Silence reigned again and he felt the tightness loosening, his breathing becoming freer.
‘This was special. Thanks for sharing it with me.’
Somehow his lips found her temple, delivered a lingering kiss on her smooth skin. ‘To answer your questions, I’ve never shared the cave with anyone. Nor this view of a Drakonisos sunrise. So yes, Alexis, you’re special.’
He watched her inhale shakily, striving for composure. But his own admission had tilted the ground beneath him. So he rose, the beauty of the sunrise gone for him. ‘Come.’ He held out his hand without looking down into her face. ‘One last thing before we return to the villa.’
He sensed her confusion but ignored it. The moment she stood, he led them to the edge of the hill. Reading his intention, she clamped her fingers around his.
‘Wait. You’re not suggesting what I think you are, are you?’ she asked, peering over the edge into the swirling water below.
The smile he flashed her felt hard around the edges. ‘It’s barely twenty feet.’
‘You go ahead, then. I’m most definitely not jumping,’ she stated firmly.
/> ‘Stepping off the edge is always daunting. But the experience is all the more exhilarating for it,’ he muttered against her lips. Then wondered whether the words were meant for him more than for her.
The slight widening of her eyes said she’d recognised the acuity of it too. His world tilting just that little bit more, he slid his arm around her. ‘Say yes, Alexis.’
Her arms slowly trailed up his shoulders, her eyes wide and apprehensive. But then her chin lifted, and her gaze grew bold. ‘Yes.’
He caught her to him, that devilish hunger demanding another taste of her. He was gratified when she fell into him, her lips clinging to his until they parted once more.
Her fingers meshed with his, her eyes growing shiny with anticipation. Without giving her a chance to rethink, he grasped her more firmly. And jumped.
For a moment in time, every trace of anguish and disquiet from his past melted away. A fierce, incandescent joy engulfed him as the clear waters of the Aegean swallowed them both.
At first, a million bubbles obstructed his view of her. Then it cleared. He spun to his left and saw Alexis, equal joy on her face as she smiled. Keeping them submerged for a little while longer, he pulled her close, wrapped both arms around her, then stole another kiss from her smiling lips. Her legs tangled around his waist, wrapped tight, and she kissed him back with equal fervour.
The need for oxygen forced them to resurface. But Christos wasn’t prepared to let her go. Arms still tight around her, he kicked towards shallower water and the large rock jutting out from the sea a short distance away.
Waves splashed around their knees as he pushed her against the smooth surface of the rock, need pummelling him.
‘How was that?’ he asked, as he slowly pulled on the strings of her bikini top. Her gaze dropped to his hands, and, despite the explicit way they’d devoured each other last night and this morning, a hot blush suffused her face.
‘Exhilarating,’ she said. Her husky voice curled around his senses and he barely suppressed a groan as he divested her of her bottoms, then yanked off his swim shorts.
The sun was already a little higher in the sky, bathing the rock and Alexis in golden light. He stepped back for a moment to savour her in this place that meant so much to him, before, sanity disappearing, he planted his hands on either side of her head.
Her moan when their bodies melded together was music to his ears. And a minute later, when her slick, warm body welcomed his groaned thrust, it spelled a certain doom he knew would alter his world irreparably.
* * *
Alexis took him inside her, and it felt as if she’d found home. A home she wanted to stay in forever. She’d suspected her heart was in danger long before last night, that it wasn’t just the island weaving its magic on her. But it was last night that had sealed her doom.
The warm security she’d felt in his arms. Perhaps it was the fateful but brief conversation they’d had somewhere in the lost hours that had reinforced that belief.
‘You never told me the last time you used this cave,’ she’d said, her hand trailing over his chiselled chest.
‘I come here every time I’m on the island, but as a child, it was my sanctuary. A place I could let my imagination run wild. Now I’ll see it differently.’
‘Why?’
A pause, long and deep and breath-stalling. Then, ‘Because you are here.’
Four little words that had lodged a lump in her throat. That had terrified her with the need to hold them close inside the heart she suspected didn’t wholly belong to her any longer. Her hand had fisted over his steadily beating heart and she’d fought back foolish tears as she’d drifted off to sleep.
And when he’d woken her a short time later and transported her to heaven once more, a very resigned part of her had accepted that the heart she’d guarded so tenaciously was no longer safe.