groin throbbed with a relentless beat as he walked over to her and slid his arms around her waist, lifting aside the still-damp curtain of dark hair to plant a lingering kiss at the base of her neck.
‘Good swim?’ he murmured.
‘Fifty lengths—and all I had to do was take the elevator.’
‘That’s the beauty of having a pool in the basement.’
‘Yes. Rafe,’ she added indistinctly as he cupped his hands over her breasts and began to massage them through the cotton of her shirt. ‘You do realise I’m standing in front of the window?’
‘I do. And you’re nineteen floors up.’
‘Somebody might have a pair of binoculars.’
‘The glass is mirror-coated,’ he said, moving one hand down. ‘Which means nobody gets to see—although, if it turns you on, you can always pretend someone is watching me slide my hand down between your legs and easing you open like this.’
‘You are...’ she gasped as he slipped his finger inside her ‘...incorrigible.’
‘Am I?’ He moved his finger against her, loving the way her head fell helplessly back against him, the scent of her sex heavy in the air as he brought her to a shuddering climax right where she stood. He felt the buckling of her knees as she slumped back against him and thought about carrying her over to the sofa. But she was nothing if not surprising because she quickly gained her equilibrium and turned around, her face flushed and a small smile on her lips as she ran the flat of her palm experimentally over his groin.
‘Oh,’ she said, digging her teeth into her bottom lip almost shyly as she explored the hard and throbbing ridge covered by the denim of his jeans. ‘I see. You are a very excitable man, aren’t you, Rafe Carter?’
He gave a low and exultant laugh. ‘Is that what I am?’
‘Among other things.’
The rasp of his zip sliding down was the only sound other than his ragged breathing as she sank to her knees in front of him and teased him with her fingers, before putting the moist tip against her lips.
‘Sophie,’ he groaned as her tongue gave a playful lick.
Sophie lowered her lips onto him, loving the sensation of sucking this most intimate part of him. She liked having the silken thickness of him deep in her mouth, just as she liked tasting that first salty bead of moisture which showed he was close to climax. He’d taught her so much. About her body. About his. Sometimes she wished she could grab hold of time and freeze it because the clock was ticking down towards Christmas and once the holiday was over, she’d be far away from here. From him.
But her thoughts were forgotten as his hands clamped around her head and his fingers dug into her scalp as his excitement grew. She could feel him tense and hear that distinctive choking sound he made, just as he flooded her mouth and she drank him in.
She opened her eyes and looked up to find him staring at her and she slid her tongue slowly over her lips, which were still sticky with his salty essence. His eyes darkened but his hands were gentle as he pulled her to her feet and led her into the huge wet room adjoining his bedroom, where he turned on the warm jets of the shower.
‘Where do you want to go for lunch?’ he questioned, slicking thick soapy foam over her body.
‘I’d love to go to that lovely restaurant in Gramercy again.’
‘Then that’s where we’ll go.’
‘Won’t you need to book?’
His smile was wolfish as he sluiced suds from her skin, paying specially close attention to her thrusting nipples. ‘I never need to book.’
Overlooking a snowy courtyard garden, the restaurant was exquisite and afterwards they went to an art gallery in Chelsea where a friend of Rafe’s was exhibiting his sculptures. Sophie drank champagne and chatted with the artist and decided she liked New York, a city where it was possible to blend in and lose yourself. She liked it nearly as much as Poonbarra. Her heart missed a beat. The two places which had felt most like home had one thing in common.
Him.
She glanced across the gallery, where Rafe was standing studying a sculpture, his thumb rubbing thoughtfully at his chin while close by a striking-looking blonde in a mulberry-coloured velvet coat was trying to catch his eye.
Sophie thought about how it would be once she had returned to Isolaverde. That one day soon, this blonde—or someone like her—wouldn’t just be chatting to Rafe about a marble figure, but would be accompanying him back to his gorgeous penthouse, to do to him what Sophie had been doing earlier. A sickening image sprang to her mind—of somebody else unzipping his jeans. Somebody else taking him so intimately into her mouth...
Sophie’s heart clenched as she put her glass down on the tray of a passing waitress and waited for the feeling to pass. But these pangs of longing and possession had been getting more and more frequent as the days had ticked by. Was it sexual jealousy she was experiencing, or something else? Something she was too scared to acknowledge because it was as futile as expecting the sun to rise at midnight. That her feelings for Rafe were becoming more complicated than either of them would ever have anticipated.
Far more than he would ever have wanted.
She wondered if he’d noticed her attitude towards him softening, or whether she’d managed successfully to hide her growing feelings. She suspected he would push her away if he got an inkling she’d started to care for him in a way he had warned her against, right from the start.
She tried to pinpoint when her attitude had slid from lust into tenderness and then into a wistful longing for a future which could never be hers. Was it when he’d protected her from the press and continued to protect her, here in his adopted city? Or when he’d made love to her and shown her that sex could be about tenderness as well as hot, hard passion? She swallowed.
No. She knew exactly when it had been. When he’d opened up his heart and told her about the baby he’d lost and she’d seen the raw pain on his face and heard the bitter heartbreak in his voice. In that moment he had revealed a vulnerability she’d never associated with a man like him, and that had changed everything. And she didn’t want it to change.
Because she couldn’t afford to fall in love with Rafe Carter.
* * *
On Christmas morning, Sophie woke first—slipping from the bed and disappearing into one of the dressing rooms before starting to busy herself in the kitchen. She gave a smile of satisfaction as she cracked the first eggshell against the side of the bowl. Six months ago and she hadn’t known one end of a frying pan from the other and now she made the best omelette in Manhattan. Well, that was what Rafe said. She was humming beneath her breath when he came out of the bedroom in just a pair of boxers, the hand which had been raking back his mussed hair suddenly stilling.
He ran his gaze over her. ‘Sweet heaven. What’s this?’
She did a twirl. ‘You don’t like it?’
Rafe felt a shaft of lust arrowing down to his groin. She was like every male fantasy come to life and standing in front of him, wearing a short baby-doll nightdress in scarlet silk, trimmed with fake white fur. The tiny matching knickers—which showed as she moved—were the same bright red and a Santa hat was crammed down over her dark hair. ‘Santa, baby,’ he murmured. ‘Come here.’
‘It’s my Christmas present to you,’ she said, walking over to loop her arms around his neck. ‘Because I couldn’t think what else to get you. The man who has everything.’
‘Best gift I’ve ever had,’ he said unevenly. ‘Which I’m now about to unwrap.’
The eggs were cold by the time they got around to eating them and afterwards they walked through the snow to Central Park, going by Grand Army Plaza and ending up in Bryant Park. Sophie’s cheeks were glowing