He had come to a decision among the seared hills and unforgiving water. He wasn't a boy any longer and his grandfather would no longer be his master. He would buy back his former home, if only to have somewhere to go when his grandfather made good on his promise to cut him off.
The decision eased the turmoil in him, put a fire in his belly. Put him in a conquering mood as he eyed the woman who moved with such unconscious grace. Her loose hair swung as she set the plate of triangular pastries on the low table next to the lounger. Her peach-colored shorts hugged her perfect ass and her breasts moved freely under her sleeveless pink top. The tails of the shirt were knotted above her navel, exposing a strip of skin he instantly wanted to touch. Taste.
He wanted her, wanted to lose himself in her. He wanted to imprint himself on her as if he could imprint himself on this island with the action. As if he could become the man he should have been by conquering her.
While she wanted to stroke his hair and say, "There, there."
He moved to the sink in the wet bar and washed his hands, shaking them dry as he said, "Quit feeling sorry for me."
She blinked. "I don't."
"What are you out here for, then?"
"I thought you might be hungry."
"I am." He advanced on her, watching her eyes widen. "But not for food." A small lie. He was starving and broke after using the wages he had been given last Friday to pay her back for the stitches. "No appetite for charity, either."
Calli scented danger, but held her ground.
"I'm just being nice." He'd been so haunted on the point. It had hurt her to see it. She knew what it was like to grieve and hate yourself. She struggled with it daily and she was facing it anew, not wanting to be so fascinated by him, tortured by their kiss, writhing every night on her sheets, caught in the grip of physical infatuation.
We react to each other. Why fight it?
Was it really the same for him? She searched his expression for the man who had seemed so human that day. So steeped in pain.
"You can talk to me, is all I'm saying."
His laugh held an edge that cut past her gentle tone to tighten her throat around any further offers of sympathy. "I don't want to talk. I want you."
She blushed, stung, while he kept coming forward. She backed up until she came to the wall of the courtyard, between the end of the lounger and the corner of the wet bar. His hands planted on either side of her head and she was trapped.
Her heart battered her rib cage, but her fear was the exhilarated kind.
He wasn't a spoiled rich boy like Brandon. Maybe she didn't know much about him, but she knew he was a man who understood regret and paid his debts and knew his own worth was intrinsic, not contained in a bank balance.
He also didn't lie and say he loved her. He looked her in the eye and spoke the truth. I want you.
An answering want had been pulling at her like a tide from the moment she'd seen him. She succumbed before he even touched her, letting her head rest against the wall and her lips part as she regarded him from beneath eyelids that grew heavy between one breath and the next.
Exultation flashed in his expression and he crowded closer, hot, damp hands finding the bare skin between her shirt and shorts.
The burning sensation was so acute, the electricity in his touch so sharp, she jerked in reaction.
His hands firmed, as though he was pinning her. Controlling her. He was. She was at his mercy. A distant voice in her head screamed that this was perilous, but there was pain deep down in her and she suspected he could soothe it. There was an ache in him, too, one that she longed to ease.
She was, after all, only human. They understood each other on a subliminal level. That was what she kept telling herself.
As he lowered his head, she slid her hands across his jaw. His stubble had softened as it grew in. She buried her fingers into the short, thick strands of his hair.
He took her mouth with ruthless command, stabbing his tongue and sliding his lips against hers with carnal passion.
It might have struck her as an abrupt shove into too much intimacy, but she'd spent the weekend reliving their kiss outside the clinic. Having the real thing, his taste of midnight and mystery on her tongue, his magnificent torso shifting against her, his knowing hands sliding up beneath her top to cup the undersides of her breasts, plunged her into a delirium of want. She wasn't wearing a bra and her nipples stung with longing, alert and needy, yearning for his touch, waiting.
He slid his knee between hers, positioned his hard thighs against the insides of hers to open her, then let her feel the hard ridge of his erection against the tender flesh pulsing between her legs. His thumbs swept across her nipples at the same time.
She shuddered at the onslaught of sensation, moaning into his mouth. Heat poured into the place where he rocked, making each of his mock thrusts that much more powerful. It was raw and raunchy, yet stoked such a white-hot fire in her she went blind with it.
She turned melty and shivery at the same time and kissed him back with a wild lack of inhibition or even skill. Pure reaction. The burn in her raged higher, engulfing her, threatening to slip beyond her control.
Clenching her fists in his hair, she dragged his head up, gasping, "I'm not on the Pill. I don't want to get pregnant."
"You don't get pregnant from this, koukla mou." He kept up the abbreviated thrust of his pelvis against hers, and stole one of her hands from his hair to pin it to the wall above her head. His fingers curled into hers, thick enough to cause a little stretch between them as he dipped his mouth to her neck.
Her skin tingled under the hot suck of his lips. He splayed his other hand over her naked breast under her shirt. Her flesh felt swollen and hard. His palm abraded her nipple. Glittering lines of sensation shot into her abdomen and lower.
Her hips bucked of their own accord, answering his movements, seeking that hard, hard ridge against the bundle of nerves pulled so tight she couldn't bear it. So close. So hot. So tense. She felt as though she'd been ignoring thirst and suddenly, here was the water, promising a quench that was a type of absolution. She needed it, needed more of him. Needed that, the elusive thing hovering just out of reach, closer, nearly in her grasp.
She tightened her hand in his, urging him with her grinding hips. Begging.
She wasn't really letting this happen right here, against a wall, behind a rush of water with a man she barely knew, was she? Was she?
Oh, yes. She was.
Release struck in a flash of heat and a rush of shivery joy. She lost herself to the moment, falling apart, soaring and flying. She might have fallen down if not held in place by his strength and the hard pin of his weight and that relentless press of his hips that shot sensation through her again and again.
Distantly she realized she was making animalistic noises. Her free hand went to his lower back, encouraging his dying movements while he cupped her jaw and set nibbling kisses against the corners of her panting mouth, saying, "Beautiful. So gorgeous." His tongue slid against her bottom lip like he was taking a final taste of an excellent meal. His body was so tense he quivered with strain. The heady fragrance of male sweat surrounded her, sexy and compelling.
She felt drugged. Her breath was uneven, her pulse fluttering. She couldn't believe he had done that to her, fully clothed. Or that she was still so aroused. If anything her skin was more sensitized and desperate for his touch, her loins even more achy with want.
She opened her eyes and looked into the earthy brown of his, read desire, but humor, too. He wasn't as lost to passion as she was.
It was a blow. Even more of one when he said, "Are you a virgin?"
"I know that's not how you get pregnant!" She gave him a shove, but he barely moved. His thick, aroused flesh sat against her tingling mound, only the thin layer of his board shorts and the seam of her cotton ones between. "I thought you were as caught up as I was and might try to..." Her voice dried up. She had to strain to find sound again. "Apparently not."
She gave him another shove, not caring how good he'd made her feel physically. She wouldn't forgive him for playing with her like a toy.
He only cupped her throat, thumb moving with lazy eroticism beneath her ear while he told her in explicit detail what he wanted to do to her. "But I don't have a condom, so we'll have to find other ways to appease ourselves, won't we?"
His eyes were nearly black, they were so dark. His mouth held a line of wicked intent that bordered on cruel. But his kiss was tender and incredibly sweet after the storm of sensuality she'd endured. Her lips clung to his, encouraging him to linger. Inviting him. Capitulating...
The scrape of the screen door into the house sounded and a male voice called, "Calli." It was an equally harsh scrape across her nerve endings.