Now, at last, he felt he might sleep.
If he could just keep Skye Marston from his mind then he might actually get some rest. It was after one in the morning, time to go to bed.
The single-storeyed pool house was in darkness. Only a small lamp by the door glowed to break up the pitch-black that came from being so far out in the country without a single street lamp for miles. But Theo knew his way around from growing up here as a boy. Shaking the water drops from his soaked hair, he padded into the hall, confident and sure on bare feet. Pausing only to snatch up a towel from a hook in the shower room, he made his way to the kitchen, rubbing himself dry as he went.
The light switch was to his left. Not even needing to look, he reached out a hand and clicked it on.
And froze in shock at the sight of the silent female figure sitting at the kitchen table, her face pale, her back stiffly upright, and her hands folded on the surface in front of her.
She was dressed in just a simple white tee shirt and jeans, her feet bare. The long red hair was loose and fell unstyled over her shoulders and down her back; there was no trace of make-up at all that he could see on her pale, soft face, and she looked stunning.
So stunning that he cursed the kick his heart gave just at the sight of her. The next moment he instinctively moved the towel he was holding so that it fell down in front of him, hiding the instant hardness that strained against the front of his shorts. How could he still respond to just the sight of this woman like this when he now knew just what she was?
An hour’s swim in the cool water of the swimming pool and he still felt like this! Hot and hungry in the space of a heartbeat. He was frankly surprised that the remains of the water on his body weren’t evaporating from the heat of his skin in a cloud of steam. What he needed was to go and plunge back into the water.
That or a very long, very cold shower.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for you,’ Skye said quietly. ‘We have to talk.’
‘No, we don’t. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want and I don’t want to talk to you.’
Skye drew in a deep breath and carefully tried to adjust her thoughts, find the new approach that would fit better with this obviously truculent mood he was in.
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Maybe you do—though I don’t see why. Seems to me you made your decision about things a week ago when you decided to use me for a one-night stand and then disappear out of my life—back to my father’s bed.’
‘Oh, no!’
That brought her head up sharply. She couldn’t have him believing that! The situation was bad enough as it was, but she couldn’t let him continue to think that way.
‘I never—I mean—we never…We don’t share a bed, your father and I. And we’ve never…’
Her voice trailed off as Theo slashed a hand through the air in a brutal silencing gesture.
‘Enough!’ he declared harshly. ‘Way too much information. Though at least I’m spared the worry that my papa might start banging on the door, demanding to be let in, having woken in the middle of the night and found that his fiancée has crept away from his bed for a midnight assignation with his son.’
There was such savage anger in the last words that Skye found herself flinching back in her chair, fearful of the cold fury in his voice. But Theo made no move towards her. In fact, from the moment that he had come in the door and found her sitting here, he hadn’t moved an inch. Instead he was standing stock still, just as he had when he’d flicked on the light to see her.
‘N-no—that won’t happen.’
The shake in her voice didn’t come from the moment of fear. Instead, it was all purely feminine awareness. She desperately needed to get her thoughts and her feelings under control so that she could function properly. But functioning at all was almost beyond her; functioning properly was entirely out of the question. And it became more difficult with every second that passed simply because of the way that Theo looked.
She knew he’d been swimming because she’d heard the faint splashing of the water as she’d made her way up from the lower level where her bedroom was to the main terrace. She hadn’t dared to use the lift inside the house in case Cyril woke and heard its faint hum and came to see what was going on, so she had used the outdoor stairs that were carved into the rock of the cliffside, moving hesitantly in the dimly lit darkness.
The moon had been shining down on the swimming pool as she’d passed it, keeping closely to the shadows so as not to be seen. And in the pale light she had seen Theo’s dark head, the flash of his muscular arms as he powered through the water, from one end to the next—a swift, neat turn, and back again. Again and again.
The moonlight had turned him into an eerie, almost unearthly being. His broad chest and back had been bathed with silver, gleaming and beautiful, making her think of a dolphin she had seen out in the bay only that morning. She had stayed there for a few stolen minutes, watching hypnotised, unable to turn away. Her mouth had dried and her heart felt as if it were beating a rapid tattoo in her chest. She could have stayed there all night, but the sudden fear of being seen, either by the man in the pool or his father, had pushed her into action. Fear had sent her hurrying to the pool house where she had waited, nerves stretched taut with apprehension, until she had heard Theo come in the door.
When he’d switched the light on, all the feelings she had experienced outside had flooded back in full force. But in a very different way.
Where outside he had been silver and darkness, elemental, ethereal, a fantasy of a merman, here he was heat and light and physical strength. He was a real man with warm, bronzed skin, still spattered lightly with sparkling water drops. His black eyes burned under lush, thick lashes, and the blood that pulsed through his veins made his body glow with health and masculine vigour.
The moon man had made her heart catch in admiration and astonishment, but she had only wanted to watch and keep her distance from him. This man made her think of life and passion and sex and her own blood heated at the memory of how it had felt to be held in his arms, her head pillowed on the hard, warm width of that chest.
‘Your father is fast asleep. I heard him snoring. He had plenty to drink at dinner.’
‘So did I, but it didn’t exactly guarantee a night’s sleep.’
Theo rubbed the towel over his still wet hair, ruffling it in a way that Skye found shockingly endearing. He looked suddenly young and almost boyish in a way that she would be all kinds of a fool to even think of believing. Theo Antonakos was no boy—and she would do well to remember that. He was all man—and hard and dangerous with it.
‘If it had, you wouldn’t have found the house empty when you arrived.’
He paused, cold black eyes searing over her in sharp assessment.
‘Or was that the idea? Did you have plans of sneaking into my bed and seducing—?’
‘No!’
She couldn’t even let him finish the appalling sentence. Couldn’t let him allow even the thought of such a thing into his mind.
‘No way! That wasn’t what I had in mind at all. As I said, I came to talk.’
Theo’s sigh was weary, resigned, as he raked a hand through his damp hair and slicked it back from his face.
‘Then can it wait until I put some clothes on?’
‘Oh—yes—sorry—of course.’
She was gabbling like an idiot, wondering if he had caught her watching him like a child in a sweet shop, almost drooling over the delights on show.
She must not think like that. Think