Chapter Seven
WILLA WAS GLAD that Ares’s hand was solid against her back because in the slithering unsteadiness of the moment she would have lost her footing. She felt loose and soft at the edges as if she was dissolving into the brilliant sunlight and the heat of his mouth on hers.
Her pulse was shivering, because she had lost her mind. He had too.
This was crazy, ridiculous, foolish, but his mouth was warm and urgent, and his hands were moving deftly over her skin. He was literally reading her like a map, and she clutched at him feverishly, the certainty of his touch giving her permission to embrace her insanity.
He was touching her face, her throat, her shoulders, and each caress was a flame licking over her skin, accelerating her desire, and she moaned against his lips.
His fingers tightened in her hair, and she felt something liquid and electric skate down her spine as he began nuzzling her throat, tasting her skin with hot, open-mouthed kisses, breathing her in, and she had to grip his shoulder to stop her legs from buckling.
Now he found her mouth again. ‘Do you want to go back to the villa?’
The hoarseness in his voice jolted her back to real time, and she saw that his face was taut with muscle and concentration, and she knew that he was having to keep himself in check. There was a tantalising power in seeing him so aroused, in knowing that she was the reason it was such a struggle.
‘No.’ She frowned. ‘Do you?’
But he was already moving both of them backwards up the slope, his hunger a living force she could feel vibrating through his body into hers.
His hands shifted to her shoulders, and then he was pulling at the straps of her dress, and she felt the fabric slip over her body, snagging on her taut nipples. Already they felt more sensitive than before, and she tugged the bodice of the dress past them.
He grunted, and the sound jolted her nerve endings, made her think of hot, damp skin and the flat of his tongue moving between her thighs.
She could feel pleasure fluttering over her abdomen like a bath spilling over, and suddenly she wanted to make him shake, to feel him lose control.
She tugged at the button on his waistband, fingers clumsy with need, and then she was unzipping him, her fingers pushing past the fabric on his trousers to take his cock in her hand.
Was he this big last time? Her breath caught in her throat. He was smooth and hard, the skin taut over the straining flesh.
‘Let me taste you,’ she said hoarsely, and his pupils fattened so that his eyes were pure black, and he let her push him backwards onto the springy grass, his hand moving to tangle through her hair as she dropped down between his legs and moved her mouth over the head of his erection.
She could sense his yearning, and then his fingers moved to caress the curve of her bottom, and she felt her blood sing, and finding his hand, she pressed it between her thighs.
His cock twitched and swelled in her mouth, and she felt him shudder against her as he slid his fingers beneath the damp cotton of her panties.
He was lifting her slightly, holding her up, holding her together almost with his fingers, and her thighs trembled uncontrollably. Her pulse was beating against his hand as she rocked against him. His other hand moved to clutch her hip, and the pressure inside of her lurched outwards.
Maybe he was feeling it too, because he was pulling her hips backwards and kissing her hungrily, his fingers pinching her aching nipples. She squirmed in his arms, wanting more contact, more flesh, more skin, desperate for friction, certain that she would die if he stopped what he was doing.
The roar in her ears was getting louder. She felt like she was melting. Her fingers twitched against his chest as he sucked her breasts.
‘Se thélo,’ he said. She didn’t speak Greek, but the raw hunger in his voice almost tipped her over, and she was arching against him wildly so that he had to clamp his hands on her hips to steady her.
‘Ares,’ she breathed out.
Beneath them, the grass-covered slope was starting to spin, the flowers nothing more than a swirling kaleidoscope of pink and yellow and violet.
His hands cupped her bottom, lifting her again so that he didn’t enter her too deeply.
And she was moaning against his neck. His skin was feverishly, beautifully warm, and his cock was rock-hard.
He started to move deeper inside her, and the first jolts of pleasure hit her so hard that she bit into his shoulder.
And even though she was anchored to his body, her own seemed to lift out of itself, and there was a sharp brightness like a match striking, and she was blooming and burning and flickering in the white heat, not blood or breath but a flame.
His hand clamped around her shoulder, and the sound he made in his throat made her vision narrow: there was nothing but Ares and his shuddering breath and her own thundering heartbeat as he surged inside her.
