‘Say something,’ she murmured.
The soft sound of her voice brought his head round to look at her. She was lying there beside him with her cheek resting on her forearm and gazing at him through shy, dark, vulnerable eyes. His heart pitched and rolled. She looked gloriously, stunningly, achingly lovely with her hair spreading out across the pillow and her face wearing that satiated bloom.
‘I was your first lover.’ It was the only thing rattling around his head that was fit to be said.
The bloom deepened, her eyelashes flickered down in a bid to hide away from that soul-blazing truth. But not for long; not this woman who had so much spirit; she wasn’t going to let a bit of shy self-consciousness beat her. So the lashes rose up again, gave him a view of deep green, slightly mocking, eyes packed full of the new knowledge he had given to her. ‘Thank you for making it such a memorable experience,’ she said softly, and smiled.
That smile…He felt it reach right down inside and grasp hold of certain parts. The urge to roll towards her and recreate the whole magic again was so tantalising he could actually taste it.
Or taste Eve, he amended grimly, and sat up. ‘You should have told me,’ he censured.
There was a moment’s silence, a moment’s total stillness, a moment in which he felt muscles clench all over him because his gruff, curt attitude had just wiped the pleasure right out. He felt it leave like an actual entity, unfolding itself from their flesh and slipping silently through the open terrace window.
Not Eve though. She still lay beside him; he could see her slender bare feet, the sensual curl of her toes and the gold silk length of her slender legs.
‘Why?’ she challenged. ‘Is there some unwritten rule somewhere that says all first-timers must announce that fact before proceeding?’
Put like that, he wanted to laugh. But the bottom line still read like ten vicious swear words. ‘I had a right to know.’
‘You believe you had a right of say over my virginity? Rubbish,’ she denounced. ‘For what purpose?’ she demanded. ‘So that you could make the decision as to whether you wanted to take it or not?’
‘No.’ This, Ethan realised, was not going to be easy.
‘Then, what?’
The silky gold legs disappeared from his vision, the slender feet, the sensually curling toes. His eyes followed them as they slid across smooth white sheeting to snake out of his sight as she pulled herself up—not to sit but to kneel somewhere behind him. He felt her rise upwards, smelt the sweetly seductive scent of her skin, felt her sigh brush his nape, just before her arms appeared over his shoulders and long delicate fingers with nails painted hot-pink came to rest in the hair matting his chest. Her lips caught his ear lobe, her teeth gently bit, and sensation sprinkled through him like a thousand pinpricks, the tips of her breasts pressing like two hard buttons against his back.
‘It wasn’t your special moment, it was mine,’ she told him. ‘Go all Neanderthal on me and I might not let you teach me how good it can be the second time…the third…’ She bit his lobe again. ‘To infinity and beyond,’ she whispered sensually.
His short huff of amused laughter found voice this time. Eve the flirt, Eve the temptress, Eve the serpent in paradise, whom he seemed to have transported with him across half the world. Now it was Eve the dangerous seductress. Though she might have just enjoyed her first experience in making love, even now he knew he could teach her nothing. She was a natural, born to it. Special and rare.
What had that small burst of laughter been for? Eve wondered anxiously. Was he thinking she was incorrigible? Was he thinking she must be a real little hussy to make so light of what they’d just done?
But Eve didn’t feel light about anything. She was worried. She was scared in case he took the honourable path and decided her virginity came with a price tag he might be forced to pay, when all he’d really been doing had been giving in to the temptation she’d so blatantly thrown his way.
She loved him, she wanted him, but not without him loving and wanting her above anything else.
Anything? she then questioned. One woman, she amended. One unavailable woman, who had no right to keep the heart she could never cherish. Well, move over, Leona, she thought possessively. Because you’ve just lost out and this beautiful man’s heart is going to belong to me!
‘I need a shower,’ she murmured huskily against that tasty ear lobe. ‘And so do you.’
Invitation—demand. Ethan stared down at the place against his chest where his ring winked defiantly up at him. She’s all yours, mate, it seemed to be telling him. For now at any rate.
Well, to hell with it—why not? he decided. He was a big boy, he could take it when it was over and it was time to get out! So he turned to look at her, dislodging her arms in the process so she sat back on her haunches looking at him through wide green wary eyes. She wasn’t sure what was coming but he knew.
He looked her over, his eyes stripping off a layer of skin with their silver-bright possessive blast. Then he swung himself off the bed, turned, and pressed Eve up against his chest so that her eyes were level with his and her thighs were clinging to his narrow waist. ‘Your grandfather,’ he said, ‘should have locked you away years ago.’
She grinned; her eyes began to shine; she had the audacity to put out her tongue and lick the shape of his mock-stern mouth. ‘Jack Banning said the very same thing,’ she informed him. Then before he could respond, she kissed him—hell, did she kiss him! She kissed him all the way into the adjoining bathroom, then the shower and, as promised, beyond.
Eve was in the kitchen and was humming to herself as she waited for the toast to pop up from the toaster. Sunlight was pouring in through the open door which led onto the terrace and behind her lay the remnants of the meal they’d eaten in here the night before—though for the life of her she couldn’t remember what that meal had consisted of.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, other than for the huggable knowledge that she had spent the night in Ethan’s home, in Ethan’s bed, in Ethan’s arms, making wonderful love. She was now wearing Ethan’s shirt as she prepared his breakfast, while his voice filtered into her from out on the terrace where he was sounding very smooth, very slick, very informed as he spoke in fluent Spanish to some authoritative body. She loved his voice; she loved its rich deep texture and what it did to her tummy muscles as she listened to him. She loved this feeling of complete contentment as she prepared breakfast for him.
He stopped talking as the toast popped up, his footsteps sounding on pale blue tiling as they brought him into the kitchen to look for her. She smiled as his hands came to cup her hips, crushing fine cotton against her cool flesh. ‘Mmm, that smells good,’ he said, then buried his mouth in the side of her throat.
It really was quite sinful the way she responded, turning round in his grasp to demand that mouth for her own. His hands shaped her body and hers stroked the smooth clean surface of his freshly shaved face. Things would have moved onto something else if the telephone hadn’t started ringing.
He was reluctant to let her go, Eve equally so. But she liked the evidence of frustration in his eyes as he dug his mobile out of his pocket and placed it to his ear.