Chapter 18 #2
‘And now we must go for a swim to wash away those tears and let all that salt go back to the ocean.’
Maddie let her shorts drop to the ground and rushed to unbutton her shirt. She’d treated herself to a second bikini in red, now she remembered how much easier a bikini was compared to a swimsuit.
Thanassis reached for her hand, and together they ran into the sea, deliberately splashing each other until they were in deep enough to push off the bottom.
For a blissful moment, Maddie forgot everything other than the sensation of water on her body as she put her head under and surrendered to the pull of the sea.
After a swim to the nearest rock and back, luckily still just about within her depth, two strong hands grabbed her round the waist and held her up in the air for a moment before flinging her back into the sea.
‘Hey!’
A grinning Thanassis came up for air, hair slicked back, and resembling a big seal.
‘Right, you’re for it.’
Maddie reached over and used all her strength to dunk his head under and hold it there.
A spluttering Thanassis came up for air and grabbed hold of her again, picked her up and marched out of the sea with her in his arms before carefully laying her down on the sand.
For a moment their eyes met as he stood over her, but Maddie was the first to look away. Thanassis was still on his feet when she looked again.
‘Another beer?’
‘Great.’
Maddie pulled herself into a seated position and took the beer he offered. He sat down next to her and raised his beer to the sky.
‘Yamas!’
‘Cheers.’
The peaceful silence as they drank gave her a chance to recover. But there were still things about him she wanted to know.
‘Can I just ask… Five years on, have you not met anyone else?’
Thanassis’s blue eyes held more than a hint of a smile.
‘Look, I haven’t been a papás, a priest. There have been a few women. But nothing serious. When you’ve had the best, it’s hard to settle for anything less.’
‘I know… Believe me, I know.’
She mustn’t start crying again.
‘And you?’
‘It’s only been just over a year. I’m still so furious at Tony leaving me like that, I don’t think I could look at another man, maybe ever.’
‘Surely you are not planning on a life without … love?’
Maddie laughed.
‘Neither of us is looking for love. I think you mean a life without sex, don’t you? And the answer is yes, very probably.’
Thanassis turned onto his side and leant up on his elbow.
‘That would be a terrible shame.’
‘Would it?’
‘I think so.’
The sun behind him made his eyes hard to read, but Maddie knew what she’d see in them. She’d known the second she agreed to go for a drink.
Thanassis covered the distance between them in a heartbeat and pulled her underneath him with ease. The first touch of his lips made her whole body shiver. After a moment’s hesitation she kissed him back with an intensity which surprised even her.
His hands in her hair told her he wanted to set it free, and she pulled the hairband out and threw it onto the sand. She reached back to undo the clasp on her bikini top and cast that off too.
As she lay down again, he moved slowly from her mouth to her liberated breasts, paying attention to each one in turn, causing her to groan out loud.
His fingers gently pulling down her bikini bottoms made her think for a second how much trickier all this would have been in a costume, but only for a second.
The sensations that overwhelmed her when his tongue reached its ultimate goal pushed everything else from her mind while the world exploded into a million colours.
When she opened her eyes again, Thanassis was positioned above her, his blue eyes as dark as she’d ever seen them in the diminishing light.
He reached down to kiss her mouth again and lit a fire in her body that she’d learnt to live without.
She was hardly an inexperienced teenager.
She was a woman of sixty-two who wanted this, badly.
His voice was soft but held a touch of steel.
‘Are you sure?’
Maddie nodded. She waited impatiently while Thanassis reached into his jeans for a condom, Neither broke eye contact as he lowered himself into her inch by inch. She was the one who moved against him first to set up a rhythm that had them both moaning with pleasure.
The feel of bare skin on bare skin was something she’d missed more than she realised.
And the way a man’s body melded with hers.
Being here with Thanassis was so familiar, yet so different.
Their entwined bodies changed shape without discussion, so deep was their understanding of each other’s needs.
The sound of the sea in her ears and the feel of the sand under her naked body were magnified a hundred times as she emptied her mind and focussed solely on the sensations ripping through her flesh over and over again.
The lazy tempo switched to an urgency that wouldn’t be denied. Her mind flooded with colour again as she screamed out into the night air at the same time as Thanassis moaned out loud and their arching bodies stilled as one.
Laying back on the sand, side by side, silence settled over the bay. Thanassis reached behind him for his jeans, made and lit them both another cigarette, and passed hers over without speaking.
In front of them, the sun threw out the last of its deep-orange rays before slipping slowly beneath the surface of the water.
She’d finally got her sunset over the sea, the one she’d missed out on while she was desperately trying to manoeuvre a boat into port with Thanassis’s unconscious body on board.
And what a sunset it was. The whole evening had been magical.
Without analysing it too deeply, something inside her had shifted for good.
Her terrible secret had been revealed, to Thanassis of all people, and she’d allowed herself to be just flesh and blood for a couple of hours, an insignificant speck on a beach on a tiny island in the middle of the sea.
She was fairly certain she and the man who’d brought her body gloriously alive would never meet again – her mind would stay forever faithful to Tony – but the guilt she thought she’d feel about giving in to what her body wanted and needed mercifully wasn’t there.
They’d go back to their own lives, their own families, but it was fine. In fact, it was a damn sight more than fine.