Читать книгу Greek Mavericks: His Christmas Conquest - Люси Монро, Люси Монро, Cathy Williams - Страница 14

WITHIN that kiss lay the essence of forbidden passion. It was strong and urgent and shamefully hungry.

Theo’s surprise lasted all of two seconds, then he savoured the sweetness of her mouth and the soft yielding of her body inclined towards his. He hadn’t moved. Instead, Sophie had half risen from her chair so that she could lean into him and she moaned softly as he placed his hand on her naked waist, where her jumper had risen up.

‘I’m sorry…’ She drew back for air, confused and disoriented by the impulse that had overwhelmed her.

‘For what?’ Theo had his hand curled into her hair and, instead of removing it, he pulled her towards him and kissed her along her jawline, which sent hot and cold flushes racing through her body. He had planned to back away from her. She was involved with another man and he was no poacher, but her kiss had put paid to any such noble intentions. Wasn’t all fair in love and war? And she couldn’t be that involved with Robert if she was willing to fling herself at another man. Theo, starved of physical contact for so long, felt himself taking deep breaths to keep his body in some kind of check.

‘This shouldn’t have happened.’ Appalled by her own behaviour, Sophie tried to wriggle back but the hand behind her was like steel. The more she wriggled, the more firmly it remained in place. Eventually, she abandoned the unequal struggle. ‘I’m not comfortable talking to you like this. I’m going to pull a muscle in my back in a minute.’

‘So I let you go and you run away. Then, when we next meet, you tell me that we should pretend that nothing happened.’ He slipped his hand under the jumper and ran his finger along her spine until she thought she might just pass out from the sensation. ‘You don’t have to run away,’ he murmured, ‘and it’s no good pretending that there’s nothing between us…’

‘There is nothing…between us…! And could you please stop doing that…?’

‘Doing what?’ Theo allowed his finger to travel the dangerous route down her spine until he found the gap in the waistband of her trousers, just big enough for his gently exploring finger to linger along the stretchy Lycra band of her underwear. ‘Turning you on?’

Sophie shivered and made one last desperate attempt to make contact with Planet Earth. ‘You mustn’t…we mustn’t…It’s just not…right…’

‘Why? Because there’s a man in your life?’

Sophie, who hadn’t given Robert a moment’s thought, mumbled something that was totally inaudible. Her head was telling her to use any excuse at hand to prise herself out of this compromising position, but her body was singing a different tune, a wickedly seductive tune. Torn between conflicting demands, she could only listen to the velvety purr of his voice and knew, with horror, that she wanted to be persuaded because her body was screaming out to be touched and not just here and there, but everywhere.

‘You’re not serious about him, Sophie,’ Theo murmured softly. ‘Come and sit on my lap and I’ll tell you why…’

Sophie had never sat on a man’s lap before. Well, she guessed, she would have sat on her dad’s when she was a toddler, but never in a situation like this, when the atmosphere was thick with unspoken needs and the innocent act of sitting on his lap took on a whole new meaning.

But, of course, it was still within her grasp to pull away whenever she wanted. That was the thought that feebly ran through her head as she edged towards him and was spared a final decision because he yanked her down, forcing her to hold on to him to save herself from an undignified landing.

‘There. Now, isn’t that better? Warmer too, with the heating off. It’s a known fact that the best way to keep warm is through close proximity to another body. You would be surprised the amount of heat we give off.’

Sophie made a strangled noise and then lost herself in his indecently sexy eyes—the purest and deepest of greens, fringed by lashes that were thick and dark and ridiculously long for a man. She felt her body melt a little and the hands around his neck imperceptibly moved upwards so that she could feel the texture of his black hair.

‘So…I was saying…’ He rested the flat of his hand on her thigh and gently massaged through the denim of her jeans. ‘The boy—Robert—he may have proposed and perhaps, just perhaps, he’s deluded himself into thinking that the two of you would be good for one another, but you know and I know that that wouldn’t be the case, would it?’

Sophie hoped that he wasn’t expecting an answer to that because she was incapable of doing anything near as coherent as that at the moment, when his hand was managing to send urgent messages to her brain that told her to open her legs just slightly, enough for him to move upwards, while his eyes remained pinned to her face.

‘I mean…’ Theo mused softly, taking his time because his body wanted to race ahead and just take what it had missed for so long. ‘That man’s no good for you, whatever story he spins about being your knight in shining armour.’

