Page 44 of Greek's Temporary "I Do"

‘Dangerous even,’ he weakly protested, as her head fell back and he anchored her to him and to the surface. He could watch her for ever. He could pleasure her for the rest of his life and it wouldn’t be enough.

‘Utterly irresponsible,’ he tried again as he teased her orgasm closer and closer.

The flush on her cheeks, the gasps of breath on the air, the way she was utterly lost to her own pleasure was almost enough to make him orgasm himself. Her cries grew higher and higher, more urgent, needing, wanting, and he had to try every single trick himself not to follow her over the edge just from watching her come.

Taut lines across her body melted away as she fell into her orgasm and he held her to him, keeping them afloat in the sea, shocked to his core by the single most erotic experience of his life in which he hadn’t even orgasmed himself.

Slowly, he drew them back to the boat, pulling her from the sea and into his arms, all the way back up to the main deck, where he washed the saltwater off their skin with the outside shower and wrapped a satiated and smiling Helena in a fluffy white towel.

He drew her to the sun loungers out on the deck. The soft canvas cushion over the wood was comfortable enough for a long laze beneath the rays of the sun climbing too far, too fast, into the sky.

He sat, drawing her between his legs and laying her back against his chest. He couldn’t stop touching her. As if his body knew that time was running out and it was desperately trying to take what it could get. All the feelings, all the scents, all the touches.

‘So, Ms Hadden,’ he began, unable to bring himself to call her by his name. His brother’s name. ‘Curious minds want to know—what is your five-year plan?’ he asked in a mock British accent, as if giving an interview.

Only a part of him was interested in the answer, because the other part just wanted to listen to her talk. Or at least that was what he told himself until she hesitated.

‘I know that I’m still quite young, and there’s so much I’d want to do with Incendia...’

If she managed to succeed in surviving the end of year financial review. He heard her doubt, he knew of her insecurities. But no matter what passed between them here, or in the future, he knew that she would do it. Knew it with a visceral belief in the woman in his arms.

‘But one day, in the not-too-distant future, I’d like a family,’ she admitted, scrunching her nose.

His heart stopped. Completely and utterly. The high-pitched whine in his ears was like that of a heart monitor flatlining.

‘Children. More than one,’ she said, her voice stronger the more she entertained her hopes for the future.

As she painted a picture of the family and the life she wanted one day, he forced his body not to betray the ice-cold hold that had taken him over. He, who had fought with his brother for fourteen years, who had immersed himself in work and business and meetings to fill days that had become increasingly empty the more he tried to protect himself, had never allowed himself to think of a future with a family.

And even if Helena hadn’t just ‘married’ his brother for all the world to see, would he have been able to give her that? The family that she had never had as a child, the kind of love and attention and focus that she deserved and needed? Could a man who had been so ruthless with his twin brother be capable of that kind of love?

‘I keep losing you,’ Helena complained gently, pulling his attention back to her.

And all he could think was that he’d already lost her.

‘What about you, Mr Liassidis? Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’ Helena asked, even though she knew that their hearts weren’t in the ‘game’ any more.

‘Oh, I think I’ll still be sitting at the head of the boardroom, commanding thousands of employees to do my bidding,’ he quipped, even though for Helena it was suddenly not at all funny.

His answer was telling, but it was also calculated, and that was what made it worse.

The moment she had told him she wanted a family she had felt something shift between them. Her first thought was that she shouldn’t have told him. Shouldn’t have confessed her dreams for the future. And then she got angry. Because it was what she wanted and it wasn’t unreasonable. She wanted the security and love that offered and she wanted to be able to give all the love she had to another human being. To pour it into them.

It wasn’t about getting something in return, getting that love back—the kind that she’d never received from her mother or her father—but she wanted so much to share what was in her. And there was so much love to give that it almost hurt.

But Leo’s retreat, emotionally if not physically, served as a painful reminder that he was not someone who was safe for her.

No, she didn’t think that he was the same Leo who had cut her from his life so easily all those years before. She knew—could see—the toll that the separation with his brother had taken on him, and she understood why he had protected himself by creating that separation. Because, deep down, she believed that Leo was just like her. He was someone who had so much love to give and nowhere, no one, to give it to.

But he was also very different to her. Because while she still had hope that things could and would be different, it was as if Leo had drawn a line and moved beyond that hope in order to protect himself.

The thought sobbed painfully in her chest. Because she loved him. She loved him deeply and truly and the thought that he wouldn’t accept that love, wouldn’t allow himself to feel that love was a visceral pain that rended her heart in two.

Forcefully, she pushed back that hurt. There would be time for that later, when Leo was gone and Leander had returned. For now, with desperate hands, she clung to the thread of the present.

She turned in his arms and craned her head to look up at him.

‘Kiss me?’ she asked.

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