Engaged in kicking off her shoes, Lindy gave him a troubled look at that explanation. ‘I had no idea you felt like that. There’s only one reason I turned you down—I thought you were only asking me to marry you because you felt it was your duty to do so because I was pregnant. And I didn’t want any man on those terms.’
‘That’s not how I felt, agapi mou. But then I didn’t really understand what I was feeling until after that point,’ Atreus conceded heavily. ‘So it’s hardly surprising that you had no idea either.’
Lindy stood up and, emboldened by that kiss, slid her arms round his neck. ‘I don’t like sleeping alone…’
Atreus locked her to his big powerful frame. ‘Do you honestly think I do?’
‘That night after I had the scan, when you took me to bed with you in your apartment, you wanted me then—’
‘And I knew you wanted me. But I wanted something more lasting for us than occasional sex when you were in the mood,’ Atreus breathed, unzipping her dress and peeling it down her helpfully extended arms.
Lindy had turned hot pink. ‘I’m not that shameless!’
‘No?’ Atreus nibbled her full lower lip while he dispensed with her bra and moulded her creamy curves.
‘All right, I can be. You taught me bad habits,’ she muttered, feverishly unbuttoning his shirt and yanking it off him with more haste than cool. ‘But occasional wouldn’t be enough for me.’
Atreus gazed down at her with sudden unholy amusement, and laughed out loud as he tugged her down on the bed with him. ‘I didn’t want to end up in some undefined messy relationship with you and my child.’
‘So, it was marriage or nothing?’ Lindy completed, spreading her fingers over his muscular hair-roughened torso in a wondering caress of reacquaintance. As she let her hands slide wantonly lower, she felt his shudder of response with deep loving satisfaction.
Stripping off the remainder of his clothing, Atreus caught her to him and kissed her with a force of hunger and urgency that told her how much he needed her. ‘You made it clear that you were only marrying me for Theo’s sake,’ he reminded her.
‘When did I do that?’ she queried, her eyes pools of enquiry as she flopped back breathlessly against the pillows and gloried in the feel of his long, lean body settling over hers.
‘After Theo’s birth.’
Lindy blinked. ‘I forgot about that. You asked me why I’d changed my mind…Theo wasn’t the only reason. I was saving face.’
‘I didn’t know that. I was too much aware of how much I’d hurt you in letting you go in the first place,’ Atreus admitted in a taut undertone.
‘Probably only because I told you. You’re not exactly on the ball when it comes to other people’s emotions.’
The wry hint of a smile momentarily stole the gravity from his face. ‘Or even my own.’
Something in the troubled expression of those black-lashed eyes yanked painfully at Lindy’s heartstrings, and she stretched up to kiss him. That kiss deepened and strengthened with a passion more powerful than any they had yet experienced together. Conversation was forgotten as more primitive needs drove them. At the instant he entered her wildly responsive body her excitement surged to a burning peak and the explosive heat inside her overflowed, sending ripples of quivering pleasure that left her sobbing his name with delight.
‘Now you feel like you’re mine again, yineka mou,’ Atreus said huskily, bestowing a tender kiss on her lush mouth and holding her until the wild pounding of her heart and her thrumming pulses had subsided to a bearable level.
Lindy lay in the blissful togetherness that followed feeling happier and more at peace than she had felt for many, many months. Luxuriating in his proximity, she knew that being close to Atreus again felt like coming home. It’s you I want…it’s always been you. That was all he had had to say to win her back, heart and soul, and of course she wanted to believe every word of that assurance—even though she felt that it would be the ultimate vanity not to accept that he had to be exaggerating.
Stunning golden eyes scanned her preoccupied face. ‘What are you thinking about?’
Lindy smiled. She had the perfect answer to that unfamiliar question from his quarter. ‘You. Happy now?’
‘I’m amazingly in love with you,’ Atreus confessed with a ragged edge to his delivery. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been in love. It hit me in the face, but I still didn’t recognise what it was. I was miserable without you. Nothing felt right any more.’
‘You love me?’ Lindy repeated in astonishment. ‘Since when?’