by Pippa Roscoe
‘What are you so afraid of?’ he asked.
It was the softness of his voice in the darkened room that undid her. That buried its way into her chest, lodging on the aching breath that shuddered from her lungs. If he’d been angry—if he’d shouted—she would have used it to fuel her indignation. But he hadn’t. His words were like a verbal key, unlocking her soul and baring her to him.
In the deepest reaches of her heart, she knew what it was. She knew that she was terrified that she wouldn’t just be giving her body to Dimitri, but more... Her heart.
But the words wouldn’t come. Some innate sense of self-protection prevented her from revealing such a weakness. She looked up at him, swathed in the shadows of the room, marvelling at how the light from the moon cast him in silver finery, lighting the sharp angles of his face, making his dark eyes seem to almost glow. He was stunning, powerful...irresistible.
If she’d thought he’d turn away from her silence, she was wrong.
Instead, he pressed closer to her, crowding her, tempting her.
‘Ask for what you want, Anna. It is your right.’
‘As your wife?’ she spat at him, desperate to cling to anything she could use to maintain the barriers she had put around her heart three years before, longer even. The barriers he was bashing through with the force of a storm.
‘No. Theos,’ he growled. ‘As a woman.’
It was as if he had let loose a battle cry to everything feminine inside her, begging, pleading with her to reach for him, to take what she wanted. And it was so tempting in the darkness of the empty island home. What he was asking her. What he was telling her to demand from him. He was right—she had been using their daughter as an excuse, as a shield from the simmering tension that had always, always been there between them. It seemed like the simplest of things, but Anna felt the decision like a pendulum, swinging either way, weighed down, but pushing them forward to an undeniable conclusion.
* * *
Dimitri could feel her need, so strong he could almost taste it. He cursed himself to hell and back because by illuminating her desire for him he had served to increase his own. His arousal pressed hard against the dark linen trousers he had worn for the wedding.
Her eyes flared and he could see her wavering. He could feel the struggle going on inside her, he could see it in her sea-green eyes. He’d promised her that she would beg—the irony was not lost on him. In that moment he would have given almost anything to have her succumb to him. In that moment, it was he who was poised on the brink of begging.
‘You did that first night,’ he reminded her. ‘You demanded everything from me and I gave it willingly and I would not refuse you this, ever. So—’ Dimitri took a step towards her ‘—you want me?’ he demanded.
She looked almost mutinous, but finally said the word he’d been longing to hear. ‘Yes.’
‘Say it.’
‘I want you.’
The thrumming that had unsettled the air about them stilled. She could still walk away. And he honestly couldn’t have blamed her, but he saw her fingers hesitantly reached for the back of her dress. Christe mou, he was going to die if she had to undo all those buttons. He closed his eyes and heard the sound of a zip sliding down its fastener.
When he opened them again he watched the slow slide of the dress as it slipped, first from her shoulders, revealing her naked chest, the slopes of her breasts perfect as they rose and fell in time with her rapid breathing. She pressed the dress over her hips and it fell from her waist, pooling in a white silk puddle at her heeled feet.
Her chin rose defiantly as she stood there in nothing but her shoes and a white silk thong. He took her in all at once, the sight of her nearly undoing him completely. He felt the tremors of his own arousal begin to threaten his control.
‘All of it. Take it off.’ He gestured towards her thong. He watched her eyes widen a fraction. Good. It was good to see her as unsettled by this thing between them as he was. A masochistic part of him wanted her to stop. To refuse his last demand. Because if they took this step...there would be no going back. He would be making her his wife, in more than name only. And once he had what he wanted, he wouldn’t let go.
Her thumbs slid down her hips and hooked under the thin lace of her underwear. Fire burned his lungs and Dimitri realised that he’d forgotten to breathe. This was what she did to him. As if she knew it, her hands hovered at her sides, waiting, taunting almost.
‘Take. It. Off.’
His voice shredded the last of her uncertainty and he watched, heart in mouth, as she slid the flimsy material down over her hips, lifting long, lean, tanned legs, sweeping it down over her ankles, and she tossed it to the side.
‘Say it,’ he commanded.
‘I’ve already told you... I—’
He shook his head slowly.
‘You bastard.’
‘That may be, but I still want you to say it.’
She started to tremble then—not with fear, no. Desire and want was clearly written in her gaze and satisfaction spread through him to see her as much at the mercy of their attraction as he. She bit her top lip as if to prevent her from saying the one thing he needed to hear. The one thing that would start what they had both wanted from the very first moment they had laid eyes on each other.
He wanted to take that lip within his own teeth. He wanted to lave it with his tongue, taste her cries as she found her pleasure in his arms. It was an all-consuming want that he wouldn’t be rid of until he had her beneath him again.
He closed the gap between them with the last step he would take.
‘Say it.’
Her white teeth loosened their grip on the plump pink lip.
‘Please,’ she whispered on a ragged breath.
He reached for her then, drawing her to him as his lips crashed down against hers, pressing her body entirely against his. Her lips opened to him, his tongue filling her mouth, meeting her own. Christe mou, he’d only once ever found this feeling before, only with her.
