Yet the other part of Cat thrummed in suspense. Could she simply let loose and enjoy a night of passion with a very beautiful man with the cast-iron guarantee of no future?
It was refreshingly tempting.
He was seriously beautiful. Far more so than she was used to.
He was also rather more brusque and arrogant than she would choose, just rather too alpha for her.
She was tired, so tired of the inevitable let-down in relationships, the starting gun of hope, the numerous false starts and then the sprint that turned into an exhausting jog, and then standing bent, hands on thighs, and admitting defeat, because the two of you were just not going to make it to the finish line.
She was surprised at the ease of her decision.
‘No.’ Cat finally smiled. ‘I have no problem with that.’
‘Good.’
Housekeeping sorted, she tried to focus on the menu but, at thirty-four, she felt she’d just passed her driving test and been given the keys but was far from skilled enough to drive.
‘Están listos para ordenar?’
The waiter came over and presumably asked if they were ready to order.
‘I’ll have paella.’ She handed back the menu.
‘The chicken here,’ Dominic said, ‘is the best you’ll ever taste...’
Her eyes narrowed. Usually she’d say that she’d like the paella, thank you for interfering. She certainly didn’t need a man choosing her food and yet as she glanced around, sure enough, the locals were eating the chicken.
Oh, he was so far from her usual fare but, no, he didn’t need to be perfect tonight.
‘When in Spain...’ She shrugged.
She had the chicken and, as he had promised, it was amazing.
‘Lemony, herby and so fat and juicy,’ Cat commented on her second mouthful.
‘And salty,’ Dominic said. ‘We’ll be up all night, guzzling water...’
He was presumptuous.
She knew, though, that he was right.
The rest of the world, the past, the future, was like rain as they huddled, as if under some imaginary umbrella, and enjoyed now—the spectacular food, the music that filled the restaurant.
They barely talked about work. She said something about being the only female consultant and how they gave every gynae patient to her. He mentioned how he’d lived in London till a couple of years ago, just half an hour or so away from her.
But then work got left behind and she found out how he loved the architecture in Edinburgh but was fast falling in love with Spain.
And she told him about her passion for renovation, and her obsession with wallpaper, how she could spend hours leafing through sample books but, even then, you could never quite know how it would look once up.
Usually she never got to that part as eyes had long since glazed over with boredom.
His glazed with lust.
‘Do you put it up yourself?’ Dominic asked.
‘I do.’ She smiled.
‘I feel emasculated.’
‘Oh, I doubt you could ever be that.’
It was Dominic who then smiled.
Was it wrong? she wondered as they danced.
Was it wrong to be dancing and happy on his birthday?
Tonight it felt right.
A sexy flamenco dancer was kicking his heels and strumming away and then, when he slowed things down, Cat felt her cheeks blaze with fire for sins not yet committed as Dominic pulled her into him.
His fingers ran lightly down her bare back and it felt utterly blissful.
‘Fourteen hours later than I’d have preferred,’ Dominic said into her ear, because that was how long it had been since he’d first itched for the feel of that sexy spine beneath his fingers.
‘Well, I’m glad for your sake that you waited,’ she said, imagining her reaction had he been so bold.
His touch didn’t feel bold now; it felt right.
When the music ended they made it back to their table and when the bill came Cat did her usual and put her card down.
‘We can go halves,’ she said as he picked up the card to hand it back to her.
‘Don’t do that, Cat.’
‘What?’
‘Ruin a perfectly good night.’
If she were setting the ground rules for the future, she’d have insisted on paying her way.
Instead, they were setting the ground rules for tonight and she shivered in the warm night air as they headed for the hotel.
They walked back along the beach. It was after eleven but not really dark thanks to a near full moon and, despite the hour, the beach was far from deserted.
‘There are some gorgeous beaches not far from here,’ he said. ‘Are you still determined to head back without seeing the place?’
‘I am, though I wish I’d known just how much I’d like it,’ she admitted. ‘I’m going to come again but next time for a holiday. You’re here a lot, then?’
‘Quite a bit,’ Dominic said. ‘I have family here.’
‘Oh.’
She ached to know more about him but Reticent was possibly his middle name because, apart from long conversations about everything and nothing, he gave away little.
The only thing she was sure of was their attraction.
‘Which is why,’ he continued, ‘when I saw the conference was being held this year in Barcelona I decided to combine both. I’m very glad now that I did.’ He turned her around and she looked into his dark eyes and his face. He was unreadable. ‘I wish you had got here on Thursday.’
‘Why?’ she asked, her brain a bit sluggish with his mouth so close. She was far too used to focusing on work and she assumed that she must have missed some spectacular talk, or some cutting-edge revelation. The answer was far more basic than that.
