The sound of excited revelry reached her before she saw the impromptu party. They were gathered in the lawns in front of the cottages. Each and every one of her guests, including Cristiano. He was, unsurprisingly, in the centre of the group, and the blonde she’d met earlier seemed to be hanging off his every word.
They’re just another group, Ava reminded herself. Get a grip. “Good evening.”
Her smile was breeziness itself, but Cristiano knew Ava better than that. She was self-conscious. She was anxious. And it was because of him.
Good.
Let her feel the emotions. They were far nicer than the dark desire that was plaguing him. Even with the willing body of Cindy beside him, every fibre of his being was trained on this Australian. A woman he had loved once, and sworn to forget afterwards.
“Oh, good. These are amazing,” Cindy said, standing and taking the tray without a word of thanks. “Did y’all try these already?”
Ava’s smile didn’t drop for an instant, but she was in retreat mode. Her duty done, she was already backtracking from the group of guests.
And Cristiano didn’t plan to let her get away so easily. He watched as she moved down the path and then stood with a lithe grace. “I’ll be right back,” he said to no one in particular, and moved with single-minded determination behind Ava. He caught her easily.
He didn’t speak, but perhaps she heard his footsteps, because she turned and stared straight up at him. “What is it?” She was hanging on by a thread.
Cristiano stared at her in silence. Her question was excellent. What did he want from her? What was he hoping to say or do? He let out a sound of frustration.
“Are you happy, Ava?”
“Happy?” She stared at him as though he’d started to speak Greek.
“Yes,” he hissed, then reached for her hand. She presumed he was going to return to the question of her wedding band, and so she prepared her answer. Angus and she had divorced only two months after they’d married. It had barely been a marriage, even then. Was she ready to reveal that to Cristiano?
She didn’t get a chance to find out. The question she was waiting for didn’t come.
Instead, he laced their hands together and pulled her gently behind him.
The sensible part of Ava’s brain was shouting at her to detach herself from him and storm back to the house. To lock all the doors and keep this man, who had always endangered her equilibrium, away from her. But he fascinated her. He enthralled her. He didn’t need to touch Ava to make her his captive. She had been from the moment she’d first seen him, and she would be forever more.
“Cris,” she said urgently, but he didn’t slow down. In the distance, she was vaguely aware of the group of guests, but he skirted away from them and instead led her to the cottage she’d assigned him. Her favourite cottage. The best.
Sanity was somewhere within Ava, but she wasn’t heeding it. How could she stop? How could she turn away from him, after years of craving anything from this man?
She had hoped against hope that he would change his mind. That he would come back to her of his own accord. That he would realise the mistake he’d made in choosing the adventure of travel over the adventure of love and commitment.
Then again, he thought she was married, she reminded herself forcibly. Staying away was the honourable thing, given the circumstances.
“Cris,” she repeated, but he kept moving, pulling her with him. Only when he reached his cottage did he slow – just enough to open the door and lead her inside. Why did she go? Ava couldn’t have said.
The lights were off, and at first Ava wondered if perhaps the fuse had blown again. But he reached across and impatiently flicked a lamp into life.
“Damn it, Ava,” he muttered, taking a step so that he was right in front of her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” She swallowed nervously; her veins were pounding with the force of her blood. She lifted a hand to the slim column of her neck, but her eyes didn’t leave his face.
“Like you want nothing more than for me to do this.” He lifted his hand and ran a thumb across her lower lip. Her body jerked in response. How long since she’d been touched like that? Her eyes widened but she didn’t step away. The past was there, an enormous hole she was slipping back into.
“Maybe I do,” she said, wondering why she was so willing to be pulled back into her history.
His expression was dark. And with good reason. Cristiano Cesar Barata was furious.
“You want me to do this?” He murmured, dropping his hands to her hips and pulling her hard against him.
Ava wanted so much. She wanted to rewind the clocks. She wanted to go back to a time when they not only desired one another, but felt love too.
She nodded slowly, hating herself for her weakness, yet knowing now that she needed him absolutely. He swore softly under his breath. She was married! He had no right to feel this flood of need for Ava. He shouldn’t have felt it then, and now? He was the worst kind of man.
And yet, she had been his. She had loved him. She had married Angus because he was the safe choice, but her heart had been Cristiano’s.
She wore a simple cotton dress with buttons down the front. He ignored those and lifted the skirt from the hem, so that his fingers could connect with the silky material of her underwear.
Ava startled, but she kept her body locked close to his. And Cristiano, fascinated by how far she would let this go, slid his fingers in the waistband. She felt smooth and warm, just as he’d remembered. His fingers ran across her buttocks, cupping the firm roundness, before coming around the front of her body. He pressed his palm against her womanhood, and was rewarded with her sharp intake of air.
“Please,” she whispered, her fingernails digging into his shoulders, her pelvis tilted forward.
In the back of his mind, Cristiano was shocked. He had expected her to be cold with him. To treat him with anger. To treat him, perhaps, like a stranger. But this? For her to offer herself to him as though no time had passed? As though she was as much his as ever before?
