He leaned in closer to whisper in her ear. His warm breath felt like a soft, sensuous lick across her skin. “I want you so bad, Jillian, that I ache. And that means I’m not giving up until you’re back in my bed.”
She immediately felt a pounding pulse at the tips of her breasts. She leaned back to stare at him and the razor-sharp sensuality openly displayed in his gaze almost made her moan.
“And before you ask, Jillian, the answer is no. It isn’t just about sex with me,” he murmured in a low, husky tone. “It’s about me wanting the woman I love both mentally and physically. You’re constantly in my mind but physically, it’s been over a year.”
She drew in a deep breath and felt the essence of what he’d said in every single nerve ending in her body. It had been over a year. With Aidan she’d had a pretty active sex life, and although there were periods of time when they were apart, they always made up for any time lost whenever they were together.
“Your needing sex is not my problem,” she finally said.
“Isn’t it?” he countered. “Can you look me in the eyes and say that you don’t want me as much as I want you? That you didn’t dream about us making love last night? Me being inside you. You riding me? Hard. My tongue inside your mouth...and inside a lot of other places on your body?”
She silently stared at him but her entire body flared in response to the vivid pictures he’d painted in her mind. Unlike Paige, Jillian wasn’t an actress and couldn’t lie worth a damn. But on that same note she would never admit anything to him. That would give him too much power. “I won’t admit to anything, Aidan.”
“You don’t have to,” he said, with a serious smile on his face. “And it’s not about me needing sex but me needing you.” He paused a moment as if giving his words time to sink in. “But this leads to another proposition I’d like to make.”
She’d set herself up for this one. “And what is the proposition this time?”
He leaned in closer. “That for the remainder of the cruise you let your guard down. Believe in me. Believe in yourself. And believe in us. I want you to see I’m still the man who loves you. The man who will always love you. But that’s something you have to believe, Jillian. However, at the end of the cruise, if for whatever reason, you still don’t believe it or feel that the two of us can make a lifetime commitment, then when we dock back in Barcelona, we’ll agree to go our separate ways.”
She broke eye contact with him to glance out at the ocean. Today was a rather calm day outside but inside she was in a state of turmoil. He was asking a lot of her and he knew it. His proposition meant forgetting the very reason she broke up with him. That would definitely be easy on him if she did. Was that why he’d come up with this latest proposition?
Jillian turned her gaze back to him. “You want me to just forget everything that’s happened, Aidan? Especially the incident that caused our breakup?”
“No, I don’t want you to forget a single thing.”
His answer surprised her. “Why?”
“Because it’s important that the two of us learn from any mistakes we’ve made, and we can’t do that if we safely tuck them away just because doing so will be convenient. We should talk about them openly and honestly. Hopefully, we’ll be able to build something positive out of the discussions. You’re always harping a lot on the things I did. What about you, Jillian? Do you think you were completely blameless?”
“No, but—”