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‘Why?’
‘Because it is my choice. Because she was my wife and he was my son.’ His voice cracked with awful emotion and she swept her eyes shut for a moment, sucking in a breath.
‘I know that. And they’re a huge part of you, just like our daughter will be.’ She carefully kept herself out of that summation.
‘But I do not want to discuss them.’
‘Why not? Don’t you want to remember your son? Don’t you want to talk to me—to someone—about his laugh, his smile, his first steps, his night terrors—all the things that made him the little boy he was?’
Leonidas’s skin was paler than paper. ‘I will never forget my son.’
‘I know that,’ she said quietly. ‘But you can’t honour someone by burying their memories.’
Her words hung between them, sharp like an insult, bony and knotty and troublesome and almost too much. She partially rejected the truths of that observation, but she knew from experience what this felt like—she’d been made to stay silent for years, to hold her grief inside, and she’d lost so much of her parents as a result. So many memories she should have been free to relish, to smile about, were gone for ever because of forced disuse.
‘He was the light of my life!’ he said suddenly. The words were torn from him, animalistic for their pain. He held his ground, staring at her as though she were covering him in acid. ‘He was the light of my damned life! Amy and I... I loved her but, God, she drove me crazy and we weren’t...in many ways, we weren’t well-suited.’ He dragged a hand through his hair, his eyes pinpointing Hannah with his grief. ‘We’d argued the week before they died. She’d gone to Athens and I was glad.’ He groaned, his displeasure at reliving that time in his life evident in every line of his body. ‘I was glad because I was sick of fighting with her, sick of disagreeing over unimportant matters. But Brax was my reason for living, my reason for breathing, the reason I would never have left Amy.’
Hannah’s grief was like dynamite in her chest.
She waited, letting him speak, letting him finish. ‘I loved her but Brax was my everything and then he was dead. Because of me.’ He dug his fingers into his chest and her eyes dropped to the gesture, to the solid wall of tanned flesh that hid a thundering heart.
‘You think I am at risk of forgetting a single thing about him? You think I need to speak to you about my son to remember the way balloons made him laugh riotously, or the way clowns terrified him, or the way he loved to swim and chase butterflies?’ His expression softened with grief and love and Hannah held her breath, all of her catching fire with the beauty of that look—of the expression on Leonidas’s face.
‘Do you think I will ever forget how much he loved strawberries? Cheese? The way he called me Bampás, except he couldn’t say it properly so he said Bappmas instead? These things are burned inside my brain, Hannah, whether I speak of them or not.’
It was too real, too raw. She needed to say something, but words failed her. She opened her mouth, searching, seeking, but Leonidas shook his head and then kissed her.
It was a kiss to silence Hannah, a kiss to suck away whatever she’d been going to say and swallow it up, because he’d made it obvious he didn’t want her grief, her sympathy, her conversation.
He kissed her, and she resisted for a moment because he was finally opening up to her and she wanted to talk to him, to help him, to hear him. She stiffened in his arms, wanting to push at his chest, to tell him not to run away from this conversation but then he groaned, a guttural sound of such utter, devastating need, and any fight wavered, leaving only surrender.
Surrender and such deep, deep sympathy.
She understood the complexity of his emotions.
And the way he kissed her now, she understood what he needed. He wished he didn’t want her like this; he’d said as much on the beach, but this flame was burning out of control no matter how they tried to manage it.
‘Damn it,’ he groaned, swooping down and lifting her up. Regardless of the fact she was five months pregnant, he carried her effortlessly, moving through the mansion with a determined gait.
He shouldered the door to his room open—Hannah hadn’t been in here. She looked around, seeing the dark wood, the masculine touches, gathering a brief impression of a space that was huge and elegant before he laid her on the bed, his body coming over hers, his mouth seeking hers as his hands pushed at the waistband of her shorts, lowering them, his hands running over her body.
A gentle breeze rustled in off the Mediterranean, bringing with it salt and warmth. Hannah lifted herself up, kissing him as her hands pushed at his shirt, guiding it over his chest, up to his head. He broke the kiss so she could remove it and then she lay back, breathless, her eyes running over his chest.
The room was dark, but she could see enough. She drank in the sight of him as quickly as she could because he kissed her again, his tongue flicking hers, his hands worshipping her body.
He brought his mouth lower, pushing at her shirt, lifting it to her throat so he could take one of her breasts into his mouth, his tongue swirling over a nipple until she bucked beneath him, stars flashing in her eyelids.
‘God,’ she moaned, digging her heels into the bed, arching her back, begging him to take her, to thrust inside her.
His mouth moved to her other breast and his fingers took over, his palm feeling the weight of her breast, his thumb and forefinger teasing her nipple until she was a puddle of whimpering nerves.
‘Please,’ she husked, running her nails down his back.
His arousal was hard between her legs; his knee nudged her thighs further apart and then he thrust into her, the ache unmistakable, the same urge overrunning them both. She felt his need and mirrored the depth of it.
She lifted herself onto her elbows, finding his mouth, pulling his lower lip between her teeth and biting down on it, so he let out a sharp sound of shock and then a groan as he pushed her head back to the mattress, his kiss a complete domination and sublime pleasure.
Only she wanted more, she wanted to be in control of this. She kissed him back, just as hard, needing him to understand her—this. Needing to reassure him in some way.
