ELLEN STIRRED. SHE was cradled against hard, warm muscle, and an arm lay heavily around her. She could feel Max’s breathing, low and steady, feel his breath on the nape of her neck. As she came to wakefulness her own limbs felt heavy, tired, and there was an ache between her legs. Yet it was not pain. Oh, no, not pain...
A sense of wonder suffused her. Was it real to be lying here in the dim morning light, with Max’s arms around her, holding her so closely? Could it possibly be real? But it was—oh, it was. That was the wonder of it—the miracle. That after all those long, miserable years of thinking herself repulsive, repellent, all the misery, the dreary self-torment, was over.
Gratitude flooded her. She knew why Max had done this, knew what his reasons were—to wean her away from clinging to the home she loved so much, that he could only see as her hiding place—but she didn’t care. How could she care when his strong arms were warm around her? When her body had discovered the bliss he could arouse in her? No, whatever his motives, she could only be grateful for this wondrous, incredible gift that he had given her—the gift of knowing herself to be desirable.
It was gratitude that she gave voice to when Max awoke and made love to her again, bringing her once more to a peak of ecstasy that left her breathless with wonder. Then another appetite struck, and they wrapped themselves in voluminous bathrobes, padded through to the suite’s dining area to partake of a large and filling breakfast.
She caught his hand, staying him. Her eyes huge. ‘Thank you...’ she breathed.
He turned her hand in his, winding his fingers through hers, turning them towards him. Amusement danced in his eyes, but there was another expression there too.
‘Oh, the pleasure was all mine—be very, very sure of that!’
He kissed her nose, lightly and humorously, squeezing her hand, his free hand brushing the loosened locks of her hair caressingly. She was gazing up at him wide-eyed, with that wonder in her expression that did strange things to him. There was wonder in him, too. He’d awakened her senses—but she had awakened in him senses he had not known he possessed.
Satisfaction—deep, consuming and very...well, very satisfying—creamed through him. Whatever his original motives for setting Ellen free from the chains she was bound with, he knew with absolute certainty that what had happened between them—what was still happening—was for quite different reasons. For reasons that had only to do with him being a man and Ellen being a woman, desiring him and being desired.
That is all we need. All I want.
He sat himself down opposite her, reaching for her glass and filling it with fresh orange juice from the jug on the table. His eyes rested on her, appreciating what he was seeing—her loose, tousled hair, the deep vee of her robe exposing the swell of her breasts, the softness in her face, in her eyes, the deep, sensuous glow of a woman who’d spent a night of passion in his arms.
He poured his own orange juice and drank it in one draught, setting down the glass. She was sipping hers in a more genteel fashion, and her gaze was flickering to his, as if she wanted to feast on him but felt a touch of shyness yet. Hunger rattled in him—and not just for the croissants nestling in their napery. He helped himself to one, tearing it open with strong fingers. Then his eyes went back to hers, holding them.
‘We need,’ he announced, ‘to get hold of your passport.’
Ellen started. She’d been in a daze, wanting only to let her eyes gaze across the table at him, to drink him in—the way his jaw was roughened right now, and how enticingly piratical the dark shadow of regrowth made him look, and how there was that glint in his eyes again that could melt her bones like water, and how the towelling robe he wore with such casual ease was so incredibly white against the gold tan of his smooth, half bared chest, and how his strong, lean forearms were reaching for that croissant with fingers that had stroked her body to shuddering ecstasy.
‘What?’ Her eyes widened in confusion.
‘Your passport,’ Max repeated. His expression changed, become amused. ‘So we can visit my eco-resort in the Caribbean. I told you over dinner last night that I needed to go out there.’ Long lashes dipped over his dark eyes. ‘Surely,’ he said softly, ‘you did not think that a single night with you would be enough—did you?’
He watched his words sink in. Words that he had already formed in his own head as soon as he’d awoken. A single night with this woman? No, not enough! Not anywhere near enough!
Across from him he saw her reaction—saw for the fraction of a second indecision hover in her eyes and then vanish.
Her face lit, and inside her head words were singing suddenly.
Go with him! Go with him while he wants you—because he does want you. Because this time is the most wonderful of your life so far. So seize it—seize it all. Take what you’ve never had before and wring from it every last drop. After all, why not?
Max Vasilikos had given her a gift she had never, never thought to possess—the gift of her own beauty. The gift of himself desiring her.
Wonder, joy and gladness filled her to the brim.
