“You’re crazy,” she muttered, but the look in her eyes was confused and emotional. She was pulling away, guarding herself again.
Even before she rose to her feet, Rex knew he had some major backpedaling to do. “Wait, please, I apologize for the interruption—that was unfortunate.” He gestured at the waiter. “I’ll see you home.”
“No, you won’t.” The defensive look in her eyes was reflected in the way she held her shoulders, as if she was ready to bolt.
“I’ll see you to the taxi rank.” He rose to his feet and held her gaze.
“It’s not necessary.”
“It’ll be busy, you’ll have to queue. I’m not letting you wait alone.”
She shook her head, but then she paused.
They’d come so close. Rex went after her.
He wasn’t about to let it end now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE STREET OUTSIDE Raphael’s was busy with traffic. It had started raining and Carmen pulled her jacket tighter as she weaved through the people on the pavement, headed to the taxi rank on the corner of the street.
“Hey, wait up.” Rex’s arm encircled her waist as he ran alongside her.
For a moment she thought she might be able to slip away, that he would get snagged waiting to settle the bill. She didn’t want him to see how upset she was. Pausing, she attempted to pull free. “Rex, I’m going home.”
“A moment?” He soothed her with his hands on her shoulders.
How she wanted to slide into his arms. She ached for him. It was worse than ever, a gnawing ache in her chest that would only be filled by him. It was as if seeing his ex like that made her realize she was lost to him, even though the encounter made her feel foolish and transparent.
She met his gaze.
“You said you wanted more,” he reminded her.
“I also said it would be wrong for me.”
“It won’t be wrong, not for either of us.”
He seemed so sure, and the way he looked, rain streaming down on him while he steadfastly ignored it, melted her to the core. She swayed unsteadily. “I can’t go there again.”
It felt like a lie. It was a lie. What she needed was to be in his arms. Heat built fast at her center and every part of her yearned for him.
“Give us a chance.” He stroked his hands down her arms to her wrists.
His dark good looks mesmerized her, his intense, determined personality evident in his actions, his appearance and his posture. The scent of his cologne made her want to move close to him, but she was too vulnerable. “Let me go.”
“I’m taking you home. That much is set in stone.” He flicked back the damp hair on his forehead. “But be warned. I want more than that. I want you to give me a chance. Things happened too fast last time, things that had been on hold for too long. It was good but it unraveled when we were under pressure, I know that. I’m willing to work at it.”
His words were sincere, and the way he held her...it all served to undermine the fact that she was losing the final shreds of resistance she clung to.
“I want you, Carmen,” he added.
That was it; he wanted, he got. Frustration gripped her. “You don’t know me. Not really!”
“I want to know all there is, but I believe I already know you better than you think I do.”
She looked at him, wary, afraid. It was only herself that she was denying, she knew that. Yet it scared her that she even contemplated the idea of giving in to him again. If she opened up, it would be too hard. He’d be gone, anyway. That’s what he was like, and she’d be alone, exposed and vulnerable. She had to keep it buried.
His hand locked on her wrist.
When she shook her head and turned her face away, he tugged on her wrist and reeled her into his arms.
He silenced her with a kiss. Possessive arms held her to him and his mouth crushed hers. Stunned and winded, she resisted, fighting him, but the more she levered against him with her hands on the wall of his chest, the more tightly he held her, and then she was swamped with it—recognition, desire and need. It was so easy for him, to click his fingers and women came running.
“I want you,” he said, his voice hoarse when she pulled back, “and as hard as this situation is, I like the fact that I couldn’t bear it that you walked out of there without me!”
She went to respond, but couldn’t muster the words when she saw the emotion whirling in his eyes.
“Damn it, I like that I hurt like hell when you’re not around, and I like that I’m ready to do everything and anything it takes to be with you. You challenge me, and that’s good, but it’s more than that. It was always there and I see it now. I see why it was always there.”
She blinked rain from her eyes. It was surreal, seeing him this way.
He thumped one fist against his chest. “I like this, Carmen. I want this—” he gestured around them “—to be here standing on the pavement in the cold driving rain laying myself on the line for you. I like what you do to me.”
It was always about him. “But I don’t like what you do to me.”
His jaw turned to granite and his eyes blazed at her. “Why not?”
“Because...” She hunted for the words, and as she did her feelings bottled, then frothed and exploded out in a rush. “Because you’re so supremely confident, and I lose myself when I’m with you and I need to stay in charge or I’ll let people down. That’s the way it is. It’s like a mountain I’ve had to climb and I’m there now, I’m on top of it, but I can’t cope when you unravel me. You are my undoing and I can’t risk that.”
“Okay, okay, slowly. I need to know about all of this.” He moved in and cupped her face in his hands. “Explain what the mountain is.”
Shit. Why did I even say that? Her stomach knotted, her backbone dissolving as vulnerability disarmed her. “Forget I said that.”