He lifted her from the pooled silk at her feet, drawing a gasp from her that he felt down to his soul. Her legs came up around his waist, his hands went down to the backs of her thighs, glorying in the soft skin he felt there, and he pulled her against him and she gasped again when she must have felt his desire.
Through the thin material of his trousers he could feel the heat of her; he wanted to touch her, taste her. His clothes were too much. He needed them gone.
He walked them up the stairs to his bedroom, the one she’d never been in. He kicked open the door and realised that someone had been in here since he’d left. He let her legs go, sliding her down the length of his body, and took in the rose petals scattered across his silk sheets, the tiny candles that had been placed around the edges of the room providing little star lights casting the barest of shadows.
He took it all in dispassionately because his sole focus was Anna. As he took one step forward she retreated, until her legs were pressed against the mattress of his bed. She nearly fell back, but he held her in place. Trembling. She trembled at his every touch.
She sat down on the mattress and he went to his knees before her, taking her calves in his hands as one by one he undid the little shoe straps around her ankles.
Her eyes never left his, locked together by wanton curiosity and need. Her hands balled the silk sheets of his bed in her fists as if to stop her reaching for him and Dimitri felt the cord of his desire for her tighten.
Her small fingers slowly reached up to the loosened tie, slipping the material away from the knot and sliding it slowly, torturously, from around his neck, tossing it aside just as she had done with her panties.
Her hands, hot, pressed against his chest, either side of the buttons, before turning their attention to releasing the small buttons from their holes. Christe mou, this was taking too long.
His o
wn hands came up to either side of his shirt and he tore at the material, sending buttons flying, and cast the ruined garment from his torso.
Her eyes widened again in satisfaction as he stood, making quick work of his belt, sweeping off his trousers and briefs in one go. And he stood there, tall, naked, needing and wanting.
* * *
Anna felt her mouth dry the instant he stood above her, glorious and powerful, his bronzed skin glinting in the glow of the tiny lights that littered the room. It was dark enough to see his features, and the storm behind his unrelenting gaze. They stared at each other for an impossible moment, two gladiators about to do battle.
They moved together at the same time, Dimitri coming towards her, her moving up off the bed towards him. Their bodies crashed together, his powerful arms reaching around her, pulling her against him. The cry of pleasure falling from her lips as she felt the entire length of his naked body against her own was stopped only by his kiss.
His hands roamed over her body, the same way they had done three years before, touching, moulding, feeling every part of her. Her back, her thighs, her breasts. God, the things he was doing to her breasts. He leaned her back over his arm, his tongue playing with her hardened nipple, wringing another cry from her mouth, as his clever fingers taunted the other. And it wasn’t enough. The need to feel him, inside her, was so utterly overwhelming.
‘Dimitri...please.’ The words came unbidden from her own mouth, her voice husky with a desire that she was almost ashamed of.
‘What is it you want, agapi mou? How is it you’d like me to take you? To please you?’
The words caught in the back of her throat. She didn’t know how to do this. How to express what it was that she wanted. She wanted...everything. She wanted him to touch her, she wanted him to taste her...she wanted to taste him. But the words wouldn’t come.
As if he sensed her inability to speak, a small smile curved that sinful mouth and he pressed her back into the soft mattress, moving with her, allowing her to feel the weight of him against her, over her. He leaned on one arm, trailing his free hand across her neck, between her breasts, down over the stomach that had borne their child. As if the same thought had struck him, he bent to press kisses against the slight swell of a stomach that had been almost perfectly flat three years before. Was he taking in the changes that pregnancy and birth had wrought on her body? Did he find them distasteful? But his kisses soothed her fears, driving heat and sparkles of sensation across her skin. His hand continued further down her body, gently pressing her thighs apart. And then he found the heart of her.
Her hand flew to his, not knowing whether she was going to push him away or press him to her. It felt incredible, the pleasure he was wringing from her. She felt her back rise from the mattress, her chest eagerly reaching for his own. But instead of satisfying her desire he pulled back, raised himself to take her in. He took her hand in his other and pressed it over his as he continued to caress her intimately.
Gasps rained down from her lips as he thrust a long finger deep within her. One, then two, filling her, but it wasn’t enough. His lips came down on hers as his tongue echoed the movements of his quick fingers. Her skin was alive, and her breath came in pants. Words, unspoken before, freed by the pleasure he was giving her, fell into the room. Begging words, pleading words she’d have had the sense to prevent if she were in control of her body, of her mind. But she wasn’t.
The hard jut of him pressed against her stomach and she shifted her hips, wanting him, needing him inside her. She was so close to an orgasm, the little lights of the room turning into starbursts in the edges of her mind. But then he stopped, and her heart did too.
She had a moment of uncertainty, until he pressed her thighs further apart and plunged into her deeply in one swift motion, bringing her to completion, bringing her out of her mind. A small well of hysteria bubbled deep within her, and for a second Anna lost all sense of time, all sense of place, and only Dimitri remained, the feel of him as her muscles held him in place within her.
Just when Anna thought she’d found her breath, he started moving, slowly, languorously almost, but deeply, so deeply, she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began.
