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‘Show me the rest of the place.’
‘Why?’ She was genuinely puzzled.
‘I used to wonder what it was like. You talked about your home a lot when we were...going out. At the time, it had sounded like a slice of paradise, especially compared to where I had grown up.’
‘And I bet you’re thinking, how the mighty have fallen...’ She laughed self-consciously because all of a sudden she was walking on quicksand. This was the man she had fallen in love with—a man who was interested, warm, curious, empathetic... For a minute, the cynical, mocking stranger was gone and she was floundering.
‘No. I’m not,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m thinking that it must have taken a lot of courage not to have cracked under the strain.’
Sophie blushed and began showing him through the various rooms on the ground floor of the house. There were a lot of them and most of them were now closed with the heating off so that money could be saved. When she and Oliver had realised the necessity of putting the house on the market, they had made an effort to do a patch-up job here and there, but not even those dabs of paint in some of the rooms could conceal the disintegrating façade.
The more she talked, the more aware she was of him there by her side, taking it all in. If this was his idea of foreplay, it couldn’t have been more effective, because she was on fire.
Talking...who would have thought that it could have changed the atmosphere between them so thoroughly?
Her nipples were tight and tingling and the ache between her thighs made her want to moan out loud. She could feel him, could feel herself warming to him, and she had to fight the seductive urge to start mingling the past with the present, confusing the powerful, ruthless man he had become with the man she had once known.
When they were through with the ground floor, she gazed up the sweeping staircase before turning to him and clearing her throat.
‘The bedrooms are upstairs.’ She wanted to sound controlled and adult, a woman in charge of a situation she had engendered. Instead, she heard the nervous falsetto of her voice and inwardly cringed.
Javier lounged against the door frame, hoping that it wouldn’t collapse under his weight from dry rot or termites. He folded his arms and looked at her as she fidgeted for a few seconds before meeting his gaze.
‘Why are you so nervous?’ he enquired, reaching out to adjust the collar of the jacket which she was still clutching around her, and then allowing his hands to remain there, resting lightly on her. ‘It’s not as though you haven’t felt the touch of my lips on yours before...’
Sophie inhaled sharply.
She had got this far and now realised that she hadn’t actually worked out what happened next. Yes, on the physical level, terrifying and exciting though that was, her body would simply just take over. She knew it would. She remembered what it had felt like to be touched by him, the way he had made her whole body ignite in a burst of red-hot flame.
How much more glorious would it feel to actually make love with him...?
She was nervous, yes, thrillingly so at the prospect of making love with him. But there were other things...things that needed to be discussed...and now that the time had come she wondered whether she would be able to open up to him.
‘I’m...I’m not nervous about...about...’
‘Going to bed with me? Being touched all over by me? Your breasts and nipples with my tongue? Your belly...?’ He loved the fluttering of her eyes as she listened, the way her tongue darted out to moisten her lips and the way she was breathing just a little faster; tiny, jerky breaths that were an unbelievable turn-on because they showed him what she was feeling. He doubted that she could even put into words what she was feeling because...
Because of her inherent shyness. It almost made him burst out laughing because she was far from shy. She was a widow who had been through the mill.
‘I’m not nervous about any of that!’ Sophie glared at him. ‘Not really.’
‘You’re as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof, Sophie. If that’s not nerves, then I don’t know what is.’
‘I need to talk to you,’ she said jerkily and watched as the shutters instantly came down over his beautiful eyes.
‘Is this the part where you start backtracking?’ he asked softly. ‘Because I don’t like those sorts of games. You did a runner on me once before and I wouldn’t like to think that I’m in line for a repeat performance...’
Sophie chewed her lip nervously. To open up would expose so much and yet how could she not?
How else would she be able to explain away the fact that she was still a virgin?
A virgin widow. It wasn’t the first time that she’d wanted to laugh at the irony of that. Laugh or cry. Maybe both.
Would he even notice that she was a virgin? He would know that she lacked experience but would he really notice just how inexperienced she truly was?
Could she pretend?
‘I’m not backtracking.’ She glanced up the stairs and then began heading up, glancing over her shoulder just once. At the top of the staircase, she eased the jacket off and slung it over the banister. ‘If I didn’t want to do this...’ she half-smiled ‘...would I be doing this?’
Javier looked at her long and hard and then returned that half-smile with one of his own.
‘No, I don’t suppose you would be,’ he murmured, taking the steps two at a time until he was right by her, crowding her in a way that was very, very sexy.
He curved his big hand behind the nape of her neck and kissed her.
With a helpless whimper, Sophie leant into him. She undid a couple of his shirt buttons and slipped her hands underneath the silky cotton and the helpless whimper turned into a giddy groan as she felt the hard muscle of his chest.
This was what she had dreamed of and it was only now, when she was touching him, that she realised just how long those dreams had been in her head, never-ending versions of the same thing...touching him.
Javier eventually pulled back and gazed down at her flushed face.
