The flight to Greece wasn't short. I had to fly to Athens first and then catch a connecting flight to Santorini. And long flights, with long legs aren't exactly comfortable.

The flight was also particularly, how shall I put this, Greek.

From the moment I boarded the plane I felt like I'd walked into another world- one that I'd been deliberately avoiding since the age of sixteen. Minutes after being seated both the pilot and airhostess addressed us all in Greek. And while waiting to take off, the TV screens in the backs of all the chairs started playing one of those made-for-tourist videos.

Aerials shots of the Acropolis. Sunsets over the sea, glasses of wine on quaint little blue tables and bowls of glistening olives were intercut with montages of happy bathers. Everyone in the video looked so happy.

Look, I knew I was going to Greece, I wasn't that mad, but this felt like overkill?

I looked around at my fellow travelers. Everyone looked happy. You could see that they were all looking forward to submerging themselves in the sights and smells of the island. I was not! This wasn't a fun vacation for me. This was business.

I tired to busy myself with as many things as possible- watching in-flight movies, reading a book, playing solitaire, and looking through a Santorini tour brochure.

At some stage my thoughts wandered to my father. Would I recognize him if he walked past me on the street? Would it be because we looked the same, or because I would feel an instant connection to him? I was sure it would be easy to find him too. How hard could it be, anyone can be an amateur detective thanks to Google and Facebook. All I had to do was Google all of the tour guides named Dimitri and then meet up with them. I was very confident that I would know who he was. We would share some kind of connection.

It hadn't been like that with my birth mother. When she'd refused to meet me I'd written her a long letter in which I'd poured my heart out, and still... nothing. She'd rejected me once when I was an infant in desperate need of its mother's touch and love, and then she'd done it again.

She finally did write back to me. She really shouldn't have. It was short and emotionless.

She told me that she had a whole new life now; with new kids and a husband who didn't even know I existed. As if I was some kind of dirty secret. She also said that dredging up past 'mistakes' would do no one any good. And then she simply signed off with:

P.S I will always be grateful to your mom and dad for being your parents.

Regards,

Phoebe

Phoebe?

For some reason it was the last name on earth I'd expected. I'm not sure what I'd been expecting, but Phoebe seemed completely incongruent to the image I had built up about her in my mind. Phoebe wasn't the kind of girl that went to Greece and fell pregnant with a tour guide.

I remember turning the note over in my hands and looking for more. After all these years, that was all she had to say to me?

But there was nothing. That was it. No explanation. No, "I still think about you and wonder what you're doing and how you are. I wish the very best for you. I think about you on your birthday. I wish I had never let you go."

I was a mistake.

The initial pain of her rejection eventually gave way to anger. Maybe anger is easier to deal with? It certainly felt better to hate her, than to long for her love.

This thought always made me feel like I was choking, so I reached for the inflight magazine in the hope that it might distract me and started flipping through the pages. They were all literally written in Greek and a person can only stare as so many pictures of sunsets over a sea before they get....But wait, what do we have here?

A full page advert for... what was the ad for?

Who the hell bloody cares, because staring back at me from the pages was a Greek God. The God in question was so good-looking that it almost didn't matter what he was selling, you would probably just buy the product anyway. He could probably sell baggy, blue jeans to a hipster, or a bloody rare steak to a vegan.

He was an Adonis.

I stared, unblinking. How could anyone be that good looking? Clearly he'd won the genetic lottery and inherited just about very attribute that made a man good looking. He was nearly too good-looking. It was almost unnatural; a genetic abnormality. Like those rats that go down into the sewers and emerge years later in the news with three eyes and a taste for small cuddly pets.

I glanced around quickly to see if anyone was looking in my direction, the last thing I wanted to do was be caught perving. No one was looking and my 'neighbors' were fast asleep. I opened the magazine even wider and pulled it closer to my face.

The Greek God was shirtless and emerging from the azure blue sea. He was flicking his wet hair back with one hand and in the other hand he was holding a large fishing-spear that looked decidedly phallic. Under normal circumstances this photo might be called cheesy, but I challenge any woman on the planet to overlook the fact that his clenched fist was causing his shoulder and arm muscles to bulge and ripple in all the right ways. That his perfectly chiseled chest was accentuated by the glistening drops of water that were running down it and that the setting sun behind him was casting shafts of light and dark on his torso that highlighted those two lines running down... down... down...

Mmmm? The water was just covering that general vicinity, hinting to the possibility of total nudity. With one more step he would be standing in front of us in all his glory. And he looked like the kind of man with the confidence and swagger that comes from knowing he's well endowed, not to mention well versed in using it too. Clearly he knew how to use a spear. In more ways that one. He was probably the kind of guy that speared you some dinner and then bent you over the kitchen counter while you cooked it.

I cleared my throat and shifted uncomfortably in my seat. My face was getting a little warmer and my mouth a bit drier. No magazine spread had ever had this effect on me. Sure, I'd stuck those obligatory posters of cheesy boy bands up on my walls as a teenager and secretly fantasized that Justin Timberlake and I were dating... but it was nothing like this.

