Ethan brought up a finger to gently touch the corner of her kiss-trembling mouth. ‘And the last time I saw you with him like that?’ he probed. ‘You weren’t sobbing then.’
‘You misread what you saw that night,’ she explained, slid out her tongue and licked his finger and watched as his eyes grew darker in response. ‘Aidan had just seen Corin wrapped in a heated clinch with his cousin. They were childhood sweethearts; he’s adored her all of his life. He was devastated, I was comforting him when I heard them coming towards us, and I just reacted by kissing Aidan to give Corin a taste of her own nasty medicine.’
‘Impulsive as usual.’ He sighed.
‘Well, you should know.’ She flashed. ‘When I realised you’d seen us, I knew what you would be thinking. So as soon as I could safely leave Aidan, I impulsively went to your room to explain. Only…’
‘You found me standing there stark-naked, and decided it was more fun to stare me into embarrassing myself?’
‘If that’s what you like to think.’ She wasn’t taking the bait. Instead she caught hold of his finger then fed it across the surface of his own mouth. Already moistened by the tip of her tongue the finger left a film of moisture on his lips.
He licked it off. Sex was suddenly alive in the air. ‘You can’t control yourself around me,’ she informed him smugly, ‘which is why you made sure you kept your distance from then on.’
His own hand came to remove her teasing finger. ‘You tease and flirt without conscience,’ he condemned.
‘Your fault,’ she blamed. ‘The more you disapproved of me the more outrageous I became.’
‘Dangerous is the word that comes to my mind.’
He was referring to Raoul Delacroix, Eve realised. It altered the mood so abruptly that Ethan gave a sigh of regret when she withdrew right away from him then walked over to stare out of the bedroom window with her arms crossed over her body in a gesture he recognised as Eve needing to protect Eve.
He followed, unwrapped her arms and replaced them with his own. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to resurrect bad memories.’
‘I’ve known Raoul almost all of my life,’ she murmured. ‘We—all the crowd on the island have been meeting up for holidays there since we were small children. Flirting and teasing was part of the group culture but no one ever took it further than that.’
‘But he decided to.’
‘We hadn’t seen him for a couple of years,’ she explained. ‘When he came back to the island this summer, he’d changed. We all noticed it, wondered why, but Raoul refused to talk about it. So we drew our own conclusions and decided it had to be a failed love affair or a fall-out with his brother, André, for whom he’d always nurtured a resentment. But never in my wild imaginings did I think he had changed so much that he was capable of pulling something like that.’
‘Forget it, it’s over.’
‘But maybe it was my fault. Maybe I did lead him on.’
‘You know that isn’t true, so we aren’t getting into that,’ Ethan said firmly.
Eve pressed back against him and said no more. Beyond the window she watched her grandfather’s car taking off down the driveway. The roof was folded away so she could see Aidan sitting next to him. They would be going to a local café where they would drink coffee while Aidan told her grandfather all his woes, and her grandfather would relay wise advice, previously discussed and decided upon with Aidan’s older brother, Patrick. It was how it had always worked since Eve had lost her parents and Aidan had lost his in the same car accident, leaving Grandpa to play the role of wise counsellor to both families. Strange really, she mused. But, thinking about it, Raoul had shown signs of resentment to that closeness too.
‘Where’s your ring?’
Glancing down, she realised that her hands were lost in the clasp of his and his thumb was stroking her naked ring finger in much the same way as her own had been doing every since she’d taken the ring off.
‘Tigger has it,’ she said.
‘And where is Tigger?’
‘In my dressing room with his friends.’ She went to move. ‘Do you want me to go and—?’
‘No.’ He stopped her. ‘We haven’t finished here yet.’
‘Finished what?’ Foolishly she turned in his arms to face him—foolishly, because she should have guessed what was coming, but didn’t; so his kiss when it arrived took her breath away.
It was fierce and it was greedy. It brought her hands around his neck and placed his hands on her hip-bones so he could pull her close. She came alive for the first time in too many days to dare think about.
He whispered something into her mouth. ‘Marry me,’ he said.
‘I’m not on my knees.’
‘You can go there later. Just say yes.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
Ethan released a soft laugh. ‘Now tell me you love me.’ He was going for broke here.
‘I love you,’ she softly complied.
After that, things moved on a pace. They found the bed, they lost their clothes, Ethan found his little red-painted heart. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this here,’ he thought to remark when it was already way too late. ‘This is your grandfather’s house. It shows a lack of respect.’
‘I don’t recall you being so sensitive when you seduced me in Victor Frayne’s house,’ Eve pointed out.
It more or less put the lid on his conscience so that he could sink himself into what he had started.
Later, much later, they lay in a tangle of satiated limbs. ‘You do know I love you to distraction, don’t you?’ he told her solemnly. ‘Leona was—’ He stopped, then started the same sentence from a different place. ‘I think I only ever loved the idea of loving someone like Leona.’ He thought that said it best. ‘But in Rahman, when I looked at her, I couldn’t even see her face
