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Without taking his eyes off Tia, he said, “I’m going to show my wife some more of the gardens. Excuse us.”

Chapter Fourteen

“THERE’S SOMETHING I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” Tia said, as they made their way from the pool and deep into the citrus grove. She hadn’t come this far—they’d walked in silence for several minutes—and hadn’t quite realised the age of the trees. Going by the diameters of their trunks, they must have been planted a long time ago. It was cooler in here, the verdant leaves giving dappled shade, the grass underfoot thick and spongy.

“And what’s that?” He sounded justifiably irritated. Not with her, but his entire family.

“Why you don’t come home more often.”

He stared at her like she’d lost her mind and when she smiled, he laughed, so all the tension left his body and the sound of his voice was like butter on her nerves. She laughed too, and when he pulled her into a hug it was the most natural thing in the world—so natural she didn’t even think to question it.

Only, they wore so few clothes—her bathers and a wrap, his swimming shorts and a t-shirt. It was too easy for the hug to become something else, something more. The tension caused by lunch evaporated only to be immediately replaced by a different sort of tension, the kind that zipped through the veins and sparked life into every cell. It took over thought and sense, so before she knew what she was doing, Tia’s hands were lifting to wrap around his neck, her body pressed to his, her mouth seeking, needing, and his doing the same, so they were kissing in the dappled sunlight beneath the ancient citrus trees. Nothing else seemed to matter.

His hands were at her waist, removing the wrap, then he broke the kiss so he could lay it atop the grass in a perfect square. A moment later, he was back, kissing, touching, his hands roaming her body in a way that was both desperate and reverential. She felt worshipped and necessary; she felt alive. He drew her with him towards the wrap, or perhaps she drew him? They were on their knees, opposite each other, kissing, hands pushing—hers at his shirt, his at her bathers, until her breasts were exposed and his torso was hers to stare at and touch, to taste. Flashes of thought were just that, brief snatches of sanity amidst the utter desperation that was firing between them. He dropped his mouth to one of her breasts, flicked her nipple with his tongue then rolled it between his lips and she cried out, her eyes on the crosshatched leaves overhead, the glimpses of blue sky she could see through the intricate pattern. His body pushed hers backward, and then he was stripping her naked, once more worshipping her body with his mouth, his hands.

Urgency ran through her and yet there was something so hypnotic in the way he was touching her, as though committing every single inch of her to his memory, familiarising himself with all the parts that made up her whole, first with his fingers, then with his mouth, so by the time he came back to kiss her properly, she was practically on fire with the strength of her need. Her hands explored, too—his shoulders, his back, the curve of his bottom, his thighs and finally, when his mouth was on hers, she felt the strength of his arousal in her palms and cried out with anticipation.

“Please.” The word throbbed through the grove. “Please, Hamish, I need you, now.”

“I didn’t think to bring a condom in my swimmers,” he said against her neck.

“Don’t care. Doesn’t matter.”

He shifted to look into her eyes, his hand cupping her cheek.

“I can’t get pregnant from this at this point in my cycle so it’s not technically breaking our IVF rule. And I always practise safe sex. Always. I’ve been tested.”

“Me too,” he said, and of course he was. He had been celibate so long. She’d almost forgotten but now the weight of this moment sat between them, taking it from purely physical to something more. Meaning when they’d said there was none.

She pushed the thought away quickly and drew him down to kiss her. “Please,” she whimpered into his mouth, and felt him exhale, as his knee wedged her legs apart.

“You’re sure?”

“Never been more sure, Hamish. For God’s sake, I’m going to die if you don’t take me here, now.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” he said, his cock pressed to her sex, resting there a moment, as though he wanted to commit every part of this to his memory as well. “I’m quite attached to you staying alive, Tia.” And he was shifting to press into her, slowly at first, then deeper. She groaned at the feeling of him inside her, the fullness, the way he stretched her and her muscles squeezed around him, and her body seemed to rejoice at this, but also to marvel. To wonder.

Her eyes were open wide, staring into his, and suddenly, the world was taking a different shape; everything unrecognisable.

She’d had sex, but she’d never felt this. This connection. This complete and total surrender to oneness, this feeling that as he moved inside of her, he was giving her something precious, something she hadn’t even realised she’d been missing. Something she feared she couldn’t control, couldn’t predict—and needed too much to care.

Foolish tears seemed to thicken in her throat and then he was kissing her and moving and pleasure was taking over everything else, even the ability to think. But she didn’t need to think to know that she felt, and felt with the power of a thousand summer suns.

Euphoria exploded and Tia rode the wave, her nails digging into his back as he swallowed her cries with his mouth, kissing her through her orgasm, his body pausing only long enough to allow her to recover before he was stoking her fires anew, with so much skill she wondered if they could both just do this together forever and ever.

A heady, strange sense of power thrilled in Hamish’s veins; he felt almost as though he could fly. His body was alive for the first time in years, a weight in his chest that he hadn’t realised he’d been carrying was suddenly lighter, maybe even gone for good.

Across the dinner table, his eyes shifted to Cressida and whatever tightness he’d once felt seemed to no longer exist. She was a woman from his past, who’d hurt and betrayed him, but that was years ago, and they were no longer the same people. There was so much water under the bridge, so much had changed.

He could never forgive them, nor trust them, but he no longer felt anything other than a recollection of betrayal.

Tia had slain his demons, and she’d done it in the most pleasurable way he could imagine. Even now, hours after their long, luxurious afternoon in the citrus grove, their bodies taking turns making the other sing, he felt a heat beneath his skin that spoke of satisfaction and anticipation, all at once.

Cressida’s eyes met his and he smiled at her—perhaps the first time he’d done so since he’d arrived. It felt natural and easy.

He turned then to glance at Tia, who was in conversation with Rupert about the bloody yacht he was obsessing over acquiring, her hair in a ponytail he wanted to take hold of, a hint of her vanilla perfume teasing him, making him remember how much he liked kissing and tasting her.

Everything felt different. He was with his family, but at the same time, he and Tia were on their own little island, separated from the rest of them by what they’d shared. What they shared. Somehow, they’d met at random and yet they might as well have been created with the other in mind—their values, their beliefs, their goals. Even the contractual nature of both their marriage and now their physical intimacy was a perfect reflection of who they were and what they needed. The rules gave them the safety to lose themselves and know that it was still bound by common agreement; the rules removed the risk.