She’d made it so easy, hadn’t thought that he was strange or uptight. As he filled their glasses, all his little tensions gave way to a warm, steady pulse of happiness.
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Starving!’ Her eyes danced. ‘Madelon bigged up your culinary skills so I’m looking forward to this.’
He grinned, lifting the lid off the serving dish. ‘Voila! Nasi goreng, Theo-style.’
‘So, what gives the planets their colour?’
She was peering through the telescope. He was unashamedly enjoying the view of her cute behind. He liked her in jeans, but he liked her in dresses too. Most of all, he liked her without clothes.
‘It’s to do with what they’re made of, and how the chemicals found in their atmospheres reflect and absorb sunlight.’
She shifted slightly. ‘So, what are they made of?’ Something in her voice, something about the way she was moving... ‘Venus, for example?’
He held in a smile. ‘Venus is a grey, rocky planet, but you can’t see any of that because its atmosphere is very dense with swirling sulphuric acid. The sulphur reflects sunlight, so Venus looks yellow.’
‘Hmm. What about Neptune?’ She shifted again and suddenly it was too much. He stepped behind her, slid his hands into her back pockets. She giggled, pushing her bottom into his hands. He felt a stab of desire and had to work at keeping his voice steady.
‘Neptune is a ball of gas, literally. There’s a lot of methane in its atmosphere, which absorbs red light from the sun, leaving only the blue. The blue’s reflected, so that’s why it looks like a blue planet.’
She was rotating her hips, distracting him deliberately. ‘That’s very interesting.’ She arched her back. ‘And what makes Mars red?’
He swallowed hard. ‘Iron oxide...dust...it gets blown into the atmosphere.’
She abandoned the telescope and fell back against him, spine curving, shoulder blades nesting into the barrel of his chest. She was shifting her hips from side to side, pressing against him, driving him wild. Her voice was a low tease. ‘Science at school was never as good as this.’
He smiled into her hair as he took his hands out of her back pockets. He knew how to tease her too. Slowly, he smoothed his palms over her taut abdomen and upward to her small, round breasts. The neckline of her silk blouse was low, but not low enough. He undid the small covered buttons, one by one, felt a tide of heat rising through his body as he slipped his fingers into the black lace of her bra. She moaned softly, and then she was twisting out of his hands, turning to face him, her eyes hazy with desire. ‘Could we take this downstairs?’
He pulled her hard against him, so she’d know exactly what she was doing to him, and then he kissed her, a hungry, hot kiss that made her moan softly into his mouth. He liked how much she wanted him. Her need made him feel strong, powerful in a way he hadn’t felt for a long time, but he couldn’t hold out on her for much longer. He needed her too, wanted her with every fibre of his being. When he broke their kiss, she was flushed and breathless, but no more than he was. He lifted her up, felt her arms and legs wrapping around him tightly.
‘Downstairs, you said...? Let’s go.’
CHAPTER NINE
MIA OPENED HER eyes, pushed the hair away from her face. She blinked, taking in the whiteness, the space, the quietness...a quietness broken only by the sound of steady breathing. She turned her head on the pillow. Theo was sleeping on his side, a peaceful expression on his face. Cloudless. She shifted a little so she could gaze at him.
Had she ever felt so thoroughly wanted, needed, desired? In bed, he held nothing back and, because he didn’t, she didn’t either. Physically, his devotion, his tenderness, his passion was absolute. It was almost as if he was trying to make up for his verbal reticence, as if he was trying to show her... What? His love? Was that what Madelon had been about to say when he’d stopped her with his tickling?
Was Theo in love with her?
She stretched out a hand, hovering it over his shoulder. He hadn’t said he was in love with her, but last night she’d felt it in his kiss, in his touch. She’d seen it in his eyes. She felt a smile growing on her lips. Yesterday, she’d been worried about falling in love with him, but this morning she could see it was too late. Love was already there, growing, unfurling inside her, a living, breathing thing. Maybe it had been there from the very first day...
She drew her hand back. Waking him would usher in the clouds, and she loved to see his face like this... Loved him. Period. She sighed softly, studying the smooth arc of his eyebrows, the gentle set of his mouth, the closed lips... He was keeping something from her. Yesterday, the thought of that had frightened her, but for some reason it didn’t any more. Maybe it was because of Madelon...
During the interview, Madelon had been open about her career but she’d been casually oblique about personal matters. It seemed that she was afflicted with the same reticence as her brother. There was comfort in that, because if they were both hiding it pointed to a reason that went beyond Theo’s defunct relationship with his ex-wife. After the interview, she’d felt calmer about things, more confident about loving Theo.
His eyelids were flickering. Such a handsome face... No, beyond handsome. She wanted to kiss him, hold him, tell him she’d always be there. If she had to wait for him to tell her the things that he was too frightened to share, then it was fine. There was no hurry. As for the Eline de Vries assignment...she’d cross that bridge when she
