Page 79 of Hot Greek Summer

‘Is this your way of saying that you feel as if we’re getting in over our heads?’

He lifted one shoulder, looking lost. ‘I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. I came here to say I’m sorry, although I don’t know if I’m sorry for wanting you or for not kissing you or for taking you to a goddamn romantic movie when I don’t do romance.’

Finally, it seemed as if they were starting to be honest with each other.

‘I think we’ve already established that you’re more than capable of romance,’ she said, loving the warmth of his hands over hers on his knees.

‘But I don’t want to be,’ he said, bereft. ‘I don’t want to be.’

She closed her fingers around his. ‘Whatdoyou want, Jesse?’ she whispered.

He let go of her hands and ran the flat of his palm down her hair, coming to rest around the curve of her neck.

‘You,’ he breathed, raw. ‘I want you so much that it crushes my chest to even look at you.’

For a self-proclaimed unromantic, he’d just stolen the breath from her lungs.

‘I’m here wanting you right back,’ she said, then turned her face into his wrist and kissed it.

He cupped her face in his hands. ‘I can’t do it, Winnie. You’re too tender for a man like me. You’re … you’re a clear blue sky on the best day of summer. You’re straightforward. You’re the most gloriously unfucked-up girl I’ve ever met, and I’m bent out of shape and bad news.’

She looked at him, really looked at him, exasperated. ‘That’s probably the loveliest thing anyone has ever said to me in my whole damn life,’ she said, her heart uneasy for this complicated man whose opinion of himself was on the floor. What had happened to him to make him take such a dim view?

He dipped his head and she pressed her mouth against his brow. ‘If I’m not mistaken, you came here to dance with me,’ she whispered.

She felt his grimace crease his skin beneath her lips.

‘I kind of hoped you’d have forgotten about that.’

‘Then you’re fresh out of luck,’ she said. As she stood, Jesse’s hands skimmed lightly over her hips and down the outside of her bare legs. The simple, intimate gesture said many things neither of them had yet been able to, and Winnie swallowed down the urge to push him back on the lounger and speed their age-old dance up from slow burn to bonfire.

He stepped into the space beside the loungers and caught hold of one of her hands by the fingertips, his eyes hot on hers.

‘Come here,’ he whispered, drawing her in until she was right in front of him. Winnie could almost hear the strains of ‘These Arms of Mine’ on the air around them as he dropped his arm low around her waist and splayed his hand flat against the small of her back, swaying her hips slowly into his. His gaze dropped to linger on her mouth, lower again to the V of skin revealed by her robe.

‘I like the way you feel in my arms,’ he murmured, ghosting his lips over her hair. ‘I like it so damn much, Winnie.’

She closed her eyes, moving with him, following his slow, sensual lead, dipping backwards when he trailed his lips down between her collarbones. He made a noise in his throat as the movement pushed her hips closer into his, somewhere between a sigh and a moan that sent a dark thrill spiralling deliciously through the pit of her stomach. She should have known that he’d be as good at dancing as he was at every other thing she’d known him do. He was unhurried, and he held her steady, and he managed to make it both sweet enough to feel old-fashioned and sensual enough to melt her bones. He slid his hand into her hair, rounding his shoulders as he bent to lower his mouth over hers. Winnie wasn’t sure if she’d smooched before, but if there was a name for this kiss, that would be it.

The million pin-prick stars overhead were their glitter-ball, the soft rush of the ocean meeting the pebbles on the shore their music.

Her hands found their way under the hem of his T-shirt, and he reached down and tugged it off in one fluid move, seemingly without even breaking the intimacy of their kiss. She revelled in the smooth warmth of his skin, and in the cords and curves of his muscles as he held her, and in the insistent way he opened her lips with his own to let his tongue in.

‘Is this what you wanted?’ he said, his voice thick in his throat. ‘To dance like this?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered against his mouth. ‘But I didn’t realise it would be like this.’

‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how to stop this thing between us.’

‘Then don’t. I don’t want you to.’ She cradled the back of his neck. ‘Stay with me tonight?’

‘Winnie.’ He closed his eyes then, as if trying to hide from what they were doing, what they were feeling.

‘Don’t run,’ she said, sliding her hand down his spine. ‘If it has to be just one night, then let it be tonight.’

He opened his eyes, searching hers, as if she were trying to catch him out. She wasn’t. She’d listened to him, to his faltering reasons and his attempts to make her feel better and himself worse, and throughout it all she’d been thinking that there was no way in this world that she wasn’t going to experience all of the brilliance and beauty of him, even if it was for one night only.

‘Do you know what you’re saying?’ he asked, his mouth moving over her face, making her suck in air when he mouthed her earlobe. ‘We’re neighbours. We can’t not see each other again after this, or pretend it didn’t happen.’

---