Just looking at him, standing there shamelessly aroused, took her to the brink.
Ezio brought her back to that place several times as he spent time moving down her body, touching her everywhere, his mouth and fingers finding secret places and nerve-endings where she hadn’t known they existed.
When he did slide between her parted legs, his kisses tasted of her.
‘Theos, you are so tight and wet,’ he groaned, moving slowly until, urged on by her cries, the urgency pumping through him, he thrust in hard, continuing the carnal onslaught until her muscles tightened around him and he let himself go.
It wasn’t until a few moments later as their sweat-slicked bodies lay entwined that he realised what he had done.
Tilda sensed his withdrawal.
She rolled on her stomach to look at his face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, self-recrimination written into the drawn lines of his face.
‘What for?’ He was about to tell he’d slept with someone... She was so convinced that when he did explain, despite the seriousness, she almost laughed.
‘I didn’t use protection. It was...there is not much point saying sorry, is there?’
Tilda pulled herself up into a sitting position.
‘It happened, and I am at least partly to blame, but, well...’ she said, ‘really, it isn’tthattime of my cycle... Well, actually, I’m already really very late, so the likelihood is not zero but low. You might have noticed that I’ve been—’
‘I noticed.’
‘That’s why I went into Athens today—not for retail therapy. I bought a test and it was negative. I’m not pregnant, so you can relax, and as for the future, well...’
He cut across her. ‘But you thought you were?’
‘I was a bit worried,’ she admitted. ‘Though you’ve always been very...considerate.’
‘Not today I wasn’t.’
‘No, well, I suppose these things happen.’
He was suddenly on his feet, dragging on his clothes. ‘Not to me they don’t!’
An icy stone inside her chest, Tilda jumped to her feet and began to pull on her wet swimsuit. She had got the fabric as far as her waist when he turned around. His eyes dropped to the coral-tipped peaks of her breasts before he turned away, murmuring something under his breath.
‘Are you going to tell me what is going on here, Ezio?’
He turned back and she couldn’t believe that this was the same man who had made love to her so tenderly a few minutes ago. His face was like stone.
‘I’m not pregnant.’
‘But if you were it would be my fault. You’re right—it could happen again. I don’t want that responsibility. I am not father material. I’m too selfish...too flawed.’ About the only thing in his favour, the only thing that made him better than his own father, was the fact he didn’t want to hurt her.
Her relief had highlighted his disappointment at the fact that he had tried to bury for so long—that a part of him craved family, connection, all the things he poured scorn on. Now the irony wasshedidn’t want those things either when all he could see was her body growing big with his child. ‘All of this is a result of, well,proximity. You were there and... Honestly, this is an exercise in futility,’ he said. ‘You think it’s going some place, but it isn’t.’
‘You’re not your father, and I’m not that woman who broke your heart. I wouldn’t do that to you, Ezio.’
But I’d do it to you, he thought, bitter self-revulsion showing in his eyes as he delivered his cruel-to-be-kind killer blow. ‘I lovedher, Tilda.’
She reacted as if he’d struck her, but it was the only way he could think of to push her far enough away for him to save her or himself.
‘So this...!’ She gestured down at the hollow they had created on the ground, cold now, but moments ago warm from their body heat. ‘It was just a technical exercise, no heart, no emotion. I don’t believe that... What scares you so much about emotions, Ezio?’
She turned and fled then, not caring how she looked, just not caring about anything. Like a wounded animal, she locked herself in her room and cried... It was dark outside when she stopped.