Breathing deeply, his nostrils flaring, he put his hands to her face and removed her glasses.
The world became a blur, yet somehow Theo remained solid.
As desperately as she had tried to forget him, he’d always remained solid in her mind. In her dreams.
This was her last chance to back away and put a stop to this madness...
But there was no turning back. Not for her. Theo was a devil built of fire and passion. Broken dreams lay smashed between them, but this was one dream she didn’t need or want to deny.
She placed a hand to his chest. The strong thud of his heart pounded against her palm. Helena filled her lungs with the woody scent that had always delighted her senses so much.
Placing her other hand against his strong neck, she closed her eyes and stepped into Theo’s fire.
Later, she would forget whose lips claimed whose first. She would forget everything but the shock of heat that crashed through her to find their lips locked together, because at that first kiss she dissolved.
Her senses went into full-blown overload. Her mouth filled with Theo’s dark taste, her airways filled with his scent, her ears soaked in every swipe of their ravenous tongues and every crackle of fabric from their groping hands as they tore at each other’s clothes.
Buttons popped, buckles snapped, zips purred...every sound filled her as much as the furnace of heat firing through her veins and bones.
His mouth broke from her lips, swept over her cheeks and down to her neck, sending sensation dancing over her skin. He tugged her trousers and underwear down, then lowered himself to his knees. Catching the hem of her cami-top, he raised it over her breasts and slid a hand round her back to unclasp her bra. Helena took care of the rest, throwing the top over her head and impatiently shrugging the bra off, then almost lost control of her limbs when he greedily covered one of her breasts with his mouth. She gasped his name and cradled his head tightly, savouring every lick and every suck of attention to her sensitised flesh.
When he abandoned her aching breasts and moved lower to kiss her belly, memories flooded her of all the times he’d pleasured her with his mouth. He’d brought her to orgasm so many times...but never in the way she’d craved. She’d wanted Theo inside her. She’d wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything.
Digging her fingers into his cheeks, she stopped him just as his mouth reached the top of her pubis, and sank to her knees.
Questions rang from his pulsating eyes. She answered by covering his mouth and kissing him hard, fusing their torsos together again so her naked breasts were crushed against his chest...
He still had his top on.
This time, Helena broke the kiss and pulled at his polo shirt. She wanted to see him naked. She wanted to feel the hardness of his body beneath her fingertips and mouth. He raised his arms, enabling her to pull the shirt off.
The wildness that had become such an intrinsic part of her when they’d been in love scratched beneath her skin for release. Too far gone for caution, she set it free.
In a tumble of arms, they fell onto the thick, soft carpet, mouths fused, both of them tugging at his shorts. Legs kicked, feet scraped and soon Theo was as naked as she. How she’d loved to inhale the scent of his wonderful hard, muscular chest and run her fingers through the smattering of dark hair that surrounded his navel. It felt as if she’d waited a lifetime to touch and smell him again, waited a lifetime for this moment.
There was a fever in Theo’s blood he’d never known before. This was beyond sanity. All those nights he’d held off from making love to Helena, all those nights after regretting his chivalry...and still something inside him, a ghost of the Theo who had worshipped the ground this woman walked on, urged him to hold back.
Hold back for what? This was everything he wanted, right here, right now in Helena’s arms, melting into her soft curves, the weight of her generous breasts pressed against him.
This was the moment dreams were made of and he was not going to be so foolish as to let it go, not when the hunger in Helena’s eyes, her kisses, her touch matched the hunger thrumming through him.
In one sudden movement, he rolled her onto her back and gazed down at her beautiful face as he positioned himself between her legs.
She stared back at him, her eyes as molten as the blood in his veins.
The breaths coming from her kiss-bruised lips were ragged. Desire coloured her high cheekbones.
There was nothing—nothing—to stop him giving her what she wanted...and what he wanted.
Still gazing into her eyes, he placed his hands on her thighs and parted them, allowing his arousal access right where it needed to be.
Theos, she was trembling. He was trembling.
Bowing his head to ravage her mouth, he closed his eyes and drove himself as deep as he could go inside her. Theos, she was tighter than he’d envisaged...
But, as a pleasure he’d never known before suffused him, a part of his brain woke up, needling him that something was wrong. It took a beat to understand what that something was.
It was the suck of air Helena had taken when he’d driven into her. The slight resistance...
Surely not?
But then she shifted beneath him, her lips found his, her warm hands cradled his head and she was urging him with her body to finish what he’d started and all his thoughts flew away as he succumbed to the pleasure of making love to this ravishing woman.
Helena felt as if she was dancing in Theo’s flames. The flames licked through her, stoking the furnace of pleasure, reducing to ashes the small sting of pain she’d felt when he’d first entered her.
The chemistry between them had always been so strong that she’d known making love would be wonderful but she’d never known it would be like this, that he would fill her so completely or that the strokes he made as he thrust deeply inside her would bring to life so many new sensations. Pulses of sunshine careered through her, a pleasure she felt from the tips of her fingers to the pads of her toes.
