‘Nothing suitable for your delicate ears.’
She scowled. ‘I wish I’d known all this when I met Diego at the restaurant. I would have punched that slimeball in the nose!’
Xavier looked at her, shocked, and then he threw his head back and laughed, t
he sound deliciously deep and full-bodied as it reverberated around the car’s interior.
His voice was rich with amusement when he spoke. ‘That is very sweet, querida, but I’m willing to bet you’ve never hit anyone in your life.’
‘There’s a first time for everything,’ she muttered, and then sucked in her breath to say more.
But he moved suddenly, and before she could guess what he intended he’d removed her seatbelt and dragged her onto his lap.
‘Enough talking,’ he growled. ‘I can think of better things to do with my mouth.’
Shock—and a surge of anticipation—made her voice breathy. ‘What happened to being safety-conscious?’
His silver eyes glittered. ‘You’re safe in my arms, amante.’
She wasn’t so sure about that, given the look of carnal intent on his face.
Then he stroked his hand over her breast and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the base of her throat, and suddenly the last thing on Jordan’s mind was being careful—or safe...
* * *
At six-forty-five a.m. on Friday they boarded his jet on the tarmac in Madrid for their return to Barcelona.
Jordan hadn’t complained about their early rising, but she had looked deliciously flushed and dishevelled as she’d raced around the apartment gathering up her things before the car arrived.
Her last-minute rush to pack had been his fault. He’d joined her in the shower, pressed her back against the tiles and done things to her under the steaming water that had consequently made them both run late—but she hadn’t complained about that either.
In the final minutes before they’d left the apartment she’d flown back into the bedroom, looking for something, and Xav had spied her journal on a side table in the living room. It had lain open at a page on which she’d written her list of things to see and do in Spain, and although he hadn’t intended to look one item had caught his eye before he’d closed the journal and called out to her that he’d found it.
The flight crew readied the aircraft for take-off and for the next hour Jordan dozed. Curled up on the seat next to him, head resting on his shoulder, she teased his senses with her subtle floral scent and soft, feminine warmth.
Time and again he found his gaze resting on her instead of on the document he’d opened on his tablet. Even in sleep she glowed with that irrepressible vitality that belied the pain she’d suffered. She wasn’t yet thirty, yet already she’d lost two parents—three if you included her biological mother.
He felt a touch of anger when he thought of Jordan being abandoned by her mother. She’d skimmed over the fact as if it barely mattered to her, but no one, especially a child, could weather that sort of rejection without sustaining a few psychological scars.
Had his own biological mother played an instrumental role in healing Jordan’s wounds?
He tucked a stray curl behind her ear and for the first time felt a deep sadness in his chest at the thought that he would never meet his birth mother. Jordan had loved and respected her stepmother; that fact alone told him Camila Walsh had been a good woman.
His mind turned to the letter she’d written to him—the letter he’d not yet read—and it struck him then, with a force that made the breath jam in his throat, what a gift it was. A gift he held in his possession only because Jordan had come halfway around the world to deliver it to him.
On impulse he pressed a kiss to the top of her head and she stirred, tipping up her chin and blinking sleepily at him.
‘Are we there?’
Her lips were soft and pink, and he studied the plump contours with a mix of lust and tenderness. Last night, after leaving the restaurant, he’d told her things he’d never revealed to another woman, opening up in a way he ordinarily would have found discomfiting. Instead it had deepened the sense of intimacy between them, so that later, when he had taken her to bed, when he’d joined his body with hers in the most intimate way possible, their physical connection had felt much more unique and powerful.
Had Jordan felt it, too? Was that why she’d finally agreed to stay for another week?
He brushed his fingers over the satin slope of her cheek and for a moment felt intensely envious of the man who would one day fulfil her romantic dream of love and happily-ever-after. He couldn’t be that man—he would never lay himself bare to that kind of risk and expectation—but for now she was his, and he would give and take as much pleasure as their time together allowed.
He stroked the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip and smiled. ‘Not yet, querida,’ he murmured. ‘Go back to sleep.’
* * *