Heat from these gorgeous memories pooled into her core right at the moment Pepe found her clitoris. She moaned.
Her mind drifted off, her body a haze of sensation all circling around what this wonderful man was doing to her.
Oh, how she loved him. With every fibre of her being.
And as this realisation filled her, the pulsations that had been building inside filled too, and, with a cry, she felt the pulsations explode, rippling out of her in one long, continuous wave of sensation.
When she opened her eyes, Pepe was gazing up at her, his eyes hooded and glistening.
‘That’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,’ he said hoarsely, before rising to kiss her. Pulling her into his arms, he lifted her off the sofa and carried her over to his sprawling bed.
His lips fused to hers, his hands gripping hers above her head, he entered her immediately. But, despite his impatience to be inside her, there was nothing hurried about their coupling. This was tender beyond her imagination.
With her body already fizzing from her earlier climax, she didn’t think she was capable of another orgasm, but Pepe knew her so well, knew exactly when to increase the friction to bring her all the way back to the edge.
Clinging to him, she gloried in his fervent control, her heart singing in tune with her body. Pepe might not love her—might never love her—but in this moment he was making love to her as if she meant more to him than just the mother of his child and his lover for the moment. He was making love to her as if she were the most precious thing in his world.
When her climax finally erupted, he was right there with her, his face buried in her shoulder, groaning words in Italian as he drove himself inside her with a final thrust.
‘You are crying?’ he asked, long minutes later when he eventually lifted his head from her neck.
She hadn’t even noticed tears were streaming down her face.
‘Did I hurt you?’
She gave a quick shake of her head. ‘Hormones’ was the most she could utter.
How could she tell him she was crying because she’d done the one thing she’d sworn she would never do?
Far from living together as a couple sating the desire between them, it had shifted it into something deeper.
She had fallen in love with him, and she knew without a shadow of doubt that when the time came for Pepe to call it a day her heart was going to shatter into tiny pieces.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘ARE YOU SURE you’re okay?’ Pepe asked for the third time since they’d left the house. Cara seemed to have lost much of her colour and was much too quiet for his liking.
‘I guess I’m a little apprehensive about this exhibition.’
Reaching for her hand, he pulled it over to rest on his thigh. ‘I won’t leave you alone for a second when we’re there, I promise.’
She smiled wanly. ‘I know you won’t.’
‘How did you cope when you worked at the auction house? You had to deal with new people on a daily basis.’