“Then you’ve been in the hot tub all this time?”
A deep chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Now if that were true, I’d be shriveled up like a prune. Believe me, I’m not.”
Again she wanted to look below the water’s depths, find a break in the bubbles, find his tattoo and the territory beneath. But she forced her eyes to remain on his face. “How long have you been home?”
He dropped his arms and stroked one hand across his chest. Joanna couldn’t help but imagine her own hand there. “Long enough to take a quick swim then get in here. I stayed at the hospital until she said goodbye to her daughter.”
“Said goodbye?”
“She’s putting the baby up for adoption.”
Joanna’s heart began to ache with that knowledge. Being without Joseph for the past few months had been devastating, and only a temporary situation. She couldn’t begin to imagine how heartbreaking it would be to give up a child permanently. “I’m sure that was a difficult decision,” she said with a sigh.
“Yeah, but for the best. She wants to continue with school. She doesn’t have any money since her parents kicked her out, but she’s got a relative willing to take her in, as long as it’s only her and not a child.”
“I hope they find a nice family for the baby.”
“I hope so, too. It’s tough not being wanted.”
How odd that he would say such a thing since he’d spoken so fondly of his mother. How strange that he sounded so sad. “I wouldn’t know.” At least not from a parental standpoint. On the other hand, she knew quite well how it felt not to be wanted by a husband. “Sounds like you might have had some experience with that.”
His sudden slight shift was the only thing that indicated his discomfort. “Oh, my mother wanted me, all right, until she married my stepfather.”
“You never mentioned him before.”
“I did. The colonel.”
“The man your mother worked for?”
“Yeah. And after they married, they sent me away to boarding school. Expected me to conform, be what they wanted me to be, in his case, white. It wouldn’t do for a decorated military man to have a poor multiracial brat running around, now, would it?”
The venom in his tone caused Joanna to flinch. “But his last name was Madrid.”
“No. It was Burlington. He adopted me, but I used my own father’s name in med school. I had it legally changed back after the colonel’s estate was settled.”
“I’m sorry that you had to live like that.”
“Well, at least I got all this in the deal.” He made a sweeping gesture around the area. “He left all his money to me, his ranch, which I sold the first chance I got. I didn’t want to hang on to those memories.”
Again he had thrown her off balance with his revelations. He was more an enigma now than ever.
The strap on Joanna’s swimsuit slipped off her shoulder. When she started to push it up, he said, “Leave it.”
For some reason she did, even though the falling strap pulled the neckline of the suit lower, exposing the top of her breast.
“Get in, Joanna,” he commanded in a deep, drugging voice. “I won’t bite. Much.” He topped off the request with a wicked grin.
Joanna suspected it would take more energy than she owned to resist his pull. But she didn’t have the desire to fight him any longer, at least at the moment. She could do this, keep her distance, remain focused and maintain a firm grip on reality.
Tossing her towel aside, she slipped into the welcoming water across from Rio. Her fair skin was cloaked in a translucent blue because of the tinted light. But Rio was dark and dangerous, the proverbial calm before the storm.
Tipping her head back, Joanna closed her eyes and tried to block out Rio’s image.
A hand caught her wrist, prompting her eyes to snap open and her pulse to quicken. Slowly he pulled her forward then turned her until she came to rest between his thighs, her back to his chest.
“Relax,” he whispered. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Oh, but he could, and quite sufficiently, at least from an emotional perspective. She couldn’t think about that now, or worry about it, because her attention was drawn to something against her lower back. She didn’t have to guess what that something was.
He rested his lips against her bare shoulder then worked his way up her neck. She shuddered at the sensations, trembled when he slipped the other strap down. He streaked his knuckles back and forth over the rise of her breasts. She wanted him to keep going, ached for him to keep going, but he didn’t.
“Take it off,” he murmured. “You’ll feel better.”
Abandoning good sense, Joanna slipped her arms out of the straps and tugged the bodice down, baring her breasts completely to his eyes, his hands. Yet he still didn’t touch her, at least not intimately.
He did wrap his arms around her shoulders, his hands clasped together above her breasts. Joanna marveled at the contrasting colors of their skin—hers almost alabaster white, his the color of warm chocolate. Marveled at her sudden lack of inhibition, her indescribable need for his touch.
Her legs floated upward and so, it seemed, did her whole being. She waited for Rio to remove her suit completely but when he didn’t, she worked it down and away and watched as it twisted into the current.
“Now that’s more like it,” he said. “Don’t you feel a sense of freedom?”
She did, and she also felt light-headed, uncontrolled and needy.
She looked back at him. His golden earring twinkled, his eyes a near match in color. His strong, sharp features delineated by the glow of the light bouncing from the water’s surface mesmerized her, as did his lips outlined by the shadow of evening whiskers playing over his jaw.
He watched her for a long moment, waited for something but she wasn’t sure what. He made no move to touch her intimately yet his eyes never left hers.
Unable to stand the suspense any longer, she palmed his jaw and brought his mouth to hers. He kissed her deeply, deliberately, with a steady glide of his tongue in a slow, seductive foray, back and forth until she lost all sense of time or place or purpose. A slight moan climbed up her throat and she tried to stop its progress. Honestly she did, but she couldn’t. She also couldn’t halt the cravings, the way he held her prisoner with his capable mouth. She felt the glide of his erection against her back as he pulled her closer to him, his hips lifting on the current. It was the most erotic moment she had ever experienced, knowing how close she was to giving him everything, finally acknowledging a sensual facet of herself that she had long ago learned to deny.
Yet when his hand drifted to her breast, Joanna tensed, a knee-jerk reaction she couldn’t control.
He broke the kiss and rubbed his thumb over her lip. “Do you want this, Joanna?”
She tucked her head beneath his chin, turning her face into his neck, away from his questioning gaze. “Yes.”
She sensed he would treat her with consideration and care, with skill. And he did, with a light stroke on one nipple, then the other. She melted against him and closed her eyes, immersed herself in his touch, the ripples of water flowing over her.
The night wrapped around her like a comforting mantle, as comforting as Rio’s embrace, his sleek touch. Something inside Joanna broke away. Her caution, her concerns. All that mattered was him, the feelings he stirred within her, the undeniable passion, the yearning that was so foreign yet so welcome.
As if she’d totally detached herself from the lonely, celibate shell her life had been to