* * *
‘There are no walls!’ Ellen exclaimed as they walked into the room. It was situated in one of the cabanas that had already been constructed, at one end of the resort, and was cantilevered over a low, rocky bluff that jutted right out over a sheltered bay on the tiny islet.
‘Just mosquito nets,’ agreed Max. He strolled up to the missing outer wall, where an area of decking gave some outside space to meld interior and exterior seamlessly. ‘Like it?’ he asked as Ellen walked up to join him, resting her hands on the balustrade above the tumbling rocks.
A little wooden staircase to their left led down to the white sand beach a few metres below. An azure sea lapped lazily, beckoning to her with seductive allure.
She twisted her head to look at him. Made a face. ‘Oh, no, it’s awful—honestly, how could you bring me to such a place? I mean, there isn’t a nightclub for miles, and there’s no gourmet restaurant with a signature chef, and, I mean, there isn’t even a wall, for heaven’s sake!’
In the hours it had taken them to arrive here the very last remnants of her shyness and uncertainty in his company had vanished. Gone completely. Now she was at ease with him, daring to laugh with him, be confident with him, to tease him as she was doing now.
He kissed her to silence her and they both laughed into the kiss, and then Max tightened his hold and deepened his kiss. ‘There is, however,’ he told her, ‘a bed—a very large, king-sized bed—and the mattress is very, very high spec... I promise you.’
It was, too, and suddenly all jet lag was gone, and energy and the fires of arousal leapt within her, dismissing all other thoughts.
‘I wanted to swim in the sea,’ was her last muffled cry as he swept her off to the bed.
‘Later...’ Max growled.
Afterwards, as they lay exhausted in each other’s sated embrace, it came to him that for a woman who had only a handful of days ago regarded herself as completely repellent to the male race, she was, in fact, taking to this like a natural. As if she’d been born to be in his arms...
* * *
Ellen waded out of the water, feeling the heat of the sun on her body immediately, even through her sopping wet T-shirt. Her snorkel and mask dangled loose in her hand.
‘Lunch?’ asked Max, glancing at her and admiring the way the wet T-shirt material clung to her generous breasts. Desire stirred in him. Maybe they could wait for lunch for a while?
‘Definitely,’ agreed Ellen, dashing his hopes, or at least deferring them until a post-lunch siesta.
* * *
Ellen glanced fondly at him. The days had slipped by, one after another, each one glorious. They’d swum and snorkelled, sailed and kayaked, and Ellen had done a beginner’s dive while Max, with years of experience, had gone for a serious deep water session.
She’d accompanied Max as he’d inspected the resort site, talking to his project manager, the architect and the work crew who came across from the main island, where they lived. It had been revealing to see him with his staff, because even the most junior of the work crew got a word of appreciation from him, and she’d been able to see they regarded him as a good boss.
That said a lot about a person...things she could admire, respect. No mere venal money-grubbing property developer was he—his values were those she could share and approve of.
‘There are places in the world where new construction is fine—and places where it isn’t,’ Max was saying now as they relaxed, replete after dinner cooked over an open firepit, down on their little beach, leaning back against a rock with the water lapping gently a few metres away and overhead the tropical stars wheeling their slow arc across the midnight sky. ‘Places where we should tread lightly on the land, as I’m trying to do here, or not tread at all—places where we should save and repair what is already there, conserve what earlier generations have built.’
She glanced at him, liking what she’d heard him say. ‘Maybe being Greek helps—growing up amongst so much antiquity?’
But her words drew from him a glance that seemed, she felt, to admonish her.
‘We cannot live in the past—it is not healthy to do so. Sometimes,’ he said, ‘we have to let go. Let go of the past and make a new future for ourselves! A new life.’
Ellen’s eyes slipped away. Discomfort snagged in her, and she wished he had not said that. This was the first time he’d referred to the underlying reason he was in her life at all. Up till now there had been no mention of it—as if that troubled situation thousands of miles across the ocean did not exist. And certainly it had not intruded into what they had here.
Here, she knew—with a gratitude that in itself was revealing of how much she did not want to think of anything beyond this bliss—she could merely revel in what was happening. Day after day, just her and Max—wonderful, wonderful Max!—who’d transformed her, transformed her life, and to whom she would be grateful always! Walking barefoot on the sand, hand in hand beneath the sun, beneath the moon and stars. All cares and concerns far, far away.
But now he was reminding her of them. Making her think about them...making her face them once again. She didn’t want to hear him say such things. He’d made no mention before—none at all—of what was for this brief space of time an ocean away. Nor did she want him to.
