saw her, and she seemed to encounter him in all kinds of unlikely places.

Joanna was conscious of his gaze following her now as she started up the track. But he never spoke to her, so there was no real complaint she could make about him. She just knew she was glad when the bend in the path took her out of his line of vision.