Finally, she understood why making love to Theo had been so important to her. She’d been a virgin but she’d known instinctively that this would be the ultimate act of closeness between them, a fusion of two bodies, a fusion between herself and the man she loved...
She didn’t want it to end but the pleasure was just too new and intense to hold back. She was climbing a roller coaster and the exhilarating plunge was in sight. Raising her thighs higher to allow him even deeper penetration, she hooked her ankles around Theo’s pounding, tight buttocks, gasping his name over and over until the roller coaster ran out of track and suddenly she wasn’t plunging but soaring, flying like a bird over the clouds. She grasped at Theo’s sweat-slicked skin and damp hair, his velvet groans soaking her ears and increasing the pleasure until she reached the rainbow and burst through it right at the moment he made one final thrust and, with a long, strangled noise, collapsed on top of her.
The loud beats of his heart thudded in his ears and tremors racked his body. Theo tried desperately to reach for something concrete, anything that would pull him back to a reality that felt as distant as his childhood. But, even as the strength of his orgasm abated, his senses remained filled with Helena. That was her neck his face was buried in, her sweet, soft skin beneath his mouth, the blood of her life a pulse beating against his cheek. That was her heart thudding so heavily against the beat of his own battered heart. Those were her fingers making soft swirls over his back, her mouth pressed against the top of his head. And that was her slick warmth he was buried so deep inside. He wanted to stay right there and savour this most incredible moment for ever.
Never in his life had he felt such closeness to another person. Never had he been unsure where he ended and another began.
Theos, he had known it would be good between them, but this...
His eyes snapped open as he remembered the sensations and the
notion that had entered his head as he had first entered her.
It took more effort than he would have believed to raise himself onto an elbow so he could stare into her dark eyes. There was a dazed quality to them he knew must be mimicked in his own.
He cleared his throat, but before he could speak his phone rang, the ring tone telling him it was Dion.
Swearing under his breath, Theo rolled off her and groped for his shorts. He answered it just before it went to voicemail.
‘Nai?’ he said shortly. Theos, he was having difficulty catching his breath.
He forced his drumming ears to listen closely then disconnected the call.
Running his hands through his hair, he took another deep breath and got to his feet.
‘The stylist is here,’ he said, not looking at Helena, who sat up and backed herself against the wall as he stepped into his shorts. ‘Do you want to shower?’
‘What?’ she croaked.
‘Do you want to take a shower before I send the stylist to you?’
She blinked a number of times. Her glasses were on the floor where he’d unthinkingly discarded them. Theo picked them up and handed them to her.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. She made no effort to put them on.
‘And the shower?’
She nodded in answer.
‘I will have her sent up in twenty minutes. Let Dion or any other member of staff know if you need anything.’
Dazed eyes still held his. He’d never believed Helena could look more beautiful, but with the stain of their lovemaking still high on her cheeks, her lips bruised like an overripe strawberry and her hair mussed, his heart bloomed as if he were gazing at a masterpiece.
A thought occurred to him that immediately sent ice up his spine. He had to clear his throat to vocalise it. ‘Protection. We didn’t...’
‘I’m still on the pill,’ she said in the same whisper.
He closed his eyes and nodded. Helena had put herself on the pill days before he’d taken her to Sidiro, laughingly saying that when she tempted him into making love to her, they would be protected.
Even then, so early in their relationship, he’d found the woman he wanted to bear his children.
The compulsion to haul her to her feet, carry her to the bed and then hold her so tightly in his arms that they became fused as one again was so strong that he took a step back.
He was not supposed to feel like this. This was supposed to be a moment of great satisfaction, the fulfilment of his fantasies, the first act in shedding the cloak of humiliation he’d worn since he’d been forced to tell their hundreds of guests that the wedding was off.
This was not how he’d envisaged making love to her for the first time. In his old fantasies, when he’d believed their first time would be the first of a lifetime of lovemaking, he’d dreamed of taking it so slowly that when the moment came for him to take possession of her she would feel nothing but exquisite pleasure. Later, after their relationship had detonated, his fantasies evolved. Knowing that, should they come true, he would no longer be her first, he wouldn’t have to take things gently. He would still take it slowly though. Oh, yes, in his fantasies he would still make her putty in his hands and have her begging for him to take her before finally sinking deep inside her and eradicating the thought of every man who’d come before him from her mind. But not like this. Not as a wild frenzy on the bedroom floor. He wasn’t supposed to lose control of himself.
Desperate to get air into his constricted lungs, Theo strode to the door. Before leaving, he looked one more time at the ravishing beauty now standing by the bathroom door.
Naked as she was, she could be Artemis. But Artemis would not be looking at him with a wary vulnerability that made his heart ache.
Softening his voice, he said, ‘I will see you soon, matia mou.’
The wary vulnerability lifted. Smiling in response, she entered the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
Theo’s smile had never been further away than on the walk he took to his swimming pool.
A swim would clear his mind. A long swim during which he could rearrange his shattered thoughts and try to make sense of what he knew to be a truth.