I don’t want this time with him spoilt in any way at all. I don’t want to think about Haughton, how desperate I am to keep it. Nor to be told that I should let it go...
But Max was speaking again, gazing up at the starry night sky.
‘I remade my life,’ he was saying. ‘My mother’s death forced me to do so. I wish so much she’d lived to see what I’ve achieved, but it was not to be.’
His gaze flicked back to her, trying to read her expression in the dim light. But he could not see it. And nor could he bring himself to tell her how struck he’d been by the house he wanted her to yield to him—how it had called to him immediately, arousing in him for the first time in his life an urge to cease his wandering, rootless lifestyle.
Instead he focussed on what he so wanted her to realise for herself. ‘Do you not think,’ he ventured carefully, weighing the impact of each word upon her, ‘that your father’s death is also a turning point for you? Allowing you to be free at last to do what you want with your life?’ He chose the word ‘allowing’ specifically. ‘Allowing you,’ he finished, his eyes on her, ‘to move on. To claim your own life for yourself?’
With a sweep of his hand he indicated the whole expanse of the beach, the starry tropical sky, the lap of the gentle waves.
‘It’s a good life, isn’t it?’ he said softly. ‘Here—and everywhere! The whole world lies before you, Ellen, and now you know how beautiful you are, how desirable, what is stopping you from walking out into that world? Living your life. Your life, Ellen—unfettered and untrammelled. Not trapped in an unhappy past.’
She let him speak. She knew why he was saying it—knew it was because he wanted her to stop fighting him, stop clinging to Haughton. Knew that he truly believed it would be for her own good. But she could make no reply. Inside her, like a festering wound, was all the bitterness she felt about what Pauline’s marriage to her father had done, and it could not be so easily lanced.
I don’t want to think about them—what they did to my father, to me—not while I’m here, having this precious time with Max. I don’t want to tell him what they’re like, how vicious and ruthless they are—greedy for everything they can get their hands on. I don’t want this idyll with Max spoilt.
So she looked away, giving a slow shake of her head, closing her eyes momentarily. Shutting out what he was telling her. Then she felt his hand on her arm, not pressing firmly, almost as a message to her.
‘Think about what I’ve said...’ His voice was low, compelling. ‘That’s all I ask for now.’
He paused, instinctively knowing that he must say no more now, that she must ponder his words, let them soak into her. Make sense to her.
He shifted his position, hooking his arms loosely around his splayed bent knees. ‘So,’ he said, his tone quite different now, ‘what shall we do tomorrow? How about if we take the catamaran out?’
Gratefully, Ellen followed his lead. This was the Max she wanted. Carefree and easy-going. Revelling in the days and nights they spent here.
And she was grateful, too, the next day—to experience the thrill and the speed of skimming over the azure swell as she clung to the tarpaulin between the twin hulls of the wind-hungry vessel, with Max commandingly at the helm.
‘Enjoying it?’ he shouted to her over the rush of wind.
‘Fantastic!’ she yelled back, and then gave a cry, snatching more tightly at the tarpaulin, as with a careless answering laugh Max spun the helm, heading right into the wind, and the catamaran tacked with a lift of one hull before coming about again.
Exhilaration filled her as he headed downwind back to shore. With easy strength she helped him haul the vessel up on to the beach, then flopped down on the hot sand.
Max lowered himself beside her. Her eyes were shining, her face alight. There was sand in her hair, and it was windblown and tangled. A memory of how Tyla had hated getting her hair in a mess sifted through him—how she’d fussed endlessly about her appearance, wanting him and every other man to admire her constantly. Desire her.
His eyes softened. Ellen—his own beautiful lioness—was fit and fabulous. She’d believed no man could desire her, and even now that he had convinced her how very, very wrong that misconception had been, so that she now finally accepted the truth of her own appeal, there was still no trace of the fussing and self-absorption that Tyla had indulged in endlessly.
How easy that makes her to be with—she accepts my desire for her as naturally as breathing now, returns it with an ardour that takes my breath away!
And it was much more than simply the time she spent in his arms, breathtaking though that was. It was her enthusiasm, her sheer enjoyment of everything—from food, to sunbathing, to swimming, to gazing up at the stars—everything they did together.
I like being with her. I like her company—I like her thoughts and views and opinions. I like it that she likes this simple place and that she does not yearn for bright lights and sophisticated glamour. I like her laughter and her smiles.
