The Ex

Yaya probably doesn"t know. How could she? I told myself, tossing and turning for the millionth time that night. This wasn"t going to be my first sleepless night – or my last – that was for sure. Every night I crawled into this ma.s.sive bed, I felt like screaming.

Sitting up in the dark, I kicked the covers off and blindly got to my feet, my eyes quickly getting used to the faint light of the moon. I crept to the gla.s.s door leading out onto the balcony and slid it open, stepping into the night-time air. Hugging myself, I watched the waves hug the solid walls of the hill and retreat. For one silly minute, I was caught in a moment of nostalgia.

This had been our honeymoon room. Days and nights of pa.s.sionate, heated s.e.x and romance had made Kástro a place of happiness. Now it was just an empty sh.e.l.l of memories.

I shouldn"t even be thinking about that.

Yaya had put me in the exact same room Kon and I had made ours over the course of that blissful month. Out of the twenty boudoirs in the castle, she"d picked that exact same room. She couldn"t have known. She just couldn"t have, but, if she did, she was a cruel woman.

I watched the sea for G.o.d-knows-how-long before I eventually returned to bed and fell into a dreamless slumber.

***

“You still haven"t mentioned any special man in your life,” said Yaya, taking a long drag of her cigarette. A plume of smoke escaped her lips as she leaned back in her chaise-longue and let out a satisfied sigh.

I reddened. “There isn"t one.” A reprimand was on the tip of my tongue. At her advanced age, Konstantin"s grandmother shouldn"t have been smoking. h.e.l.l, she shouldn"t have been smoking, period.

Yaya surprised me by letting out a raspy laugh. “Christos seems to think otherwise. He mentioned a schoolteacher?”

“He talked to you about me?” I asked in disbelief.

“He tells me everything, Francesca.”

I couldn"t see her eyes through her Ray-Bans but I was absolutely positive that Konstantin hadn"t told her about how I"d succ.u.mbed to his recent s.e.xual advances on many an occasion. Yaya was the type of woman to just come out and say it and the fact that she wasn"t meant that she had no idea.

“Then you must know that there is no one,” I said simply. “Your grandson made sure of that.” I leaned forward and picked up my gla.s.s of wine. It was an old Bourgogne pinot noir, Konstantin"s favourite selection. It had been the wine of choice on our wedding day and I"d never forgotten the taste. Chugging it down was like having the taste of him on my tongue.

“Surely you want to settle down, Francesca.”

I was only twenty-five. “Settling down” wasn"t exactly expected of me. Yet. What was it with old people these days? Why were they outliving their children? My mother"s mother, Abuela Tina, was a few years older than Yaya, yet she regularly got down on her knees to do the gardening in her Suffolk cottage. When she"d gotten pneumonia last year, I"d been afraid that I was going to lose the only family I had left. She didn"t prod me into marriage.

“I"ve done the marriage thing,” I said flippantly, staring out at the horizon. “It just wasn"t for me.” It felt strange to discuss my failed marriage to Konstantin with his grandmother.

“Christos is very silly,” Yaya said under her breath. Turning to me, she said, “I"m feeling tired now. Will you be fine if I take a nap?”
I nodded. “Of course, Yaya.”

“I"ll join you for an afternoon snack. Does the balcony sound all right?”

“Definitely. I"ll sunbathe for a bit. I finally have the chance to get rid of my ghostly pallor.”

Yaya chuckled, slowly getting to her feet. She patted my shoulder. “I know that I say this every day, Francesca, but I am so glad to have you here.”

“I"m glad to be here,” I replied automatically, feeling a burst of affection for this strong, small woman. I meant what I said.

Yaya smiled and turned on her heel, shuffling back into the drawing room and leaving me alone outside. I leaned back in my chaise-longue and flicked my shades back on, intent on taking advantage of the sun. Reaching behind my back, I unsnapped the knot of my bikini top and discarded it on the granite floor. I must have pa.s.sed out because when I finally came to, the sun – on its descent – was partially hidden behind a cloud and a gentle breeze whipped at my hair. Couscous, Yaya"s snow-white poodle, had curled up at the foot of my chair and was fast asleep.

A shadow fell over me and, self-conscious, I quickly scrabbled for my top.

“Frankie?”

