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He stilled. His fingers dug into her. Eyes turned almost black regarded her in abrasive silence. ‘And is that what you want? For us to use each other for one single night and forget the other one exists come morning?’ There was something darkly condemning in his voice, but also enough sexual anticipation that said he wasn’t completely averse to that scenario. The opposing forces of that view left her speechless, unable to decide which one would most please him.
He leaned in closer, bringing his power and might to bear on her. ‘Answer me, Suki. Is that what you want?’ Blade-sharp eyes searched hers.
‘Isn’t it what you want too?’ She forced a laugh. ‘Please don’t tell me you see anything more beyond...whatever this is happening tonight?’
He was silent for an interminable age. Then his gaze dropped to her shoulders and upper breasts exposed by the gaping dress. Lower to the rapid rise and fall of her torso. To the restless hands on the seat beside her hips, twitching with the need to touch him. Finally to her splayed legs and the black panties whose thin, insubstantial material framed her core. His thumbs caressed again, drawing another shameless shudder from her.
‘Sí, you’re right. Nothing more can come out of this. Nothing will.’
The sharp dart of hurt somewhere deep beneath her breastbone disappeared at the pleasure pain of her panties cutting into her flesh one moment, then ripping free of her body the next.
Suki gasped, the move so audaciously erotic, she felt her folds dampen further.
Ramon’s eyes remained on her for a further intense second. Then they dropped to her core.
Heat scoured his cheekbones, his lips parting as he breathed her in. She wasn’t sure whether it was the sight of him on his knees before her or the power of sensations ploughing through her. But the urge to touch him grew too big to contain. She cupped his jaw, slid her hand along over the masculine stubble to his strong throat, then around to his nape. A tight smile whispered over his lips, gone in the next breath.
Then he was lowering his head, his intent very clear. Her grip tightened, pulling him away, her eyes widening at the blatant act he was about to perform.
‘Ramon, I don’t...’ she started. Her train of thought dissolved at the firm kiss he delivered to her core, her fingers convulsing in his hair as pleasure jerked through her. ‘Oh!’
Raising his head, he blew gently on her. ‘You want me to stop?’
The anxious part of her that had rejected what he was about to do frantically begged for more. ‘No,’ she blurted.
At his husky laugh, heat washed up her face.
But laughter and all trace of embarrassment evaporated beneath the deluge of rapture his next kiss brought. He tasted her and pleasured her with bold, possessive strokes, ramping up her pleasure until her eyes rolled in bliss. Until hoarse, alien words fell from her lips and her fingers sank deep into his hair, urging him on, begging for more.
He gave generously, his tongue and lips drawing untold delight from her. When he finally concentrated his attention on her tight, swollen nub, Suki’s back arched off the seat, a ragged scream ripping from her throat before her whole body was gripped in wave after wave of ecstasy.
She resurfaced to the scent of sex and leather and the sight of a virile, hungry, half-naked man. He’d disposed of his jacket, his shirt hung half open and his trousers were unzipped. Black luxurious hair looked sexily dishevelled as if someone...she...had run her hands through it in mindless caresses.
Her barely decelerated heartbeat kicked up again as she watched him slide on a condom with one hand and roughly push down her dress and free her arms with the other. Next, he unclipped and eased off her bra.
At the sight of her exposed full breasts, he swore low and hard. ‘Santa cielo, you’re exquisite.’
As if testing the reality of her skin, he smoothed his hand down from her neck to her stomach, bypassing the needy, screaming peaks of her breasts. On the upward caress, his other hand left his sheathed manhood. Both hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs mercilessly teasing her nipples for a mindless stretch of time before he sucked one into his mouth. Hard on the heels of her expended climax, renewed pleasure surged. High and heady and unthinkably surreal.
Was she really here, about to—?
‘Oh, God,’ she moaned, her mind fracturing as he grazed his teeth over her nipple.
Still torturing her, he wrapped one arm around her waist and dragged her lower until her buttocks hung off the seat. She was a heartbeat from tossing herself over another cliff into another mind-blowing climax when he lifted his head.
