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Even as he picked up his mobile, Theron couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was about to go horribly wrong, just when he needed it to be right.
An hour later Theron stalked through the halls of the estate, knowing that he had to find Summer but feeling utterly out of control. He wanted a tether. He needed her. She had anchored him since the first time he’d seen her. Pulled at his unconscious like a magnet. From the first time he’d got up to leave and sat back down, he’d felt as if he was constantly returning to her, would always return to her, somehow.
She wasn’t in the kitchen, or the library. The garden looked empty and he hoped that she wasn’t in the secret passageways again. He was about to go back to the upper floors when he thought he heard something being dragged across the floor. It was faint, but there. He followed the strange sound. Whatever it was seemed heavy, which worried Theron. Summer had a habit of biting off more than she could chew.
He turned down a corridor he’d not visited before, running parallel to the back of the house, seemingly all the way to the other side. The sound finally began to grow louder and the end of the corridor began to throb with light, firing his curiosity. Treading softly, he made his way towards the light, peering around the corner, hoping to remain hidden, but what he saw made his jaw drop.
A floor of aged white and blue tiles stretched down the centre of a large glass-roofed structure attached to the main house. At the far end two thin-paned glass doors were thrown open to the setting sun and in between were huge, deep forest-green plants of all shapes and sizes. Thick, broad leaves bent open like palms, thin, spindly, pale green tendrils coiled and curled, and some kind of climber hung beneath the peeling white ironwork of the ceiling, through which the sun shone beams of dappled light back onto the ornate floor.
‘What is this place?’ he wondered out loud as he passed into the glass chamber.
‘It’s the orangery. As the only place utterly ignored by our grandfather, it has—unsurprisingly—thrived,’ Summer replied from behind him.
He turned to find Summer hauling an impossibly large sack of compost across the floor. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
She peered up at him, huffing a long blonde tendril from her eyes. ‘Making a roast dinner. What does it look like I’m doing?’
She was angry. She had every right to be, he knew that, but he felt it too. Anger, frustration. The sense that everything he wanted was right there within his grasp...but not quite.
‘You shouldn’t be trying to move that,’ he declared over his chain of thoughts.
‘Imovedit. I wasn’ttrying.’
Theron suppressed a growl. ‘You don’t have to do it all yourself, you know.’
‘You don’t get to do that,’ she said, dropping her hold on the enormous plastic bag of compost and rounding on him. ‘You don’t get to come here, out of nowhere, and suddenly be everything.’
‘Be everything?’ he asked, the anger in Summer’s tone igniting his own.
‘I meant be everywhere,’ she lied badly. She stepped towards him. ‘You might find this hard to believe, but I was fine without you.’
‘Yeah?’ Theron demanded, taking a step towards her, closing the distance between them like pieces on a chessboard. ‘Well, so was I,’ he gritted through his teeth, the lie like iron on his tongue, with the realisation that he’d not been even remotely fine until meeting her, even as his mind scrabbled to take the thought back. And that vulnerability, that weakness only angered him more.
His eyes caught hers, the golden sparks firing against the green evidence of her own internal war. And then, as if static electricity arced between them, linking them, drawing them together, he couldn’t fight it any more.
They moved together at the same time, lips crashing, hands reaching and curling, hearts beating, breath hitching, caught and held. All of it, he wanted to hold all of it—Summer, their child, the past and the future, in one single breath. To consume it and keep it safe for ever.
She moved against him, her hands reaching around his neck, holding him to her as if worried he would stop. She was like fire, twisting and turning in his arms, and he Prometheus, as if he’d stolen her from the gods themselves and he couldn’t help but fear what his punishment would be.
But when she opened her mouth to his, when her tongue thrust against his, all thoughts were lost to sensation. Her fingers moved from curling in his hair to his chest, one hand pulling and the other pressing as if she couldn’t tell what she wanted more.
Theron had no such confusion. He wanted everything. The thought roared through his veins, beating like a drum in his chest. He placed his hand at her back, fitting it between her shoulder blades, loving how he could stretch his palm between them, pressing her against him, feeling her chest and thighs against his.
His other hand slipped beneath her shirt and the moment his skin touched hers his heart missed a beat. He thought he felt her gasp against his mouth as his fingers swept around her waist to her stomach, and when his palm pressed against the gentle slope of her abdomen he paused. Gently, she pulled back and gazed up at him—a moment of calm in the madness. A moment just for them that healed a hurt he wasn’t sure he’d known was there. But, as they gazed at each other, peace turned to hunger, turned to need, and desire became impossible to resist.
Summer inhaled once swiftly, her eyes inflamed, and she drew him back into her kiss.
She tugged at his jumper, dragging it from him as he tore at the buttons of her shirt. Her hands went to the button on his trousers and his went to her thighs and he lifted her up into his arms. He swallowed the squeak of surprise with his kiss and drew her up his chest, the friction sending enough sparks to consume them both. She shifted endlessly in his arms, and he could have held her there for eternity, but he wanted to touch, to taste, to tease. He backed towards the chaise longue he’d seen—the ancient piece of furniture fitting the faded dignity of the room and completely at odds with what he wanted to do to Summer. He wanted her indecent, he wanted her incandescent, he needed her as mindless with pleasure as he was every time he touched her.
He wanted to hear her scream his name and know that no other man would be able to do that for her. He wanted... The backs of his legs met the cushion of the lounger and he sat, bringing her with him, the air knocked out of their lungs at the impact.
He groaned out loud, not from the fall but from the exquisite pleasure of having her in his arms again. He felt completely lost to her, his heartbeat racing, an urgency in him that he couldn’t quite account for. As if time was running out for them and he greedily wanted everything he could take, every memory he could make. It was as if Summer could feel it too. He could sense it in the way she searched his gaze, the way she held onto him so tightly, the desperation that seemed to make their hearts beat together.
Summer had never felt anything like this. As if all the want and need she’d tried to deny had boiled up and escaped and was now coursing through her veins. She was drunk on lust and she felt out of control, as if she honestly didn’t know what she would do next. She wasn’t this person, she was considered, rational, calm, but right now she was mindless, incoherent and wild. Here in this beautiful orangery, with deep green plants curling up to the ceiling, she felt elemental.
The thought struck her and stuck.
Elemental.
