And really? Did she want him to stop? She swallowed hard as he slid his palm between her thighs and worked them apart. Her muscles gave way of their own volition, trembling in low-grade anticipation as his calloused fingers scraped against her skin. It seemed difficult to pull air into her lungs, to maintain even the simplest of conversations with heat descending over her in waves.
She put her silverware down on her plate, laying it neatly across the china as if to signify the discipline to stop. “Coburn,” she murmured in his ear. “No.”
“Sound more convincing,” he rasped back, “and I will.”
She couldn’t do it. His thumb dipped into the heat at the core of her, his swift intake of breath telling her he’d discovered just how aroused she was.
Oh. My. God. She attempted to coherently answer Dana’s question about a jewelry boutique in New York her hostess couldn’t remember the name of while Coburn’s thumb found the honeyed, delicate nub at her center and rocked against it. Her breath seized in her throat, her hand fisting on the table.
Somehow the name of the store popped into her head. She told Dana, who pulled out her smartphone to make a note of it. Coburn’s caress deepened, quickened. She clenched her thighs around his hand, her mind warring with her body. She could not let him do this here. She could not.
She slipped her hand under the table, closed her fingers around his and squeezed. His fiery blue gaze met hers, and for a moment she was lost. He was as gone as she was.
His hand slipped away from her skin. Her constricted chest eased, oxygen making its way back into her lungs. Coburn tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear and leaned in close. “You are so ready for me, baby,” he murmured. “Do not expect me to hold back.”
Her nervous system short-circuited. She ignored the unabashedly curious looks the blonde threw in her direction and focused on breathing. She took absolutely nothing in as their dinner plates were removed and dessert and coffee were served. The anticipation simmering in her veins was of the all-consuming variety.
Arthur had just asked the table if anyone would like a refill on the nightcap when a bundle of small boy appeared on the terrace in his pajamas and threw himself at his father. Maciah, Arthur’s nine-year-old son, babbled some incoherent words to Arthur, bringing the entire table to a halt.
She thought it was a night terror at first. The little boy’s eyes were wide and he was hyperventilating, trying to pull air in. His father pulled him onto his lap, smoothed his hair and told him to take deep breaths.
Maciah’s small chest inhaled and exhaled. “James is hurt,” he sobbed.
His father frowned. “He’s in bed.”
The little boy took another deep breath, his voice shaky as it tumbled out. “We wanted to have some fun, too, so we decided to build a fort on the cliff. Only James fell and hurt himself.”
The internet CEO’s wife gasped. Diana sat up in her chair. Arthur took his son’s face in his hands. “James is on the cliff?”
“Y-yes. Daddy, there’s all sorts of blood.”
Diana was on her feet. “Call an air ambulance,” she instructed Dana. She flicked her gaze to Maciah. “Can you show Daddy and I where James is?”
He nodded and slipped off his father’s lap. They raced outside and over to the edge of the cliff in front of the house, which was bounded by a tall fence. Maciah slipped through an opening she hadn’t seen. Diana followed, Arthur and Coburn behind her. Her heart lurched as Maciah pointed to a jagged ledge about five feet down from the edge, the sheer face of rock beneath it terrifyingly steep. James was lying on the ledge, barely visible in the darkness, his ragged sobs piercing the night air.
“We need light,” she said tersely. Someone ran up to the villa and came back with a flashlight. She shone it down on the ledge, her pulse accelerating at the awkward angle the boy’s leg lay at, but more so because of the amount of blood spurting from it. He had ruptured an artery.
“Is the ledge steady?” she asked Maciah.
He nodded. Coburn cursed. “You don’t know if it will take your weight.”
“We’re about to find out.”
He caught her hand in his. “I’m going down first. If it’s stable you can come down.”
“Coburn—”
“Nonnegotiable.”
She held her breath as her husband levered himself over the edge of the cliff and down onto the ledge with the stealth of a man who had climbed some of the world’s biggest peaks. Arthur looked as if he was in shock, his face white as Coburn stood up gingerly, testing the steadiness of the rock.