Fervid green eyes met and trapped hers as he drew her legs over his shoulders. Then, with a grunt, he gripped her waist and thrust hard and deep inside her.
Her strangled scream was kissed away, urgent hands holding her in place for his second thrust. ‘Dios...so wet...so tight.’ His voice was gravel-rough hoarse, the words barely coherent.
Suki gave up trying to decipher them, her mind fracturing into useless pieces as she was fully submerged in the fiery enchantment of Ramon’s possession. He commanded her body like a masterful virtuoso, driving her to the peak and pinning her there, over and over, but not letting her fall.
As the limo ate up the miles they writhed beneath streetlights thrown intermittently into the car.
‘Ramon... Ramon...’
She wasn’t sure how many times she moaned his name to his thick encouragement. But she was fully astride his kneeling form, their bodies slick with sweat and his implacable arms around her when he raised his head one final time, looked deep into her eyes and instructed, ‘Now, Suki.’
Glorious pleasure and pressure burst wide open. She could do nothing but hang on as it sucked her deep into a bottomless vortex.
He caught her earlobe in a sharp bite a second before he was hurled into his own release, muttering hot, torrid words that drew out her own pleasure as he jerked inside her.
They were still breathing hard when the car swayed round a corner and drew to a stop. He caressed her for another minute before he set her back on the seat and zipped up her dress.
Unable to meet his eyes or stop the flames of disquiet eating her up, Suki snatched up her panties and bra and stuffed them inside her handbag.
Beside her, having straightened his own clothes, Ramon lounged back in the seat.
‘Um...thanks for the lift,’ she said after a full minute when it became clear he didn’t intend to speak.
He didn’t reply, just stared at her with hooded dark eyes. Okay... Clutching her handbag, she edged closer to the door. ‘Goodnight, Ramon. Have a safe trip back to...wherever.’
She reached for the handle. He beat her to it, catching her hand and tugging her round to face him.
‘No, I’m not about to have a safe trip back to...wherever. Because we’re not done, guapa. Far from it,’ he said.
Exiting the car with the grace of a sleek, powerful animal, he held out his hand to her.
She had no choice but to get out. She knew that. But suddenly what awaited her outside was more daunting than the mind-bending sex she’d just enjoyed in this car. For one thing, her heart and mind hadn’t stopped racing. And the voice screeching in her head that this was over and she needed to walk away was growing weaker under the one howling harder in greedy, grabby need. The one telling her she wanted more. Needed to live a little for longer. Experience more of what had just happened. Of everything.
‘Come out, Suki,’ he ordered.
She told herself that she complied because she couldn’t stay in the limo for ever. Not because the unabated hunger in his eyes called to hers.
The moment she stepped out, he slammed the door shut and tapped twice on the roof. As the limo pulled away he yanked her close, delivered a hard, searing kiss to her mouth. That single spark was enough to ignite the erotic conflagration again. Long moments later, he raised his head, glanced up at the small Victorian terrace house she called home, then back at her. ‘Invite me in.’
She invited him in.
But even before he’d stepped over the threshold into her sanctuary, Suki knew that this was nowhere near the forgettable experience she had convinced herself it would be.
CHAPTER THREE (#uba7e59ee-85b6-5e18-a44f-c08c96a2d14d)
Ten months later
SUKI READ THE email one more time, the shaking in her hands nothing compared to the pain lacerating her heart as she took in the stark words that blended with soul-breaking ones. Halfway through the first paragraph, her vision blurred. She blinked and tears spilled down her cheeks. Swiping them away, she closed her eyes for a moment, vainly wishing the words would be different when she opened them again.
They weren’t.
Private memorial for Luis Acosta and his parents, Clarita and Pablo Acosta. A strictly family affair. Unless expressly invited, please do not attend.
Lawyers request your presence for the reading of his last will and testament followed by a private meeting with Ramon Acosta. Attendance strictly necessary.
