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CHAPTER NINE
CLARAHADN’TBEENin Marcelo’s room before. Her first impression was that it was very big and very masculine. There was no second impression because her attention was completely captured by the humungous bed. She headed straight to it and lightly stroked the black sheets.
Not hearing any movement, she turned and found Marcelo propped against the closed door watching her.
She soaked him in, her prince of a man. Could he see the thuds of her heart through her skin or hear the beats raging so loudly in her head?
He straightened.
Her breath quickened.
For the better part of the evening Marcelo had been fighting arousal. Clara’s presence alone was enough to turn him on but their long conversation about sex had pushed him over the edge and for the first time in his adult life he’d been visibly aroused in a public setting. The drive home had consisted of him staring straight ahead and trying to keep a lid on his consuming awareness of the woman attached to the hand that had gripped his so tightly, knowing that when they reached the castle, Clara was trusting him to back off if she gave the word.
But now he was here, in his bedroom, facing her, the moment his body had been aching for finally at hand, and he, the man who’d always enjoyed sex for sex’s sake, found he had cold feet.
This was all too clinical, something he would likely have celebrated with all his other lovers as it meant a guarantee of no awkward morning-after conversations but here, now, with Clara... It felt wrong.
He didn’t know what he wanted but he did know that he didn’t want clinical. Not with her.
Grabbing his hair, he opened his mouth to tell her this was a mistake and that the risk they’d discussed earlier was too great when she did something that stole the words from his tongue and the breath from his lungs.
She put her hands to her shoulders, pinched her sleeves and pulled them down to her waist.
All evening he’d tuned out the fact she was unlikely to be wearing a bra. Now he had proof of those suspicions.
Swallowing hard, his breath now back in sharp, ragged inhalations, Marcelo fought with all his might to halt the burn of desire roaring back to life inside him.
Her unflinching stare glued to him, she worked the dress’s sash loose then moved her hands behind her back.
Seconds later, the dress fell to the floor.
Beneath it she was naked.
The thumps of his heart were violent enough to send blood pounding in his head.
She was more beautiful and ravishingly sexy than even his deepest fantasies had conjured, a Botticelli and nineteen-fifties bombshell combined together and brought to spectacular life. That she stood there without a hint of shyness when he knew he was the first man to have seen her naked only added to the effect.
She gazed at him a moment longer then stepped out of the red velvet puddle of her dress and walked towards him. There was no hesitancy in her steps.
It was only when she stopped before him that he noticed the colour high on her cheeks and the staccato of her chest as she fought the same battle for breath he was fighting.
The hint of a smile formed. She reached for his hand and lifted it, placing the palm at the top of her breasts. ‘Can you feel my heartbeat?’ she whispered.
It pulsed rapid and strong.
‘Clara...’ His intended protest turned into a groan when she gently lowered his hand to cover one of her breasts. It felt so full and yet so soft that the arousal he’d been battling enflamed him and he squeezed gently, reflexively. When he felt the nipple harden against his palm he had to smother another groan.
Her eyes widened. Darkened. She put a hand on his shoulder, lifted herself onto her toes and brought her face up to his.
Push her away. Tell her to get dressed. Leave the room. Do whatever you have to do to end this before it goes any...
Her hot breath danced over his lips. ‘You smell wonderful.’
This had to stop.
Finally doing what he should already have done, Marcelo removed his hand from her breast, cupped her cheeks and looked Clara square in the eye, filled with resolve to end this now before it went any further.
But looking her in the eye was his biggest mistake he could have made because everything contained in them, everything she was feeling, was there for the reading. Desire. Curiosity. Wonder.
