her voluptuous bustline, but Marina would go to her grave swearing that He had.
She had dressed to kill and, if she did say so herself, she looked like hot sex on a stick. Ben would drop to his knees and crawl after her.
She pleasantly envisioned herself planting her bejeweled toes in the center of his forehead, so he had to suck on her spike heel. Then he’d beg her forgiveness….
The 911 sped around a last curve leading to a vast construction site that teemed with hot, sweaty, shirtless men framing out a very large building. According to Mathew Tremaine, one of those hot, sweaty, shirtless men was Ben.
She squealed the car to a halt, unbuckled her seat belt and vaulted out, her chestnut hair streaming in the wind. Several guys on the crew stopped work to stare as she strode toward them wearing her oversized Dior sunglasses. One of them whistled, one clapped a hand over his heart and another almost stepped on his tongue.
“Hello, boys.” Marina accepted a big beefy hand up onto the concrete slab and rewarded its owner with a dazzling smile. Then her gaze narrowed on a set of familiar shoulder blades about a hundred feet away.
Ben’s back was brown from the sun and rippled with muscle as he bent toward his task. Sweat ran in rivulets down his spine; dotted his neck and soaked his hair. She stood stock-still in helpless female appreciation at the way his torso segued into a narrow waist and slim hips; at the firm, well-developed backside under his leather tool belt, the long legs encased in filthy jeans.
Delgado personified power. Raw, dirty, animal force—dear God, her Ben had it in spades. No matter how angry or hurt or devastated she was, he was the kind of man a woman would lift her dress for. Hungrily. Shamelessly. Almost involuntarily—not having any real choice about it.
As if he could sense her gaze on his bare back, Ben turned, his eyes widening as he saw her. For a split second, she felt that naked, helpless feeling and she craved the scent of his skin as it moved over hers. Then he broke the spell himself.
“Go away,” he said.
Rage and frustrated love exploded inside her. “You son of a bitch!” she shrieked.
He closed his eyes, while every man on the site turned and stared, now. She didn’t care.
Relief burst within her next. He was alive, not broken and bleeding in a ditch somewhere, or unconscious from pills or booze. It was one thing for Gina Keys to tell her—and quite another for Marina to see it herself.
“How could you? How could you do this to me, Ben? I’ve been a wreck, worrying about you!”
“Marina, mi amor, get back into your car and go home. This isn’t the time or the place—”
She ran at him, her fists clenched. “A letter, you coward? How could you break up with me in a letter? You didn’t have the nerve to say it to my face?”
Marina reached him and threw a wild punch at his chest.
Ben allowed her to hit him once, then twice.
“A letter?” called one of the onlookers. “Christ, Delgado. That’s cold.”
Another guy spit on the ground. “Whoa. You let this little hottie go?”
Ben’s eyes snapped in annoyance.
She hit him again, and he grasped her wrist and held it. She threw her Chanel purse at him with the other hand, began to cry and then aimed a fist at his solar plexus. He commandeered it, too, before she made contact, staring down at her with those dark, unfathomable eyes of his.
“That’s right, Benny, you show her who’s boss,” some lowlife hollered.
“How did you find me?” Ben growled.
“What do you care?” She struggled in his grasp, all too aware that her cool, carefully calculated image had gone up in smoke. She could feel the heat radiating off his skin, smell his perspiration and the leather of his tool belt and the cool mint of his breath as he held her captive. “Let me go!”
In spite of her anger, a sexual current shot through her, a primal response to the ripped expanse of muscle, the rock-hard chest inches away from her. A mere glance from Ben could cause her nipples to ache and, at the moment, his eyes roamed over her from head to toe.
Her mouth went dry and her knees almost buckled at the look on his face: Hungry, punishing, loving—all at the same time. He looked as if he wanted to screw every inch of her—and it made her feel faint.
Another male voice called, “This little filly is on the market, Delgado?”
Ben’s mouth tightened.
“We’ll take her off your hands, buddy,” yelled another one. More whistles and catcalls ensued. A guy with three belly rolls grabbed his crotch suggestively.
Ben silenced them with a look and loomed over her protectively. “Damn it, Marina, why did you come here?” He released her wrists and shook her gently by the shoulders. Then his mouth crushed hers and his arms wrapped around her as if he’d never let her go.
All thoughts of killing him flew out of her head as she helplessly kissed him back. He lifted her, she wrapped her legs around him. Before she knew it, they were off the concrete slab in a hail of lewd, encouraging cheers and Ben was striding toward the construction trailer with her.
She forgot about power, about dignity, about hurt. She couldn’t care less about his dirt or his sweat or his ripe male odor. All that mattered was him plastered against her, his lips to her lips, his chest to her chest, his sex to her sex.
The bulge in his jeans pressed into the scrap of lingerie at the heart of her, and she almost came before they got to the trailer door.
Frigid, artificial air washed over her as he wrenched it open, stumbled up the steps and inside and locked the door behind them. Then he set her on top of a battered vertical filing cabinet, rucked up her skirt and tore off her panties.
His face pressed between her thighs, his tongue pushed in side her and she screamed helplessly. He didn’t stop when she convulsed and beat her heels on his back, just pulled her forward, settling his big hands under her buttocks and feasting on her until she came again and again and finally begged him to stop.
He pulled her skimpy top and bra down around her waist and devoured her breasts, suckling the tips until she thought she’d die of needing him inside her.
He tore open his fly, freed the hard, heavy length of him and scooped her up again. Then he drove into her with a primal groan.
She spasmed around him again immediately, colors bursting behind her eyelids, while he drove harder, faster, deeper, sliding against her flesh until the tensing of his muscles, the guttural groan, the last mighty thrust told her he’d come, too.
“Dios mío, Marina. Dios mío. Te amo.” One hand still supported her bottom, one clasped her to him.
Just hearing his words almost made her come again, all by herself. He loved her. He loved her… Everything was going to be okay. This was all just a big mistake, an emotional reaction on his part.
They collapsed to the floor, breathing heavily,