“Please,” she groaned again, with more urgency now, and her hand dropped to his, to press it harder against her core.
His laugh spurred an ache in her gut; it was so like Milly’s. Guilt flushed her body and she wanted to expunge it.
His fingers rose to the dress that was ruched around her waist and he lifted it over her head, discarding it on the floor. She stood before him in black underwear, and though he hated her, he loved her too. The emotion enraged him.
Before he could question the wisdom of what they were doing, he undid the button on his shorts and slid them off. His shirt followed suit. At the sight of him naked, Ava gloried.
A time would undoubtedly come to regret this decision, but it wasn’t in that moment.
He brought his mouth to hers with a searing desperation, and as he plundered her moist warmth with his tongue, he pushed her backwards through the accommodation, towards the bathroom. She danced with him as she always had, their limbs moving in unison, her fingers tangling in his hair. He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her from the ground, holding her petite body against his.
She heard the water before she felt it. Warm from the shower, he placed her in the cubicle and then stepped in behind her. It doused her completely and the small, logical part of her brain wondered how the heck she’d explain the wet hair to Marie when she returned to the house. But the rest of her was focussed on the moment and the man.
His kiss was demanding, and his hands even more so. They ran over her body, as if touching every inch of her to remind himself of how it had been between them. Did he need reminding? He pushed the thought aside and reached for the small bottle of shower gel. He emptied it on her shoulder and then ran his hands across her, lathering as he went.
Ava’s laugh was husky. “What are you doing?”
His eyes glittered dangerously in his handsome face. “What do you think?”
�
�Well, it feels like you’re giving me a bath.” She thought of Marie and Milly with another stab of guilt.
“Yes,” he agreed, but there was a dangerous undercurrent to his agreement. He washed her as though he could take away the past; as though he could physically remove Angus’s touch from her body. That his beautiful Ava had married another man would have killed him if he’d let it.
He unhooked the shower head and chased the bubbles from her skin before bringing his mouth down to her collarbone. His teeth grazed the sensitive skin, and at the same time, he brought a hand back to her core. He didn’t stop now but pushed a finger inside of her, smiling with satisfaction as her body bucked hard against him. “This is what you want?” He murmured against her ear, bringing his other hand to her breasts so that he could tease her nipples with his fingers. “You want to feel this?” And he moved another finger inside her moist core, spreading her legs and telling himself that soon he would feel the same pleasure.
God, Ava was shaking. Her body felt weak; her mind couldn’t focus.
“You want to feel this?” He began to move his hand back and forth, in and out, simulating the way his body would pleasure her, in time.
She nodded, delirious with desire.
“Turn around,” he commanded, and she was so fogged by lust that she did as he said, pressing her face against the cold, wet tiles.
“Good,” he murmured, bracing his legs to match her stance, bringing his hands back to her front and teasing her sensitive nerve endings at her entrance. He wanted to make her forget her husband. Her life without him. Everyone and everything she’d done since Cristiano had last possessed her he wanted to make irrelevant.
“You remember I am not easily satisfied,” he growled against her ear. “I intend to make this pleasure last all night, Ava, so do not think you will be running off anytime soon.”
Her cheeks flushed with guilty desire. Guilty, because she knew she would ask Marie to stay with Milly in a heartbeat, to experience what Cristiano was offering her.
He took her silence for compliance, and a deal was brokered between them. It might as well have been a blood pledge, for all he had the power to break it. To hell with her husband. She had been his first.
He had been her first lover.
And he was going to be her lover now. He was going to obliterate anything else from her mind.
He brought his erection towards her, and almost cried out at the remembered desire. Then, in the past, he’d been slow and gentle. She’d been inexperienced and he had adored her. Now?
He couldn’t untangle how he felt, but it was not adoration.
He plunged into her fast, hard, and with an angry need to possess. Her muscles were tight; and she groaned at the sudden invasion. He moved deep; she wrapped around him. He brought his hands around to cup her breasts from behind and he clamped them tight while he moved within her.
She was crying out, her voice a hoarse sound in the emptiness of the bathroom. He heard her increasing pleasure and he knew she was getting close. Good. He wanted to drive her absolutely wild. He pulled out of her swiftly, then spun her around to face him.
“Have you missed this, Ava?”
She nodded wordlessly, and he could see the sincerity in her face. “Good,” he groaned, bringing his mouth down to her nipple and biting it with playful intensity. She jerked against him, and brought a leg up to curl around his waist.
“Please,” she begged, trying to pull him back to her core. It had been three long years. “I’m so close.”
“Yes, I realise that,” he laughed. “But there is no rush, is there?”
Her cheeks flushed. “Please,” she whimpered against his shoulder. “I need this.” Her sanity was a ghost, far off in the distance. What she’d gone through since Cristiano had left was a brick path she couldn’t travel. Not then. He would never understand who she was now. All they had was this. This moment. This passion. This desire that was a hot, uncontainable force between them.
