Then, with a susurration of her name, he moved.
And her body answered him.
She cried out. She could not help it—could not stop herself. Cried out as the drowning sweetness flushed through her until every cell was honeyed, every pore dissolved, and her whole body was drenched. The sweetness went on and on and on. He was there too, his body surging into her, and she heard him cry out with her. And then it was ebbing—ebbing away. The sweetness drained from her until all that was left was the utter exhaustion of her limbs, only lassitude. His body was heavy on hers, and he rolled them sideways so that she was in his arms, and he in hers, their bodies still melded, still complete. Her eyelids were so very, very heavy, her body sweet and warm. She folded against him, clasped to him, her hair swathing him, her head against his shoulder. Her breathing slowed, her heartbeat slowed, her eyelids fluttered shut and soon she was still, sleeping in his embrace.
Dim light pressed with skimming fingertips against her eyelids, fluttering them open. For a moment she was alone, as she had been for so long, and then, as if in a mirage, she realised she was in Nikos’s arms.
And they had made love.
Happiness welled through her. How it had happened she did not care—nor why. It had happened, that was all, and she was here, and he was with her. Her hands could press against the warm, hard wall of his chest, feel the rise and fall of it, feel the soft rhythm of his breath. She could open her eyes and see, in the dim dawn light, the beautiful contours of his face, his sable hair feathering on his brow, his long, long lashes swept down over his eyes.
And know, with a wonder that was like a piercing pain, that she was experiencing something that she had never, ever experienced in her life.
I never lay in his arms, I never woke in his arms.
But this time—this time that had been granted to her!
This is how it should have been—
Her mind tried to sheer away, to block out the terrible memories that suddenly, instantly, were there inside her head, vivid and anguished. Humiliating and poisonous.
S
haming.
Cold iced through her. The warmth of Nikos’s arms was gone. Blindly she stared out into the room.
And slowly, very, very slowly, as if a terrible, unbearable weight was crushing down on her, she knew what she must do.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘YOU do realise there’s a recession, don’t you?’
The voice of the woman in the Job Centre was sharp, impatient. Sophie knew why. She’d walked out of a perfectly good job, for no reason the woman could see—a jaunt to the countryside hardly counted—and now she was back again, wanting another job just like that.
‘I’m willing to take anything,’ Sophie said, her voice low.
Anxiety pressed at her. Although the cheque from Nikos was buying her blessed time, she had to start earning again as soon as she possibly could.
But she should not have thought of that cheque.
Nor of Nikos.
Like a guillotine, her mind slammed shut. A steel door rammed down across her memory. It took every ounce of her strength to hold it in place.
Focus—that’s all you have to do! Focus on the only thing that matters now: getting another job. Any job.
The woman at the Job Centre was scrolling down her computer screen. ‘There really is very little,’ she said, disapproval still emanating from her. ‘If you could type it might be different, but as it is you have no marketable skills.’
Sophie knew. Had known it for four bitter years. No marketable skills, and no time to acquire any. No time to do anything other than work all the hours she could, for whatever wages she could.
The woman sat back, defeated. ‘You’ll have to come in tomorrow. There may be more then. All that’s on the database is casual bar work, and you said you didn’t want that.’
No, Sophie didn’t want that. She’d tried it once and found the inevitable sexual harassment repellent. Since then she’d stuck to shop work, which could run on into the evenings. But now she knew she had no leg to stand on in being picky about bar work. Not after she’d been prepared to work as an escort…
Even if she had denied the true nature of the work Nikos had been right.
But she couldn’t think of Nikos. Absolutely, totally must not think of him. She looked across at the woman. Her expression was bleak.