Oh, please tell me this is a very bad figment of my imagination brought on by too much sun, I mentally chanted, tying my top back on.

“What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?” I screeched, jumping to my feet when it became apparent that I wasn"t hallucinating.

Konstantin must"ve been flying for hours yet his tan suit was barely wrinkled. The only sign that he"d had a long flight was the lack of a tie. He never wore a tie when he flew.

“I could ask you the same question,” he said gently, his silver eyes raking over me. I shivered under his blatant scrutiny. “Yaya,” he muttered under his breath.

“She invited me over.” I grabbed my towel and wrapped it around myself. “But I think I"ll leave now.” I moved to go past him and he slid in front of me to block my escape.

“If my grandmother is well enough for social visits, am I to take it that she is not at death"s door like Petro phoned to tell me?” His face was granite as he looked down at me.

My brow furrowed. “I don"t know anything about that. Yaya"s fit as a fiddle.”

“And where is she?”

“Sleeping.”

“More like hiding,” he grumbled aloud. “She knew I was on my way.”

“I didn"t. If I"d known, I"d have been on the first jet out of here.”

Konstantin finally allowed me to step past him. I was dizzy with shock, barely registering that I was on my way to my bedroom. Of course, Yaya had known he"d run to her side if he"d thought she was ill. And of course, she"d known that he"d find me.

I"m going to kill her, I thought as I stomped into my room, slamming the door and turning the key in the hole. A weekend away? More like a lifetime.

In essence, Yaya had kidnapped me. It was already the middle of the week and I was inexplicably stuck on the island. Sure, she was good company, very sociable. For someone her age, Yaya certainly kept with the times. She knew everything there was to know about everything, and the sound of her BlackBerry pinging with messages could be heard echoing throughout the castle. Aside from all that – and more importantly – she loved me as her own and didn"t harbour any hard feelings. That meant a lot to me, the woman who"d asked her grandson for a divorce.

“Frankie?” The doork.n.o.b was turned. “We should talk.”
“About what, Kon?” I snapped, pulling on a cotton cerulean dress. I tugged my hair into a ponytail, glaring at the closed door. “About how much you don"t want me here? Well, you can relax – because I can"t think of anything worse than staying in this place with you!”

“Listen, I had no idea you"d be here,” Konstantin thundered in response. “Perhaps if you"d mentioned that you were still such good friends with Yaya, I would"ve –”

He was cut off by the sound of my wrenching the door wide open. “You would"ve what?”

He didn"t miss a beat. “I would"ve put two and two together.”

“And gotten seventeen, I bet,” I muttered, whirling round and stomping back across the room. I fell to my knees and yanked my suitcase out from under the bed.

“Now you"re being ridiculous. You don"t have to leave. This is Yaya"s home, not mine.”

Getting to my feet, I turned to scowl at him. “Don"t flatter yourself. I"m not leaving because of you. I"m leaving because I"ve overstayed my welcome.”

“You"ll do no such thing.”

Konstantin and I both turned to the doorway, to the person who"d just voiced the command. Yaya stood in all her regal glory, such a small woman who commanded authority from all she graced with her presence.

“Christos, come – let me have a look at you,” she said cheerfully, extending her arms to receive her grandson.

I watched as he went to her , pulling her into a hug, enfolding her in his frame. When he eventually released her, she promptly reached up and slapped him across one cheek.

“What was that for?” Konstantin growled, his back to me.

“That was for making my guest feel unwelcome,” Yaya responded, then burst into a stream of Greek.

After that, I was completely lost. Greek would always be, well, Greek to me. I listened to the back-and-forth exchange between the two until, finally, Konstantin left the room, chuckling to himself.

“What did you tell him?” I asked Yaya once I was sure he was gone.

Her eyes sparkled. “Oh, only that he was incredibly gullible to believe that I would be on my deathbed when I"m the one having the time of my life,” she said, giggling. “If anyone seems close to death, it"s my darling, overworked Christos.”

***

The seawater lapped at my bare feet, cold and unforgiving. It felt good to simply yield to the icy claws of the waves, to ignore the pain they were inflicting.

“Are you sure you want to go down tonight?” Petro had asked as he drove me down to the beach.

“Why?”

“It"s just that the waves can get very angry at night.”

“I"ll be fine,” I"d told him – and I was. Or I was going to be.

