“Then, let’s go bare.” She used the patch for birth control, so they didn’t need to worry about making a baby neither of them were ready for.
“Yes,” she breathed out, lowering her body so his hard length slid inside her moist channel.
He said that word that she always chided him for and had to fight the urge to surge upward with every ounce of self-control he had earned in his thirty-five years of life. She rewarded his restraint by dropping down and engulfing his entire length in her humid heat. Damn, massaging him had excited her.
She was slick with arousal and her inner muscles clenched at him in undeniable need. They moved together like animals mating and yet, not. Their supreme awareness of each other could be no less than human. Their gazes locked and never broke once during the wild ride.
The sensation of their bare skin moving together threw him into a convulsive climax, but he didn’t have to worry. She was right there with him, her head thrown back, her pleasure falling from her lips in a keening cry that tingled at the base of his spine.
This moment in time was perfection.
Zephyr surprised himself by enjoying their gluttonous day of museum-viewing. While he liked museums, he wouldn’t normally have planned an entire day around visiting as many as he could get to. However, Piper’s enthusiasm and fascination was catching. That was the only excuse he could make for how interested he was, even in exhibits that he had seen before as a child on group trips with the other children from the home.
He’d refused to use the term orphan because he hadn’t been one. He’d had both a mother and a father, even if neither had been willing to make him an important part of their life.
“This just goes to show that we repeat ourselves creatively. This would be considered ‘modern art’ by current art critics. If it hadn’t been dated as being more than four thousand years old.”
They were standing in front of an early Cycladic statue that did indeed look like something he might see in a gallery dedicated to modern artists. “It seems odd the statues would be so lacking in intricate detail when the pottery has such complicated patterns on it.”
“I’m sure someone hundreds of years from now will find it strange that our houses are built like cookie-cutter images of one another, but we are so particular about what goes inside them.”
He turned to her, laying a hand on her waist and not questioning the urge to do so. “You think so?”
“That, or they’ll postulate we only ate on plastic because plastic dishes are the only ones that survive that long.” Her azure eyes glittered with humor.
“We had stoneware in the home and you’re right. It didn’t last long.”
“My mom bought those unbreakable dishes, but nothing could prevent us kids losing them. The small square bowls made too good a shovel in a pinch.”
“I can just imagine you as a small child.”
“I was a terror.”
“But shy with strangers,” he guessed.
“Yep. Teachers never believed my mom about me until I’d organized my first boycott of the cafeteria’s no-name catsup. That stuff was nasty. Or had a petition going to reinstate outdoor school when budget cuts threatened that right of passage. It didn’t usually happen until my second year in school anyway.” She sounded altogether proud of herself.
“I see, you lulled the authority figures around you into complacency and then you sprang.”
“That’s about it.”
He laughed. “I have no problem seeing that.”
“Neither did my mother. School administrators were not so insightful.” Her eyes twinkled mischeviously. “Until after the fact.”
“I shudder to think what your children will be like.” Her daughters would be stubborn, her sons protective and both would be intelligent.
She gave him a strange look followed by a negligent shrug that wasn’t. Negligent. At least it didn’t seem so to him, but he didn’t ask her about it because she was already headed to the next display.
She stopped in front of a male kouros statue. “Nice to see Greek men haven’t changed in all these millennia.”
“I think I’m flattered.” The statue had seriously developed abs and thighs that could crack an opponent’s back in a wrestling match, ancient or modern. However, the genitals were nothing to write home about. “I hope you are not comparing certain aspects of my anatomy to his understated representation.”
She gave him a mocking little smile that made him want to do something that would turn that smile into a grin. “I read somewhere that the aspect of a statue’s form was deliberately underrepresented so the focus could be on the aesthetic rather than the sexual.”
“That, or the only men willing to be used as artists’ models had teeny weenies.”
Piper burst out laughing as he’d expected her to, drawing the attention of those around them. While most of it was indulgent, one serious-looking elderly man glared. And a young woman sent daggers Piper’s way, but he didn’t know if that was for her laughter or the fact she was so clearly with him.
The woman had given him an encouraging once-over when he and Piper had first arrived at the National Museum, but he had ignored her.
Once again, he turned his back on her and smiled down at his beautiful companion. “That is not something you have to worry about in my bed, no?”
“You, Zephyr Nikos, are a braggart. And a bad, bad man.” The laughter still laced her voice and he wanted to kiss its flavor from her lips, but he refrained.
Stealing a kiss at the Acropolis, he could get away with. But he’d get more than one glare at such a public display of affection in the National Museum. Greece was not America, or even England for that matter, when it came to love affairs being conducted in public. It was generally a far more conservative country.
That had never bothered him before, but he wanted to kiss his yineka. However, he refused to embarrass her.
He would make up for it and then some when they returned to their room later.
The next morning, Piper tried to gather her thoughts as hot water pelted down over her during her solitary shower. The day before, they’d both admitted to fidelity and agreed to stop using condoms. She’d wanted the illusion of deeper intimacy for what she was coming to accept would have to be their last tryst and had readily agreed.
Only later had she begun to wonder if those were the actions of a man who would never love her? At first, she’d discounted his assertion he hadn’t been with another woman since the second time they’d made love, but as the day wore on she’d asked herself why. And she hadn’t liked the answer. She would not let Art have that much control of her present, regardless of how his betrayal had hurt.
But even believing in Zephyr’s faithfulness, what did that mean? Was he capable of loving her? So many things pointed to a yes answer, even as his self-admissions denied the possibility.
Their time at the museums had been almost magical, full of laughter and subtle marks of affection between them. The little touches had added up and by the time they returned to their hotel to get ready for dinner, Zephyr had overcome her with a storm of desire. They’d missed their reservations and had a local café deliver dinner to their room.
Zephyr had been right when asked. For enough money, any restaurant would deliver food to a hungry couple. Even a couple who had refused to leave their hotel room while sating a different hunger than that of the stomach.
How could she end their sexual liaison without ending their friendship? Did she have enough strength of will to be his friend without falling back into his bed? And even if she did, would maintaining their friendship be the best thing for