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Her lungs felt as if they might burst. ‘I just wish I could go back in time and do things differently,’ she whispered. ‘If I’d left earlier... I should have left earlier... I should have—’
‘Shh...’ He pressed his finger against her lips. ‘Don’t think about that now.’
Gazing up into his eyes was like diving into cool blue water. It soothed the ache in her throat. Curling her arms around his neck, she let him roll her underneath his body, losing herself in the heat of his kiss. Because even though she knew it wasn’t true, it felt as if she was meant for him.
Gazing down at the sleeping woman in his arms, Gabriel felt a jagged weight in his chest. Outside the window the sun was sliding jerkily between clouds, disappearing and then returning to view in time with the beat of his heart.
He had thought he couldn’t feel worse than he had that day at the hotel—but then he hadn’t truly understood what it felt like to feel someone else’s pain.
To be responsible for that pain.
And hewasresponsible. He had let his grief and anger and misery at what had happened with Fenella colour his relationship with Dove. It had been like a bruise, a weakness, and the moment Oscar Cavendish had pressed against it, it had cracked apart. Blind with panic and pain, he hadn’t seen the truth.
Actually, he hadn’t looked. It had been easier to accept what he was told, even though doing so meant thinking the worst of the woman he had loved.
He shifted his body, but the guilt was solid...immovable. And he deserved it. If Dove had been a business he was buying he would never have made any decision without completing due diligence. Every single piece of data would have been sifted and analysed and assessed. And yet he had accepted Oscar’s words at face value.
Worse, he had acted on what he’d been told without even the most cursory of conversations. Forcing her to work for him, threatening her—threatening her boss, her colleagues—dragging her on to his yacht to rub her face in his wealth and success.
No wonder she had fought him so hard when he’d confronted her at Cavendish and Cox. She must have been devastated by what happened between them. But he had seen it as just temper—frustration at finally being held to account. He had ignored her distress and blackmailed her into working for him anyway.
And he could never make it up to her.
He couldn’t change the past—and he certainly couldn’t change himself.
His stomach clenched tight. He was broken in some fundamental way. There was a blankness, a gap inside him—like a missing step in a staircase.
He gazed down at Dove. And yet when her body fused with his he felt complete. In those hectic moments he forgot everything...cared about nothing but the light, delicate touch of her fingers and the hot press of her mouth.
Hunger had stormed through him like a conquering army. His hunger and hers. She’d been like a curling flame in his arms. Everything between them had pulled taut, the white heat of their bodies consuming the pain, and the past, so that there had been nothing but fire and need and the bliss of her being his once again.
Dove stared up at the waterfall, blinking into the cool spray. She had come across it by accident. It had just appeared out of the lush greenery as she’d made her way from the house.
Waking in Gabriel’s arms, she had wanted more than anything to stay pressed against his warm, sleeping body. But she knew there was no purpose to thinking like that.
What had happened had not been a mistake. Nothing that perfect could ever be called that. But it would be an act of reckless self-harm to let it happen again. And she didn’t trust herself to be there when he woke up. Didn’t trust herself to resist that beautiful golden body...
‘There you are.’
She turned, her feet slipping on the wet rocks, and steadied herself. Or rather she regained her balance. Nothing could possibly steady her heartbeat, she thought, gazing up into Gabriel’s glittering blue eyes.
‘I just thought I’d take a quick look around before I left,’ she said quickly, trying to pull her mind back in line.
There was a small pause, and then he nodded. ‘Of course. But it would probably be better to have a guide. There are quite a few treacherous paths, and it’s easy to get lost and not know where you are.’
She frowned. ‘Isn’t that what being lost is?’
One corner of his mouth twisted into a smile that kicked up sparks in her all over again, and she was instantly, hopelessly aware of the shimmering blue heat in his eyes and of how close he was standing.
‘What I am trying and failing to say is that there’s no point using a landmark as a guide if you don’t know how it relates to anything else.’
‘I see what you mean, yes...’ She nodded, but honestly he might have been speaking Portuguese or Mandarin. Her brain didn’t seem to be working properly.
‘We could walk up to the lake. Or we could head down to the beach. See if we can spot any dolphins.’
‘Dolphins?’
He nodded. ‘Dolphins, whales, sharks...’