‘We could have had three nights instead of one.’
Still, he didn’t kiss her, though she ached, ached for him to do so, but he just smiled in the dark like a beautiful devil and then they walked on.
Back at the hotel Cat was breathless, though not from walking, as they stepped into the foyer. They went through Reception and there was a lot of noise coming from the bar from their fellow attendees.
‘Did you want to go to the bar?’ Dominic offered.
‘Yes.’
‘Again,’ he said, ‘she lies.’
Cat smiled. ‘She does.’
They headed for the elevators.
No, he didn’t ask her for her floor.
He pressed his.
They stood backs against opposite walls facing each other as the lift groaned its way up, letting people in, letting people out.
And his eyes never left her face.
With three floors remaining they were finally alone and still he did not beckon.
Stay, Cat told herself, though she felt like a Labrador waiting for Christmas dinner.
Ping!
She walked slowly only because he did.
And his very steady hand swiped the card and opened the door to his room.
Would he offer her a drink? Cat wondered as she looked around.
The room was the same as hers, except it smelt of his cologne and there was a suitcase on the floor.
And then there was no time for further observation because he turned her to him and finally there was the bliss of his mouth. It was the roughest ever kiss and tasted divine. His tongue, his lips, his hands, the hunger in him was so consuming that there was no room for thought. She hadn’t been kissed like this since—well, since for ever. His tongue was wicked, his hands pressing into her head and his body just primed and ready, because she could feel him.
She ached to feel him, so much so that the three garments of clothing she’d assumed he
was wearing—was it only this morning?—were being unbuttoned and unzipped by Cat as his mouth never left her face.
He halted her briefly, long enough to retrieve his wallet, because of course he carried condoms, and she watched as he deftly put one on and so thick and hard was he that she played with him for a moment as he removed her dress.
She heard a brief tear and knew she would be up all week sewing Gemma’s dress as it was now a white puddle on the floor.
She’d think about that later. Right now she was concentrating on him as his tongue met with her ear and she just about came in midair at the thought of him inside her.
Her bra was gone. She knew that because his mouth was on her breast as his hands slid her panties down.
And then she felt herself being lifted.
Not just onto him, but lifted out herself.
Out of grief, out of control, out of everything she knew.
Her shoulders met the wall and then he entered her and filled her, so rapidly and completely that it hurt enough to shout.
‘Yes,’ he said, and his mouth moved under her hair and his fingers met the back of her neck as he ground into her.
Cat wasn’t used to being so thoroughly taken. A bit of foreplay might have been nice, but then she’d never been so close to coming in her life.
She was thoroughly rattled in the nicest of ways. He just kept thrusting in and she held on to her own hands behind his neck and then of her own accord was grinding down.
It felt amazing.
Just that.
It felt so amazing that he knew, more than she did herself, about what she liked.
Oh, she liked it rough.
She liked the intensity of him and the deep, rapid thrusts and the way he stopped kissing her and stared her down.
He felt the tension and thank God for that because he was past consideration. He could feel the clamp of her thighs around him and the heat of her centre and had moved to the point of no return just as she started to pulse.
He loved orgasms, he met them regularly, but there was something so intense about hers, something so intrinsically matched to his, that she drove him on to more.
To get back to her mouth and rougher kisses and deeper thrusts and then he felt it, the slight collapse of her spinal column and the slump of her shoulders as she rested her head on his and he knew she was smiling.
Even as he shot the last of himself into her, he knew she was smiling and somehow that made him smile too.
No guilt, no regret, they met each other’s eyes and kissed again but without haste this time.
Then he took her to bed and they lay there a moment before she was back to his mouth, down to his hips, and they did it all over again.
And again.
CHAPTER FOUR
DESPITE HAVING SLEPT for all of an hour, Dominic woke before sunrise.
Just as he always did.
Even if he went back to sleep afterwards, his body clock still dictated that he watch the sun come in.
He glanced at the clock and it was just after four and he knew where he needed to be.
Where they needed to be.
‘Cat,’ he said. ‘Cat...’ He watched her slowly stretch like her namesake. ‘Get dressed...’
She could have, given the circumstances, assumed her use-by date had expired and she was being thrown out, but he gave her a kiss to awaken her and told her to hurry as he picked up the phone.
Her Spanish was...well, it wasn’t, but she knew the word ‘coffee’ when she heard it in any language.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked as, doing up her espadrilles in the elevator, they made their way down.
‘You need to see more of this city.’
‘At 4:30 a.m.?’
‘We could do it tomorrow if you’d stay another night.’
He hoped she would stay another night but they both knew that that wasn’t happening.
Cat blinked as the doorman handed them two take-out coffees and Dominic took her hand and they walked to a car.
