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He groaned, his face contorted with an agonised expression. ‘Later... Now I just need...’
‘Oh, God...’ she panted, and widened her legs as she felt him begin to enter her. ‘Yes, please, Rio!’
She arched her back, losing every vestige of self-control as she cried out his name again, urging him on as he filled her full of him, absorbing the powerful, driving thrusts that aroused every nerve ending and pushed her towards a climax that wrenched a wild, raw cry from her throat.
He lay there panting on top of her while Gwen slowly floated back to reality, which was that she was lying on a cold, hard tiled surface. Until now she had not even registered the discomfort.
‘Let’s use a bed next time,’ he whispered in her ear as he rolled off her.
‘Is there to be a next time?’ she teased lightly, kissing the palm of the hand that was still thrown across her chest.
His dark eyes glittered wickedly down at her as he raised himself up on one elbow. ‘You know that I always rise to a challenge.’
Gwen resisted the tug that brought her surfacing from sleep, her reluctance finally overcome by curiosity, the feeling that something wasdifferent. And then it all came back with a rush that made her suck in a short shocked breath as a stream of images and sensations began to flow through her head.
Without opening her eyes, she now knew that the weight she felt across her waist was Rio’s arm thrown across it and the warmth was his long hair-dusted legs that were tangled with her own.
She didn’t analyse the sense of rightness or safety that it gave her. Who wouldn’t feel right waking up entangled with a man who looked, felt and made love like Rio?
She lay there enjoying the moment. She had finally fallen asleep in the early hours with her head on his chest. It was still there now, and the sound she was listening to was the soft, slow boom of his heartbeat.
She remembered him asking did she want him to go back to his own bed.
She must have said no, but she didn’t recall doing so.
She lay still, willing herself to absorb every detail, each impression, knowing she would want to relive this moment in her head later. She wanted to remember the feel of all the little whorls of chest hair that tickled her chin, the musk of his warm skin, the weight of his arm, and the way his fingers curved across the angle of her hip.
She wanted the moment to last for ever, but of course it wasn’t going to. Her brain was not content with staying in neutral and her thoughts were already racing around like a frantic hamster on a wheel.
As the thoughts crowded in she couldn’t lie still any longer. Holding her breath, she carefully pressed a hand into the mattress and eased her weight back, sliding out from underneath his arm. Balanced on the edge of the bed now, with just his thigh holding her there, she lifted her head and angled it to take a look at his face.
From this position she could see the perfect carved contours of his face, the angles and hollows emphasised by a night’s worth of dark stubble, his long eyelashes lying dark against the perfect slashing angle of his cheekbones.
The ache of longing inside her as she gazed at him was frightening in its intensity. Lifting a hand to blot away the tears she felt on her cheeks, she eased herself carefully away from the confining weight of his hair-roughened thigh, hating to break the contact with his warm body and shatter the lingering remnants of intimacy.
There was a very good reason Gwen hadn’t allowed herself last night to think about what the morning would bring, and this aching hollow feeling in her stomach was it. Last night she had given herself over entirely to need, and she had accepted thedesperationthat had risen from the deepest part of her when he had touched her, not fought or questioned it.
This morning it wasn’t the questions she was pushing away, it was the answers!
She reached down and picked up the gown she had folded across the end of the bed, which was now on the floor. Fighting her way silently into it, she tightened the belt and, without allowing herself a glance backwards, crept quietly along the small corridor that linked her room with Ellie’s nursery.
She didn’t go inside, just looked over the safety gate. This room was darker because of the blackout blinds behind the brightly patterned curtains. It took Gwen’s eyes a few moments to adjust to the light cast by the two nightlights that projected a starry pattern on the ceiling and make out the dark curls above the low safety sides of the brightly painted castle bed.
Gwen could hear the soft sound of even baby breathing, and for a moment love banished the shadows lurking in her eyes. Did all mothers dream of the future they wanted their child to have, a future without any tears? Had her mother held her and thought that same way?
The guilt came as it always did, rational or not, whenever she thought of her own mother. Her sadness, the sense of betrayal she felt at her mother’s actions, was always tinged with guilt.
Of course she knew that her mother could have walked away from her husband, but hadchosento stay, just as she had chosen not to defend her daughter, and that hurt the most. But despite everything Gwen couldn’t shake the feeling that she had deserted her mam; she had chosen her baby over her mother.
She was momentarily tempted to go into the room and hold Ellie, breathe in all the warm, comforting, wholesome sweetness of her, but practicality won out. So instead of risking disturbing her daughter she stayed there a moment, just listening, before finally dragging herself away. Her bare feet were silent on the cool tiled surface as she turned and made her way into the massive light-filled living room. She touched a handle and one of the full-height sliding glass panels that made the outside and inside blend seamlessly together swished open silently. Gwen slipped through and into the dusky pre-dawn light.
She paused, breathing in the rich scents that filled the air that was already pleasantly warm before making her way through the garden that seemed to be planted with sensory appreciation in mind. Her robe brushed the sweet-smelling Mediterranean herbs, sending even more intense aromas into the air.
Without any real plan Gwen found herself skirting the pool, the memories of what they had shared there still too shockingly fresh. She felt like a different person when she was with Rio, a person she barely recognised.
By the time she’d walked down the broad steps onto the beach the sun was just rising over the horizon, spilling fingers of scarlet and gold out into the layered smoky grey and blue of the clear dawn sky.
Sinking ankle deep into the soft sand, she watched as the grey turned to bands of contrasting shades of blue split by red-gold that turned the sea a delicate shade of pale copper.
