‘Surely you know you can tell me anything?’
‘Anything?’ Roula checked.
Once she had trusted him in a way that was hard to define. Once she’d been able to share what was on her mind with him, and Galen was inviting her to do so again now.
He had been her first real friend.
Her first dance—well, the first that she’d enjoyed...
And now, for the first time in her life, she wanted a kiss. It felt like a butterfly flitting past, and it was so fleeting, so rare, so impossible, that she was scared the feeling might never come again.
Roula had taken notes on his sex life this afternoon—she knew how little one kiss would mean to him.
Yet it would mean the world to her. To know...
‘I want to be kissed goodnight,’ Roula admitted. ‘Thatis what is on my mind.’
He looked at her. Hell, he had meant her just to tell him about all the drama going on with your brother.
‘You want me to kiss you?’ he checked.
‘Yes, but if you kiss me here, can we end it there? I mean, I won’t ask you in.’
A kiss?
Two weeks ago he would have laughed at the thought of just a kiss—at least on the inside—but he guessed it would be her first since her husband.
‘Sure.’ He was practical. ‘But then we’re done.’
‘Completely.’
Roula felt his hands on her arms and breathed in, in nervous preparation for his mouth. Except it was the softest brush of lips, and she felt as if there must be snow in May, for Athens had become silent.
There was nothing she could liken it to, for it was soft and slow, and yet it made that deep breath pointless, for she was hungry for air when his kiss did not end with that brush of lips.
The pressure of his mouth was a relief, and as his hands moved from her arms to her head she felt his fingers in her thick hair. Then it was Roula who parted her lips, and the slip of his tongue was the most beautiful thing she had ever known.
It was like dancing, and it was like laughing, and it stroked her and gently coaxed her, until her hands were in his hair.
Thiswas how it felt to be kissed, to kiss, to want the touch of another.
His fingers stroked her back and moved to her bra strap—or rather straps, because she felt them linger to check. And then his hand moved down, his arm circling her waist, and for a second she opened her eyes.
His eyes were closed, so Roula returned to the darkness, and the deep, deep kiss, and the citrussy clean scent of him, and the slow thrill of his tongue and the mouth that made her want more.
And then he ended it.
Their mouths shiny and wet, her skin a little raw, they stood, bodies apart, heads together, both breathless.
‘Go in,’ Galen told her, and his voice was a touch uneven.
She knew that in his world they should be up against a wall now, with her legs wrapped around him. Yet for Roula everything felt right with the world.
She stood and savoured her first kiss—well, the first kiss she had enjoyed—simply lingering in the ripe deliciousness of it.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘My pleasure.’ Galen nodded. ‘We might do it again on your leaving day, but not a moment before.’