‘What are you doing?’
‘What does it look like? I’m giving you the bed.’
That was when he realised she’d shed the dressing gown. The blanket was pooled at her hips and Lulu was sitting up in the sexiest lingerie ensemble he’d ever seen.
Or maybe it was just the girl wearing it.
Some kind of vintage cream satin bra and panties trimmed in old-fashioned white lace. Later, when he was thinking with his brain again, he would wonder what it was about that white lace…
But now he was more interested in the soft pale curves poured into it.
She was delicate, and more lovely than anything he’d ever seen.
She’d also seen him. The snug boxers didn’t hide much.
She looked fascinated, and it was only when the mattress gave under his weight and he got close enough to feel the warmth of her body that she seemed to realise she was only wearing her underwear. She made a wordless gesture, pulling the blanket towards her, which should have stopped him. He kissed her anyway. But not as he had kissed her in the car, with his blood up and her mouth full of snippy demands and his male ego making him want to prove a point.
His blood was up, all right, but he was looking to prove something else.
That he was good enough for her.
That she could trust him.
That she was his.
Tomorrow he would have to share her with everyone at the wedding, but right now she was his, and he realised that this knowledge had been growing from the moment he’d boarded that flight and set eyes on her—before everything else had intervened between them.
She pulled away first, looking at him as if she was every bit as stunned by this turn of events as he was.
‘I don’t know—’ she began, and it was everything he didn’t want to hear.
He watched her, waiting.
Lulu could see his amber eyes gleaming beneath those ridiculously long, thick sable lashes, holding all kinds of knowledge she wanted to have. He was one of the most beautiful men she’d ever seen. He made her feel so…alive, and he hadn’t treated her like glass all day. He’d been absolutely, appallingly awful to her. Just the thought made her body ache a little more for him.
If I don’t have sex with him I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.
Even before she could think about doing it she was tracing the seam of his parted lips with her fingertip.
He took her hand and gently folded her fingers into a fist. ‘You are not sure, hermosa.’
‘I am.’
‘I’m not looking for a relationship, and I think you are.’
Lulu weighed that up. Non, she knew how hard relationships were to sustain when you were trapped in your own fears, as she was. She knew she couldn’t have that.
‘That’s not what I want.’
‘No?’
Frankly, she didn’t know what she wanted—other than what she was having right now. When what she’d been having for far too many years was—nothing.
‘I just want something different,’ she admitted.
‘Different from what?’
Where did she begin? Lulu tried to find words that just wouldn’t come. Everything was bound up so tightly inside her—safe and sound, she’d once thought. But she was beginning to feel like a prisoner, locked up along with her anxieties.