That, until they had made love on her bedroom floor, Helena had still been a virgin.
CHAPTER TEN
HELENA LEFT HER bedroom feeling as if she’d slipped into a dream.
There had been little time to reflect on the explosion of passion that had consumed them. No sooner had she taken a hurried shower than the stylist and her two assistants had arrived to turn her into a princess for the evening.
The thrum of their lovemaking had still been there in her veins while she’d been pampered and preened. She’d longed to send the women away and have the luxury of composing her thoughts before she had to face Theo again.
All those years ago she’d longed for the complete fulfilment she’d known could only come from his lovemaking. It had been beautiful. It had been everything she’d dreamed it could be.
She had not an ounce of regret.
It was Theo’s reaction that played on her mind.
She’d expected him to crow, not in a nasty way but in a Theo way, in a way that involved him making quips about his own prowess and implying without any subtlety whatsoever that this was what she’d been missing out on all these years.
She hadn’t expected him to just...leave. Not a single comment, not a solitary wink. He hadn’t even strutted out of the room.
He’d looked as dazed as she’d felt.
Helena supposed she should be thankful the stylists were there to distract her, otherwise she’d have her knickers in a twist about where they were going. The palace!
If Theo had planned this in advance, he’d been wise to keep it a secret. Not only was he taking her to her favourite place on earth but, as this was a VIP thing, many of his friends would be there too. She’d always felt gauche in their company. They were all so sophisticated, especially the women, all of whom she’d wondered if they’d shared Theo’s bed. She’d sensed the antipathy towards her, from his friends of both sexes. Theo had playfully accused her of being insecure, which had accounted for some of her feelings, she knew, but she’d also known it had run deeper than that. Whether his friends saw her as a threat who was going to steal the life and soul of the party from them or if they merely disapproved of a non-socialite joining the gang, she’d never been able to discern.
That was why she’d loved their time on Sidiro so much, she remembered wistfully. There, for a whole glorious month, it had been just them, the sun and the sea and like-minded people loving life without any airs, graces or fancies.
At the end of the corridor was a full-length mirror. Taking one final look at her reflection, she reminded herself that she was not the same naïve young woman who’d felt so out of her depth before. She was strong now. She could hold her own. She would not feel intimidated. She had nothing to feel jealous about.
Despite all these tough words to herself, she descended the stairs with her heart in her throat and legs shaking so hard that she clung to the gold bannister to keep herself upright.
* * *
Theo heard light footsteps nearing the veranda. Every one of his senses immediately set itself on high alert.
Holding his glass of Scotch firmly in his hand, he rose to his feet and braced himself for Helena’s appearance.
His own appearance had taken him thirty minutes to master. It had entailed a shower, a shave of his neck—he’d decided to grow his beard—the donning of a dapper suit and the artful mussing of his hair. The rest of his time had been spent reading his PA’s business report, a daily briefing she sent at the end of every working day. Usually he would fire back observations or instructions to be carried out, but he’d had a hard enough time concentrating on the report, having to read it numerous times for the words to sink in, wit
hout finding the intelligence needed to reply.
The only place his mind wanted to go was reliving every moment of making love to Helena. The harder he tried not to think about it, the more the images pushed into the forefront of his mind. It was a form of mental torture.
He’d expected it to be explosive between them but there had been a part of him expecting it to be anti-climactic. After all, the build-up through the years had taken such weight in his mind that nothing could live up to it. But it had. More than lived up to it.
He could revel in the buzz still alight on his skin were it not for the emotions that had erupted beneath it. Emotions had never been part of the plan.
Damn it, she wasn’t supposed to have remained a virgin.
The footsteps grew louder.
He sucked in a breath and braced himself.
With the early evening sun blazing down on her like gold dust, Helena stepped onto the veranda.
Theo sucked in another breath.
She’d foregone her glasses—she had always carried contact lenses ‘just in case’—leaving her beautiful face free from obstruction.
She glowed. Her golden skin had a luminescence he’d never seen before. Her dark hair shone, artfully knotted at the nape of her neck, not a strand displaced. The professionally applied sultry make-up glimmered. The silk of her dress gleamed.
‘Well?’ she asked shyly, spreading her hands out. ‘Will I do?’
He cleared his throat and nodded. ‘You look beautiful.’
So beautiful it felt as if his heart had been punched.
* * *
Agon’s royal palace was an architect’s dream, as colourful as the lives of the people who inhabited it. Its influences ranged from Turkish to French, blended to create a vast wonderland that rivalled Buckingham Palace for size. Helena distinctly remembered driving to her grandparents’ home from the airport in Agon as a small child, her heart soaring with wonder to see the colourful turrets in the distance. As soon as they’d arrived she’d begged for paper and colouring pencils and immediately set about drawing it. That was her first ever attempt to draw a building and it had ignited a lifelong love of both the palace and the architecture behind it.
His Greek Wedding Night Debt (Passion In Paradise Book 10) Page 10