‘Ramon... Ramon...’
She wasn’t sure how many times she moaned his name to his thick encouragement. But she was fully astride his kneeling form, their bodies slick with sweat and his implacable arms around her when he raised his head one final time, looked deep into her eyes and instructed, ‘Now, Suki.’
Glorious pleasure and pressure burst wide open. She could do nothing but hang on as it sucked her deep into a bottomless vortex.
He caught her earlobe in a sharp bite a second before he was hurled into his own release, muttering hot, torrid words that drew out her own pleasure as he jerked inside her.
They were still breathing hard when the car swayed round a corner and drew to a stop. He caressed her for another minute before he set her back on the seat and zipped up her dress.
Unable to meet his eyes or stop the flames of disquiet eating her up, Suki snatched up her panties and bra and stuffed them inside her handbag.
Beside her, having straightened his own clothes, Ramon lounged back in the seat.
‘Um...thanks for the lift,’ she said after a full minute when it became clear he didn’t intend to speak.
He didn’t reply, just stared at her with hooded dark eyes. Okay... Clutching her handbag, she edged closer to the door. ‘Goodnight, Ramon. Have a safe trip back to...wherever.’
She reached for the handle. He beat her to it, catching her hand and tugging her round to face him.
‘No, I’m not about to have a safe trip back to...wherever. Because we’re not done, guapa. Far from it,’ he said.
Exiting the car with the grace of a sleek, powerful animal, he held out his hand to her.
She had no choice but to get out. She knew that. But suddenly what awaited her outside was more daunting than the mind-bending sex she’d just enjoyed in this car. For one thing, her heart and mind hadn’t stopped racing. And the voice screeching in her head that this was over and she needed to walk away was growing weaker under the one howling harder in greedy, grabby need. The one telling her she wanted more. Needed to live a little for longer. Experience more of what had just happened. Of everything.
‘Come out, Suki,’ he ordered.
She told herself that she complied because she couldn’t stay in the limo for ever. Not because the unabated hunger in his eyes called to hers.
The moment she stepped out, he slammed the door shut and tapped twice on the roof. As the limo pulled away he yanked her close, delivered a hard, searing kiss to her mouth. That single spark was enough to ignite the erotic conflagration again. Long moments later, he raised his head, glanced up at the small Victorian terrace house she called home, then back at her. ‘Invite me in.’
She invited him in.
But even before he’d stepped over the threshold into her sanctuary, Suki knew that this was nowhere near the forgettable experience she had convinced herself it would be.
CHAPTER THREE
Ten months later
SUKI READ THE email one more time, the shaking in her hands nothing compared to the pain lacerating her heart as she took in the stark words that blended with soul-breaking ones. Halfway through the first paragraph, her vision blurred. She blinked and tears spilled down her cheeks. Swiping them away, she closed her eyes for a moment, vainly wishing the words would be different when she opened them again.
They weren’t.
Private memorial for Luis Acosta and his parents, Clarita and Pablo Acosta. A strictly family affair. Unless expressly invited, please do not attend.
Lawyers request your presence for the reading of his last will and testament followed by a private meeting with Ra
mon Acosta. Attendance strictly necessary.
Her throat clogging with fresh tears just waiting to be shed, she looked away from the words she didn’t want to read, never mind accept, and clicked on the attachment. A slight bolt of shock went through her when it sent her to an airline website. Swallowing, she clicked on further links until she arrived at the page holding the first-class return e-ticket to Cuba under her name.
The email and attachment had come from a firm of lawyers in Havana, the ones she’d been desperate to contact ever since she received the horrendous news of Luis’s and his parents’ deaths.
The same lawyers who’d refused to take her calls or answer her letters for two months, but were now reaching out to her. She knew they wouldn’t have contacted her without the express permission of Ramon Acosta, their client.
This email giving consent for her to visit Cuba to pay her respects wouldn’t have come from anyone else because Ramon was the only one left of the Acosta family.
Despite the turn of events after their night together, she’d reached out to him after Luis died. At first Suki had respected his deafening silence, knowing that he was grieving the family he’d tragically lost in a car crash. Until she’d learned via social media that several of their university friends had been invited to attend Luis’s funeral three weeks after his death. The date had come and gone without any of her frantic calls being returned by Ramon’s office or his lawyers, forcing her to grieve her best friend’s burial alone in her bedroom. Every single email she’d sent after that had also gone unanswered.