Page 41 of Virgin's Stolen Nights with the Boss

‘My father desperately wanted to walk me down the aisle. He saw every man I dated as a future husband.’

‘What about you?’

‘I wanted to make my father happy.’

‘Wanted?’

Carmen nodded. ‘He died last year.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Please don’t...’

She put up a hand to halt his sympathies. It still felt too new, too raw, to talk about. But it wasn’t just words he was offering, because his hand gently rested on her bare shoulder.

Usually Carmen pulled away from physical contact, but there was comfort in his hand, and it steadied her enough to dwell on the moment. Elias was the first person she’d told about her father who had never met him. It felt like some bizarre milestone...one she didn’t want to unpick.

Then he removed his hand, but that rare feeling of comfort remained.

A lovely wave came and kissed her toes and Carmen smiled, saying, ‘The tide is turning.’

She closed her eyes, missing his hand on her shoulder, knowing his eyes roamed her body, feeling her spine tingling as if he’d run a light finger down it.

‘My father had terrible taste. He adored the last boyfriend I had, but...’

‘Did you?’

‘We weren’t together for long, but I actually thought he was a nice guy for once.’

Why she was sharing her shame, Carmen didn’t know. Well, she wouldn’t tell him about the money, because she didn’t want to reveal her background, or how well-known she was back in Spain. The only alternative was to reveal the part of her life that had stung the most.

‘I overheard him telling his friend that I smelt of the stables and that he had to—Well, anyway, some other not nice things too.’

Telling Elias, watching his reaction, she felt her embarrassment over the long ago incident evaporate.Poof!Gone.

Because he just looked at her.

Andhowhe looked...

Carmen had never been looked at like that before. It was as if he wanted to lean over and inhale her neck, or lift her arm and kiss the tender inside and say,I beg to differ...

There was nothing she could pinpoint, no apparent change in his demeanour, but he looked, and she smouldered beneath his gaze. She saw the dark ring around his chocolate irises and felt something heavy in the air between them. She felt the weight of her own lips, and as the object of his studied attention she felt...

Wanted.

She felt kissed.

For a moment, just a second—it didn’t even equate to time—Carmen felt wanted in a way she’d never known before. So wanted that the most natural thing to do was surely to move her face towards his...

She’d never met such power. The ocean was a mere puddle compared to the absolute pull that shot through her, and it made her want to lean in and know his kiss for real.

It took everything she had to resist, to remind herself that she had no idea what she was doing...

‘I should get going...’ she croaked.

‘Of course,’ Elias said calmly as Carmen stood up.

She had known she had a crush on him. Was attracted to him. With his looks and charm it was perhaps a matter of course. Yet what she had felt just now had been far from a matter of course. To kiss him would have felt natural.

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