Even three years before she hadn’t felt anything this incredible, the power of him turning her helpless, and she gave herself over to him completely. Again and again he brought her to the brink of yet another orgasm, and just before she could fall he would slow the punishing rhythm, as if testing the very limits of his own control. Minutes gave over to sensation, time gave over to pleasure and only when she felt him harden even more did she find the truth of their joining. He stilled, biting his bottom lip as if preventing the same cries she’d given freely from escaping. She felt him shudder and release himself into her at the very same moment she fell into the abyss.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dear Dimitri,
I wanted more. More than you were willing to give.
THE SOUND OF Amalia’s laughter woke Anna from her sleep. Her body ached in a way she’d only known once before and she stretched out beneath the sheets, loosening her muscles. She didn’t have to open her eyes to know that Dimitri had left their bed. Had left the room. For a moment, her heart stuttered and she was back in her bed in Ireland three years before. Confused and disorientated. Only this time, she didn’t run through the small bed and breakfast looking for him, wondering where the man she’d given her virginity to was. Wondering if he would ever come back. This time, Anna knew that—even though he had left her bed—he would be having breakfast with their daughter, as he had done every single day since they had arrived in Greece.
But it didn’t mean that she was any less confused. Last night, Anna had asked him for what she wanted and he had given it to her. Again and again throughout the night they had reached for each other. She had given him the thing that he had told her she would: her body. But, she lied to herself, only her body.
She came down the stairs and what she saw held her back. Dimitri was holding Amalia in his arms, gibbering away in a nonsensical mix of English and made-up words that Dimitri pretended to understand perfectly. Amalia thrust out a fist and grabbed hold of Dimitri’s dark hair, and instead of brushing her aside he simply laughed.
Was this what she had kept her daughter from? Not the pain and hurt she had promised herself over and over again, but the love of her father? A small, but very powerful, part of her wondered whether instead she had actually been protecting herself. The sight was so striking, it took her a moment to see that Dimitri was dressed in a suit, as if he were...
‘You’re going to work?’ she couldn’t help herself from asking. ‘The day after our wedding?’
Flora grumbled from the kitchen, as if understanding not the words, but the sentiment.
‘The bank doesn’t stop just because I got married, Anna,’ he said as if scolding a child. ‘I have meetings to attend and a charity function to organise.’
Amalia, as if noting the change in tone around her, started to fuss. He walked over to Anna and placed Amalia into her arms.
‘I’ll be back, but most likely late, so don’t wait on dinner for me.’
With nothing else said, he left the house. The sense of concern she’d felt earlier grew into a living, breathing animal in her chest. Now that she had given him what he wanted, was he going to retreat? Was this how their marriage was going to be? Shame and foolishness taunted her fragile heart.
It had taken Dimitri three sentences to cut through whatever fantasy she had clung to from the night before. It had taken less than thirty seconds for pain, sharp and acute, to slice through laughably thin armour, poking and prodding at old wounds.
Instantly she began to question what she’d done wrong, what she’d said to make him leave. The familiar pins and needles shivering across her skin, vibrating within her chest, reminded her of her childhood, when she would wait at the school gates for the imagina
ry figure of her father to come and get her. But he never had. Anna had promised herself that she’d not feel like this again. And she wouldn’t. She slowly pulled each block of stone back into place around her heart, refusing to mistake sensual intimacy with emotional intimacy. She may have the security of wearing his wedding ring, but she knew from experience that a gold band didn’t mean a thing.
* * *
Dimitri found himself pacing the length of his office yet again. Through the glass frontage he had watched as the sun set over the Athens’s skyline, as he tried to focus on the numbers for the last financial quarter rather than the memories of losing himself in Anna’s arms. Each of the seven days since their wedding had been the same. He would leave for work after breakfast with Amalia, the moment that Anna appeared from their bed. He wouldn’t return home until the sun had long since set and would find Anna asleep on the sofa, or in a chair in the living room amidst a pile of second-hand English paperback books. He would pick her up and take her back to his room, where they would make love long into the early hours of the morning.
But they had barely exchanged a word. It was as if their life was playing out in silence. As if he was afraid of what he would reveal, or what she would ask of him: the one thing he didn’t even know if he was capable of.
Dimitri could count the number of people he trusted on one hand. Antonio and Danyl were the closest thing he had to a family. His father had been cold and distant his entire life up until recently, and Dimitri still wasn’t sure he could trust the changing tide of their relationship. But it was Anna who was threatening to undo him. Seeing Anna with Amalia, it hurt. Watching her prepare his daughter’s food, watching her soothe away her tears, it reminded him of his mother. And all the memories he’d sought to suppress for years were coming to the surface.
Little things, like the way his mother had made the best, sweetest baklava—so big it resembled a loaf and had to be cut with a bread knife—the way that she had put a plaster over his knee when he had fallen. The way that, even after her long day at the restaurant, she would still find the energy to read to him at night. The feel of having her there, the comfort and the love that she had wrapped around him, protecting him from the bad things of the world. Protecting him from his father’s absence and rejection.