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Looking down at her now, some of the cravening need Cruz was feeling dissipated as his chest tightened with an emotion he’d never expected, nor welcomed. But this woman evoked it effortlessly, especially after the shattering revelations of her innocence, and in more ways than one.
He shook his head, honesty compelling him to say, ‘I haven’t come to my senses since that night. You’ve bewitched me, Trinity.’
‘What do you mean?’
Cruz knew that he’d never before willingly stepped into a moment of emotional intimacy like this. No other woman had ever come close enough to precipitate it. After everything that had just happened he felt exposed and raw, in a way that should have been making him feel seriously claustrophobic, but what he was feeling was...a kind of liberation.
‘What I mean is that I haven’t looked at another woman since that night.’ His voice turned rough as he admitted, ‘I haven’t wanted another woman since I touched you.’
Her eyes widened. Her mouth closed and then opened again. Finally she said, ‘You’re not just saying this?’
Her vulnerability was laid bare, and Cruz wondered bleakly how he’d blocked it out before now.
Because he’d wanted to. Because it had been easier to believe the worst rather than let himself think for a second that she could possibly be as pure as he’d believed from the start. Because then he’d have had to acknowledge how she made him feel.
He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not just saying this. You’re all I want, Trinity. I hated thinking of you and Rio together... I was jealous of my own brother.’
* * *
Trinity felt breathless at Cruz’s admission. She could see how hard it was for him to open up like this, even as it soothed a raw hurt inside her. And with that came the heavy knowledge that he was beating himself up now over feeling jealous of Rio—and that was exactly the result Rio had wanted to achieve. To mess with Cruz’s head.
Loath to shatter this fragile moment, Trinity pushed that knowledge down deep, like a coward, and said, ‘We were never together...not like that.’ Feeling absurdly shy, she said, ‘No other man has ever made me feel like you did. After...that night... I couldn’t stop thinking about you...about how it would have been...’
‘If we hadn’t stopped?’
She nodded jerkily.
He gathered her closer and a tremor ran through her body. The air shifted around them, tension tightening again. ?
?We don’t have to stop now...’
Trinity couldn’t battle the desire rising inside her—not after what he’d just told her. She was already laid bare. Nowhere to hide any more. And she wanted this—wanted to fulfil this fantasy more than she wanted to take her next breath.
She looked up at him and fell into molten amber heat. ‘Then don’t stop, Cruz. Please.’
He waited for an infinitesimal moment and then lowered his head, touching his firm mouth to her softer one with a kind of reverence that made emotion bloom in her chest. To counteract it, because she wasn’t remotely ready to deal with what it meant, she reached up and twined her arms around his neck, pressing closer, telling him with her body what she wanted...
He deepened the kiss, stroking into her mouth with an explicitness that made her groan softly, excitement mounting again. His hands moved around to her front, unknotting her robe. He pushed it apart and spread his hands on her hips, tracing her curves, before she broke away from the kiss, breathing raggedly.
He pulled back and looked at her, before pushing her robe off completely. Without looking away, he opened his trousers and pushed them down, kicking them off. Now they were both naked. Trinity looked down and her eyes widened. That stiff column of flesh jerked under her look, and a sense of very feminine wonder and sensuality filled her at the thought that she could have an effect on him like this.
He took her hand and brought it to his hard flesh, wrapping her fingers around him. Slowly, gently, he guided her, moving her hand up and down... It was heady, the way her skin glided over steely strength...
* * *
Cruz felt beads of perspiration pop out on his forehead as Trinity’s untutored touch drove him to the edge of any reason he had left. It was a special kind of torture...and before she could reduce him to rubble he took her hand from him and led her to the bed.
He wanted to consume her until she was boneless and pliant and his.
When he laid her down on the bed and came down alongside her she reached out a tentative hand and touched his chest.
He sucked in a breath. ‘Yes...touch me.’
His eyes devoured her perfect curves, slender and yet lush all at once. An intoxicating mix. Innocent and siren.
Innocent.
She laid her hand flat on his pectoral, and then bent her head and put her tongue to the blunt nub of his nipple. Cruz tensed. He’d never even known he was sensitive there. Small teeth nibbled gently at his flesh and his erection grew even harder at the certainty that she would be a quick study...that she would send him to orbit and back all too easily.
