he said, but his voice sounded so tight and urgent that it was almost as if she had never heard him speak before. She was breathless and wet as he eased the condom on himself with an exaggerated amount of care, as if only by doing that could he hang onto a self-control which seemed perilously close to deserting him. And then he positioned himself over her, that first deep thrust making her moan and his subsequent rhythm making her moan ever more. Until he stopped and a mumbled protest fell from her lips.
‘L-Loukas—’
‘Open your eyes,’ he ordered. ‘Open your eyes and look at me.’
Reluctantly she let her lashes flutter apart to meet his smoky black gaze, afraid of what he might be able to read when all her defences were down. She tried to tell herself that this was what every woman felt when she was having sex with a man, but on some fundamental level she knew that wasn’t true. Because surely it wasn’t normal to feel as if your heart were on fire. As if you wanted to burst with joy. Those were the feelings you associated with love.
But Loukas wasn’t looking for love. The reason he wanted her to open her eyes was to gauge her level of satisfaction, and there was no hiding that.
Her lashes flickered open completely, and he smiled.
‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you like, Jess. Tell me what you want me to do to you.’
She wondered what he expected—a verbal map to indicate just which zones she found most erogenous, or an expressed preference for a different position? But in reality, there was only one thing Jessica wanted Loukas to do to her.
‘Just kiss me,’ she said, because that was the closest she could get to asking him to love her.
BE CAREFUL WHAT you wish for.
Jessica stood at her bedroom window, watching Loukas in the garden below as he chopped logs and added them to the growing pile. It made for a compelling image. His strong arms swung in an arc as the blade splintered into the wood—drawing attention to the honed definition of muscles rippling across his shoulders and his broad back.
Her throat dried. How many times had she longed for a scenario like this, in those lonely moments when her fantasies about him wouldn’t respond to censorship, no matter how hard she’d tried? She’d dreamed of Loukas being back in her life and in her bed—with the freedom to conduct their relationship openly in a way which had never been possible before. And now she had it. No more moments of passion sandwiched in between the strictures of her career and the demands of his billionaire boss. Now he was the billionaire—although she no longer had a career, she thought wryly. Still. It should have been great. It should have been almost perfect.
So why the questions which still whirled around in her mind, which felt as if they had no real answers?
Ever since he’d moved into her Cornish cottage, they’d behaved like a couple. They’d done stuff. The normal stuff which other people did. They’d cooked dinner and shopped for food, and at first it had been disorientating to see Loukas in the local store, standing among all the villagers and the occasional tourist. People stopped what they were doing and turned to look at him and it was easy to see why. With his leather jacket and faded jeans, he looked larger than life—tall and indomitable. A dark, head-turning presence who seemed to come from a very different world.
Because he had. That was exactly what he had done. He’d known violence, rejection, pain and despair and those things had given him an edge which marked him out from other men. No wonder everyone else had always seemed so pale and so tame in comparison. No wonder no other man had ever been able to coax her into his bed.
Very quickly Jessica discovered that she liked having him around. She liked being part of a couple and doing coupley things. It made life more interesting to have a man to watch a scary film with, and play the old-fashioned board games which she taught him and which he was soon winning. She liked the feel of his warm, naked body when she got into bed at night and his arms wrapped around her waist when she woke up in the morning. She liked knowing they could make love whenever and wherever they liked.
But she was also aware of the subtle boundaries which surrounded them. The unspoken, instinctive restrictions. They never talked about the future and they never used the word love. He might have seamlessly slotted into having a home, but it still felt like her home, not his. As if he had invested nothing in it, nor was he planning to. Of course he hadn’t. Because, when she stopped to think about it for long enough, could she really imagine Loukas Sarantos living the rest of his life in some rural Cornish outlet?
And despite his intention to delegate, his other life soon began to snap around at his heels, like a puppy demanding to be played with. It started with the odd phone call here and there and the beginning of a mounting pile of emails which needed to be dealt with. Soon there were conference calls, which he told her he had to take.
Jessica usually absented herself for those. She would go out into the garden, hearing his deep voice drifting through the open window—often speaking Greek—while she stared down at the bare soil and wondered when the first daffodils would push through and show that spring was nearly here.
She had just straightened up from plucking a weed from the ground after one such call, when she felt the warm caress of Loukas’s hand splaying over her denim-covered buttock and she gave a little shiver of pleasure.
She threw the weed onto the compost heap. ‘Everything okay?’
‘The conference call was fine. And then my brother rang.’ There was a pause. ‘My twin.’
Jessica turned around, hearing his deliberate emphasis of the word and knowing just why he did that. She guessed it was still weird for him to acknowledge that he actually had a twin—the amazingly successful Alek Sarantos. She knew that contact between the two men had been minimal, but maybe that wasn’t so surprising, since neither had known about the other’s existence until they were grown men.
‘How is he?’
He shrugged. ‘He’s okay. Actually, he’s in London.’
‘Oh.’ Wasn’t it stupid that just the mention of the city sounded vaguely ominous, as if it posed some kind of threat? She felt as if his other world—the one she wasn’t part of—was beginning to inch towards them. Her smile didn’t slip. ‘That’s nice.’
‘Mmm. He wants me to have dinner with him. I thought I’d stay up for a few days. Do a little work while I’m there.’ He narrowed his black eyes. ‘You could always come with me.’
She lifted her hand to his face, her fingertips drifting over the sculptured outline of his unshaven jaw and feeling its rough rasp. Yes, she could. She could accompany him to London, a trip which would require a frantic mental inventory about what to wear. She could gatecrash his meeting with his newfound brother and inhibit their burgeoning relationship. She could hang around the Vinoly while he went into the office, or dutifully kill hours doing cultural things with which to impress him when he got home.
She got a sudden scary glimpse of how the future might look, once the initial wild sexual excitement had started to fade. He would probably start making more trips to London and each time he came back, it would be a little harder for them to reconnect. That was how these things worked, wasn’t it? How long before he told her he was moving back
