“How could you? After what we were to each other? How could you choose him?”
She dug her nails into his shoulders. “Please, Cris. Talk later. Please, not now.”
He made a strangled noise of impatience. “I can’t do this, Ava. I thought I could, but it turns out, I’m not the kind of man who can sleep with another man’s wife.”
He pulled away from her and clamped his hands to his hips. She stared at him as though she’d lost a limb.
“I’m not married,” she blurted the words out at the same time that she pushed off the bed. She took advantage of his surprise to push her palms against his chest and guide him back to the mattress. She employed strength to power him back to it, and then she sat on top of him, straddling him with her hands still on his chest.
“I’m not married. I’m no one’s wife. And right now, I just want to be here with you.”
“You’re lying,” he murmured, his eyes wide. His hands were on her hips, guiding her over his erection even as he processed her assertion. It obliterated his guilt completely. Without the complication of a husband, she was just a woman he’d once loved.
She arched her back as she welcomed him back to her core and began to move freely and hungrily over his length. Up and down she guided his shaft, her breathing laboured as her pleasure reached its zenith.
Her face was beautiful as it filled with passion. He saw her begin to lose control and he grabbed her waist so that he could flip her onto the bed. He wanted to do that to her. He wanted to stoke her flames himself. He saw the indignation in her eyes at the prospect of having her fever quelled for a second time, and he lifted a finger to her lips.
“Trust me,” he promised, moving back into her. As he teased her and tortured her back to the precipice, he touched every inch of her. Her skin had goosebumps as he ran his fingers lightly over it.
“God, Cris,” she cried out, wrapping her legs around his waist and stifling a scream as finally, for the first time in three years, she felt pleasure and happiness flood her body. “Yes!” She pushed her hips up, and then fell back against the mattress.
Her heart was racing and her body was moist with perspiration from the warmth of the evening. “That was amazing,” she said with sincerity.
“You speak in the past tense,” he chided. “I am not finished, and nor are you.”
Her eyes flew wide and, as if to prove his point, he moved so that she could feel his enormous, hard erection still clutched in her muscles.
“You are not married,” he returned with razor sharp precision to their earlier conversation.
“No.”
“But you were.”
“Yes.” She didn’t, at that time, know how that single word admission wounded him.
“What happened?” He brought his mouth to her breast and ran his tongue around the sensitive peach aureole. She bucked against him, and desire began to stir anew in her body.
Even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t have focussed on the words that needed to come out. They were murky in her mind, concealed beneath layers of thick swamp mud. Desire was fogging her. Need was disabling her. She shook her head and pushed up on her elbows, so that she could claim his mouth with hers. “Not now, Cris. Not now.”
He understood, as he always had. And though the questions simmered in his gut, he stored them away for that moment. He knew what she needed. It was the same for him.
Their passion could obviate the pain of the past. At least, for a few moments it could.
CHAPTER THREE
It evaporated as quickly as it had settled. That crazy fog of desire was an illusion. Now satiated, Ava couldn’t believe she’d been such an idiot. Her breathing was still ragged in her body, but sense was returning like a sledgehammer to ice. She pushed her hands against his firm chest and rolled out from beneath him.
Her mind was a painful well of recriminations.
“Ava.” His voice was like honey on her spine. She dipped her head forward and tried to focus on something – anything – that would serve as a talisman of reality.
Her clothes were in the small lounge area. She stalked from the bedroom and scooped them up, then made for the bathroom. But even it was flooded with the accusing images she would never be able to forget.
He caught her by the door. “You are not rushing away from me.”
Her eyes were loaded with a pain he couldn’t understand. “I have to go back to the house.” Her words were a plea; her face was pale. He saw the way she was swallowing and he understood that she was overloaded with emotions. But he didn’t give a flying care. How could he when his own sense of comprehension was at an all time low?
“You were so sure about everything,” he said with a dull throb in his voice.