‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed. ‘Oh, yes—my own, adored Angelos.’ She opened her arms wide to him and as he came down beside her she clung to him, whispered in his ear. ‘And not a single drop of any intoxicant but one.’ Her eyes softened, and she hugged him tight against her. ‘Love,’ she said. ‘Pure and potent love …’
He gave a low, soft laugh—and then there was no more need for words.
Only love, made whole, and pure, and everlasting.
Thea lay warm and nestled against Angelos. Happiness, as unbelievable as it was radiant, enwrapped her as closely as his strong arms wound about her. She gazed into his eyes as they returned her gaze, love light in them both.
She lifted a hand to touch his face.
‘How can this be?’ she asked wonderingly. ‘How can such happiness be?’
He smiled down at her. Tenderness and love filled his gaze. ‘I only know I don’t deserve it—not after all I did to you.
She laid a finger across his mouth. ‘No—it’s over now, all that bitter past between us. I won’t let it haunt you.’
‘I’ll spend my life making you happy, trying to undo what I did.’
‘It’s gone, Angelos—truly, it’s gone. And now we have this …’ The note of wonder was back in her voice.
It was in her heart, too, alongside the radiance of her happiness. How strange life was, she thought, that out of all the anger and bitterness love should have flowered.
When had it started to blossom? she wondered. Oh, she had long felt the power Angelos had over her—not the malign power he had wielded, but that overwhelming male power that drew her eye endlessly to him, that made her quiver with awareness of his presence, awakening her nascent female instincts—but it had taken the lonely beauty of the mountains they had shared, those firelit evenings together for her to start to see him as a person other than the forbidding, distant stranger who had so persecuted her.
And then, in the ecstasy of his arms, it had blazed to life, possessing her even as he had possessed her body and she had given herself to him.
A shadow passed over her eyes.
‘If I hadn’t run from your bed that morning—’
His arms tightened around her as he heard the distress in her voice. ‘If I had given you reason to trust me, you would not have fled,’ he told her. He kissed her gently, soothing her. ‘My beloved Thea,’ he murmured.
The shadow in her eyes glinted into a smile. ‘So I am Thea now, finally?’
His eyes smiled in return, but his voice as he answered was sombre. ‘But you are Kat, too—Kat who overcame what she had been born to, who had more courage and guts in her little finger than I have in my whole body and made something of herself from the nothing she was born with. And then made herself Thea after all I did to her …’
Her eyes glinted again, seeking to draw him away from dark memories that were not needed now, nor ever would be again now that all had been healed by love.
‘Kat was very lippy, though,’ she murmured.
Now, at last, his mouth curved into a reminiscent smile. ‘Oh, she was indeed,’ he agreed. ‘But I have to admit,’ he mused, ‘that was part of your charm …’
‘Novelty value? After all those flunkeys kow-towing to you?’ she probed wickedly.
‘Very possibly,’ he said dryly. ‘But,’ he went on—and his voice had changed, was serious now—’Kat stood up for herself, and so did Thea. Whatever I threw at them.’
Again she laid a finger across his mouth. ‘No—the past is over.’
He caught her finger with his lips and kissed it, and then kissed her mouth.
‘Only the future matters now,’ he told her, and cradled her yet closer against him. But though his arms were strong about her, his voice, when he spoke again, was uncertain—hesitant. ‘Your name is yours, and yours alone to choose, but …’ He paused, then took an indrawn breath.
Thea could see the sudden tension in his face, the uncertain wariness in his eyes.
‘Would you consider,’ he went on, ‘taking another name? Would you consider taking the name Mrs Angelos Petrakos?’
She stilled, looking up at him. Then, out of nowhere, his features blurred.
His head dipped to hers, his mouth to hers.