One Night with Gael (Rival Brothers 2)

‘Maybe it’s the best thing for me to leave.’

His raw, unexpected response made her heart race faster.

‘You think you love her, but you don’t.’

‘Perhaps I’m not capable of loving anyone. Not even myself.’

The words were spoken with a quiet, strong conviction that made her eyes widen. Made her certain she was glimpsing something Gael Aguilar might not want her to had circumstances been different. Had he not been caught up in whatever emotions held him prisoner right now.

‘I don’t bel

ieve that. Besides, I know you enough to tell you what is in your heart. I love you that much, Simon. Enough to forgive. Enough to take another chance on us. But for us to happen you need to stay. Please...take the chance.’

‘Even if staying is perpetuating the cycle? Destroying us and everyone else who comes into our orbit?’ he rasped, his eyes fixed firmly on her.

Tears prickled her own eyes.

Slowly she reached out and laid a hand on his. ‘We’ll find a way, but we’ll only find a way if we’re together. Don’t leave. Please...take the chance on us. I love you. Fight with me. Fight for us.’

The powerful exposing words, spoken from a place in her own personal pain—the pain of suffering a broken family—rumbled through the room, moved through her as she blinked and raised her gaze to Gael.

The look on his face made her breath catch. It was a mixture of pain, regret and frustration. There was also hunger. A visceral need for connection that lanced her from the short distance between them.

‘Dios mio, you’re good. So very good...’ he muttered, his tone gravel-gruff.

Between one second and the next the hand beneath hers moved, turned and captured hers. He drained his glass and tossed it aside. Then he used their meshed hold to drag her close.

Goldie ended up in his lap, the air knocked from her. Before she could take a needed breath Gael’s mouth was on hers. Hot and sizzling and cognac-laced.

He brought every emotion bubbling beneath the surface of his skin to the kiss.

Goldie had been kissed before, either through her work or through casual acquaintance dates that had never gone anywhere. No past experience came close to what she was feeling now as Gael’s lips devoured hers, slipped past her stunned senses to breach them deeper. Her hands curled into his shirt, fisted, held on tight as his tongue licked her lower lip, her upper lip, then charged inside, his intense savouring of her drawing fire through her veins, drenching her from head to toe in white-hot sensation. Need slammed hard into her, making her moan and strain closer to his tensile strength, to the heat of sleek muscles moving beneath the cotton shirt.

She slid her hands higher, closer to the exposed skin of his chest, his throat. At her first touch they both groaned. Gael dragged her closer still, his hand moving to her hips and positioning her more firmly in his lap until the bottom of her robe fell open, her legs moved to either side of him. When she was situated to his liking he speared one hand through her hair, using his hold to angle her head, fusing their mouths closer together.

The kiss was like nothing and everything she’d ever dreamed of. Goldie felt as if she was flying and drowning at the same time. Her lungs screamed with the need for oxygen. She wanted to deny their request, to just keep experiencing the incredible sensation of kissing Gael Aguilar.

Only the pressure of his hand in her hair finally broke her free. But it was only so he could set her back a scant few inches, stare up at her with a face masked in raw, edgy lust.

‘I want you, Goldie. I want to have you. Right here, right now,’ he rasped, low and deep, his eyes dark with ravaging hunger and fierce intent.

Beneath her, his hips flexed, his powerful erection nestling deeper between her thighs, ramming home to her the strength of his desire.

Need pounded with relentless force through her. A need she knew she should fight. But for the life of her she couldn’t summon the willpower. All the same, she tried.

‘Gael—’

He closed the gap between them, forcing her answer back down her throat as he kissed her again, showed her with his mouth how feeble any protest she wanted to attempt would be. Groaning, she slid her hands up his strong neck, noting the raging pulse beneath her touch, glorying in it for a second before her fingers spiked into his hair.

His guttural groan was one of encouragement. Of ferocious need. They stayed like that for endless minutes, her on top of him, kissing him as if her life depended on it.

All too soon, he forced her head back again.

‘Don’t deny me, Goldie. Don’t deny us both,’ he rasped.

His accent was more pronounced, his voice curling around the words, burning them into her skin the way his eyes burned for her.

At twenty-four, Goldie knew she was an anomaly in the virgin stakes, and would probably draw mockery from Gael if he knew the depth of her innocence. But it was an innocence she was proud of—an innocence she’d fought to retain simply because she knew what throwing it away on the wrong person would make her feel further down the line. She’d watched her mother throw her body and her emotions away on the wrong men for far longer than she wanted to dwell on.