Page 12 of The Virgin's Dance with the Devil
She smiled and unthinkingly rolled onto her side to face him properly. “He didn’t get much further than that. When he tried to stick his hand up my skirt, I bit his tongue and kneed him in the balls.”
He winced and laughed in one painful sound. “Good for you.”
“It’s funny, but I look back on it now and I feel sorry for him. He was a clumsy schoolboy. I could probably have stopped him by just pushing him away and saying no.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“His tongue in my mouth was just…” She made a gagging sound that made his face briefly crease with amusement before the lines around his eyes smoothed out and the intensity came back into his stare, an intensity with such hypnotism she couldn’t have looked away if she’d wanted to.
For the longest time, they just gazed at each other. Marisa’s heart was swelling so hard she swore she could feel it push against her ribs.
He inched his face even closer, so close the tips of their noses were almost touching. “I’m sorry your first kiss was such a bad one,” he said lowly. His warm breath whispered against her skin… she could smell the mint and rum of his mojito. The tips of his fingers brushed the tips of hers, and suddenly her heart wasn’t just swelling but pounding hard enough to stop her breathing, drums thrashing a beat in her head. His fingers sliding slowly between hers, Rico’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Have you kissed anyone since?”
Swallowing a mouth suddenly filled with moisture, she gave the lightest shake of her head.
The tips of their noses touched. Their fingers locked together. The drum beat in Marisa’s head and her chest became a cacophony of hot noise as Rico tilted his head and his lips gently pressed against hers.
Closing her eyes, the world whooshed away under a flood of flickering sensation.
After forever passed where he did nothing but hold his lips chastely to hers and breathe her in, his mouth moved in an almost lazy caress, and he seductively coaxed her lips apart. His silken tongue slowly brushed against hers, shocking her with the electrical thrill of it, and then the world and everyone in it disappeared.
Helpless to do anything but follow his tender ministrations, Marisa’s entire being sank into Rico. His darkly exotic taste filled her as much as the sensation of his mouth on hers, and as she breathed him in, a faint trace of warming oranges swirled with the musk of his skin and the darkness of his breath.
She had no recollection of their hands slipping apart until she softly moaned at the exquisite sensation of his fingersburrowing into her hair. Pressed her fingers tighter into a warm cheek of a texture so utterly different to her own, she dragged the pads over it, dimly marvelling and thrilling at the thick stubble threatening to break the surface. The kiss intensifying, she sank even deeper with it, leaving her dazed when he finally broke the fusion and drew back.
His hand still burrowed in her hair, his piercing stare capturing hers, he rubbed the tip of his nose to hers and huskily whispered, “How was that? Better?”
But she couldn’t speak. She was trembling, inside and out, and as the loud screech of a seagull flying over them penetrated her senses, the fog of Rico that had enveloped her lessened enough for her to fill with horror at what she’d just allowed to happen.
Dropping her hand from his cheek as if it had been scalded, she grabbed his wrist to pull his hand from her hair and scrambled upright.
“What did you do that for?” she choked, unable to look at him. “You know that isn’t what I want.”
There was a long moment of silence before the mattress moved, and then every cell in her body clenched as he hooked an arm around her waist to pull her back to rest against his hard chest, spreading his legs out on either side of her, gently but effectively trapping her.
He pressed a kiss into the top of her head and held his mouth there. Slowly, slowly, the heat of his breath seeping into her skull had the effect of relaxing her, and when she closed her eyes, she became aware of the beat of his heart pounding against her back.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, clutching at the muscular arm holding her waist so securely. She’d let him kiss her. She’d kissed him back. It wasn’t fair to blame him for how he made her feel.
His mouth moved against her head. “Don’t be. I told you, I will be anything you want me to be.”
Her voice dropped even lower. “I didn’t mean to lead you on.”
“You didn’t.” His breath swirled through the strands of her hair. “I will take whatever you can give me, but I will never pressure you into anything you don’t want to do.” His arms tightened around her. “Just holding you like this feels incredible.”
Fighting back tears at the impossibility of their feelings, she twisted into him, pressing her cheek against his heart. The urge to lift her face to his and seek another of his kisses was growing so strong that if his phone hadn’t suddenly rung out, she couldn’t put her hand on her heart and say she wouldn’t have done it.
She felt him stiffen and then suck in a long breath. “I need to take this.”
Chapter Four
It waswith perhaps the deepest reluctance Rico had ever experienced that he loosened his hold on Marisa, unwrapped his limbs from her, and stretched over for his phone. This was one of only two numbers he’d set to override his phone’s silent setting, the caller under instructions to only make contact with definitive news. He answered it with a curt, “I’ll call you back shortly.”
This was a call he needed to take in privacy.
He caught Marisa’s stunning eyes. She’d twisted around and drawn her knees to her chest, and was looking at him with so many emotions flittering over her face that he wondered how one person could feel so many different things in one go.
Rico was very much a man who lived in the moment. Sure, he was strategic and always made sure to be ten steps ahead of anyone else, but that was business. Outside of business, life was for having fun. He worked too hard to waste his playtime on things that stopped play. As soon as a lover stopped being fun, he ended it and moved onto the next one. One day he’d marry, if only to produce some grandkids to make his mother and grandmothers happy, and when he did, it would be to awoman who knew the score and knew not to make demands on his time or ask too many questions about his business dealings; a woman prepared to turn a blind eye to infidelities and who knew not to take them personally. In short, a woman built from the same hardened mould as his mother.
