Page 43 of Greek's Temporary "I Do"

With as much care and attention as he’d shown in their bed, he soaped his hands and ran the suds gently across her skin. Never had anyone shown her such care and consideration. This was touch—not for pleasure, but still pleasureful. It was intimacy, not carnal but still erotic. He didn’t say a word the entire time, his dark hair slicked with water, skin slippery with soap, hands roaming all over her body. He was as focused on her as she had been on him earlier, and yet somehow his actions, this, nearly brought a tear to her eye.

In that moment she was the centre of his world and she knew it.

And even if it was just for now, she’d take it.

CHAPTER TEN

‘WHERE ARE YOU?’ Helena called out from the sun lounger on the main deck.

‘I’ll be there soon. Just wait.’

But she didn’t want to wait, she thought, and nearly laughed at herself. Had he cast some spell? Had they turned back time to when she was an infatuated teenager, desperate to get just one more glimpse of Leo Liassidis? Even though she knew it was more than an infatuation, she told herself that was what it was, what it needed to be. Because she was going to find it so hard to walk away when...

‘Ta-da!’

Leo loomed between her and the sun, casting himself and what he was carrying into shadow through her sunglasses. And for a moment it felt like a warning, the cut-out of where he would never be in her life.

She bit her lip, forced a smile to her face, took off her sunglasses and gasped when she saw the tray he was holding.

‘You made all this?’ she demanded.

‘Of course,’ he replied, as if outraged that she thought he wasn’t up to it.

The platter held bowls of beautiful fruits, yoghurts, nuts and seeds, golden and toasted, flutes filled with mimosas, and even two plates with delicious-looking omelettes.

‘Of course?’ she repeated on a laugh. ‘You can cook?’ she asked, teasing.

‘Is this because I’m Greek or because I’m a man?’ he demanded, leaning into one hip and making her laugh even more as his outrage deepened. ‘Because I need to know which before I can be offended appropriately.’

‘Both?’

A string of Greek curses filled the air and she couldn’t help it. She threw her head back and laughed, a deep, stomach shaking, heart resetting laugh that she remembered from her childhood.

‘Stop laughing like that,’ he mock-complained as if she didn’t know how much he enjoyed seeing it.

Over breakfast they talked about what they would do that morning, for lunch, for dinner that evening, as if the spectre of Leander’s return didn’t hover over their shoulders. As if there would be a hundred tomorrows to come.

Swim, eat, luxuriate. It all seemed so easy and so free. So different to the way that she’d spent the years since she’d last seen him. From the moment her father had passed away, she’d been so focused on working with Incendia, on earning her degree, her master’s, on being the best that she could be, hoping, wanting so badly to be someone her father would have been proud of, someone that her mother could...could love.

And somewhere in that, she’d forgotten the girl she had used to be. The one that laughed and played in the sun and the sea. The one who had delighted in the teasing fun offered by the Liassidis twins as much as her father’s attention. And it wasn’t just she who was learning to relax in this moment.

The Leo she remembered from her childhood unfurled beneath the sun, the smile so far from his lips only a week ago nearly a constant. The heat in his eyes, the promise there, was entirely unfamiliar but utterly thrilling and it left Helena feeling so aware of herself and her sensuality—it was powerful and heady, and terrifyingly addictive.

Leo thrust out an arm to catch Helena around the waist, her skin slippery in the saltwater of the Mediterranean, the swimming costume high on her hips and low on her chest. He’d never forget this as long as he lived.

As he trod water, and ducked to avoid the splash she sent his way, he pulled her against him, his body delighting in the feel of her warmth, her skin, her. With the islands in the distance and the sea surrounding them, he racked his brain to find any moment more perfect than this.

He remembered seeing Helena at the bottom of the aisle of the church in her wedding dress. Before she’d seen him, before she’d realised that it wasn’t Leander waiting for her, there had been a moment—the length of a heartbeat—when he’d forgotten. Forgotten why he was there, forgotten that she wasn’t his fiancée, forgotten the feud with his brother... In truth, he’d nearly forgotten his own name.

She’d had a small smile on her lips, a Mona Lisa smile, hypnotic, cryptic, but alluring nevertheless, and when she’d looked up he’d thought, for just a second, he’d seen recognition in her eyes, delight, hope...before it had turned to horror.

‘Earth to Leo,’ she whispered into his ear as she twisted in his embrace, their legs sliding against each other as they navigated buoyancy together. ‘Come in, Leo,’ she finished, the simmering want in her gaze wicked and playful and everything he’d never thought he’d be lucky enough to ever have.

‘Well, your wish is my command,’ he replied as his fingers found the hemline of her costume at her hip.

She squealed in delight, and wriggled, pushing her body further against his, and curses fell from his lips before he claimed hers with his own.

‘This is impractical,’ he mock-complained against her lips and once again she undulated against him as his fingers found her clitoris. She moaned against him and no amount of cold water could hold back his erection.

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