‘Because I want to take you home.’
As the car purred away from the city, through the hilly Sydney streets, she could never have guessed at his nervousness. Gates parted and the car slid into a garage, and as they stepped out Emma found that she was frowning, unsure as to why Zarios had selected a key and opened a front door.
It was the normality of it, Emma realised as she stepped inside. The normality of a key on a ring and Zarios letting himself in had momentarily dazed her—and never more than now, as she walked through the hall and into the lounge.
Oh, there was no doubt it was a luxurious property—the view alone took care of that, the ocean seeming almost touchable from the clifftop vantage point—but it wasn’t even that that had her breath catching in her throat. It was the telescope set up beside the window, the low comfortable cushions, a book turned pages-down on the coffee table.
Zarios had been right.
This was a home.
‘I don’t get here often enough.’ Zarios was flicking on lights, shrugging off his jacket, and instead of contemptuously tossing it on the floor for someone else to pick up, he actually hung it—if not on a hanger in the wardrobe, at least over the back of a chair.
‘Progress!’ Emma commented.
‘Sorry?’
‘If you keep practising, in a couple of days you might even manage to hang up a towel.’
‘I only have someone come in once a week here—to stock up the fridge and keep the place ready for me. If I don’t put it away myself…’ He actually smiled as it dawned on him she was being sarcastic, and Emma found she was doing the same. Especially when he offered her coffee and actually made it himself.
‘The view’s stunning.’
The moon was waxing, just a couple of nights away from being full, and it lit up the inky water, catching the surf and highlighting it as it crashed to the beach. Zarios had slid open one of the vast windows, the Pacific Ocean was roaring its tune, and Emma realised that she was nervous. For days she’d waited for this moment, but now that it was actually here she wondered how to approach it—almost yearned for the anonymity of a hotel room, for the vagabond existence she had thought was his. Because here amongst his things, here in his home, Emma felt wrong-footed, embarrassed, almost, at her presumption that there was something she could offer him.
If Zarios wanted a family, then surely he would already have had one?
‘Excuse me a moment…’ she said, and she dashed to the bathroom.
There was a run in her very sheer stockings and Emma pulled them off. It was a relief to get out of her Magic Knickers, too, to gulp some water from the tap, and then glance around at his things.
Zarios’s things.
No glass bottles, no matter how fancy, filled from the vats belonging to a hotel, but his things. Cologne and shaving brushes…Funny that a box of cotton buds could make her smile, or thick brown towels and a book by the bath, which must have been dropped in it at one point because the pages were all wrinkled.
She tried to picture the room with baby lotions and nappies and a bath full of toys, but she couldn’t. The heir he seemingly desired was a person in its own right, not a Band Aid to hold two people together.
She wished she could stop the clock, could pause the changes in her body long enough for them to work it out, long enough to establish the couple before the family.
Which was what she wanted to do tonight.
She’d put on weight.
Zarios watched her as she crossed the lounge room. Oh, he knew women too well to comment—knew she wouldn’t believe him even if he insisted that he liked what he saw.
And he did like it.
Her legs were bare now, and still slender, but there was a roundness to her hips that suited her, and her breasts…Zarios found his tongue was on the roof of his mouth as he saw the swell of them, the sheer silver fabric accentuating swollen nipples.
There were so many reasons for her not to walk over to him—they needed to talk, needed to sort things out—except they needed togetherness more. It was as if some invisible thread were pulling her. The memory of his kiss was still alive on her mouth, and if somehow she could capture that, if somehow they could retrieve the closeness they had once shared, surely then they would be in a better position to sort things out?
Always he was beautiful—that was never in question—only tonight he was exquisitely so. His jacket was off, his tie loosened, his jaw dark, his cheekbones savage in the dim light and his dark eyes quietly watching. She wanted to bound up to him like a crazy puppy, or jump on his knee like a purring kitten, but instead she walked over.
