Greek's Forbidden Temptation
Author
Millie Adams
Reads
15.4K
Chapters
14
Their desire is forbidden…but too strong to deny in this dramatic off-limits romance. She's always been off-limits…Now, she needs him! Greek playboy Dionysus has long desired Ariadne from afar. He's never forgotten the blistering kiss they shared, before she devastated him by marrying his twin. Now she's tragically widowed, Ariadne wants Dionysus to help her protect his brother's legacy — by giving her an heir! Ariadne has craved security since her tumultuous childhood, which was why she picked the "safe" brother. Except alone together on Dionysus's private Greek island, there's nowhere to hide from the flame that started burning years ago. Dare she risk everything by surrendering to the inferno that only he can ignite?
CHAPTER ONE
THE EMPTY BARSTOOL next to Dionysus Katrakis was luxurious as it was tragic. It ought to be. Tragic because it was empty as the man who had once occupied it was no longer living. Luxurious because the Diamond Club was the most exclusive club on earth. With membership consisting only of nine of the world’s richest men.
And one woman.
The empty chair was now for her.
And yet it wasn’t.
It seemed somewhat baffling to her that there was a whole bar in this establishment that catered only to the uber elite.
You’re one of them now.
But she never really would be. She wasn’t the one who should be sitting here right now. And she didn’t know when or if that truth would ever come forward. If there was any point to it. All she knew was that her life had changed forever. That her joy was shattered and the future they’d imagined was...
It was impossible now.
She blinked back rising tears—she really didn’t want to cry right now.
And so Ariadne Katrakis took a seat on the luxury barstool next to her brother-in-law, and did not cry.
She looked at Dionysus’s profile. Proud. Arrogant. Familiar. His features were arranged in the exact same order and shape her husband’s had been. Stunningly handsome with a strong, square jaw, a nose that was sharp and angular. His skin was the same tawny gold, his brows heavy. His black hair was longer than his twin’s, rakish, looking as if a woman had just finished running her fingers through it. Whether by design or simply because that’s what had just happened, she couldn’t say.
One never could with Dionysus.
Her brother-in-law was so different than her husband. Hedonistic, selfish. Unpredictable.
Horrendously likable and magnetic in spite of it all.
That was her true tragedy. She’d always felt bathed in warmth when she was in the company of Dionysus.
She imagined every woman did.
She cleared her throat.
“It’s done,” she said.
He turned to look at her, one dark brow raised. Yes, he was identical to Theseus. And yet he wasn’t. Theseus had carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. His face had been a study in granite severity while Dionysus’s was mobile. His face could cover a broad spectrum of emotion in a moment. It had always fascinated her.
“So then you’ve bathed in the blood of virgins and completed the requisite ritual sacrifices.” The corner of his mouth curved into a smile, but she could see the exhaustion there. The grief.
“All I got was the blood of a very tired pigeon and a ritually sacrificed guinea pig, have I been misogynied?”
“I believe that is what they call pink tax.” He picked his glass up from the bar and knocked back the remaining Scotch. “Drink? They have to get you whatever you want now. You’re a member.”
“Yes,” she said, staring down at the marble bar-top. “I am a member.”
“I apologize for everything my father said to you after the funeral.”
That farce of a funeral that hadn’t said a single real or deep thing about Theseus. That farce of a funeral hadn’t included the people who had really mattered to him.
“Did you hear any of the things your father said to me?”
He tapped his glass and the bartender materialized and poured him another measure of Macallan without being asked.
The man paused and looked at her expectantly. “Just some sparkling water, please,” she said.
“I didn’t need to hear them,” Dionysus said as her sparkling water filled the glass. “I can guess exactly what he said. I imagine he’ll be fighting you for the money.”
“He was thinking you should fight me for it.”
He lifted a brow. “Because I’m so impoverished?”
“I am slightly richer than you now,” she said.
