Chapter Eleven
Poppy buried her face in his throat.
He moved fluidly. One long stride after the other, as if her weight was nothing. As if his arms had been built to carry her. He’d picked her up many times, but this, it felt different.
It should feel as if they were saying goodbye, but somehow it felt as if they were saying hello.
Konstantinos’s footsteps slowed. She raised her head. Opened her eyes. Light from up on high streamed down on his golden skin. Into his eyes. So dark. So deep.
Her head turned towards a door of tanned wood.
He reached for the handle.
Opened the door.
He stepped into the room of stark whites and velvet browns. Into the room made of windows and light. He hit a button and the caramel blinds closed out the view of the terrace, the pool, the sea and the cliff-top forests.
Until it was only them.
The orange light outside filtered through the seams of the blinds, softening the blanket of darkness. He hit another button. The bedside-table lamps lit up on either side of the bed.
A low bed. So wide. So deep. She knew she could get lost in its neutral-toned sheets. She knew the plump white pillows on the left and the right had separated them long before she’d moved to her own room.
There would be no divide now.
He carried her towards the bed. Laid her down in the centre. On his knees, he stood between her parted thighs.
‘Kiss me,’ she pleaded.
She wanted there to be no thoughts in her head.
She wanted only him.
He lowered himself. His mouth hovered in front of hers. Their breath mingled. Teased each other.
‘Where do you want me to kiss you first?’
Her toes curled. ‘On my mouth?’
‘Here?’ He pressed his mouth to the seam of her lips.
‘Yes.’
He moved to the other side. ‘And here?’
Butterflies took flight in her stomach, and their wings, so hard did they beat. ‘Yes.’
He raised his head. ‘And finally…’ His eyelashes fell. Shadowed his high cheekbones. ‘Here.’
She held her breath.
Her eyes closed.
He pressed his mouth to hers.
It was an explosion. Too many wings took flight. Her mouth opened. His tongue crept inside. And all she felt was the need to be closer. To press herself against him.
Her fingers went beneath his suit jacket. Pushed it from his shoulders. His hands crept underneath her T-shirt. Their mouths parted as he yanked it over her head. And then his mouth was on her again.
Her fingers reached for his throat and yanked the knot of his tie free.
His fingers undid the button on her shorts, as hers found the buttons on his shirt, and freed them from their housing. She pulled his shirt free from the hem of his trousers.
He trembled. A full-body shudder. ‘Poppy…’ Panting hard, he pulled back. ‘Lie down,’ he commanded.
And she did.
He tugged her shorts down her hips. She curled for him, her knees, her ankles, until the shorts fell to the floor.
Mouth open, he stared down at her. His eyes moving over the rise and fall of her breasts inside her white bra. He tugged down the straps, the cups. His head dipped. He closed his mouth around her nipple. He sucked it.
‘Ahh!’ Poppy screamed.
She didn’t notice his fingers going to her back. She didn’t notice him unclip her bra until it was falling to the floor beside her. Until he was lifting his head.
He ran his fingers over her pelvis. Over the plane of her stomach. She watched his brown fingers tease at her pale flesh.
She’d always loved his hands. His fingers knew just where to touch her. He knew how to tease her, when to go slow. When to go fast.
She didn’t need slow now.
‘Konstantinos, please…’
He dipped his fingers inside the elastic band of her knickers. His fingers gently feathered over her blonde curls. He touched her intimate lips. Stroked her.
She trembled.
He dipped a finger inside her. A testing finger.
‘Better?’ he asked.
‘That’s good,’ she husked, and pushed herself onto his hand, needing more, needing his fingers deeper. ‘So good, but…’
He pushed another finger inside her.
Her eyes closed at the fullness. At the stretch of his fingers.
‘Yes,’ she moaned. ‘More.’
‘Another?’
‘Please.’
He pushed three fingers inside her. Gave her the fullness she needed. He curled them upwards. Found that secret nub of nerves deep inside her. Stroked it.
‘Ah!’
She opened her eyes, raised herself on one elbow and reached for the open seam of his shirt, and yanked him closer.
His fingers still inside her, he came willingly. Met her where she waited for him. Crushed her mouth, dipped his tongue inside and filled it.
The pressure of his lips pushed her back into the pillows.