My eyes moved north and finally settled on his face. His face was do damn perfect that if he'd had a pot belly and a third nipple, trust me, you wouldn't have cared.

Perfectly proportioned. Chiseled, strong jaw darkened ever so slightly with a five o clock shadow. Someone quickly paint an oil painting of this guy and hang it on the wall of the Louvre.

I continued to stare, despite starting to feel like some lascivious old woman. It was hard to tell the color of his eyes, but it wasn't hard to read the messages that they were sending all the way through the pages of the magazine...

"Have sex with me. Have sex with me NOW!"

I swallowed hard at the mere thought. But when the airhostess walked past, glanced down at the magazine and gave me a kind of knowing smile, I decided to close it and put it back where it came from.

So with nothing else to entertain myself, I put my head back, closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

*

When I woke up I was lying in the warm sun. The sky above me was clear and there was a slight breeze in the warm air. I sat up and looked around. I was on a beach, but the sand around me was completely red. I recognized the beach immediately, I'd seen it in the Santorini tour guide. How was I here already?

I looked out over the water, it was so blue against the red pebbly beach. A splashing sound caught my attention and I swung around to see what it was...

Oh. My. God. It was him. He was emerging- in, slow mo, from the sea and this time, he was completely naked. I gaped. My mouth fell open and my breath got stuck somewhere between my lungs and my throat. It was large. It was large and it was coming towards me.

He flicked his head back and drops of water flew through the air. He reached up with both his hands and tussled his hair, causing his stomach muscles to do something almost hypnotic. Something that should very possibly be illegal. He strode steadily through the water. I glanced around. The beach was totally deserted.

Why was he walking towards me?

He stepped out of the water and onto the beach and his eyes locked onto mine...

"Have sex with me. Sex...Now! Sex."

I wanted to get up and run, but I couldn't move. His intense gaze froze me to the spot. Seconds later he was kneeling next to me.

"Jane." He whispered my name in the sexiest accent I'd ever heard. Wait...How did he know my name?

"Jane, you're so beautiful."

"Take me." I thought I heard some strange, forward version of myself say.

"Oh, I will. But first, let me look at you."

My breath caught as he moved in closer to me and I leaned back until my back came into contact with the warm pebbly beach. His eyes traveled up and down the length of me with his fingertips oh-so-softly following – up to my stomach, slowly circling my belly button. Then a straight line up to my neck, his eyes still hungrily watching his hands, over my collarbone, shoulder, down my arms. He gently took my hand in his and lifted it up to his lips, softly kissing it, lips lingering.

And then he looked my in the eye and I felt like I was melting from their sudden heat. I let out a small breath of anticipation before he lowered his body onto mine, crushing me into the ground. He rubbed his lips against mine, his skin felt and his scent sweet. I closed my eyes and threw my head back to feel his lips on my neck. My ear, my chin and then he came up to kiss me. I heard myself moan against his mouth as the kiss deepened and became more frantic. His hands trailed down over my body coming to rest on my breasts. Suddenly I was naked too. His hand went further down until I felt it between my legs, pushing them apart and then-

I moaned at the intense feeling and closed my eyes. I could feel all my usual control melting into the sand beneath me, as he slid his body between my legs. Some version of myself brazenly grabbed him and pushed him inside me as hard as I could...

"OH GOD!" I almost half shouted the word. The sound jolted me up and...

wait... jolted me up out of my seat. The plane seat. The seat I had been sitting in this whole time. I looked around and a few eyes were on me.

"Hey!" my neighbor sat up and rubbed his elbow.

"Sorry... I didn't mean to, I just...." I couldn't finish the sentence and quickly turned away from him before he noticed the luminous red color of my cheeks.

What the hell had just happened? I'd just had a sex dream. Me? Of all the people in the world...

After that the rest of the flight felt torturous. It was almost impossible to stop thinking about the dream, and him and his eyes...

"Have sex with me. Sex... yes. With me... Now!"

By the time I landed I was so exhausted from trying to push thoughts of him out of my mind. I still felt like I needed a shower and was desperate to get to my hotel room and crash.

I collected my bags, walked out into the airport and looked around. People were holding up placards with names on them, but my name was nowhere in sight. The plane was half an hour early, so maybe he wasn't here yet. I put my bags down and started to scan the crowd.

When you've gone overseas a few times, you start to notice the kinds of people that travel. There are the happy holidaymakers, young backpacker students, and the pensioner's with purple rinses going on those group tours.

But there also seemed to be another type here...the attractive single, older woman. She was already tanned, regardless of whether it was winter back home or not. Skirts short, tops low. Their hair and make-up was perfect, despite the long flight and they all seemed to have a kind of hunger in their eyes. Perhaps these were the recently divorced women, looking for a hot young Greek holiday fling. What a cliché. I continued to scan the crowd, trying to pick out more of these cougars on the hunt when...

It was... but that was impossible. So totally impossible.

I was still on the plane dreaming. I was fast asleep in my chair while my subconscious was running rampant. Only, I knew I wasn't.

It was him. Advert man.