“Is that why you’re so afraid of marriage? Oh!” She cupped a hand over her mouth in a gesture that Alex found almost comical. She definitely talked too much, asked too many questions, but Alex had known it was coming.
“I told you, I don’t like entanglements. A wife is an entanglement.”
She frowned. “But what if you fell in love, like Ethan and Francesca?”
Alex looked away. Love. He knew it would come to this. Alex had never been anyone’s first. He hadn’t wanted to be. The first time was special. Even he half believed it should come out of a feeling of love. But he didn’t need that feeling, and he didn’t want it from her.
But her feelings were fleeting. She was in love with the idea of him, not the reality. He wasn’t the man she’d built up in her mind over the years. He’d tolerated her silly crush when she was fourteen, but now he had to end it. End her fantasies before she came to hate him. “Lucia, I told you, I have no intention of marrying, and I meant it. And as for love . . .” He laughed ruefully.
“Only fools fall in love,” Lucia interrupted, “Yes, I know. I suppose all of the unhappy wives keep you too busy to fall in love, at any rate.” She flopped back on her pillow.
Alex felt a bitter laugh well inside him. The thought of most of his past lovers left an acrid taste in his mouth. He’d cared for some of the women, but many had been brief diversions—their couplings hasty and meaningless. So unlike what he’d felt with Lucia tonight.
Beside him, she huffed, and he leaned over, brushing the hair away from her face. “Right now there’s only you, Lucia. No one else.”
There will never be anyone else. The words sprang from deep within, but he shut them off, refused to say them or even acknowledge them. Then she wrapped her arms around him, and he was enmeshed in her scent, intermingled with that of their earlier lovemaking. He kissed her neck, breathing her in.
“Mrs. Witherspoon never said anything about this.” Her voice was breathless.
He smiled against her collarbone. “That’s because Mr. Witherspoon doesn’t have anyone as tempting as you in his bed.”
“Oh,” she murmured. Then, “Oh!” as he moved over her, molding her slim body against his and tracing the soft curve of her stomach and the swell of her breasts. The sensation of skin against skin intoxicated him, and his mind reeled as she rubbed against him, increasing the contact between them. He slanted his mouth over hers, and when she opened her lips to him, he slid his tongue inside, stroking her, probing deep, showing her what he’d do with his body. She caught his tongue mid-thrust and sucked on it playfully. He hardened at the sensation and her boldness.
Unable to resist, he reached down, caressing her calves and draping her legs around him. Her legs were lean and shapely, the skin of her inner thigh like silk. He molded his palm to the curve of her hip, liking the fullness of it next to her small waist.
Reluctantly, he pulled his mouth from hers, wanting to taste more of her. He trailed kisses down her neck to her breasts. Her nipples hardened, and she moaned when he took first one, then the other into his mouth.
His hands moved between them, and she shifted restlessly. “Alex, Alex,” she moaned in his ear. God, he wanted her, needed her, hot and wet, her tight body cinched around him. But it was too soon. He didn’t want to hurt her.
“Alex, please,” she said on a sob.
“Sweetheart, you don’t know—”
“I want you,” she breathed, and he lost the battle.
He entered her gently, testing her readiness. She was slick and wet against him. He pushed, feeling her muscles clench around him—giving, accepting. She gave a ragged cry, and he froze.
“Sweetheart, did I hurt you? I’ll stop,” he whispered. God, he prayed, please don’t ask me to stop.
In answer, she kissed him, pulling his head to her mouth and savaging it with her own. Her tongue met his wildly, and he returned the kiss with equal fervor. Between their bodies, he readied her, stroking the nub at the center of her folds until her head was tossing back and forth on the pillow, and she arched against him. On her scream of pleasure, he entered her, thrusting hard, burying himself in her sleek folds.
Her legs tightened around him, squeezing him, pulling him deeper. And he was far from gentle. He had no restraint, no boundaries. With a groan, he thrust into her, movements slow, then fast, deep, then hard.
He was out of control, overwhelmed by the sound of her cries, her touch, her taste. Instinct took over, and he held nothing back, left no part of himself untouched by her. At that moment she was his, and he gave equally of himself.
Ecstasy and something else—something more than the physical—shuddered through him. He was part of her. They moved together, breathed together. It seemed even their hearts beat as one. Together their bodies tensed, and he felt her tighten, felt her tiny convulsions. With a last thrust, they rose to meet the pleasure as one.
Chapter Seventeen
A few moments later, Alex lay on his back, trying to catch his breath and his reason. His lungs were cooperating, but not his mind. The image of Lucia’s eyes—violet, almost black at her climax—was imprinted on his mind. He’d known those eyes would be the end of him. Known the first time he’d seen her in the Pools’ garden that life was never going to be the same. Bloody hell, he’d known the first time he’d ever seen her, when she was a giggling schoolgirl he’d much rather have scolded than kissed. And perhaps that was why he’d kept his distance. It was inevitable that if he saw her again, saw those azure eyes light on his face as they had that first time, he’d fall. And he was falling, drowning in the deep uncharted waters of her eyes— an ocean he neither understood nor wanted to understand.
He reached for her, pulling her close, breathing her in. She murmured, fluttering her eyelids, then closing them. Her breathing slowed, and she fell into a light sleep. For a long, long time, he watched her.
“Alex?”
He was moving. The earth was shaking beneath him.
“Alex?” a female voice hissed. “Get up.”
