‘Why?’ she whispered, her heart beginning to pound.
‘Don’t let’s play games—not now. You know exactly why.’
‘But you just, just—’
‘Pushed you away?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe I’ve realised what a fool I was being. Or maybe I just needed time for my body to make its protest known. And it is—believe me, it is—very loud and very clear.’ Glancing down with a rueful expression, he shrugged. ‘So come over here, Melissa.’
‘No,’ she said, in a small voice.
‘No? You refuse your King?’
‘You are not my King and, yes, I am refusing you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because…’ Because you’ve already made a fool of me. Because you could break my heart into a million pieces. ‘Because I’m here to discuss my son—and it’s not appropriate.’
‘Not appropriate?’ he mocked.
‘N-no.’
‘You think there’s some kind of social guideline for the bizarre situation in which we find ourselves?’ he demanded, but, interestingly, her words only inflamed his growing desire—because refusal was something which Casimiro never encountered. ‘Then it seems that I must come to you, bella mia.’
Her eyes widened in alarm but she could do nothing about the sudden prickle of her senses as he began to walk towards her with the determination and the stealth of a predator which had just spotted a particularly accessible morsel lying waiting for him.
‘Don’t,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t what? At least try to say it as if you mean it,’ he drawled, his mouth hardening into a smile as he reached for her and pulled her into his arms.
It wasn’t his touch—but the smile which sealed it. This one was hard and somehow grim, but it was a smile all the same and it catapulted her back to bittersweet time when she’d seen a much softer variation. When desire had ruled their lives and there had been no shame in it.
‘But why this…frown?’ Casimiro’s voice had deepened as he smoothed the small crease in her brow, tracing his fingertip down to outline the sudden trembling of her lips.
‘Can’t you guess?’ she whispered.
He read the wariness in her eyes and recognised that she was going to have to be cajoled into subm
ission. That she was cleverer and feistier than he’d given her credit for—and that if he wanted her co-operation, then he was going to have to seduce her. Really seduce her. For there was no surer way of getting a woman to consent to a man’s agenda than by making her a prisoner of her own senses.
Because he needed Melissa Maguire, he realised. Needed her to remind him of the missing fragment of his past and to see what lay in it.
He felt the slow simmer of anticipation as he gazed down at the trembling of her lips.
And she needed him, too. Much, much more.
Again, he traced the outline of her lips with his fingertip, seeing her eyes cloud as she looked up at him. ‘You don’t like me doing this?’ he questioned silkily. ‘And yet minutes ago you were writhing around in my arms—your body silently begging me to take you.’
Melissa swallowed, for the fingertip was now stroking its way along her jaw. It was an almost innocuous touch and yet it had activated an aching kind of hunger which made every nerve ending instantly feel as if it were on fire.
‘I know. But that’s not what we’re here for, Casimiro. We’re supposed to be…to be…’ She wanted to tell him that they needed to talk some more. About Ben. About what was going to happen now. But how could she manage to utter a single word of objection when his lips were now on her neck?
‘Shh.’ He felt her head tip back—like a flower which was too heavy for its stem—giving him access to the smooth expanse of skin.
‘We should…should…’ She wanted to say that they should stop it because that was what she knew she ought to say. Some inner voice of caution telling her that it was a mistake to let him take her as easily as this. But her love-starved body and her idealistic heart had craved this moment too much to be able to resist it and her words drifted away like bubbles as his hand reached down to cup her breast. His thumb began roughly teasing a nipple to acutely sensitive life—and Melissa felt the quick flood of blood to her veins as her body responded to him.