He came back over her, gold flecks shining in the hot molten lava churning in his eyes. It seemed for a moment as if he wanted to say something, as if the words had somehow caught in his throat. But she didn’t need words.
She reached for him then, her hands coming to his back, urging him to her, urging him into her, and as he entered her she felt him fill all the empty spaces she hadn’t realised she had until she’d met him. Until she’d seen the man beneath the outer layer he wore about him like armour. Until she’d seen the man he could be.
He pressed deeper, further into her, filling her from the inside out as if they were no longer two people but one. And then there was no room for thought, only sensation. The slick slide of him within her was teasing dizzying need and arousal from her. Pushing her closer and closer to the edge of that same precipice she had sensed him upon.
* * *
Lost. He was lost. Antonio was drowning in a sea of emotion and sensation. Emma had cast a spell over him, soothing long-held hurts and filling the spaces with her. She was all he could see, all he could feel.
He plunged into her, wringing a cry from her lips, answering the one made by his soul, no longer wanting to think, no longer wanting to hurt. He took her mouth with his, exalting in the sweetness of her, his tongue mirroring his body’s actions. He consumed the breath she exhaled, not wanting even that to escape his reach.
Sensation and need became overwhelming as he drove them again and again towards the edge of their release and pulled back. Desperate to stay in this state of bliss, desperate to hold back from the moment it would all come crashing down.
He teased and taunted, wringing pleasure from them both in equal measure. Sweat slicked his brow and hers. The room was filled with the gasps and sighs of exquisite arousal as time suspended its march as if just for them, giving them the simple gift of each other.
But soon need became a palpable thing and he could no longer hold back. He drove them both to the brink, holding them there on the edge. He could taste it on his tongue, in his throat, and hear it in the desperate cries falling from Emma’s perfect lips.
With one final thrust he plunged them into the abyss, the joint feeling of their completion sending them into a spin he was sure would never stop.
* * *
Antonio woke from the sleep he hadn’t realised had fallen over him. He knew before he had even opened his eyes that Emma wasn’t with him. It was as if his body had become so attuned to her presence that he no longer needed sight.
And he didn’t want to move. Didn’t want this moment to happen. Because despite what had just passed between them he knew there was only one outcome—could only ever have been one outcome.
Reluctantly he left the bed, making his way to a bathroom wet with condensation from a shower he hadn’t heard Emma take. He couldn’t look at himself in the mirror as he stepped beneath the hot spray of water, shutting off the voice that called him a coward in his mind. Whether because of what he would do or couldn’t do he didn’t know.
Drying himself with a towel, he grabbed his discarded trousers and thrust his legs into them. The fact that only twenty-four hours earlier he had done the same, taken the same action, wasn’t lost on him.
The night before he had been about to make a decision that would turn the tide in his battle against his father, no matter the cost. And now he knew instinctively that he would be asked to make the same decision again.
He walked through to the living area of the hotel suite, sidestepping Emma’s bags, still packed from hours before. If his heart ached to see them there, he forced it aside.
Emma was sitting on the sofa, illuminated only by the light of dawn breaking over Buenos Aires through the windows. He tried to force a smile to his lips, but couldn’t. There wasn’t one answering his gaze as she caught sight of his presence.
Antonio was surprised to find that he no longer felt the sting and heat of anger. There was only resignation and sadness for something that was yet to pass. The kind of prescient ache that met inevitability.
‘Are you going to use this?’ she asked, holding the dossier on Mandy Bartlett.
* * *
Emma’s heart was torn in two as he stood there, bisected by the shadows of the sunrise. Half in shade, half in light. She wondered which side he would choose. She had asked him the one question she wasn’t sure she was ready for him to answer, but knew that she needed hear it.
‘If I have to,’ he said, and his words made her want to weep.
‘Really? You’d destroy this man’s family, just like your father did, to get what you want?’
‘He deserves it, Emma.’
‘Michael might—but does Benjamin Bartlett? Does Mandy?’
She hoped that she could make him see. Before he did something that would change him for ever.
‘I will do whatever it takes. You already know that.’
She was surprised to hear softness in his voice—not anger, not fury, but gentleness, as if he were preparing her for news she didn’t want to hear.
But she wasn’t done fighting yet.