His fingers moved, almost pulling out.
He thrust back inside.
‘Konstantinos!’ She dipped her hands inside his shirt, pushed it over his shoulders. Dragged her nails over his taut flesh.
One arm freed, his shirt remained trapped on the hand bringing her to wanton extremes. Extremes making her skin burn. Her body restless to find release. It was so close. But it wasn’t enough. She needed him naked. Them naked.
She dragged her mouth from his. He stared down at her. His fingers slowing. It was agonising. She wanted his hand back. But she knew it wouldn’t be enough. She wanted his skin on hers. She wanted the weight of his body on hers.
‘Take off your clothes,’ she demanded heatedly.
His fingers slipped out of her. He raised himself again on his knees, and took off the shirt hanging on a single wrist. Threw it onto the ground beside the bed and reached for the buckle of his belt. The button.
She wanted to taste him.
She wanted what he’d denied her at the ball. To take charge. And this was the last chance she’d have to do it. She needed to do all the things she wanted to do to him. She needed to close the door on every fantasy. Leave no room for regrets.
She sat up. ‘Let me.’
He hovered above her.
She unbuttoned him. Pushed her fingers into the band of his trousers, his boxers. She pushed them down his thighs. He sprang free. The sight of him, so hard, so thick…his erection stood proud between them. A wet heat flooded between her thighs.
She pushed his clothes down until they could go no further. Until they bunched around his knees. She flicked her tongue against the tip. Captured the droplet beading there.
‘Poppy…’
She opened her mouth, leant forward and closed her lips around him.
His fingers drove into her hair. He didn’t pull her closer, didn’t angle his hips so her mouth took him further inside.
He waited for her.
She took him into her mouth. Deeper.
‘Theos mou!’ he moaned.
It was electrifying.
She moved her mouth up and down his silken length. He pulsed. Danced inside her mouth, until he grew bigger. Thicker.
Her hands reached for him, for his hips to lever herself. He moved with her mouth. Faster she took him. Faster he moved.
His hands cradled her scalp. His fingers tightened. ‘Poppy!’
He pulled her head back. Pulled himself free of her mouth. He stared down at her as if she was someone he didn’t recognise. As if she made him burn. Made him lose his mind.
She didn’t recognise herself—the smile tilting her lips.
It felt good for him to look at her like that.
‘I will taste you,’ he said, breathlessly. ‘Now.’
‘I want you to,’ she admitted, just as breathlessly. Just as awed by him. By what he’d just let her do when he’d never let her before. She’d tried once before to taste him, in the early days, but he’d stopped her. She’d shied away from trying again.
A niggle of doubt drooped her lips.
He hadn’t let her make him come.
‘Lie back against the pillows,’ he said, kicking off the clothes bunched around his knees with a slide of his foot to the floor.
She dragged her bottom up. Lay down.
He moved up the bed between her thighs.
He dipped his head.
His tongue licked her inner thigh. He moved his mouth inwards. Pressed hard, deep kisses to the seam of her knickers. His tongue swept the place where he had kissed. Long, steady strokes. On the left. On the right.
Her fingers raked through his hair. She gripped the black silk. Tightly. Pulled it. She lifted her hips. She wanted his mouth there.
‘Patience, pouláki mou.’
She wasn’t patient.
The barrier of her knickers was too thick. Too unnecessary.
‘Take them off,’ she demanded.
He didn’t lift his head. He didn’t look at her. His eyes stayed focused on the part of her that needed more.
‘These?’ he asked, and his fingers ran down the seams, slowly.
Her toes pressed into the mattress. ‘Yes.’
He gripped either side of her knickers. She lifted her bottom. Slowly, he pulled them over her hips. The fabric curled into itself as it travelled over her thighs, to her knees, her ankles and over the arch of her feet.
He dropped them to the floor with the rest of their discarded clothes.
His hands spanned her hips. Pushed them back into the mattress.
He kissed her. There. Teased at her with his tongue. Dipping it between her intimate folds. His mouth closed around her engorged nub.
‘Oh, my God!’
He replied with his mouth. Sucked harder. Faster.
It wasn’t enough.
‘I want you inside me.’
‘Not yet,’ he whispered heatedly against the heart of her. The warmth of his breath, of his mouth, the tease of his tongue dipping inside her—
It was torture.
