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Cassie’s breath locked in her lungs when the elastic of her panties tightened and then slid over the curve of her backside until they rested just below it, one palm curving around the front of her thigh until he reached the heart of her.
Her body seized as a finger slid into her with ease.
“Ahhhh.” She was powerless to hold back the sound.
“Caliente. Mojado. Tal como esperaba.”
The rational side of her should feel embarrassed that with barely any effort at all he’d aroused her to fever pitch. And he knew it. But the not-so-rational side felt a stab of pride that her body had obeyed him.
All too soon, his hand withdrew. When she started to mutter a protest, he stopped her.
“Shhhh. Almost.”
He retrieved the condom from its resting place and ripped it open in front of her. He lifted it and stroked it down her cheek and over her lips. It was unbearably sexy. She could picture him against her mouth, asking to come in.
She wanted it. Wanted to feel him along her tongue.
“Tell me you want me.”
“I do.” Her eyes closed and then opened again, fixing on his. “I want you.”
“Yes.”
The condom disappeared below her line of vision, but she could picture him slowly rolling the latex cover over his length. His mouth went to her cheek, following the line he’d taken seconds before. She turned her head so she could kiss him. Their lips fused together as Rafe’s hands returned to her hips, easing them backward, tilting them, his mouth following hers as his movements forced her upper body toward the top of the dresser, until her breasts were resting on the wooden surface.
“Open. More.”
He definitely wasn’t talking about her mouth. She spread her legs wide, his chest pushing against her back, hands returning to her breasts.
With a quick thrust of his hips, he entered her, stretching her wider than she thought possible. He stayed like that, their labored breathing the only sound in the room for several long seconds. Then his thumbs were brushing across her nipples, and it was as if he was caressing her somewhere else. A sharp point of arousal began building rapidly, threatening to overtake her.
“Rafe... I don’t think I can... Please.”
“Say my name. Again.”
“Rafe.”
Then he was moving with powerful strokes, sending her hips into the edge of the dresser, the sharp pain only adding to the pleasure.
It was too much. The wave found her. Slammed into her and sent her spinning through the surf, taking her breath away and making her see stars.
She was vaguely aware of Rafe above her, shouting something in Spanish, but she was too lost to try to make sense of it as he thrust into her again and again.
Then it was over. His cheek against hers, nostrils flaring as he dragged in air.
Her own body eased its grip on her senses, and she blinked. The mirror showed that his eyes were closed. She swallowed.
Who would he be when those dark pupils met hers again?
She shifted, trying to brace herself for an abrupt withdrawal. A speedy exit into the night.
“Don’t move.” The eyes opened.
“But...”
His body slid from hers, but it was anything but abrupt. He turned her to face him. “Do you have to leave yet?”
The words sounded as if they’d been forced from him against his will. His sudden frown echoed that thought.
She should. She should go, tossing him a quick thank you on her way out the door. But she didn’t want to. To leave was to face the ugly reality that awaited her outside that door. “No. I don’t have to leave.”
One side of his mouth curved, his frown fading as he swung her into his arms. “Then let’s see if we can try that again. In the comfort of a bed this time.”
He leaned down and nipped her lower lip. “As great and sexy as that was, it was much faster than I’d hoped it would be. So for the next round...”
He tipped her shoulders down so he could catch at the edge of the bedspread and pull it down. “Let’s see just how slow we can go.” With that he set her down on the bed, went over to the dresser and retrieved his wallet. When he pulled out three more condoms, her eyes widened, and she had to moisten her lips.
Surely not.
As if reading her thoughts, he grinned again. “Oh, yes. We can. And we will.”
* * *
Bonnie—if that was even her name—was sprawled naked on her stomach, her hair in a deliciously tangled mess all around her face. A peculiar twinge went through Rafe’s gut as he stared down at her.
Shafts of sunlight were already ducking beneath the hem of the curtains and pooling on the carpet at the bottom of the bed. He was normally long gone by now, his one night binge doing what it always did: blotting out a specific memory.
