she knew it. From him. From her hurt. And from the moment she knew would come, the one where she’d have to explain to him just why looking at the ring had made her cry.
It was an explanation she never wanted to give. Because the only man she could ever confide her pain in, was also the one man she could never tell. Because he was the man who’d caused it.
ZACK’S heart pounded as he scanned the villa’s courtyard. It was too dark to see anything, but he was sure this was where she was. Unless she’d called the car service and asked them to come and get her, which, if Clara was really upset, he wouldn’t put past her. She could be on the next plane back to the States.
His plane.
Which, he had a suspicion he might deserve.
There was a narrow path that led from the main area of the courtyard into an alcove surrounded by flowering plants and trees. And he was willing to bet that, if she was still in the villa, she’d gone there.
He was right. She was sitting on the stone bench, her knees pulled up to her chest. She was simply staring, her cheeks glistening in the moonlight. The sight made him ache.
He was all about control, all about living life with as few entanglements and attachments as possible. But Clara was his exception. She had been from the moment he’d met her.
She was the one person who could alter his emotions without his say so. Make him happy if he really wanted to be angry. Make his gut feel wrenched with her tears.
“Are you okay?”
She dropped her knees and put her feet on the ground, straightening. “I’m sorry. That was stupid. I overreacted.”
He moved to the bench and crouched down in front of it, in front of her. “What did I do?”
“I was just … I told you, it was an overreaction. It was nothing, really.” She sucked in a breath that ended on a hiccup and his heart twisted. “I can’t really … explain it.”
The confusion he felt was nearly as frustrating as the pain he felt over hurting her. He didn’t really understand exactly what he’d done, but not understanding it didn’t make it go away.
Without thinking, he lifted his hand and curved it around her neck, stroking her tender skin with his thumb. It was a gesture meant to comfort her, because he’d upset her somehow, for the second time in forty-eight hours, and he hated to upset her. She meant too much to him.
But something in the touch changed. He wasn’t sure exactly when it tipped over from being comfort to being a caress, he wasn’t sure how her skin beneath his fingers transformed from something everyday to something silky, tempting.
She looked at him, her eyes glistening, the expression in them angry. Angry and hot. And that heat licked through him, reached down into his gut and squeezed him tight.
It was close to what he’d felt down at the river, but magnified, her anger feeding the flame that burned between them. And he couldn’t walk away from it. Not this time.
Without thought, without reason or planning, without stopping to think of possible consequences, he leaned in and closed the space between them, his lips meeting hers. First kisses were for tasting, testing. They were a question.
At least historically for him they had been. This kiss wasn’t.
Something roared through him, filling him, a kind of desperation he’d never felt before. He didn’t ask, he took. He didn’t taste, he devoured. The hunger in him was too ravenous to do anything else, so sudden he had no chance to sublimate it. He wrapped his arms around her, and she clung to his shoulders, her lips parting beneath his.
He growled and thrust his tongue against hers, his body shuddering as his world reduced to the slick friction, to the warmth of her lips on his.
Clara was powerless to do anything but cling to Zack. Powerless to give anything less than every bit of passion and desire that was pouring through her. To do anything but devour him, giving in to the hunger that had lived in her, gnawed at her for the past seven years.
This was heaven. And it was hell. Everything she’d longed for, still off-limits to her for the same reasons it always had been. Except for right now, for some reason, it was as though a ban had been lifted. For this one moment, a moment out of time. A moment that she needed more than she needed air.
His lips, firm and sure, were everything she’d ever dreamed they might be, his hands, heavy and hot on her back even more arousing than she’d thought possible.
This was why there had been no one else. Because the idea of Zack had always been more enticing than the reality of any other man. And the reality of Zack far surpassed any fantasy she’d ever had. Maybe any fantasy any woman had ever had.
She slid from the bench and onto the stone-covered ground, gripping the front of his shirt, their knees touching. He pulled her closer, bringing her breasts against his hard, muscular chest. She arched into him, craving more. Craving everything. All of him.
When they parted, he rested his forehead against hers, his breathing shallow, unsteady, loud in the otherwise silent night.
She didn’t know what to say. She was afraid that he would try to say something first. Something that would ruin it. A joke. Or maybe he’d even be angry. Or he’d say it was a mistake. All valid reactions, but she didn’t want any of them. She didn’t want to deal with anything. She simply wanted to focus on the pounding of her heart, the swollen, tingly feeling in her lips. On all the really good, fizzy little sensations that were popping in her veins like champagne.
Zack let out a gust of air. “Damn.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. Of all the reactions she’d expected, and dreaded, that hadn’t been it. That he would allow an honest reaction, and that his reaction would match hers, hadn’t seemed likely.
“Yeah,” she said.
He braced his hand on the bench behind her and pulled himself up, then extended his hand to her. She gripped it and let him help her to her feet. She brushed some dried leaves from her knees, ignoring the slight prickle of pain and indents of small twigs left behind on her skin.
Her eyes caught his and held, and all of the good exciting feelings that had been swirling through her dissolved. The cushion of fantasy yanked from under her, there was nothing but cold, hard reality. She’d kissed Zack. More than kissed, she’d attacked him.
And there was nowhere for it to go from that point. If she leaned in again, if she kissed him again, then what? They might go to bed together. And where would that leave her after? Where would it leave them?
No, he hadn’t slept with Hannah, but he’d slept with other beautiful women. Lots of them. She’d met a good number of them. And she was … she was inexperienced, unglamorous. And she was here as a replacement. If something happened between them now, on a night that was meant to be his wedding night with another woman, she would always feel like she’d been second.
He was a man, and the pump was well and truly primed. He’d been promised sex after what