Being in Kástro with Konstantin was far too agonising for me. It took all my willpower to pretend that the sight of him sitting across me at the dinner table didn"t affect me; to pretend that the sound of his voice asking me to “pa.s.s the salad, please” didn"t make the tiny hairs on my skin stand up; to pretend that I didn"t wonder what he was doing in his room at night.

Oh, yes, because he hadn"t left yet. In fact, Yaya had all but sunk her claws into him to keep him there, claiming that he never visited her, which was probably true. He rarely made it home and when he did, southern Greece was last on his agenda, although he did adore his grandmother. That peanut of a heart of his was capable of that, at least.
Don"t be bitter, Frankie, said my conscience, and I almost screamed at it to shut the h.e.l.l up.

I wanted to be bitter, to hold on to that one feeling that seemed to already have me in a chokehold. Siobhan knew I wasn"t over this man, that I probably wouldn"t ever be. Fúcking him repeatedlyhad been a poor decision on my part. It made me crave him on a more intense level when I wasn"t supposed to want him at all.

“It"s getting late, Frankie.”

Startled, I whirled around and saw the tall frame of a man. The moonlight illuminated Konstantin"s face, etching its way over his brow, the bridge of his Phoenician nose and the square jut of his jaw.

“Stop creeping up on me,” I muttered, annoyed that I was savouring the sight of his face. Did I have to be so utterly pathetic, wanting him so badly?

“Yaya sent me to get you. It"s difficult to navigate one"s way up the hill once it gets too dark. You know that.”

I tightened my hold on my lace shawl. It was doing nothing against the gentle battering of the wind.

“The only thing I know,” I said, turning back to the sea, “is that freezing to death is a much better option than spending another night under the same roof as you.”

The sound of his low, rumbling laughter came from behind me. “Is that what you tell yourself every night before you sleep and dream of me?”

“I despise you.”

I hadn"t meant to say the words aloud but once the words were out, it was impossible to get them back. Konstantin"s laughter stopped. I felt him move to stand beside me.

“I don"t understand why,” he said quietly.

My head jerked to look at him. “You don"t understand why?”

“Trying to explain myself to you, Frankie, is frustrating. I"ve given up. Begging isn"t my style.”

I felt a hot soup of fury bubble up inside me. There was no way in h.e.l.l that I was going to stand there and listen to him play the injured party.

“Fúck off,” I said through gritted teeth and stepped away from him at the same time he got a hold of my arm.

Wrenching away from him proved fruitless, so I propelled myself at him, forcing the both of us down onto the sand. Konstantin caught me in his arms, bearing my full weight. For a second, I thought about squirming like a fish out of water, but my body had other ideas. My response to his heat, his male hardness, was almost instantaneous. Our mouths found each other, my lips instantly parting for the flicker of his tongue. His arms were bound around my waist, one hand travelling to cup my a.s.s.

Flipping me over, keeping the bulk of his weight off me, he cleanly ripped the front of my dress into half and bared my body for him. Sand found its way between my legs. I didn"t care. It felt like silk beneath me. Feeling slightly more affectionate than I was minutes before, I ran my hands up Konstantin"s vest, tracing the contours of the planes of his solid chest. His tongue inflicted sweet torture on both b.r.e.a.s.t.s before he trailed kisses down the valley between them. I sucked in a deep breath when his lips met the soft skin of my tummy, gently flicking his tongue into the hollow of my navel. My fingers threaded the thickness of his hair and pushed him even lower, silently telling him where I wanted him to be.

This doesn"t count, I told myself when he wrenched off my thong and pulled me to him. I felt the first crash of water against my bare toes and thought about telling him to take me to the car, but then his mouth was on my cúnt and all thoughts of safety flew out the window.
I dug my fingernails into the sand, grinding my hips against him. Konstantin"s tongue was the only one I"d ever had inside me, it was the only one I"d ever wanted. He was furious in his pace, sucking on my throbbing clít until I felt the need inside me swell and grow into a wave of unadulterated bliss. With one finger simultaneously fúcking into me, he mashed his face into the folds of my pússy and in the brain-addling state of such pleasure, I unconsciously rubbed the slick of my wetness up against his mouth, his nose, his entire face.

“That"s it, Frankie mou,” Konstantin murmured into my flesh. “Let go for me.”