‘Every girl needs a knight in shining armour…’ The observation ended on a gasp as his questing hand found the zip of her jeans and tugged it down, exposing her sensible black cotton underwear. Still talking in that lazy silky voice, Theo slipped his hand under her pants and he groaned when she arched back, eyes closed, enjoying his fingers as they played with her.

‘I think we should go somewhere where there’s a bed,’ he said.

Through the blurred mist of her thoughts, Sophie knew that this was her last chance to pull away. At this point, she could use any excuse she wanted. They would both know the truth of the situation and there was no excuse that wouldn’t reek of hypocritical emptiness.

Sophie had never been a risk-taker. She had never rebelled during her teenage years. Her minor disobediences had been along the lines of feigning illness to skip a test or refusing to carry on with piano lessons even though her parents wanted her to continue. She had been a goody two shoes, content to watch from the sidelines while other girls broke the rules.

Going with Theo would constitute the biggest risk she could take.

‘Let’s go,’ she heard herself say, peppering his mouth with kisses.

Two words and she metaphorically jumped off the side of the cliff. It wasn’t just that she was going to sleep with him. No. Deep inside her she knew that it was much more than that. She was going to sleep with a man she barely knew, someone to whom she responded, often antagonistically, on a gut level. There had been no courtship, no dating, no romance and it was a situation that was going nowhere. She was willingly going to go against everything she had always believed in and she was looking forward to it!

That realisation made her walk just that bit more provocatively as they headed to the bedroom. With each step, she could feel her excitement increasing until they were finally in the bedroom and the double bed was staring them in the face, screaming an invitation.

Sophie, released from a lifetime of conformity, moved towards the window and drew the curtains, shutting out the weak, intrusive winter sunlight. When she turned round, it was to find Theo standing by the door, looking at her.

‘It’s basic.’

‘It’s perfect,’ Theo told her roughly. When she began to hitch her jumper over her head, he stopped her and began walking towards her.

‘Body heat. Remember?’

‘Meaning…what?’ It was madness, but for a one-night stand, or rather a one-morning stand that was going nowhere, he was making her feel incredibly sexy and very, very wanton.

‘Meaning we should get naked…when we’re in very close proximity to one another…’

He placed his hands in the hollow of her back and ground her against him so that there was no escaping the reality of his erection and, when she felt as if she was going to faint from what it was doing to her, he began kissing her—long, sweet kisses that left her breathless and weak.

The soft willingness of her body was, for Theo, like a life raft to a drowning man. Had he realised how much he had missed this most basic of human contact? After Elena, he had willed himself to feel nothing and so he had felt nothing. Not a twinge of sexual awareness in the presence of a woman, no matter how beautiful or physically desirable or even available the woman in question had been.

And, even when he had been with Elena, sex had not been on the menu. Her ultra-feminine fragility had not encouraged the more rampantly male side of him and Theo had been content to wait until such time as she dictated.

It had been a very long time since his body had been satisfied. Theo buried his face in her Sophie’s fair, silky hair and breathed in that beautiful fragrance, a mixture of shampoo and hair conditioner, that always struck him as essentially female.

And, miraculously, he felt no sense of betrayal. On no front did this woman constitute a threat to his precious memories. She was a safety valve. He heard her moan softly as he pressed her still harder against him.

‘I’d carry you to the bed myself, but…’

‘But you’d like to spare me the embarrassment of being responsible for you ending up in hospital with a broken back…?’

Theo laughed. She had a sense of humour, which was good. It meant she wasn’t making this into a big deal.

‘I think, in a case like that, we’d both be embarrassed.’ But, actually, he really would have liked to have carried her over to the bed and very gently deposited her on it. It was an amusing notion considering he thought himself the least romantic man on the face of the earth.

But one thing he wouldn’t let her do was take her clothes off. That was something he intended to do himself so that he could savour every second of the experience very slowly.

Sophie found herself luxuriating in the experience, feeling like the cat that had suddenly and unexpectedly landed the jug of cream. In that part of her brain which was still operating—just—she puzzled over the enigma of how she could enjoy, with such perfect blissful abandonment, the touch and feel and scent of a man who was also capable of rousing her to real anger and frustration. Like one of those nasty maths problems she could never work out for exams, Sophie dismissed the niggle and sighed as Theo began tugging down her jeans.

