FOUR
Chapter 4
“I am crazy for you.” He told that to her every night, his breathing heavy as he held her close in his arms. Every single night since the first night they spent together, when he took her innocence and found himself at quite a disadvantage.
“You gave me such a gift, what can I give you in return?” Isabelle noticed that his voice had turned more accented and strangely subdued, as he held her body tightly close to his warm, naked chest.
“Nothing.” She had replied in the dark. Because that was the truth. She had spent her whole life just struggling, with not but a moment's respite, and now here, in his arms, she had felt like she had received it all, she snuggled closer.
“I am going to Singapore tomorrow, come with me.” He had asked her huskily, smelling the top of her head. And Isabelle had felt her happy balloon deflating, they were returning to their previous argument. “I can’t. You know, I can’t I have a job.” Nik didn’t like the fact that Isabelle worked for Avery Grant, and he bought it up every chance he got, trying to convince her that she should leave that job.
“That can be easily rectified.” He pulled her closer and started kissing the sides of her cheeks. “Think of me, if nothing else. How will I spend 2 weeks in Singapore without holding you in my arms, without touching you for that long?” He huskily murmured into her ear, sensually kissing the arch of her throat as his hands moved over her naked waist. “Come with me.” He invited her again. An invitation for both – to go with him to Singapore and to come into his arms now, and taste the sensual feast he was laying down for her.
“Nic.” She tried stopping him, only for him to take hold of her wrists and pin them above her head, before starting to ravish her all over again. His mouth made a slow route down the slender column of her neck as he moved lower.
An hour later, when their bodies had been satiated again, and they lay in the blissful, lethargic aftermath heat, still engulfed in each other's arms, Nik spoke again, “Pack for warm weather, it’s hot in Singapore right now and some beach wear….” The sleepy, sweet lethargy in her bones suddenly disappeared. “Nik, I am not going because I have a job, and if you don’t like that, it’s your problem, but I can’t leave Ms. Avery like that without notice.” She thought of getting up and storming out; she would have liked to bang the door shut loudly for good measure, too, but she was naked and had essentially nowhere to go.
Because like a stupid woman in love, she had jumped at the chance to go live with Nik in his penthouse, with a jacuzzi larger than her previous apartment and the largest, softest bed in the entire world.
Trying to keep her relationship with Nikoulous Dimertriou a secret, when she had told Avery Grant that she was moving out, she hadn’t mentioned that she was going to go live with him in his apartment. Just last afternoon, Avery had caught her in the elevator coming down from the top floor. For a second, she had looked confused before laughing it off. “So, you are cleaning his house too? Good for you.”
Now, that had hurt Isabelle for some reason. She knew she shouldn’t take it to heart. That it was a logical conclusion for her to come to. But it hurt her nonetheless. Isabelle wanted Nic to be proud of her, to look at her in public and say proudly that she had achieved something in life.
So, she had decided to go to college after all. And how would she do that if she doesn’t have a job? So, now more than ever, she needed the job to save money for college.
But at times like this, when he told her in not so many words that he didn’t want her to work in a menial job like this. When she realized that he was embarrassed by her, it hurt her that much more, and while she knew it was childish of her, she couldn’t help it.
For a long-long while afterwards, he didn’t say anything at all, so much so that Isabelle had thought he had fallen asleep. Before he had spoken again, “Marry me, then.” Once again, his voice had been strangely heavy as he had said those words.
“Surely, as my wife, your first duty would be to your husband and not some stupid job.” Challenging Nick was never a good idea, he always got what he wanted. It was many years later that Isabelle had realized that his passionate marriage proposal had been his ego talking. She had thrown down the gauntlet by not listening to him and he retaliated with a power stroke that pulled the floor off from under her feet.
She had been ecstatic, on cloud nine, the happiest moment of her life.
And sometimes she wished she could go back in time and relive that memory of bliss all over again. Because it did not last long.
He was 31, she was eighteen, they married a month later, and no one ever got over it.
Not the media, the paparazzi, not his snobbish rich family, not Avery Grant, and definitely not Isabelle Mercer. No one ever got over the fact that she, a street-side nobody, could drag the mighty Nikolaus Demetriou to the altar within a month of meeting her.
And maybe that was the reason why their unfortunate marriage ended just as quickly burnt in the same scorching fire, in which it had begun.