Page 23 of His Forgotten Wife

Their grandparents’ anniversary had been celebrated.

Even his birthday had been marked and gushed over, like it had never been before.

Most of the extended family and friends had taken their leave and hopefully, the grand loving-family showboating that his parents excelled at was over.

It had only been close to four weeks but it felt like an eternity.

Ares could breathe again. When he wasn’t in danger of losing that very breath as he and Dahlia explored each other’s bodies with increasing fervor. It had become a sort of game between them, as to who could bring the other to their knees with pleasure first.

Although the time she’d gone down on her knees and taken his cock in her mouth, she had definitely won. Even losing could become addictive if it was to Dahlia and her far too efficient mouth and fingers.

The villa was quiet and peaceful, except for the pounding of Arabella and Dahlia’s shoes in the early mornings when they went running in the grounds.

Or when they giggled and generally created mayhem in the kitchen, experimenting with new recipes because his sister wanted to train to be a chef and was using Dahlia as her guinea pig.

And since she was acting as such, Dahlia had roped Arabella into her own activities.

Ares hadn’t missed Dahlia’s strategy. She was trying to be the bridge between him and Arabella, taking out the awkwardness of what they would talk about on his side, and the pressure of disappointing him from Arabella’s.

His sister, he was learning, was shy, kindhearted and witty, and obsessed with everything to do with New York.

Her round features grew animated when she hounded him or Dahlia for details about Central Park or Times Square.

And then a wistfulness would take over her young face when she said Papa might not let her travel that far for college.

Dahlia would cheer her up by promising her that Ares would convince their father to let Arabella come live with him for an entire summer and that Dahlia herself would show her all of New York.

Empty as her promises to Arabella might be—for Dahlia reminded Ares every chance she got that she was leaving at some point, although she said it with less and less conviction each time, and Ares had no inclination to take on Arabella’s responsibility nor to talk to his father about it—he would be forever indebted to her for how she looked after his sister in those moments.

In the evenings, the two women attended a tango dance class that he’d arranged—with the charming dance instructor he’d hired usually flirting outrageously with either or both of them.

Or the three of them lounged around the pool while he taught them the rudimentary principles of chess.

Dahlia, to his delight, was bloodthirsty with her attacks and barely gave strategy a thought, while his sister was far too scared to make any bold moves.

And while his headaches weren’t getting better, they weren’t getting worse, though his memories of before the accident remained hazy.

He was even able to fall asleep for longer than he had in a month.

Especially if he tired himself out by trying some new position with Dahlia.

Even sharing the bed with her, with her arms and legs thrown around him, was a novelty and a much-needed anchor for both of them—he with his pain and she with her nightmares. Which were getting less frequent.

It was comforting and exciting to have her so close, depending on whatever his mood, and hers, dictated.

The last board meeting with his shareholders, where he had presented his face and reassured them that he wasn’t dying yet, could be called a success.

And while he hadn’t yet proposed making their arrangement permanent to her, he had noted that Dahlia was smiling more these days.

Her grandpa, she had told Arabella one morning with a loud squeal, had been able to stand unsupported for a whole minute and was doing well on his road to recovering full mobility.

She’d even let Ares say hello to the older man quickly on a video call, which she hadn’t in nine years of their knowing each other.

She’d lost that haunted I-don’t-belong-here look.

Of course, he wanted to believe that he and the kisses he stole from her every chance he got, had something to do with the new pep in her step.

And Christos , he couldn’t get enough of the little sounds she made when she climaxed and how responsive she was to his every touch.

Making her come, while denying himself over and over, was now his favorite obsessive game.

Until she decided that she wanted him to lose his mind too.

He was perpetually in a state of arousal but he liked that too. He liked being so preoccupied with planning what he would do to her next or how he would take her when she came to him finally, that everything else fell by the wayside.

It was as if he was living out nearly a decade of leisure and luxury and all kinds of sensual pleasures he’d never really wanted before, in a few weeks. Neither was he sure if he would ever be able to see his parents’ villa without her in it.

