Page 41 of Greek's Temporary "I Do"

He watched her response, the slow close of her eyes, the breath caught in a chest pressed against his so that he could feel the slightest movement, the heady fragrance of crushed peonies beneath their feet and the soft scent of her reaching up to bewitch him.

‘Then no,’ she said, opening her eyes and locking her gaze with his. ‘I won’t stop you. Do what you will.’

Need clashed with the last vestiges of his control, thrashing against the leash of his restraint.

‘And what is your will?’ he demanded, his voice harsh, but broken by the strength of his want. Needing to hear her desires, needing her to be in this as much as he was.

‘My will is that you take me, own me and make me yours so that I will be ruined for any other man to come.’

He searched her eyes, her face for any sign of fear or insincerity, but there was none. She meant what she said. And it was a command that he would follow to his last breath.

‘As you wish,’ he replied, before claiming her mouth with his. As his tongue thrust between lips opened on a gasp, meeting the push of hers, his fingers flexed and fisted, the silk of her printed dress sliding over skin he needed to touch as much as he needed oxygen.

She moaned into his mouth and his chest nearly burst with need. His hands came up to cup her face and he angled her beneath him, taking full advantage of his height, bearing down on her with all the need and passion he was so desperate to share. Her hands came to his wrists, not to stop him but to keep him there, as she opened herself to him in utter and complete surrender.

‘Don’t hold back,’ she whispered against his lips. ‘Please don’t hold back,’ she begged.

Helena’s body was on fire, everything burning for him, from him. She didn’t think her heart would ever recover, her pulse, her breath would be ruined for ever by the sheer power of her need for him.

He pulled back from a kiss that was so overwhelming she had to steady herself against his chest. The incessant pulse between her legs, the ache low in her core, the dampness on the silk of her panties, Helena swore he knew it all.

He held her gaze as his hands dropped to her thighs, fisting the silk of her dress in his hands, inch by inch, the sensual glide against her ankles, her calf muscles, her knees and upward to her thighs. She pressed her legs together as he pulled the silk higher and higher, towards her hips, and shivered not from the cool sea air that hit her damp sensitive flesh but from the promise in the dark swirling depths of his eyes.

His fingers gripped the flesh of her backside and slipped beneath the bunched dress, the silk falling over his hands as if hiding the deliciously wicked things he was about to do from the world behind a veil of civility. His palm rounded the curve of her bottom, his thumb playing with the string of her silk thong, pulling it taut against her clitoris, and fire exploded across her skin and ignited a deep need in her soul.

Her head fell back and her mouth opened on a cry as his other hand slipped beneath the front of her panties, one long finger gliding down the centre of her slick folds, slowly back and forth, the palm of his other hand still pressed against her, while his gaze still held hers captive, as if demanding that he see every single expression that he wrought from her.

A sob fell from her lips and desire sparkled like gold shards in his eyes.

‘Again,’ he commanded.

She frowned, momentarily unsure and distracted by the play of his hands.

‘I want to hear the sounds you make,’ he whispered harshly into her ear, as if he were as affected by her pleasure as she was.

She didn’t know why it was something she struggled with, keeping her arousal silent, quiet as if it were her own.

‘Or do you need me to help you with that?’ he asked, his gaze ferocious with anticipation, a slash of red across each of his cheeks. ‘Oh, Helena,’ he said, before he slipped his finger deep into her, melting her entire body in a single stroke. Her head fell back but she was anchored between his hands. ‘You have no idea what the sound of you does to me,’ he said, and the thought of it, the want to do that to him, for him...

He added another finger and brushed her clitoris with his thumb and she saw stars. His palm pressed against the curve of her bottom, his fingers a caress, a grip, before pressing between her cheeks, the startlingly wicked play sending a shudder across her entire body.

Gasps fell from her lips unbidden, and victory shone in his gaze. Her breath shuddered in and out in time with the movement of his hands, and in her mind’s eye she saw them: Leo wringing pleasure from her, holding her in her most intimate, sacred femininity, herself near mindless under his ministrations.

Her breaths came quicker and quicker, the closer he pushed her towards her orgasm. She both feared it and wanted it more than life itself, because never before had she felt such a crescendo of sensation that her body vibrated with it. He was her anchor in the storm that came for her. He was the one that held her, even as he caused that very same storm—and even, she could barely believe it, as he promised more was still yet to come.

Her breath caught as she was hurled towards the precipice, no longer caring what sounds she made, gasps and cries of pleasure, need and want, carried away on the sea air. She was no longer Helena, but want, desire, a need that couldn’t be stopped, a force that couldn’t be dimmed. And when her orgasm crashed over her she fell against Leo, utterly spent and overcome.

She was vaguely aware that Leo picked her up as if she were delicate and precious and, slowly, he walked them down to the main deck, past the luxurious living area and back towards the master cabin she had yet to see.

He paused on the threshold, as they both took in the suite that had been prepared for a honeymoon. More peony petals littered the floor, candles in hurricane lamps glittered and flickered from the breeze coming through the open window, displaying dusk at its most beautiful. Sea salt played on the air and she knew in that moment she would always associate that smell with Leo. The breeze pulled and pushed at long net curtains that hung from the ceiling, encasing a king-sized bed in filmy romanticism.

And she realised with sudden, stark clarity that this was all they could have together, it was all they would ever get. Leo tightened his hold on her as if he’d had the same thought. She reached up to him then, and this time it was she who wanted to anchor him, to this moment, to what they’d given in to so selfishly. If they could have one thing, just one, it would be this.

‘Stay with me?’ she asked.

‘For as long as I can,’ he promised, truth in his words, refusing to shy away from the constraints that were shaping the rest of their lives.

Leo placed Helena gently on the bed, shocked at having discovered that she was the greatest fantasy he’d never known he’d had. How on earth had he got so lucky and so unfortunate at the same time, as the seconds they had left slipped through the cradle of his fingers?

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