Chapter Two
HE HAD COME. She watched the man manoeuvre the line of loungers like a leopard cutting smoothly through the undergrowth, his dark, unyielding gaze tightening around her so that it felt as if it was wrapping itself over her skin.
Her naked body twitched. He could see everything. Not just see, she corrected herself as his pupils fattened: he was tasting.
Savouring.
Consuming.
Above the buzz of the traffic, she could hear Big Ben marking the hour. She felt like Cinderella. Only she had already scampered from the ballroom before midnight. And instead of leaving behind her slipper, she had stripped naked for her prince.
Her pulse jerked unsteadily in her throat as his gaze found her mouth.
At the party she had pushed back against the shimmering tension that filled the space between them, literally turning her back on him.
It didn’t matter that she was more physically aware of him than she’d ever been of any other human. He was arrogant and off-limits.
Which was why she had kept moving in a carefully chosen orbit designed never to cross his path and had managed to leave that room with her pride intact. But he had gotten under her skin, crept through her bloodstream, snuck inside her head no matter how hard she tried to slide around him.
Her spine stiffened. She didn’t do this. Men. Lovers. Boyfriends. Back at home, she hadn’t dated much. She was famous for it, in fact.
The Ice Queen was one of her nicer nicknames.
She was never sure if the boys just wanted to date her because she was a Hamilton. Later she hadn’t wanted to date anyone because she knew by then that she wasn’t a Hamilton, and it simply reminded her that she was living a lie. Worse, it had made her realise that she didn’t know who she was.
But tonight, and for the first time since she had found out the truth about her parents, she knew who she wanted to be. This man, this dark-eyed stranger, had cut through the doubt and all the lies she’d been told and all the lies she’d unwittingly lived.
And when he walked into the bar, it seemed less like luck and more like fate. A throw of loaded dice because she had wanted this man from the moment he’d stepped out of that stupid limousine with his storm-cloud eyes and those endless shoulders.
Hunger pooled in her belly, but she couldn’t speak, and instead she turned and went back down the steps into the pool.
The water felt like a caress—or maybe that was his eyes. She could feel them following her, tracking the sway of her hips and she felt an ache in her pelvis that she hadn’t felt in so long. Her lips ached too as if his gaze had pressed against them.
As she lowered herself into the water, she felt a rush of panic.
He wasn’t going to follow her. She had thought there was a connection between them, but she was so out of practice, maybe she had misread that heat in his eyes.
Maybe it was just a simmering fury from what happened with his car.
And things were different here in London.
It wasn’t just her accent. There were other things too that kept catching her out. Maybe this was one of those—
She sensed him before she felt the ripples as his body entered the water. Her breath somersaulted unsteadily in her throat, and then she turned her head to look over her shoulder, and—
Oh. My. Days.
Willa was conscious of her jaw dropping, of being not quite in control of herself and her reaction.
The man was in the pool, close enough that if she reached forward, she could have touched him.
Every nerve in her body felt alive with his nearness and his nakedness. Because, of course, he was naked too.
By the lights that ran at intervals along the interior of the pool, she could see the contoured expanse of his chest and the line of fine dark hair leading down to—
He was not fully erect, but he was aroused. Unmistakably aroused.
Nothing like this had ever happened to her. It was so intense and abandoned.
She tried to swallow. Her whole body was rigid with desire, and she considered moving closer to let him feel her eagerness, but now that he was here she wanted to just freeze time, drink him in slowly. Because there would be no repeats.
‘It feels good,’ he said then, and she watched his hands move across the surface of the water, slowly tracing a shape that made her skin itch.
How was he doing this? For so long, she hadn’t wanted to be touched. To be touched was to be known, and she didn’t know who she was, so how could anyone else?
But this man made her feel differently. He made her feel that not being touched by him would be appalling. Unbearable.
‘The water. It feels good,’ he repeated.
He would feel good too, she thought wildly, her eyes skimming over the smooth skin of his stomach. So much beautiful smooth gold skin. It had been a long time since she had touched any skin other than her own, and she realised that she missed it.
