‘I’ve been thinking about this too.’
Her eyes squeezed tight as he slid his tongue inside, following the full curve of her lush lips before plunging in deeper. Luiz struggled to soften the bruising pressure; he wanted her so much that every nerve in his body ached.
‘Oh, my God, Luiz!’ she gasped when the kiss stopped.
He looked deep into her eyes and said thickly, ‘You trust me to make this good for you.’
She didn’t have to think about it. ‘Totally,’ she sighed.
The complete lack of reservation in her eyes touched Luiz in a place that no one had reached before. He raised himself over her, his dark eyes sliding over her slim, pale body, and his hand trembled as he brushed her hair back from her brow.
The tenderness brought tears to her eyes. Simultaneously the dark passion in his face sent a shiver of anticipation down her spine. Nell’s spine arched as he kissed his way slowly down her body, his tongue and lips sending her spinning out of control.
Her breath came in hoarse gasps as his attention shifted to more intimate areas. The skilful erotic caresses of his hands and lips sent her close to the fulfilment her body and soul craved, and then each time he drew back, until finally as she felt her throbbing body was on the brink of explosion he slid into her, shockingly, beautifully filling her, merging, becoming one with her.
She wrapped her hips across his and clung as he began to move. When he felt the first ripples of her climax Luiz closed his eyes, every muscle and sinew and nerve ending in his body screaming for release as he heard her hoarse cry and felt her come quick and hard, her soft wetness tightening rhythmically around him.
As he looked into her shocked, passion-glazed eyes he said thickly, ‘Once more with feeling, querida.’ And he began to move slowly, rocking his hips into her, touching her, lighting a slow-burning fuse with his body.
Luiz and the fuse exploded in unison and for a long, breathless moment Nell lost all sense of self; they were one.
‘That was…perfect.’
‘Perfect,’ Luiz echoed, sounding, she thought sleepily, as shaken as she felt.
After the second time they made love Luiz fell into a deep sleep of total exhaustion with Nell curled up in his arms.
Sleep eluded her. Her overactive mind just wouldn’t switch off and, anyway, who wanted to sleep when she could look at Luiz?
She drew back a little, pushing her head into the pillow and pushing her hair back from her face so that she could watch him sleep. She was mesmerised by his face. Emotion thickened the aching blockage in her throat as she stared, committing each strong angle and intriguing plane to memory. She was fascinated by every little detail: his fingers that had moved so sensitively over her skin; the sleek, powerful muscles of his shoulders, the frosty network of scars on his chest hidden by the swirls of dark hair. Would she ever know how he came by them?
He shifted restlessly in his sleep of exhaustion, murmuring something in Spanish, and Nell moved closer, throwing her hip across his as she moulded her body to his hard contours and whispered soothingly, her lips brushing his ear, ‘Go to sleep, lover.’
She felt some of the tension that bunched Luiz’s muscles relax as if at some subconscious level he had registered her whispered words.
There was a sense of release in not needing to hide her feelings as she stroked his hair from his brow. Then, without warning, his eyes opened. Her arm extended in a graceful arc, Nell froze as he seemed to look straight at her, but Nell knew he was nine parts asleep.
‘Rosa.’
He said the one word, then closed his eyes, oblivious to the woman who lay rigid with silent tears of humiliation and anguish spilling from her eyes.
One word could change so much.
Had he been thinking of his dead wife while he made love to her? Nell’s stomach clenched with revulsion at the thought.
She lifted his arm from her waist and rolled out from under it, pulling herself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. She lifted a hand to her trembling lips and doubted she would ever be able to rid herself of the bitter metallic taste of humiliation in her mouth.
She had felt beautiful and special and comfortable in her own skin with him—able, he had convinced her, to be herself.
All that sweet, terrifying tenderness and now this. It was like seeing heaven and plunging back to a cold, stony earth.
She sniffed and, pulling a sheet off the bed, wrapped it around her shoulders. Her quivering lips firmed. There was no way she could compete with a ghost, she didn’t want to! Her mistake had been thinking—a classic case of seeing what you wanted—that it had been more than just sex for Luiz.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NELL checked the baby monitor was switched on and sat back down to read her book, the same page for the tenth time and it still hadn’t sunk in. The exploits of her favourite female detective could not distract her from the introspective gloom of her own reflections. Any more than her brother and sister-in-law’s boast that her nephew never woke once he was put down to sleep had saved her from having to go up and down the stairs four times.