Theseus had her hands pinned and her body trapped beneath him before she could take another breath.
‘You’re not sacrificing your life for me but for Toby,’ he snarled, his breath hot on her face.
She could sense his fury, matching hers in its strength. Her blood was pumping so fast it heated her veins to boiling point.
She bucked beneath him, kicking her legs out wildly. ‘Toby is the happiest child in the world! I’ve sacrificed everything to love and care for him and now you want me to throw our lives away just so you can lay claim to him, as if he’s some possession and not a flesh and blood boy.’
‘He’s a prince of Agon and he deserves the protection and everything else that comes with the title.’
Theseus trapped her kicking legs with a thigh. Theos, the shy wallflower he’d met in Illya had more fight in her than he’d ever imagined. Even though his emotions were as intense as he’d ever known them, his body could not help but react to her.
‘If you’re a reflection of the way a prince of Agon turns out then I’d much rather he stays a commoner,’ she spat back.
He gazed down at her, fully pinned beneath him, and took in the fire shooting at him from her beautiful eyes, the heightened colour of her cheeks.
‘No amount of insults will change anything,’ he said roughly. ‘Accept it, agapi mou. You and I are going to marry.’
After all the lies she’d told, she should repulse him. Yet he was far from being repelled.
He’d spent a whole week with this woman’s scent playing to his senses like an orchestra. A whole week fighting his fantasies, fighting his baser instincts.
Now, with her hair fanned out on the sheets like an autumnal cloud, it was like gazing down at the Venus de Milo. And as he stared the fire blazing from her eyes suddenly burned in a wholly different manner, her look turning from hate to confusion to desire.
She stilled, her body’s only movement her heaving chest.
He ached for her.
They were going to marry. There was nothing to stop them acting on their desires. There was no need to fight any longer.
He brought his mouth down at the same moment she raised her face to his, bringing them together in a mesh of lips and tongues and merging breath.
Their kisses were hard, almost cruel, all pleasure and pain at once. Everything rushed out of him, leaving behind only the desire that had held him in its tightening grip since she’d walked into the palace.
He had no recollection of releasing her hands, but a groan ripped through him when her fingers found his scalp and dug into it, her nails grazing through his hair and scratching down his neck.
There was no slow burn. Every inch of flesh she touched became scorched, and his hunger for her accelerated in a rush of blood that burned. Everything burned.
He pulled away to stare at her, taking in the dilation of her pupils and the heightened colour of her cheeks.
He wanted to drown in her.
Touching her, holding her... Whatever deceptions there had been between them, this hunger couldn’t be faked.
He straddled her thighs and pulled his shirt over his head, too impatient to bother with the buttons. No sooner had he thrown it to the floor than her hands were flat on his chest, spreading all over him, her touch penetrating through to his veins.
It had been like this on Illya; his desire for her so instantaneous and combustible that one touch had blinded him to everything else. It had turned from nothing to the deepest desire he had ever known.
And that had been nothing compared to the way he felt at this moment.
Had he been naked he would already be buried deep inside her.
From the darkness in Jo’s eyes, her short ragged breaths, the way her hands roamed his chest as if she needed to touch him, he could tell this desire was just as flammable for her too.
Wordlessly she lifted herself, enough for him to bunch her T-shirt up to her waist and slide it off, just as he’d done once before. As he pulled it free her russet hair fell down with the motion, sprawling over her naked shoulders and spilling out over the breasts he’d spent the past week wishing he could remember with the same clarity he remembered everything else. They were better than anything his imagination could have conjured, the nipples a dark, tempting pink.
She lay down, her smouldering eyes never leaving his face. He swooped in to kiss her again, needing to feel the sweetness of her lips merging with his own. Her arms wrapped tightly around him and her legs bucked, this time not to throw him off but in an attempt to part and wrap around him.
He shifted so the weight of his thighs was no longer trapping her and propped himself up on an elbow to gaze at her.