His words sent me over, pushing me into an orga$m that brought tears to my eyes.

Konstantin raised his head and placed a soft kiss on my abdomen, keeping my thighs apart with one knee. He moved higher, kissing me again, letting me taste myself. I moaned into his mouth, murmuring something along the lines of wanting him inside me, wanting him to fúck me hard.

“Be patient,” he groaned, an erection pressing against my thigh through his shorts as he pulled his vest off with one hand, “because I"m trying to be.” Something glinted in his hands, catching the light. He held the foil packet up, ripping it open with his teeth. “We haven"t been very responsible, have we, Frankie?”

“I know,” I breathed, “but I"m clean and birth control keeps me regular. I don"t know about you, though. G.o.d, I"m stupid.”

His eyes narrowed as he rolled the latex on. “I get checked regularly. On this, you can trust me.”

My heart wanted him to say that in the two years of our separation, he hadn"t been with anyone. My head knew better.

“Then...please,” I whispered, and his hands were on me, simply stroking and caressing every inch of my body until I thought I"d burst.

This doesn"t count, I thought again, but it was becoming harder to believe that. With him, there was no way to keep my silly heart out of things.

Finally, Konstantin lost his patience and eased himself into me. My hips met his as he pushed himself into me to the hilt and I arched my back to offer my swollen b.r.e.a.s.t.s to his mouth. He tongued them until they seemed to be on fire, tweaking them with his teeth, and inside me, his c.0.c.k pulsed and moved. Hissing, I wound my legs around his waist and he turned me over, settling onto his back in the sand. Straddling him with my knees almost buried in sand on either side of him, I moved against him, pressing my palms flat on his broad hest. His hands steadied me and firmly settled on my hips, pulling me down against him, stilling me as he thrust up against me.

“Oh, G.o.d,” I said on an exhale, feeling so full of him, so close to him, it was unreal. My eyes slid shut, my mouth open on a breathy sigh. “I need to come, Kon. Please. I need to... Ah, fúck.”

He seemed to swell inside me, to drive himself even deeper, and yet, I wanted more...

His thumb found my clít and I fell apart, my cúnt clamping down on him. With a garbled curse, he reached completion, his hands tightening in a vice grip as I collapsed onto his chest, sighing heavily. Konstantin"s arms wrapped around me in an embrace and he placed a light kiss on the top of my head. Water washed over our tangled feet and I wiggled my toes, already used to the chill.

“Do you think this was Yaya"s plan?” I said aloud, pressing my lips against Konstantin"s chest.

The rumble of his laughter beneath me tickled me. “I wouldn"t put it past her. Yaya has always gotten what she wants.”

“Like you, I suppose.”

“No. I don"t have everything I want,” he said in a low voice.

I raised my head and looked down at him. “Please don"t tell her about...this. I"d die of shame.” I placed my ear onto his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

“Do you honestly think I tell my grandmother about my s.e.x life, agapi mou?” Konstantin"s voice was amused. “I don"t kiss and tell. G.o.d, you smell good.” His nose burrowed in my hair.

“Liar. I stink of salt.” I laughed, trying to pull my head away from him.

“Perhaps, but you make it s.e.xy.” He shifted inside me. “It is quite the turn-on.”

I hissed, digging my nails into his arms. “Mm. Do that again.”

And he tossed me onto my back and took me again, until I honestly couldn"t move.

“You"re insatiable,” Konstantin remarked, finally withdrawing and rolling over onto his back beside me.

“Oh, shut up.” I sat up, wincing at the dull ache between my thighs. The remains of my clothes caught my attention. “Lovely. You"ve slashed all my clothing.”

He followed suit, following my gaze to my discarded dress. “I apologise. I usually possess a little more self-control than that.”

I watched him pull on his shorts and felt a tiny swell of affection for him when he wordlessly handed me his vest to wear and pulled me to my feet. It was loose on me and covered all the necessary bits.

“So will you allow me to drive you back up now?” He extended his hand.

“I don"t have much choice, do I?” I replied, and took it.

The SUV was parked only a stone"s throw away from the sh.o.r.e. Konstantin pulled open the pa.s.senger door and I slipped inside. The sound of the door slamming shut was like the sound of the final nail in my coffin. If going down felt a good as this, I really didn"t mind.