He couldn’t untangle how he felt, but it was not adoration.
He plunged into her fast, hard, and with an angry need to possess. Her muscles were tight; and she groaned at the sudden invasion. He moved deep; she wrapped around him. He brought his hands around to cup her breasts from behind and he clamped them tight while he moved within her.
She was crying out, her voice a hoarse sound in the emptiness of the bathroom. He heard her increasing pleasure and he knew she was getting close. Good. He wanted to drive her absolutely wild. He pulled out of her swiftly, then spun her around to face him.
“Have you missed this, Ava?”
She nodded wordlessly, and he could see the sincerity in her face. “Good,” he groaned, bringing his mouth down to her nipple and biting it with playful intensity. She jerked against him, and brought a leg up to curl around his waist.
“Please,” she begged, trying to pull him back to her core. It had been three long years. “I’m so close.”
“Yes, I realise that,” he laughed. “But there is no rush, is there?”
He
r cheeks flushed. “Please,” she whimpered against his shoulder. “I need this.” Her sanity was a ghost, far off in the distance. What she’d gone through since Cristiano had left was a brick path she couldn’t travel. Not then. He would never understand who she was now. All they had was this. This moment. This passion. This desire that was a hot, uncontainable force between them.
“Good,” he drawled, reaching behind her to flick the water off. He didn’t bother to grab a towel. Dripping wet, he stepped from the shower and held a hand to her. “You will get what you want, Ava. Plenty of it, I assure you.”
She dipped her eyes forward with embarrassment and he understood. She felt wanton. Cheap.
That was fine by him.
“Go to the bed.”
“I …”
“Go.”
She clamped her mouth shut. Whatever she’d been about to say, she forgot it. She wanted him. Three long years. Cristiano; the love of her life and father of her child. She needed him. She would process the ramifications later.
He watched her walk into the bedroom and then took a deep breath. He was older and had considerably more experience. He also had some morals, didn’t he? Was he really prepared to spend the night with a married woman? It would be a first for him. Cristiano, after all, had his pick of women. He had never needed to delve into those who had committed themselves to another.
But Ava was different. She was not simply another man’s wife. Their past; what they’d shared … she would forever belong to him, in the same way he would to her. Three years and still he felt it. The tug towards her. The ache to be with her. The need to hold her. The desire to please her.
Had he really thought he would be able to come back to the Valley without remembering this sensation? Had he really thought he would be able to stay on her property and not remind her of the connection they shared? He groaned softly.
Married or not, it didn’t matter to Cristiano. He judged himself badly for that, but what was judgement in the face of such powerful need?
A small part of him remained conflicted. It was a tiny voice in his mind, demanding better behaviour. More honourable actions. But when he walked into the bedroom and saw Ava’s naked form on the edge of the bed, he lost any ability to respect the sanctity of a union such as marriage. She’d turned on a single lamp, and the room glowed with a warmth that was dwarfed by the heat in his blood. If he’d had his way, he would have turned every light on in the house, so that he could marvel at her properly. But he was impatient. Such details could wait until next time. “Lie down.”
Her eyes held silent challenge, but she did as he’d commanded. She was trembling, like a fine thread caught in the breeze. He walked towards her purposefully and brought his body over hers. He was big, and she was small. He covered her with his strength, and she revelled in the sensation, as she had done years earlier. He ran a finger down her side, drawing imaginary patterns on her soft, wet skin.
“You used to love it when I did this,” he murmured, bringing his mouth to her belly button and then running it down lower, to her secret core.
She swore as he danced it along her heart, teasing and promising and making her body flood with an ache of need. “You loved this, didn’t you?”
“I loved everything,” she promised through gritted teeth.
His laugh was soft. “Everything? We had so much yet to learn. So much more to discover together. How do you know what everything could have been?”
She felt the condemnation in his words; they cut her heart in two.
He was right, anyway. With them, every time they’d touched had been magic. A lifetime of that? It would have been heaven on earth. But she’d never experience it.
“I hate that you married him,” he groaned, his words heavy with emotion.
Ava closed her eyes. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to feel. “I know,” she murmured, lifting her feet onto the mattress, her knees heavenwards.