“Amazing what hundreds of years of hoarding wealth will do.” He took a drink of Scotch. “But this situation is of my father’s own making, he’s the one who chose to give Theseus the empire upon his marriage to you.”
“Conditionally, Dionysus, which I think you know. It wasn’t to be final until he produced an heir. But you did not hear...” She curled her hands into fists. “I’m pregnant.”
“Pregnant?”
She didn’t know if she was imagining the shock in his voice. If she was hallucinating any sort of reaction. But that was the truth. She was pregnant with Theseus’s child. And that should be good news. For everybody. A part of him would live on.
As far as the details of all of it... She wasn’t going to share them. Not with anyone.
If the truth came out the Katrakis patriarch could still disinherit her child. And that was something Theseus had wanted to avoid at all costs. He’d shaped his whole life around the desire to see the two of them at the helm of the company and to see the legacy pass on to their children, who they would raise differently than he’d been raised.
She’d made him a promise. With her whole heart, her whole life.
She would not do anything to compromise it now.
Her eyes started to fill with tears and she blinked those tears back.
He’d given her a good life. One filled with love and laughter, even if it had been unconventional. Even if there had been times she’d struggled—who didn’t struggle on occasion? Who didn’t regret their choices on the odd rainy Sunday?—but mostly her life had been full.
It felt desolate now, but she could not afford to be destroyed. Not now. She had the baby to think about.
“And I assume that you told my father this?”
“Of course I did. I am carrying his precious heir. You know how he favored Theseus.”
There was no point sugarcoating any of it. She didn’t say it to hurt Dionysus. Though honestly, she didn’t think Dionysus had feelings to hurt. Not any longer.
Her current relationship with her brother-in-law was... Uneasy at best these days.
But the bedrock of their relationship was a near lifetime of friendship. They had known one another since she was ten and the boys were twelve. They had been thick as thieves growing up, anytime their families had been on the island for the summer.
She had been drawn to Theseus’s quiet, serious nature, his sly wit that had flown under the radar of anyone who didn’t get close enough to really listen to him. He made her laugh. He’d made her feel understood in a way no one else ever had. He listened. Really. Deeply.
Dionysus on the other hand, had been an explosion. All she could do was watch and hope that none of them got hurt by the aftermath. There had been a cheerful sort of naughty joy that he took in his exploits and she couldn’t help but let herself feel a bit of delight in it too, even if from afar.
It was only after the implosion at her eighteenth birthday party that she understood his behavior wasn’t just reckless...it was dangerous.
Ten years later and that was all behind them, their shared history growing up together more important than a few moments in time.
They were bonded by deeper things.
She’d been alone before Theseus and Dionysus.
And without each other, the boys had been vulnerable to the rages of their father.
Patrocles Katrakis had a mentality as ancient as the stone walls of his home country and a cruel streak as deep as the Aegean. He had exacting expectations of what he wanted from his sons. But most especially Theseus. Who was born three minutes before Dionysus, making him the focus of their father’s wrath and unreasonable nature. He was shaping the son who would take over the industry.
Because that was what mattered to him most. The legacy he had built, the billion-dollar shipping company that bore the family name.
His sons were the richest twins in the world. Evidence of his virility, of his might.
A legacy nearly as ancient as Greece itself.
So he thundered, loud and often.
As Theseus’s wife, Ariadne had been under her fair share of pressure. Theseus’s strengths weren’t in organization or admin. Or in finance, which was what James had begun to manage—and just as well because it wasn’t Ariadne’s strength either. Theseus was good with people. Compassionate. Things his father didn’t value. But they had done a good job holding each other up as they managed the company, and their strengths complemented one another’s. Patrocles, of course, minimized Ariadne’s role in the company but as she’d often told Theseus, she wasn’t hungry for the recognition of an old, cruel fossil.
Thank God for James. He’d been managing everything at Katrakis Shipping for the past few weeks, which seemed unfair in many ways, but he’d told her it gave him a way to matter privately.
Since he wasn’t able to publicly.
