“Please, mi hermosa. Do not do this.” He never pleaded, but right now it was his job to equalize things between them.
And if that required him swallowing a tiny bite of his Spanish pride, so be it.
Finally, her head tilted up, her expressive gray eyes clouded with emotion. “Why?”
“You can ask that after last night?” He paused, letting his words sink in. “And this morning?”
“That’s sex. You can get it elsewhere. So can I.”
Chance would be a fine thing. As far as Basilio’s investigators could tell, the woman had been celibate since her last disastrous relationship five years previous.
“Not that kind of sex. Not the mind-blowing, expectation-smashing joining of two bodies.” He moved in on her, pressing her back against her door, watching for denial that never came. “What we experience together is something special.”
“For you?” she demanded with clear disbelief.
“Sí. Do not doubt it.”
Miranda shook her head, her golden-brown hair rubbing against the door. He kissed her before she could say something they would both regret, like that he should leave. Which he would do if she requested.
After her recount of what had happened with Carlos, Basilio refused to do anything that might spark similar fear in her.
But Miranda did not fight the kiss, or even refuse to respond. Her mouth went soft against his with a sound that was very much like surrender. Relief all out of proportion for the situation shot through him.
Basilio reached down to where she held the keys in her hand and gently took them. Without breaking the kiss, he found the proper key for the locks through trial and error, and finally the door swung open behind her.
Miranda stumbled backward and he followed, closing the door behind them. The way to her room was strewn with discarded clothes as they kissed with a passion so much bigger than what he felt with other women. He hadn’t been blowing smoke up her skirt when he said this kind of sex was special for him; it was entirely outside his undeniably sufficient experience.
He’d had enough women in his bed to know that finding one so compatible, so combustible, was extraordinary. So rare, he’d never actually coupled with a woman he was so instantly into, or one whose kiss could have him so close to coming without even a touch to his sex.
By the time they reached the bedroom, Miranda was down to another sexy set of lingerie and he was completely nude.
“As tantalizing as these are, there is no place for any covering between us when we reach that bed.” He pointed to the full-size bed stacked high with colorful pillows and covered in a spread that looked like it might have come from India.
She measured him with her gray gaze. “Then maybe you should take them off.”
He didn’t need a second invitation, reaching out to do exactly as she suggested. In a matter of seconds the final bits of clothing were lying on the floor, and nothing hindered his gaze from consuming her elegant curves, the way her nipples were already taut and flushed with need, the glistening patch of curls at the apex of her thighs.
“You are truly beautiful.”
“English tonight?”
“Probably not for long.” She made him lose his ability to communicate in anything but the most primitive.
A shadow seemed to lift from her, as if his admission had given her some kind of reassurance. He was glad he had allowed truth to speak in that case.
Her bore her back to the bed, her soft thighs a cradle for his hard muscles, her hands coming up to grip the back of his head.
Their kiss went incendiary and the hours that followed were even better than the night before. What sleep they got, they spent wrapped in each other. There was really no choice, not in the double bed that wasn’t really meant for two people.
Especially when one of them was six foot four and broad-shouldered, and showed a heretofore unknown tendency to cuddle.
In the middle of the night, he woke to her touching him and was so damn turned on by her initiating their lovemaking that he didn’t even think of the condom until after he’d climaxed in her tight, wet heat.
He didn’t actually think of it until she started swearing, which so far he’d never heard her do, and then pounding on his shoulder. “Move. Get off me. We forgot the condom! I can’t believe this. It’s not happening. We forgot the condom.”
Despite the urgency in her tone, he was careful as he withdrew from her body. Basilio rolled to his side, but didn’t jump from the bed and held her wrist when it was clear that was what she wanted to do. “Don’t have a fit.”
She yanked her arm away and sat up, turning on the light. “How can you say that? We just had unprotected sex. I’ve never even asked to see test results from you. I can’t believe I didn’t. Kayla keeps reminding me I need to be safe, but I never thought it would come up. I wasn’t even dating anyone!”
