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Naked beneath him, she arched her back, then lifted up, seeking him once more, but he stayed where he was, still clothed, staring down at her. His eyes held hers until her heart exploded and she had to close the distance between them and kiss him to stop from saying three words that were pulsing around her mind without any anchor point in reality. She didn’tlovehim. She’dlovedhim, once, a long, long time ago, as a teenager who’d had no inkling about life and people and loyalty and what love really even meant.
Kissing him was simple, though. When they kissed, and touched, no explanation was necessary. She needed no time to analyse what any of it meant; it was written in the stars. She said his name over again, the syllables husky and exotic beneath the Mediterranean moonlight, the taste in her mouth building like an incantation, a spell over both, over this glorious bay and all that was here on this island.
He ripped off his shirt, discarding it at their sides, his chest moving powerfully with each breath. The moonlight landed like a shaft across his torso, catching words that ran in cursive script just beneath his heart. She lifted a finger, chasing them, saying them aloud so they washed through the air, adding weight to the incantation of his name.
‘Que cada palo aguante su vela.’They were beautiful words, though she didn’t understand their literal meaning.
‘Si,’he agreed, though, and then he was moving over her, kicking out of his shoes as her hands found the button of his trousers and unfastened it, then pushed them down, hungry for him, terrified of her need, but unwilling—unable—to stop.
Ten years ago, their coming together had been tentative and gentle—an exploration, an awakening—but now, a decade’s worth of need pulsed through them like a live wire, driving her hands so she stripped him naked as he pushed out of his trousers, working together to liberate him, needing him with the power of a thousand suns.
‘Please,’ she groaned to underscore her desperation and he laughed, a low, growling sound that pulsed in her belly, but then he stopped, moving over her, his face just an inch from hers.
‘We can’t do this.’
Something dropped inside of her. A weight. A loss. An ache spread. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t have a condom.’
‘Oh, my God.’ She lifted a hand to his chest, shocked that she could have been so caught up in the moment she’d forgotten the simple precaution. Even that night, he’d used one—though it hadn’t stopped her from falling pregnant.
‘I never don’t use protection,’ he said through ground teeth, lips clenched, and then he cursed, the word vibrating around them, and she flinched, not from the word itself but from the force of his disappointment—a perfect echo of her own.
‘No,’ she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut, trembling with her need. In that moment, she would almost have risked another child simply for the exquisite pleasure of knowing his possession once more. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘I’m not—I’m sure—’ But what could she say? That she was sure they wouldn’t fall pregnant? When the impossible had already happened despite them using protection?
‘I won’t take the risk.’
Her heart skipped, because his protestations showed how devoutly he wanted to avoid the complication of a pregnancy.
‘Are you on the pill?’
Oh, she wished she was, but why would she have been? Slowly, she shook her head. ‘I’m not in the habit of this kind of thing.’ She dropped her gaze between them, hating how much that revealed to him, hating how unsophisticated and inexperienced she was. But he moved quickly, his mouth finding hers and kissing her until she wasn’t thinking straight and her hips were moving, silently inviting him to take her, to become one with her. His hand moved between her legs while he kissed her with his own desperate hunger, his fingers finding the sensitive cluster of nerve endings and brushing over them so she cried out into his mouth, the noise harsh and afraid. Pleasures almost unknown to Alicia began to cut through her like blades of lightning, arcing from the centre of her womanhood through every cell in her body until she was a trembling mess beneath him.
He struck a finger inside of her and she jolted off the ground at the invasion, surprising and welcoming, and he laughed again, but there was restraint to it, as if he was just holding on to his own sanity. With no experience to guide her, only instincts, her hands moved across his body, feeling the sculptured lines of his abdomen before running lower, to the hardness of his arousal. He swore as she gripped him in the palms of her hands, as he throbbed and swore again. Then he moved his own hand faster, and she was no longer capable of moving or hearing or speaking. She was on fire, burning from the inside out, every part of her aflame. She whimpered into his mouth, against his cheek, and then, as the heat of her orgasm detonated all through her, she cried his name into the night sky and arched her back, utterly, totally overcome by the strength of her pleasure, but also, regardless, by her need for him.
He watched her come back to earth, his control considerably frayed at the edges given the way her hands were spasmodically clutching his length, her grip animalistic and primal, desperate and possessive, her face scrunched up in pleasure and his body desperate to feel her, to be inside her. He moved his hands to her hips, then higher to cup her breasts, so she released her grip on him and lay back on the grass, staring at his face, frowning, as though she’d never seen him before.
Something hummed in the air between them—words unspoken, a confession—and he wondered. He felt a weight inside of her, felt an ache he couldn’t fathom, and so he kissed her slowly, wanting to erase the frown, wanting to taste her, to feel her.
Ten years ago, when he’d made love to her—taken her innocence in a field not dissimilar to this one, their backs then on a picnic rug rather than the grass—he’d felt a connection unlike anything he’d ever known. Before that, he’d had sex. But with Alicia, it had been a connection of their souls, a frighteningly intimate experience that had changed him.
He’d never known a feeling like it since, and he couldn’t help but wonder... Would it be like that again now? Even watching as she came had pulled at a piece of him, unravelling bonds he’d formed many years earlier, a tightness in his chest that had served him well.
But this was just an itch he needed to scratch, like he’d said. They had unfinished business. The sooner they finished it and could move on, the better.
He lifted her just as he had the first day she’d arrived and twisted her ankle, holding her naked body against his chest as they approached the house, and she was too alive with nerves and anticipation to think clearly. Only as he shouldered the doors in, she startled, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘Isabella,’ she reminded him anxiously, looking around.
‘Is nowhere to be seen.’ But he moved faster, and rather than entering the courtyard, he turned right and took a set of stairs that led to a part of the house she hadn’t explored. When he shouldered in the door to his bedroom, her heart splintered apart, just as she’d known it would, to be crossing this threshold of intimacy, to be entering his private sanctuary.
Her senses were overloaded. The room was large, with a huge bed against one wall, darkly wooded side tables and a leather sofa across the space. A television hung above a fireplace, and two narrow doors marked the edge of the room—one leading to a wardrobe, she guessed, the other, a bathroom, going from the tiles she could see on the floor. The artwork on the walls was bold and modern, and the curtains that hung were dark navy. Everything in here was overtly masculine, including a lingering aroma of cologne that made her groan softly.
He placed her on the edge of the bed and stood back, regarding her slowly. ‘Are you sure you want this?’ he demanded, watching her, his face terse, his eyes showing impatience.
She was tempted to toy with him, to tease him, but her desire was too oversized, and their shared past and pain too mighty to be treated frivolously.
‘Yes.’ A simple answer that had him moving quickly to his bedside table and opening a drawer, removing a line of condoms and perforating one from the rest before slicing it across the top. She watched, riveted, as he unfurled it over his length, then came back to her, standing over her, chest heaving so her eyes fell first to his tattoo then lower, to his arousal. She gasped, because he was so very large and tantalising that her skin lifted in goosebumps and she felt a strange heat spool between her legs.
