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Are you sure? Do you really want to leave things as they are?
He absolutely could. The old man had never cared to talk to him before Aristeidis found out he was dying, so why should Atticus be the one to make the effort now? Did his father really want to mend things between them or was it only the prospect of having a clean soul before he faced his heavenly reckoning?
Either way, Atticus wasn’t going to help him.
He started for the doorway to the hall, but found that Elena had nipped past him and was now standing directly in his way.
She wasn’t very tall—the top of her head only came up to his chest—and she seemed delicate, especially wearing his T-shirt. However, determination radiated from her and there was a stubborn look in her deep brown eyes.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You listen to me, Atticus. We will be having this decision and we’ll be having it now. I want to know why you won’t come home. Why you’re insisting on putting what you want ahead of your dying father’s wishes.’
He ignored her, sidestepping and intending to go around her, but she sidestepped too, again in his way. ‘Have a conversation with me,’ she insisted. ‘Give me something I can tell Aristeidis.’
His patience frayed, the threads on it snapping one by one as once again he tried to go around her. Again she blocked him. ‘You can try and avoid me all you want. But I’m not going to let you.’
‘Get out of the way,’ he ordered through gritted teeth. ‘If you continue to be a nuisance, I’ll put you on that boat and the storm be damned.’
She gave him the most dismissive look. ‘Don’t be childish. Give me one good reason why you don’t want to come home. I think you owe me that at least.’
And just like that his temper snapped completely.
He was tired of her being here, reminding him of the past. Reminding him of all the painful things he’d put behind him. Reminding him that he still had a heart whether he liked it or not, and that he still felt things even though he didn’t want to. Reminding him that his body was hungry for a woman’s touch and that she was beautiful, and he didn’t like that. Not at all.
‘I owe you?’ he demanded, closing the gap between them, getting close to her, looming over her. ‘I owe you for what? I rescued you. I gave you a home. I gave you a family. I gave you a future. I owe you nothing.’
Another woman might have found him intimidating and backed away. But not Elena. She didn’t give an inch, staring straight up at him as if he weren’t taller than she was and much bigger, much stronger. ‘You left me alone in a country I didn’t know, in the care of man who was a stranger to me, who didn’t speak my language and didn’t want a child dumped on him.’ Bright golden sparks of anger glittered deep in the warm brown of her eyes. ‘And this was after I’d lost everything and everyone I’d ever loved. So yes...’ She lifted a finger and jabbed him hard in the chest. ‘You do owe me.’
He didn’t know what came over him in that moment, a sudden rush of fury and, beneath it, a flood of pain he hadn’t realised he still felt, and he raised his hands so he could lift her and put her out of his way. Or at least that was what he intended.
Yet the moment his hands settled on her hips, all he could feel was the heat of her body beneath the T-shirt, and how seductive it was. How lush her sulky mouth looked and how he could think of a much better way to get her to be quiet.
‘Atticus,’ she said, her feathery blonde brows descending. ‘What are you doing? We need to talk about—’
But she never got to tell him what it was they needed to talk about, because by that stage Atticus had got tired of listening too.
If she wouldn’t get out of his way or be quiet, then he’d do something else to silence her.
He bent his head and covered her mouth with his.
CHAPTER FOUR
ELENA KNEW WHAT he was going to do—the flare of heat in his eyes had been warning enough. Not that she needed it, given the electricity in the air that had surrounded them just before his hands had settled on her hips. An electricity composed of anger, grief, pain and a deep, physical desire unfamiliar to her, yet that had caught her by the throat all the same the moment she’d looked into his black eyes.
She’d never been kissed before. She’d never even come close and the thought that her first kiss would be from him...
Perhaps that was what she’d unconsciously wanted the moment she’d seen him walking across the sand to her a couple of hours earlier, magnificently naked and so beautiful. A myth made real. Perhaps that was why she’d kept pushing him, telling herself all the while that it was for Aristeidis’s sake, when all along it had been because of him. Because the raw, primal power of him had thrilled her, the heat in his black gaze exciting her. The sense that he was dangerous, that he was a threat, was intoxicating and she’d wanted to see how far she could push him before he broke and that threat was made real.
And what a delicious threat he was. His hard mouth on hers, so hot and demanding. She could taste his anger and his desire, and it was thrilling to know it was because of her. Because he wanted her.
She’d spent years viewing him through the lens of her own dim memories and then through that of the media. An enigmatic, brilliant, ambitious man, who’d then retreated from the world stage, whispered about only as rumours and hearsay.
But he was here now and real, so real. His hands were on her hips, holding her fast, his palms burning through the cotton of the T-shirt she wore. His T-shirt. She’d shivered when she’d put it on and smelled his scent, salt and sun and something deliciously musky and masculine.
She shivered again now, surrounded by that same scent, tasting salt as he kissed her, along with a heat that stole her breath. His tongue touched her bottom lip and then pushed inside her mouth, and her head went back, giving him access.
Warmth was beginning to spread through her, a heavy ache gathering between her thighs. She lifted her hands to his chest and spread her fingers out, feeling him, testing his strength beneath the warm cotton of his T-shirt. So hard, like rock.
He deepened the kiss, taking more, like a marauder, and she followed his lead, kissing him back, rewarded when he growled and his hands slid from her hips to the backs of her bare thighs and then up again, moving beneath the hem of her T-shirt. His fingers slipped beneath her underwear, those large, warm palms covering her rear and squeezing, then lifting her up onto her toes as he pulled her hips against his. The hard ridge behind his fly was pressed to the softness between her thighs, making the ache worse and sending a pulse of the most delicious pleasure spiralling through her.
