Secret Souls (2 page)

‘Then you find her fascinating, much the same as I do. The way she looks at you, Manoussos, I think you’re in with a chance there,’ teased Max.

D’Arcy leaned closer to Manoussos and gave him a sisterly kiss on the cheek. ‘Max is right, Manoussos. She wants you. She might just steal you away from us and keep you for her pleasure for the rest of her life. Now how would you like that?’

Joke as his friends might with him, from the moment Manoussos had entered the restaurant and had seen her, he’d been attracted to her. Yes, her mere presence: a great beauty sitting alone in a near-deserted restaurant off the beaten track was intriguing, but she had instantly been more than that. He had sensed her sublime sexuality, sensual danger. Here was a woman who was an adventure in ecstasy of the body, the heart and the mind. His libido craved a woman like this one, and how many more men before him would have had her? Not many, he thought. A policeman’s instinct, or was it that she looked to Manoussos too discerning for promiscuity? Oh, yes, he would have her, he had no doubt about that. That was not his ego talking, rather the manner in which she looked at him.

There was something else about her besides and it had to do with the incredible good looks of this tall, slender yet voluptuous woman with raven black hair, fair skin and seductive grey eyes, large and almond-shaped. It had to do with her being much more than a beautiful woman – an aura of fire and ice and secrets, many secrets, engrained in the soul. It was all there in her face: beautiful for its stunning bone structure, a pointed chin with the bare hint of a cleft in it, a sultry, simmering sexuality. Here was a woman who had seduced men from the day she was born. How they must have abused her for stirring their lust for her! He had been watching her every movement and gesture, half as a policeman and the rest as any man who wanted her sexually, ready to take possession of her elegant perfection. She was like a goddess come to dwell on earth.

Manoussos was a man who thrived on sex with exciting, sexually liberated foreign women. He had had many, they chased after him hard. Infatuations, mild and short-lived, yes, he had had
more than his share. Manoussos had fallen in love only once, and never quite out again, with D’Arcy, when they were children. They grew up together, became first loves and lovers, and had for years conducted sexual liaisons together when it suited them. They and everyone else knew they would love each other always, and so their separations were painless. Other lovers had caused them no anxieties because they had always known what they had together had never been quite enough for either one of them. Now across a sea of empty tables Manoussos felt tremendous excitement because here was a dangerous but thrilling woman who could capture his heart entirely.

After D’Arcy’s having danced away from a sexual encounter for many years because she never wanted to be another notch on Max’s sexual belt, which she surely would have been then, Max and D’Arcy had fallen in love. That had been less than a fortnight ago, and since then they had been together in love rather than lust night and day. Suddenly, sitting at that table with D’Arcy, Max realised this was their time; they were ready to vanish together into the sexual life they both craved. It was evident that D’Arcy was wanting him in the same carnal way as he wanted her. Their exploration of love and passion without sexual congress, something they had been steeped in for the last few weeks, was over for them. Suddenly there was little excitement about lunch and lingering over food.

From across the room, Chadwick watched Max abruptly scrape back his chair, rise and leave the table. There seemed to be a dreadful fuss between Max and the proprietor and then Max whispered something in the man’s ear. Immediately he was all smiles and hugs and waving arms. She was a lady alone watching a scene that changed abruptly: watching turned to wonder as Max and the taverna keeper walked past Max’s table and friends and across the room to her.

Strangely she didn’t feel embarrassed when Max gazed directly into her eyes and smiled while the taverna keeper made excuses: ‘I hope it doesn’t offend you, madam, our approaching you like this?’

She didn’t answer. Nor did she smile. Imperiously, and yet
sweetly, she nodded her head and with a hand gestured to them to take a seat. Max was even more dazzled by her.

‘This is my good friend Max de Bonn,’ offered the restaurateur.

Max raised her hand and lowered his head to place a kiss upon it, then sat down. The Rhadamanthys’s proprietor made excuses and left.

Max at his most charming and seductive. Manoussos and D’Arcy were amused – puzzled but amused. This was Max doing what they had seen him do hundreds of times, picking up a lady. D’Arcy felt no jealousy, but rather curiosity. She and Manoussos were laughing at Max’s audacity: quite suddenly jumping up and leaving them to flirt with a stranger. ‘What’s going on, Manoussos?’ she asked as the food that had only just arrived was swept away, leaving them with forks poised in the air.

