The kiss caught fire, heat licking through her veins, pooling in her stomach. She was ready for him again. She doubted if there would ever be a time when she wasn’t.
She parted her thighs, let him settle down against her. She trapped him, curling her legs around his calves, her hands on his shoulders. She rocked against him, and a muffled curse escaped his lips.
“What?” she whispered.
“If you keep doing that, this will end very quickly.”
“That’s fine. You lasted admirably the first time.”
He took one of her hands from his shoulders and captured it in his, before taking the other one in the same hand and lifting her arms up behind her head so that they were resting on the pillows. And she was powerless. “Admirably, huh?”
“I’ve heard … not that I’ve heard much … that some men can’t last long enough to give a woman, you know, pleasure. I was prepared for that the first time.”
“Really? Well, printzyessa, I have had years, and years of practice controlling myself.” He dipped his head and took one of her nipples into his mouth. She arched into him, lost in the heat and friction, in the deep pull that started low in her body and radiated through her.
“Then, in the interest of control, maybe you should grab another one of those condoms,” she said.
“Good idea.”
Happiness had always been a kind of vague, elusive goal. Eva hadn’t ever felt truly happy, not since her mother’s death or Xander’s departure closely after.
And since that horrible arranged marriage to whichever bachelor bid highest had started to get so close to reality, happiness had drifted even farther away.
Maybe Mak was right. Maybe happiness wasn’t that important. But right now, sitting in the hot tub, with the warm water shielding her skin from the bitter cold, and Mak’s arms around her, her head rested on his hard chest, she felt that happiness had arrived. And she felt as if she didn’t want to live another day without it.
“Tell me something,” she said, tracing a faint scar that ran along his forearm.
“What?”
She shrugged. “Just something. Anything. Something you’ve never told anyone before.”
He shifted, his arms tightening around her waist, his hand flat on her stomach. “You already have quite a few of my secrets, Eva.”
She arched her head back and kissed his throat. “Just a few more.”
“You would make a great spy.”
“Would I?” she asked, laughing.
“A man would give up anything just to have a kiss from you.” His words were light, but there was an undertone of darkness there. One that told her he felt he’d given up something to be with her. And it was more than virginity.
She felt a twinge of guilt, and she tried to block it out. It was needling at her happiness, and she didn’t like it. Wouldn’t let it.
“Well, I’m not asking you to breach national security.”
“All right, but we trade. Prisoner exchange.”
“We’ve already done that,” she said. “At least physically. My virginity for yours.”
He chuckled. “True enough.” He paused for a moment, his fingers playing over her stomach. “I am not an honorable man,” he said. The words carried great weight, depth, as though they’d lived in him for years, playing on Repeat. Words that were well-worn in his mind, if not on his tongue.
“I told you to tell me something you hadn’t told anyone,” she said. “I didn’t tell you to lie to me.”
“It’s true. Would a man of honor give up the care of his ailing wife to nurses when money allowed it? Would he take job after job, earn more and more money, partly to relieve his responsibility? Because I did. This house … this house was a place for me to come in between some of my jobs. So I could be alone. So I didn’t have to see her like that. Alive but not. Caught between the living and the dead and part of neither. I felt as though I was caught there too. And I felt plenty sorry for myself.”
“That doesn’t mean you weren’t honorable. You put everything on hold for her. Honored your marriage vows.”
“And I resented them sometimes,” he said, an edge in his tone, as though he was desperate to prove he was right.