Emelia felt a weight come off her shoulders. ‘You truly believe I wasn’t unfaithful?’
He held her look for endless seconds. ‘Let’s just let it go,’ he said on a long breath. ‘I don’t want to be reminded of the mistakes I have made in the past. We have to concentrate on the here and now. I want to see you get well again. I feel it is my fault you were almost killed. I cannot forgive myself for driving you away in such an emotionally charged state. I should have insisted we sit down and sort things out like two rational adults. Instead, I let business take precedence, hoping things would settle down by the time I got back.’
Emelia stood looking at him in silence. His gruff admission of guilt stirred her deep inside. She could tell it was unfamiliar territory for him. He didn’t seem the type to readily admit when he was in the wrong.
She breathed in the clean male scent of him as he stood so broodingly before her. He had showered and changed into a polo shirt and casual trousers. His hair was still damp, ink-black and curling at the ends where it needed a trim. She wanted to run her hands through it the way she used to do…She jolted as if he had struck her, staring up at him, her heart beating like a hyperactive hammer.
‘What’s wrong?’he asked, taking her by the shoulders.
She looked up into his face, frowning as she tried to focus on the sliver of memory that had made its way through. As if by their own volition, her hands went to his hair, her fingers playing with the silky strands in slow, measured strokes. She saw his throat move up and down and, glancing at his mouth, she felt another tiny flicker of recognition. Her right hand went to his lips, her fingers tracing over the tense line, again and again until it finally softened, the slight rasp of his evening shadow as she stroked the leanness of his jaw, the only sound, apart from their breathing, in the silence.
‘Emelia—’ his voice was low and deep and scratchy ‘—what have you remembered?’
She looked into his dark eyes. ‘Your hair…I remembered running my fingers through it…lots and lots of times…It’s longer now, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I’ve been too busy to get it cut.’ His grip on her shoulders tightened and his eyes were intense as they held hers. ‘Can you remember anything else?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure…’ Emelia tried to focus again. ‘It was just a fleeting thing. Like a flashback or something.’
His hands slipped down from her shoulders to encircle her wrists, his thumbs absently stroking her. ‘Don’t force it. It will come when it wants to. We have to be patient.’ He let out a rough sounding sigh and added ruefully, ‘I have to be patient.’
Emelia felt the drugging warmth of his touch on the undersides of her wrists. Her blood leapt in her veins and she wondered if he could feel the way he affected her. Her belly was turning into a warm pool of longing, her legs unsteady as his eyes came to hers, holding them for a pulsing moment.
Time seemed to slow and then stand impossibly still.
Without a word, he lifted one of his hands to the curve of her cheek, cupping her face gently, his thumb moving back and forth in a mesmerising touch that seemed to stroke away every single reason why she should ease back out of his embrace. Instead, she found herself stepping closer, her body touching his from chest to thigh, feeling the stirring of his body against her, the hot hard heat of him lighting a fire that she now realised had smouldered within her from the moment she had woken up in the hospital and encountered his dark unreadable gaze.
‘Emelia.’
The way he said her name was her undoing. Low and deep, an urgency in the uttering of the syllables, a need that she could feel resonating in her own body, like a tuning fork being struck too hard, humming, vibrating and quivering with want.
She lifted her mouth to the slow descent of his, her arms snaking around his middle, her breasts pressed up against his hard chest, a feeling, as his lips sealed hers and his hands cradled her head, that she had finally come home…
EMELIA sighed with pleasure as Javier’s mouth urged hers into a heated response. Desire was like a punch, hitting her hard as his tongue deftly searched for hers. He found it, toyed with it, stroking and stabbing, calling it into a dance that mimicked what was to come. Her body felt as if spot fires had been set all through it, the blood raced and thundered in her veins as his kiss grew all the more insistent, all the more hotly sensual. The delicate network of nerves in her core twanged with need, her breasts tightened and tingled where they were pressed against him, and her mouth was slippery and wet and hot with greedy want as it fed off his.
His hands moved from cupping her face to pressing against the small of her back, bringing her hard against him. Emelia felt the outline of his erection; it stirred something deep and primal in her. Her thighs trembled as she felt the slickness of need anointing her. She sent her hands on their own journey of discovery: the hard planes of his back and shoulders, the taut trimness of his waist, the leanness of his hips and the heat and throbbing of his blood rising so proud and insistent from between his legs.
He groaned against her mouth, something unintelligible, a mixture of Spanish, English and desperation as her fingers freed him from his clothing. He stepped out of the pool of his trousers, his shoes thudding to the floor as he succumbed to her touch. She felt another punch of lust in her belly. She wondered if this was how it had been from the start of their relationship. Physical attraction that was unstoppable, not underpinned with feelings other than primal lust.
Javier shrugged himself out of his shirt, tossing it aside before he started to work on hers. He pulled her top away from one of her shoulders, his hot mouth caressing the smooth flesh he had uncovered. Emelia gave herself up to the heady feel of his lips and teeth, her legs quivering with expectation as he continued the sensual journey, removing her clothes and replacing them with his mouth until she was standing in nothing but her lacy knickers.
His eyes were almost completely black as he stood looking at her, his hands on her hips, his touch sending livewires of need to her core.
Emelia’s fingers splayed over his chest, the hard smooth muscles delighting her, the thunder of his heartbeat against her palm. She pressed a hot wet kiss to his throat, moving down, through the rough dark hair that narrowed from his chest to his groin. She went to her knees in front of him and he sprang up against her, hard, hot and swollen. She breathed over him, the air from her mouth making him tense all over. She touched him with the tip of her tongue, a light experimental taste that had him gripping her by the shoulders, his fingers digging in almost painfully as he anchored himself. She stroked her tongue along the satin length of him, feeling each pulsing ridge of his flesh, delighting in the way his breathing intervals shortened, the way the muscles of his abdomen clenched and his fingers dug even deeper into the flesh of her shoulders.
Before she could complete her sensual mission he hauled her back up to her feet, his eyes almost feverish with desire as they locked on hers. ‘Enough of that for now,’ he said. ‘I won’t last.’
Emelia could feel the pressure building inside him and wanted to feel it inside her, to feel him stretching her, filling her, possessing her totally, irrevocably.
His mouth came back to hers, hungrily, feeding off her with a new desperation as his body pulsed with urgency against hers. His hand cupped her feminine mound, a possessive touch that made every hair on her scalp lift in anticipation. The lacy barrier of her knickers only intensified the scalding heat of his touch. She arched up against him, an unspoken need crying out from every pore of her flesh.
He moved her to the bed, guiding her, pushing her, urging her with his mouth still