The drawn curtains had managed to block out most of the light but it was still far from dark in the room. Sophie watched, fascinated and turned on, the ripple of muscle along his arms and shoulders as he discarded her jeans and, kneeling at the bottom of the bed, removed his jumper. His body was as lean and as honed as any finely tuned athlete and bronzed—as perfect a male specimen as she had ever set eyes on. It briefly crossed her mind that she was taking on way more than she could handle but, like the insoluble maths problem, she shoved aside the worry.

More pressing was the thought that her underwear was simply not up to scratch. She was pretty sure that the women he had slept with, and Lord knew how many of them there had been in his life, would have worn sexy, lacy underwear. Expensive exquisite silk as opposed to bargain buy cotton.

But that little anxiety lasted all of three seconds and then there were no more thoughts as he pulled down the functional briefs and positioned himself squarely between her thighs.

It was almost painful for Theo not to give in to the overpowering urge to just take her. No more preliminaries, no more foreplay, just desperately needed gratification of his senses, but even though his body was so keyed up that a single touch and he would explode, he still wanted to satisfy her and to feel every inch of her respond to him.

He breathed in deeply to steady himself and then leant over her and began inching her jumper upwards. He must have fantasised about this even without realising it. What else would account for the fact that he could hardly breathe as more smooth skin was revealed to his greedy gaze?

And no bra. His hands itched to touch but when he finally touched he knew that he wanted it to be with his mouth. He wanted all his senses to be satisfied.

He heard her whimper as finally the jumper was off. For a fairly slight woman, her breasts were surprisingly lush, with big well defined nipples that Theo reached forward and touched, first with his thumbs until the peaks were rock-hard and then with his tongue, his mouth, his teeth, enjoying the way she bucked against him.

He couldn’t get enough of that sweet taste, pulling the nipples into his mouth and suckling on them until she whimpered that he had to stop, that she wanted him in her.

‘Not yet,’ Theo said, moving down, trailing his mouth along the flat planes of her stomach, circling her belly button with his tongue. He must be a glutton for punishment, he thought, not to take her at her word and release them both from the sweet torment of their needy bodies, but he was still intent on tasting every inch of her luscious body, knowing that she would respond.

He breathed in her unique smell, filling his nostrils with it, and then gently parted the folds of her womanhood. With his free hand on her stomach, he was aware of her sharp intake of breath and the jagged release of it as his tongue found the protruding sensitive bud of her femininity.

He wouldn’t stay there too long. He knew that she was on the brink. Frankly, so was he. When she began to toss under his exploring tongue, Theo rose up and, with a few sharp thrusts, penetrated her.

He reared up and took them both over the edge and release was glorious, spectacular.

Their bodies were slick with perspiration when he finally lay down next to her.

He wanted to ask her what she was thinking and realised, uncomfortably, that that was just the sort of question women used to ask him, a question which he had always found intensely irritating because his thoughts were not meant for sharing idly after sex. Or at any time, for that matter.

He pulled her so that she was facing him and gently stroked her hair away from her face.

‘Should we have done…what we just did?’ Sophie breathed. She could feel anxiety buzzing around inside her. No, she did not regret abandoning her principles, but, like all principled people, she couldn’t help wondering what happened next in the scenario, where was the logical progression that would make sense of her behaviour. She half hoped that he would tell her that it had all been a crashing mistake because that way she could rebuild her fortress and get back to some healthy dislike.

Instead, he gave her a lopsided grin and raised his eyebrows. ‘What kind of question is that?’ He kissed the corner of her mouth, which in itself provided her with the answer she was looking for. Yes…no mistake had been made. Making love with him had felt right.

‘Are you afraid that as your lover I might start asking you to knock something off my rent?’ He kissed her a little bit harder and was ridiculously gratified when she responded.

‘Are you afraid that as my lover I might start asking you to pay a bit more towards the rent?’

‘I would, you know…’

‘Would what? I was joking.’

‘Would pay more—enough to bail you out of your financial mess, in other words.’

Sophie stiffened. ‘I would never, never ask you to do that.’

‘I know you wouldn’t. I’m offering.’

‘Thanks but no thanks.’ She began pulling away but he kept his hands firmly clamped on her shoulders, preventing her from going anywhere.

‘I don’t intend to open up an argument over this, Sophie,’ Theo grated. ‘It was an offer. You rejected it. That’s fine. I won’t broach the subject again.’ He was tempted to draw her attention to that fine line between pride and stupidity but it wouldn’t have gone down well, even though it enraged him to think that she would consider Robert—nondescript background Robert—as someone she might turn to in her hour of need. Still. Her life and her prerogative to run it as she saw fit. It wasn’t his concern at the end of the day.