‘We need to get to a bed.’ He barely recognised his own voice, which was thick with desire, the voice of someone drunk with want. ‘If we don’t, I’m going to turn into a caveman, rip off your clothes right here on the staircase and take you before we can make it to a bedroom...’
Sophie discovered that she was wantonly turned on by the image of him doing that.
‘My bedroom’s just along the corridor,’ she whispered huskily, galvanising her jelly-like legs forward.
There were numerous bedrooms on the landing and most of the doors were shut, which led Javier to assume that they were never used. Probably in as much of a state of disrepair as some of the rooms downstairs which had been sealed off.
Her bedroom was at the very end of the long, wide corridor and it was huge.
‘I keep meaning to brighten it up a bit,’ she apologised, nervous all over again because, now that they were in the bedroom, all her fears and worries had returned with a vengeance. ‘I’ve had some of the pictures on the walls since I was a kid and now, in a weird way, I would feel quite sad to take them down and chuck them in the bin...’
He was strolling through the bedroom, taking in absolutely everything, from the books on the bookshelf by the window to the little framed family shots in silver frames which were lined up on her dressing table.
Eventually he turned to face her and began unbuttoning his shirt.
Sophie tensed and gulped. She watched in fascination as his shirt fell open, revealing the hard chest she had earlier felt under her fingers.
He shrugged it off and tossed it on the ground and her mouth went dry as he walked slowly towards her.
‘There’s...there’s something I should tell you...’ she stammered, frozen to the spot and very much aware of the great big bed just behind her.
Javier didn’t break stride.
Talk? He didn’t think so. The marriage she had hoped for and the guy she had ditched him to be with hadn’t gone according to plan. That changed nothing. She still remained the same woman who had strung him along and then walked away because, when you got right down to it, he had not been good enough for her.
‘No conversation,’ he murmured, trailing his finger along her collarbone until she sighed and squirmed and her eyelids fluttered.
‘What do you mean?’
‘No confidences, no long explanations about why you’re doing what you’re doing. We both know the reason that we’re here.’ He hooked his fingers under the checked shirt and circled her waist, then gently began to undo the buttons on the shirt. ‘We still want one another,’ he murmured, nibbling her ear.
‘Yes...’ Sophie could barely get the word out. Her body tingled everywhere and his delicate touch sent vibrations racing through her. She rubbed her thighs together and heard him laugh softly, as if he knew that she was trying to ease the pain between them.
‘This is all there is, Soph.’ There was a finality to stating the obvious which, for some reason, set his teeth on edge, although he didn’t quite understand why when it was pretty straightforward a situation. He was propelling her very gently towards the bed; she realised that only when she tumbled back, and then he leant forward, propping himself up on either side of her, staring down at her gravely.
Sophie couldn’t have uttered a word if she’d tried. She was mesmerised by the compelling intensity of his expression, the soft, sexy drawl of his voice, the penetrating, opaque blackness of his eyes.
Somehow he had managed to undo every last button of her shirt and the cool air was a sweet antidote to the heat that was consuming her.
He stood up and paused for a few seconds with his fingers resting loosely on the zipper of his trousers.
She could see the bulge of his erection and half closed her eyes when she thought about the mechanics of something so impressively large entering her.
But no talking, he’d said...
No talking because he wasn’t interested in what she had to say.
As though reading the anxious direction of her thoughts, he dropped his hand and joined her on the bed, manoeuvring her onto her side so that they were lying stomach to stomach, then she flopped over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.
‘Look at me, Soph.’ He framed her face with his hand so that she was forced to look at him. His breath was warm on her cheek and she wanted to evade the deadly seriousness of his gaze. ‘Whatever it is you want to tell me, resist, because I’m not interested.’ He felt a sharp jab of pain deep inside him but pressed on, because this had to be said, and wasn’t this all part of that wheel turning full circle? That she’d come to him and now, with her in the palm of his hand, he could reduce her to humility? That he could let her know, without even having to vocalise the obvious, that the shoe was firmly on the other foot?
That he was the one calling the shots?
He had the uncomfortable feeling that it should have felt more satisfying than it did.
‘This is something we both have to do, wouldn’t you agree? If you hadn’t ended up back in my life in a way neither of us could ever have predicted, well, we wouldn’t be here now. But we’re here and...’ He smoothed his hand over her thigh and felt her shudder, wishing she wasn’t wearing clothes because he was itching to feel all of her, naked, supple and compliant. ‘We have to finish this. But finishing it doesn’t involve tender sharing of our life histories. This isn’t a courtship and it’s important for you to recognise that.’
Sophie felt the hot crawl of colour seep into her cheeks. Of course, he was just being honest. Of course, this was just about the sex they should have had all those years ago. Nothing more. If she could, she would have slid off the bed, looked at him with haughty disdain and told him to clear off, but what her body wanted and needed was calling the shots now.
