‘It looks very pretty,’ Lizzie admitted absently, still dazed by his kisses, and still wearing nothing more than the towel wrapped around her. It was true about the garden, but they were now in a bedroom that possessed a very large bed, and right now all she wanted was to be lying on that bed with Ilios, with nothing to come between them, or to come between her and her increasingly urgent need to explore every bit of him.
Ilios obviously didn’t feel the same way, because he was leading her down a smooth path, the tiles cool beneath her bare feet. The raised walls protecting the garden made it pleasantly warm, and above them the evening sky was studded with stars like diamonds in velvet, their gleam reflected in the swimming pool.
It would have been on nights such as these that the gods came down from Olympus to mingle with mortal men—and women, Lizzie thought, remembering how some of the Greek myths involved human women being impregnated by handsome gods. She paused to touch the leaves of a small olive tree set into a tub.
‘Olives and vines. Food and drink,’ Ilios murmured.
‘Ambrosia and nectar,’ Lizzie whispered back.
They had reached the side of the swimming pool, and as she looked back at the ruin Ilios spoke teasingly.
‘I think we can dispense with these, don’t you?’
Lizzie sucked in her breath as he plucked away her towel, but the self-consciousness she had expected to feel was banished—melting away, she suspected, in the heat that filled her as his gaze stroked over every bit of her, just as though he was actually caressing her.
What was happening to her? She was with a man who made her feel as no man had ever made her feel before, and it was the most extraordinary, the most deliciously sensual and exciting feeling she had ever had. Her awareness of her own nakedness actually gave her an additional frisson of pleasure, made her want to stretch erotically beneath the warmth of Ilios’s gaze. She watched as he removed his own towel, her heart thudding into a climax of fierce female anticipation as she waited for him to take her in his arms.
Instead he dived into the water, slicing it cleanly and surfacing a few feet out into the pool before turning to hold out his arms to her.
‘Jump in. The water’s warm.’
They were going for a swim?
Lizzie took a deep breath and jumped.
Ilios’s arms closed round her. They were standing body to body, the water just covering her breasts. It lapped against them, a warm touch against her sensitised nipples and between her legs, as sensual as a lover’s touch gently caressing her. Ilios’s hands stroked over her skin, his movements vibrating in the water so that it felt as though he and the water were one. He had complete mastery over her desire, arousing it, compelling it, filling her with pleasure and then drawing it from her. Her body was a willing vessel, to be filled with the pleasure he was giving her. The sensation of his breath against her skin made her cry out softly, arching her throat to its touch just as she was arching her body to his possession. She was his to do with as he pleased—to give her all the sensual delight he was giving her.
Lizzie closed her eyes beneath the onslaught of the sweet agony of growing need, opening them quickly when Ilios moved to float onto his back, taking her with him so that she was lying on top of him, supported by him, her body pressing into his, every inch of her skin aware of every inch of his, where they touched and where they didn’t.
He kicked out strongly through the water, his hands sliding down her back and then up again slowly, stroking her skin with his fingertips, moving lower with each caress.
Lizzie held her breath against the fever of her own longing. Only when he finally stroked past her hips to cup her buttocks was she able to exhale in shaky relief. Now, at last, against her own sex she could feel his, solid with muscle and arousal, pressing up against her as Ilios pressed her down against himself.