For an instant her brain could not take in the significance of the hair roughened, heated flesh under her agitated fingers. What…? Then, “Dimitri?” whispered because she couldn’t force more volume from the frozen muscles in her throat.
“It is I.” His voice surrounded her with more warmth than the steam from the hot water flowing over both their bodies.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
An arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her forward. “Should I not?” he asked against her shocked lips.
“No. I don’t want this.” Did she sound as unconvincing to him as she sounded to herself?
Knowing fingers brushed gently over nipples that had gone turgid and aching the moment she realized his naked body stood so close to her own. “Are you sure about that?”
“We need to talk,” she tried again, while her body shook with the need to melt into his.
“No,” he said with harsh emphasis. “We have talked enough. It gets us nowhere, but this…” He squeezed her nipple between thumb and forefinger and she could not stifle her moan. “This I can give you.”
“Sex won’t solve our problems. It’s what started them in the first place,” she said, trying one last time to keep hold of her senses.
“No. It was not the sex. When we make love it is like a poem of rare beauty and beat. Words have brought this distance between us. My words. Your words. I will not let it continue. I cannot let it continue.”
The urgency in his voice affected her as deeply as the emotive words and she felt tears burn the back of her throat. He was right. Their distance had been caused by words. Making love had never been anything but beautiful between them, even that last tempestuous time.
She couldn’t stand the distance any longer either, but undoubtedly for a different reason. There in the steamy darkness, she accepted a truth her heart had been telling her all along. She was not over Dimitri Petronides. She would never be over him. The love she felt for him was too strong, too deeply imbedded in her.
Again it was the fossil in the rock, only this time she knew with absolute certainty that to try to rip the love she felt for him from her breast would destroy her completely.
She made a noise of need and longing. His arm tightened around her, bringing her body flush with his own. Familiar lips closed over hers in a kiss so passionate, she felt scorched by the heat of it. Dimitri nibbled impatiently at her bottom lip until she opened her mouth and then he was inside, laying claim to her softness and reminding her of the incredible physical bond they had once shared. A bond that rejection, distance and time had not been able to sever.
Hungry for the feel of him, she let her fingers trail over the musculature of his chest. His mouth broke from hers and she sensed his head falling back as his body shuddered. “Yes, moro mou, touch me. I need you to touch me.”
She had no hesitation about obliging him. She’d tried to hide from it, but she’d missed him so much. She circled the hard little nubs of his nipples, making him grind his already pulsingly erect flesh against her stomach.
Memories of how that flesh felt filling her would have sent her to her knees, but for the almost bruising hold he had on her waist. Running her hands up his chest and over his shoulders, she got drunk on the ability to touch him once again. She leaned forward and took one nipple into her mouth. Gently she teased it with her teeth and small flicks on the very tip with her tongue. He was moving against her with almost uncontrolled desire and she loved it.
If nothing else, she knew that in this, he was hers…completely.
She started sucking on that same erotic bit of flesh and Dimitri made hoarse sounds of need from deep in his throat. Then his hands were on either side of her face, exerting light pressure to her head. She let go of his nipple with reluctance.
“I want it to be so good for you, you will never leave me again,” he vowed with a fervency that was almost frightening.
He pushed against her shoulders until she was leaning against the slick wet tile wall at the back of the square shower cubicle. “Press your hands to the wall.”
She did it because she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“Do not move them.”
“Dimitri?”
“Trust me.”
In this, he had never hurt her and she knew deep in her heart, he never would. “All right.”
Masculine fingers traced her cheeks until one brushed her lips and pressed inside. She felt warmth flood her between her legs as she sucked on that hot finger sliding in and out of her mouth. He continued the light tracing of her skin with his other hand, brushing down over her collarbone to her left breast. He stopped there, exploring her new shape brought on by changes from her pregnancy.
It was fuller and more sensitive. He seemed to sense this and kept his touch feather light as he used all five fingers in a cone motion encircling her entire breast. He brought his hand toward himself, bringing his fingers together as he did so until they circled her distended peak. He squeezed lightly and then did the entire motion all over again, and again, and again until she felt feverish with the need for his mouth on it.
“Dimitri, please…Your mouth…”
He laughed huskily. “Not yet, hmm?” Then he pulled his hand from her mouth and gave the same treatment to her other breast until her head was thrashing back and forth against the wall in an agony of need.
“Please…” She could not articulate another word.
She didn’t need to. He dropped to his knees in front of her and took one straining tip into his mouth. He started off suckling ever so softly, but soon increased the pressure until the pleasure was almost pain and she was crying out.
“More, please…Oh, Heavens…Stop! I can’t bear it. No…Don’t stop! Harder. Now, Dimitri! Now…” and she came with an explosion of color in the inky blackness of their sensual prison.
She sagged against the wall, but he wasn’t done. He kissed a path down to her belly. If she thought his exploration earlier of their baby’s current home had been erotic, it was nothing compared to the way he caressed every new curve, every bit of skin stretched tight over her womb with both fingers and lips that almost worshipped.
“Moro mou.” His baby. He kissed the center of her distended tummy. “Yineka mou.” His woman. Both his hands covered her skin in possessive declaration.
She was so lost in her sensual daze that she almost did not catch the significance of the words whispered against the taut wall of her stomach, but when they penetrated her brain she felt emotion course through her. Earlier he had called her his baby, but now he was acknowledging their son. And her, but in a very different way. He’d claimed her with an endearment he’d never used with her before. Words that both connoted her place in his life as his woman, but also laid claim to her as his wife.
“I will never let you go again.”
She could not respond. What could she say? He acted as if her leaving his life had been voluntary and also that it had hurt him. She didn’t know if she could believe him, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it. His lips were traveling down her stomach until they found her most secret place. He kissed her there, a soft salute and then exerted pressure on the outside of her thighs to bring her legs together.
She was unprepared for the penetration of his tongue. He did not pull her legs apart again, but let his tongue slide between her slick folds of femininity. He stroked her sweetest spot with the tip of his tongue, going back and forth and then in circles, all the time keeping her legs together. She couldn’t believe how incredible it felt to have her inner thighs touching and the swollen flesh of her womanhood pressed together and around the wet stimulation of his tongue.
She felt the sensations of pleasure begin to build to ecstasy once again. Tears ran down her cheeks to mix with the water on her skin from the still pulsing showerheads as she said his name over and over. His hands moved from their hold on her outer thighs to cupping the underside of her bottom and she pressed herself against his marauding mouth, unable to stop the wanton movement.
Then one of his fingers penetrated where she had not been touched in over four long months and she came apart, sobbing out her pleasure and his name. He didn’t stop and she bucked against him, convulsing over and over again until she went limp and the impenetrable darkness was no longer responsible for the blackness before her eyes.
She came to on the king-size bed in Dimitri’s room. He was toweling her dry with gentle movements. The bedside lamp was on, casting a gentle glow over his bronzed features.
He smiled down at her. “So you have decided to wake up.”
“I fainted.” She couldn’t believe it.
“It happens sometimes, when the feelings are very, very intense.”
A surge of purely possessive jealousy coursed through her and she stiffened, glaring up at him. “I suppose you’ve had lots of lovers faint in your arms.”
He shook his head, all trace of smile gone. “Never, yineka mou. Only you. Only now.”