‘I’m not a charity case.’ Sophie was not mollified by his retreat. There could be no power play between them and no suggestion that he might rescue her from her debts. Whatever they had had to be free from all constraints, free, in a way, from the ugliness of reality—something passing to be enjoyed. It might be that their enjoyment lasted only this one time or maybe once more, but it couldn’t be marred by the grinding nuts and bolts of everyday life. And talk of lending her money was everyday life at its worst.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to help me with this computer program of yours.’ Well, was lending money any different from lending time and energy? She would still feel indebted in some way and indebtedness would be the clarion call for guilt to set in. Guilt that she was doing something she shouldn’t be doing, guilt that she was being used, guilt that she shouldn’t be enjoying herself, not when her beloved father had died and there were so many problems to be dealt with in the wake of his death.

Theo felt that he could read this woman’s mind like a book. Or maybe her face was just so transparent that her thoughts flitted across it without the benefit of concealment. He was momentarily enchanted by the concept of someone so inept at hiding what they were feeling. ‘If you say so,’ he murmured, taking a gamble on her response. She might not behave in a predictable fashion, but he knew enough about women to realise that certain things were predictable, and having her self-righteous tirade chopped off before it had a chance to begin would, he reckoned, be too much for her to handle.

‘Well, I do. As a matter of fact.’

‘Okay.’

Sophie frowned and smoothed her ruffled feathers by telling herself that at least they weren’t going to have an argument because he refused to listen to her. She didn’t want to argue with him. She wanted to enjoy him. It was perverse and made no sense but she wasn’t going to question it. She had jumped off the side of the cliff and was free-falling, but in a wonderful way, and she wasn’t going to alter its brief course.

‘Good,’ she told him firmly. She pressed herself against him, loving the feel of his hard masculine body against her soft feminine one. And she obviously wasn’t the only one with a responsive body. She reached down and circled his arousal with her hand and gently massaged it, then she pressed it against her own moist arousal and moaned softly as his eyes darkened and his breathing became jerky.

Theo, not foreseeing the end of the conversation just yet and pretty convinced that he could swing her round to accepting his help if not his money, found himself unable to do anything but respond to what his body was doing. Although he made love with the finesse of a master, there had always been a part of him that could stand outside what was happening and remain detached, some little part of his brain that could take control of the proceedings at any given moment should the need arise. The same part of his brain which should easily have been able to resist her exploring hand and terminate the conversation when it had reached a satisfactory conclusion for him. Not so now. He was powerless to do anything but touch and feel as the motion of her hand got quicker until he felt himself on the verge of doing the unthinkable and ejaculating like a teenager unable to control himself.

He grasped her hand and groaned.

‘You witch.’ He laughed softly and spun her so that she was on top of him. ‘Like it like this?’ He pulled her face towards his and kissed her and, while he kissed her, she manoeuvred herself so that he was deep inside her, filling her with such intense pleasure that she felt breathless.

She moved on him and arched her body up so that her breasts dangled provocatively in his face, their ripe nipples teasing his mouth until he found one and sucked hard on it as she increased her tempo.

Sophie had never done anything like this before. Her sexual experiences were severely limited and she had certainly never been roused to levels of such utter abandonment. She looked down at him, at his fiercely handsome face, and shuddered as she watched him suckle on her.

Their bodies were slick with perspiration and the aroma of sex filled the air like musky sweet incense. Sophie barely noticed the sound of the central heating firing up as power was restored. She was lost, every part of her absorbed with the sensations her body was experiencing.

Their climax left her spent and oddly emotional. She sagged on top of him before rolling off but, when she went to draw the covers over her ravished body, he stilled her hand.

‘No way. I want to lie here and look at you naked.’ He reached out and gently feathered a touch across her breast, circling her nipple, which was still darkened from the attentions paid to it.

And, he thought, he wanted to establish that all questions about Robert had been answered. For her own sake, he thought piously, he had to make sure that she wouldn’t enter into a relationship with the wrong man for the wrong reasons. Her eventual fate meant nothing to him but he was, he decided, not without conscience.

‘Would you like to tell me that no man has ever made you feel like I just did?’ Theo asked lazily.

‘I most certainly would not.’ No man had. Thank God he wasn’t a mind-reader. ‘And we have to get up. We can’t stay here all day.’

‘Why not? Are you expecting visitors?’