And she’d desperately needed his help.
“Yes, I am aware that my father favored my brother.” He laughed, a hollow sound. “Of course being favored by my father was always a poisoned chalice. As I think you know.”
“Yes. I know.” She looked down into her glass. “Your father approved of me as a wife for Theseus.”
Dionysus laughed, the mirth in his eyes sharp, uneasy. “I am aware of that. Even still he was terribly hard on you all this time, wasn’t he?”
She blinked, and looked away from Dionysus. She was afraid they were having a shared memory. One she didn’t want to have at all right now, much less share.
She needed to keep her stress managed. She’d been feeling off the last few days. Well, off was an understatement. She’d felt bereft since Theseus’s accident. Numb. Then angry. How could the world be so cruel? They’d been ready to have their child and once they had that child...
Everything would have changed for Theseus, finally.
But her emotional exhaustion had turned into physical aches and pains that had her feeling wary.
“He doesn’t want me to be in control of the company, that’s for certain. He also doesn’t want me being the steward of all the wealth. Sadly for him... There’s nothing that he can do.”
“You never struck me as someone who cared overmuch about money, Ariadne.”
She wasn’t. Of course, she didn’t know life without it. She couldn’t say how she would function, but she knew how to work. That was the thing. There were a few components to this that mattered. The first was that Theseus’s legacy carry on. In the form of their child. The second was that she was able to take some of this money and put it toward causes she knew Theseus would have wanted to support.
Because there were children out there, like Theseus, who lived their lives in shadows. Who could not be themselves. Who had to hide who they were from their parents, from the world. She would...do something for them. A tribute. A charity.
She couldn’t give Theseus the happy ending she’d wanted him to have, but perhaps she could take his memory and use it to make the world happier. What was the point of money if she couldn’t make changes with it?
“Did he know you were pregnant?” Dionysus asked.
He’d been so happy. They all had been.
It had also started a ticking clock on the way their life was structured. She’d been excited, but nervous. Happy. Relieved.
“Yes,” she said. “We found out two days before he died.”
“How lucky for you that you managed to fall pregnant just before his death.”
She flinched. She knew that what he said was true—if there was no baby the company wouldn’t be in her care. If there was no baby none of the Katrakis money would come to her at all. But that wouldn’t have been the tragedy. The tragedy was losing Theseus. The end.
“You know me better than that, and you should know I loved your brother better than that too.”
His expression was contrite, which was unusual for him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was out of order. You didn’t deserve that. The money is yours, Ariadne. My father has no right to take it from you.”
“I’ll be a steward of it, it will be our child’s.”
“You will continue to run the company. You will maintain your position at the club. Until my nephew or niece comes of age.”
His voice took on a hard edge there. It was difficult to imagine Dionysus as a doting uncle. It was difficult to imagine him doing much of anything other than making flippant remarks and indulging in excess.
What had amused her when they were younger had turned into something dangerous and frightening when they had become adults.
Dionysus had always seemed insatiable. But as Theseus went further and further into himself, Dionysus seemed to explode beneath the strictures of his father. He had gone off on his own. Had made a fortune independent of the family name.
Theseus had said he envied his brother sometimes.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be my brother, flaunting conquests everywhere like prizes?
Dionysus was a libertine. She wouldn’t be surprised if he couldn’t count the number of women that he had taken into his bed. He might even lose track of a weekend. A forty-eight-hour orgy seemed right up his alley.
Maybe she was bitter. Bitter because Theseus worked so hard to do the right things, to stay in his father’s will, to be the oldest son that fit the image.
Bitter because Dionysus seemed to have no idea. His life might be a middle finger at his father, but whether he meant it or not, also at his brother.
He was the second born.
And he was free.
Of course, Theseus could have defied his father much sooner than he’d planned. But he had spent a lifetime being conditioned to fall in line and after he’d decided that things had to change, he’d still wanted to wait until they’d had a child until the inheritance was secured, before making any drastic public moves.
