She did this to him. Just as he did it to her.
Reaching him, she stood before him and let her eyes drift over the magnificent body that Takis himself would struggle to replicate in all its beautiful glory.
Carve Theo in marble and put him on a plinth and she would worship it.
The Theo before her was flesh and bone.
Staring deep into his eyes, she put her hands to his warm face and gently stroked the developing beard and the contrasting smooth skin of his cheekbones.
His throat moved but he made no effort to touch her back.
His Greek Wedding Night Debt His Greek Wedding Night Debt, she drifted her fingers down his neck then spread her hands out on his chest, over the fine hair that covered it, rubbing her thumbs over his flat, brown nipples then moving them down to his hard abdomen, gradually lowering herself to her knees as she went.
Now placed between his legs, she looked back up into his eyes.
Not a word was exchanged. None were needed.
She undid the button of his shorts. The thick, dark hair she was greeted with revealed he’d not bothered with underwear.
In that instant she was thrown back to their original time on Sidiro when he’d only donned shorts to spare everyone else’s blushes. When it was just the two of them, he’d stayed naked. And so had she.
How had he found the strength to keep denying her all those years ago? Denying them both?
He raised his buttocks to allow her to tug the shorts down his hips. The movement was enough to make his erection spring free and reveal itself in all its glory.
After pulling his shorts down to his feet, she took his arousal in her hand. Long, thick and as smooth as velvet... Yes. Glorious.
He was glorious.
He was everything. He always had been.
His breaths shallowed. When she bent her head and licked the tip of his erection, he groaned. It was a sound that only served to stoke the heat building inside her.
She took as much of him into her mouth as she could manage, and revelled to hear her name escape from his lips.
Giving him pleasure had always turned her on as much as his giving her pleasure had. There was something incredible in witnessing the great Theo Nikolaidis lose control and know that loss was because of her. To know that everything he made her feel was shared. He felt it all too.
Theo was losing his mind. Helena had turned the tables on him, bringing to life his fantasy and sucker-punching him in the process.
She’d performed this intimacy on him before, many times, but never had it felt like this. Her soft moans as she licked and sucked him were like music vibrating in his senses.
Theos, this was incredible...but it wasn’t enough. He wanted to feel her soft skin pressed against his.
Gritting his teeth, he lifted his head and groped for her face.
She looked up at him, colour high on her cheeks, eyes molten.
‘I want to be inside you,’ he said through ragged breaths.
A dreamy smile spread over her face. ‘Not yet.’ And then she took him back in her mouth.
‘Helena...’ But his groan tapered into nothing, for she was cupping his balls and squeezing them, oh, so gently.
Holding off from taking full possession of her three years ago hadn’t been this torturous. But then, three years ago he’d never experienced the exquisite pleasure of being inside her, never experienced the closeness and wonder he now craved with every fibre of his being.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Theo fought to hold on, but release fought equally hard. Just as he feared he was losing the battle, Helena moved from his arousal to drag her tongue up over his abdomen and chest and climb up to straddle him.
Hands on his shoulders, her breaths shallow, she gazed into his eyes.
Unable to take any more, Theo wound his hand into her hair and pulled her down for a kiss of such savage passion that when she finally sank onto his length, their moans caught in their tongues.
After a moment of stillness, she began to move.
Hands cradling his head, she teased her breasts against his face. He caught one in his mouth.
Still cradling him tightly, Helena threw her head back and arched her spine. The sensations wrought from his tongue and mouth only added to the fire blazing within her.
His strong arm wrapped around her, he held her securely. When she looked into his eyes she saw such a mixture of emotions reflecting back at her that the sensations deepened, strengthened, until all she could see was Theo, all she could feel was Theo, all she could taste, hear...everything was him.
And, when her orgasm ripped through her and she ground down so tightly on him and held him so closely and felt his own orgasm in response, all she could think was that she’d found heaven.
Theo had unlocked heaven for her and in it she had found only him.
* * *
‘What are you doing?’ Theo asked as he entered his yacht’s dining room the next weekend. He’d woken to an empty bed and immediately set off in search of Helena.
Dressed in only a silk kimono—see, dreams did come true!—she was sitting with her head bent over an English newspaper he’d picked up for her the day before during a short trip to Athens.
‘Nothing,’ she said with suspicious innocence.
‘Is that a crossword?’
‘No...’
‘You minx.’ He shot an arm out to snatch it from her but she was too quick. She hugged it to her chest with a cackle of laughter.
It was a sound that immediately threw him back three years to a time when one of them would sneak downstairs early to grab the morning paper while the other slept, and dive straight to the crossword. Nothing made either of them smugger than completing it in one sitting before the other woke up. They’d been as bad as each other. Neither was averse to hiding the offending crossword within their clothing to stop the other getting to it, which in itself had led to wrestling, which had then led to peals of laughter, quickly followed by intimacies...
