SHATTERED and stunned, Rafael steadied his breathing and gradually became aware of his surroundings. His face was still buried in her neck and the sweet, tempting scent of her hair and skin teased his senses and created a dull haze over his usually acute brain.
Forced to acknowledge that he couldn’t concentrate on anything at all when she was this close, he reluctantly moved his hands from her hips.
Without his hands supporting her she flopped forward, her head against his chest, her blonde hair soft and tangled. Her breathing was unsteady and she rubbed her fingers over his chest and gently pressed her lips to his skin.
The affectionate gesture took him by surprise and for endless seconds Rafael stood still, his hands suspended in the air while he decided what to do with them. What he wanted to do was to drag her back into his arms and just hug her, and the impulse shocked and spooked him because he’d never before felt a desire to express affection following sex.
Reminding himself that gestures of affection could easily be misconstrued, he gritted his teeth and let his hands fall to his sides. So far he’d been entirely honest with her, and that wasn’t going to change.
But something had changed, hadn’t it?
Since when had he ever been tempted to have sex with a woman on his desk in his glass office?
No one would have described the encounter as romantic. Hot, yes. Sizzling, yes. Incredibly powerful, definitely. But it had been a primitive act of lust that had bordered on the sordid and if there was one thing that Grace Thacker definitely didn’t deserve, it was sordid.
Gritting his teeth to resist the temptation to sample her for a second time, Rafael gently eased away from her and made some rapid adjustments to their clothing.
For a moment she didn’t speak. And then she slid off the desk cautiously, as if she wasn’t entirely sure that her legs were going to support her.
‘There are things we need to sort out.’ His voice was rough and he thought he saw her flinch slightly when she lifted her head to look at him.
‘Absolutely.’ Her voice was unsteady and her smile was a little too bright. ‘I should be going.’
‘Going?’ His dark brows met in a frown. ‘Going where?’
‘Home, of course.’ She slipped her feet into her shoes, which had somehow become dislodged from her feet during their frantic encounter. ‘I have things to work out. And you need to get on with your life.’
He stared at her with blank incredulity. ‘That’s it? We have phenomenal sex and you just walk out on me?’
She smoothed her dress with hands that shook. ‘I thought that was what you wanted, Rafael. No commitment.’
In the grip of an escalating tension that he didn’t entirely understand, Rafael strode across to her. ‘There’s no way I’m letting you go,’ her look of astonishment matched his own feelings and he quickly added, ‘yet. I mean, I’m not letting you go, yet.’ Eventually, yes, of course.
Her eyes lingered on his mouth and then she looked away. ‘I have to go home. You know I do. I have a million things to sort out.’
‘What things?’ What could possibly take priority over him?
‘How can you ask me that? My life is in crisis. My business is going under and my own father has cheated me. I need to confront him about it and then I need to find someone to help me make sense of the figures …’ The dark shadows under her eyes and the unmistakable shake in her voice racked his already soaring tension levels several notches higher. Surveying her slim, delicate frame, he felt a burst of almost volcanic anger at her father for causing her pain.
‘You’re not dealing with this on your own.’
‘It’s fine. Really. I’m tougher than I look.’
His eyes raked her pale features with no small degree of irony. ‘I sincerely hope so,’ he said with sardonic bite, ‘because you look as though you’d be blown over by a small gust of wind. If I hadn’t actually seen you in action in the jungle I’d think that you were fragile.’
‘I’m not fragile, Rafael. I think I’ve proved that to you.’ Her eyes met his boldly and he knew that she was remembering the rampant, almost aggressive nature of their last steamy encounter.
For a brief, disconcerting moment he wondered whether he’d hurt her but the look shimmering in her blue eyes assured him of the opposite and, remembering her soft cries, urging him on, he knew that she’d been as desperate as him.
‘Maybe not fragile, but how do you intend to deal with your father?’
‘I don’t know yet. I have a long flight ahead. That should give me time to think about it.’
He frowned. ‘You have no idea who in your company you can trust.’
‘That’s right.’ She gave a shrug. ‘I’ll just have to develop a suspicious nature as fast as possible.’
‘We both know you don’t have a suspicious bone