Their eyes met in a long moment and he felt shaken by the sudden unexpected intimacy of that.
He slid the flat of his hand over her hip. ‘I don’t want to hurt you—’
She bit her lip, as if she was about to say something controversial but had thought better of it at the last moment. ‘Just make love to me, Alek,’ she said with a simple sincerity which tore through him like a flame.
Slowly he eased himself inside her, uttering something guttural in Greek, which wasn’t like him. But none of this was like him. He’d never felt this close to a woman before, nor so aware of her as a person rather than as just a body. It rocked him to the core and, yes, it intimidated him, too—and he didn’t like that. He wasn’t used to being out of control. To feeling as if he were putty in a woman’s hands. He groaned. Maybe not putty. Because putty was soft, wasn’t it? And he was hard. Ah, neh. He was very hard. Harder than he could ever remember. And if he wasn’t careful, he was going to come too soon.
This is sex, he told himself fiercely. Sex which you both want. So treat it like sex. Breaking eye contact, he buried his face in her neck as he began to take command, each slow and deliberate thrust demonstrating his power and control. He smiled against her skin when she moaned his name and smiled some more when she began to gasp in a rising crescendo. ‘Oh, yes...yes!’
He raised his head and watched as she came. Saw her tip her head back and her eyes close. He saw her body shudder and heard the disbelieving little cry which followed. And then he saw the first big fat tear which rolled down her cheek to be quickly followed by another, and he frowned. Because hadn’t she cried last time—and wasn’t the deal supposed to be that this time there were no tears? No regrets. His mouth twisted. No nothing—only pleasure.
‘Alek,’ she whispered and he could no longer hold back—letting go in a great burst of seed which pumped from his body as if it was never going to stop.
He must have fallen asleep, and when eventually he opened his eyes again he found her sleeping, too. Rolling away, he stared up at the ceiling, but although his heart was still pounding with post-orgasmic euphoria he felt confusion slide a cold and bewildering trail across his skin.
He glanced around the room. Her wedding dress lay on the floor along with his own discarded trousers and shirt. His usually pristine bedroom looked as if someone had ransacked it and he found himself remembering the ornament breaking in the hall—a priceless piece of porcelain shattered into a hundred pieces which had crunched beneath his feet.
What was it about her which made him lose control like that? He turned his head to look at her again—a pale Venus rising from the crumpled white waves of the sheets. His gaze shifted to her belly—still flat—and his heart clenched as he thought about the reality of being a father.
The fears he’d been trying to silence now crowded darkly in his mind. What if certain traits were inherited rather than learnt? Wasn’t that one of the reasons why he’d always ruled out fatherhood as a life choice, not daring to take the risk of failing as miserably at the task as his own father had done?
She began to stir and opened her eyes and he thought how bright and clear they looked, with no hint of tears now.
‘Why do you cry?’ he asked suddenly. ‘When I make love to you?’
Ellie brushed her fringe out of her eyes, more as a stalling mechanism than anything else. His question suggested a layer of intimacy she hadn’t been expecting and that surprised her. This was supposed to be about sex, wasn’t it? That was what she thought his agenda was. The only agenda there could possibly be—no matter what her feelings for him were. If she suddenly came out and told him the reason she’d cried was because he made her feel complete, then wouldn’t he laugh, or run screaming in the opposite direction? If she told him that when he was deep inside her, it felt as if she’d been waiting her whole life for that moment, wouldn’t it come over as fanciful, or—worse—needy? If she told him she was crying for all the things she would never have from him—like his love—wouldn’t that make her seem like just another woman greedily trying to take from him something she knew he would never give?
She told him part of the truth. ‘Because you are an amazing lover.’
‘And that makes you cry?’
‘Blame my hormones.’
‘I suppose I should be flattered,’ he drawled. ‘Though, of course, that would depend on how experienced you are.’
She pushed her hair out of her eyes and narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you fishing to find out how many lovers I’ve had before you?’