looked down, suddenly embarrassed. ‘I warned you. I get a bit carried away.’
His fingers took hold of her chin, turning it back towards him. ‘No, don’t be embarrassed about being passionate. You make your passion contagious. In fact, I think I know exactly how that volcano felt before it blew.’
And he drew her chin closer at the same time he dipped his head and his mouth met hers.
Something fluttered in her heart as she gave her mouth to his. Something small and indefinable, but like the brush of butterfly wings against her eyelashes. Something insignificant and yet of such import that it seemed her whole world had subtly shifted in a way that had nothing to do with the currents beneath their vessel.
His lips toyed with hers, gentling, caressing, warm breath intermingled, overlaced with the salty scent of the sea, before, slowly, he pulled gently away.
‘Happy?’ he asked, smiling down at her.
And Athena blinked as she looked into his beautiful face. Not because of his question, but because of the answer bubbling up inside her. Because she was happy, honestly truly happy for the first time in what seemed for ever. Because she felt as if she was truly alive. ‘I am.’
‘You sound surprised.’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe just a little.’ She gave a blissful sigh. It was the island, she told herself, for Santorini had once again proved to be her refuge and her saviour. There was a reason she loved this place.
His hand took hers and she felt that zing of excitement, that thrill of connection, she felt every time he touched her, before he lifted it to his lips, and turned it and kissed her palm, his hot tongue stroking it, his dark eyes filled with the promise of dark deeds, sending a delicious thrill coursing through her.
‘I like your bikini,’ he said, his eyes scanning the length of her body without his head shifting, his voice low and thick and vibrating with so much desire it was impossible not to feel aroused. ‘I’m going to enjoy peeling it off.’
Her nipples peaked and hardened as his eyes lingered at her breasts even while his fingers toyed with the tie at her hips, the electric touch of his fingertips setting sparks beneath her skin while his lips came down to meet hers, their heat enough to melt any thought of resistance away. The white bikini had been an impulse decision when he’d suggested sailing today and she’d told him she hadn’t brought a swimsuit. A good one as it turned out. He’d taken her to a boutique and she’d been rifling through the racks of one-pieces when he’d offered her a clutch of bikinis. She’d almost said no outright—she hadn’t worn a two-piece since she’d been that cocksure teen A-lister baring almost everything she had to bare on the Amalfi Coast—but something in his eyes had made her reconsider and agree to try them on.
And that very first one, the white one—she’d seen the heat and hunger as his eyes had roamed her exposed flesh, a hunger that had made her insides tremble with the promise of the forbidden. Not some spoilt son of a newspaper tycoon or shipping magnate looking at her with an overactive libido and clumsy technique, but a man, looking at a woman, and wanting her.
As he wanted her now.
He broke away from the kiss, the curled hairs of his sun-warmed chest kissing her bare skin as it rose and fell with his ragged breathing. ‘We should take this downstairs,’ he said, his heated breath on her face, like an invitation. And in the flutter of her answering heart, she knew it wasn’t just the island that made her so happy. It was this man beside her and the way he made her feel. As if she was special.
As if she deserved to be happy.
And after the despair of the last few weeks, of the shock of learning her estranged father had died, and the remorse she felt for a relationship gone badly wrong, and then the guilt on learning he’d forgiven her without ever letting her know, this man made her feel things might have changed, that her life was on the up.
She went willingly as he tugged her to her feet. Went willingly down through the hatch to the freshly made bed in the spacious cabin lined with glossy timbers with brass fittings. And here he finished what he’d started, tugging at the tie between her breasts, brushing the thin straps over her shoulders and letting her bikini top fall to the floor, before his hands moved to her thighs, untying the bows at her sides until that scrap of material similarly fell to the floor.
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