He’d always hated the fact that Sergio and Stefano had driven him out of his own home and yet he now wondered what home truly meant. A foolish part of him even hoped that the lawsuit might quietly go away, without shaking up the current situation.

Some evenings, his parents joined him, Arabella and Dahlia by the pool, apparently content to watch them from a distance.

While Mama did her best to engage Dahlia in conversation, Papa continued to remain stubbornly silent.

Ares didn’t have to wonder about what kind of poison his ears had been filled with by his half brothers.

Sergio and Stefano—and their uppity wives and their whining, spoiled children—had thankfully left for their own residences in a nearby island.

It was another side effect of the new perspective he had on life.

He was more than happy to go down the route of “out of sight, out of mind” with his brothers.

Except he knew, and Dahlia kept reminding him, that some kind of resolution needed to be achieved regarding the lawsuit. Before everything went public, triggering a scandal. It was time to settle the score with his brothers, one way or the other.

He had never in his life resisted something that needed doing as he resisted this confrontation with them.

In the deep dark of the night, when he couldn’t sleep for his hip pain, he had even wondered if he was still scared of them, wondered if he had let them become so large and ugly in his mind that he couldn’t tackle them head-on.

Still, he should have known that Sergio and Stefano, being insufferable asses, would bring it to a boiling point themselves.

One evening, he was panting through his stretching routine up on the high terrace of the villa.

Near the end of his routine, he caught Dahlia swimming slow laps in the pool below, while suddenly Sergio and Stefano crowded her from either side.

They were far enough away that Ares couldn’t hear their words.

But he could read Dahlia’s rigid shoulders and deep scowl well enough.

Adrenaline flooded him as if he was once again facing the jagged, twisty edge of the cliff he was driving around, his speed too much to control in the last split second.

His ire spiraled as he discovered his father standing a few feet away from the scene, arms folded at his midriff, watching quietly, as if the whole thing was unfolding just as he pleased.

Ares was a mass of fury as he took the winding stairs down to ground level and then passed rows of neatly manicured gardens.

The last of the sun’s rays were shimmering across the surface of the water and Dahlia’s shoulders as he reached the group.

“You are both worse than I could have ever imagined.” Dahlia’s words were gritted out between clenched teeth, eyes flashing like rare gems. She kept her voice low, he knew, for his benefit.

“And if you repeat any of this vile, slanderous nonsense you’re spewing in front of Ares, so help me God, but I’ll do bodily harm to you. ”

Stefano had the grace to look dumbstruck at her outburst while Sergio simply laughed, splashing water onto her face and shoulders. She calmly wiped the water and began swimming towards the edge.

Ares grabbed a towel, approached the pool and stood waiting for her. Immediately, the meatheads’ expressions changed while out of his periphery, he saw his father approach the pool.

“Hey,” Dahlia said, looking up, the word pitched a little high.

Ares gave her a nod and a hand as she pulled herself out of the pool. Water sloshed down her body in rivulets, wetting his sweatpants. When he held the towel aloft and stretched his arms, she walked into them. He wrapped it tight around her, noticing that she was shivering and trying to hide it.

He enfolded her in his arms, expecting her to pull away. That she tucked her wet forehead against his shoulder without resisting his protective gesture only set his already boiling temper ablaze.

It was clean and clear, the surge of anger that filled his limbs and fired his blood. He had ordered her here, against her own wishes. While she had repeatedly reassured him that she could handle Mama’s microaggressions, her having to put up with his half brothers’ cheap comments was too much.

“Are you okay?” he said, pressing his mouth to her wet temple. The scent of her sank into his pores and centered him.

“I’m absolutely fine.” She looked into his eyes and swallowed. “They didn’t scare me. And honestly, it wasn’t even about me.”

“Then why do you look like you’ve swallowed something bitter?”

“Doesn’t matter. I handled it. This is why you brought me here, remember?”

Something about the way she said it pricked his chest. “To help me find common ground with them. Not to absorb all the crap they level at you because you are with me.”