'Saffron, my sweet, naïve Saffron,' he teased, and she glared down at him, only to be rewarded with a swift kiss on her full lips. 'Surely you've realised by now that my mother is the original drama queen?'
'Drama queen?' she murmured. Alex's amusement and the surge of desire that went through her at his kiss, and his hand stroking up and down her back as she lay against him, were hazing her brain.
'My mother, much as I love her, can't help herself,' Alex said, and, finally controlling his amusement, he continued, 'She was a dancer when she met my father, but her ambition was to be an actress. My father worshipped the ground she walked on, and if anything was far too indulgent. He listened to her dramatic stories, put up with her trips to London for the theatre, the opera, the art.
'She probably told you the old story of Aunt Katherina and my father; it was nothing. Katherina dated my father twice, met his brother and that was it, but Mama likes to embroider the truth; she can't help herself. I should have stopped her years ago, but, like my father, I tend to indulge her. I was eighteen when I had to take over the running of the family, and I can tell you that looking after three women—my mother, aunt and cousin—is no joke; I would rather run a multinational business any day.'
Saffron believed him. Hadn't she been puzzled by the easy friendship of the two women on Serendipidos? 'The chopstick poet,' she murmured.
'Exactly; that sounds like Mama.' An affectionate smile curved Alex's mouth. 'You can't believe half she tells you, and the rest is usually a vast exaggeration. But I love her.' His voice thickened as his hand slipped under the waistband of her jeans, curving her bare bottom. 'And I love you, quite desperately, Saffron. Believe me.'
She did. . . It was in character, Saffron realised, for Alex to allow Sylvia the use of the apartment. He had been taking care of women all his life, and, thinking back to the morning on the yacht, she had not actually seen Sylvia leave his cabin; she had been standing with her hand on the door. In that moment Saffron acknowledged that there were some things she would have to take on trust. The decision made, she smiled, a wide, beauteous curve of her full lips.
'I do believe you, Alex, and I do love you,' she said simply, her green eyes, soft and full of emotion, gazing down on his darkly handsome face. Tomorrow, she would use that test and, God willing, she would be able to give him the greatest gift of love—a child.
'Saffron, my darling,' Alex husked, pulling her head down to his and kissing her with all the urgency and pent-up emotion of a man starved of love for years, instead of only one night.
Clothes were discarded in frantic haste as they rolled around the wide bed in a tangle of arms and legs, mouth seeking mouth, hands touching, caressing, teasing, tormenting, until finally Saffron lay beneath her husband's taut, poised body, shaking on the brink of completion. 'Please, Alex,' she pleaded. 'Now.'
Alex raised his head, his eyes glowing with an incredible warmth and passion as his broad chest rubbed over the throbbing fullness of her breaste. 'Now—' He joined with her. 'Now and forever I will love you, in this world and through all eternity,' he declared thickly as finally he moved slowly and deeply, his great body claiming her, fulfilling her wildest dreams.