Ever since that passionate encounter in the kitchen, on the morning of the broken coffee cup, Theo hadn’t touched her. He’d been cold, reasonably polite when necessary, but also distant. Despite that, Annie couldn’t stop. She couldn’t stopwantinghim. What had started in that kitchen had ended in dramatic fashion, and she’d tried so hard to hold on to her anger. It was still there, stirring around in her belly, but more and more there was just a static electricity sort of awareness of every single movement Theo made.
Sleeping in the same bed and diligently not touching was its own form of torture. She’d barely let herself drift off because she was so worried her subconscious would take over and drive her towards him in the middle of the night.
Theo, meanwhile, either knew how distracted she was, or had no clue and didn’t care. Either way, he swam naked each morning, so it had become her guilty pleasure to get up as soon as she heard the front door click shut, creep into the kitchen and watch him walk, glorious and raw, towards the ocean, to disappear into it, all beautiful manhood and masculinity.
If he knew she watched, he didn’t say. He left her mostly to herself, and Annie therefore set about reading her way through the small collection of books she’d found on a shelf, and pretending not to notice him, even when she was focused on him with a laser-like intensity.
There were a million things she wanted to ask him. To learn about his life since they’d parted, to understand him better, but she had barely any opportunities to ask those questions—even if she’d thought he’d be receptive.
They didn’t eat together—the fridge was well stocked, so she simply grabbed what she wanted when she was hungry and out of an abiding sense of pride, tried to pretend her husband didn’t exist.
But a sense of needing him, aching for him, craving him, was driving her almost mad.
So finally, on the eighth day of their ‘honeymoon’, she snapped. Maybe it was that same sense of pride, or maybe it was just lust. She knew only that he thought he could call all the shots, and she was sick of it. He wanted her to beg for him? Well, maybe she wanted that, too. Maybe she wanted him to admit that he was as powerless in the face of their attraction as she was. Or maybe she just wanted to pull apart his defenses, to strip him to his most animalistic self, to see the real man, not this edifice he was presenting her with.
Watching from the kitchen window as he carelessly strode towards the ocean, all stunning naked masculinity, she ground her teeth together, as a plan born purely of instincts formed.
Moving before she could properly think it through, and certainly before she could second-guess herself, Annie stripped out of the T-shirt she’d slept in and then, before she could hesitate, the shorts as well, but she stopped short of removing her underpants. She wanted to give him his just desserts, to subject him to the same temptation he’d been throwing at her all week, but she wasn’t quite as daring as him.
Still, dressed in just a skimpy pair of briefs, with her dark hair pulled over one shoulder, she stepped out of the front door and on autopilot, looked left and right, before grimacing at her silliness—because there was no one else there. It was a totallyprivate island. She picked her way over the stones that were inlaid between the lawn, and then, to the sandy grass that gave way completely to the shoreline. He was swimming away from her, powerful strokes taking him in the opposite direction.
Good.
Let him swim, she thought, refusing to listen to common sense and turn tail back into the house.
The truth was, she was almost being driven mad by the way he was ignoring her. Infuriated and yes, hurt. Her ego was smarting by the way he appeared to have simply turned off any awareness of her, while she’d been drowning in the distraction of wanting.
So today, she’d see.
He saw her head, at first, though initially he didn’t realise it was a person, just something in the ocean, not too far in front of him. But he slowed and took a second look, switched his stroke so he could keep his head above water, and then, he saw her face, too, in profile, her lips parted, her eyes closed, as she breathed in deeply. And then, she stood up, which brought her body just a little above the water’s surface. Just enough to suggest that she too was naked, the top of her breasts revealed to him, so he cursed and stopped swimming, his first instinct being to turn right around again.
But perhaps with his subtle change in movement, something drew her attention, because she turned her head, towards him, her intelligent, clear eyes landing on his face, her soft, pink lips parted as though she were silently begging him after all.
Awareness was like a lightning bolt right to his cock.
When they’d been dating, he’d been so determined to respect her boundaries. Theo had never had any issues falling right into bed with a woman before, but Annie had been different. She’d been different from the first, but then, on her eighteenthbirthday, when she’d begged him to kiss her, he’d known she was vulnerable and sweet, and that he’d do anything to protect her. It was the first time he’d felt like that in a long time—the first time he’deverfelt like it for someone in his new life. These people were all rich and spoiled, but Annie…not Annie.
He’d wished her a happy birthday, then kept an eye on her for the rest of the night—from a distance. Making sure she didn’t ask anyone less scrupulous, and get taken advantage of.
Her twenty-first birthday had been different.
On her eighteenth, he’d known it was a dare. A silly game to seduce the man who’d once been the boy from the wrong side of the tracks. But it hadn’t mattered. At eighteen, she’d been too young and innocent anyway. By twenty-one, when she’d asked again, it hadn’t been a dare. She’d wanted him, and he’d presumed her to have the experience to know that she was playing with fire—and to welcome the consequences. So he’d kissed her, and tasted her, and he’d been hooked from that moment on.
Yet he hadn’t slept with her. Even when they’d gone beyond that night, and started dating—secretly, because she hadn’t wanted her parents to know—he’d somehow just understood that he wanted to silo what they were off from his other short-term relationships.
She was different, and he’d treated her as such.
But now, she was his wife. His goddamned wife, and she was staring at him like that, across the ocean. A wave bobbed past her, above her breasts, and then the ocean sucked out a little, so the water fell, and he saw her nipples, dusky pink, like her lips, peaked in the middle of her small, rounded breasts.
Slowly, he swam towards her, trying to bring his body back under control, to fight the surging heat of desire pounding him from the inside out. But what was the point? Hadn’t she come here to tempt him? To do exactly this to him?
When he was close to her, just a foot or so away, he stopped swimming and stood, his eyes probing hers, studying her, his hands aching to reach out and touch. He waited for her to say something, but she was breathing hard, as though she’d just run a marathon.
As though she was nervous.
Or something.
‘Did you feel like a swim?’ he prompted.