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.
How long had he been waiting for this moment? It felt like for ever as he gazed down at her rosy, flushed body, his breathing laboured as if he had just completed a marathon.
She was perfect.
Her skin was silky smooth, her breasts pert, inviting all sorts of wicked thoughts, and as his eyes drifted lower...
The soft, downy hair between her legs elicited a groan that sounded decidedly helpless.
So this was what it felt like...
This heady sense of power as she watched him watching her and losing control.
By the time she had married Roger, she had known