‘We are indeed,’ she agreed, barely recognising the desire in her own voice.
This time, Jake didn’t reply. Instead he took her hand, enveloped in his, and tucked her into his side as he hurried her across the floor and out of a hidden staff door to the side.
And all Flávia could do was follow. They were like two tree frogs hurrying to the shelter of a bark hollow to seek safety from a deluge.
CHAPTER FOUR
AS THEY STEPPED through the bedroom door, Jake deliberately ignor
ed that part of him demanding to know what the hell he thought he was playing at.
He had no idea how he’d managed to slow things down. He only knew that he needed to give her—and himself—time to think.
How had he let himself kiss her? More than that, when the sprinklers had started and they’d finally pulled apart, why had he decided the next best step was to usher her to the reception desk and book a suite upstairs for them?
As if he couldn’t help himself. As if he hadn’t risked any one of their colleagues walking out and seeing them. As if he wasn’t now responsible to a little boy across the other side of town.
So much for not letting Flávia Maura slide under his skin.
He didn’t know what had compelled him to book a suite for them, any more than he understood why he’d started to tell her things—like anything about Helen, and his irrational sense of guilt—that he’d never told anyone else in his life. Not even Oz.
Or, more to the point, he did know. He was just trying to pretend that he was still in control of himself—and not just the fact that he’d barely been able to keep his hands off her in the lift, enduring what had to be the longest elevator ride of his life.
This was the craziest thing he’d done in ten months—longer, really—and yet he couldn’t bring himself to feel guilty. Was it really so much to crave one night with a woman who made him feel...something again? Was it too much to want to feel normal again, instead of feeling as though he was constantly on the brink of drowning in the responsibility of a seven-year-old boy who barely liked him, let alone wanted him around?
And, of course, Brady didn’t want him. The poor kid just wanted his mother—and that was just one more thing for which Jake felt as though he’d failed his nephew.
Tonight.
One night.
With a woman who made him feel alive.
Closing the door behind them and leaning his head on the cool wood for a moment, he tried to make himself think. Only when he thought he finally had a grip on his uncharacteristically out-of-control libido did he finally turn.
Only to see Flávia clad in nothing more than the sexiest lace bra-and-panties set he could swear he’d ever seen in his life. And hold-ups, which practically stopped his heart in his chest. Her shimmering gown lay in a puddle around her sinfully high heels. Jake tried to force himself to think straight, but it wasn’t easy when the woman had the kind of eyes that pinned him to the spot, the thickest and glossiest curtain of chestnut curls and a body which ought to be illegal, it was so dangerous.
There was no doubt about it: Flávia was some kind of goddess that no red-blooded male could ever hope to resist.
Or want to.
Yet for all that, her hands were clutched almost self-consciously to her front, over the apex of her slender, tanned legs that seemed to go on for ever and, despite his best intentions, made him imagine hooking them over this shoulders as he engaged in far more carnal pursuits.
A fresh lick of attraction wound its way over his body—hardly helping matters. Blood pooled in the hardest part of him. She made him feel hotter, greedier, more alive, than he’d ever felt in his life.
Worse, he didn’t mind feeling so out of control—yet he surely should have minded.
Instead, all he could think of was how her skin would feel, right there in that inviting hollow of her neck, how those dark nipples—which were announcing themselves so proudly through the scrappy lace—might scrape the middle of his palms or under the pads of his thumbs, or how sweet she would taste if he crossed the room right now, lifted the hem of his tee and buried his face right there between those long, tanned thighs.
He snapped his eyes back up to hers, aware that he’d let them trail over her in a way to which she would no doubt object. But as those amber depths locked with his, his heart jolted. Because he didn’t see censure, or displeasure, in her gaze; instead, he saw something far more primal. Something far more like a mirror.
The proof that, just like down in the gardens, she ached for him just as much. It was all he could do not to give in to this raw need which scraped away inside him. And then she pulled her lower lip in with her teeth.
‘Is this...okay?’
It was incredible that she actually sounded uncertain. As if he might have, for some wholly ludicrous reason, changed his mind. Jake couldn’t hold himself back any longer.
He closed the gap between them in an instant.