“What happened to bring you to maintenance work, Christopher? I know you haven’t always been a maintenance man. Not that there’s something wrong with that.” Raina hastily added. She didn’t want him to think she judged him for his line of work. It was good, honest, hard work, and he was a reliable worker.
He was silent for a moment until she feared that she had offended him.
“You’re right there.” He paused, and she could almost see the wheels turning in his mind as he chose his words carefully. “I wasn’t always a maintenance man. I was recently in a situation where lost a good deal of money.” he said with a tight smile. “So, I needed to regroup and figure out what to do about it. That led me to the Del Mar.”
“I’m so sorry.” Raina said sympathetically. She noted that he had not really told her more than she already knew, but she also sensed he did not want to discuss it, and she respected that.
His information brought closer home her own precarious situation right now. She was at risk of losing everything that she thought of as security. Her job. Her house. Her safety. She longed to know more about him, ask him more questions, but she decided to let it go when she saw that he had said as much as he planned to say.
“It’s alright. Things happen for a reason. Think of it this way, if that hadn’t happened, I would never have met you.”
He turned his eyes to look at her and Raina’s heart jumped. His look held so much, more than he was saying. She licked her lips and found herself lacking something to say. Again, the moment lingered and she felt the heat from his gaze suffuse her body.
To break the tension, she tried making a little joke. “I would think you’d be more excited about rubbing elbows with the famous guests of the hotel than you would about knowing me.” She let out a small laugh.
He gave a small half-smile, acknowledging her effort, but the intensity of his attention on her didn’t lessen.
“Raina McMillan, I’m certain that you’re the most beautiful person—inside as well as outside—that I have ever met.” His voice was deep, and husky, and she heard longing behind it. Longing that shocked and surprised her.
Raina’s lips parted in disbelief. This wasn’t what she had expected.
“Say something?” he coaxed gently.
What could she say?
I think about you all the time?
You look like a Greek God in those jeans and that T-shirt?
Do you want me as much as I want you?
And a million other things she would never permit herself to say.
She looked at Christopher again, knowing her deep brown eyes mirrored his own longing and betrayed her inner most thoughts. But no. She knew they were thoughts she could never permit herself to act on.
Raina, tried to gather her senses, clearing her throat to rebuff him and then … Christopher leaned forward.
9
He kissed her like he was a man dying of thirst in the desert and she was water from the freshest well. His desire was strong, insistent, and overwhelming.
His arms pulled her to him, enveloping her hard against his broad, muscular chest.
Christian kissed her greedily, loving the feel of her full lips on his and her sweet scent. He ran his hands over her face, hardly daring to believe that this moment was real. She tasted sweeter than he could ever have imagined. He wrapped his hand around her waist and pulled her hips closer to him, his lips never leaving hers as he continued to devour her.
After her initial shock, she responded to him in kind, her hands running frantically over her body, as though this was the first and last time she would ever touch a man. Her lips parted beneath his tender onslaught and he felt her melt against him.
Finally, unable to bear the barrier between them as they sat side by side on the couch, he lifted her easily and deposited her on his lap. All the while her eyes were tightly shut.
He devoured her mouth again, and teased her tongue with his. She let out a small groan, which fueled Christian’s own fire, and he felt his erection pushing hard against his jeans.
She pushed herself closer to him, her legs astride his. She was dressed in a short, green-patterned skirt, which now rode up her thighs and revealed her beautiful dark skin, so smooth against his palms.
Christian ran both of his hands along her thighs, all the way to the top, where his fingers came in contact with her silk panties.
Still kissing her and holding on to his sanity by a thin thread, one of Christian’s hand inched its way to her blouse and slowly, he opened her blouse.
Raina shrugged out of it, helping him as he divested her of the expensive garment. He stopped kissing briefly her to admire her breasts, letting out an audible groan before burying his face between them and raining kisses over them.