Page 38 of Hot Greek Summer

He had no idea how right he was. She was unravelling right there in front of him, unpicking the stitches of her personality and re-embroidering herself back together a little braver, a little more daring.

Winnie peeled the white cotton and lace from her body and let it join her dress on the floor, and then without giving herself a second to think or panic, she hooked her fingers under her knickers and pushed them down too.

‘There,’ she said, feeling all kinds of exposed and vulnerable.

‘I’m not going to touch you,’ he said, and she squeezed her eyes tight shut because this wasn’t about sex but it absolutely was too, and because the only man who’d ever seen her naked was Rory, and never like this. Never standing in an olive grove with the sky overhead streaked pink and rose-gold like abstract art.

She sensed him step away, and it only made it all the more intimate because she knew he was studying her. He didn’t speak, and she found herself desperate to hear the thoughts running inside his head. Was he analysing her from an artistic viewpoint, or was he looking at her as a man looks at a woman?

‘Will you turn to face me?’ he asked, and everything about his low, measured voice told her that it was OK if she didn’t want to, and somehow that made it OK for her to want to.

Slowly, one heartbeat at a time, she turned around.

He met her gaze, and she didn’t recognise the look in his eyes because she hadn’t seen it before. He didn’t rush to take in her body. His gaze lingered on hers instead, waiting for her to be ready.

‘OK?’ he said, and she nodded, the tiniest of movements.

‘How do you want me to pose?’ She had no clue how this was supposed to go.

His gaze slid away from her, considering their surroundings.

‘I have this idea of you,’ he said. ‘Sit here.’

He stepped over the blanket to indicate a large smooth boulder.

She followed him, and then shyly perched on the rock. It was smooth and worn, but none the less it came as a sensory shock to feel the cool granite against her bare skin.

He stepped back a few paces. ‘Pull your knees up and then drop them to one side?’ he asked, more detached now as he immersed himself in the technicalities of the pose.

She did as he asked, her hands demurely in her lap.

He studied her, and then came closer.

‘Can I try something?’

‘Yes,’ she breathed, trusting him not to do anything she didn’t expect.

‘It’s your hair,’ he said, touching his fingertips to the braid wrapped around her crown. ‘May I?’

His fingers gently unpicked the grips from her hair and placed them beside her on the rock, and then eased the band from the end of the plait. Winnie closed her eyes against the sudden rush of emotion that thickened her throat. Rory had never taken the clips from her hair, and it was such a simple but sensual thing that she frowned with concentration not to blush or, worse, to cry. His fingers moved to unpick her hair, freeing it into long crinkles as he ran his fingers through it.

‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Youcanopen you eyes, you know.’

She smiled, tremulous, and when she opened her eyes she found him waiting, one hand still on her hair as he met her eyes.

‘You’re impossibly lovely, Winnie,’ he said, placing his fingers loosely on her shoulders to straighten them and position them as he wanted. ‘Please feel it. Feel the warmth of the sun on your bare skin, and your hair where it brushes over your breasts. Don’t shy away from the woman you are, Winnie. Don’t blush. Bloom.’

God. He was a man of such contrasts. So many facets. She’d known him barely three weeks, and yet he seemed to see past all of her layers and defences straight through to the woman inside, as if he wanted to drag her out of the shade to sit in the sun. How did he do that? How could he be wise-cracking and sarcastic and then tender, empowering and fierce? It made him difficult to read and a little bit dangerously addictive to be around. She watched him settle himself on the ground against the trunk of a nearby olive tree, his jean-clad knees pulled up to create a rest for his sketchpad.

‘Sit up a little straighter and look slightly to your left,’ he said, his head on one side as he looked at her. ‘We’ll do ten minutes like this, no more than that, OK?’

She appreciated his consideration of her comfort, and realised that it must come from his experience of posing others. Did he do this often? Arrange naked women? She wasn’t brave enough to ask.

‘Like this?’

He nodded, thoughtful. ‘Can you sweep your hair over your left shoulder for me?’

It would expose her breast. She’d come this far. Tentatively, she did as he’d asked, running her hand down the rope of her hair.

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