For a moment, she was unable to move or speak. She was outside of time. This Willa existed only in the shade of this olive grove. A creature of raw need, lost to rational thought, uncaring of her semi-dressed state. Half-wild.
All his.
And he was hers. And it was the sweetest, most terrifying feeling. And she knew better than to say it out loud. But she couldn’t stop herself from thinking it, just for a moment.
She had expected Ares to pull away, not because he’d done so that last time. He hadn’t. But this was different than before. Now they had a past. And a future?
Her breath shortened. She wasn’t going to think about that now. Most likely Ares didn’t want that anyway. After all, he was still in limbo, waiting for confirmation that he was the father. And she hadn’t forgotten what he’d said about his children inheriting Kallos.
If I have children. Which currently I have no plans to do.
No plans. But this baby wasn’t planned.
‘What are you thinking?’
Ares’s voice cut across her thoughts, and she rolled towards him, tilting her head back to meet his gaze. ‘Nothing, really,’ she lied. ‘Usually, I have so much going on in my head. I find it hard to tune it out. But here it’s easy just to get lost in the beauty of all this.’
He shifted her weight so that she was resting against the crook of his shoulder. ‘That’s what Kallos means. Beauty.’
‘It is beautiful.’ She let her gaze move across the gold-drenched, flower-covered slope, taking in the grove of silvery-leaved olive trees and the clumps of wild thyme.
‘It’s aesthetically pleasing.’ Reaching out, he picked a petal from her hair, and then almost on impulse, he leaned in and stole a kiss that had her forgetting how to breathe.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he murmured against her throat, and she made herself look away because she wanted to look at him so badly and keep looking so that she could remember this moment in time when everything was perfect between them.
‘You don’t have to compliment me. We’ve already slept together.’
‘You think I compliment women to get them to sleep with me?’
It was more of a statement than a question, but there was an intensity to his grey gaze now, as if her answer mattered.
‘No, I don’t.’ It seemed unlikely that he would need to. She couldn’t imagine there were many women who would refuse Ares Konstantinou, and the thought stung a little. ‘I’m sure you get by just fine doing the whole brooding-Greek-hero thing.’
His mouth pulled up at one corner. ‘The brooding-Greek-hero thing?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t pretend like you don’t know what you’re doing. Standing on your own at Larry’s party had a definite Achilles-sulking-in-his-tent vibe.’
He laughed, and suddenly her pulse was thrumming, and she was weightless, soaring high like a bird or a kite with a fluttering tail because his laugh was not just aesthetically pleasing, it was beautiful, and all she could think about was how she could make him laugh again.
‘I wasn’t sulking. I was trying to think of a suitable counter-curse for you.’
‘So, you did see me.’ Willa sat up to look at him, tugging her dress up to cover her breasts, trying to ignore the way his pupils narrowed as she did so. ‘Why didn’t you come and talk to me?’
‘Why didn’t you come and talk to me?’
‘You nearly ran me over. And then you mansplained how to cross the road.’
‘I was looking out for you. I didn’t want you to get hurt any more than I want you to miss another meal.’
Lost in the sudden easy familiarity of what was probably the closest she’d come to banter in her entire life, it took her a second to realise that Ares was glancing at the sky. Or, more precisely, at the sun which was well on its way to the dark line of the horizon.
‘I am actually quite hungry,’ she said quickly. She wasn’t. But she didn’t want him to think that she was trying to prolong what was essentially the dotting of an i in a final edit.
They dressed quickly without touching, but as they walked back up the slope, Ares’s fingers grazed hers, and after a moment he caught her hand and held it firmly.
Only to stop her slipping, of course. Which was why he let go as they reached the villa.
Iona had set the table out on the terrace. It was an unashamedly romantic setting. The sky was streaked with pink and orange, and a pale moon was starting to creep upwards like a shy sister peeping into a ballroom.
‘I usually eat outside, but if you’d rather—’
‘No, this is lovely.’
She had been too tense yesterday to do more than pick at the meze at lunchtime.
But eating had been tricky for months now.
Food was a big part of life in Santa Catalina.
And when she was working in LA, when she still thought that she had a place in her family, she’d gone home most weekends for a Sunday barbecue or a cookout on the beach.