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‘I’m very fond of her. She has a huge heart. She coped with losing me by burying herself in her studies and travelling round the world to work on archaeological digs—’
‘What was it like for you growing up in such an unsettled household?’ Elvi pressed, helplessly curious.
‘Imagine what it’s like to come home from school and discover your bedroom has been taken off you and given to a new step-sibling instead,’ Xan urged. ‘Nothing was permanent, nothing was private, nothing in the house on Thira truly belonged to me. I was at the mercy of Dad’s latest wife or lover. It made me a loner, who didn’t trust anyone. I always thought my father married my mother too young and that’s why he made such a mess but now I think he was just an easily bored womaniser.’
Elvi was drinking in every word, finally understanding how the boy had grown into a man with a colour-coded wardrobe and a powerful need for privacy. Deprived of order, control and security as a child, Xan had made order, control and security his first goals as an adult.
‘Being a womaniser entails messy, dramatic relationships so I went the mistress route instead,’ Xan confided. ‘I suppose it was sleazy—’
‘It was sleazy,’ Elvi told him.
Xan shrugged a shoulder. ‘It worked for me until you burst onto my horizon and then I blew it... I didn’t want you in the same apartment where I’d been with other women. I didn’t want to treat you the same way...’
As the silence dragged unbroken, Elvi stroked his lips apart with a tender fingertip and bent down to kiss him. ‘If you talk, you get rewarded...and the more you talk, the bigger the reward gets,’ she whispered encouragingly.
Xan arched his hips up beneath her, letting her know that his erection had not subsided. ‘Tell me more, moli mou—’
‘No, you bring out a side of me I don’t know,’ Elvi mumbled, suddenly embarrassed by her forward behaviour.
‘You do the same to me. Unnerving, isn’t it?’ Xan prompted. ‘I want you more than I’ve ever wanted a woman in my life—’
‘Angie?’ Elvi challenged shamefacedly.
‘Angie was never a challenge. You were... Will you quit bringing her up?’ he demanded impatiently.
Elvi nodded seriously. ‘OK.’
‘I thought you and I were just about good sex until I tried to make myself give you up. I felt huge guilt about depriving you of your virginity, but I still couldn’t bring myself to let you go or admit that what I had with you was different from anything I’d ever had with a woman,’ Xan told her, reaching up to untie the narrow shoulder straps of her sundress and tug her bodice down inch by dangerous inch.
‘Stop it...we’re talking!’ Elvi protested.
‘Can’t we play at the same time?’ Xan questioned, giving the dress a rough yank to free her full breasts, and then groaning out loud as her bountiful pale curves filled his hands to overflowing. ‘I mean...let’s be honest...at this moment... I will tell you anything you want to know—’
Her breath caught in her throat as he rubbed her swollen nipples between finger and thumb, sending a flash of heat shooting
through her. ‘Why were you trying to run away earlier?’ she demanded shakily.
‘I was...’ Xan flung his tousled dark head back and breathed in deep and slow. ‘When you told me you’d only married me because you were scared I might try to take our child away from you, I was...’ Again he hesitated.
‘You were...what?’ Elvi prompted in frustration.
‘Hurt... OK? I was hurt!’ Xan finally got that word out and grimaced. ‘Because by the time I got to our wedding today I knew I wanted and needed you round the clock and that somehow you had made me fall passionately in love with you, which explains why I continue to screw everything up. Passion and logic don’t work well together and the way you make me feel often leaves me feeling like I’m clinging to sanity by my fingernails alone.’
Elvi gazed down at him in awed incredulity. ‘You love me...seriously?’
‘Serious as a heart attack.’ Xan flipped over, carrying her with him, reversing their positions at the same time as he endeavoured to remove her dress. ‘I think I started falling for you the minute I saw you, which is why I was so eaten up with guilt when I first took you to bed. Suddenly I was seeing every wrong thing I’d done and said to you in horrible Technicolor and I didn’t know how to sort it out and start again.’
‘You were hurt when you believed I’d married you just to safeguard my position.’ Elvi smoothed gentle fingertips along his strong jaw while with her other hand she ran down the side zip on her dress to facilitate his manoeuvres. ‘And I told myself I was agreeing for that reason, but I suspect that I was really giving myself a good reason to do what I secretly wanted to do because I love you. Do you deserve my love?’ she asked for herself. ‘No, you probably don’t, but you can work at deserving it for the rest of our lives—’
Xan laughed out loud. ‘I like it when you’re blunt like that—’
‘And, no, you don’t get any time off for good behaviour,’ she told him sternly. ‘And after sex, you will always, always hold me close.’
‘It’s not just sex with you...it’s much more than that,’ Xan muttered awkwardly.
Elvi fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Souls meeting?’
Xan laughed again, reaching down to kiss her at the same time as he unzipped his chinos. ‘Our bodies are definitely going to meet,’ he intoned against her reddened mouth with unconcealed hunger. ‘On a collision course right now to that meeting—’
