“I’m tired.” She turned away from him and headed back to the house.
Stavros watched Jessica walk back into the villa, her arms wrapped around her body as though she were holding herself together with her own strength.
He felt numb. Numb and in pain all at once. He’d come out with the express purpose of seducing her. Of finding a way to put her in a category he was comfortable with. To embrace his sexual need and ignore the strange ache in his chest that seemed to appear whenever she was around.
It hadn’t worked. She hadn’t allowed the distance, and he certainly hadn’t been able to retreat behind the security of flirtation, not after that admission.
What an ass he was for making her confess something like that.
She was right, he should run. He should take her advice and focus on his upcoming marriage. Or find a woman to help him burn through his pent-up sexual desire.
He took a heavy breath and walked into the house, heading for his office. He closed the door behind him and sat at his computer desk. He ought to email his father, at the very least, to let him know he was almost certain he was close to finding the future queen of Kyonos.
Instead he opened his internet browser and stared at the blinking cursor in the text box of the search engine.
Then he typed in endometriosis.
She wanted to cry, and she couldn’t. She’d spent so long forcing herself to keep it together that now she actually wanted to take a moment to fall apart, she couldn’t.
It was impossible to force tears.
She just lay on her bed and stared out the window at the moon glimmering on the surface of the ocean. It was the perfection of nature, beautiful and unspoiled. She would never understand why some things were fashioned so perfectly when she wasn’t.
Why her body seemed to have been put together wrong when so many other people were made just right. Why she hadn’t been able to just buck up and deal with it. Why the shame and failure still ate at her like a parasite.
And she wanted Stavros so much she could hardly stand living in her skin. She wanted to touch him, wanted to taste him. She wanted to kiss him again, to have all that passion directed at her. Mostly she wished she could go back and not tell him about her endometriosis. It had been so nice to have a man look at her like she was beautiful. To have him not see her as different from other women, not in a bad way, but in a way that made her seem special rather than damaged.
When he said she was different, he hadn’t meant broken. He hadn’t meant pointless. Worthless as a woman or a partner.
His perception of her had been a lie, sure. But it was one she would have been happy to live in for just a little while.
She closed her eyes and let their kiss play through her mind again. Allowed herself to relive what it had been like to feel the pressure of his hard body against hers. To feel his lips against hers, so hot and demanding. So unlike any man she’d ever kissed.
Desire coiled in her stomach, her heart beating faster, her body begging her for some sort of release. Release she’d denied herself for so long. Too long, maybe.
She sat up and balled her hands into fists, pushing against her closed eyes. Without thinking, she stood, her heart hammering as she slipped out into the hall and looked in the direction of Stavros’s room. He would be in there by now, asleep.
And he wanted her. He’d said he did. It was such a rush. Such a shot of adrenaline. Pure, feminine pleasure. To be wanted. To want someone.
Her hands trembled and she shook them out, trying to steady them. Trying to steady herself. Easier said than done. She breathed in, then out again.
What if she could have a little bit of it? Something guaranteed. Something she couldn’t fail at. She tried to swallow but the motion stuck in her dry throat. The idea of sleeping with Stavros was the most elating and terrifying thing she could imagine. To be so vulnerable to a man who was so perfect. To take a chance at failing again. At being revealed as not good enough.
Blood roared in her ears as she made her way to his room. She stopped and wiped her hands, damp with sweat, on her skirt. She knocked lightly on the door, not pausing to think because, if she did, she would have just turned and scurried back to the safety of her bed.
“Yes?” She heard Stavros’s sleep-roughened voice from the other side of the door and she pushed it open.
He was propped up on his elbows, the sheets riding low around his waist, revealing his chest. The moon glanced off the hard ridges of muscle, the valleys cast into shadow, giving his body the impression of cut stone.
He was utter perfection. Just as she thought, that was not the sort of chest she’d ever touched before. And she was dying to touch him. Aching for it. His beauty drew her in, but it also intimidated.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. So lame. “Obviously you could so maybe I shouldn’t have come.”
“I wasn’t sleeping well,” he said.
“That’s good, I …” She took a step forward. “Can I?”
“Please,” he said, his face half-hidden in shadow, his voice strained.
She sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand out in front of her, curling it into a fist, then flexing her fingers as she fought against indecision. Then she placed her palm on his chest and her breath caught as a shock of fire streaked through her veins.
He was so hot, his hair rough on her skin, his muscles hard, his skin smooth. She let her fingers drift down over his sculpted muscles, lightly skimming, following the ripple of his body.
She leaned in and kissed his lips. He remained frozen beneath her, his stomach rock-hard beneath her hand, his body wound tight. She could feel his tension, flowing from every tendon and into her fingertips. Hers to command. Hers to enjoy.
Maybe she couldn’t have everything she wanted. But she could have some of it. He wanted her. And she could satisfy him. Without having to give up any power. Without being vulnerable. Without failing.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his forehead resting against hers, his lips a whisper away.
“If you have to ask, I must not be doing it right. It has been a while, maybe protocol has changed?” She kissed his neck, tasted salt and sweat on his skin.
She let her hands slide down beneath the sheet, where she found him hard for her, a whole lot bigger than she’d anticipated. An involuntary rush of air hissed through her teeth, matching time with Stavros’s sharp intake of breath as she curled her fingers around his erection.
In this, she was certain. Giving a man pleasure without taking any for herself had been a necessity in the latter days of her marriage. A desperate attempt to hold things together. A way to keep intimacy without having to deal with any physical discomfort.
She could do the same now, with Stavros. A way to have him without risking anything. It seemed so easy.
Except she was getting a lot hotter than she’d anticipated, and it made the thought of leaving his bed unsatisfied a lot less … satisfying than it had seemed a few moments earlier. Still, even without an orgasm she was enjoying this. Enjoying wanting him. Enjoying exploring his body.
It was a slice of what she wanted, and she’d learned to accept that that was how life was for her. Little tastes here and there of true pleasure, while the full experience stayed out of her reach. It would be enough, because it had to be.
She pressed a kiss to his pectoral muscle and down to his nipple, sliding her tongue over it, feeling it tighten beneath her touch.
His hand came up to the back of her head, fingers sifting through her hair. She smiled against his skin and continued to pepper kisses over his body. “You have the most incredible chest,” she said, “among other things.”