He, who had shut off that part of himself so long ago now that it was almost shocking to recall how much he had loved his spoiled, careless half sister, and how much it had hurt when she’d thrown that in his face. He had never thought anything could hurt him again.

“You are nothing to me!” she’d screamed at him when he’d attempted to console her after Peter’s vicious termination of their relationship. He had not known, then, that she was pregnant. That Peter Barbery had scoffed at her and called her a whore—then claimed his own child could have been anyone’s. All Nikos had known was that Althea had been in a lump on the floor of her room in their father’s elegant mansion in Kifissia, her face streaked with tears. Still, her eyes, as they focused on him, were narrow and mean. Like their father’s.

“Althea,” he had said, his hands in the air, trying to soothe her. He had thought he had shown her that he was trustworthy—the older brother she had never had. Someone she could love and lean on. That was what he’d wanted.

“I wish you had never been born!” she had thrown at him, cutting him as surely as if she’d thrown a knife. “This is your fault! You were the one who was too cocky, too sure—”

“I will make this right,” he had promised her. “I will. I swear it on my honor.”

“Your honor? What is that to me?” She had been scornful then, her pretty face twisted, spiteful. “You may have climbed out of the sewer, Nikos, but you still walk around with the stench of it clinging to you, don’t you? And you always will!”

Nikos shook the unpleasant memory away, gritting his teeth. Only a week later, she had been gone, her pregnancy uncovered. So much lost. So much wasted.

The Barberys deserved whatever they got, even Tristanne, the innocent one. He would not feel guilty for it.

He would not.

She was still half-asleep when he pulled her into his arms. Tristanne came awake as his body moved over hers, her own already responding to him, already softening for him, before she was fully aware of what was happening.

“You have yet to answer me,” he said softly, moving his mouth along the column of her neck. “I presume this is merely an oversight.”

“What if my answer remains no?” she said, her voice husky from sleep, and, she thought, the fact that no secrets remained between them. Not any longer. She felt…naked unto her soul. New.

Vulnerable.

A faint memory stirred then, of Peter in Florence, asking snidely after Nikos’s angle in all of this. She shook it away, concentrating instead on the feel of Nikos’s hard muscles beneath her hands, his hot mouth against her skin, her breast. What could she do? She had told him everything. She could only hope that he would do her the same courtesy—but even if he did not, it was not as if she could simply decide to stop loving him in the meantime.

Her body would not allow her to stop wanting him, not even for the barest moment.

“Yes,” she said, as he twisted his hips slightly and thrust deep into her, making her sigh with wonder at the perfect, slick fit.

“Yes, what?” he taunted her as, slowly, he began to move, stroking in and out of her, sending shivers of delight all through her limbs.

“You are a bully,” she said, gasping.

“I am merely emphatic,” he growled against her throat, nipping at her. “And very, very focused.”

And because she could do nothing else, because ripples of pleasure fogged her brain and coursed through her veins, she wrapped her legs around him and held on tight.

His eyes were dark, threaded through with gold, and yet seemed almost conflicted as they met hers. He dropped his gaze, and kissed her, taking her mouth with an intensity she might have called desperate in another man. He began to thrust faster, harder, holding her bottom in his strong hands to please them both with the deeper angle.

“Yes,” she said, because she could not remember, now, why she had denied him. She wanted to soothe him, to ease the darkness in his gaze. She wanted. “I will marry you.”

He did not speak again. He merely lowered his head, and then he took them both over the edge.

Chapter Fourteen

“WE MUST marry quickly,” Nikos said the following evening as they sat in the fading light, startling Tristanne as she feasted on tangy kalamata olives and sharp feta drenched in locally grown olive oil and spices. The sun had only just ducked below the horizon, and Nikos had only just returned from another day in Athens.

Part of her, she realized now, had wondered if the events of the previous night were real—of if she’d dreamed them. His words sent a thrill of anticipation through her.

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