But before he could answer D’Arcy, Max was on his feet kissing the stranger’s hand again and walking back to them. The woman was smiling now and her face was flushed, an extra light in her eyes. Max had been very quick. He could not have been away from his table and friends for more than three or four minutes.

‘You weren’t jealous and you trusted me?’ he asked D’Arcy.

‘Next you’ll be telling me you did it for me,’ she teased, but admitted that she had not been the former and did the latter.

Max pulled her up from her chair and into his arms before he kissed her full on the mouth and with great passion told her, ‘For that I’m going to make you the happiest woman alive for the rest of your life.’ Then he turned to Manoussos and said, ‘Her name is Chadwick Chase and she would like to invite you to lunch, so D’Arcy and I can run away with ours and slip into the land of erotic delights. Eros calls to us, old boy. You don’t mind, do you? A beautiful woman and finding your way back to Livakia alone … do you think you can manage?’

Manoussos stroked his moustache by smoothing it down with his thumb and forefinger, a habit when he was contemplating something or when he was pleased. When pleased, it invariably brought a hint of a smile to his lips and his dimples appeared to
give him an even more handsome and boyish look. ‘I have to say one thing about you, Max, you sure know how to take care of your friends. No, of course I don’t mind, though had you told me what was on your mind, I could very well have managed that invitation myself.’

‘But what are friends for?’ Max retorted before smiles crossed the faces of the two womanisers who had been the closest of friends for so many years.

Manoussos rose from his chair and he and D’Arcy exchanged several words and kissed before she and Max walked away, a trail of waiters following them with baskets of food, the sumptuous feast Max had earlier ordered for them. Without a moments hesitation, Manoussos walked towards the woman waiting for him.

‘You have invited me to lunch. That was gracious of you, especially since you have already had yours. May I sit down?’

Chadwick was awe-struck by the man standing in front of her. It was lust. She was physically attracted to him as she had never been to any man before. She felt quite marvellous, not at all embarrassed that her attraction to him was obvious. His desire for her was no less overwhelming. It showed in his eyes, the way he looked at her. They were making love to each other, were hungry for sex to take them over. They were each other’s destiny. That realisation sent a shivery thrill through her, it was visible and he didn’t miss it. She raised her chin and tossed her hair away from her face, running her fingers through it.

What would it be like having sex with a man as big and bold and sexy as this? The very thought of his sex, of glorious thrustings … what bliss, that rapture she had been waiting for for so long. Here was a man she could love, who felt no guilt about sharing a sexual act with her. The very thought brought tears of deep emotion to her eyes. She fought them back and smiled at him. ‘Yes, please do, Manoussos. I think your friend has done me a great favour.’

He liked her voice, it was husky and she spoke softly, in a sort of loud whisper; there was something mysterious and promising in that voice. The way she spoke was breathlessly sexy. There
was something enigmatic about Chadwick Chase; like the great Sphinx of Ghiza in Egypt, her beauty and her secrets drew men to her. He drew back a chair and sat down opposite her. ‘He has done us a favour, Chadwick.’ And reaching across the table, he took her hand in his, kissed it, and did not let it go.

She closed her eyes for a moment and swallowed her emotions. Chadwick was struggling hard to maintain some composure. Manoussos saw that and more, not nervousness, more an innocence, inexperience, a certain vulnerability. This lovely creature had never ever lusted for a man as she lusted for him. Had she ever taken on a stranger, or been so bold with a man as she was being with him now? he wondered. A woman as sensual, as erotic and hungry for all things sexual as she appeared to be must have done. But this was different, and Manoussos sensed it because love was involved.

In an instant his overwhelming attraction to Chadwick had somehow knocked Manoussos off balance. He had nothing by which to measure her. She was unique and he was falling in love. He tried to regain his own composure and find a way of relating to this woman by whom he was captivated. Enchanted by a woman to whom he had only said a few words, and those inane – he couldn’t help but laugh at himself.