He was silent while he considered her.
Adrift on a tide of unleashed emotions, desperation gripped her.
“We’ll come back to it,” he said, “because if it’s something that’s stopping us being together I want to know about it.”
“For crying out loud, Rex,” she blurted, finding her mast and strapping herself to it again, “you aren’t ever going to truly be ‘together’ with someone, not for any length of time. It’s not in your nature.”
“I disagree. I do want that, and it’s you I want to be with, and I want that to be for a very, very long time.”
Her stomach flipped. “Please don’t say that,” she whispered, “not if you don’t really mean it.”
“But I do mean it, and we were warming nicely, we were getting close. So why don’t you start by telling me what were you thinking back there, before Kelly arrived. And after.”
She turned her face away, wrapping in on herself.
“I need to know.”
She was about to deny him, and then his hand snaked around the back of her neck. She balked at his control, knowing what it could do to her.
Wriggling in his grasp, she denied him.
Then he stroked her chin with his thumb and her head instinctively dipped back, absorbing the comfort he offered her—a seductive tactic he used while he probed deeper. She felt as she did when he was sexually demanding, but here on the edge of the pavement she wanted to get into a taxi and he’d taken over. “Rex. Don’t do this to me, please.”
“I’m here, holding you. I want it all, Carmen, tell me.”
What she wanted to feel was denial, but it was hope that overwhelmed her. Hope is futile. She stared at him, hating him for what she felt. I love you, and I hate that.
The need to let him know how much she hurt because of him reared its head, and she let rip. “I wanted to say, yes, I think of being with you often, fool that I am.”
“Because I was right back there, damn you. I was giving in, wanting what you offered.” Blood rushed in her ears. There wasn’t any switching it off, not now. “Then your gorgeous ex walks in and I was right back there with women waltzing in when we were so right together, so full on, and then you were with them and...oh, bloody hell, Rex, we couldn’t be together, anyway.” Her legs had turned to water. “Eventually I gave in to that situation but it wasn’t easy...and...oh, fuck it, you know how it is, it’s hard to reverse that.”
Rex’s expression broke, his frown lifting. “But we were meant to be, you just said it...we were so right. The rest is just hurdles. We can get past them, together. Tell me again...you just said it.”
She squirmed and shook her head. Hearing him repeat her words left her feeling silly, her dreams exposed and raw.
He laughed softly. “I’m not going to ask you why you won’t repeat it because you’ll give me a load of bullshit excuses...when we were meant to do this all along.”
Had he really just said that, and was it true? Reason deserted her. Then it was back with startling clarity, as if a curtain had dropped. She stared at him, and saw a man speaking honestly—a man who had forced her to speak honestly, too.
He nodded, and then he looked away at the roadside and signaled. “Here we go.”
A London black cab pulled alongside them. He opened the back door and helped her in. For a moment she thought he was going to close the door, to let her go home alone like she’d requested—demanded—minutes before, and she felt a desperate sense of loss.
He spoke to the cabby, then climbed in after her, and the relief she felt was instant and obvious. There was no denying it. It made her heart ache, painfully so, but there was elation, too. She reached out for him.
Under her hand his heart beat fast and hard, and she felt his will and his fierce desire, so strong and sure—his yin to her yang—and she melted. She lowered her head, looking at him from under her lashes, eager to feel the intensity of his sexual domination again.
“I asked for your trust earlier today. You give yourself to me so totally when we are intimate. I want that level of trust in every aspect of our lives. I know I have to earn it, and I have some making up to do.” He lifted her hand to his lips, and kissed it. “Will you give me a chance to do that?”
He held her gaze, and as he did images flashed through her mind, images of them locked together in passion, images of her crawling to him, confessing her darkest desires. Her heart hammered in her chest. She nodded.
While his mouth claimed hers she pushed her fingers into his hair, her desire rising to meet his. His hands on her were possessive, giving their shared kisses the deepest intimacy. Even after their kiss broke, she clung to him, her cheek against his chest where she could feel his heart beating.
She stared with unseeing eyes at the lights zigzagging through the damp streets as the cab sped across the city. Rex kept his hand locked around her wrist, holding her, anchoring her. Time blurred. All she could think about was that—his hand holding her. Oddly the action made her feel as if she were flying, as if freedom was there, under his hand. That was exactly how she experienced him, though. As a lover he’d unleashed some part of her that had previously been untapped. It was little wonder that she couldn’t refuse another taste of his sweet medicine.
When the taxi drew to a halt and they emerged, she saw that he hadn’t taken her home.
“My place,” he explained as the taxi drove away.
“Oh.” Why did that make her nervous? He’d taken her to his home, somewhere she’d never been before.
He took her hand and led her to the door.
I am in his private space, she thought when he ushered her inside.
He turned on a lamp, and in the half-light she scoped a sparsely furnished bachelor pad. Clinging close to the door, she watched as he did a quick circuit of the room, dropping his keys in a dish on a shelf as he passed. He shrugged off his jacket, resting it over the back of the sofa, and then turned back to look at her.
