Page 39 of One More Sleepless Night

His grin was too smug to ignore. ‘I’ll show you.’

‘How?’

Giving him a deliberately smouldering smile, Nicky pushed him onto his back, climbed on top of him and watched with satisfaction as a flicker of wariness leapt in his eyes.

‘You’ll see,’ she said, and began to slide down his body.

*

‘You know, you’re absolutely right,’ said Rafael quite a while later when he was able to think again. ‘There is a difference.’

Nicky glanced up and grinned. ‘Told you.’

‘Feeling smug?’

‘A little.’

And actually she had every right to, he thought, because frankly the afternoon had been astounding. When he’d initially pulled her into his arms he’d had the feeling that they’d be good together, but nothing could have prepared him for the explosive way they’d responded to each other. Over and over again she’d come apart in his arms and beneath his mouth, and he’d shattered in and beneath hers more times than he could count. It was truly staggering.

Now it was dusk and she was sitting cross-legged in his bed wearing one of his T-shirts and eating a tortilla he’d whipped up, tousled haired, sleepy-eyed and looking thoroughly ravished, and with any luck the night would be equally astonishing because unbelievably he wanted her again.

As the desire that had never really gone away surged through him for the dozenth time this afternoon Rafael felt himself harden and stabbed his fork into a piece of tortilla.

What was it about Nicky that made him lose such control and forget about everything but her? Where had all those thoughts of revenge come from? And as for wanting to make her beg, what the hell had that been all about?

The need to possess her, to make her succumb, had been all-consuming, and, for someone who’d always been so focused and in control when it came to sex, the realisation that all it took was a gorgeous woman, weeks of frustration and scorching chemistry to derail him so spectacularly like that was kind of harrowing.

‘And tired,’ said Nicky, yanking Rafael out of his thoughts in time for him to see her smothering a yawn and stretching languidly. ‘You’ve worn me out. It’s a good thing I stocked up on rest at the cortijo.’

And that was another thing, he thought as the comment she’d made earlier about not being well flashed into his head and a wave of guilt washed over him. Forget the mental gymnastics he was going through. What about the extremely physical ones he’d spent the afternoon subjecting her to?

He swore softly beneath his breath. Nicky had been ill and never mind that everything they’d done had been entirely mutual, he should have taken more care. Better still, he should have held his ground and resisted her in the first place, but there was little use in beating himself up about that again.

‘Rafael?’ she asked, the tinge of concern in her voice making him feel even worse. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Are you?’

She blinked and shot him a dazzling smile that slowly flipped his stomach. ‘Of course I am. I feel fabulous. Why do you ask?’

‘You said you hadn’t been very well.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘True, but I also said I’d recovered. As I think we’ve just admirably demonstrated.’ She frowned. ‘I hope you don’t think you hurt me or anything.’

Rafael stiffened with resolve because he’d let too much slide and he wasn’t about to let this go. ‘If you’ve been ill, can you blame me?’

There was a pause, then she set her fork down and looked at him, pinning him to the mattress with those stormy grey-blue eyes of hers. ‘OK,’ she said, linking her fingers in her lap and leaning forwards earnestly. ‘Here’s the thing. Yes, I haven’t been particularly well, but neither have I been exactly ill.’

As his once sharp but now apparently addled brain tried to work out what she meant and failed, Rafael frowned. He’d had a first class education initially at public school in England, then at Cambridge and finally at Harvard, and he’d always assumed he was pretty much bilingual, but perhaps he’d been deluding himself all these years. Perhaps somewhere along the way he’d missed the lesson on nuance, because right now he couldn’t work out what she was saying. ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’

‘I nearly lost myself.’

‘How?’ he asked, now even more perplexed.

‘Burnout.’

‘Burnout?’

‘That’s right. Gaby diagnosed it a few weeks ago and I think she was right.’

---