‘You’re a little mermaid.’
He watched her eyes fill with tears. ‘What...did something happen on your trip to Athens?’
Nothing, except I know I’m not carrying your baby.She had convinced herself, and she’d been so convinced that when the test had come up negative she had repeated it twice before she believed the results—not pregnant, just late.
The tears began to leak and she brushed them away. ‘No, it’s just my dad used to call me that... Oh, hell, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’ She did—she loved him.
‘Oh, Tilda, I’m sorry.’
‘Heavens...’ She sniffed. ‘You have no need to be sorry, you’re just—’ She closed her mouth over the ‘perfect’ she had been about to say and belatedly became aware that the thin wet Lycra of her swimsuit offered very little concealment of her nipples, which had sprouted to pebble-hard prominence. She half-lifted her arms to cover herself, before the utter ridiculousness of her self-consciousness hit her.
This was a man who had seen and explored every inch of her body.
‘What...?’ She watched as he kicked off his shoes.
‘What are you doing? You’re wearing your clothes...’
‘If I find your earring—’
‘That’s not possible...it could be anywhere.’
‘You have freckles,’ he said, brushing a finger across the gold-tinted skin of her nose. ‘If I find it you owe me...’
‘Owe you what?’ He already had her heart and soul; there wasn’t a hell of a lot left, she thought dismally.
His wicked grin glimmered on his bronze face. ‘Oh, I’ll think of something.’
Standing on the shore, a hand shading her eyes, she watched as he waded in until the water was chest-deep before he dived under. He was down so long that she had actually started to wade in herself when he reappeared, his dark hair saturated. He raised a hand and dived straight back under.
It was a process that he repeated, and actually she lost count. She had called out for him to stop several times but, if he’d heard her, he’d ignored her.
She was contemplating swimming out to him to put a stop to this craziness when he reappeared but didn’t go back down. Instead, he struck out strongly for the shore.
He stood up and started to wade towards her, making her think of some sea god rising from the waves. Then as he got closer she saw the glint of something in his hand.
She jumped up and down in the shallows.
‘I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it.’
She waded out to meet him and snatched the earring from his fingers. He caught her by the waist and swung her around.
Held high above him, she curved down and took his face between her hands, raining kisses on his wet brown face. ‘Oh, thank you. I have no idea how... It was impossible... Oh, you beautiful man, Iloveyou!’ The laughter faded from his face. ‘Not literally, obviously.’
The look vanished but she sensed caution in his eyes as he planted her back on her feet. Together they walked up the sand and reached where her possessions lay. Tilda went to bend to retrieve them and stopped as she felt his hands on her breasts, cupping and kneading them through the fabric as he stepped in close, allowing her to feel the full strength of his arousal as he pressed into her back as his thumbs traced the bold projection of her aching nipples.
Her back arched as he continued to massage her breasts and slide his tongue up the length of her exposed neck. He turned her round and she lifted her passion-glazed eyes to his face, mesmerised by the mask of primitive need she saw. He looked almost in pain as he took the earring from her fingers and with elaborate care put it back in her earlobe, leaving behind a million whispering, silken threads of painful sensation.
‘It’s a miracle.’
‘I think you’re a miracle,’ he rasped, and her heartbeat escalated.
He kissed her then, not fiercely, but with deep, drugging kisses that left her feeling limp and languid. Dizzying desire swirled through her as he picked her up and carried her up the beach to where the pines met the sand. There he laid her down gently in the shade.
He knelt there, drinking her in before he slowly slid the straps of her swimsuit down her shoulders. A few seconds later, she was naked.
‘You’re beautiful.’
‘So are you,’ she whispered back, watching through closed eyelids as he stripped off his tee shirt, pulling it over his head to reveal the sleek, hard muscles of his torso. A moment later his wet jeans were gone too.