The Demetrios Virgin

Her mouth was properly open beneath his now, her tongue hungry for the sensual melding stroke of his, and the intensity of her own feelings was dizzying and dazzling her.

‘You want me... You need me...’

She could feel him mouthing the words and she couldn’t deny them, her body, her emotions were saturated with the intensity of a response to him so new to her that she had no defences against it.

Everything else was suddenly forgotten, unimportant. Everything else and everyone else. All she needed... All she wanted... All she could ever want was here within her reach.

She moaned and trembled as she felt Andreas’s hands on her body and over her dress, their touch hard, hungry...excitingly, dangerously male. The unfamiliar intimacy of his body against hers was depriving her of the ability to think or to reason properly. There was no place for reason to exist in this new world she was inhabiting anyway.

‘I want to see you...watch you whilst I make love to you,’ Andreas was saying thickly to her. ‘I want you to see me... My God, but I can understand now just why all those other men fell victim to you. There’s something about you, some witchery, some— What’s wrong?’ he demanded as he felt the abrupt way Saskia had tensed against him in rejection.

Saskia could not bear to look at him.

With those few contemptuous words he had destroyed everything, totally obliterated her wonderful new world and brought her crashing back to her old one. She felt sick to her soul from her own behaviour, her own folly.

‘No, no, I don’t want this,’ she protested frantically, pushing Andreas away.

‘What the...?’ She could hear the anger in his voice, feel it almost, but still he released her.

‘If this is some kind of game—’ he began to warn her, and then stopped, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘My God, I must have been out of my mind anyway, to even contemplate... I suppose that’s what too many years of celibacy does for a man,’ he threw at her unkindly. ‘I never thought I’d be idiotic enough...’

He turned back to her, stopping when Saskia froze.

‘You’re quite safe,’ he told her grimly. ‘I’m not going to touch you. There’s no way—’ He broke off and shook his head again, and then walked abruptly away from her, telling her brusquely, ‘I’ve got some work to do.’

* * *

THE BEDROOM WAS in darkness when Saskia woke up, and at first she didn’t know what had woken her. Then she heard it again, the rhythmic sound of someone swimming. The patio doors to the pool area were open, and as she turned her head to look towards them she could see the discreet lights which were illuminating it.

Andreas was swimming... She looked at her watch. It was three o’clock in the morning and Andreas was swimming...tirelessly up and down the pool. Warily she sat up in bed to get a closer look as his powerful crawl took him to the far side of the pool. As he executed his turn Saskia lay down again. She didn’t want him to see her watching him.

Beneath the bedclothes she was naked, apart from a tiny pair of briefs. The one thing Andreas had apparently forgotten to buy for her had turned out to be any kind of nightwear. That discovery had caused her to remain for nearly fifteen minutes in the locked privacy of the bathroom, agonising over what she should do until she had finally found the courage to open the door and make an undignified bolt for the bed, her body hidden from view by the towel she had wrapped around it. Not that she need have been so concerned. Andreas had remained out of sight in his office.

But he wasn’t in his office now. Now he was swimming in the pool.

Beneath the protective cover of the bedclothes Saskia’s brain worked feverishly. Should he be swimming alone at night? Was it safe? What if...? Almost the very second that fear formed her ears registered the fact that she could no longer hear the sound of Andreas swimming. Quickly she lowered the bedclothes and looked anxiously towards the pool area. The water was still, calm—and empty of its sole swimmer.

Andreas! Where—? She gripped hold of the bedclothes as she saw him climbing out of the water—totally naked—totally! She tried to drag her recalcitrant gaze away from his body but it was no use; it was refusing to listen to her, refusing to obey her, remaining fixed in hungry female appreciation on the pagan male beauty of Andreas’s nakedness.