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‘He left...’
The two words had struck hard, leaving a shadow word ringing in her ear.Abandoned.Like, she was sure, Javier had felt when Gabi chose to stay with his mother. And exactly like he must have felt when she had left him six years ago. Guilt twisted her stomach into knots. But she had done so not knowing the whole story at the time. So no, Emily wouldn’t blame herself for the decisions she’d made then.
But shecouldtake responsibility for the decisions she made about the man she encountered now. He was as alluring, if not more so, than he had ever been. And, despite the caution she felt, she was swept up by her husband all over again. It was the little things that got to her. Three days ago, she had come down into the living room to find him reading a book. When she’d asked what it was, he’d tilted the cover for her to see—Bald but Beautiful: Everything you need to know about Sphynx Cats—tersely informing her that he was ‘getting to know’ his enemy. That his supposed enemy had started to follow him round the house was not something she felt like pointing out. Of course, it had nothing to do with the little trail of treats he would leave for Diabla even as he gently ignored her. Though it was less ignoring and more like gentling her in to his presence. Even if they visited the other side of Spain, Javier would make sure they returned that evening, no matter the time, becausehepreferred their bed. But she knew it was because he didn’t like leaving Diabla alone for that long.
Yet, despite all his outward charm and attention, there was a sense of tension in Javier that Emily couldn’t quite put her finger on. It was as raw and powerful and deeper than any tension she’d felt between them before. It was an undercurrent that both drew her and scared her, not physically but emotionally, and Emily was beginning to realise that with Javier that was perhaps the more dangerous of the two.
She knew she had been right to put that barrier between them—if she slept with Javier, if she made love with her husband, she feared she would be irrevocably lost. And he’d kept his word and not tried to sleep with her. But that didn’t prevent the magnetic draw she felt to him, it didn’t stop her from reacting when his hand lay upon her hip in the morning, gently tugging her back into the aroused warm body that thrummed with the same need, the same desires that whispered beneath her skin. It didn’t help her heart and the way it jerked and pulsed and stopped and tripped when he emerged from the shower with a towel around his waist, or when he looked at her as if she were the only person in the entire world and he was just fine with that. Just a hint of that sandalwood scent, crushed mint and peppercorn, and her body softened, her defences melted just that little bit more.
And on a night like this, when he had covered the patio in tea lights, set champagne in an ice bucket, lit incense so that its heady scented smoke uncurled exotic thoughts and gentle music played from inbuilt speakers he was even harder to resist.
‘You are trying to seduce me,’ she accused as he came out onto the patio, Diabla weaving through his legs, both with such feline grace that neither tripped. If he was aware of just how much he’d won over the little she-devil, he showed no sign of it. Emily hid her smile in the turn of her head towards the champagne.
‘But of course. What kind of husband would I be not to do so?’ he asked, the charm present, but not quite able to mask that tense bass note in his voice.
‘Is everything okay?’ Emily asked, trying to ignore that feeling of once again being shut out by her husband.
‘Of course,mireina.’
He was lying again. He knew it. He was pretty sure she knew it too. But this feeling...he hadn’t been able to shake it since the Alhambra. And it washorrible. A strange, angry frustration that he couldn’t release. It was branded in his soul—and God knew Javier wasn’t one for the dramatic, but that was the only way he could describe it.
She joined him at the patio’s balcony and he hated that she could read him so easily, but also not at all. She reached up her hand to cup his cheek, her eyes asking to be let in, but his heart was bruised enough to deny her entry.
He turned his face to her palm, laying a kiss in the centre and reaching up to her wrist to feel the flicker of her pulse against the pad of his thumb.Cristo, she came alive beneath his touch. It was a temptation too far. His inner voice called him a coward but his stubborn nature ignored it bluntly and willingly hurling him into a course of action that would delight them both. He had agreed to her terms and, gentleman that he was, he would not break them. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t left him a leeway that he was determined to make absolute and full use of.
He swept his tongue out across the pulse point and felt the ripple of goosebumps across the skin of her forearm. Her fingers curled reflexively and the whisper of pleasure that fell from her lips was only encouragement.
‘Javier,’ she warned half-heartedly, ‘we have a deal.’
‘We do,’ he agreed, even as his own arousal hardened to the point of near pain.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said, even as her body angled towards his like a flower seeking the sun.
He pulled back just enough to look into his wife’s eyes, to see, read and know her desires, those on the surface and those much deeper. And the complexity of the layers in those depths, not just need, want and arousal, but warmth, comfort and connection and the yearning for more was what sent him deeper into this madness.
‘Intercourse.’
‘What?’ The word was a choked laugh from his wife as he bent his head to place more and more kisses along her bare arm, closing the distance between them.
‘You defined sex as intercourse. It was—may I say—rather unimaginative of you, Emily,’ he teased gently, reluctantly pulling back to look at her. ‘But I am not such a monster that I will take control from you—unless you will it of course.’
Stormy eyes sparked white heat at his words, and what had started out as pure distraction became an irrefutable need.
‘One word from you will stop me,’ he said, pulling her against him, the heat of her body raising the essence of her, jasmine and orange, filling his senses and driving him wild with torment.
‘Stop me, Emily,’ he all but begged, knowing that this would break the last thread of his control. He pressed his forehead against hers. She knew he was distracting her. He could read the accusation in her eyes as if she had said it out loud. But desire and desperation kept her silent long enough for him to press an open mouth kiss just above her collarbone and suck so that she melted in his arms enough for him to sweep her off her feet.
He carried her over to the chair, knowing that if they went inside, the deal, his honour and her clothes would be in tatters on the floor within seconds. He arranged her in his lap, her thighs naturally falling either side of his, and he gloried in having her above him. Her hair hung down in curtains, shielding them from the rest of the world—a glorious place where touch was erotic and thoughts were of nothing other than sin.
He drew her down against his erection, the delectable friction delighting them both as moans of need tangled in their tongues as they kissed. He promised her silently that he would keep to her deal—too much hung in the balance to not. But that didn’t mean that he would let her go this night without punishing her in the most delicious of ways.
She hadn’t helped matters, of course. The deceptively simple dress she was wearing had been designed with his torture in mind. The thin straps holding up the simple satin dress allowed the V at her neck to display the palm-sized flat between Emily’s breasts in an invitation he couldn’t refuse. He placed his hand there, against her sternum, even as his other hand slipped between the thigh-high cut in the satiny material, reaching behind her to pull her even closer, harder, deeper in a way that could never be enough to satiate his hunger for her.
He gripped and pressed, so that Emily would never know how much his hands shook with the intensity of his need for her. For this. Sheltered in the curtains of her hair, it didn’t matter that he was blind with lust, he didn’t need his eyes to feel, to touch, to taste.
His lips found hers with unerring accuracy anddevouredin a roar of passion. His tongue thrust deeply into her open-mouthed acceptance. Positioned above him should have placed him at a disadvantage but he continued to possess, consume,ownher mouth in the most exploitative of ways. And she let him. She simply opened herself to him as he sought to hide himself in her.
And that thought alone had him stopping. He shouldn’t be doing this. No matter how much he wanted to, this was exactly why she had made the deal in the first place. Because he did this, used sex to distract her. And it was a line he didn’t want to cross. He shifted his hands to her upper arms, trying to hold her in place when she would so willingly have closed the distance between them.
