CHAPTER TEN
CECILIAUNDERSTOODEVERYTHINGin a sweet, sudden rush. A glorious flash of flame and longing, while his mouth moved on hers and remade the world again.
It was all about fear.
She wrapped her arms around him and let him bear her down to the ground, sighing in happiness as he fit that exquisite body of his to the length of hers, proving yet again how well he fit.
How beautifully they had always fit, just like this.
Fear was why she hadn’t looked harder for him, when she could have. Fear was what had kept her in the mountains guarding her child, instead of taking the harder, scarier route and facing him six years ago. Five years ago.
Or any day since.
And fear was what had made him do what he’d done. She got that now. Because revenge was what Pascal knew. It was easier. Anger was far more palatable than those hot, confusing mornings when they woke up wound up in each other. If he made her angry, she understood, he could fight her. He could make demands, issue threats.
He could reduce what was happening between them—what had always been happening between them—to a simple little battle.
But Pascal was not a bully. She knew that like she knew her own heart. It wasn’t her weakness he was after, it was her strength. Weakness would have wrecked him. It was her strength that allowed him to treat her like an adversary.
Because adversaries could not be hurt. Adversaries fought.
And if they were fighting, they couldn’t be afraid.
Cecilia understood all of it as he kissed her, his mouth hot and wicked andperfect.She understood it as she kissed him back with all the fire and need he’d taught her.
Pascal pulled back and stripped himself out of his jacket, his shirt. Cecilia took the opportunity to pull off the dress she wore, leaving her in nothing but a bra, her panties and her boots.
His eyes darkened, and that sensual mouth of his firmed. And he looked at her as if he wanted nothing more than to get his mouth on every last centimeter of her. As if he might die if he didn’t do precisely that. Now.
“You kill me,” he growled, the sensual menace in his voice making her shudder withwant. “Every time, you kill me.”
His hands were on her, like bright hot flame and searing madness, testing the shape of her breasts and then gripping her hips to haul her toward him again.
And his mouth on hers was a revelation.
So good, so right, that Cecilia understood why she’d been refusing herself the very thing she’d given so freely six years ago.She was afraid.
Of what it would do to her. And what it would do to her life. Because the truth was, having sex with Pascal had already changed her entire world once. What would he do this time?
But she already knew. Sex wasn’t the danger here. Sex wasn’t going to ruin her and wreck her, stalking her across the years until she found him again. Love was.
And the simple truth was, she had never stopped loving Pascal.
She wasn’t sure she ever would.
So Cecilia kissed him back, pouring the years they’d been apart into it. The fear and the loneliness, and more than that, all her dreams. All her joy. The flavor of the life she’d lived away from him, and all the secret hopes she hid inside her that this new life they’d started together would bloom despite their best efforts to pretend it was a misery.
She kissed him and she kissed him. And when he got to his feet again, then pulled her up, she followed him blindly. Greedily. He carried her over to the long, low sofa, and lay her down upon it. She watched, breathing too hard, as he kicked off his trousers and the boxer briefs he wore beneath them, then bared himself to her gaze at last.
For a moment she lay there, sprawled out in abandon. She simply looked at him.
Because she could never get enough oflookingat this man.
His scars, his muscles. All together, the devastating masculine beauty that was Pascal Furlani, the only man she’d ever touched. The only man she’d ever loved.
As far as Cecilia was concerned, the only man there was. Full stop.
His black eyes glittered. His shoulders were wide enough to cling to, forever. Between his legs, the hardest part of him stood tall, proud.