How could something as boring and simple as a crossword bring such laughter? And who else apart from Helena could he laugh with over a crossword? She’d introduced him to a side of himself he’d never explored before. It was Helena’s influence that had made him see art with new eyes, to appreciate it, to seek it, to covet it. The only area her influence had failed was with poetry. It bored him rigid—apart from her own poems, of course. They were mercifully short and always contained a riddle for him to solve. Those poems were a language only the two of them knew.
Theo had brought fun into Helena’s life and opened her mind to the pleasure life could give. She had opened his mind in other ways. They had complemented each other perfectly. Together, they had been perfect.
When he saw melancholy replace the laughter in her eyes, he knew the same memories were playing in her mind too.
* * *
The moment Sidiro appeared on the horizon, the tightness in Theo’s chest loosened. His two days in Milan had been productive from a business sense but the loneliness of the evening had been acute. He supposed it was his own fault for crying off the party he’d been invited to so he could spend the evening talking dirty on the phone with Helena.
It was the first time in three years he’d stayed in when he could have gone out.
He doubted he would have enjoyed the party without her by his side.
Their time together was ticking onwards, days turning into weeks as if life had been set to fast-forward. Helena shared his bed every night. They made love constantly. How either of them got any work done he didn’t know. Their passion for each other remained undiminished and he was no closer to exorcising her from his blood.
He no longer wanted vengeance. He no longer believed he’d ever wanted it, not the way he’d told himself he did.
He couldn’t allow what they’d shared this time around to be turned into somet
hing ugly for the sake of petty revenge. It was a realisation that had come to him as if he were a man waking from a long dream. Helena didn’t deserve it. She’d never set out to hurt or embarrass him. His humiliation at the cathedral was all on him. He hadn’t listened. She’d been a frightened child and he, although older than her, had been an immature fool.
She’d been right about one thing though. When it came to her, he had been a control freak. Not in the way her father was, God forbid, but in a possessive, all-consuming way. He’d needed to know where she was every minute of the day for his own peace of mind, to know she was safe. He’d wanted her by his side so he could feed his addiction to her, to always be able to touch her, to look at her, to just be with her. His love for her had been obsessive and greedy, and he could sense the old feelings building back up in him. He needed to rein them in before he opened himself up to having the great wound in his heart ripped open again.
* * *
Helena looked out of her office window and let Theo concentrate on the first complete set of draft plans in peace. In the distance, across the water separating the peninsula from Sidiro itself, were clifftop homes nestled together. Anyone visiting Sidiro for the first time would be forgiven for thinking these pretty, simple dwellings served only one function. They couldn’t know—indeed, only a few did know—that when the sun went down in the months of July and August, the owners of these dwellings threw their doors open, their homes becoming nightclubs, bars, restaurants, cafes and shops. When the sun came up, the partygoers would drift back to their rustic lodgings, the owners would close their doors and the island would doze lazily until the sun went down again. Rinse and repeat.
Today, on this beautiful Friday morning, she watched a large yacht with a batch of revellers sail past the peninsula towards Sidiro’s small harbour. The past week had seen more yachts sail to and from the island than usually visited throughout the rest of year. She wondered if tonight the wind would carry the music beating from it in their direction.
To which dwelling had Theo taken her dancing that time she’d drunk too many Greek Doctor cocktails? She hadn’t realised the strength of them until she’d been rocking like a madwoman on the makeshift dancefloor. Her top had ridden up her belly, she remembered. Theo, who’d been chatting to a group of other people, had noticed. He’d grinned, danced his way to her and discreetly pulled her top back down.
With a stab of emotion, she remembered how, even through the fog of her own inebriation, she’d known he’d pulled her top down out of pure caring. Theo had known how shy she was about her body—by that stage, she’d lost all shyness with him but in public it was a completely different matter—and he’d known she would be mortified to be flashing her belly like that.
It was a memory Helena hadn’t thought about since it had happened. She’d forgotten how many hang-ups she’d had. She’d forgotten how Theo had simply sliced through them. He was doing the same now.
As she was about to turn away from the window, her attention was caught by two figures walking hand in hand down the hillside. Elli and Natassa.
What a blind idiot she’d been not to realise they were a couple. Or, if she was being honest with herself, what a jealous idiot she’d been. As she’d learned in the weeks since she and Theo had become lovers, the two women had been together since art school. Elli was an old family friend of the Nikolaidises. Theo had got talking to them at a party and learned Natassa had lost her job teaching art and that they were struggling to pay the rent on their tiny apartment. When he’d offered them the shared job of his housekeeper and the promise of their own art studio when the house was built, they’d practically bitten his hand off to accept.
Another yacht sailed by. If she squinted she could see the partygoers sunbathing on it.
Those partygoers had once been her and Theo.
As she looked back at him, her heart hurt to see the exhaustion lining his face. The new legislation had given him nothing but headaches.