‘The views are good too.’ She half turned towards the London skyline to let her gaze drift across Big Ben and the Gherkin and the Shard. A fat, wavering strip of orange like a tiger’s fur was melting into the buildings.
She was melting too, she thought as she glanced back to find him watching her in that intent way of his, as if she was a puzzle he was trying to solve.
‘Yes, they are,’ he said slowly, and she felt something inside of her loosen as his gaze drifted down to where her breasts were now exposed.
Her nipples tightened, then tightened again as she heard his sharp intake of breath. She let herself sink a little, floating beneath the surface. His gaze felt like a blow-torch, burning into her skin, softening her at the edges so that she could feel herself changing into something new.
‘Is that why I’m here? So you could show me the view?’ His voice, the hoarseness in it, made her legs part slightly. He was doing that too, and without even touching her, she thought with a jolt.
She shook her head slowly, feeling his grey eyes track the movement just as if he was using his hands.
‘We didn’t get properly introduced.’
‘And this is how you introduce yourself?’ He studied her face in that fierce, focused way of his that made heat slide under her skin like a hot knife through butter.
‘No, normally I just say Hi, I’m Willa.’ She didn’t give him her surname. There was no need. ‘And then you’d say—’
‘Hi, I’m Ares,’ he said softly.
Was that Greek? But she didn’t need to know that either.
‘So is that it? Are we properly introduced?’
‘We are.’
‘Then, what do you want to do now?’ His mouth curled up infinitesimally at the corners into an almost smile as his question vibrated through her, and now she was holding her breath so that it was impossible to answer.
But she didn’t need words for what she wanted to happen next.
She reached over and hooked her hands around his neck and kissed him, and panic, adrenaline, shock and relief at having done it spiked inside her as he kissed her back.
His hands were moving over her body. She could feel his cock pressing against her stomach, and the size and the hardness of it made her slip sideways a little, and then he was reaching under the water to lift her legs around his hips, taking the weight of her in his hands.
They kissed back and forth hungrily, tasting one another, and she had never kissed or been kissed like this. His mouth was possessive and devastating, and then there was the hard, insistent press of his erection against her stomach.
He scraped the hair from her neck, sucking her shoulder, and she moaned into the rhythm of his open-mouthed kiss, her fingers biting into his biceps.
‘Easy,’ he murmured against her lips, and then he was moving them both back into the shallow end of the pool.
Out of the water her breasts felt heavy and full, and a shiver ran over her skin as Ares sucked first one then the other into his mouth, circling the swollen tip with his tongue until she wanted to cry out.
Not because it hurt but because anything that started had to end, and she didn’t want this to end.
‘Don’t stop,’ she panted, and he lifted his mouth and kissed her fiercely.
‘I’m just getting started.’
He lifted her onto the shallow steps, his hands still cupping her bottom, and then he was spreading her legs, lowering his mouth to brush a kiss across the triangle of soft dark curls.
Flattening his tongue, he licked the pulse beating between her thighs, and she arched against his mouth, moaning.
He held her gaze, his grey eyes soft and light, sliding inside her as easily as his tongue was sliding back and forth.
And everything shuddered out of focus, and she was lost, adrift, spinning and splitting, her senses spiralling out of control, and yet she could still feel herself anchored to his mouth.
He was holding her together and undoing her at the same time, and then she was rising up on the crest of a wave, and there was nothing but him, this man, this stranger and his tongue swiping inside her and his hands gripping her waist.
A few more strokes and she’d be gone, but she wanted to feel him, feel him lose control.
‘Come inside me.’
She was pulling at his shoulders, his hair, so needy for him it hurt, scraped raw by her desire.
‘Let me get a condom.’
‘It’s fine. I’m safe.’
Safe. Was that the word? For a moment the whole of it, all the pain and misery of finding out that as well as losing her past, she was to be denied a future, threatened to swamp her, but she pushed back against it.
‘Please, I want you insi—’
But before the words were out of her mouth, he was kissing her, filling her with his need, and then he was angling his cock, sliding it in, and now he was filling her, and she was no longer conscious of anything but his nearness, and how big he was and how hard.