Weakness went through her, making her breath catch, her heart seize. The warmth of his hand on her shoulder made her weaker yet. Her eyes clung to his. Clung in desperation, beseeching. Yearning.
Oh, dear God—Nikos!
Emotion filled her that she should be so close to him, and then anguish that this was, could only be, her final moment with him. That nothing remained—only this final parting.
And then…
Slowly, infinitely slowly, as if a weight were dragging at him, his hands slid from her shoulders to fasten around her arms. She felt his muscles tense, felt him draw her towards him. Her heartbeat had slowed. Her breath stopped. Time stopped. The unbearable past that had taken him from her once, the unbearable future that would take him from her for ever, all vanished, and th
ere was only this moment—now. This moment with him. The soft dark of the night, the dim points of the stars, the faint soughing of the wind in the distant trees, the haunting cry of the hunting owl—that was all there was.
And Nikos. So close to her. So close.
Holding her.
Words came from him again, in his own language, low and rasped. She did not understand. But she did not need words to know what was in his eyes, his face.
His lips.
In a slow, slow descent, his mouth covered hers.
Like silken velvet his mouth moved on hers, drawing from her a nectar sweeter than honey. The nectar he had tasted before, as sweet as this. The nectar that had been in her very first kiss—and in her last.
And now in this.
She opened to him. She could not do otherwise. Giving herself, all of herself, to this moment of bliss. Nikos kissing her. Nikos’s mouth moving on hers softly, slowly.
As he had kissed her the very first time.
Past and present fused in her head, her heart. The past she had submerged beneath layer after layer of desperately imposed barriers was now as real and singing in her consciousness as the bliss of the present.
Holland Park, after the open-air opera, walking along, hand in hand, his fingers laced with hers. Nikos pausing in the shadowed pathway to turn her slowly towards him, to murmur her name, and then, as her eyes fluttered shut, to do what she had been longing, aching for him to do—kiss her…
It was as if that moment had come again—as if this was the first time all over again. As if her heart were singing, soaring as it had then, her body and soul filling with the sweetest bliss.
Then, in that distant, long-ago past, he had drawn back regretfully, reluctantly, and she had gone on standing there, dazed and dizzy with delight, gazing up at him, lips parted, her heart soaring heavenward on wings of wonder.
‘I must take you home,’ he’d murmured then, and had walked with her, slowly, his arm around her shoulders, their bodies touching. They had meandered homewards, slowly, back towards her father’s house. His car had been parked there, and though she had invited him in for coffee—daringly, hopefully—he had ruefully shaken his head.
‘I can’t,’ he’d said. ‘Or I will want to stay…’
All he’d done was tilt up her chin and drop the lightest, slightest kiss upon her lips. Then he’d let her go and turned away, walked back to the car, pausing only to lift his hand in a final goodnight and call softly, ‘Go in, Sophie.’
And she had, though it had been like tearing herself away, and when she had shut the front door she had leant back against it until she’d heard his car drive away, and then she had drifted upstairs, floating on air to her bedroom, aching with all her being for him.
As she ached now. Now that she was in his arms again—now that the bliss of his kiss was soaring in her veins—now that the low, hectic beat of her heart, the pulse of her blood, were binding her to him—now that the warm, sensuous pressure of his mouth was drowning her senses.
She gave herself to it absolutely, completely. Not even trying to fight, trying to resist. The past flowed into the present, becoming one.
He guided her to the staircase and up the narrow stairs, into the dim, encompassing darkness that awaited there. To take her into his arms again. The darkness enveloped them, but he did not need light to tell him what he knew—that her soft, slender body folded to his, that her tender, rounded breasts pressed against him, that her sweet, generous mouth was like honey beneath his. Nectar.
Did he speak? He did not know. Nor if he spoke Greek or English. Knew only that his hand had slipped around the nape of her neck, cradling her head to his as his other hand slid down the long wand-curve of her spine. He was kissing her still, deeper, and yet each kiss only engendered a greater hunger, a wilder desire for her. His fingers were at her blouse—that cheap, unlovely blouse that should never have sullied her honeyed-body—peeling the material away from her, careless of buttons just as he was careless of zips or fasteners, only to ease her skirt from her, let it slide and cascade to the floor, where he could lift her out of it and lower her gently, carefully, down upon the waiting bed.
He followed her in a daze, his own garments and her remaining ones shed somehow, anyhow. Irrelevant how they fell, or where. All that was essential was to lower his bared body onto hers, gleaming like pearl in the velvet dark, to graze his lips along that opalescent skin, the delicate bones below her throat, the hollow at its base. Then, with the lightest, most feathered touch, he skimmed the swell of her tender breasts, heard her murmurous cries, felt her breasts swelling to his touch of lips and fingertips, felt their peaks cresting beneath his sensuous suckling, heard those cries again, husky from her throat.
Her fingers wound in his hair, splaying out over the contours of his back, and his body hardened against hers, filling him with a desire so steep, so absolute, that he moved on her, seeking, questing, parting her thighs with his and lifting himself to her arching hips. Her throat was extended, her head thrown back, the pale tresses of her loosened hair flowing like a banner as he kissed her again, deeper and yet deeper still, as she opened to him with tiny, breathy cries, pleading for him as he slowly, carefully, sheathed himself within her yielding body.
She could not move. Dared not. Because if she did something impossible would happen. She would feel a bliss more than it was possible to feel. So she could only lie there, his body filling hers, hers enwrapping his, their muscles quivering. Her hands were caught at the wrists, lifted either side of her head. Her whole being was poised, balanced so finely that it was as if the very edge of a tsunami had welled out of the ocean deeps. For a timeless, exquisite moment she was held so still it was as if she were a statue of marble or ivory, hung in a moment of time that seemed eternal. She gazed upwards, her eyes wide, her lips parted—up into the face above her, whose dark, dark eyes held a question that was impossible to deny.