To think she had accused him of being spoilt and lazy. Spoilt still held—how could he be anything else considering the life he’d lived—but lazy? No. That had been an unfair accusation. She’d never appreciated that he’d taken three months off from his business to be with her. Every time she’d questioned him about it back then, he’d kissed the tip of her nose and said he wanted to enjoy their time together before real life had to intrude. She should have had faith that he was telling the truth.
While she’d worked diligently on the plans, Theo had quietly got on with running his business empire from the office next door, jetting off occasionally to meetings around Europe. Only twice had he been unable to make it back to the peninsula. She’d worked until her eyes blurred to pass the time, then panicked and dawdled as the plans got nearer to completion.
From wanting to complete the plans as quickly as she could, she now wanted to draw it out for ever. She’d stressed the plans laid out before him were in draft form and that much more work was still needed.
This was only a partial truth.
If he approved these, the proper plans could be finished in days.
Once Theo signed them off...
Neither of them spoke of what would happen then.
The future was terrifyingly opaque.
‘Can we go to the island tonight?’ she asked impulsively.
He looked at her speculatively. A quirk curved the left side of his mouth. ‘You want to party?’
Only with you.
She gave a dreamy sigh. ‘Yes. I want to party.’ Other than those two nights of bliss on Agon there had been none of the wild partying of old. Not since their night at the palace had they spent time with any of his social circle. Weekends had been enjoyed on Theo’s yacht. They’d sailed to other islands, dined in quaint local tavernas, snorkelled, ridden on Theo’s jet ski and made love so many times she was surprised she could still walk. Those weekends had been heaven.
His eyes gleamed with appreciation but there was something else underlying it, a something that, just for a moment, sent a needle of unease up her spine. Then he grinned and her unease vanished.
‘You’re an animal,’ he said.
Only for you...
* * *
They stayed on Sidiro until the sun went down on Sunday night.
For two blissful days they did nothing but make love, sunbathe, make love, drink, make love, eat delicious food, make love and dance. There were many people Helena remembered from their time on the island before and they welcomed her back like an old friend. The new people, she was sure, would one day feel like friends too.
All the worries left her shoulders just as they had three years ago. No wonder she had agreed to marry Theo and have lots of children with him here on Sidiro. They’d been cocooned in a bubble of happiness. The outside world had seemed too far away to be real.
Theo rowed them back to the peninsula, his muscular arms working the oars as adeptly as he did everything else.
Helena stretched out with her feet on his lap. If they interfered with his oar-stroking, he didn’t complain.
‘Can we go back next weekend?’ She held her breath while she awaited his answer. Theo had not given her his thoughts on the draft plans. If he hated them she would go back to the drawing board. If he liked them...
It could all be over by the end of the week.
Only the emerging stars gave the sea any illumination, but without the moon their radiance was not powerful enough for her to see the expression in Theo’s eyes. His pause before answering made her wary. It was a feeling she was becoming all too familiar with. For all the bliss that weekend, there had been a few occasions when she’d caught something in his eye, gone before she could really be sure she’d seen it, but powerful enough to send flutters of alarm off in her belly.
‘I thought you were keen to get home,’ he answered.
Home?
For someone who’d a
rrived wishing time would pass at the speed of light, she now wished she could bottle it and hold it in stasis.
Scared at how nauseous the thought of returning to England without him made her feel, she settled on, ‘It all feels very far away.’
‘What will be the first thing you do when you get back?’ Theo’s chest was tight. It had been tight the whole weekend. It had been tight since his return from Milan a week ago but had taken on unbearable proportions when Helena had asked if they could spend the weekend on the island.
He had been about to open his mouth and approve the draft plans.
If he had spoken first, they would already be over.
Call him selfish—Helena had called him that more times than he could count—but the thought of one more weekend with her had been irresistible.
She was silent for a long moment before answering. ‘I’ll visit my mum and see if I can convince her to leave my father.’
‘You’ve tried that before.’
‘It might be different this time.’
Theo felt her eyes on him and sensed she was talking about more than her mother.
He knew he’d changed a great deal from the man Helena had jilted but he also knew the possessive control freak still lurked beneath his skin. It itched to be set free. That man was the last thing she wanted. That man frightened her.
Steadily, he said, ‘I wish you luck.’
They’d reached the peninsula. Theo jumped out of the boat, helped Helena to climb out too, then hauled it up the beach out of harm from the tide’s reach.
Their footprints left indentations in the sand. Come the morning, they would be gone. There was a metaphor in that somewhere but right then he couldn’t think what it could be.
It was time to let Helena go. He’d known it since he’d pored over the draft blueprints in her office and felt a fissure rend his heart.
He should have let her go three years ago.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE SCOOTER WAS where they’d left it. Theo climbed on. Helena followed suit behind him and immediately wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek into the small of his back. He closed his eyes and savoured the warmth of her body against his. It would be for the last time.
His Greek Wedding Night Debt (Passion In Paradise Book 10) Page 14