“Calm down, bella. You are fine. We are fine. I can show you the results of my latest physical.” He counted it a win that she’d stayed in the bed.
“How long ago was that? More important, how many women? Did you have sex with them without protection?” The questions came fast and furious, her lovely gray eyes wild.
“No. Never before. You have nothing to concern yourself with.”
But she was freaking out, her body strung like a bow, tension emanating off her in stress-filled waves. Her pupils were blown with shock, not pleasure. Unfortunately.
“Of course I’m going to concern myself. I can’t believe I never asked to see anything before. What’s the matter with me?” she practically shrieked. “I totally fail at this modern woman reveling in her independence thing.”
He would have laughed if she hadn’t said the last with such a sense of despondency. “You are getting hysterical for no reason.”
“I’m not hysterical!” She shot him the glare of death. “How can you say that? I don’t get hysterical.”
Okay. Sure. “So, I can see.”
“Don’t patronize me.” She smacked the bed for emphasis, the sheet covering her breasts slipping down.
He reached out and readjusted the bedding, tugging it up and tucking it around her. “You must stop this spiraling. Trust me, you have nothing to fear from me.”
“What about pregnancy? What about that?”
Alarm coursed through him. “You’re not on birth control?” What woman today did not protect herself from unplanned pregnancies?
Maybe a celibate one. He’d read the report; he should have paid attention to what that meant.
“No! I told you, I suck at this!”
“The only kind of sucking you do is very pleasurable and wholly positive.”
“This is not a joke!” She was spiraling again.
“Of course not.” He reached out, going to touch her again, relieved when she didn’t pull away this time. He put his hand against her neck and let it slide down to cup her shoulder. “There is the morning-after pill.”
“Yes. Right. Yes. Where do I get that?” She looked around wildly, like she expected to find one lying on the nightstand or dresser.
He bit back another smile. “At the pharmacy, I would imagine.”
“Oh, right. Of course.” She reached over and grabbed her phone off the bedside table. Soon she was lost to whatever she was reading on the screen. “It says here for the one I don’t need a prescription for, I’ve got three days. That’s good, right?”
“Sí, esta bien.”
“But it also says that even the one that is good for up to five days doesn’t work if I’m already ovulating. What if I am?”
“Do not assume the worst.” He tried to see what she was reading on her phone, but the text was too tiny. “People try for years to get pregnant and don’t manage it. There’s no reason to think one transgression is going to result in you carrying my child.”
The thought of it, though? Was more alluring than alarming.
Ridiculous.
Basilio squashed that train of thought fast. While he knew a great deal more about Miranda than she realized, courtesy of the report he’d had compiled on her, they’d only met the day before. Great sex did not equate to a relationship solid enough to build a family on.
If he’d learned nothing else from his father’s serial infidelity, Basilio knew that to be true.
“It says here... Oh, my goodness... I’m right in the middle of when I should be ovulating.” She looked at him with stricken eyes. “I’m not ready to be a mom. I don’t know if I ever will be.”
A woman who dedicated her life to children didn’t want any of her own? How was that possible? “Stop borrowing trouble. Please. We will go to the pharmacy as soon as it opens in the morning if that will make you feel better.”
“But what good will it do? I’ve probably already ovulated.”
“We’ll call the doctor. Maybe he will have a solution.”
“My doctor is a woman.”
“She, then.”
“Okay, okay, we’ll have to wait for tomorrow.” But she didn’t sound like she was going to survive without losing it during the interim.
“Miranda, mi hermosa.” He waited for her to acknowledge him.
When she didn’t, seeming to be lost in a world of potential unplanned pregnancies, he got up from the bed. She still didn’t act like she even realized he was still in the room, so he went into her bathroom, where there was thankfully a surprisingly large tub. The apartment complex was old and the porcelain tub looked original to the building, deeper and slightly wider than those he’d seen in more modern dwellings of the same caliber.
Basilio ran a bath, pouring some salts into the water from a stash he’d found under the sink. When he went back into the bedroom, Miranda was still sitting on the bed, her slightly out of focus expression filled with dismay.
“I ran you a bath.”