Page 28 of Penniless Cinderella for the Greek
‘Sorry, I must have fallen back to sleep. Are you...okay?’
‘I’m fine.’ Confession wasn’t good for the soul, whatever anyone said. He regretted that she had seen him when he was weak. It wouldn’t happen again.
‘I meant to go to my room, but I was tired after...’ She broke off and blushed.
Dimitris couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a woman blush. It was a reminder that Savannah was different, more vulnerable, than the lovers he’d had in the past, who’d had no expectations from him.
‘I enjoyed last night, and I think you did too,’ he drawled. He did not want her to think that taking her to bed had been about anything more than satisfying their mutual desire.
Her breathing quickened when he sat on the edge of the mattress and tugged the sheet away from her breasts. ‘We should get up and start work in the studio,’ she said huskily.
‘Have you forgotten it’s the weekend?’ He pulled the sheet down, and hunger tore through him as his gaze lingered on the vee of blonde curls between her thighs. He wanted to make love to her and lose himself in the sweet solace of her body, to banish the shadows of his nightmare.
Dimitris stripped off his sweatpants and lay beside Savannah on the bed. His erection nudged between her thighs when he lifted himself over her and supported his weight on his elbows. ‘Weekends are when we relax,’ he murmured. His nostrils flared as she reached down and curled her fingers around his hard shaft.
‘You don’t feel very relaxed to me. Quite tense in fact,’ she teased him softly.
‘Witch.’ He didn’t know what to make of her. She made him laugh.Theós, she had almost made him cry. Savannah made him feel things he was afraid to define, and he told himself it was desire that caused his heart to pound when he entered her with a long, deep thrust and smothered her gasp with his mouth.
The kiss was wild and hot before it became slow and sensual, with an underlying tenderness that only Savannah had discovered lurked in the depths of his soul and which he could not hide from her. He moved inside her, and she matched his rhythm, lifting her hips each time he drove into her with steady strokes, taking them closer to the edge.
It couldn’t last, and she gave a sharp cry as she shuddered beneath him, and he felt the exquisite tightening of her internal muscles around his shaft. Moments later he reached his own shattering climax, and afterwards a sweet lassitude swept over him and he rolled onto his back, taking her with him and holding her close.
Much later Dimitris unravelled from Savannah and they balanced the tray on their knees while they feasted on tart yoghurt and juicy figs. She chased a tiny shred of mint leaf across her lips with her tongue and he couldn’t resist using his own tongue to lick off a smear of honey from the corner of her mouth.
‘Tell me about your father,’ he said, propping himself against the headboard. ‘It must have been a shock when he was accused of corruption.’
‘It felt like a bad dream.’ She bit her lip and glanced at him as if she was remembering how she’d woken him from his nightmare. ‘Although I didn’t have a close relationship with my father I respected him until I discovered that he was corrupt to his core. The stress of his trial accelerated Mum’s illness, I’m sure.’
Dimitris searched her face for any sign that she knew the truth about Richard O’Neal. ‘Were your parents happily married?’
She frowned. ‘I never heard them argue. They had quite separate lives. My father was always working, and Mum was busy with her art. I don’t think they were particularly close.’
Savannah hesitated. ‘A few years ago I helped Mum sort out some old letters and paperwork she kept in her bureau. Tucked at the back of a drawer was a photo of a young man. She took it from me and got upset when I asked who he was. My father was still alive then. I wondered if she had been in love with the man, but something had happened, and she’d married my father.’
Dimitris slid out of bed and walked outside to his private balcony. Could the man in the photo be Savannah’s real father? he brooded. He felt guilty that he was keeping a shocking secret from Savannah. But he could not reveal what Richard O’Neal had told him. The person who should tell her the truth was Savannah’s mother.
‘Dimitris?’ Savannah’s voice was soft with concern, and when she joined him on the balcony the gentle expression in her eyes chipped at the ice around Dimitris’s heart. ‘I know you are worried about telling Eleni everything you told me. But she has a right to know the details of the accident. And one day you might be able to put the past behind you.’
‘Why do you care?’ he asked gruffly. ‘I hurt you in the past.’
‘I wish you had confided in me ten years ago. But I was immature, and I wanted you to rescue me like the handsome prince from the fairy tales I’d read as a child. I wish I had tried to get you to talk about your parents.’
Dimitris felt an ache in his chest when he remembered her at eighteen, so beautiful and trusting. There was a wariness in her now that he guiltily acknowledged he was responsible for. He wished he were different and could give her the fairy tale. But at the end of the photoshoot he would let her go so that she could find her prince. He was stunned by how much he hated the prospect, and how bleak the future seemed without Savannah.
He pulled away from his thoughts and smiled. ‘I thought that after breakfast I would take you out on my boat to visit some of the other islands around Rhodes. Symi and Halki are both pretty islands.’
‘A boat trip sounds amazing.’ She caught her breath when he lifted her up so that her pelvis was flush to his and she felt his burgeoning erection. ‘We’ve eaten breakfast,’ she reminded him when he carried her inside and tumbled them onto the bed. ‘So are we going on your boat now?’
‘I didn’t specify how long after breakfast we would go on a boat trip,mátia mou.’ He grinned as he eased between her splayed thighs so that his swollen tip pressed against her moist opening. ‘But I have a feeling it will bemuchlater.’
CHAPTER TEN
DIMITRISSHOVEDHIShands in his pockets and turned away from the window where he had been staring unseeingly at the beach. His sister looked up from her book. ‘I wish you would sit down. You have been prowling around the room ever since I arrived.’
He walked over to Eleni and lowered his tall frame onto the sofa beside her. In his mind he heard Savannah’s voice urging him to open up to his sister. ‘I need to talk to you...about what happened in the accident.’ He pulled in a breath. ‘Or rather why it happened.’
‘Actually, I know what happened.’ Eleni closed her book and gave him her full attention.
