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“Why should you be the only one using this chemistry of ours for your own ends?” she asked, lightly enough. Though he found he didn’t quite believe it. Not when her gaze seemed far darker than that bright summer blue it normally was. “Maybe, Joaquin, I just want to use you for sex. Or is that not allowed?”
“It’s entirely encouraged.”
And as she moved closer to him, he caught her up, lifting her into the air so she could twine that marvelous body of hers around him. He slid her wet body down the length of his, then sighed a little when she opened one of her hands and showed him the condom she’d brought with her.
“So there can be no confusion,” she whispered, and he couldn’t tell if that was a challenge or a dig. When he shouldn’t have cared either way.
He ripped the packet open with his teeth, and sheathed himself in an easy movement, then lowered her onto his sex.
And he’d told her she would get used to this, but he never did. The tight fit. The perfection of her body holding tight to his. The friction, the heat.
Joaquin took his sweet time lifting her up, then lowering her down. Again and again, until her head was tipped back, her eyes were closed, and she was not issuing challenges any longer.
She was chanting out his name.
He should have been jubilant, he thought later, after he carried her out into their bed and rededicated himself to the task of tearing them both apart. He should have been delighted that they were both on the same page.
And later, when she drifted off to sleep beside him once more, curled into his side as if this was something other than what it was, Joaquin lay awake and stared at the stone ceiling. Then out the glass wall where the sea surged and retreated, again and again.
She had just given him everything he claimed to want. She hadn’t fought him. She hadn’t dissolved into tears, or begged him to change his mind.
Was that what he wanted? Was his true aim here no more and no less than to humble her? Was that really who he was?
Because a wise man would set that aside, when given assurances that both he and Amalia were on the same page. No emotions. No future. Just the delirious, delicious madness of the passion between them until it waned.
Surely that would be any day now, he told himself.
Any day at all.
Though perhaps he would have believed that more if he’d thought she really meant it. He found he didn’t. He couldn’t. He looked at her beside him, sleeping so peacefully, and couldn’t ignore the way his heart thumped now.
Because maybe he was more sentimental than he liked to admit. Maybe he had fallen too hard for that artless girl he’d thought she was that first summer.
Some part of him had never believed the scornful Princess she’d become at the end.
And he knew his summer girl would never have agreed to an arrangement like this. She would have sobbed. Her heart would have been broken. She might never have told him that she loved him, but she hadn’t had to. He’d known.
It had been in every glance, every smile. Every touch.
And she accepted, lying there, that he didn’t like the possibility that none of that was happening now. It was fine ifhedid not fall in love. That was his goal.
But he didn’t much care for the hollow feeling inside him at the notion thatshedidn’t lovehim,either.
Joaquin found he didn’t like it at all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AFEWDAYSLATER, Amalia returned from a long late afternoon walk to find one of the few members of staff on the island waiting for her at the top of the private path that led to the dungeon villa.
“If you would like to change for dinner,” the woman said deferentially, “Señor Vargas waits for you on the lower patio.”
“Are you sure?” Amalia asked in surprise. Then flushed a bit when the woman shot her a quizzical look. She knew better than to make personal remarks to people who could not, by virtue of their position, respond in kind.Friendly does not mean friends, Esme had drilled into her. “I mean, of course. Thank you. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
She hurried down the path, pulling open the heavy front door that always made her shiver a bit for those who’d been locked up behind it, and half expected him to be inside. No doubt laughing at whatever joke this was, or waiting to pounce and examine her every last facial expression to see if he could discern her actual feelings. Then demolish them.
But the villa was empty. Amalia hurried through her shower, realizing as she soaped herself up and rinsed it all away that she couldn’t recall the last time she’d taken a shower by herself. Normally, it was only one more venue to experiment with all thatjust sexthey were having.
After he’d left her in the rain the way he had, she had not faced the prospect he’d laid out before her with anything approaching equanimity.