‘No, but…’

‘Mm. I know. It’s wildly decadent, isn’t it?’ he murmured, amused. ‘Lying here in bed during the day…Admittedly we’ll have to get dressed some time and get ourselves something to eat…Unless, of course, you have stuff in your kitchen, in which case we can just stroll out there as we are and eat…Now that would be wildly decadent…’

‘You’re teasing.’ Sophie blushed because the thought of doing that did seem very debauched indeed, which said a great deal, she thought ruefully, about her wildly exciting life. While twenty-somethings all over the country spent their free time strolling around kitchens with their lovers in the nude, here she was, as buttoned up as a fifty-year-old spinster.

Curiosity, as sharp as a blade, slashed through her. Did he do this often? Take time out during the day to make love? Lie in bed with a woman, only getting up to eat? What women? How many had there been? Why was there no woman around now?

Sophie fought down the urge to ask him any of those things. Something inside her recognised that her burgeoning curiosity could blossom into a dangerous need to get to know him and getting to know him was not part of her plan. As it was, she already knew too much about him. Not in the detail but in the general—the fact that he could be as amusing and witty as he could be arrogant, that his arrogance, even, had a certain compelling charm, that his intelligence outstripped that of any man she had ever known, possibly even her father, whom she had always considered head and shoulders above the rest of the human race as far as brain power went.

‘I’m going to have a bath,’ she said abruptly, slipping her legs off the side of the bed.

‘I’ll come.’ Holding on to her was like trying to hold water in the palm of his hand. Right now, Theo could feel her beginning to slip through his fingers and he wasn’t going to let it happen. Touching her, making love with her, had left him wanting more. He also needed to find out what the position was with Robert, whom he saw as not so much a threat as an unnecessary irritation.

‘I can bathe myself,’ Sophie was telling him, trying to maintain an appropriate distance and hating the little swirl of excitement that sparked through her as she contemplated the luxury of being bathed by this big powerful man.

She could feel little goosebumps on her arms as the warmth of the bed and their shared space was replaced by the coldness of the flat into which heat was only now slowly beginning to creep.

‘Sit.’

Theo dwarfed the tiny bathroom. Sophie could barely look at his towering frame. Suddenly, she felt very vulnerable, sitting as commanded on the toilet seat while he ran a bath, testing the water and pouring in bath salts, one hundred per cent comfortable with his nakedness. Her new role as decadent woman of the world obviously was confined to the bedroom. Once out of the bedroom, she seemed to revert to her usual self, anxiously wondering whether she had done the right thing.

‘Stop it right now,’ Theo said, without looking at her.

‘Stop what?’

‘Chewing your lip, folding your arms across your breasts, thinking about what happened between us like a dog worrying a bone.’ He turned around to face her, all man. He walked towards her and gently prised her arms from their predictably folded position so that he could look at her breasts in unashamed appreciation. She had glorious breasts. He could stand for hours and feast his eyes on the sight. He knelt down in front of her and cupped them with his hands, feeling their weight and hearing the alteration in her breathing as she responded. Amazingly, he could take her again. Instead, he steadied himself and dragged his eyes from the tightening peaks of her nipples.

‘Hop in.’

Sophie could feel his eyes burning through her as she walked to the bath and stepped into the water, which was just the right temperature.

‘So much better in a bigger bath,’ Theo murmured. ‘I could get in with you…’

‘And do you?’ Sophie asked. ‘Get into baths with women?’

‘No, not as a general rule.’ He got the bath sponge and began washing her neck, then, as she leaned forward, her back. It was a dreamy experience. Sophie closed her eyes and sat up so that her breasts were exposed and he could rub the soapy sponge over them. ‘Now stand up.’

Sophie obeyed, eyes still dreamily half closed. The sensation of being rubbed all over with warm soapy water was intensely exquisite. And he took his time, frequently squeezing the sponge and dipping it back into the bath water, paying attention to every inch of her, parting her legs so that over and over he could rub the sponge just there, on her most intimate part, on that throbbing nub, until her body was screaming for satisfaction.

Never, never, not even in the deepest recesses of her mind, had Sophie ever imagined that she could achieve orgasm like this, in full view of a man’s eyes, shamelessly juddering until every ounce of pleasure had been squeezed from her and then releasing one long breath of deep satisfaction.

She looked at him as he got to his feet and leaned forward to kiss her. He had seen her enjoy her most intimate experience and she wasn’t horrified at the thought. In fact, she smiled and told him very nearly what he wanted to hear, which was that this was the most pleasurable bath she had ever had. She wound her arms around his neck. ‘And I’m going to return the favour, never you fear.’

