CHAPTER TEN
THEDANCEFLOOR of the private nightclub was packed. Leander wasn’t complaining. It meant he was forced to keep Kate and her hot little body close.
With their bodies grinding together to the deep RB beats pulsing through the floor and Kate’s arms hooked around his neck, arousal thrummed strongly in him.
Arousal always thrummed with Kate.
He could do nothing to stop it firing into his loins.
Tightening the clasp on her bottom, he ground her against him, letting her feel his hardness.
Her lips parted in a throaty exhale, the jade of her eyes melting with the same heat that heightened the colour on her cheeks. Fingers of one hand slipped under the collar of his shirt, the other skipping down his arm and tightening around his back.
Eyes and pelvises locked, their bodies continued the sensual grind to the music, desire flowing in a current that grew stronger with every passing beat.
Theós, he’d never known it was possible to want someone so much, for arousal to infect every atom of your body, for the want to multiply with every coupling. Never known he was susceptible to addiction.
Two weeks ago he’d collected Kate from his family’s airfield. The roof of his car had been down. Helena had sat in the front, Kate in the back. Kate had poked her head between them and asked him to turn the music up because a song was playing that she liked. Before they’d had a proper conversation they’d sung along, badly, to a tune he knew he would spend the rest of his life thinking of Kate whenever he heard it. By the time they’d arrived at his family’s home, a strong friendship had established itself.
He’d never had that with a woman before. Helena didn’t count because Helena was like family to him.
He’d been addicted to Kate’s company before he was even aware of wanting her. He’d not allowed himself to see her as a woman because she was only there to act the role of maid of honour for his fake marriage and then when the blinkers had come off his eyes as Dimitri had leered all over her, the depth of his want had scared the hell out of him.
He could never have imagined those two short and yet so long weeks ago that he would find himself addicted to making love to her. Addicted to the sound of her voice, her laugh, her smile. Kate Hawkins touched something in him that no one had touched before and when her nails dug into his neck and she rose onto her toes to breathily whisper in his ear, ‘Is there somewhere private we can go?’ the pulse that shot through him almost brought him to his knees.
Spearing her hair, he gazed deep into her eyes. The meaning of her words reflected in their liquid depths.
Hands clasped tightly, desire thrumming like an infection in his blood, he led her through the heaving bodies on the dance floor and out of the nightclub room. The first two doors in the corridor were locked. The third opened into an empty, perfumed, sensuous cloakroom with a maroon leather sofa and mirrored walls.
The burning ache inside Kate meant she didn’t hesitate. Locking the door, she pushed Leander against the wall and pulled his head down to her. Devouring his mouth with all the passion she possessed...she felt like she was possessed...she yanked his shirt free and set to work on freeing him. The moment his erection was released she dropped to her knees, gripped the base and closed her lips around him.
His groan of pleasure fed the ache in her.
Too big to fit whole in her mouth, she used her hand along with her tongue and lips to pleasure him, thrilling at his moans and the way his big hands held her head, the pads of his fingers clasping her skull without restricting her. His groan when she cupped his balls was guttural. Lifting her stare, she found his hooded eyes on her, his features ablaze.
‘Theós, Kate, what are you doing to me?’ he muttered hoarsely before closing his eyes and throwing his head back.
Loving you, she would have replied if her mouth hadn’t been full.
Loving Leander. The most natural, beautiful, intoxicating feeling in the world. What he’d done for her that night, the effort he’d gone to...
This might be the last chance she’d have to show what it all meant to her. What he meant to her.
He meant everything. For Kate, Leander had become everything.
How was she supposed to say goodbye to him? She couldn’t. It couldn’t end like this. There had to be a way...
Although Kate had pleasured Leander with her mouth before, it had never felt like this, like the pleasure could split him into atoms. Release had never felt so necessary but as heady as it felt to reach climax this way, there was no single pleasure greater than finding release buried inside her.
Sensing the point of no return speeding towards him, he tightened his grip on her head and tilted her face. ‘Come here,’ he said thickly.
Her arms were wound back around his neck and her hot mouth on his in moments.
Twisting her around so it was Kate’s back to the wall, he slid a hand up her thigh and clasped her bare bottom.
Theós, and he’d thought he’d been close to coming before?
‘No underwear?’
She grinned into his mouth before her tongue continued its dance with his.
He didn’t hesitate. Lifting her up, he thrust straight into the tight confines of her sticky heat.
Her legs wrapped around his waist, Kate closed her eyes and clung tightly to him as he pounded into her, softly moaning as she extracted every ounce of the pleasure Leander was giving them both.
So hot and ready was she for him that her climax came quickly and she clung even tighter, closing her eyes as the waves of ecstasy shot through her, trying to drown out the thought that it was now Sunday and that very soon she would have to say goodbye to all of this.
