him.
It was said and there was no way she could unsay it. Near-death experiences did not make you braver, they clearly made you more stupid!
‘God, pretend I didn’t say that. I’m embarrassing myself.’ she admitted, not looking at him. ‘I’m embarrassing you.’
‘I am not easy to embarrass.’
Her eyes lifted. ‘I know,’ she conceded unable to take her eyes off his dark face. ‘Not that I’m suggesting that’s a bad thing. It wasn’t a criticism,’ she added hastily, thinking not many people looking at his face would find much to criticise.
Her embarrassed little laugh transmuted into a sharp intake of breath as he left the table and came round to join her.
Holding her eyes, he took her hand and drew her up to him. Placing a hand behind her head, he tilted her face up to him.
‘I too wondered when I saw you how you would taste. I wanted to find out right there in the street.’ And what man would not? How could any man with red blood in his veins resist the combination of warm sexuality, wide-eyed innocence and a body made for pleasure? ‘What would you have done if I had?’
‘Screamed, called for help…?’ she suggested, struggling to inject amusement into her voice and failing totally—her breath was coming in short choppy spurts that made it difficult to breath and impossible to raise her voice above a whisper.
‘And now?’ he asked, running his thumb across the cushiony pink surface of her lips.
She closed her eyes because looking at the flame burning deep in his—a trick of the light, probably—made her dizzy, and said, ‘Are you going to kiss me or torture me?’ She held her arms wide in a come and get me gesture and, eyes still tight shut, tilted her head back in invitation.
‘When you put it like that I see it would be an act of charity to put you out of your misery.’ The fever in his blood as he looked down at her made him shake—literally shake with need.
She tensed in anticipation of the plundering pressure of his lips; the light touch on the corner of her mouth took her by surprise.
Maggie’s eyes flickered open. They were still open, welded to the silver gleam in his, as he increased the pressure slightly as his tongue followed the curve of her mouth, leaving a damp trail.
The heat and frustration inside Maggie mounted as she noticed just how ragged her breathing was.
‘How was that for you?’
‘You know your way around a mouth. Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me yet,’ he breathed against her mouth.
So I would get a good score, hmm?
His wicked grin flashed as he took her face between his big hands.
‘That was not a kiss, that was merely the beginning…foreplay. I love the way you blush… I love your skin.’
‘There is only so much foreplay, Rafael, a girl can take.’
The touch of his warm lips as they claimed her sent a tide of heat through her body. Rafael’s arms slid around her body, pulling her close into him. Maggie’s arms curled around his neck as she raised herself up on tiptoe and leaned into the male hardness of his lean body, excited by the leashed hunger that made him shake.
The excitement spiralled at the first sensual stab of his tongue into the warm, moist recesses of her mouth. She moaned with need and kissed him back, her hands bunching into fists as she grabbed the fabric of his shirt.
‘I’m so sorry, darling, I had no idea.’
Maggie jumped away from him as if shot. Blinking as she struggled to clear the sexual fog in her brain, she stared. For some reason the star of a top American detective series was standing in the doorway.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IN the flesh and without the benefit of lighting and make-up and minus the skin-hugging trademark leather trousers Camilla Davenport was even more beautiful than the wisecracking detective she played on the small screen.
Five ten in her bare feet, which she wasn’t—her heels had to be at least four inches—she was dressed in what was probably the latest fashion. It was hard to find fault.
And Maggie tried!
In real life the actress’s eyes were actually bluer, her lips even more incredibly pouty, and her breasts—was it even possible—more perky. And the people who said the camera put on ten pounds were obviously lying.
Was he sleeping with her?
Of course he was sleeping with her.
Maggie felt sick and stupid and plain. A plain, stupid woman throwing up—that would leave a great lasting impression, because obviously she was leaving. It would save him the bother of asking her to go.
‘Camilla, what are you doing here?’
Rafael dragged a not quite steady hand through his dark hair and turned a less than welcoming glare on his ex-lover.
‘And how did you get past Security?’
‘Oh, don’t blame them—nobody told the darlings I am yesterday’s news. Rafe, darling, you look absolutely scrummy…’ She advanced with a purposeful sexy sway and kissed him on the cheek, not from intention, but because he turned his head before she landed the kiss.
She gave a sigh and stroked a red-painted nail down his cheek. ‘As always,’ she said, adding with a pout, ‘you are a spoilsport.’
Rafael issued her a glare of seething impatience and her hand fell away.
‘Oh, all right, look, I can see my timing is absolutely lousy as usual—’ she flashed Maggie a friendly look apparently totally all right to find her lover with another woman ‘—but I was up here to check on the house. I’m thinking of putting in a new pool. I have a little villa just across the valley,’ she explained to Maggie. ‘Rafael makes a very friendly neighbour.’
‘I can imagine,’ Maggie said, trying hard not to, but Camilla’s attention and her fluttering eyelashes had already returned to Rafael.
‘So I thought I’d come and say sorry in person and I am truly…’
Rafael struggled to contain his impatience. ‘For what?’
She widened her eyes in amazement. ‘God, you don’t know! Wow, that’s…awkward.’ She lifted her brows and grimaced in Maggie’s direction. ‘He always reads the papers from cover to cover, doesn’t he? But not today. I guess he was busy.’
Maggie blushed and Camilla gave a husky laugh and said, ‘You’re different.’ Her attention swung back to Rafael. ‘All right, I’ll come clean. You remember that gorgeous weekend we spent on your yacht?’
‘I remember.’
Would anyone notice if she slipped out? Maggie wondered bitterly. Or
