Hot Summer Flings: A Spanish Awakening / The Italian Next Door... / Interview with the Daredevil. Nicola Marsh
her breathing still all over the place, turned her head on the pillow. Emilio lay beside her on his back, one arm curved above his head. His eyes were closed and he was breathing deeply; his chest rose and fell in sync with each shallow breath. Megan rested her cheek in the crook of her arm, her expression rapt as she followed the play of muscles sliding below the golden glistening surface.
Everything about him fascinated her.
She reached out a hand to touch his skin and drew back. So far he hadn’t said a word. Was that normal? Should she be bothered by his silence?
How crazy was this? Minutes earlier they had been intimate in a way that should have shocked her but hadn’t; now she was scared of touching him in case it was the wrong thing.
Megan chewed her lower lip fretfully as the doubts crowded in. Had he fallen asleep?
Perhaps he would expect to find her dressed or even gone when he woke up? The instincts that had kicked in earlier had definitely switched off.
It was ironic—when she might have expected to feel some uncertainty there had been none, except for that brief moment when she was sure that they were simply not compatible in a purely dimensional sense—she had been very pleased to be proved wrong.
Beautifully wrong!
She might no longer be a virtuous virgin, but she still had no clue how a person was meant to behave post-lovemaking.
She glanced around the unfamiliar bedroom with the vast bed and modern art on the walls almost guiltily, as though she were a voyeur intruding on a scene in someone else’s life.
But this wasn’t happening to someone else, it was happening to her. Had happened.
No wonder it seemed surreal. I spent the morning in bed with Emilio Rios—now how weird did that sound? Actually, not so weird at all. A person, it seemed, could adapt awfully quickly to some things.
But she couldn’t allow herself to lose sight of the fact that for Emilio this was just sex. While in one sense his pragmatic approach to his physical needs and appetites shocked Megan, in another way she did kind of admire his painful honesty.
It would never be possible for her to match his honesty, she thought, refusing to acknowledge the lonely ache in her heart—time enough for that later. To him she was a one-night or any rate one-morning stand, so wanting more was a stupid waste of time.
She had always wanted more from him. God, it really did stink when your first crush turned out to be your last!
She had always been his for the taking; he just hadn’t felt the urge to reach before today. Megan blinked away the hot tears burning behind her eyes and gave a fierce frown as she told herself that for once in her life she would not think about tomorrow.
Her eyes made a covetous sweep of his body. A natural athlete’s body, long and lean, it was a sculpted, breathing miracle of taut muscles, hard bone and glistening, satiny bronzed skin. A tiny sigh of appreciation left her lips; he really was beautiful!
And he had done beautiful things to her.
And tomorrow he would be doing them to someone else.
The pucker between her arched brows smoothed out as she firmly pushed away the thought. She swallowed, refusing to acknowledge the ache in her throat—why spoil a perfect moment?
She rolled onto her side, watching the rise and fall of his chest as Emilio sucked air deep into his lungs through flared nostrils. There was not the slightest suggestion of softness in any part of his lean, hard body. She exhaled a shaky sigh and thought, This is perfect.
He was perfect.
As she watched him, need unfurled from the tight knot of nameless emotions locked in her chest. She had imagined she was in love with him, but the man she had fallen for had never really existed. She had been infatuated with a fantasy.
She had seen the real Emilio Rios the night he had ripped her character to shreds, not a kind man, but dangerous and capable, as she knew to her cost, of being cruel.
She tried to work out the attraction. She knew it wasn’t just his amazing face or athlete’s body. Emilio projected a raw power, an intensity that drew her like a moth to a flame.
Scratch the surface of polished sophistication he was famed for and there was something primitive, a danger that should logically have made her run. Instead Megan found his earthy magnetism impossible to resist.
Throat thick with emotion that shone in her amber eyes, she responded to the compelling need to touch him. She reached out, tangling her fingers in the light fuzz of hair on his chest before trailing her fingers slowly in the direction of his flat, muscle-ridged belly. She had never imagined feeling this greedy fascination with a man’s body, but she was utterly enthralled by everything, from the texture of his skin to the faint quiver of muscles just under the satiny surface she stroked.
The dark fan of his ebony lashes lifted slowly from the sharp angle of his cheekbones.
Megan held her breath.
Emilio turned his head.
Their eyes connected, liquid brown on topaz.
She could not read the expression in his dark eyes but she could feel the waves of strong emotion rolling off him, not something she had anticipated.
Neither had she anticipated the wave of paralysing shyness, not after the intimacies they had just shared and the total lack of inhibition she had displayed. She lay there aware of every imperfection, feeling horribly exposed and vulnerable, wishing with every ounce of her being that she could recapture the liberating pleasure in her own body she had experienced while they had been making love.
Emilio’s stare had not wavered from her face. The intensity of his unblinking regard was starting to be unsettling, but suddenly overwhelmingly conscious of her nakedness Megan reached down for a sheet to cover herself.
The next seconds were a blur. One moment she was clumsily attempting to grab the sheet, the next her hands were pinioned above her head.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I should get dressed.’ It was pretty hard to hit a casual note, but Megan thought she did quite well given the circumstances. ‘I’m sure you have things to do, a busy schedule, and I should touch base with D—’
‘You should stop babbling.’
‘I’m not babbling,’ she protested.
His broad shoulders lifted fractionally. ‘All right, talking nonsense.’ His dark eyes dropped from her face, sliding slowly down her body.
The insolent, sexually overt scrutiny made her stomach muscles twist in excitement.
‘I do have things to do.’ His eyes glittered as he bared his white teeth in a fierce smile. ‘All of them include you, and clothes are not involved. Your body pleases me. I find it utterly and totally exquisite. You will not hide it from me. You should be proud of it and enjoy it as much as I intend to.’
The explosive quality in his fierce stare made her shiver, then cry out when without warning he pressed his face against her breasts, the stubble on his chin abrading the smooth, sensitive skin, but not in a bad way.
He thinks I’m beautiful.
Her breath came in a series of shallow gasps as, eyes half closed, she watched through heavy eyelids his dark head against her body, her back arching as his tongue began to whip slowly across the peaks of her breasts, still painfully sensitised from their recent lovemaking.
When he loosed her hands to cup one quivering peak she tangled her fingers in his dark hair, pushing through the ebony strands still damp from their recent exertions to cradle his skull and hold him against her.
They stayed in his hair when he lifted his head and grinned down at her.
‘Also there is no point trying to hide from me in a bed this