Chapter Twelve
A cold quiet slipped inside the bed with Poppy.
It settled over the room, over her skin, and whispered into her ears.
She didn’t have to open her eyes. She knew.
Konstantinos was gone.
She rolled onto her stomach, pushed her face into the pillow. It hit her. His scent. Theirs.
The scent of heated desire long spent. Was it done? Did it feel like…closure?
It stirred in her stomach. Arousal. It narrowed to the sensitive place between her thighs. Tender. She felt him there. She felt him on her skin. Moving inside her.
She sat bolt upright—clutching the duvet to her chest.
The blinds were open. Only a little. Only enough to reveal the doors leading outside to the veranda. Her gaze swept over the room. It was chaos. Clothes—evidence—of what had happened yesterday was everywhere.
There hadn’t been evidence in this room for longer than she could remember. It had become his room. Slowly, all of her things had left with her to the other side of the monastery. But she was here now. Her things were in his room. She was still in his bed.
She should have gone back to her room. She should have treated this as what it was. A one-time thing. A last time. Because being here now…
It didn’t feel over.
It didn’t feel like closure.
She was still naked. Still aching.
She needed to leave.
Go back to her room.
Poppy threw the cover off and pushed herself to the end of the bed. She dropped to the floor, on her knees, and doubled over reaching for her bra…
‘Good morning, glikia mou.’
Her head snapped up. Her tangled hair heavy and knotted, it moved awkwardly on her scalp.
‘Konstantinos,’ she said, but it wasn’t a greeting. It was an acknowledgement to herself. He hadn’t left her. He’d been…
Her eyes flicked over his wet black hair, the droplets of water kissing his skin. A few stray drops ran down his broad shoulders, his curled bicep. Over his washboard-flat abdominal muscles. Her gaze flicked to the white towel in his hand.
‘You’ve been swimming?’ she asked, but she knew. It was an obvious statement. But she’d never understood it before. His routine to start his day doing endless laps. It hadn’t occurred to her this morning he’d be doing it. It hadn’t occurred to her why he did it.
It did now.
It thumped her on the temples.
It wasn’t a fitness ritual.
It was to perfect his swimming technique.
It was to make sure he could fight against the tide.
‘Why are you on the floor?’ he asked.
She looked down at the bra in her hands. Her nakedness. On her knees, she moved closer to the bed. She didn’t know why she felt the need to hide. Why she felt guilty. She held up her bra. ‘Getting dressed.’
‘Were you going to leave without saying goodbye?’
She understood it now. The darkening of his gaze.
Its narrowed intensity as he awaited her reply.
She was going to sneak out as though last night had been nothing but a one-night stand.
Something casual. Something easily forgettable.
But wasn’t that what it was? What they’d agreed it would be?
Something to be done and now they’d done it.
Now they both had to forget it. Move on. Close the door.
‘I thought you’d left already,’ she admitted.
‘I’m still here.’
Her breath caught. He was. And so was she.
The silence thickened until it pulsed with a low drumbeat of awareness. An awareness of the room where they stood. The bed. Of her nakedness. His near-nakedness. All he had on was black swim shorts. Wet, and clinging to his muscular thighs.
Her body forgot the rules. It tingled. Her feet ached to find the floor, to stand from her knees, and go to him.
She’d make herself remember what they’d promised to each other. She ducked her head. Hid her eyes from his, because she could feel the little blaze in them dilating her pupils. Her eyes found her shorts. She reached for them.
She looked up at him from behind lowered lashes. ‘I’ll get dressed,’ she said.
He ran the towel over his head. ‘I’m going in the shower.’ He turned to his right and without looking at her again he opened the door, walked through it and closed it behind him.
The water started to run.
The memory hit her now.
The day she’d hired the private investigator; she’d stood outside this bathroom, listening to him run the water, knowing he was beneath it, scrubbing himself clean.
Her heart squeezed into a tight fist.
She’d been so very angry that day. It had swallowed her grief. Eaten her from the inside out. And when he’d emerged from the bathroom barefoot and shirtless, his trousers unbuckled, smelling of soap…
She hadn’t been honest with him that day. And if she had been…
She wouldn’t think of it. The past, it was just that. Gone. After everything they’d been through, didn’t she owe him honesty now? Didn’t she owe it to herself?
She’d been wrong.
Last night it hadn’t been enough.
She stood, leaving her bra and shorts on the floor.
Naked, she walked to the bathroom.
Poppy placed her hand to the closed bathroom door.
A jittery flutter danced in her stomach.