“Good,” he drawled, reaching behind her to flick the water off. He didn’t bother to grab a towel. Dripping wet, he stepped from the shower and held a hand to her. “You will get what you want, Ava. Plenty of it, I assure you.”
She dipped her eyes forward with embarrassment and he understood. She felt wanton. Cheap.
That was fine by him.
“Go to the bed.”
“I …”
“Go.”
She clamped her mouth shut. Whatever she’d been about to say, she forgot it. She wanted him. Three long years. Cristiano; the love of her life and father of her child. She needed him. She would process the ramifications later.
He watched her walk into the bedroom and then took a deep breath. He was older and had considerably more experience. He also had some morals, didn’t he? Was he really prepared to spend the night with a married woman? It would be a first for him. Cristiano, after all, had his pick of women. He had never needed to delve into those who had committed themselves to another.
But Ava was different. She was not simply another man’s wife. Their past; what they’d shared … she would forever belong to him, in the same way he would to her. Three years and still he felt it. The tug towards her. The ache to be with her. The need to hold her. The desire to please her.
Had he really thought he would be able to come back to the Valley without remembering this sensation? Had he really thought he would be able to stay on her property and not remind her of the connection they shared? He groaned softly.
Married or not, it didn’t matter to Cristiano. He judged himself badly for that, but what was judgement in the face of such powerful need?
A small part of him remained conflicted. It was a tiny voice in his mind, demanding better behaviour. More honourable actions. But when he walked into the bedroom and saw Ava’s naked form on the edge of the bed, he lost any ability to respect the sanctity of a union such as marriage. She’d turned on a single lamp, and the room glowed with a warmth that was dwarfed by the heat in his blood. If he’d had his way, he would have turned every light on in the house, so that he could marvel at her properly. But he was impatient. Such details could wait until next time. “Lie down.”
Her eyes held silent challenge, but she did as he’d commanded. She was trembling, like a fine thread caught in the breeze. He walked towards her purposefully and brought his body over hers. He was big, and she was small. He covered her with his strength, and she revelled in the sensation, as she had done years earlier. He ran a finger down her side, drawing imaginary patterns on her soft, wet skin.
“You used to love it when I did this,” he murmured, bringing his mouth to her belly button and then running it down lower, to her secret core.
She swore as he danced it along her heart, teasing and promising and making her body flood with an ache of need. “You loved this, didn’t you?”
“I loved everything,” she promised through gritted teeth.
His laugh was soft. “Everything? We had so much yet to learn. So much more to discover together. How do you know what everything could have been?”
She felt the condemnation in his words; they cut her heart in two.
He was right, anyway. With them, every time they’d touched had been magic. A lifetime of that? It would have been heaven on earth. But she’d never experience it.
“I hate that you married him,” he groaned, his words heavy with emotion.
Ava closed her eyes. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to feel. “I know,” she murmured, lifting her feet onto the mattress, her knees heavenwards.
“How could you? After what we were to each other? How could you choose him?”
She dug her nails into his shoulders. “Please, Cris. Talk later. Please, not now.”
He made a strangled noise of impatience. “I can’t do this, Ava. I thought I could, but it turns out, I’m not the kind of man who can sleep with another man’s wife.”
He pulled away from her and clamped his hands to his hips. She stared at him as th
ough she’d lost a limb.
“I’m not married,” she blurted the words out at the same time that she pushed off the bed. She took advantage of his surprise to push her palms against his chest and guide him back to the mattress. She employed strength to power him back to it, and then she sat on top of him, straddling him with her hands still on his chest.
“I’m not married. I’m no one’s wife. And right now, I just want to be here with you.”
“You’re lying,” he murmured, his eyes wide. His hands were on her hips, guiding her over his erection even as he processed her assertion. It obliterated his guilt completely. Without the complication of a husband, she was just a woman he’d once loved.
She arched her back as she welcomed him back to her core and began to move freely and hungrily over his length. Up and down she guided his shaft, her breathing laboured as her pleasure reached its zenith.
Her face was beautiful as it filled with passion. He saw her begin to lose control and he grabbed her waist so that he could flip her onto the bed. He wanted to do that to her. He wanted to stoke her flames himself. He saw the indignation in her eyes at the prospect of having her fever quelled for a second time, and he lifted a finger to her lips.
“Trust me,” he promised, moving back into her. As he teased her and tortured her back to the precipice, he touched every inch of her. Her skin had goosebumps as he ran his fingers lightly over it.
“God, Cris,” she cried out, wrapping her legs around his waist and stifling a scream as finally, for the first time in three years, she felt pleasure and happiness flood her body. “Yes!” She pushed her hips up, and then fell back against the mattress.
Her heart was racing and her body was moist with perspiration from the warmth of the evening. “That was amazing,” she said with sincerity.
“You speak in the past tense,” he chided. “I am not finished, and nor are you.”
Her eyes flew wide and, as if to prove his point, he moved so that she could feel his enormous, hard erection still clutched in her muscles.
“You are not married,” he returned with razor sharp precision to their earlier conversation.