She lifted her head and groaned. ‘It’s not even dark! ‘
Emilio threw back his head and laughed. The deep, attractive sound lowered the sexual temperature but the respite was brief. A moment later he was looking at her, his teeth bared in a white, wolfish grin, and the expression of predatory intent written into every line of his lean face as he looked down at her sent the sexual temperature zooming off the chart!
‘Are you a lights-out girl?’
She was a good-book-and-a-mug-of-cocoa girl, but even had she felt inclined to confess this Megan doubted he would have believed her.
‘While I agree darkness has an allure,’ he continued in the same deep, seductive, throaty purr that made the downy hair on her neck and arms rise and the skin they covered tingle. ‘It breaks down restraints and frees up the imagination.’
Megan, whose imagination had broken free of all her own restraints, her eyes sealed to his, began to pant softly. She couldn’t seem to draw enough air into her tight, aching chest.
‘I find visual stimulus very—’
With a cry she pulled her hands out from between their bodies and clamped them over her ears, closing her eyes and yelling, ‘We weren’t talking about your sexual predilections!’
A static silence followed her outburst. Megan stood there with her eyes tight shut, knowing she had pretty much blown her I’ve-been-here-done-this-got-the-T-shirt card!
‘No, we were talking about yours.’
At the quiet but firm correction her eyes flickered open. She angled a wary look at his face and immediately felt her defences crumble as she read tenderness mingled in with the driven hunger in his lean face.
‘I would like to know what pleases you.’
The answer did not require much thought and Megan felt her knees give as the truth emerged uncensored from her lips. ‘You!’
Heat flared hot in Emilio’s eyes in response to her whispered admission.
Megan could not understand a word of the flood of liquid, passionate Spanish that flowed from his lips, but she listened raptly, observing with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension the smile of gloating male satisfaction that curved his sensually sculpted lips.
‘I don’t know what you just said, but—’
He cut her off, which was possibly just as well because Megan hadn’t the faintest idea what she wanted to say. What sort of but was appropriate after you’d just told a man that he virtually embodied your sexual fantasies? There was actually no virtual about it—he did!
‘I said I intend to please you,’ he promised thickly.
Megan’s heart lurched wildly further south; the liquid heat between her thighs throbbed. She never doubted for a moment that he could fulfil his promise and she couldn’t wait—it was what she wanted.
It was what she’d always wanted.
You can’t have what you want. You can just have a tiny piece of it. Will that be enough?
Megan lifted her chin and silenced the whisper of doubt in her head. You had to take a risk. Life was short and when it threw the possibility of something precious your way it would be churlish, not to mention stupid, not to grab it with both hands!
The alternative was always wondering what if? Megan didn’t want what ifs. She wanted Emilio. She wanted Emilio heavy on top of her; she wanted him inside her.
For the first time she allowed herself to look at him without trying to disguise what she was feeling. The sensation was simultaneously liberating and scary, but since when was anything that involved Emilio uncomplicated?
‘I want you so badly, Emilio, I can’t stand up.’
Megan heard the sharp intake of his breath and sighed as his long fingers slid into her silky hair. Her head fell back, the expression in her golden eyes hazed by a sheen of lust as he slid a supporting second hand into her hair and angled her face up to him.
‘You are so beautiful—that face, that body.’ Megan saw the raw hunger in his eyes and tasted for the first time some of the female power he had spoken of—it felt pretty good. She wanted to tell him it was the first time she’d felt this way, that he was the first man who—
Her eyes widened. God, she had to warn him that she hadn’t done this before it went any further, even at the risk of her confession ruining the mood. The possibility of that happening made her hold back, but only for a moment. If he had a problem with her inexperience it was better to know now, not later down the line.
Rejection later on really would be crushing. ‘Do you remember that night in the car?’ Emilio swore softly under his breath at the reintroduction of the subject.
Obviously he remembers, stupid, she told herself. He thinks it’s the event that triggered your moral downfall. ‘Well, I know that it looked—’ ‘I remember that that night I came this close …’ he interrupted, bringing his face within a whisper of hers.
Megan’s eyelids drooped. She could feel the waft of his warm breath on her skin, on her mouth. The thought of confession slipped from her head as lust and longing shuddered through her body. She stared transfixed at the fine lines around his eyes, the gold tips at the end of his otherwise ebony eyelashes. Her heart ached. He was the most breathtaking, perfect thing on the planet and he wanted her.
‘This close?’ she parroted, fighting her way through the sensual fog in her head.
‘To throttling the bastard,’ he explained matter-of-factly.
Not following this instinct had taken a large chunk of will power, but the effort had faded into insignificance beside the will power he had needed to tap into to stop himself taking Megan in his arms to comfort her.
The sight of her standing there, white-faced and shaking, looking so vulnerable and fragile, had awoken every protective instinct he had and some new ones. While she had struggled not to cry he had struggled to keep his distance.
Emilio hadn’t allowed himself to even touch her.
He couldn’t. If he had he knew it wouldn’t have stopped at comforting.
He had been tempted. Dios, but he had been so tempted standing there, fighting against his baser instincts, especially given the status of his relationship with his then wife playing in a loop through his head.
Little snippets of the beginning of the end of his marriage slid into his head now.
‘I understand,’ Rosanna said when she discovered he had removed his things from the room they shared.
‘And are relieved?’ he asked, genuinely curious, and taking no satisfaction from her obvious distress.
Emilio felt a lot of responsibility for what had happened. His mindset when he had entered into the marriage had not differed from how he would enter into any other contract.
With the benefit of hindsight he could see that this had been a mistake—this wasn’t any