This seemed to bring them both back to some kind of reality. He let go of her hand and raised his to get the waiter’s attention. Turning back to Chadwick he told her, ‘I’m famished, and I will have lunch. Max ran away to make love to D’Arcy and gobble up the feast he had ordered for us. And you? Can you manage a second lunch or at least toy with one, just to please me?’

It was ridiculous, but all she said was, ‘Incredibly, I am suddenly ravenous,’ and he was thrilled.

He rattled off several of the restaurant’s specialities to the waiter hovering over them. Just as the man was rushing off to fill the order Chadwick stopped him, surprising Manoussos with her excellent Greek when she asked the man to bring an order of the aromatic buttery rice infused with cardamom, cinnamon, and sprinkled with almonds and sultanas. Then, turning her attention back to Manoussos but still speaking in Greek, she told him,
‘That’s the dish that brought me here to this restaurant, that and the deep dish casserole of roasted red and yellow peppers, aubergine and caramelised onions. A friend recommended this place and those dishes. I find the rice irresistible.’

‘Your Greek is astonishingly good.’

He was delighted with her. She had intended for him to be impressed by her linguistic skills, not out of vanity but more that there should be no obstacle between them. The language barrier gone, he gave her the opportunity to rid them both of another that might have existed when he remarked, ‘Not learned, I hope, by speaking with a Greek husband or lover?’

‘University. A passion for Classical Greece, El Greco and Crete. There is no husband, no lover.’

His smile was broad and open and he pulled down on his moustache with his forefinger before he told her, ‘There is no wife, no lover.’

The silence that followed was deafening for its very importance to the lives of Chadwick and Manoussos. Each of them aware of it, could do little but reassure the other that something momentous was happening to them. It was Chadwick who offered her hand to Manoussos. He took it in his and held it, stroked it, as they gazed into each others eyes, their hearts and souls.

So many questions lovers have for each other in those first hours together. There was no doubt in the mind of either Manoussos or Chadwick that they would be lovers. Yet there was silence between them. Just being together seemed far more important than mere words, histories past or present. A lifetime in love and togetherness would take care of those things. At a moment like this, what did they matter anyway?

Instead they dined and were able, slowly, to overcome the silence that had over taken them. That hush that seemed so right, so very important to them. It was Manoussos who broke it when he told Chadwick, ‘Life is indeed miraculous. Who could have known that this was going to happen to us today?’

That seemed to say it all. They were together and it felt to them as if they had been waiting for each other all of their lives.
Throughout lunch they spoke as young lovers always speak, of the wonder and beauty of every little thing: the weather, the food, their chance meeting, what had brought her to Iraklion and the restaurant that day, his friends. Chadwick was enchanted by Max and D’Arcy and their love story; the way they and the other foreigners lived and loved in the small village of Livakia,
his
village, on the west coast of the island, over the rough and wild Levka Ori mountain range.

It sounded to Chadwick like a paradise for pleasure seekers. She wanted to be there, be one of them, live at the peak of existence. Be the free spirit and the adventurer that she had seen instantly in Max when he had walked through the door of the restaurant. Be loved and full of sensual splendour in the same way D’Arcy was. Be embraced by Manoussos who saw in her their joint destiny. These were fearless people who knew what it was to be alive, hold the world in one hand and make it spin for them. They made the greatest of efforts to live and work and be happy. Here were lives and ways of living completely foreign to her, and they appealed to Chadwick as her new
today.
All she had to do was reach out and take Manoussos’s hand and leave all her
yesterdays
behind her.

Water crashed against the window pane and ran down the glass. It somehow brought her out of her thoughts. She watched it for only a few seconds then, taking a deep breath, rose from her chair. Manoussos followed suit. Chadwick walked round the table to stand in front of him. He took both her hands in his.

‘Are you sure about this, Chadwick? You must be, because for my part I already know there will be no turning back. We know nothing about each other or our lives and I am already more deeply involved than I ever imagined I could be with anyone. We can stop now and no one will get hurt. We should, unless you feel the same as I do. We mustn’t use each other, not even for one night of sexual extravaganza. As much as I would like that, want that, we’re much more.’