“Still wild enough to swim naked with me?” Yannis asked Cara
“What do you think?” She crossed her forearms under her breasts, offering them up to him.
As he stared, her nipples tightened further, and he didn’t think it was from the cool night breeze. “I think yes.” As if of its own accord, his hand rose and hovered above her right breast.
She pulled his hand to her. They gasped simultaneously. Her breast filled his palm, full and heavy like an apple ripe for the picking. He instinctively thumbed her nipple, making her shudder.
Encouraged, he cupped her other breast, teasing and plucking. She tipped back her head. “Oh, Yannis.”
He’d never felt skin so soft, so smooth before and closed his eyes in sheer sensual pleasure. Then suddenly his hands were empty.
Cara had stepped back from him and dropped the rest of her dress to the sand. She spun on her heel and ran toward the ocean, wearing only a tiny pair of black panties. “Last one in is a rotten egg!” she cheerfully called over her shoulder.
She’d literally pulled heaven from his grasp and now she called him a rotten egg? Yannis stripped down to his briefs and charged after her. Never mind calling him names—he’d have her screaming his in no time.
Dear Reader,
In a funny way, I’ve been waiting to write a book about Greece since I was a kid. My grandparents on my dad’s side were both organic chemists. My grandmother was one of the first women to earn her PhD in organic chemistry from Columbia University and ran a defense lab during World War II, where she was burned in an explosion. She decided to stay home after the war to raise her kids, writing chemistry books and articles with my grandfather. The only words in these articles I ever understood were a, and and the.
Once they retired, my grandfather decided to learn Greek. Not the useful, modern Greek language, as in “I’d like to order gyros,” but ancient Greek, so he could read Homer’s Odyssey. In the original. So he did. Over the years he and my grandmother took several trips to Greece and brought me a marble statue of Athena, goddess of wisdom, which I still have. One of my favorite memories is snuggling in bed with my grandma as she quizzed me in Greek mythology.
So here is my tribute to my grandparents and the Greece they loved. I hope you enjoy Cara’s story as she falls in love with Yannis and learns to love his homeland, as well.
Marie Donovan
P.S. I’m delighted to hear from my readers. Visit www.mariedonovan.com to learn more about my upcoming books.
My Sexy Greek Summer
MARIE DONOVAN
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marie Donovan is a Chicago-area native, who got her fill of tragedies and unhappy endings by majoring in opera/vocal performance and Spanish literature. As an antidote to all that gloom, she read romance novels voraciously throughout college and graduate school.
Donovan graduated magna cum laude with two bachelor’s degrees from a Midwestern liberal arts university and speaks six languages. She worked for a large suburban public library for ten years as both a cataloguer and a bilingual Spanish story-time presenter. She enjoys reading, gardening and yoga.
Books by Marie Donovan
HARLEQUIN BLAZE
204—HER BODY OF WORK
302—HER BOOK OF PLEASURE
371—BARE NECESSITIES
To my grandmother and my grandfather.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
1
“LOOK AT HOW BEAUTIFUL this place is, Cara! I can’t believe you didn’t want to come.”
Cara Sokol elbowed her friend in the ribs from where they were leaning on the ferry railing. Emma Taylor’s cheerful voice had carried to the clumps of locals. The ones who understood English looked at Cara with marked unfriendliness.
Welcome to Greece. As if Cara needed another reason for the Greek populace to hate her. “Aphrodisias is as beautiful as its namesake,” she told Emma loudly.
At her compliment to their admittedly lovely island, the scowlers turned to gaze at the landmass they were approaching. Cara poked her friend in the ribs again. “Emma, enough about my not wanting to come to Greece. I never said it wasn’t a beautiful country.”
“Sorry, Cara.” Emma swiped a hunk of straight blond hair out of her face.
Cara had expected the wild sea winds on the ferry ride and had pulled her curly red hair back into a braid. She couldn’t get a comb through her hair on a good day, and the June Aegean trade winds would snarl her hair into a copper-wire scouring pad. “That’s okay. I know you’re excited about our trip.”
“Well, who wouldn’t be?” Emma gestured broadly at the vista in front of them. “Greece—the cradle of mathematics, the birthplace of Euclid, Pythagoras, Archimedes—did you know that before Archimedes died at the siege of Syracuse, he requested his favorite mathematical proof be carved on his tomb?”
“Wow.” Cara would be hard-pressed to think of an appropriate proof for her own tomb. Maybe a big, fat zero with a slash through it, but she didn’t even know the fancy math name for it. She shook off her Greek-induced grumpiness and instead stared ahead. Emma was still talking about Greek mathematicians, understandably since she was a Ph.D. student in math at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where they were neighbors in the same apartment building. Emma looked like a cuddly blond cheerleader but had the brain of a supercharged computer.
While Emma subsided into silence with a happy sigh, Cara fell into the rhythm of the Greek speakers, their rapid-fire consonants and vowels sorting out into words as her ears adjusted to the language. The older men were complaining about ever-volatile Greek politics and the crooks mismanaging things in Athens, the women were discussing children and clothes, and the two young men closest to Cara and Emma were commenting on the girls passing by.
Cara hid a smile as the guys wondered if she and Emma dyed their hair and discussed their hip size in favorable terms. Chauvinistic Greek men might be, but at least they liked girls with some meat on their bones.
She straightened from the railing and let her gaze travel casually over the two young men. She knew better than to wink at them, since she didn’t want them following her around Aphrodisias like eager puppy dogs. They met her gaze and grinned, obviously enjoying the idea of putting one over on the foreign girl. Sorry, dudes, I’ve been there and done that. She’d like to meet the Greek guy who could put one over on her now.
Despite her previous travels in Greece, Cara had never been to Aphrodisias, part of the Cyclades group of islands. The island was straight out of Greek legend, craggy hills where undoubtedly shepherds still tended their flocks, blindingly white cubic houses dotting the