“I just put on a condom. What does that tell you?”
His hands were on her now and he ran them over her, greedily filling his palms with her breasts and hips and the round cheeks of her butt, as if he couldn’t get enough. One hand rode up the front of her thigh, and his thumb slid inward to part her damp folds. When he found the slick center of her, he made a rumbling noise of satisfaction in his chest.
Here, finally, was the lover who had been generously teasing her past the point of no return each night. She wanted to give that back to him and shifted, rising to guide him to her entrance, then slowly taking him in.
Oh, dear.
“Hurt?” he asked gruffly, making her aware she’d caught her breath.
Had that been the source of his reticence? Worry? Tenderness filled her as she folded herself onto him.
“It feels really good,” she sighed. His penetration wasn’t so much painful as painfully intense. Profound. She hadn’t had a lot of sex and he’d been her only lover in years. Now they had so much between them—not just a son, but history and a tangle of emotions that still remained knotted. They had a very tentative trust that needed protecting, but in this moment, she felt incredibly close to him.
She kissed him with abandon, long and deep, letting the joy of being entwined with him spin her into that depthless space of pure, luxurious passion they always found. The eddies of arousal within her became a deeper imperative. Her hands roamed over every inch of him that she could reach while his own hands molded her back and hips and thighs.
When she began to move, he guided her. Moved with her. Let her sit tall while she touched where they were joined. Moments later she was crying out with exaltation, shaken by her powerful orgasm. Breathless, she sank bonelessly onto him.
With her skin damp and her heart still pounding, he rolled her beneath him and said, “My turn.”
“Mmm,” she agreed, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She locked her ankles behind his lower back and groaned with abandon as he began to thrust and withdraw in slow, powerful strokes.
When the tension wound tight in her again, however, and she hovered on the brink, he settled his weight on her, no longer thrusting, and soothed her down from the peak.
“What are you doing?” she panted, confused.
“You don’t like it?”
“No, it feels really good, but...” She made a restive noise and moved beneath him.
“I’m in charge now, Scarlett,” he said, and she felt his will like a force that took hold of her very soul.
He drew her back up to the peak and let it recede again, making her so crazy she wound up scraping her nails down his back and biting into his shoulder.
He laughed and nipped at her jaw. “What’s wrong, querida?”
“Don’t make me beg, Javiero.” She turned her face to the side and one tear leaked out her closed eyes and ran down her temple.
He made a noise of pity and gathered her in. When his lips found the dampness at her temple, he used his thumb to rub the tear into her skin.
“What do you want from me?” he asked.
“This. You.” More. She had wanted to return to what they had had eleven months ago. She had wanted their lovemaking to be a reset. A fresh start.
That had been the fantasy of a fool, but she couldn’t let him go, either.
She held him in a clasp so intimate she could feel the pulse of his heartbeat between her legs, but too much had happened to allow them to go back to that moment of profound pleasure and an unstained history. If she had stayed with him that day, she might have had a chance.
Now here she was, trying to recreate magic that had been an illusion in the first place.
Her heart beat outside her chest, trying to reach his, but his was closed off. How else could he hold her like this, on the brink of ecstasy, and deny them both?
When his mouth touched hers, she poured everything into the kiss, her heart and soul and all the love within her. All of this, what little she had of him, was going to disappear. She knew it. But she quit fighting his agonizing pace and savored it with him, wanting the moment to last forever. She held him deep as they drew out each caress and kiss. It imbued the act with something emotive and profound, until she was shaking under the intensity of this exquisitely powerful joining. A single press of his lips to the point of her shoulder became her world. She traced his crooked lips with her fingertip and it was the most exquisite kiss of her life.
When a frantic desperation closed her fist in his hair, trying to hang on to something she couldn’t grasp, he caught that hand and pressed it to the mattress, linking his fingers through hers.
Then he began to move. For real.
By that time, she was pure, liquid desire, steeped in arousal. The impact of his hips became something so beautiful and pure that the burn of tears hit her eyes again, these ones of veneration. Jubilation.
She loved him, she acknowledged, as the last vestiges of self-possession left her. She loved him with every fiber of her being.
But as the little death of climax overtook her and she faced the fact that nothing was eternal, most especially this brief paradise she had found with him, she felt something break inside her, and her tears squeezed between her lashes to track her cheeks.
CHAPTER NINE
JAVIERO EXTRICATED HIMSELF carefully from Scarlett’s sleeping form.
Waking her to say goodbye would be the decent thing, but she had been up in the night and had come back to make love with him again, wordless and so intense he still felt like she’d stolen a piece of him.
He wouldn’t have touched her again if she hadn’t reached
