He reached for her and tugged her into his lap, her thighs straddling him as the limousine raced down the highway. Gabriel gripped her waist as she eased down and pushed him inside her. He gritted his teeth and pressed desperate fingertips into her flesh as he fought for control. She felt amazing. When he was buried fully inside her, he held her still for a moment, then reached for her face. He pulled her forward and captured her lips with his own.
As his tongue slipped inside her mouth and stroked her, he started moving slowly beneath her. Pushing the pink organza of her gown out of the way, he gripped the curve of her rear to guide her hips. At first, their movements were deliciously slow, and he savored every pang of pleasure. As the intensity built, they moved more frantically. Serafia grasped his shoulders and threw her head back, a silent cry in her throat.
“Let go for me,” Gabriel pressed. “I want to watch it happen. You’re so beautiful when you come undone.”
She found her release again. This time, he held her close, not just watching, but feeling the pleasurable tremors running through her body and experiencing them with her. Her inner muscles tightened around him, coaxing his own release. As she collapsed against him, he wrapped his arms around her waist and thrust into her one last time. He buried his face in her neck, growling his climax against her flushed skin.
They sat together, not moving for several minutes. In the stillness, Gabriel was finally able to mentally catch up with everything that had happened in the last few hours.
The moment he had stepped out into the garden after her, he knew things would be different. He wasn’t going to let her keep pulling away from him, and if opening up to her about his own past was what it took, he was willing to do it. She...inspired him in a way no other woman had. It wasn’t just an attraction; it was more. She didn’t want anything from him. Unlike the sharks circling around the Rowling ballroom, Serafia didn’t need his money and she certainly didn’t want to share his spotlight. He felt that she was someone he could trust, especially after she shared her own story with him. Her past was different from his but he could tell that it had scarred her in a similar way. The difference was that he didn’t trust others and she didn’t trust herself. But she should. And he wanted to help her with that.
It made her ever more attractive to him, if that was possible. She wasn’t just the supermodel from his teenage fantasies. She was so much more. He just had to convince her of that.
“The car is slowing down,” Serafia noted. She climbed from his lap and quickly started pulling herself back together.
Gabriel turned and looked out the window. They were approaching the gate to the compound. “We’re home. Time to get dressed so we can go inside and I can take it all off you again.”
Serafia tugged the top of her dress back up over her shoulders and looked at him. “Really?”
How silly she was to doubt him on that point. “Oh yes,” Gabriel said in a tone as serious as he was capable of. “That was just to hold me over until we got home.”
Seven
Serafia woke up the next morning with a small smile on her lips. Opening her eyes, she spied Gabriel’s broad shoulders as he slept beside her. She rolled onto her back with a yawn and reached for her phone to check the time. It was eight-thirty, practically midday for her. She wasn’t surprised, considering that Gabriel hadn’t let her sleep until after three.
Flinging back the sheets, she gently slipped out of the bed so she wouldn’t wake Gabriel. She snatched up a blanket off the foot of the bed, wrapped it around her naked body and walked toward the wall of French doors that led from the master bedroom onto a secluded patio that overlooked the sea.
She stepped out onto the balcony, pulling the door shut behind her. The sun was bright, warming her skin as she took in the remarkable view.
Playa del Onda was built on a sheer cliff overlooking the sea. It was perched at the apex of a crescent-shaped bay lined with sailboats and beaches that would hopefully draw tourists now that the Tantaberras had fallen. The water was an enchanting mix of blues and greens that begged you to dip a toe into it. It reminded her of her hacienda in Barcelona. Her view overlooked the Mediterranean, but the feelings it inspired in her were the same. Peacefulness. The ability to breathe. Relaxation.
She wanted to take a mug of coffee and sit out here the rest of the morning, but that just wasn’t possible. The house was crawling with guards and servants. She couldn’t stroll into the kitchen wearing a blanket and slip back into the prince’s suite without someone noticing. Not that it was necessarily a secret to those who’d traveled back to the beach house with them last night, but she thought it was inappropriate to flaunt it.