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‘Good. No one will hear you.’
‘You get how that sounds, right?’ she asked, unsure whether to laugh or back away.
He looked at her in all seriousness and then a smile broke out across his face, lighting his eyes and making him look his age for the first time since she’d met him. ‘Yes. That’s the point. You are going to scream.’
‘Okay, enough with the psycho talk,’ she said, turning back, before he caught her arm to stop her.
‘No. I’m serious. All this anger. You’re going to scream it out.’
Summer stared up at him, finally understanding what he wanted. ‘I don’t think—’
Theron sighed. ‘That’s the point. Youdothink. You think far too much. Screaming? It’s visceral, it comes from here,’ he said, pressing his hand to her diaphragm, just above the round of her stomach. There was a slight pause, a flare in his eyes, before he masked it. ‘You need to let it out because it’s damaging. So, scream.’
Summer was so tempted. She could imagine it. How it might feel to release all the emotions bottled up inside her. But she was embarrassed. She’d sound stupid, she’d probably get it wrong, and she’d look—
Every thought stopped as a thunderous bellow cut through the night sky. She turned to Theron, eyes wide and shocked.
‘That’s how you do it. Your turn.’
She frowned, still unsure.
‘Hold on,’ he said, placing his hands over his ears as if he understood her concern, as silly as it might be. ‘Go.’
She huffed out a laugh, but he didn’t move, just waited for her to get on and do it. Finally, she took a deep breath, looked out across the mass of brambles and stars...andscreamed.
She winced through the first awkward second or two, but then it rushed out of her, gaining power and volume just at the end.
‘Naí.Good. Again,’ Theron commanded.
Her heart pounding and the pressure in her head and chest beginning to flow, she screamed again, the sound, the anger, the tension, the constant fear she’d been holding in, all purged from her body in one long howl. She nearly choked when she heard Theron join her.
Her blood fizzed in her veins and there was a lightness in her chest that she hadn’t felt since Greece. ‘People are going to think we’re crazy,’ she said, laughing.
‘That’s okay.’
She looked up at him, outlined by the stars in the night sky, his eyes blazing more fiercely than the moon. And then she remembered. That night on the beach. She’d tried to force it from her mind because of the intensity of the feelings, the emotions it brought. Her fingers itched to reach up and brush the stray lock of hair that had fallen across his brow.
Because she wanted to see him. All of him. She wanted so damn much. But she was scared. And that was why she turned back to look out across the garden.
‘Was it Lykos who taught you that?’
There was a beat of silence before he answered.
‘No. It was Kyros.’
And suddenly it hurt. Hurt that her father had given him this...thing, had spent years with Theron, while she’d had nothing. It made her feel mean and angry all over again. But most of all it made her sad.
Once again, he stopped her before she could turn to leave. His hand was at her wrist, a gentle clasp that she could have easily broken, but didn’t. Couldn’t because of the way she felt alive beneath his touch.
‘I remember a similar feeling,’ he said, his voice quiet but breathing sincere emotion into the night air between them, ‘to the one you described. That anger. At the world, at my parents for dying, at Lykos for leaving. It’s as familiar to me as the blood in my veins. And if Kyros hadn’t intervened, things might have been very different. But he did.
‘Do you think it’s possible,’ he asked, looking down at her, as if trying to read the eyes she kept hidden from his gaze, ‘that Kyros taught me, all those years ago, so that I might be here with you now, showing you?’
The idea behind his words, the intent, was all too much. She felt like a raw nerve, exposed and vulnerable, and she wanted to feel powerful. She wanted to feel confident—all the things she had embraced the night she’d spent with him in Greece. And, before she could stop herself, she reached for him, her hands threaded through his hair, clasped at his neck, pulling him down towards her, and when his lips finally met hers it was as if she could breathe again for the first time.
For just a moment he didn’t move and she thought he would pull back, feared that he would leave her breathless and wanting. And then he groaned helplessly against her lips as he deepened the kiss, thrusting his tongue into her mouth at the same time as pulling her against his body and everything in her exploded. Open kisses, tangled tongues and pounding heartbeats were all Summer knew for blissful endless moments that rolled into each other.
She breathed in the scent of him, salt from the sea mixing with honeysuckle and cedar. His hand settled between her shoulder blades and the other swept up her side, perilously close to her breast, but not close enough. Her nipples tightened in anticipation, in need and then—
