style="font-size:15px;"> ‘I do not make a habit of explaining myself to people.’ So what was he doing now?
‘All right, you may not be sleeping with her, but you wish you were. It’s obvious. You weren’t even angry with her and she used you.’
‘That was always a possibility.’
The calm admission made her stare.
‘Cami is without scruples—charming,’ he conceded, ‘but utterly self-centred.’
‘And good in bed,’ Maggie, slightly mollified by his scathing assessment, inserted with a sniff.
He did not deny it, but no matter how expert a lover he had taken he had always been conscious of an empty, knowing sense of dissatisfaction even after the most satisfactory sex.
The feeling had been absent last night and this morning. Possibly her inexperience added a challenge that he needed?
‘There are a hundred Camis—a thousand. I meet them wherever I go.’ He studied the tear-stained face turned up to his and wondered if he would ever meet a Maggie again.
As she watched him dismiss the actress with a click of his long fingers she wondered if he would dismiss her in the near future in a similar fashion. He almost certainly would and the knowledge gave her a horrid sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
‘Look, I could lock myself away behind high walls and massive security and never have an unflattering photo of me snapped. But I consider the price too high.’
‘But you have a lot of money.’
The observation drew a grim smile from Rafael. ‘It is not a question of cost.’
‘Something only a very rich person would say.’
Rafael ignored her wry interjection and said quietly, ‘I would become a virtual prisoner. Instead I walk the middle ground. I do not actively seek publicity and on occasions I go out of my way to avoid it, but I do not lose sleep over every insane story that appears about me.’
Maggie frowned, considering his words. ‘All right.’
He regarded her warily. ‘I believe you and I might have overreacted slightly.’ Slightly! She had broken out with a bad case of the green monster; the amazing thing was he hadn’t run for the hills.
‘So we can go back to where we were before the interruption?’
The sultry look she flashed him through her lashes sent a pulse of lust through his already aroused body. ‘I think we’d got past the foreplay.’
‘Do not be so impatient,’ he charged, slipping his hands around her waist. It was so tiny that he could almost span it. ‘I am still waiting for you to score me on my kisses.’ He pressed an open-mouth kiss to her neck and her head fell bonelessly back. ‘Be generous,’ he pleaded huskily.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MAGGIE forced her heavy eyelids open. Rafael’s face was so close she could see the gold tips on his lashes and feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek. ‘I’m thinking possibly above average.’
He inclined his dark head fractionally without taking his eyes from hers. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said, breathing in his warm male musky scent and feeling dizzy—in a good way.
‘You’re a very beautiful woman.’ He slid a hand into her hair and let the silky strands run through his fingers. ‘A sensual woman.’
‘You really think so?’
The indentation between his brows deepened. ‘If you have any doubts, then I’ve been doing something wrong.’
‘No, Rafael, you do everything right…so right it hurts.’ She pressed a hand low on her stomach to show him where her agony was centred.
His smouldering eyes slipped to her mouth. Very slowly he lowered his head and kissed her; he kissed as if he would drain her, then he lifted her up into his arms and strode from the room.
‘You do know all this macho stuff does nothing for me,’ she said, teasing the sensitive skin behind his ear with her flickering tongue.
‘You are very bad for my ego.’
‘Well, you’re incredibly good for mine,’ she confessed struggling even now to get her head around the fact the marvellous man fancied the socks off her.
Rafael removed more than her socks and she enjoyed every single second of it. She was determined to savour every moment of their short time together.
Over the next few days Maggie did not lose sight of her vow.
She did indeed extract the last ounce of pleasure from everything, from the sound of his laughter, to waking and feeling the warm weight of his arm across her waist, and the intimacy of a candlelit meal and a shared bottle of wine.
She savoured everything and firmly pushed away the lurking knowledge that it would all shortly end. It was getting harder to ignore the ticking clock.
She woke on the Wednesday and thought, Two days left.
She opened her eyes and the cheerless thought slipped away. Rafael’s head was on the pillow beside her, his long lashes lying in dark fans across the chiselled contours of his cheekbones, his jaw darkened with a layer of piratical dark stubble.
Sleep had ironed some of the severity from his patrician features and the hank of dark hair flopping across his high forehead made him look younger.
She could have carried on looking at his face for ever.
Over the days some of his defences had come down and he had opened up and spoken to her about his family and the uncomfortable relationship he had had with his father, who sounded to Maggie like a sadistic monster.
When Maggie had voiced her opinion he had laughed, and told her that his father had never been that interesting.
She had learnt about his mother more slowly. Sometimes she had caught a look of surprise on his face when he’d spoken of her. She got the impression that it was not something he did often.
Then the previous night as they had lain, their bodies still cooling in the aftermath of lovemaking so intense that it had made her weep, he had explained abruptly why he had reacted so strongly to her tears.
‘I was ten when my mother left. I never saw her again. She was crying.’
The association, it seemed, had stayed with him always.
He had not revealed the story in one go, it had slipped out in fragments that Maggie had joined like a puzzle to see the big picture, and it was a very sad picture that had made her tender heart ache for him. Though, knowing how allergic he was to any form of sympathy, she had made her response practical, contenting herself with hugging him hard until he’d laughingly asked if she was trying to break his ribs.
Amazingly he was not bitter that when faced with the