Her throat clogging with fresh tears just waiting to be shed, she looked away from the words she didn’t want to read, never mind accept, and clicked on the attachment. A slight bolt of shock went through her when it sent her to an airline website. Swallowing, she clicked on further links until she arrived at the page holding the first-class return e-ticket to Cuba under her name.
The email and attachment had come from a firm of lawyers in Havana, the ones she’d been desperate to contact ever since she received the horrendous news of Luis’s and his parents’ deaths.
The same lawyers who’d refused to take her calls or answer her letters for two months, but were now reaching out to her. She knew they wouldn’t have contacted her without the express permission of Ramon Acosta, their client.
This email giving consent for her to visit Cuba to pay her respects wouldn’t have come from anyone else because Ramon was the only one left of the Acosta family.
Despite the turn of events after their night together, she’d reached out to him after Luis died. At first Suki had respected his deafening silence, knowing that he was grieving the family he’d tragically lost in a car crash. Until she’d learned via social media that several of their university friends had been invited to attend Luis’s funeral three weeks after his death. The date had come and gone without any of her frantic calls being returned by Ramon’s office or his lawyers, forcing her to grieve her best friend’s burial alone in her bedroom. Every single email she’d sent after that had also gone unanswered.
Until today.
She wanted to hate Ramon for denying her something so fundamental as a goodbye to the only true friend she’d known. But her emotions, already scraped raw by everything she’d endured these past ten months, were too shredded to accommodate another detrimental emotion such as hate.
Although she’d already been through a gamut of them. For weeks, she’d cried, begged, then railed against fate. And science. And her own weak body.
When she’d finally reached acceptance, she’d cried for days. Those tears had sapped the last of her will to fight, dropped her to what she’d foolishly thought was rock bottom. Until Luis was also ripped from her. Then she’d known true devastation.
Devastation she’d had to deal with on her own, while grappling with her own loss and remaining strong for her mother. The multiple blows fate had dealt her still possessed the power to disrupt her sleep and trigger bouts of tearful sadness.
Like when she’d dissolved into floods of tears during her meeting with the head of HR at her workplace last week. Even before she’d finished the return-to-work interview, she knew things hadn’t gone well.
Her boss had insisted she take the full three months of her sick leave, the need to protect themselves from professional liability overshadowing her protests that, with only one month remaining, she was ready to return to work.
She’d petitioned. With her finances fast dwindling and her mother’s medical bills piling up, she’d appealed the decision and been granted the interview. Only for her overwhelmed state to get the better of her.
She hadn’t been surprised when her HR manager had sympathetically ended the interview and called a taxi to take Suki home. What she hadn’t expected was a letter a few days later stating that her sick leave had been extended by another month with half pay because she wasn’t deemed fit to deal with clients in her current state.
Suki had been too drained to fight the assessment. And deep down she knew that, as much as she loved her job as an interior designer for one of the most prestigious firms in London, her passion had been depleted.
She didn’t need a psychologist to tell her she needed to find closure before things got better. Or barring that, a different avenue for the cocktail of emotions bubbling beneath the surface of her heart.
Closing her laptop, she rose from her small desk and trudged to the kitchen to dispose of her barely touched cup of tea. Mechanically, she washed the mug and set it on the draining board.
Outside, birds chirped and wasps buzzed as Vauxhall basked in the August bank holiday sunshine.
Suki turned her back on it, her hand sliding as it so often, so painfully did to her stomach, to the child that had never managed to thrive there. The urge to walk upstairs to her bedroom, curl up under her duvet and slide into perpetual oblivion was almost catatonically irresistible.
She fought the temptation, her mind returning to the email and the airline ticket. Although she’d been prepared to dig into her meagre savings to pay her last respects to her best friend two months ago, her resources had dwindled even further owing to her mother being readmitted to hospital. With confirmation of her cancer, Suki had had to use almost all her remaining funds to keep her and her mother’s heads above water.
Travelling to Cuba had fast become a distant dream.