‘Please,’ she begged, because it was the only word she had left.
She needed their last time to end with him inside her.
Konstantinos reached over to the gold handle of the bedside drawer. He opened it and withdrew a foil packet. He took out the condom and let the packaging fall to the floor.
His eyes met hers. His hand disappeared between their bodies. He sheathed himself, giving them an extra layer of protection.
The tip of him nudged at her opening.
‘Oh!’
‘Are you sure?’ he asked, his voice a husk of broken need.
‘I’m sure,’ she replied just as brokenly. ‘One last time.’
Konstantinos hesitated. He felt too big. Too hard.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he confessed raggedly.
‘You won’t.’ She lifted her hips. Took him a little deeper.
His shoulders bunched. The knuckles of his hands bore down into the mattress.
‘Poppy,’ he growled, restraining himself, holding back months of denial.
He didn’t want their last time to be quick. He wanted it to be slow. He wanted to taste every inch of her. But slowly—it was pain. It was agony.
The only way to make it end, he knew, was to push his hips forward. Bury himself deep, and pray he could remember his way out of the cocoon of her heat. That after, when it was over, he could forget how good she felt wrapped around him. How right.
This last time of theirs, it had to be enough.
It would be enough, he told himself.
Slowly, he pressed into her.
‘Konstantinos!’
He buried himself inside her. Her intimate walls closed in. Enclosed him so tightly. He couldn’t breathe for the pleasure of it. It was blinding. Consuming.
‘Please… Move.’
He moved.
‘Yes,’ she moaned. ‘Deeper.’
He was lost. He arched his hips, buried his fingers into the bones of her hips and went deeper. So deep, he didn’t know where he ended and she began.
He thrust again and again until she screamed his name.
‘Konstantinos!’ Her hips locked. So tightly did she squeeze him.
‘Poppy!’
So hard did he come. It was bone-shattering. And he lost the will to hold himself above her. He collapsed on top of her. Buried his nose in her throat.
‘That was…’ she wrapped her arms around him. Panting just as hard as him ‘…intense.’
He made himself pull back—gather himself. His legs, his body screamed as he tried to move. But he did. He pulled himself free, rolled off her. He disposed of the condom in the bin beside the bed, ignored the stirring in his groin. So easy would it be to roll over to her, and do it again.
Konstantinos rolled onto his back. His brain rebelled. It told him to stand up and leave. Get out of the bed. To walk out the door and not look back.
Konstantinos did not get up.
He lay still. Quiet.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked, and rolled on her hip to face him.
Her question, it made his eyes narrow. Had anyone ever asked him if he was…okay? He couldn’t remember a time. And the question felt too blunt. Too visceral.
Her question, it probed him in tender places. Vulnerable places.
He wasn’t ready to open those parts of himself.
He didn’t know if he ever would be, or if he remembered how to access them.
‘I’m okay,’ she told him. She reached for him under the duvet. She placed the flat of her palm to his chest. To his heart thudding under the warmth of her delicate touch. It pounded as if it wanted out of his chest and into her hand. ‘I’m more than okay, actually.’
‘I’m fine,’ he said, but it was ragged, each word a combination of exhaled breath and a touch of something that came up from the pit of his stomach. A something he couldn’t name. But he didn’t want it inside him.
Her hand stroked him.
Moved down to his stomach.
His sternum tensed.
She gasped. ‘You’re still hard.’
‘It will go away.’ He rolled onto his side, his face turned away from her, and shut off the light.
‘Konstantinos—’
‘Go to sleep, Poppy,’ he said, and pulled the coverlet over his shoulders. His mind buzzed. With too many thoughts. Too many incoherent things. They were only flashes. Flashes of the sea. Of weeds. Of Isaak.
His son’s face bloomed to life in his mind. His scalp a mass of straight black hair. Hair he’d raised to his nose. Inhaled.
Emotion too thick—too fast—clogged his throat. He fought the urge to reach for her. Wrap his arms around her small frame.
He would control his fingers. He would not reach for her hip—drag her closer—into him. He would not bury his nose into her hair. Inhale her. He would not hold her.
He closed his eyes, and Konstantinos prayed that, whatever this was…this need to have her close…
It would go away.