Almost against his will, he took a step closer, noting her head was precariously perched near the edge of the mattress. The reason for that made a certain part of his body react yet again.
He should wake her up, make sure she got home safely, but something stopped him from touching her. He was due at work in a half hour, but it wasn’t that.
He’d approached last night the same way as he did every year on this date, and yet something about this woman’s appearance in the bar had been different. The way she’d jerked the ring off her finger as if she couldn’t stand it being there one second longer. She’d looked lost, the sense of desperation in her eyes dragging up a sense of protectiveness he hadn’t felt in a long time. Hadn’t wanted to feel in a long time.
Rafe had thought for a moment she was running away from someone. He’d actually glanced behind her to make sure some abusive ex wasn’t following her. When he’d satisfied himself that she was alone, he decided to bide his time and leave her to someone else.
Except she’d sat down beside him, the clear blue of her eyes colliding with his glance and sending all rational thought running for the door. Maybe the alcohol had actually done the job he’d meant it to do and addled his thinking. The rest was history.
So what did he do now that he was no longer under the influence?
She was a big girl. Surely she could hail a cab and get home on her own?
The notepad on the end table caught his attention, along with a black elastic circle.
When she’d reached for the band to put her hair up before settling down to sleep last night, he’d stopped her, the thick mass of strands calling for him to sift through them one more time...to wrap them around himself and...
Hell, she’d driven him wild last night. He closed his eyes to banish the memory.
Time to go. Now. Before he woke her up and made himself later for work than he was already going to be.
Besides, goodbyes were one thing he’d never learned to do well.
Going to the table, he gripped the pen, his fingers accidentally brushing across the hair band in the process. Without thinking, he picked it up and pocketed it, picturing her leaving the hotel with her locks in sexy disarray from what they’d done in this room.
He would probably be damned to eternity for everything that had happened last night.
No. The damning had taken place many years ago, when shaking eighteen-year-old hands had placed his signature at the bottom of an irrevocable document.
He grabbed the hotel stationery. This time there would be no signature. The pen hovered over the pristine white paper for several seconds as he thought. Then he scrawled two words. No Goodbye. No Thanks for a fun evening. Just: Taxi fare. Then opening his wallet one last time, he drew out a crisp fifty-dollar bill. Because unless he wanted to go snooping through her purse or, worse, wake her up to ask if she had any money, it was the only thing he could think of to do.
Laying the bill under the note, he set a cheesy palm tree alarm clock on top of it.
Then he quietly exited the room. This was one event that would go down in annals of What Not to Do with a Beautiful Woman.
Because every moan and touch and thrust was permanently seared in his skull. A cautionary tale at best. So the only thing left to do was tiptoe back to his normal mundane life and never think of Bonnie—or whatever her name was—ever again.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_79e0971f-e035-5287-86fb-0dacce0a93e7)
One month later...
EVEN AS CASSIE wrapped the measuring tape around Renato Silva’s head, she knew. The newborn would fall below the circumference norms.
Microcephaly wasn’t something she encountered every day. Or even every year. And yet this child made three in the last eight weeks. A shiver went up her spine. With all of the reports coming out of Brazil and elsewhere, she worried that these cases could somehow be related.
Two centimeters below normal. Not terribly off, but still concerning.
One of the nurses glanced at her, brows up. Cassie knew what she was asking. She gave a subtle nod in response, her stomach churning inside her. And it was up to her to give the new mom the news. The obstetrician had already moved on to the next laboring patient.
She cradled the baby in her arms, and switched to Portuguese. “Você fala inglês?”
“Yes. Some. I am learning.” The young woman’s hungry eyes took in the swaddled infant. Her child. A tiny soul carrying a wealth of hopes and dreams.
Two centimeters surely wouldn’t destroy all of those dreams. She’d seen babies with terrible deficits go further than anyone had ever thought possible.
The baby gave a hoarse cry. It was a touch more strident than that of most newborns. Another worrying sign.
