the hell didn’t you tell me that you—?’
Her voice tight with humiliation, Megan cut across his incensed demand. ‘You didn’t seem all that interested in conversation at the time.’
The line of colour across the angle of Emilio’s cheekbones deepened as their glances clashed. Even now the air between them hummed with a sexual tension that was almost tangible. Despite the intensity of their lovemaking it had not even taken the edge off his hunger for her.
He did not need reminding that his actions had been ruled by his own selfish carnal desire, a carnal desire that after two years of denial had been stripped to its primitive and most basic form.
It had been a point of pride with Emilio that he had never been a victim of his hormones. He had certainly never lost control in bed before, and now the one time he should have shown restraint with a woman, when he should have been gentle, he had snapped. His relentless, ravenous need for her had made him utterly blind to her inexperience until that last moment.
There must have been clues? How had he missed them? Missed the opportunity to make her initiation special.
‘And you were not acting like a virgin,’ corrosive shame made him retort defensively.
‘Know a lot about virgins, do you?’
His eyes narrowed as his eyes drifted to her tender lips still swollen from his kisses. ‘Nothing, as it happens,’ he said, thinking it seemed he also knew even less about women, or this one at least.
‘You’re making a big thing of nothing. Being a virgin isn’t like having a contagious disease. It’s not obligatory to go into isolation.’ Her mouth settled into a mutinous line of defiance as she tried to hide her hurt. ‘I’m sorry you feel cheated and short-changed but I’m not about to say sorry.’
His brows lifted. ‘What are you talking about now? Cheated …?’ he asked irritably. ‘You are not making sense.’
Face scrunched in an effort to hold back the tears that threatened to spill over, she lifted her chin and blinked hard.
‘Well, so sorry,’ she drawled, ‘if I’ve lost my edge of clinical objectivity, but I’ve never been in this situation before.’
‘And you think I have?’
‘Yes, I get it, you don’t need to spell it out.’ She had been slow but the penny had finally dropped. She knew why he was acting this way. ‘You thought you were getting someone who knew what she was doing in the bedroom and instead—’ she broke off to give a loud sniff and passed a hand across her suspiciously bright eyes as she gulped ‘—instead you got me.’
She heard the unattractive, self-pitying whine in her voice and shook her head, mumbling, ‘Even you could not have got it perfect your first time.’
He probably had. Megan closed her eyes, hating the woman he had got it right with.
Torn between frustration and tenderness, Emilio levered himself into a sitting position with the fluid grace that typified all his actions.
‘Have I got this right?’ he asked, placing one hand beside her head as he looked down at her. ‘You think I feel short-changed? Short-changed?’ he repeated, shaking his head as he added something, not appearing to realise he had slipped into his native tongue, and laughed. ‘The way your mind works, querida, is a constant source of amazement to me. Listen, you may not value what you gave me highly, but I do.’
MEGAN’S eyes slid slowly up from the expanse of golden chest she was staring at. ‘You value? ‘
She parroted the words like someone speaking a foreign language.
Emilio nodded and framed her face between his long brown fingers, smoothing the strands of hair spread around her face from her brow. ‘I am your first.’ The sheer impossibility of it still shook him. ‘Do you know how that makes me feel?’
Her eyes darted from side to side, refusing to meet his. ‘Annoyed? ‘
‘Privileged.’
She froze at the throaty rebuttal, her eyes heavy, lids half closing as he touched her cheek. The tremor she felt in his fingers as they brushed slowly across the downy curve shocked her.
Her lips, soft and warm and so incredibly sweet, trembled under his as he kissed her softly.
‘And in shock,’ he admitted, pulling back. ‘I still don’t understand how it is possible.’
Arm curved above her head, she watched as he propped his broad shoulders against the carved headboard. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the tangled strands off her hot face with one hand and, anchoring the sheet over her breasts with the other, pulled herself up into a kneeling position.
‘Because you thought I slept my way through college?’
The suggestion drew a dark frown from Emilio. ‘No, because you’ve been living with a man for two years.’ And though he had buried it deep, the knowledge had driven him out of his mind. He took a deep breath, let the anger pass through him and released it; despite a lot of practice he had never quite perfected the technique.
‘A man!’ Megan sank deeper into confusion.
‘All right, live-in lover, boyfriend, whatever he was to you.’
Megan sat back on her heels, lifting a hand to balance herself as the mattress shifted. She was totally at sea. Live-in lover? She had barely had a date!
‘What are you talking about? I haven’t been living with a man!’ She stopped, her eyes widening in comprehension, before sliding back down in the bed with a laugh and a billowing of silken sheets. ‘You’re talking about Josh?’ She chuckled.
He arched a brow, his focus drifting as his eyes were drawn to the outline of her body against the silk. She gave a sinuous wriggle. All he had to do was reach out and lift the sheet … He swallowed as he struggled to banish the image of her smooth, naked body from his head.
The effort made sweat break out along his upper lip.
‘There were others?’ He immediately recognised the irrationality, given the topic under discussion, of his jealous question. More? There hadn’t been any!
‘What is this about?’
Emilio looked down at her lying there, looking like a wild-haired wanton angel, and felt a pulse of desire throb through his body. ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. This
Josh, he—’
Megan’s brows twitched into a perplexed line. Her fingers restlessly tugged at the sheet. ‘What is this thing you have about Josh? You sound as if you don’t like him.’
‘I have no thing about Josh. I’m sure he was perfect, but …’
‘Pretty much,’ she admitted. It was a view shared by all her female friends. They had all bemoaned the fact that the perfect men were always