Tension built fast, as if the dimly lit room magnified it. We’re alone, and I have agreed to this, to whatever he wants of me.
When he ran his fingers along the back of the sofa, she almost felt as if he touched her instead. His gaze covered her possessively. “Come here.”
His request triggered her reaction—a racing pulse, an inability to do anything other than step closer.
“Take off your jacket.”
She did so, leaning forward to rest it over the back of the sofa, next to his. She thought he was going to tell her to strip, as he had done before, but he went back to the shelves where he’d left his keys.
“I brought you a little something I thought you might like.” He lifted an object and held it up.
Carmen took one look at the sparkling cuffs in his hand and gave a soft laugh. It sounded nervous, because the implications made her that way. “You were so sure of my capitulation?”
His mouth lifted at one corner. “I’m a man who likes to be prepared for every eventuality.”
He closed on her, and held the cuffs aloft in front of her as he observed her reaction, his stance at once powerful and so easily attuned to the suggestive object.
Covering for the fact that the sight of the cuffs made her weak at the knees—her mind flooded with thoughts of being bound and at his mercy—she observed the way they glinted in the light from the lamp.
“You like?”
“Maybe.”
He stroked her wrist. “I would happily keep you locked up around the clock, but I know that’s only part of what you are. It’s an important part, though, and I want to honor it, to show you what it means to me when you give yourself into my hands so totally.”
Carmen wavered in his grasp, feeling both light-headed and restless. His natural air of command was pure seduction under normal circumstances. The added intensity of the conviction he’d offered overwhelmed her.
He stepped closer still, resting his hand on her waist, and the gem-studded cuffs rested heavily against her hip bone. The weight of it against her felt like a warning and a promise all wrapped up in one. “No objections?”
She shook her head. The pounding pulse in her core wouldn’t allow her to pretend otherwise.
“I thought not.” His insinuating tone ran fire along her nerve endings. “Too tempting a toy for you, my precious.”
This was when he was fatal to be around, because he was so sure and that broke her apart.
“Offer me your hands, and in doing so accept that this is more than a game. This represents so much more to me than that. It’s a deep bond, and I want you to acknowledge that, too.”
Tremulous, aware of the immensity of what was passing between them, Carmen put out her arms.
He closed the cuffs around one wrist.
“And I intend to show you how well I know you.” With his hand splaying the free cuff open, as if readying it, he led her down the hall and into the bedroom. There, he stripped her and carried her to the bed before maneuvering her arms above her head and clicking the second cuff closed.
When she tugged, she realized he’d tethered her to the headboard. Moaning and writhing, she tugged again, caught on a razor wire between the promise of pleasure and fear of losing herself to him totally.
“You like the cuffs, I can tell.”
“I’m not sure,” she whispered.
“The best part of having you this way is I get to adore you without you arguing with me. Being tied up seems to demand all your attention.”
It was true, she was speechless. But it was partly because she was watching as he pulled his shirt free from his trousers, and she was mesmerized by the sight of him getting naked. When he shu
cked off his pants and jockey shorts, his cock stood out, half-risen and rising still, long and lovely and eager. The look of it made her even wetter.
“It’s you. You demand all of my attention,” she retorted, “but that can’t be a good thing for a woman.”
“Too late for doubts now. You agreed.”
She eyed him dubiously. “The doubts linger.”
“In that case I’ll have to find a way to distract you.” He climbed over her, and dipped his head to kiss her cleavage while he molded her breasts in his hands. His lips were hot on her skin and he mouthed her flesh hungrily, making her shiver with arousal.
Distract her he did. She arched up to him on the bed when he toyed with one nipple, outlining the stiff peak with his tongue before grazing it with his teeth. The action tugged at her core. Her sex throbbed in response, her anticipation for him building. When his fingers trailed along the insides of her thighs, she moaned aloud.
He lifted his head and studied her while he stroked his fingers into the groove of her sex. She jerked her wrists, but that only made her hotter still, the confinement emphasizing their connection and how easily he won her.
“Rex,” she murmured, attempting to stay still. Part of her wanted to plunge down on his hand, rock her hips and beg him for more, but there was part of her that recognized the deliciousness of restraint. He was taking his time with her, and the pleasure/pain of the anticipation was a heady drug.
He smiled as he moved one finger inside her. “You do realize that I intend to keep you this way all night?”
Before she had a chance to say anything, he ducked down between her thighs to lap her clit, nursing it in his mouth. Pangs of pleasure shot from the swollen nub, his ministrations overwhelming her senses. Her orgasm built fast, swelling as it did on a tide of unruly emotions.
He drew her first climax that way. Then he was over her, driven and passionate, filling her while he arched over her to kiss her lips, her face, her eyelids.
The Burlington Manor Affair Page 31
