“Are you saying you don’t like plotting and talking with me?”
“Fine. We can be scheming friends who also enjoy each other’s bodies.”
Her face was on fire with her daring words, but she would be damned if he thought she was too embarrassed or afraid to say what she wanted.
His large, warm hands circled her waist and drew her over his lap, bringing her flush against his hard cock. “We haven't been friends for years.”
She seized the open neck of his shirt for support. “Rivals, then.”
“For what?”
They both looked surreptitiously at the emeralds around her throat.
Slowly, Diana pried her fingers away from the soft linen of his shirt and unfastened the necklace. She lifted his warm hand and placed the jewels in his palm.
For a long moment, they stared at it, both quietly contemplating her surrender.
Ian stretched his arm and placed the necklace on the bedside table. It landed with a clink, like two champagne flutes heralding a toast.
Then he bent and sealed his mouth on hers.
The kiss was slow, languid. Diana tried to deepen it, but he held her carefully as he sipped on her mouth and massaged her neck with the lightest of touches.
She broke away for a long breath. “Let’s suspend time, just for tonight.” She wanted to forget necklaces and manipulating mothers and the distance between their fortunes. “Can we do that? Forget everything else?” As she stroked a hand up his chest, she delighted in the delicious draw of his breath. “Tonight, nothing else exists. Our sole purpose is making each other feel good.”
Ian clamped his hands over hers. “If you expect tenderness, you should know I can’t be that way with you.”
“You were in San Sebastian.”
“That was—” He’d started to say,a mistake, but the way he caught himself gave her hope.
That, and the very tender way he was staring at her.
“I don’t need you to be tender.” She nipped at his lip to underscore her point. “Tenderness would undermine the entire premise of this being purely physical.”
“Can you separate it so easily?” His hands explored the pockets of her skin exposed by the widening gap in the back of her dress. “I fear I won’t be able to. That we’ll do this, and we’ll get caught up in a fantasy that we could have more together.”
Lord, how his words exhilarated and wounded her. And what a tremendous relief that he suffered the same craving beneath his skin that she did. This present stolen moment together wouldn’t fully assuage it. And her heart wrenched for the shared dream they could never turn into reality.
“We won’t let it master us.” She pulled the bottom of his shirt, and he lifted it off in a effortless movement. In the firelight, his skin was smooth and tanned. When her hands ran over his chest to trace the small Maltese cross inked over his heart, they both moaned.
His mouth took hers, and he urged her back on the bed. When he finally broke away, for a breath, he pinned her arms to the mattress. His dark eyes traced the length of her body with a sizzling look.
Everything south of her waist clenched and melted.
“Is this what you imagined, Diana?”
In truth, her fantasies had never quite taken this direction, and she chided her limited imagination because she loved the weight of his body on hers and the soft, commanding way he spoke.
“Is this what you want?” He panted.
“I want to touch you.” She arched up and nibbled at his ear. “And I want my touch to bring you incalculable pleasure. I want to know what you taste like when you’re completely undone by it.”
She faintly thought speaking such obscenities out loud should mortify her, but it was exhilarating having no filter between them.
Arousing beyond measure.
With a rumbling growl, his lips came upon hers and finally delivered the pressure and heat she’d been chasing. Diana sighed in relief as she lost herself in his kiss.
