Then she didn’t want, because she got.
She got what Nico had wanted but had withheld for longer than he could have imagined. With one definite move, looking at her, awaiting her response, he drew her to where she belonged, against him. He pulled her deftly in and he met the giddy height of relief from wanting, because now his aching groin had the support of her warm body; but it did not satisfy, not even for a second, for instantly it demanded more.
He saw her eyes widen as she felt the solid length of his arousal, saw her lips close and a nervous, excited swallow as he pressed in harder again.
And again, till she was pressing now into him.
And they both tasted for the first time real teenage kisses, willing the other on to a sweet forbidden place. He shrugged off his jacket and it was Connie who dealt with his tie and then somehow they were moving to the bed. Nico kicked off his shoes; Connie frantically tore at his shirt buttons till he lay there beside her, his bare feet sliding between her stockinged calves, her naked breasts against his exposed chest. To have skin on skin deepened their kiss, till he suckled on her tongue in a decadent disclosure of what he intended next.
His hand roamed over the curve of her bottom, scooped her hungry body right into his and she wanted her dress fully off, but he would not let her miss this lesson, would not, though he was tempted, deny her what long ago should have been hers.
How could he not want her?
As his fingers slid up beneath her dress, his question was not aimed at Stavros but at the fools who had feared her father, for had he been there, had he lived on this island, had they met before, then this moment would have been his a very long time ago.
She could feel his fingers, inching up the fabric and then sliding between the tender flesh of her inner thigh, and in reflex rather than refusal she clamped her legs together, could not fathom he wanted to touch her there.
‘Just,’ Nico breathed, and kissed as, despite her flesh’s protest, still he moved higher, ‘as a good girl would do.’
‘I don’t want to be good,’ Connie said, as contrarily her legs tightened, yet her mind willed his hand higher.
‘Then relax,’ Nico said, as the vice of her thighs tightened around his hand.
‘I don’t know how to.’
‘But you want me to carry on?’ Nico checked, though he was sure, quite sure of her answer.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Then all you have to do is trust me.’
Absolutely she did.
‘Where are we?’ she whispered. ‘Where have you taken me?’
‘For a drive,’ Nico whispered, ‘and soon you have to be home. We’ve stopped on the hill … and now,’ Nico said, ‘before I take you home I’m going to take you to heaven.’ And she was there in his car, and much younger, and so, too, was Nico. She forced herself to breathe, to not think just for a second of what he was doing, to rest her mouth on his neck and just breathe in his scent. When she parted her legs the necessary fraction, his hand crept higher and she braced herself, for what she did not know; but he was more patient than she dared hope, his hand rested on her panties. He kissed her as she accustomed herself to the weight and the warmth and then as he kissed her hair, her cheek, her closed eyes, her head was too heavy and it sank in the pillow, his hand slid into her panties and expertly explored her.
She was so tender that surely soon she would tell him to stop, especially as probing fingers stretched her, and then she went to halt him again as his thumb pressed harder, but there were tiny, almost imperceptible beats of pleasure as his hand worked on. Tiny pulses that mirrored a rhythm that was rising inside, and she tried to stop, to wriggle away, but her body refused to move from this masterstroke. So she stayed, and she found just how much she had been missing. She came to his hand and did not want ever to go back and then Nico stopped, kissed her breathless, and told the shell of her ear what would be next. How it could have happened in the different world they had created, one where youth was shared at the same time, one where he was nicer, kinder, more trusting, one where he cared intensely for the woman in his arms. He told her how then he might have progressed.
‘The next time we dated …’ he whispered, ‘I would want more from you. All week it would have been driving me crazy, trying to picture …’
He knelt up on the bed and pulled the dress down past her waist and removed it, and she made a small token gesture of modesty, gripped the fabric and then loosened it, because his gaze made her warm and utterly devoid of shame. All that was left was shoes and panties, and he dealt with the former, kissed her toes and then her soles till her feet curled around his hungry mouth. He found a sliver of flesh that was surely linked by a thread to where his fingers had just been because her hips rose from the pillow and he slid in between her calves. Nico had to pause and breathe a moment as he gazed at the pleasure that beckoned and the treasure that lay beneath the satin panties that were soaked from his earlier caress. He would wet her more with his mouth, Nico decided, would have her ripe and moist so as not to hurt her, except his virgin bride had different ideas.
‘I would have, too.’ Constantine said, and she saw him frown just a little as he tried to piece together a conversation when his mind was certainly elsewhere. ‘I would have been thinking about you, too—wanting to see you.’ Her hands moved up and slid down his open shirt, and she saw the shoulders she had leant on, the arms that had held her, the rise and fall of his chest and the lick of his lips as still he looked where no one had, as her body beckoned his mouth there, so badly she did want to see him. ‘Let me see you.’
Nico stood and undressed and Constantine watched—excited, curious and, when she saw him, filled with trepidation, but her mind quietened that, for he was too beautiful to fear.
‘And then?’ Constantine asked, because she wanted what came next.
‘And then …’ Nico said, as he knelt back on the bed between her thighs and looked down at her waiting body, and for a moment tried to think of what next to tell her, what the next instalment of their story might be. Then he found it, and no imagination was required, for it was all right here.
‘He waited,’ Nico said. ‘Till the night he took his bride to bed.’ He paused for a moment, felt as if he had dated her, had lived his life here, that this moment, the future, truly was theirs. He looked down at her nervous, brave, but somehow trusting, and he felt like he would have had—had he loved her.
His hands slid down her panties and she moved her hand to hide herself, but there beneath such a tender gaze there was nothing Connie wanted to hide from.
He turned, annoyed with himself, for his jacket was on the floor, but she halted him as he went to climb from the bed.
‘I went on the Pill for my wedding.’
Foolish girl to say that. Later he would warn her to trust no one with that knowledge but him. But he did not want to think of others and later he wanted to stay in a place where this was their night.
And selfishly, too, he wanted.
Wanted her in a way he had never before, a way that made him disregard his own strict rules, but only for her.
‘Will it hurt?’ Connie asked, but did not require an answer, because she knew there and then that whatever the pain it would not compare to the pain of tomorrow