Nicola Marsh - Hot Summer Flings

He had been tempted. Dios, but he had been so tempted standing there, fighting against his baser instincts, especially given the status of his relationship with his then wife playing in a loop through his head.

Little snippets of the beginning of the end of his marriage slid into his head now.

‘I understand,’ Rosanna said when she discovered he had removed his things from the room they shared.

‘And are relieved?’ he asked, genuinely curious, and taking no satisfaction from her obvious distress.

Emilio felt a lot of responsibility for what had happened. His mindset when he had entered into the marriage had not differed from how he would enter into any other contract.

With the benefit of hindsight he could see that this had been a mistake—this wasn’t any contract.

Mistake number two had been not factoring in the emotional factor, not allowing for the possibility that, despite what she had said, Rosanna needed more than he had been prepared or able to offer.

What had happened had been inevitable.

The suggestion made his errant wife look uncomfortable. ‘I wasn’t dissatisfied with what we had. That isn’t why I slept with—’

Emilio took pity on her. ‘It’s all right, I don’t want a score out of ten, Rosanna, and I don’t want to know his name.’

‘I know you don’t. If you’d loved me you would have.’

‘I never—’

‘I know you didn’t,’ she cut in quickly. ‘He didn’t love me either, but he said that he did, and I needed to hear that even if it was a lie,’ she admitted sadly. ‘Don’t look like that, Emilio. Don’t be sorry for me. I’m not asking you to sleep with me. I don’t expect it, and I do realise that you will need—when you do I won’t make a fuss.’

‘So you are giving me permission to have sex with other women?’

‘It’s a sensible solution.’

Cold-blooded and clinical were the words that slid unexpectedly into Emilio’s mind; they were two things that he had been accused of in the past. And mostly those accusations had been justified, so why now did settling for a dispassionate solution make him feel discontent?

Why did he think it was settling? Settling implied there was a better option. He knew there wasn’t—marriage was by definition flawed, at best a compromise.

‘More sensible than a divorce? ‘

She looked at him, white with anxiety under the perfect make-up he had never seen her without. ‘But you agreed we could make this work.’

‘I agreed that a divorce would be messy. I agreed that we make better friends than lovers. I agreed that domesticity is not something I am suited to.’

‘You haven’t met anyone?’ she began tentatively. ‘Someone special?’

The idea amused him. ‘I have met no one I wish to have sex with and, even if I had, I have no desire to leap into another marriage,’ he promised, believing it.

They left it like that.

When six months passed and he had not taken up the offer of guilt-free cheating, he did pause to consider the situation. Six months was a long time and he was a man with a healthy sex drive. He recognised channelling his energies, no matter how successfully, into work was not a long-term solution to the problem.

Did his reluctance to even acknowledge a problem existed stem from the fact he still thought of sex outside marriage as cheating?

It was not a distaste of cheating that held him in check when he looked at Megan that night and burnt with a primal need to make her his.

It was the knowledge that following through with his instincts, taking advantage of her at a moment like this would make him no better than the man he had just sent packing.

The idea filled him with repugnance; for the first time in his life he wanted more than sex. He did not want some sordid hole-in-the-corner affair; he did not want their relationship to be tarnished with his past mistakes. He knew he had to be patient.

Despite his reputation for infallibility, Emilio had made bad decisions in the past. While he did not advertise that, neither did he agonise over it; he shrugged and moved on.

But the decision he made that night to be patient had not been one he had been able to shrug away. It had tortured Emilio for two years.

He never made the same mistake twice.

Emilio was going to make Megan Armstrong his. He was going to make her forget every man she had ever known. Determination hardened to steel inside him. The need to claim her had not lessened with time, but deepened—she was going to be his.

He ran a finger down her smooth cheek, smiling as he felt her shudder. He breathed in the fragrance of her hair and allowed the scent of apples to flood his senses.

‘I did not warm to the man,’ he explained.

Megan, deep in the sensual thrall, responded to the wry admission with a vague, ‘Who?’ The warmth of his breath on her ear lobe was sending shivers of sensation all the way down to her curling toes.

He brought his face close to hers until their noses were almost touching. ‘The clown you were fighting off in the car.’

‘I was fighting him off,’ she said, thinking, Kiss me, please kiss me. Every second he didn’t was sheer torture.

‘I know.’ He lifted his head fractionally and hooked a thumb under her chin, tilting her head from side to side as he studied the soft curves of her face with an expression of ferocious fascination. ‘I should have throttled him,’ he mused thickly. ‘I really wanted to, but not as much as I wanted to do this.’

Without warning he grabbed her bottom, his big hands curling over the feminine curves as he hauled her upwards and hard against his body, sealing them from waist to thigh.

Megan’s eyes flew wide, the breath leaving her body in a gusty sigh as she registered the bold imprint of his rock-hard erection as it ground into the softness of her belly.

‘Oh, God!’ she groaned as a rush of liquid heat exploded inside her. ‘You wanted. That night. But you were married.’

His mouth twisted into a smile that left his dark eyes cold. ‘Do you think that a piece of paper stops a man wanting another woman? You of all people should know that isn’t so, Megan.’

She flinched at the reference. ‘So you’re saying if it did I wouldn’t exist,’ she said quietly, trying not to be shocked by his admission. Maybe some men shouldn’t get married. Especially highly sexed ones like Emilio.

He kissed her then, hard and possessively, the bruising pressure of his lips driving the breath from her lungs, his tongue probing deep into her mouth. Megan’s arms slid around his middle as she clung, kissing him back wildly, without finesse, just with a hunger that equalled his.

When he finally lifted his mouth from hers it took several seconds for her head to clear, for a tiny sliver of sanity to filter back.

‘You’re going to do that again, aren’t you?’ Not that much sanity.

He smiled, his liquid, dark, incredible eyes fastened on to her face absorbing every detail as he ran his fingers down her throat. ‘That’s up to you.’

His reply frustrated her. ‘Do I have to beg?’

No wonder he looked so smugly confident; he had to have had women begging him all his life.

God knew Megan didn’t want to be another notch on his bedpost, but if she had to beg she would. Where Emilio was concerned it seemed she had no pride.

‘You have to tell me you want me as much as I want you.’

She began to turn her head, her lips trembling. ‘Because you don’t know.’

The bitterness in her voice brought a frown to his face. ‘Because I need to hear you say it.’

She couldn’t bear it. Every cell in her body craved his touch. ‘I want you, Emilio.’

His nostrils flared as he moved in to bite her lower lip, breathing in her warm womanly smell as he nipped his way towards the corner of her mouth. ‘But if you prefer to go sightseeing.’ he teased, running his tongue along the sensitive skin of her inner lip. Her moan of pained protest drew a fierce grin from Emilio. ‘Though I should point out that my bedroom is much closer …’