Exotic Affairs(79)

And she knew it was crazy, but in these few brief sensual moments, she knew that Luiz belonged to her. She owned him. She possessed him. If she said, Die for me, Luiz, he would die.

But, more than that, as incredible as that might seem, she would also die for him.

‘Luiz…’ she breathed into his mouth.

The soft breathy sound had the most powerful effect on him. On a low growl, he literally submerged her in a hot and hungry flood of heat that completely consumed her will to fight.

If she’d ever had any, she derided herself. Luiz was her weakness, just as gambling was her father’s. Once you acquired an addiction it remained with you for life. Starve it for years and it would still erupt at the first tiny, tempting sip. And she was certainly sipping at her addiction, she admitted as she fell into the kiss with all the urgency of starvation, tasting him, touching him, needing him, wanting more!

His hands caressed her and she let them, his mouth devoured hers and she allowed it to. She could taste mint on his breath and on the moistness of his tongue, and feel the deep throb of his heart beneath her restless fingers.

Something gave between them. She hardly understood what it was until her breasts were swinging free and Luiz’s hands were taking possession. After that the whole thing became a banquet at its most ravenous. He deserted her mouth to go in search of other delights, and she tossed back her head and simply preened with pleasure while he licked and sucked and teased her breasts.

It felt perfectly natural to lift up one long silken leg and hook it around his lean waist for balance as she arched to offer him easier access. But the action brought her into even more intimate contact with the hard masculine core of him. And after that she became lost in a burning bright kaleidoscope filled with touch and feel and sound and scents that were so entrenched in her psyche because this man had been her first lover. The one who’d taught her to feel like this, to respond like this, to need like this!

Her only lover—though she hoped to goodness that Luiz couldn’t tell that was the case. Couldn’t tell that she was responding this wildly and this helplessly because he was the only man ever to make her feel like this.

And while it happened it didn’t seem to matter that he was also the man who’d completely shattered her once, betrayed her so badly that she had never been able to recover. Her father didn’t matter. The game didn’t matter. The knowledge that Luiz could only hurt her again didn’t matter.

In fact she was so lost in what he was doing to her that when the knock sounded on the pool room door she could barely comprehend what the sound meant. Until Luiz straightened abruptly, thrust her leg away, then clamped her weak and trembling frame to his own pulsing body before reaching out to open the door a crack.

At which point the shock waves of what they had been so close to actually doing, began ricocheting horribly through her system. Seven years with no contact, she was thinking dizzily, and they’d fallen on each other like a pair of hungry animals at the first opportunity they had been handed.

It was all so utterly, shamefully vulgar that she buried her burning face in Luiz’s throat and hoped to God that the person knocking on the door was not her father.

A man’s voice she had never heard before, but which had the same American drawl as Luiz, said, ‘It’s all arranged. You have half an hour.’

‘Okay,’ Luiz acknowledged gruffly, quickly shut the door again, then with a firmness that utterly shook her, he put her from him.

It took her a few moments to realise what was happening, but one glance at his coldly closed face and she knew that the passionately out-of-control man she had been kissing had suddenly turned back into her enemy.

‘What’s arranged?’ she asked tautly.

‘What do you think?’ he replied.

He meant his game with her father, she realised. Even after what had just erupted between them he was still going to play him.

‘Here…’ Bending down, he picked up her dress where it had fallen to the floor at some unknown point. ‘Put this on; you’re dry enough. We have things to do and you can’t leave here looking like this.’

Looking like this… Through glazed eyes Caroline stared down at herself, saw the pulsing tightness of her distended nipples, her flushed skin, her long white thighs still trembling from the way he had made her feel. Even Luiz’s jacket was no longer where she’d thought it was.

He was shrugging it back onto his own broad shoulders with what was a callous disregard for her raw sensibilities as she stood there almost naked in front of him, feeling completely humiliated and cheap.

Instead of burning up with undiluted passion she was now icy cold with dismay. The nausea arrived, attacking her throat and forcing her to swallow thickly a couple of times before she dared let herself speak.