“Renato is breathing just fine and his color is good. We’ll want to run a few tests—”
“Something is wrong.” With those soft, knowing words, the whole atmosphere in the room changed.
Cassie couldn’t keep it from her, not and live with herself. “His head is a little bit smaller than we’d like to see, but we won’t know anything for sure until we check him out completely.”
Her patient fell back onto the pillows. “It was the sickness. I left...came here in December to get away from it. Ele me seguiu.”
It followed me.
The words sent a chill through her. “What sickness? You were sick while you were pregnant?”
“Yes. Just after I learned I carried him. I fear it was Zika.”
News and panic about the mosquito-borne virus had been a huge topic among doctors and journalists for the last year. Yes, she knew of it. This was the third incidence of microcephaly at the hospital. Like it or not, it was time to call the CDC again. She knew they were swamped—it was the excuse they’d given her three weeks ago when the second microcephaly case had appeared. They’d told her they’d get to her as soon as possible. But this time they had to listen to her. Her patients’ lives depended on it.
“You know for certain you had Zika?”
“I was sick. The mosquitoes, they were very bad.”
It was just turning summertime in the U.S. but since the seasons were the opposite on the southern side of the globe, December was the hottest part of the year in Brazil.
Her stomach took another turn, whether from the tragedy unfolding in front of her or from something else, she had no idea. She swallowed hard, trying to rid herself of the queasy feeling. It stayed with her no matter how much she tried to banish it.
“I’ll come back and talk to you as soon as we check Renato over.” She squeezed the woman’s shoulder. “I promise.”
Cassie nodded at the nurse to take the baby to the nursery, where they would carefully go over the newborn inch by inch.
But first...
She walked through the door and pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her lab coat. First, she was going to call the CDC in Washington one more time and give whoever answered a piece of her mind.
* * *
The canopy of the paraglider caught the wind and swept Rafael Valentino’s legs out from under him as it lifted him skyward. Still attached to the towline behind the boat, the wind whistled past his face, plastering his hair to his head. A familiar sense of weightlessness took over, allowing his problems to drop to the warm sands of the beach below, where they would stay until he touched down. A few more seconds, and he could relax into his harness. But not yet.
Rafe had flown more in the past month than he had in years. Not since those early terrible days after his father’s death, when the adrenaline rush had been one of the few things that had allowed him to blot out the reality of what had happened.
At a signal from the speedboat driver, he pulled the cord that would release the towline and set him free to glide for as long as the winds would sustain his flight. He sat, his harness cradling his butt and his thighs as he worked on changing his angle, catching the winds much as a sailboat did. Only there was something about being in the air, suspended far above the earth. It was heaven. There was nothing else like it.
Except for maybe those last frantic seconds of being suspended in a different kind of heaven. Like the one a month ago?
His jaw tightened. Thoughts like that were why he was out here today. He had to work in a few hours, but he’d needed something to erase those memories. Bonnie had been different in some indefinable way.
And the last thing he wanted to do was try to define anything about that night.
A sudden gust of air caused the nylon that covered the baffle cells to flutter, and he bobbed a time or two before his flight settled back out. The change in the wind conditions did the trick. Everything was wiped from his brain except for controlling his craft.
It was a perfect day for flying, and there were dots of color all up and down the beach as others had the same idea. Powerboats far below carved out white wakes in the ocean as some of the commercial parasail ventures towed thrill seekers up and down the coastline. He would have to descend with care when the time came, but he already had his landing site mapped out.
For now, he would just immerse himself in the moment and not let anything else clutter his skull. He adjusted the speed bar at his feet and shifted his weight to change direction.
Nothing could bother him here.
A sudden buzzing at his hip stopped that thought in its tracks. Damn.
Really? His phone? He should have turned it off. Glancing down and trying to read the caller ID while it was upside down, he swore softly when he was able to make it out.
Perfect. It was work. His boss wouldn’t call him on his day off unless it was urgent.
Fun time was over almost before it began. Scouring the beach for a place to land that was relatively free of sun worshippers, he shifted his weight once again and began his descent.
* * *
