‘I wish I’d brought bathers,’ Emily said when he came down beside her on the rug. ‘I was in such a mad dash to pack the other night, I didn’t think to put some in.’
‘You won’t need them here,’ Loukas said. ‘I own this cove and it’s completely hidden from the top of the cliff. The nearest road is at least three kilometres away.’
She turned to peer over her shoulder at the cliff path they’d come down, as if expecting to see a cluster of paparazzi with long-range lenses. ‘Are you sure?’
He slid a warm hand down from the middle of her shoulder blades to the dip in her spine, making every muscle in her body sigh with pleasure. ‘I’ve swum down here heaps of times.’
‘Naked?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alone or with someone?’
He picked up a small twig off the rug and tossed it onto the sand near his crossed ankles. ‘Alone. I haven’t brought anyone down here with me before you.’
Emily glanced at him but he was staring at the twig he’d tossed with a part-frown on his face. ‘Why did you bring me?’
He turned his head to look at her, his expression difficult to read. ‘How about that swim? Do you want to have lunch or cool off first?’
Emily chewed at her lip. ‘I’ve never swum naked before. What if something bites me? And I have to take my contacts out, unless you happen to have a pair of swimming goggles handy.’
He rummaged in the bag where he’d packed towels and sunscreen and handed her a pair of blue goggles. ‘Voilà.’
* * *
Loukas walked hand in hand with Emily to the water, making sure she didn’t lose her footing on the hot sand. She kept grinning up at him like a kid who had been given permission to do something that was decidedly wicked. ‘Are you absolutely sure no one can see me? Scout’s honour?’
He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. ‘You’re perfectly safe with me.’ As soon as he said the words, his gut clenched. Was she safe? He had made sure she stayed in bed and rested that morning because he’d read on that website how pregnancy nausea hit hard first thing on an empty stomach. That wretched website was giving him nightmares. So much could go wrong when a woman was pregnant. He had gone online out of curiosity about the process of pregnancy...or so he’d told himself. It was only after he realised how obsessed he was becoming that he understood it had more to do with Emily than with the baby. The baby was important to him in a distant sense, but Emily was present, and had such a potent effect on his senses. Not just his senses. That was the scary part. He was developing a thing about her.
What the hell was a thing?
He had never felt this way before. He kept putting it down to the fact she was pregnant but he couldn’t help feeling it was more than that. He genuinely liked her. She made him smile. Who had ever done that to him before? She was fresh and honest and didn’t live on the surface of life, like some of the women he’d dated. She dug deeper. A little too deep for his liking, but in a way it had been a relief to tell her about the accident. Telling her hadn’t eased his guilt but it had eased his burden. Someone else knew what he felt. Empathised with him.
He had been careful how he’d broached the subject of the pre-nup because he hadn’t wanted to upset her. He had never brought anyone down to his cove before because it was his private sanctuary, but it seemed fitting to share it with Emily and their developing child. He’d had some qualms about her walking down the cliff path but she had done it without even drawing breath. The sun was scorching, and her skin was a lot lighter than his, but he’d lathered her with sunscreen and only just stopped himself from making love to her on the rug because she was feeling so hot.
That was another thing he’d read about pregnancy—the mother shouldn’t let her core body temperature get too high because it could harm the baby.
The baby.
Every time he thought of those two words he would start to imagine their child. Would it look like him? Would it be a girl or boy? Emily wouldn’t show for weeks, if not months, but he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to see their baby on an ultrasound. Would that make it seem more real to see those tiny developing limbs and body? That tiny heartbeat? He wondered what it would be like to see his child born. To hear that first cry. To hold it in his arms for the first time.
What sort of father would he be?
Loukas hadn’t expected to feel anything for the baby at this stage and yet, the more he thought about that tiny developing body, the more he got a warm feeling in his chest.
Almost as warm as the feeling he got when he thought of Emily...
Emily smiled up at him once they were waist-deep in the water. ‘You can let me go now. I won’t fall over.’
‘In a minute.’ He brought her closer so her body was slick and cool and wet as a seal’s against his. ‘There’s something I want to do first.’ He pressed his mouth to hers and she gave a soft whimper of pleasure—the same little whimper that had wreaked such havoc on his control the night of the wedding. Her mouth was like a flower opening, soft and fragrant, and sweet as nectar. Her tongue shyly met his and then became bolder as he deepened the kiss. He held her by the hips, holding against the pounding heat of his body, wanting her so badly it was an ache that dragged at his flesh. She pushed herself even closer, her arms going around his neck, her fingers tugging and releasing his hair as her mouth stayed fused to his.
After a long, blissful moment, he moved his mouth from hers to kiss a pathway down the side of her neck, to the spot below her earlobe that never failed to get a breathless gasp out of her. He used the tip of his tongue around the shell of her ear, tracing the delicate whorls, until she turned her head to press her mouth back to his in a hungry ‘I want you’ kiss that made the blood roar through his veins like a freight train. She reached for him, her soft little hands massaging and stroking him before she brought him to her entrance, raising herself on tiptoes to give him access.
He needed no other invitation.
Loukas was inside her with a thrust that made every hair on his head tingle, her body clutching at him, rippling around him as tight as a fist. She moved with him, her little moans and gasps spurring him on, ramping up his desire until he was fighting not to lose control before he made sure she was satisfied. He slipped one of his hands beneath the water to find the heart of her, taking her over the edge with a few strokes of his fingers. She came apart around him, her body convulsing with pleasure that triggered his own.
The sun beating down on his back, the cool water lapping at their bodies and Emily’s gasping cries of ecstasy brought to the experience an earthy, elemental quality he had never experienced before.