But he was relentless, until she came against his mouth and he held himself there, delighting in the shift of her muscles, her quivering, pleasure cresting inside him like a blade. With a darkly uttered curse, he moved swiftly then, finally, finally consenting to put his own body from its state of torment, but taking her in one fast, urgent motion, driven by passions and needs that were beyond sense and familiarity.
Control was nonexistent. They were animals, passion their master, pleasure their sole objective.
They moved as one; every shift of his body, every thrust was echoed by a lifting of her hips, a desperate smacking together of their thighs as he drove into her and she sought him, as he pushed deeper, harder, than he’d known possible, and then, his mouth was on her breast, his teeth clamping her nipple and she exploded, her muscles so tight around him that he lost any ability to hold on; he was falling, with her at his side, their cries mingled, their bodies covered in shower water and sweat, cries of sweet release filling the room.
It was interminable.
Leonidas couldn’t have said how long his orgasm lasted, only that it shook him to the center of his being, that he’d never known anything like it.
He stared down at her, trying to make sense of the world again, to piece it back together, even when he doubted he’d ever be able to do such a thing.
It went way beyond logic.
He pulled away, both hating the space and knowing he needed it at the same time, but when he looked at her beautiful body, pink where his stubble had dragged across her skin, where his hands had gripped her, where his mouth had moved, he felt something important change inside of him. He reached down, untying her wrists and a moment later, was lifting her once more, carrying her against his chest.
“What are you doing?” She asked, eyes roaming his face as though she too was desperate to understand what had happened.
“Taking you to bed.”
“We were in bed.”
“Yours is now half full of water,” he pointed out.
She didn’t argue and he was glad. It was easier for her to sleep in his room, with him. Why not a guest room, of which the villa boasted dozens? He couldn’t say. But he wanted her with him, close by, all night long.
Only when she was nuzzled against him, and his arm was weighted across her chest like a band, did he sleep, and it was a sleep flooded with dreams of Mila…
Chapter9
WHEN MORNING BLUSHED THE walls of Leonidas’ room, Mila woke with a strange sense of disorientation that was followed immediately by recollection. There was nothing shameful about sex, not even wildly passionate, animalistic sex such as they’d engaged in the night before, but that wasn’t to say it wasn’t overwhelming. That wasn’t to say she didn’t need time and space to comprehend what had happened between them and more specifically, within her.
His arm was across her like a vice and her body stirred, renewed desire sparking in the pit of her stomach. Slowly, so slowly, she shifted, moving from beneath him, creeping to the edge of the mattress and then pushing her feet onto the floor.
To her delight, her ankle gave barely a hint of complaint. Testing her weight, she moved, towards the door and only when her hand was on the edge of it did she turn, casting a glance over her shoulder with more than a hint of regret.
He slept, when she wanted him to wake and call her back to bed. And would she have gone to him? In a heartbeat.
That thought had her scuttling through the door, breath held, until she was halfway down the corridor. She didn’t allow herself to think until she’d found a private space, a living room that overlooked the glorious rolling vines and fruit orchard to the west of the house. The time was still early and the air filled with pale pink clouds wisping across the azure sky, the sun weak, but promising, she knew, another day of warmth.
With her back pressed against the door, Mila was very still, as memories of the evening before filled her mind, making her gasp with her utter surrender. She had totally given all of herself to Leonidas.
And so what?
Do you trust me?
She had. She did. And she had no regrets, except one. And it wasn’t so much a regret as a fear, creeping through the recesses of her mind, demanding she pause and consider for a moment, because it was impossible to deny the strength of what had happened between them the night before.
Mila didn’t have boyfriends. She didn’t have friends.
For years, she’d focused with single-minded determination on her career, because that was all that mattered to her. It was all that could matter to her. In order to achieve as she was driven to achieve, she had to work out how to ignore the rest of the world.
“Do you know what I could have been if it weren’t for you?”Her mother’s drunken, jeering question twisted inside Mila and she squeezed her eyes shut against the familiar pain of having grown up knowing she was unwanted—that she was the reason her mother’s skating career—and her life—had fallen apart.
Leonidas fundamentally threatened everything Mila had worked towards, everything she felt she owed it to her mother to achieve. He was impossible to blot out and, even more dangerously, when they were together, she didn’t want to. The commitment she’d sworn to her career, her skating life, waned when they were together, and with the power of a solar eclipse, he pushed everything else from her mind.
She felt as though she were trying to hold crumbling earth in the palm of her hand, beneath the weight of a crashing tsunami.
With a start, she moved away from the door and began to stretch, telling herself that she could rediscover her focus, if only she got back into the rhythm of practicing, of remembering all the ways in which skating was a part of her.