She was smiling now—smiling right up at him as he loomed over her.
‘Good fun?’ He grinned, and she laughed again exuberantly. ‘You can sail her tomorrow,’ he promised, and then busied himself with kissing her.
From kissing her it was an easy progression to sweeping her up into his arms and carrying her up to their open-air room, making use, yet again, of the very large bed.
His last conscious thought, barely forming in his head, was just how good it was to make love with Ellen—how very, very good. And then there was no more thought, no more conscious awareness of anything at all, only rich, sating fulfilment.
* * *
Max’s hand was resting lazily over Ellen’s warm, sand-speckled thigh as they lay in partial shade on their little beach, having breakfasted on their terrace after an early-morning workout at the open-air gym in what would shortly be the reception and central services area of the resort. They were sunning themselves, waiting for enough wind to rise so they could take out the catamaran.
It was their penultimate day there, and Ellen was only too conscious of a sense of deep, aching reluctance for this blissful, wondrous time to end. She could feel a little tug on her insides—a sense of yearning for this time not to be over, not to be done with. She glanced over the sparkling azure water to the curve of the tiny bay edged with vivid glossy foliage. The fronded roofing of their wooden cabana was barely visible, blending into the verdant greenery.
She gave a low, regretful sigh. These past days—one slipping effortlessly into the next, so that she’d all but lost count of them—had been so wonderful. So idyllic. They had been cocooned on this lush tropical island, living as close to nature as they could. Away from all the rest of the world, away from all its problems and difficulties.
A little Eden—just for the two of us. And I was Eve—woman new-made. Discovering for the first time just how joyous being a woman can be.
New-made, indeed—and from Adam’s rib. A smile tugged whimsically at her mouth.
Max made me—he made me a woman, sensual and passionate.
Oh, he’d done it for his own purposes, his own ends—she had no illusions about that. He had been perfectly open about wanting her to discover what life could be like beyond what she knew he saw as the prison of her childhood home. The place that had trapped her in misery, in the past, in her bitter feud with Pauline and Chloe. But she didn’t care. How could she? His motives could never detract from the effect his liberation had had on her. The wondrous, glorious gift he had given her!
The gift of his own desire for her.
And hers for him.
Her eyes went to him now with familiar pleasure as he lay beside her on the sand, dark glasses shading his eyes so that she did not know if he was dozing or awake.
It was the latter. ‘Why the sigh?’ he asked, turning his head towards her.
‘Oh, I guess it’s just that I... Well... This time tomorrow we’ll be heading back to London.’
She felt his gaze on her through the opaque lenses. ‘You’ve enjoyed it here?’
There was a little choke in her voice. ‘Of course I have! It’s been idyllic.’ It was all she could manage to say.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘it’s certainly been that.’
His hand moved a fraction on her thigh, and he turned his head away to look up into the sky. She could hear a pause in his silence. Then he spoke.
‘Tell me...’
His voice was different—almost, she thought, speculative.
‘What do you think about Arizona?’
She frowned in surprise. ‘Arizona?’
‘Yes. Or actually it might be Utah. I’ll have to check.’ He turned his head towards her again, pushing his dark glasses up on to his head. ‘Ever heard of Roarke National Park?’
She shook her head, still frowning slightly.
‘Well,’ Max continued, ‘it’s not as well-known as the more famous National Parks in the American West, such as Zion and Bryce—let alone the Grand Canyon. But, anyway, the lodge there is hosting a seminar on sustainable tourist development which I’ve a fancy to go to.’
He paused again, his eyes suddenly unreadable.
‘So what do you say? Shall we head there next? We can fly from Miami. Once the seminar’s done we could add a few days’ hiking, maybe. Pick up boots and kit when we’re there. Does it appeal?’
She was silent. Then suddenly she propelled herself up on her elbow, looking down at Max. ‘Yes! Oh, yes.’
In an instant her heart was singing, her mood soaring into the stratosphere. More time with Max—oh, yes, more time!
A grin split his face. ‘Great,’ he said.
He reached up a hand to her nape, drawing her mouth down to his, letting her hair fall like a veil around them. Satisfaction filled him. And a sense of triumph. Another new place, another new experience for Ellen to savour—to tempt her to stay out in the wonderful world that could be hers if she left her past behind her.
And, best of all, another stretch of time to enjoy all that she bestowed upon him.
His kiss deepened, and soon all thoughts of taking the catamaran out that morning faded completely.