It was a little under an hour later by the time they emerged, sated, from the bathroom and Sophie’s eyes were glowing. Lunch was something they threw together—bread and cheese and, in keeping with the unconventional nature of the day, a bottle of wine. And they talked, Theo stepping over certain topics, encouraging her to open up so that he could broach the topic of Robert, which had been temporarily set to one side.

Eventually, in an atmosphere of domesticity which Theo succumbed to because it was a one-off, and with mugs of coffee set in front of them as they sat in the small sitting room, cosy, warm and content, he tentatively broached the subject of her relationship with Robert. In an oblique fashion. And he watched her as she spoke, lazily playing with her hair, maintaining a physical contact that his body seemed to crave.

‘I’m a possessive lover,’ he told her. ‘I can’t say I even like the thought of another man looking at my woman.’

My woman. It had a glorious ring to it until Sophie reminded herself that this was a blip on the horizon, two ships meeting in the night, soon to go their separate ways.

‘Robert’s just a friend at the moment,’ she said, tucking her feet under his thigh and resting back on the arm of the sofa.

Theo didn’t like the sound of at the moment even though he was quick to acknowledge in his head that her future dealings with the man were not his concern. This was passion born of the moment and with a predetermined time span.

‘Just like this is simply something that’s happened at the moment,’ she added, squashing the feeling of sharp regret that washed over her. ‘I think we both know where we stand,’ she continued, determined to make sure that she drove the point home, that he needn’t fear that she would become wrapped up in him. She was a modern woman, able to handle a modern relationship, which meant wonderful, passionate, fulfilling sex with no questions asked. She was well aware that his departure date was in her diary, with a two-week break before a couple and their two children rented the cottage for a week over the New Year period.

Robert, she knew now beyond any doubt, was never going to be a contender to her heart and she would tell him, but why should she let Theo know that? Didn’t modern women have their secrets? And some instinct she never knew she had warned her to hold back.

‘Enjoy the moment,’ Theo murmured, pulling her towards him so that she was lying against his chest, hearing the thud of his heart.

‘I never thought I would do that,’ Sophie confessed. ‘I mean, have a relationship with a man and be perfectly happy that it was going nowhere…’

‘But you can with me…’ Why was it that he didn’t like to hear that? She also wasn’t ruling Robert out of her life, which he would have liked—yet another illogical thought that he pushed away.

‘Mmm.’ She squirmed round to straddle him and clasped her hands behind his neck. They had both changed, he into his boxer shorts and nothing else, she into a T-shirt and underwear. Just enough to preserve propriety, which she had insisted on, much to his amusement as he would have been happy to stroll through the flat in the nude. ‘No tomorrow.’

‘Oh, I think tomorrow is a certainty,’ Theo drawled, cupping her rear with his hands. ‘In fact, I can think of quite a few things we could do tomorrow…’

‘Yes—’ Sophie laughed ‘—your writing and my work!’ But the temptation to bunk off reared its ugly head and held her captive.

‘Our work…’ Theo said, tilting her face so that she was looking at him, green eyes tangled with brown. ‘I’m going to install that program, Sophie, whether you like it or not, so you’ll have to put your pride in a cupboard and bring it out some other day.’

‘You won’t have time—I don’t want to interfere with your writing.’

‘Don’t worry about…about that…’he told her. ‘I’ll find it relaxing. Of course, I shall have to lay down a few provisions which I consider essential to my successful programming…’ He felt her laugh into his chest and a thrill of intense satisfaction snaked through him. Satisfaction and…peace.

‘And that would be…?’

‘Oh, sex in unusual places and possibly at odd times…Walks on the beach so that we can talk about work and computers and other stimulating topics like that…You cooking at least one meal for me without anything on…’ He wondered where that last had come from but, having said it, he already felt turned on at the thought of her ladling food on to his plate while he watched the sexy movement of her bewitching body. With a disturbing leap of imagination, he thought that that request would never have been on the agenda with Elena. She had aroused other things in him but certainly not this fierce desire rushing like burning acid through his veins. But already Sophie was distracting him from following the thought through, teasing him, reminding him how much there was to life outside the work that had dominated his for so many months, showing him his humanity.

Right now, right here. That was all that mattered. Accustomed to controlling the course of his life and a future that was as ruthlessly marshalled as was humanly possible, Theo allowed himself the unique indulgence of just going with the flow.