Page 23 of His Innocent for One Spanish Night

Light fell on her face from the stained-glass window. ‘You’re gorgeous.’

‘I’m really not,’ Emily said.

‘Oh, you really are.’ He seemed to think about her words for a moment. ‘Why would you say that?’

‘Say what?’

‘Why would you put yourself down? I gave you a compliment.’

She didn’t know how to accept one, though. There really hadn’t been many.

‘You’re gorgeous,’ he repeated.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her cheeks flaming, and then she added, ‘So are you.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For the record, I never get involved with anyone at work...’

‘Liar...’ She smiled.

‘No!’ He shook his head, but then must have reconsidered that statement. ‘Oh, Sophia and I were an item ages ago, long before she worked for me.’

Oh, God! He was so worldly, and he was so confident, and everything she was not.

‘But tonight,’ Alejandro said, ‘perhaps we...?’

She could take it no more. She raised herself onto tiptoe and placed her lips on his, just for a second, for one tiny taste.

‘Hey!’

He pulled back and she stood there, mortified by her own boldness and appalled at how she had misread things. But as she turned to flee, she felt his hands still on her hips, and it took her a second to register that he was smiling.

‘I was going to say,’ he said, ‘that tonight perhaps we could meet and address things.’

It was not said in chastisement, because his tongue had bobbed out and tasted the place where her lips had been. ‘However, I can’t let you go after that...’

He lowered his head and his mouth came down on hers. Then he prised her lips open with his tongue.

It was a kiss she had hoped existed.

A kiss so thorough that she moaned into his mouth.

A kiss that just blocked out the sun and made the floor feel absent—as if she were floating.

This was how a kiss should be. She knew it because she’d found out how it felt to crave and to be craved.

His hands pressed into her bottom. His palms were hot through the fabric, and then decisive as he pulled her into his groin. The length and hardness of him pressed into her soft stomach felt indecent. Deliciously indecent and something she ached to explore.

His mouth moved to her neck and she was panting, a little dizzy as his hands slipped under her thin top.

There wasn’t time to suck in her stomach—there wasn’t even any thought that she ought to suck in her stomach. His hands were giving her flesh a light tickle on their way up to the underside of her breast...

‘I love your breasts,’ he said into her neck. ‘I am going to love your breasts.’

And Emily loved his words, for they promised there would be more of this later.

He stroked her nipples through the lace of her bra and his lips were softer now, gliding back down, and she was grateful for his control. Especially when she heard the distant sound of footsteps, hating the sound of them, and they both pulled back.

For the first time in her life Emily had to make herself decent, pulling down her top. Even if it had been only a kiss, it was her first real one.

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