She would have to say goodbye to the love of her life.
Kate flopped into Leander’s arms in the back of the car and blew a lock of hair off her face.
What a night. The most fun, magical night of her life. The best birthday of her life.
Shifting to make herself comfortable, she nestled her head under his chin and stroked the hand resting under her breasts. She closed her eyes and expelled a contented sigh. His breath was warm in her hair. She could feel the rhythmic thumps of his heart through her back...
‘Wake up, sleepyhead, we’re home.’
Blinking herself back to life, she jerked upright and was astounded to find they’d reached the top of Leander’s private drive.
In another blink, all the joy and contentment drained from her.
She’d just wasted twenty minutes with Leander sleeping. A quick look at her watch showed there were only eight hundred minutes left. Her car was collecting her at ten a.m. It had just turned two.
‘Take a shower with me?’ he asked knowingly after they’d stepped inside and he’d thrown his phone into his study.
She tried to coax her lips into the beaming smile that had been ever present since she’d made the decision to stay, but this time it was an effort. Making her legs bounce up the stairs to his bedroom was an effort. The only thing that was no effort at all was stripping herself naked, stepping into Leander’s walk-in shower and making love to him. This time she tried to draw the pleasure out for as long as she could but her body was so responsive to his touch that her climax came as quickly as it had in the nightclub...and when it did come, the usual separation from her body failed to happen and instead of crying out her bliss she found herself pressing her mouth tightly against his neck to stop herself from crying tears.
After he’d wrapped her in a big fluffy towel and carried her to his bed, they made love again, and even though the pleasure was drawn out this time and her climax as powerful as she’d ever experienced, still she couldn’t find the separation she so desperately sought, still she fought back tears.
The worst bit was afterwards, lying in Leander’s arms, exhaustion trying to lull her into wasting more of her precious time with him in sleep.
Rubbing at her tired eyes, she sat up. ‘Can I have a coffee?’
His smile was half sad, half knowing. ‘Extra strong and extra sweet?’
Her heart filling that he knew she needed the caffeine and sugar dose to stave off the sleepiness, she nodded.
The coffee was delivered to Leander’s room soon after. The night’s weather was for once relatively balmy so they took it out onto his balcony, Leander in a pair of shorts he hadn’t bothered doing the button up on and Kate in one of his sweaters that, like all the other items of his clothing she’d borrowed, she had no intention of giving back to him.
She would take every memento she could. She might make a shrine to him with it all, she thought, trying to jolly herself along with absurd thoughts.
The balcony had a small round iron table and two chairs on it. Sitting beside him, she slung her legs over his lap and fingered her earrings. At least she would always have something of Leander as a part of her, she told herself valiantly, then looked out over the black sky and the dotted white crests of the ocean reflecting off the stars, and breathed in the salty but sweet night air. The ocean was calm that night, the usually loud crash of waves hitting the beach muted.
Not even Leander’s hand stroking her thigh could soothe the crash of Kate’s heart hitting her ribs or stop the hand holding her coffee cup from shaking.
This would be the last time she’d share the same night sky as him. When the sun rose it would be the last daybreak she’d share with him.
How could she bear it?
She’d thought she was prepared but now, with time picking up speed and the moment of her departure less than six hours away...
Time was slipping away from her and with every second that passed, the ache in her heart spread.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Leander observed. Kate hadn’t spoken a word since they’d sat down and was now on her second cup of coffee. There was a tension in her body that had never been there before.
She finished her drink and leaned over to put the cup on the table. ‘Just exercising my brain cells,’ she said, mimicking his earlier comment. If the night wasn’t so still and Leander so attuned to her, he wouldn’t have noticed the tiny choke in her voice.
Gently lifting her chin with his finger, he gazed down into eyes that shone with misery.
For a long moment they just stared at each other and then her pretty heart-shaped chin wobbled and a tear rolled down her cheek. ‘I can’t do this,’ she whispered with a quiet sob.
Leander closed his eyes and pulled in a breath as he wrapped his arms around her. Kissing the top of her silky hair, he kept his mouth there and fought the swell of emotions her tear had let loose in him.
For another long moment they stayed locked as they were, with Kate’s wet cheek against his chest and her small hand gripping his bicep, Leander’s mouth on her head and his hands stroking her back. Her slender body was trembling.
A long time passed before she disentangled herself to look back at him. It was as if her whole face had crumpled. ‘How am I supposed to say goodbye to you? I can’t.’
The pain in his chest was like nothing he’d felt before. ‘You can and you will. It has to be this way.’
More tears filled her eyes and she shook her head. ‘It doesn’t.’
‘It does. We always knew it would have to end.’ They’d been over before they’d even started.