‘You’ve hired a car.’
He didn’t answer and when she got in she realised that it wasn’t a hire car because there were coffee cups and papers and it looked pretty much like the inside of hers.
‘Just how long are you here for?’ she started to ask.
‘Ask no questions,’ he said.
Yes, she reminded herself, that was what they were about—fun, freedom...
And yet he intrigued her.
He spoke Spanish and he drove like a local through the dim city streets and she drank her coffee and tried to get her brain into gear.
‘Come on.’ He parked the car and took her hand and she was happy to just go with the adventure.
Without him she’d still be asleep.
Instead, she was wide-awake, walking up a hill and wondering just what the hell was going on, and then she remembered it was one of those days.
There was a tiny fracture to her mind, an angry inward curse that she could have made it through almost forty minutes of being awake without remembering the day that it was.
‘This is Collserola,’ Dominic explained. ‘It is a national park—the green jewel of Barcelona...’
And it wasn’t exclusively here for them because, as they climbed the hill, Cat found herself behind a group of tourists and it became clear as they chose their spot and sat on mossy ground that this was the place to be at sunrise.
And it was.
The city twinkled its night lights, the cars weaved in orange lines and beyond that, slowly, the dark ocean started to turn to blue as around them woodland came to life.
‘It’s amazing,’ she said, and then turned to him but Dominic didn’t answer.
He sat watching and tried to tell himself that he shouldn’t have brought her, that he should feel guilt. Oh, there it was, this clutch of guilt in his chest had arrived. He had no issues with last night; it was the morning he was wrestling with.
And Cat didn’t notice his lack of answer because as the world came to light she was on the edge of crying.
I miss you every single day.
I miss you this very second.
Just not every second.
Not every moment.
And sometimes moments run into hours but I still miss you every single day and will for ever.
How can that be? both wondered.
When did the seconds start to join up? When did that first full minute devoid of grief arrive and your leaving go unthought-of for an hour?
At what point did a cruel world start to turn beautiful again?
‘To think I could have left without seeing this.’ Cat broke the strange silence they were wrapped in and he turned then and looked at her.
And the clutch of guilt in his chest released.
It just went.
He would regret it later, Dominic decided.
Right now they shared a kiss.
A deep kiss that chased her softly to the ground and she could feel damp grass beneath bare shoulders and for them both all was right with the world.
It was a kiss unlike last night’s, soft and tender, and she opened her eyes in the middle and saw his closed and wondered how it might be to be loved by this man.
It felt as if she was, it was the strangest glimpse of it. Her hands were in his hair and his mouth was still over hers, and if there hadn’t been a lot of tourists present and two hundred cameras clicking, he would have made love to her, Cat knew.
He would have peeled off her dress and just slipped inside her.
She’d never come to a kiss, but the deep, sensual press of his mouth persisted. The roam of his hands was gentle, pressing into the side of her. In public, somehow shielded, she just came to private thoughts tha
t she dared not examine and he nearly did too just feeling her slight rise and then the stillness in his arms.
It was a long, lingering kiss that had to stop and as his lips left hers she looked up into his eyes and she wished she could stay here for ever.
So did he.
Of course they couldn’t.
‘We have to get back,’ he said, and waited for the clutch of guilt to return but it had escaped.
‘We do.’
It was rather odd to step back into normality.
This time she pressed the lift button for her floor and there were others in there with them. When they arrived at her floor they shared a sort of odd wave as Cat got out.
Oh, my, she thought as she saw the damage to Gemma’s dress. There were grass stains up the back, a tear near the bust, and then she looked at her face.
Yikes.
She looked as if she had spent the night having torrid sex with a stranger.
She had!
It was this morning that disconcerted her, though in the very nicest of ways.
She had a shower, wearing a shower cap, and then got out and picked half a forest out of her hair.
She had love bites on her breasts and she remembered his mouth there and suddenly she wanted him all over again.
She put on her lilac dress and went downstairs and took her seat in a talk she had been very much looking forward to.
But how did you concentrate on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation? Cat thought. Dominic was off doing whatever he was doing but he might as well have been sitting next to her because that’s where her thoughts were.
She felt the buzz of her phone in her bag and she sneakily pulled it out.
Of course it couldn’t be him, suggesting they sneak away, she reminded herself.
He didn’t even know her number.
It just felt as if he should.
Instead, it was Gemma.
Are you okay?
Yes, but your dress isn’t, Cat was tempted to reply. She thought of the tear he had made in it last night and the grass stains today.
She just hoped they had another one at Gatwick.
All good, Cat answered without thought, and then she guiltily fired another text.
It seems wrong to say that today.
The Baby of Their Dreams (Contemporary Medical Romance) Page 4
