How had he found the strength to keep denying her all those years ago? Denying them both?
He raised his buttocks to allow her to tug the shorts down his hips. The movement was enough to make his erection spring free and reveal itself in all its glory.
After pulling his shorts down to his feet, she took his arousal in her hand. Long, thick and as smooth as velvet... Yes. Glorious.
He was glorious.
He was everything. He always had been.
His breaths shallowed. When she bent her head and licked the tip of his erection, he groaned. It was a sound that only served to stoke the heat building inside her.
She took as much of him into her mouth as she could manage, and revelled to hear her name escape from his lips.
Giving him pleasure had always turned her on as much as his giving her pleasure had. There was something incredible in witnessing the great Theo Nikolaidis lose control and know that loss was because of her. To know that everything he made her feel was shared. He felt it all too.
Theo was losing his mind. Helena had turned the tables on him, bringing to life his fantasy and sucker-punching him in the process.
She’d performed this intimacy on him before, many times, but never had it felt like this. Her soft moans as she licked and sucked him were like music vibrating in his senses.
Theos, this was incredible...but it wasn’t enough. He wanted to feel her soft skin pressed against his.
Gritting his teeth, he lifted his head and groped for her face.
She looked up at him, colour high on her cheeks, eyes molten.
‘I want to be inside you,’ he said through ragged breaths.
A dreamy smile spread over her face. ‘Not yet.’ And then she took him back in her mouth.
‘Helena...’ But his groan tapered into nothing, for she was cupping his balls and squeezing them, oh, so gently.
Holding off from taking full possession of her three years ago hadn’t been this torturous. But then, three years ago he’d never experienced the exquisite pleasure of being inside her, never experienced the closeness and wonder he now craved with every fibre of his being.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Theo fought to hold on, but release fought equally hard. Just as he feared he was losing the battle, Helena moved from his arousal to drag her tongue up over his abdomen and chest and climb up to straddle him.
Hands on his shoulders, her breaths shallow, she gazed into his eyes.
Unable to take any more, Theo wound his hand into her hair and pulled her down for a kiss of such savage passion that when she finally sank onto his length, their moans caught in their tongues.
After a moment of stillness, she began to move.
Hands cradling his head, she teased her breasts against his face. He caught one in his mouth.
Still cradling him tightly, Helena threw her head back and arched her spine. The sensations wrought from his tongue and mouth only added to the fire blazing within her.
His strong arm wrapped around her, he held her securely. When she looked into his eyes she saw such a mixture of emotions reflecting back at her that the sensations deepened, strengthened, until all she could see was Theo, all she could feel was Theo, all she could taste, hear...everything was him.
And, when her orgasm ripped through her and she ground down so tightly on him and held him so closely and felt his own orgasm in response, all she could think was that she’d found heaven.
Theo had unlocked heaven for her and in it she had found only him.
‘What are you doing?’ Theo asked as he entered his yacht’s dining room the next weekend. He’d woken to an empty bed and immediately set off in search of Helena.
Dressed in only a silk kimono—see, dreams did come true!—she was sitting with her head bent over an English newspaper he’d picked up for her the day before during a short trip to Athens.
‘Nothing,’ she said with suspicious innocence.
‘Is that a crossword?’
‘No...’
‘You minx.’ He shot an arm out to snatch it from her but she was too quick. She hugged it to her chest with a cackle of laughter.
It was a sound that immediately threw him back three years to a time when one of them would sneak downstairs early to grab the morning paper while the other slept, and dive straight to the crossword. Nothing made either of them smugger than completing it in one sitting before the other woke up. They’d been as bad as each other. Neither was averse to hiding the offending crossword within their clothing to stop the other getting to it, which in itself had led to wrestling, which had then led to peals of laughter, quickly followed by intimacies...
How could something as boring and simple as a crossword bring such laughter? And who else apart from Helena could he laugh with over a crossword? She’d introduced him to a side of himself he’d never explored before. It was Helena’s influence that had made him see art with new eyes, to appreciate it, to seek it, to covet it. The only area her influence had failed was with poetry. It bored him rigid—apart from her own poems, of course. They were mercifully short and always contained a riddle for him to solve. Those poems were a language only the two of them knew.
Theo had brought fun into Helena’s life and opened her mind to the pleasure life could give. She had opened his mind in other ways. They had complemented each other perfectly. Together, they had been perfect.
When he saw melancholy replace the laughter in her eyes, he knew the same memories were playing in her mind too.
The moment Sidiro appeared on the horizon, the tightness in Theo’s chest loosened. His two days in Milan had been productive from a business sense but the loneliness of the evening had been acute. He supposed it was his own fault for crying off the
