‘You mean like this?’ he questioned as he lowered himself down on her.
‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘I mean exactly like that.’
‘Are you going to tell me how best you like it?’
‘I’ll...’ The word came out in a gasp. ‘I’ll leave that to you.’
Alej positioned himself so that his weight was on his elbows, putting him in a perfect position to see the darkness of her sapphire eyes. Her lips were parting and their moist gleam was enticing but still he couldn’t bring himself to kiss her. So instead he ran the tip of his tongue down her neck and then to her chest, before making a moist path along the hollow between her breasts. He could taste the salt of her sweat and she moaned a little as he moved his head to concentrate on one pert mound, teasing the nipple until it was rose-dark and puckered before turning his attention to the other breast.
‘That’s...’
‘What?’ he prompted huskily as the word was bitten off by her teeth digging into her bottom lip.
‘Amazing,’ she breathed.
‘I should hope so.’ He smiled before sliding his tongue over her belly and as he sensed her growing frustration, that somehow pleased him. Restlessly, she tried to lift her hips in impatient demand but he stilled her by teasing light circles over her skin before tiptoeing his fingers down towards the soft bush at her groin. Her little moans had stopped and he could tell she was holding her breath, wanting him to touch her where she most wanted to be touched. For a while he teased her some more by holding off and when his middle finger alighted on her sweet spot and began to strum, she almost shot off the bed, convulsively clutching him by the shoulders. And as her nails dug into his flesh, Alej felt a brief flare of something he couldn’t define. Maybe it was his own little bit of rebellion which made him wonder how she would deal with it if he calmly removed himself from her body and told her he’d changed his mind.
But he couldn’t. Even though she had betrayed him and treated him like dirt. Even though hers had been the first act in a chain of events which was to darken his life for ever, he couldn’t pull back. Even if he were about to die, he couldn’t think of anywhere else he’d rather be right now, with the warm, potent scent of sex in the air, and the only sound their shuddered breathing as he felt himself grow so hard that he wanted to explode. He’d planned to make her come every which way—first with his finger and then with his mouth. He’d planned to further increase his desire by making himself wait before finally thrusting into her molten heat and driving up to the very hilt of her, but he could see now that wasn’t going to be a possibility. He wanted her now.
‘Oh!’
She made a single syllable of disappointment as he withdrew his finger from her sticky heat.
‘Always so impatient,’ he observed.
Her teeth were digging into her lower lip again and now there was anxious query in her sapphire eyes, as if she’d suddenly realised he’d been having second thoughts. ‘Alej?’
He paused for just long enough to make her anxiety real before he relented. ‘Don’t worry, querida,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll be right back. But first I need to get some protection.’
She nodded. ‘Of course.’
As he removed himself from the bed, Emily was overcome with a rush of remorse and shame. What was the matter with her? Was Alej aware that if he hadn’t intervened she would have happily taken him unprotected into her body, desperate to feel his unsheathed hardness inside her? How insane would that have been—if she’d ended up pregnant with Alej’s child? Yet the idea didn’t fill her with the horror it surely should have done. Instead she got a frighteningly vivid image of herself cradling a black-haired baby in her arms and she experienced a pang of something which felt like wistfulness. Or regret.
It was only when he turned his back on her to dig into the pocket of his suit trousers that she noticed the scar which snaked across his back—a livid zigzag, dark red and angry against the olive skin. It was the only disfigurement on an otherwise perfect physique but it was big enough to make her gasp out loud.
He must have heard her because he turned around—the glint of the foil condom matching the sudden forbidding glint of his eyes.
‘Oh, Alej. Whatever happened to your back?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t want to talk about it. Especially not right now.’
‘But it’s—’
‘I said, I don’t want to talk about it. Do you want me to repeat it in Spanish?’
The harsh note of finality in his voice was deterrent enough, but by then he was back beside her and suddenly the scar was forgotten. Everything was forgotten and her attention was inevitably drawn to other things as he opened the foil with exaggerated care before stroking it onto the erection which was nudging hard against his belly. A wave of something like shyness washed over her as she saw how aroused he was and Emily’s heart warred with her mind about what it was she was expecting from this. Her body had certainly been brought to life and already she felt poised on an erotic knife-edge, where the slightest thing would send her hurtling over the edge. But something was missing. Something she couldn’t put her finger on.
‘Now,’ murmured Alejandro as he moved over her and she could feel his hardness pressing against her. ‘Where were we?’
She was running her fingertips hungrily over his bare back, her fingertips encountering the raised surface of the zigzagging scar for the first time. But he shifted his position slightly and she said nothing more about the disfigurement, concentrating instead on his husky question. ‘I’m not...sure,’ she answered.
‘Then how about I remind you, Princesa?’
It was a long time since he’d called her that but this time the nickname was underpinned with a harshness which had never been there before, which in any other circumstance might have made Emily think twice about what was about to happen. But it was already too late. He was licking her breasts and her blood was pulsing warm and thick as she felt the experienced flick of his fingers against her clitoris. She heard him murmur his approval and then her thighs were spreading open as if no power in the world could stop them and he was entering her. He was pushing deep inside the slickness which awaited him and filling her completely. Emily moaned and instantly he stilled, his eyes narrowed in question.
‘It’s good?’
Wordlessly, she nodded. Of course it was. It was better than good. Better than anything she’d ever experienced—but it was a shock, too. Alejandro had always been big—not that she had anyone to compare him to, of course—but their first time together had been so loaded with emotion that she hadn’t had time to appreciate it properly in the way she could now. But she couldn’t tell him that. She didn’t want to stir up bad feelings about the past and neither did she want to confess to another possibility—that her body had become unaccommodating and tight in all the intervening years, because it had been so starved of pleasure.
So she put her hands on his shoulders and sucked in a deep breath. ‘Is it good for you, too?’
‘Oh, Emily. You have no idea,’ he groaned in response. ‘Especially when you play the part of breathless little innocent so effectively. Aren’t you a little old to be cast in the role of disingenuous virgin?’
For a moment she scented more danger. He thought she was playing games, or acting a part? That this was just a cynical approach she was adopting to inject a little excitement into their lovemaking? She wanted to tell him the truth—that this was so beautiful that deep down she did feel as innocent as the first time she’d lain with him. But she guessed he would dismiss such an idealistic sentiment and, anyway, her thoughts were blotted out by his next potent thrust.
At