135

The moment the suite door clicked shut behind them, Yalda tore away from Ioannis's gentle grasp, storming toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. Her reflection glimmered faintly in the glass, she was a ghost of herself. Her chest heaved as the ache twisted and bloomed within her. Her hands curled into fists at her sides.

"Yalda," Ioannis said softly, his voice a cautious thread behind her. "Talk to me. What do you need?"

She had pulled herself together after she came, and she had told him she wanted to leave the hall. She couldn't take it all anymore, it felt like everyone was watching her.

She turned slowly, her eyes bloodshot and burning with desperation. "I want to forget."

"We can leave. We can get on the plane tonight—"

"No," she snapped, her voice trembling. "Not leave. Not sleep. I want you to fuck me, Ioannis. Make me forget everything. I need to forget him. I need to forget me..."

Her body trembled as she walked to him, closing the distance, she reached for the buttons of his shirt with shaking fingers. Ioannis watched her closely, uncertain. "Yalda, you're not okay. This isn't the way to fix what's happening."

She pressed her forehead against his chest. "I know. But I can't take it anymore. Please... I want to stop feeling this. Just for tonight. I want to disappear."

He hesitated for only a second longer before tilting her face up. Her lips were trembling, eyes wide and wet with pain, and he saw the same brokenness he had seen in her back in Greece when they'd first met. He cupped her cheeks with both hands, and she leaned into his warmth as though it might hold her together.

Then he kissed her.

It wasn’t soft, nor tentative. It was desperate. Frantic. The kiss tore the breath from her lungs, and she welcomed it. He lifted her effortlessly into his arms, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her arms around his neck. Their mouths didn’t part, not even as he carried her toward the bedroom.

He laid her on the bed like something precious, though she didn't want to be treated gently. She reached for his belt with eager, clumsy fingers.

"Harder," she whispered against his mouth. "Don’t be gentle with me tonight. I want to feel everything."

Ioannis's gaze darkened. He knew she was asking him to be her escape, her erasure. He answered with a growl that rumbled deep in his chest as he pinned her wrists to the bed.

"You want to forget?" he breathed against her neck, his voice rough with restraint. "Then I won’t let you think."

He claimed her mouth, silencing any reply, his hands already roaming her body like he was trying to relearn every inch. The bed dipped under them as he pushed her down, his weight pressing her into the sheets, his lips bruising hers, hungry and unforgiving. The air between them thickened with heat and grief and unsaid things.

His body moved over hers with a punishing rhythm, and soon enough they were rid of their clothes. She was still wet from earlier and he wasted no time in plunging into her. Each thrust deep, deliberate, meant to drown her in sensation.

The sound of skin meeting skin filled the room, slick and desperate. Her moans broke free, uncontrolled, raw, as he drove into her with an urgency that bordered on reckless. She clutched at him, her nails digging into his back, her legs wrapping around his waist, drawing him in even deeper.

She wanted to feel him in her soul.

She was soaked for him, her body responding without hesitation, tightening around him as if refusing to let go. The heat, the stretch, the burn of it made her cry out, and he drank the sound like it was the only thing keeping him sane.

“You feel that?” he gritted out, his breath ragged against her cheek. “That’s how you forget.”

His hand slid up, firm around her throat, not enough to hurt, but enough to make her gasp. Her eyes fluttered open, glassy, dazed, her pupils blown wide as she surrendered everything. When she begged him to go harder, to push her further, he did.

His grip on her hips tightened, holding her in place as he took her again and again, harder each time, until her cries turned into broken sobs and pleasure warped into something dangerously close to pain.

She clung to him, gasping his name, and when the wave finally took her, it was explosive, her whole body tightened around him, her back arched, her mouth parted in a silent scream. He didn’t stop. He followed her, burying himself to the hilt, groaning her name against her neck as he fell apart with her.

When it was over, she lay boneless, trembling in his arms, her body wrecked, her heart still spinning. Ioannis cradled her against him, his hand smoothing down her hair, grounding her. But even in the stillness, even in his arms, her mind drifted.

it circled back, to Alexander. To the man she couldn’t purge, no matter how hard she tried.

And Ioannis knew.

He saw it in the way her eyes searched the ceiling long after the fever had passed. He felt it in the stiff silence that followed. Still, he didn’t leave her side. He gathered her against his chest, his strong arms cocooning her trembling form. Her breathing slowed, though her eyes didn’t close.

He kissed her temple. "Did it help at all?"

She didn’t answer for a long time. Then, with a voice so quiet he almost missed it: "No."

Tears slid down her cheeks again, silent, raw. Her fingers clutched at his forearm where it rested over her stomach, as though his touch was the only thing anchoring her to the present.

"He’s still there," she whispered. "Always there. Always in my head."

Ioannis held her tighter. "Then we keep trying. I’m not going anywhere."

Yalda curled into him, burying her face in his chest. She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to love Alexander anymore. But her body betrayed her. Her heart betrayed her. Even in Ioannis’s arms, even after everything, she still burned for a man who had looked her in the eye and walked away.

The guilt was corrosive. But it didn’t kill the longing.

Eventually, exhaustion claimed her. Her lashes fluttered closed, her body heavy against him. Her pain didn’t vanish, but it dulled under the weight of sleep.

Ioannis remained awake.

He stared at the ceiling, listening to the soft breaths of the woman beside him. He loved her. Not in the way of poets and dreamers, but in the raw, real way of a man who wanted to build a life with her. But he knew that tonight, she hadn’t been his. Not really.

She had been chasing ghosts. And no matter how tightly he held her, she was still lost in the shadows of Alexander Monroe's memory.

But still, he would stay. He would keep holding her. Even if it meant bleeding slowly for a woman who might never be able to truly love him back.

He closed his eyes, whispered her name once, and let the silence settle between them.