no.
His expression looked…inviting. Vital. The lips had softened—as if they were illustrating just how kissable they really were. And his eyes were dark—really dark—with that opaque kind of blackness which even someone with Melissa’s scant experience knew meant that he wanted her.
‘Why?’ she whispered, her heart beginning to pound.
‘Don’t let’s play games—not now. You know exactly why.’
‘But you just, just—’
‘Pushed you away?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe I’ve realised what a fool I was being. Or maybe I just needed time for my body to make its protest known. And it is—believe me, it is—very loud and very clear.’ Glancing down with a rueful expression, he shrugged. ‘So come over here, Melissa.’
‘No,’ she said, in a small voice.
‘No? You refuse your King?’
‘You are not my King and, yes, I am refusing you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because…’ Because you’ve already made a fool of me. Because you could break my heart into a million pieces. ‘Because I’m here to discuss my son—and it’s not appropriate.’
‘Not appropriate?’ he mocked.
‘N-no.’
‘You think there’s some kind of social guideline for the bizarre situation in which we find ourselves?’ he demanded, but, interestingly, her words only inflamed his growing desire—because refusal was something which Casimiro never encountered. ‘Then it seems that I must come to you, bella mia.’
Her eyes widened in alarm but she could do nothing about the sudden prickle of her senses as he began to walk towards her with the determination and the stealth of a predator which had just spotted a particularly accessible morsel lying waiting for him.
‘Don’t,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t what? At least try to say it as if you mean it,’ he drawled, his mouth hardening into a smile as he reached for her and pulled her into his arms.
It wasn’t his touch—but the smile which sealed it. This one was hard and somehow grim, but it was a smile all the same and it catapulted her back to bittersweet time when she’d seen a much softer variation. When desire had ruled their lives and there had been no shame in it.
‘But why this…frown?’ Casimiro’s voice had deepened as he smoothed the small crease in her brow, tracing his fingertip down to outline the sudden trembling of her lips.
‘Can’t you guess?’ she whispered.
He read the wariness in her eyes and recognised that she was going to have to be cajoled into submission. That she was cleverer and feistier than he’d given her credit for—and that if he wanted her co-operation, then he was going to have to seduce her. Really seduce her. For there was no surer way of getting a woman to consent to a man’s agenda than by making her a prisoner of her own senses.
Because he needed Melissa Maguire, he realised. Needed her to remind him of the missing fragment of his past and to see what lay in it.
He felt the slow simmer of anticipation as he gazed down at the trembling of her lips.
And she needed him, too. Much, much more.
Again, he traced the outline of her lips with his fingertip, seeing her eyes cloud as she looked up at him. ‘You don’t like me doing this?’ he questioned silkily. ‘And yet minutes ago you were writhing around in my arms—your body silently begging me to take you.’
Melissa swallowed, for the fingertip was now stroking its way along her jaw. It was an almost innocuous touch and yet it had activated an aching kind of hunger which made every nerve ending instantly feel as if it were on fire.
‘I know. But that’s not what we’re here for, Casimiro. We’re supposed to be…to be…’ She wanted to tell him that they needed to talk some more. About Ben. About what was going to happen now. But how could she manage to utter a single word of objection when his lips were now on her neck?
‘Shh.’ He felt her head tip back—like a flower which was too heavy for its stem—giving him access to the smooth expanse of skin.
‘We should…should…’ She wanted to say that they should stop it because that was what she knew she ought to say. Some inner voice of caution telling her that it was a mistake to let him take her as easily as this. But her love-starved body and her idealistic heart had craved this moment too much to be able to resist it and her words drifted away like bubbles as his hand reached down to cup her breast. His thumb began roughly teasing a nipple to acutely sensitive life—and Melissa felt the quick flood of blood to her veins as her body responded to him.
‘Sí, cara—I know we should. And what is more, we’re going to. Right now—just like we both want to.’ The declaration was honeyed, irresistible and undeniable as Casimiro began to ruck up the baggy T-shirt—his hand alighting on the flesh of her inner thigh to where a woman was always soft. But Melissa’s skin was like cool silk, he thought—a tantalising contrast to the molten heat which was beckoning him inexorably upwards.
It had been so long, he realised with a jolt. Like an empty arid waste of time since he had last made love to a woman. His heart had not been in it and neither had his body—but now the hunger and the need had returned like an urgent fire which was consuming him. For one fleeting moment, he questioned his sanity, it having chosen this woman with whom to break his self-imposed curfew. Until he caught the unmistakable scent of her arousal in the air and again felt her restlessness as his fingers trickled enticing little circles over her thigh.
For a moment he tantalised her. Letting his hand linger there—inches away from its sweet destination. Hearing her sharp intake of breath as she waited to see if he would continue. He left it just long enough to make her frantic. To make her flesh crave his touch. And to hear her stumbled little gasp of relief as he plunged his fingers into her molten warmth.
‘Oh!’
‘Oh, but you wanted that, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, yes!’
‘Wanted it badly?’
‘Yes!’
‘How badly?’
She knew what he was doing. Playing power games with her even while his fingers were inflicting such sweet torture. She knew that a stronger woman might have torn herself away. Looked at him with a cold dignity and told him that she would not negotiate anything which revolved around sex.
But Melissa wasn’t feeling strong right then. She felt helpless and torn by conflicting emotions as he lowered his lips to her ear.
‘This badly?’ he questioned as he began to move his fingers intimately against her aroused flesh.
She closed her eyes. Tell him no. Tell him no. But her fists, which had been tightly clenched by her side now unfurled themselves, like daisies in the heat of the sun. ‘Yes. Yes. Oh, please—yes!’
He could feel her pleasure building quickly, inexorably, and in normal circumstances he might have brought her swiftly to orgasm before seeking his own fulfilment. But these were not normal circumstances. Urgently, he looked around. The floor? Or the bed? His mouth hardened. No, definitely not the bed. Take her to bed and he might just be tempted to spend the night with her.
Without warning he picked her up and carried her over to one of the sofas, slowing sliding her to her feet and then tilting her chin up so that she was caught in the cross-fire of his amber eyes. ‘Now undress me,’ he commanded unsteadily.
Melissa wasn’t exactly a novice, but that was what it felt like—until