Chapter Nine #2
Saskia could hardly breathe. “And what if I can never be her again? What happens then?”
“You must be you.” Thanasis was still standing there, facing her.
He didn’t shift his gaze from hers. “You are still you, Saskia.” He didn’t seem to notice that he said the wrong name.
Saskia jolted, but he didn’t. “It doesn’t matter what you remember.
It doesn’t matter if you ever remember. Do I wish you could remember everything that happened between us?
Of course I do. What we had was special.
But I thought you were dead for five years.
You alive is what matters. If your memory doesn’t appear and never will, that is still all that matters. ”
He meant that. She could see it. She could feel it.
She looked at him, her heart pounding. “What if there’s a way that I might remember?”
“I have studied this, a lot, since I walked into that villa and saw you there,” he told her then, and he rubbed a hand over his face and that, too, told her how much he meant what he was saying.
It made her whole body shake, deep inside.
“It could be anything. A bit of music. Coming back to this apartment. Anything.”
“Maybe you haven’t tried the right thing,” she suggested.
And then, because she was tired of punishing herself, she walked toward him. She watched his face change the way it had before.
Shock. A quick assessment. Then that long, slow burn.
She walked directly into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and arching herself into him. She tipped her head up, fully aware that doing so thrust her breasts into the wall of his chest.
It felt exactly as fantastic as she remembered.
“It sounds to me that the major way you and your Saskia communicated was sex,” she said, and she didn’t even stumble over the your Saskia part. “What if…?”
“You can’t be serious.” He shook his head, but his arms went around her and he held on tight. “You may have forgotten what happened on the beach, but I have not. I have no desire for you to look at me like that ever again. As if I could possibly…”
Thanasis shook his head.
“This is different,” she said. When he scowled at her, she pushed back from him and waved her hand around at the flat they were standing in. “There are pictures of us everywhere here. Did you think I wouldn’t notice that? You said that every trinket that was here was something I put here myself.”
His scowl only deepened. “You did.”
“I did this.” She pointed to the frames on the mantel, on the side tables. “I went and put these pictures of us, everywhere.”
It had been like being haunted all over again. Everywhere she turned, there was another picture. Candids. Posed shots. Funny little moments of them together.
It had been almost too much to bear.
No wonder she’d felt the need to call him about dancing, of all things.
“Saskia,” he began.
But he heard it that time, and he shook his head as if he despaired of himself.
“Selwen,” he corrected himself.
And she still did not tell him who she really was. Or what she remembered. There was something wrong with her, that much was perfectly clear to her.
But she couldn’t bring herself to care about that.
Instead, standing slightly apart from him, she kicked off the flats she’d been wearing on the plane.
She shrugged out of the duster she’d been wearing to keep the weather at bay.
She let that fall to the floor, and made sure that he was looking at her as she peeled off the sweater beneath, then shimmied out of her jeans.
He looked as if she’d struck him over the head with one of the heavy vases in the foyer.
Then he looked something a lot more like haunted when she unhooked her bra and let it fall too. And then his expression darkened and went molten hot when she peeled off her panties.
When she straightened, she let her hair fall all around her and she watched the way that he swallowed, hard. She could see the tension in him, and how his hands were curled into fists he kept tight at his side.
“You said I know you,” she said, standing there naked before him and somehow never feeling more powerful. “And I want to. I want to know you in every possible way. Maybe it will change my memory. Maybe it won’t. But either way, Thanasis. I want you.”
Then she turned and headed down the hallway toward their bed.
And her heart was pounding so hard that she wasn’t sure she could manage to keep walking. But she also couldn’t hear him, and that was the trouble.
She took one step, then another. She kept walking, and she didn’t allow herself to look back. She passed the study. Then she passed the guestroom. And right up ahead, she could see the bedroom door—
But then she was in the air, because he was sweeping her into his arms and holding her high against his chest. Thanasis kicked his way into the bedroom, tossed her on the bed, then followed her down before she could bounce.
Then his mouth was on hers, his body was a heavy weight on top of her, and everything made sense again.
