Her breath was trapped in her throat as she watched him walk back into the bedroom, carelessly, casually naked, and a riot of sensations and emotions stormed through her body. His eyes were unreadable, his face set into an expression she couldn’t even begin to fathom. And then her heart skipped a beat as he climbed back into bed, and she realised that he had just been getting rid of the condom.
Gazing down at his muscular body, she felt her skin grow warm. She was not quite embarrassed, but a little shy at her naivety. And at his nudity. He was just so big and masculine and naked.
And still aroused.
She felt her body ripple back to life.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Achileas asked.
He was looking down at her, his blue eyes intent on her face. She tried to smile, to distance herself from the ache in her breasts and the flare of heat between her thighs.
‘I was just thinking that now I understand what all the fuss is about.’ They were lying close together. Close enough that she could feel the furnace heat of his skin, and better still breathe in his delicious maleness. ‘I didn’t before.’
He tipped his head back, his mouth curling into a question mark. ‘Fuss about what?’
‘Sex.’ She bit her lip. ‘I didn’t get what people meant. But now I can see why they say it makes the world go round.’
The corners of his mouth tugged upwards. ‘I think you’ll find that’s money.’
She pulled in a breath, lost in his smile. He was right, it was money, but her brain didn’t seem to be working properly.
Fighting to keep her voice casual, she said, ‘So what do they say about sex?’
He reached out and brushed her hair away from her breast, letting his hand graze against the nipple until it hardened.
‘I don’t know and I don’t care what they say. I only care about what you say. What you want.’ His teasing smile faded and slowly he trailed his fingertips from her aching breast down over the curve of her hip to the triangle of hair between her thighs. ‘What you like.’
She stared up at him in silence. That was easy: she liked him.
A lot.
Too much.
But this was just how people talked about sex, wasn’t it?
He wasn’t being serious.
Was he?
Suddenly she wished she knew more...had experienced more. Like Tamara and all those other women from his world. She knew so little about how sex worked, so little about this kind of intimate moment.
Her shoulders shifted. But she did know that there had already been too many lies in her life, too many hidden truths. She knew, too, that she wanted his hand to keep sliding over her skin.
So why not take a risk tinier than the last?
She cleared her throat. ‘I like it when you touch me.’
His eyes on hers were dark and unreadable and she felt a wildness inside her, both hope and panic, as the silence stretched between them. And then he moved closer and kissed her softly...so softly that his lips barely whispered against hers. And yet she could feel the heat beneath, and the power. Always the power.
‘I like it too.’ His voice was rough sounding, as if it was an effort to admit it even to himself, and then his hands moved to her back, and he drew her closer. ‘And I’d like to keep touching you, and for you to keep touching me.’
She stared at him mutely, shaking his words like a gold prospector, turning them over, sifting them, sieving them inside her head.
A short time ago she had been living on her own, living half a life in her tiny London flat. Now she was on an island, a private island in the middle of the Aegean, sharing a bed with a man. And not just a bed; she knew what Achileas’s hard body felt like inside hers and the speed of change made her feel dizzy.
Her eyes skimmed back and forth over the smooth, contours of his chest and stomach, dipping lower with each pass. Years of living with the unknown had made her fear uncertainty, and she knew that to keep touching him would have unknowable consequences.
But right now, here in this moment, not touching him again was unthinkable.