Page 74 of A Diamond Deal
Naked, she walked to the bathroom.
Poppy placed her hand to the closed bathroom door.
A jittery flutter danced in her stomach.
It wasn’t her nakedness that made her hesitate. It wasn’t her bare flesh that made her feel vulnerable. If she opened the door—if she stood before him in nothing but her skin—and told him her truth, what she needed from him…more…would he reject her? Or would he listen?
She didn’t have a solution. She just knew it hadn’t worked.
Thiswasn’t closure. And she knew it was the same for him. Knew he stood in there now, thinking of her out here, while she thought of him in there…
What did she have to lose?
Poppy opened the door.
The bathroom was a wet room made of speckled white marble. It was huge. Gold-accented mirrors lined the walls. A claw-footed bath stood to her right, a his-and-hers sink to her left and in front of her…
Konstantinos stood beneath the shower head. His hands braced on the wall in front of him. His head ducked. The water beating down on his head. The water streamed between his shoulder blades, over the curve of his spine, to cascade over his firm buttocks.
Low embers of heat ignited in her stomach.
She swallowed, moved inside the room. The marble damp beneath her feet, she walked towards him.
Her heart racing, she stood behind him.
‘Konstantinos.’
He turned, sweeping the hair away from his face. He dragged his fingers through it—combed it backwards. His black eyes met hers. Framed by thicker lashes now, darker.
He stepped forward, out of the stream of the overhead spray. Water dipped from every part of him. Down the tip of his noble nose. Rolled down his chest, flattening the wisps of his hair to his tanned skin. And lower. Arrowing down the V on his stomach.
The air stuttering from her lips, Poppy snapped her gaze back to his.
‘I was wrong,’ she admitted too quickly.Too breathlessly.‘Last night. It was…intense.It was good. But I… It wasn’t enough, Konstantinos, and I don’t know how to fix it.’
So intensely did he watch her. He didn’t speak. Did not push her to say it quickly. He just waited for her to tell him what she wanted. What she needed. The feelings were there. In her chest.Lower.But the words…oh, how hard it was to think them, let alone say them. To admit she needed what she needed.
She needed him.Still.
‘I want…’ Her chest was on fire. Her shoulders rose with the breath she held inside her lungs for too long. She made herself exhale. She let the burn travel up her throat, until it was in her mouth, and she let them out. Her feelings.Her truth.
‘I want more.’
So did Konstantinos.
All night he’d lain beside her. Wanting to touch. Wantingher.
He hadn’t been able to admit having her back in his bed felt so right, but everything else… It was wrong. Inside, everything felt mismatched. Out of sync.
He’d thought the water, his disciplined stroke, would align him. But even in the water his body had been too stiff to pull him forward. He was sluggish.Weak.And finding her ready to leave when he’d returned…
His throat closed. He couldn’t explain it. Why he hadn’t been able to reconcile himself with the fact it was over. She was going back to her side of the monastery. They would continue their ruse, but everything else they’d promised to close the door on.
He didn’t want to close the door.Not yet.
He ached to take control. To do what his body demanded he do, and take charge. Pull her beneath the water with him and kiss her. Push all this—whatever it was…it was a ball, a knot, a mass of something he couldn’t expel, untie, or release—into her.
‘What do you want to do, Poppy?’