This was better than the beach, because she only felt she really bloomed when he was pressing himself against her like this. When he was holding her down so that she could wrap herself around him and press herself even closer.
Saskia realized belatedly that he had taken the time to remove his own clothes back in the living room. And wasn’t that thoughtful, because now there was no barrier at all between them.
Finally, she thought. Finally.
He ate at her mouth in some kind of delicious fury and then his hands were joining him in the exploration, and he was muttering against her neck. Half in Greek, but half in English as well.
“Perfect,” she heard him say, and low curse against her breast. “Still so fucking perfect.”
And it thrilled her.
He took his time inspecting every last part of her, and making sure she was all in one piece. That she was her. He found every new scar and freckle.
He knew her body so well, and he remembered everything.
He checked the entire front part of her body, down to the soles of her feet, and then he turned her over and started up her backside.
And when he got to her neck, he set his teeth to her nape and he hauled her up onto her knees with an arm around her middle. She thought that he might take her like that. One smooth, thick trust—
She was pretty sure he considered it, but then he pulled her over to her back again, came down with her, and slammed himself home.
Saskia was lost, immediately. She arched up to take all of him, and that easily, shattered apart.
It was one thing to have fingers inside of her on a beach, but this was something else. Something much, much better. This was heaven. This was hers.
This was all of him, buried deep inside of her, and she had never wanted him more.
Not even that first time.
“I want to see you,” he told her gruffly. “All this time, I’ve only seen you in my head. It’s not enough, Saskia. It’s never been enough.”
As the orgasm faded, he began to play those dark and beautiful games of his, taking her from the heart of one fire and tossing her into the next. He slowed down when she tried to speed up. He laughed when she sobbed out her pleasure and her need.
And still he kept playing.
She didn’t know how he had it in him, after all this time. But that was Thanasis.
He was methodical. He was ruthless.
He brought her to the edge and tossed her off the side of it again and again.
And only when she began to dig her nails into his shoulders, and had tears pouring down the sides of her face, did he relent.
He built up one more fire. He made sure that she burned first.
And then, only then, did he follow her.
For a while, everything was scorchingly hot and just as beautiful.
Saskia couldn’t believe that she had finally made it back here, to this bed, with him.
When she felt him stir beside her, she rolled over and threw her leg over him so that she could straddle him, for a change. He smiled up at her, and so she took her time, sliding up and down his chest. Kissing him and biting him, and laying her own kind of claim all over that glorious body of his.
When he kept trying to grab her, she shook her head. She made herself frown at him.
“Place your fingers behind your head,” she told him.
His arrogant brow rose, but he looked delighted. “And if I refuse?”
“Then there will be penalties.”
“But what if I like the penalties?” he asked, with a laugh.
Then he stopped laughing, because she slid all the way down the length of his body and found her way between his legs. Then she smiled up at him, held his gaze, and sucked him deep into her mouth.
He didn’t keep his hands where she told him to. But that wasn’t surprising. They ended up in her hair, and though he let her play at first, as it went on, he began to guide her. He began to use her head as he liked, and it had the expected effect on her. Immediately.
She loved it. And if Saskia had any doubt that she loved it, her entire body broke out in goose bumps. She was slick between her thighs.
As he thrust into her mouth, she came close enough to her own cliff.
And then, when he threw back his head and flooded her, she came too.
He was hauling her up almost immediately, flipping her over and finding his way between her thighs, because he knew. He tossed her legs over his shoulders and settled in.
Saskia could feel him hum his approval, deep between her legs.
And then everything was the way he ate at her, the way he licked and sucked, and enjoyed himself so obviously that he had her bucking against him and crying out his name—so fast that it ought to have been embarrassing.
But it wasn’t. It was Thanasis. It was the two of them. It was this.
Before she was done falling apart, he was pulling her to him once more. Then they were kissing again, deep and wild.
He pushed his way inside her once more with her legs wrapped tight around him, her heels encouraging him to go faster, harder, forever—
Because everything was blistering heat, and the glory of this thing was only theirs.
And this time, when they burned to ash, they did it together.