“Cat,” he said huskily, and took her mouth with his.
CHAPTER TEN
MAYBE Jake’s kiss was part of her dream.
The images were already fading away, but Catarina remembered enough to know that she’d dreamed she was in Jake’s arms.
In Jake’s bed.
She touched his face. Smoothed his dark hair back from his forehead and whispered his name.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, sweetheart.” And that was when she knew the dream was over.
This was real.
Jake, holding her close, his arms hard around her. Jake, his mouth on hers, tasting her, letting her taste him.
Yes, oh, yes, oh, yes!
Cat said his name again, her lips curving in a smile, and looped her arms around his neck. He groaned, kissed her another time, but then he clasped her hands and tried to draw them down.
She wouldn’t let it happen.
The near-darkness, the intimacy of the bed, of his kisses, made her bold.
“Don’t stop,” she murmured. “Please, Jake. I’ve waited so long for you to do this…don’t stop now.”
She felt his body shudder against hers.
“Cat,” he said hoarsely. “Honey, this isn’t a good idea. I shouldn’t have kissed you. Hell, I shouldn’t have taken you to my bed, but you were sick and I wanted you close, where I could take care of you.”
“You’ve done that all along. Taken care of me, I mean.”
“I haven’t,” he said. She could hear the anger in his voice. “I’ve been awful to you, Cat.” He cupped her face, stroked the tangled curls back from her face. “Taking you out of that school without any real explanation,” he said, his tone softening. “Making you to fly to the States, ignoring you once you were here, acting as if I hated having you around when the truth was—the truth was—”
“What?” Her voice was barely a whisper. “What was the truth, Jake?”
What, indeed? He was a man who’d been going along a road, traveling contentedly from point A to point B, and then Cat had come along and changed everything. She’d turned his existence upside-down and he’d complained about it. To her. To himself. She was trouble, he’d said. She was a burden.
The truth was that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. She was more than he’d ever dreamed he’d find, and she could never be his.
“The truth,” he said roughly, “is that you’re wonderful—and I’ve wanted you from that first night in Rio.”
“Then take me,” she said softly. “Make love to me, Jake.”
He took her hand, brought her palm to his lips and kissed it. “I—I can’t.”
“But you just said—”
He silenced her with a kiss so deep that she was trembling when he ended it.
“I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. But I can’t take your virginity, sweetheart. It would be wrong.”
“It would be right,” Cat said fiercely, and as she said the words she suddenly knew the truth.
She loved Jake with all her heart.
She knew better than to tell him that. Fate had brought them together; reality would drive them apart. But she could tell him some of what she felt.