His Ultimate Prize
His sigh was heavy and exaggerated. ‘Bianca is almost ready to serve dinner. I figure we have twenty minutes to burn. Shall we be very English and talk about the weather before then?’
‘The weather is fantastic. Now, let’s talk about your return to X1. I don’t wish to get personal...’
His low laugh made heat rush into her face.
‘What I mean is...you’ll have to be careful when it comes to being...um...’
‘Just spit it out, Raven.’
‘Fine. Sex. You can’t have sex.’
He clutched his chest, then tapped carefully on his sculpted muscle. ‘Dios, I think my heart just stopped. You can’t say things like that.’
‘I mean it. The last thing you need to be doing is chasing after paddock bunnies. You could reverse any progress we’ve made in the last few weeks. Your pelvis needs time to heal properly. You do want to get better, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but at what cost? My libido could just shrivel away and die,’ he returned without the barest hint of shame while she...she’d grown so hot she had to take a hasty sip of her drink.
‘It won’t.’ She set her glass down on the table. ‘Not unless you put too much stress on your body by taking on too much. Look, I’m not asking for much. I’m saying keep your...keep it in your pants for just a little bit longer, until you’re more fully recovered.’
He opened his mouth but she raised her hand before he could speak. ‘And please don’t say you need sex to recover. Despite what you want everyone to think, you’re not a sex addict. In fact you were one of the most disciplined men I knew when it came to dedication to racing. All I’m saying is apply that same discipline to your...needs, at least for the time being.’
Sensual masculine lips tilted at the corners. ‘I think there was a compliment in there somewhere. Fine, I’ll take your lecture under advisement.’
‘You need to do more than that, Rafael. Your injuries are too serious to take recovery lightly.’
He shoved a hand through his hair. ‘Dios, did I call you a buzzkill earlier?’
‘I believe you did.’
‘Congratulations, you’ve just been upgraded to manhood-killer. Ah, here comes Bianca. Let’s hope she’s got something to revive me after that complete emasculation.’
‘Yeah, my heart bleeds.’
* * *
Rafael tried to follow what the financial newsreader was saying on the large high definition screen on his plane. He failed.
Opposite him, ensconced in the club chair, Raven twirled a pen between her lips as she read and made notes on a piece of paper. On any other woman he’d have ridiculed such a blatant sexual ploy. But he knew the woman opposite him was unaware of what she was doing. And its totally groin-hardening effect on him.
Giving up on finding out how the Dow-Jones was doing, he turned off the TV and settled back in his seat.
She raised her head and looked at him with those stunning hazel eyes. ‘What?’
‘How did you get into physiotherapy?’
She regarded him for several seconds before she depressed the top of her pen. ‘The random kindness of strangers.’
He raised an eyebrow.
She shrugged. ‘A chance meeting with an ex-PE teacher in my local park when I was seventeen changed my life.’
‘Was he hot?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘She realised I loved to exercise but I had no interest in being an athlete. We met and talked a few times. About a month later she took me to the local sports centre where professional athletes trained and introduced me to their head coach. By the end of the day I knew what I wanted to be.’
‘And she did this all out of the goodness of her heart?’
‘She realised I had...anger issues and worked to give me focus. She didn’t have to, so yes, I guess she did.’
He held back the need to enlighten her that nothing in life came free; that every deed held a steep price. ‘What were you angry about?’ he asked instead.
‘Life. My lot. What do most teenagers get angry about at that age?’
‘I don’t know. I was on the brink of realising my dream and getting ready to step into my very first X1 racing car when I seventeen. I was pretty happy with life at that age.’ Blissfully ignorant of the consequences fate had in store for him.
‘Of course you were. Well, some of us weren’t that lucky.’
‘Not all luck is good. Some comes from the devil himself, bonita. So, you achieved your light bulb moment, then what?’
Her gaze slid from his. He forced himself to remain quiet.
‘Although my teacher helped direct my vision, I couldn’t really do anything about it. Not at seventeen. I spent most of that year counting the days until my eighteenth birthday.’