The arrival of the ticket, although it bruised her pride a little, wasn’t one she was about to refuse. For a chance to say goodbye to Luis, she would set aside her ego for the moment. Once she was back at work, she would pay Ramon Acosta back every penny she owed him for the ticket.
The decision eroded a little bit of her apathy, made her half turn back towards the window, allow the sunshine to touch her face. Warm her.
She wasn’t aware how long she stood there, making careful plans, her soul mourning the vibrant, charismatic man she’d been lucky enough to call her friend.
The soft beeping on her laptop, reminding her of the appointment at the hospital, finally roused her. On automatic, she dressed, left home and made the short drive to the hospital that held far too many harrowing memories.
Fighting the ravaging pain that attacked her, Suki blocked out the smell of disinfectant and death, forced a smile, and entered her mother’s ward.
Moira Langston was dozing lightly, her shrunken form lost in stark white sheets. Sensing Suki’s presence, she opened her eyes. For a second, they just stared at each other.
Then her mother gave a soft, shuddering exhalation. ‘I told you not to visit. I know how hard it is for you to come here.’
Suki laid her hand over her mother’s. ‘I’m okay, Mum. It’s not that bad,’ she lied.
Moira’s lips pursed. ‘Don’t lie. You know I can’t bear lies.’
Tension rippled in the air, twisting through pain churning inside them both. Broken trust fired by a thousand lies was what had shattered her mother’s heart long before Suki was born. It was the reason Moira Langston had never again let another man close enough to hurt her, the reason she’d drummed into Suki the need to protect her own heart at all costs.
It was the reason her mother had been bitterly angry with her when Suki had told her about her pregnancy. Her mother had come round eventually, even put aside her own health issues to support her after she lost the baby, but the look of mournful regret still lingered.
Suki swallowed, and tightened her grip on her mother’s hand. ‘I can’t not visit you, Mum.’
Moira sighed, her face softening. ‘I know. But I’m feeling better, so I should be home very soon.’
Suki didn’t argue, although her mother’s notable weight loss told a different story. They chatted about neutral subjects for a while, before her mother’s shrewd eyes settled on her one more time. ‘Something’s bothering you.’
She started to shake her head, but, not wanting to upset her mother, she took a deep breath. ‘I heard from Ra...from Luis’s brother’s lawyers.’
Moira’s eyes narrowed. ‘And? What did Ramon have to say for himself?’ she demanded sharply.
‘I...nothing. The lawyers sent me a ticket to Cuba. To attend Luis’s memorial.’
‘Are you going to accept it?’
Slowly, she nodded. ‘I want to say goodbye properly.’
For a long moment, Moira remained silent. ‘Luis was a good man. That’s the only reason I won’t tell you not to go. But, be careful, Suki. Stay away from his brother. He’s caused you enough grief as it is.’
Her mother had been quick to lay the blame for everything at Ramon’s feet when she found out Suki was pregnant and alone. Ravaging pain and the need to mourn her lost baby in isolation had made her hold her tongue against telling her mother that Ramon had no knowledge that he’d fathered a baby. That was an assumption she would rectify in the future, when her heart didn’t shred every time she thought of her baby.
‘Mrs Baron will visit you every day, and I’ll be back before you know it.’
As if conjured up, their next-door neighbour walked into the ward. The widow, easily fifteen years older than her mother, was nevertheless spry and full of life. Her cheery demeanour was infectious, and her mother was soon chuckling.
An hour later, Suki left the two women chatting, and returned home, thoughts of the email and of Luis darkening her spirits as she opened her front door.
The sight of mail on her doormat roused her from her blanketing sadness. Welcoming the tiny distraction, she walked through to the kitchen.
Two of the three pieces of post were junk mail. The stamp on the third envelope shot her heart into her throat, and her hand was trembling as she ripped the letter open.
Frantically, her gaze flew over the words. Her shocked, tearful gasp echoed through her small hallway. Forcing herself to calm down, she read them again.
You’ve been accepted...first appointment 15th September...