It wasn’t her nakedness that made her hesitate. It wasn’t her bare flesh that made her feel vulnerable. If she opened the door—if she stood before him in nothing but her skin—and told him her truth, what she needed from him…more…would he reject her? Or would he listen?
She didn’t have a solution. She just knew it hadn’t worked.
This wasn’t closure. And she knew it was the same for him. Knew he stood in there now, thinking of her out here, while she thought of him in there…
What did she have to lose?
Poppy opened the door.
The bathroom was a wet room made of speckled white marble. It was huge. Gold-accented mirrors lined the walls. A claw-footed bath stood to her right, a his-and-hers sink to her left and in front of her…
Konstantinos stood beneath the shower head. His hands braced on the wall in front of him. His head ducked. The water beating down on his head. The water streamed between his shoulder blades, over the curve of his spine, to cascade over his firm buttocks.
Low embers of heat ignited in her stomach.
She swallowed, moved inside the room. The marble damp beneath her feet, she walked towards him.
Her heart racing, she stood behind him.
‘Konstantinos.’
He turned, sweeping the hair away from his face. He dragged his fingers through it—combed it backwards. His black eyes met hers. Framed by thicker lashes now, darker.
He stepped forward, out of the stream of the overhead spray. Water dipped from every part of him. Down the tip of his noble nose. Rolled down his chest, flattening the wisps of his hair to his tanned skin. And lower. Arrowing down the V on his stomach.
The air stuttering from her lips, Poppy snapped her gaze back to his.
‘I was wrong,’ she admitted too quickly. Too breathlessly. ‘Last night. It was…intense. It was good. But I… It wasn’t enough, Konstantinos, and I don’t know how to fix it.’
So intensely did he watch her. He didn’t speak.
Did not push her to say it quickly. He just waited for her to tell him what she wanted.
What she needed. The feelings were there.
In her chest. Lower. But the words…oh, how hard it was to think them, let alone say them. To admit she needed what she needed.
She needed him. Still.
‘I want…’ Her chest was on fire. Her shoulders rose with the breath she held inside her lungs for too long. She made herself exhale. She let the burn travel up her throat, until it was in her mouth, and she let them out. Her feelings. Her truth.
‘I want more.’
So did Konstantinos.
All night he’d lain beside her. Wanting to touch. Wanting her.
He hadn’t been able to admit having her back in his bed felt so right, but everything else… It was wrong. Inside, everything felt mismatched. Out of sync.
He’d thought the water, his disciplined stroke, would align him. But even in the water his body had been too stiff to pull him forward. He was sluggish. Weak. And finding her ready to leave when he’d returned…
His throat closed. He couldn’t explain it. Why he hadn’t been able to reconcile himself with the fact it was over. She was going back to her side of the monastery. They would continue their ruse, but everything else they’d promised to close the door on.
He didn’t want to close the door. Not yet.
He ached to take control. To do what his body demanded he do, and take charge. Pull her beneath the water with him and kiss her. Push all this—whatever it was…it was a ball, a knot, a mass of something he couldn’t expel, untie, or release—into her.
‘What do you want to do, Poppy?’
‘I want to come in,’ she said.
‘There are no shower doors,’ he reminded her. ‘There is nothing to stop you joining me in here.’ But there was, he knew. It was why he hadn’t reached for her last night. It was why he didn’t reach for her now.
‘We said one last time,’ she said out loud for them both.
‘It wasn’t enough,’ he said. ‘For either of us.’
‘No.’ Heat flooded her freckled cheeks. ‘It wasn’t.’
‘So we should do it again,’ he said, guiding them both to the conclusion they both wanted. Both needed.
Her eyes blew wide. ‘One more time?’
‘As many times as it takes,’ he countered. ‘Until we reach the closure we desire.’
Her pert breasts lifted with a deep inhale.
He hadn’t let himself see her nakedness.
He hadn’t considered his.
He was aware of both now.
‘Okay.’ She exhaled it, her agreement, but there was more.
He wouldn’t question it. He wouldn’t analyse it. It was a requirement. A necessity. He would demand it, and she would give it to him. She’d give it to him because after last night, he saw it in her eyes.
There was no alternative.
‘We will have your things moved back into the main suite,’ he said, watching her watching him.
‘We will,’ she agreed.
‘You will sleep in my bed,’ he said, his voice rough. ‘You will sleep with me every night until…’ His voice simply stopped.
‘Until after we renew our vows,’ she supplied for him.
Stiffly, he nodded.