“Well, given the blood rites, I do want to maintain my position at the club.”
He chuckled. “Of course. Why would you give up all this?” He lifted up his glass and waved it around, indicating the luxurious nature of the space.
“You may not understand this, but the company actually became very meaningful to me. I know the people there. I care about them. I understand the important part our work plays in keeping the world turning. People depend on us. For their livelihoods. For survival. Under Theseus, there was quite a lot of charity work structured into the business. Employee salaries were raised, benefits packages improved. I want to keep building on what he did, and I’m the one who knows. I know it inside and out. We were a team.”
“It’s shocking,” he said. “The suddenness of it.”
“He was just going back to the office to get some paperwork. A drunk driver hit him. He wasn’t speeding. He wasn’t...he was himself to the end. Taking care of his responsibilities.”
“A terrible waste,” said Dionysus. “If one of us was going to die young, I had always thought that it would be me.”
“You certainly earned it,” she said.
He smiled ruefully at her. She wondered if she had gone too far, if she had crossed the line, but he didn’t seem angry at all.
In fact, he seemed amused. But it was hard to say with Dionysus. She’d known him once. Really known him. They’d been friends. They’d been in-laws for a decade and she saw him casually. For dinners, holidays. They bantered, they were good at it.
There had been whole Christmas dinners where she’d lost herself sparring with him. Like the whole room had faded away and everyone else with it. But that had always been about current events or completely inconsequential topics.
They didn’t know each other. Not anymore.
Now she felt the ache of that.
Because here they were. Without Theseus.
“It’s true,” he said.
“And yet, you also built your own massive business. If you didn’t care about anything the way that you pretend, including your own life, why would you have done that?”
“You underestimate just how badly I wanted to prove my father wrong. About me and about everything. I made something out of nothing. My father just managed to continue to multiply a fortune that was on that path generations before he was born. I am not belittling what Theseus did with the company, or what you have done with it. But my father takes a disproportionate amount of pride in the little work that he has done.”
It made sense. In a sick sort of way.
She took a sip of her sparkling water. “He would also take a disproportionate amount of pride in wresting the company back from me if we didn’t technically fulfill the terms of the rather complex inheritance stipulations.”
“Yes.”
“He would want to automate. Get rid of as many employees as possible.”
“A business is not a charity,” Dionysus pointed out.
“Do you run yours with the same sort of ruthless precision your father would?”
He laughed. “That would require me to care about being rich or simply for the sake of it. And I don’t. I have what I want. A portfolio of successful businesses running the gamut on practical delivery services. From car services to food and grocery delivery. It has been lucrative, and I no longer have to go in to work every day. I help people with their everyday lives, I’m able to take advantage of the fact that people will pay money for convenience, and in turn, my life is more convenient. I can do as I please.”
For some reason, something about that hit Ariadne strangely. He could do as he pleased. She had so much money now. She had devoted so much of her life to her friendship with Theseus. And in all of that, she hadn’t been truly satisfied with it.
She’d hoped to be.
But no one could see the future.
Maybe it wasn’t Theseus who had envied Dionysus.
Maybe she did.
She felt a sharp cramp low in her midsection, and she pressed her hand to her stomach.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, grabbing her arm and looking at her fiercely.
“Nothing,” she said.
She had been having these strange phantom pains for a couple of days, but her doctor had said they were nothing to worry about. Because they hadn’t progressed, and there had been no bleeding.
“I’m just going to...” She slipped off the luxurious stool and stood up, and felt a rush of warm liquid escape her body. But it didn’t stop. She was dizzy, and suddenly the pain was quite intense.
No.
This was what she’d been afraid of, more than anything, when she’d begun to ache a few days ago. When she’d been dealing with the shock of losing Theseus.
That the baby would be taken from her too.
No.
No.
The last thing she saw was Dionysus reaching out to take her in his strong arms as she lost consciousness and everything went dark.
