‘He didn’t kiss me—my hand, I mean.’
‘I know what I saw.’
‘Or you saw what he wanted you to see,’ Summer replied, watching him closely. ‘And, even if he had, it was just a kiss,’ she said with a shrug.
‘Just a kiss?’ Theron demanded, horrified. ‘There is no such thing asjust a kiss,’ he said, wondering what inept individuals she had been kissing to say such a thing.
And then she blushed and looked down at the table. And he knew.None.
How was it possible? This beautiful, vibrant, incredible woman and no one had kissed her? He stared at her as she tried to gather herself, understanding that she was embarrassed, and glared off into the ocean to give her a moment’s privacy.
He cursed himself mentally. He’d known she was different from the women he had associated with in the past, but this? This was an innocence that should be well beyond his reach.
Coffee was placed on the table along with plates of baklava and Theron wavered. He desperately wanted to leave, return Summer to her hotel and never look back. But he couldn’t leave her looking like that.
‘He likes you,’ he said to her. When Summer raised eyes full of questions, he explained. ‘The owner. He only ever gives out one piece,’ he said, pointing to the two squares of baklava on her plate.
His answer took away some of the hurt in her eyes and he was thankful. But he still marvelled at her innocence. How she could—
‘The town I grew up in is quite judgemental and, my sisters and I, we have...we have different fathers. So...’ she shrugged, as if that would make all the preconceptions, judgement and sadness he imagined she must have battled as a child just disappear ‘...for the most part people avoided us.’
‘For the most part?’
She frowned, making him want to smooth away the little furrow in her brow. ‘When I was about thirteen, a boy—theboy—at school asked to meet me after class.’ She smiled sadly at herself as if she should have known better. ‘I overheard his friends talking about it. How they wanted to see if I was just like my mother.’
Theron clenched his fists under the table, feeling the anger he’d banked ignite instantly, her experience with bullies and teasing melding a little with some of his own. The fights he’d had, before Lykos.
‘I left him waiting and ignored him and his friends for the rest of the year.’
He tried to let go of it—the anger—the way she seemed to have done.
‘It was easier to stay away from boys like that. And at uni the guys on my course... Well, they tend to be more interested in...’
‘Igneous rock formations?’ he asked, thinking of her studies.
She laughed, as if it was funny that she had so little experience of receiving attention, and his heart broke a little. ‘Yes. Exactly,’ she affirmed.
He nodded. ‘Eat your baklava,’ he commanded.
‘Yes, sir,’ she replied with a smile.
From the first mouthful of the sweet, nutty, sticky dessert she had fallen instantly in love. And through every subsequent bite Theron had sat back in his chair, sipping at his coffee, never once taking his eyes off her.
At first it had made her self-conscious. Her forkfuls had been small, dainty and her eyes low on the table. But then she had lost herself in the tastes and textures of each mouthful, caught herself stifling a moan of sheer delight and risked a glance at Theron, who seemed almost carved from stone. Almost, because there was nothing inert about his eyes. They flashed, sparked, flared, flickered... There was such movement in them she could look at them for ever. She felt them graze over her face, her shoulders, her hands where they picked up the fork, her chest when she sucked in a breath, her neck when she leaned forward to take a sip of coffee, her lips when her tongue smoothed over a drop of syrup. Every single action made her aware of her heart beating in her chest and the low pulse between her legs. Something was building within her, a yearning, a need, and she felt as if she might jump out of her own skin if it wasn’t let loose. She might never have experienced it, but she knew exactly what it was. She put her fork down, giving up on the unfinished dessert because that wasn’t the kind of hunger she felt now.
She knew it. And so did he.
Theron reached across the table and picked up her hand. He brought it towards him and her heart shifted. He cradled it within his palm, the pad of his thumb smoothing imaginary lines on the back of her hand as if slowly, inch by inch, he was erasing the memory of one man and imprinting himself in its place.
He lowered his head and she felt sparks ricochet in the air between his lips and her skin, the vibrations getting quicker and quicker until her heart felt as if it might burst from her chest. As his lips pressed against her skin, her heart missed a beat, her fingers curled in his palm, tightening around his hand and her thighs pulled together. She bit her lip and felt unaccountably angry when he finally released the press of his lips and looked up at her.
Just a kiss?
He had proved her wrong. They both knew it, but in doing so he’d opened a door that she’d never walked through before, never wanted to before. And now...now she feared he might close that door before she’d even tried.
Nowshewas angry. With him because she knew Theron wanted to walk away. With her father for not being there. Angry for him and for the loss of his parents. Angry with her mother for being ill. With everythingnotgoing to plan.
She lurched up from the table, startling him and the other customers with the scratch of the chair legs against the floor, and turned, running down the stairs and out onto the walkway illuminated solely by the light of the moon.