She would not turn into one of those women who put up with all sorts of crap from a man just because he was...well...good in bed. And Kamel was, in her defence. There were probably not enough superlatives to describe just how good he was! She smothered the internal sigh and thought that he’d certainly had enough practice at it. It was not by accident they had dubbed him The Heartbreaker Prince!
One corner of his sensual mouth lifted in a lazy half-smile, but there was nothing lazy about the gleam in his eyes. She pressed a hand to her stomach—not that it helped to calm the fluttering.
‘I think you’re a little overdressed, angel,’ he rasped throatily.
The same could not be said of him. The black shorts he wore low on his hips left little to the imagination—and hers was rioting as she raised the level of her stare.
‘There are some swimsuits in the pool house.’
She closed her mouth with a firm and audible snap. Clutching the dress in one hand and her anger in the other, she slung him a contemptuous look that would have frozen a normal man stone dead in his tracks. The man she had married gave a here-we-go-again look and dragged some of the excess moisture from his hair with one hand, sending a shower of silver water droplets over her heated skin.
‘I just bet there are, but I’m not too keen on wearing other women’s cast-offs—or, for that matter, sleeping with them!’
He responded to her hostility with a long, slow, considering look. ‘Right.’
He didn’t add I see because he didn’t. When she had left him a few minutes earlier the sexual promise in her blue eyes... Well, if she hadn’t left when she had, he had been within an undiplomatic hair’s breadth of doing the unthinkable—slamming the phone down on his uncle with the explanation, I need to make love to my wife.
Acknowledging the strength of that need had been what had driven him to the pool. He hadn’t spared his body—the relentless pace through the water should have left him incapable of breath, let alone lust, but the ache was still there, and now she was looking at him as though he had just been found guilty of waging a hate campaign against kittens!
He ground his teeth at the sheer, unremitting frustration of it all. He tilted his head, a dark scowl forming on his wide forehead as he fished for a word that summed up his life before Hannah had come into it. Centred.
At another time he might have appreciated the black irony of the situation, but at that moment, with frustrated desire clenched like a knot, the humour passed him by. He had married her, resenting both the sense of duty that made him step up and the woman herself. And now, days later, he wanted her so badly he could barely string a coherent thought together. He was utterly consumed by it.
Not his type...well, that self-delusion had lasted about five seconds! Hannah was every man’s type and once you saw the woman behind the cool mask... He shook his head, his fine-tuned steel trap of a mind finding it impossible to rationalise the fascination she exerted for him, the all-consuming need he felt to possess her and to lose himself in her.
It was just sex, he told himself, recognising an uncharacteristic tendency to over-analyse in his train of thought. Why try and read anything else into it? He’d married a woman he couldn’t keep his hands off. But there was always a flip side, no heaven without hell. Not only did she have the ability to stretch the boundaries of sexual pleasure, she also had the ability to drive him crazy with her mood swings.
He forced his eyes from her face to the garment in her hand. Her mood seemed out of proportion with a wardrobe malfunction. He struggled to school his features into something that conveyed an interest he did not feel—he was more interested in peeling off her clothes than discussing fashion.
‘You want to show me a new dress?’
Her brows hit her hairline. He actually thought she wanted to parade around and ask his approval!
‘I suppose you’ve never seen this before?’ Her voice shook almost as much as her hand did as she held out the backless, frontless, totally tasteless garment.
Recognition clicked in his brain. ‘I have.’ He had little interest in women’s clothes but this one had been hard to forget—as was the evening that had gone with it.
He hadn’t been the intended victim or beneficiary of the provocative number. Neither, it turned out, had Charlotte begged him to escort her to the glittering premiere for the pleasure of his company. He and the dress had been part of her revenge on her ex-husband. Bizarrely, although Charlotte had been glad to be out of her marriage, she had resented the fact her ex had moved on too—especially as the woman he had moved on to was a younger version of herself.