‘I know that,’ she assured him in a calm voice which was not at all how she was feeling inside. ‘I’m not on the lookout for a courtship! Do you really think that I’m the same idiotic young girl you knew all those years ago, Javier? I’ve grown up! Life has...flattened me in ways you couldn’t begin to understand.’ Right now, she didn’t feel very grown up. Indeed, she felt as unsure and uncertain as a teenager.
But she really wasn’t the same girl she had once been. That much, at least, was true.
Javier frowned. Her words were the words of a cynic altered by circumstance, but the tenor of her voice...the soft tremble of her mouth...seemed to be saying something different, which was, of course, ridiculous.
‘Good,’ he purred. ‘So we understand one another.’
‘A one-night stand,’ she murmured, flattening her hand against his chest as a tingle of unbridled excitement rippled through her. She’d never been a one-night stand kind of girl but a one-night stand with this man would be worth the final demolishing of all her girlhood, or whatever remnants remained in some dark closet at the very back of her mind.
Javier was a little piqued at the speed with which she had accepted the brevity of what they were about to embark on but he was done with thinking.
His erection was so rock-hard it was painful and he took her hand and guided it to his trousers.
‘If you don’t hold me hard,’ he muttered, ‘I’m not going to be able to finish what’s been started the way it should be finished.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean it’s time to stop talking.’
He stood up in one fluid movement and began undressing. She marvelled at his utter lack of self-consciousness. He looked at her and held her fascinated gaze as he removed his trousers, tossing it on the ground, where it joined his shirt, leaving him in his low-slung silk boxers, which did nothing to conceal the evidence of his arousal.
She did this to him!
Hard on the heels of that thought came another, less welcome one.
How many other women had done this to him? How many women had lain on a bed and watched him with the same open-mouthed fascination with which she was now watching him?
He wouldn’t have slept with any of them because they had started something years ago that needed to be finished. He wouldn’t have slept with any of them because he’d been driven to. He would have slept with them because he’d wanted to. The difference felt huge but it was good that she was aware of that, because it would make it easy to walk away when they were finished making love.
It would make it easy to detach.
‘I’m really surprised you never got married,’ she blurted out and he grinned and slipped onto the bed alongside her.
His erection butted against her thigh and then against her stomach as he angled her to face him.
Javier was accustomed to women who couldn’t wait to strip off so that they could show him what was on offer and it was weirdly erotic to be naked and in bed with a woman who was still fully clothed. He couldn’t wait to get those clothes off, yet he was reluctant to undress her, wanting to savour the thrill of anticipation.
Once they’d made love, once he’d had her, it would signal the end and where was the harm in delaying that inevitable moment? They had the night to make love and in the morning, with that itch put to rest for ever, he would leave and contrive never to see her again. His relationship with her company would revert to being just another business deal, which would, he knew, be as successful as all the other business deals he had made over the years.
This didn’t taste of revenge, not the revenge that he had seen as his when her brother had first entered his office on a begging mission.
This was a conclusion and it was one over which he had complete control.
He was exactly where he was meant to be and it felt good.
‘I don’t think marriage and I would make happy bed partners.’ He propped himself up on one elbow and began undressing her. ‘A successful marriage...’ the shirt was off ‘...requires just the sort of commitment...’
Now she was wriggling out of the shorts, leaving just a pair of lacy briefs that matched her bra. Her breasts were full and firm and he could see the dark circle of her nipples through the lace.
‘That I don’t have...’ He breathed unsteadily. ‘Your breasts are driving me crazy, Sophie...’ He bent to circle one nipple through the lacy bra with his mouth and she gasped and arched into his questing mouth.
They hadn’t even got this far first time round. She had been as prim and as chaste as a Victorian maiden and he had held off, curbing his natural instinct to swoop and conquer. He closed his mind off to the reasons why she had been so damned prim and chaste because the only thing that mattered now was the taste of her.
He didn’t unhook the bra. Instead, he pushed it over her breasts and, for a few unbelievably erotic seconds, he just stared. The big, circular discs of her nipples pouted at him. Her breasts were smooth, creamy and soft. He was a teenager again, with a teenager’s crazy, wildly out-of-control hormones, trying hard not to come prematurely.
He almost wanted to laugh in disbelief at the extraordinary reaction of his normally well-behaved body.
He licked the stiffened bud of one nipple and then lost himself in something he had dreamed of, suckling and drawing her nipple into his mouth, flicking his tongue over the tip and just loving her responsive body underneath him.
Without breaking the devastating caress, he slid his hand under the small of her back so that she was arched up, writhing and squirming as he moved from nipple to the soft underside of her breast, nuzzling and tasting.
Driving himself mad.
He had to hold off for a few seconds to catch his breath; he had to grit his teeth and summon up all his willpower to withstand the urge of her hand as she reached up, blindly curving the contour of his cheek, desperate for him to resume what he had been doing.
Without his usual finesse, he clumsily ripped the remainder of her clothes off.