‘Come here.’ He made the last few steps easy, caught her wrist and pulled her onto his knee. ‘Come here so I can never let you go again,’ he said. And if it was just about sex, if it was just about lust, why did he hold her for a full moment before kissing her? He pressed his face in her hair, as if her scent was enough, but only for a moment before the tension, the want that had simmered, eternally checked, infinitely controlled, was let loose in one savage motion—the hungry search for each other’s mouth.
Greedy, greedy kisses that at first had nothing to do with pleasing the other, just satisfying one’s hungry self—tasting, licking, sucking and confirming the other was real. His kisses were so potent, yet so desperate as mouths still entwined, he spun her round on his lap so she was straddling him. There was no choice but to hitch up her dress to accommodate his thighs between hers. His fingers grazed the bare flesh of her upper thighs, and she felt his low moan in her mouth as his fingers slid higher.
‘Oh, Emma…’ His hands cupped her bottom. ‘You should have told me…’
A shocked gurgle of laughter filled her throat that he thought she had been walking around all night with no panties—but why spoil it when she was sliding down his zipper, freeing his delicious erection? She felt almost sick with want. His fingers were working her zipper also, his hands creeping in at the sides of her dress, the pad of his thumb working a nipple—till it wasn’t enough, either for her or him. He broke the strap on her dress with mutual consent and then, capturing her breast in his mouth, sucked greedily as she pressed his length against her heat.
He lifted her buttocks the generous inches it would take to accommodate him, his mouth still working her breast, then came the heaven of him entering her. She could see him, sliding deep inside her, and it was the most erotic thing she had ever seen—his endless length teasing her, his hands moving her up and down more slowly than she would have preferred. But even if she was on top, it was Zarios who was in control.
‘All the nights I have wanted you…’
‘I wanted you, too…’
She was giddy with want, fighting his strong hands, wanting to move faster. But he wouldn’t relent, each measured stroke deep inside coveting her, revealing the beauty of gleaming black hair against soft blonde curls. And still, even as she came, still he moved her slowly, wouldn’t let her orgasm abate. He just ground her hips down to meet his, over and over again, till her body imploded, till she screamed out his name, till she was coming again. Only then did he let her move with wild abandon as he pulsed deep inside her, taking her closer to the edge than it was surely safe to do, then pulling her back when she was sure she was lost for ever.
‘I missed you…’ Still his kisses were urgent as he carried her to his bed a mesh of arms and legs, and she lay drunk on a cocktail of sensations. His slow deep kisses breathed life back into her and she kissed him again. It could never be so good with anyone but him. It was as though he could see inside her, could read her as if he was her.
‘Can we make it?’ Black eyes stared down at her. ‘Could you forget the hurt, forget the past…?’
‘Can you?’
‘Yes.’
Oh, but it was too simple an answer—and her resolve to establish them before she brought in the rest of world faded with the caress of his eyes.
‘Zarios, when I accepted the loan I thought there would be no problem. I mean…’ Her mouth was impossibly dry. She was scared to trust him with her brother’s secret, but scared not to. Scared not just because of the debt that would go unpaid, but scared for the future—because Jake was hurtling head-first into a pit of no return. Her parents were gone, and when her brother didn’t pay her back their relationship would be gone, too. ‘I wasn’t honest with you when I asked for the loan…’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He shooed it away. But for Emma it did matter.
‘It does…’
‘It’s money…’ he kissed her mouth ‘…of which I have plenty. Forget about it.’
His mouth was toying with hers, numbing her panic, and when he kissed her like this she could kiss him for ever—because here in his bed, here in his arms, it was about so much more than a debt unpaid.
‘I need your help.’
‘You have it.’ His tongue slid into her lips. ‘Tomorrow we will sort out whatever trouble you are in. But tonight…’
Tonight was theirs. Tonight was about making love over and over, about lying in his arms afterwards and glimpsing a future she’d never dared to. A cot in the corner, their baby in bed beside them…