Her voice was barely audible. ‘I didn’t know it would hurt so much.’
He hadn’t known either.
Lightly, tenderly, he stroked her cheek. ‘It hurts now but in a few days you’ll be in Borneo. This is it, Kate. Your dream is coming to life, and when you’re there you’ll be so busy that the pain will fade to nothing.’
‘Is that how it was for you when you left your brother?’ she whispered.
The pain in his chest sharpened. ‘That was different, and I didn’t leave Leo.’ Ultimately, Leo had left him.
Her swimming eyes held his before she blinked sharply and her back straightened. ‘I can wait for you.’
Unsure what she was suggesting, he stared into her eyes.
Fevered animation suddenly lit her face. ‘The two things stopping us being together are your promise to Helena and me moving to Borneo. I don’t have to go to Borneo. Well, I do, but I don’t have to stay. You need to go back to Greece and play the role of Helena’s husband and help her get her inheritance but that’ll take a few months to sort out, which is enough time for the charity to find a replacement for me, and then we can—’
Hardly able to believe what she was saying, he cut her off. ‘Kate, stop.’
‘But this is the perfect solution, don’t you see? Helena will be happy for us, we both know that, and I’ll still get a few months in Borneo and then—’
‘Are you seriously suggesting that you would give up the job you’ve spent your whole life working for, for me?’
Jade eyes bright, she nodded.
Nausea rolled violently in his guts. God help him, she was serious.
Thinking hard and quickly through the nausea and the roar of blood in his head, Leander tried to find the angle needed to make Kate see that what she was suggesting was impossible.
She was prepared to give up everything for him. Give up everything for the man who’d destroyed his own brother in pursuit of his own selfish needs.
He could not let her do that.
‘And your family?’ he asked, stalling.
‘They will understand.’
‘Kate...’ He filled his lungs with air and hardened himself to speak the words that would set the ball rolling for the first unselfish act he would make in his life. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘I promise you, if I’m happy then they’re happy.’ That was one thing Kate was quite sure of. ‘They made all those sacrifices for me because they love me and want me to be happy.’ It had been her own fears of wasting their sacrifices that had driven her forwards when she would otherwise have given up. Thanks to them, she’d reached the finish line of her marathon. The destination she took now didn’t have to be fixed in stone. ‘And I’m sure they’d secretly be happier if I got a job somewhere a little less remote. I can start my own small practice or work for another zoo or—’
‘Have you forgotten my aversion to long-term relationships?’ Leander cut in. ‘You would be throwing away your dreams for a man who doesn’t want to make a commitment to anything permanent.’
Confusion clouded her beautiful features. ‘But...’ Her voice trailed away for a moment. ‘Don’t you want to try? There’s lots of ways we can make it work. I’d give up Borneo for you but there could be a way for us to be together without me having to do that, and—’
Loathing himself for the hurt he was inflicting on her, a hurt that lanced his own heart, Leander had no choice but to inflict more of it. ‘What we have shared these last few days has been great, but I haven’t said anything that would make you think I want more than this.’
The last of the brightness and animation vanished. Her voice was stark. Bewildered. ‘You’re happy to never see me again?’
He couldn’t tell her a bare-faced lie of that magnitude. ‘I wouldn’t say I was happy about it.’
The bewilderment of her voice was mirrored in her eyes. ‘Then what? Why are you being like this?’
‘We became lovers knowing—both of us—that our time here was all we could have.’
‘That was then, and you can’t expect me to believe after everything we’ve shared that you’re happy for us to be over.’
‘I just said I wasn’t happy about it, but lust is a powerful emotion.’
She flinched as if he’d physically wounded her. ‘Lust?’
‘Lust,’ he confirmed firmly, confirming it to them both. Leander’s feelings for Kate were stronger than anything he’d believed it was possible to feel and he’d known from the moment they became lovers that saying goodbye to her would be a wrench, but that wasn’t reason enough to let her throw away her life’s work on something that would never last and for a man like him, someone selfish, who put his own needs and wants above those he loved. ‘And the lust between us is strong. You’re only feeling like this because our time together has been short and we haven’t had the chance to work it out of our systems. There is no way to make it work between us that doesn’t involve one of us giving up the things most precious to us and the end result would still be the same, whichever one of us made the sacrifices necessary—our desire for each other coming to a natural end. I’m not built for sustaining a relationship.’
He watched the colour drain from her face and thought he had never hated himself so much.
There was truth in being cruel to be kind, he thought grimly. And truth in the truth hurting.
‘You don’t mean that,’ she whispered.
‘I do mean it. You know me, Kate. You know the kind of man I am. I am sorry if your feelings have changed, but mine haven’t. I think the world of you but we wouldn’t have a future together even if Borneo wasn’t a factor.’