‘Let me go. I told you I’d had enough.’ Her voice was clipped and condescending and a frisson of long-forgotten shame feathered his spine—as if he was still a ragged slum kid who’d dared to touch a princess with his dirty paw.
His hand gentled.
‘You’re too fit to be a regular drug user, Marisa. I’ve seen too many of them to be fooled. And as for gambling... You’ve had ample opportunity since you arrived but you’ve shown no interest.’ He paused. ‘That leaves your reputation with men.’
‘I’m hardly a virgin, Damaso.’
For which he was grateful. Sex with Marisa was one of life’s high points.
‘So how many have there been, Marisa?’
She tugged at his arm but he held firm.
‘You can’t seriously be asking that.’
‘I seriously am.’
For four pulse beats, five, six, she stared him down. Then she leaned towards him, her free hand sliding from his thigh to his groin, closing around his already quickening shaft.
‘Enough.’ Her voice was a throaty murmur that turned his bones molten.
‘Convince me.’
For a flicker of a moment she hesitated. Then she shoved him back on the pillow and bent her head. Long tresses of silk caressed his skin. Her lips were hot and soft, wickedly arousing on his burgeoning flesh.
But something was wrong. Damaso felt the tension in her frame, as if her nerves had been stretched to breaking point.
With a groan of disbelief at what he was about to do, Damaso pushed her away, rolling her onto her back and imprisoning her with the weight of his body.
They lay so close he saw the over-bright glitter of her fine eyes and the uneven twist of her lips.
‘Don’t ever do that unless you want it too.’ The idea of her servicing him rather than acting out of shared arousal left a bitter taste on his tongue. For that was what she’d been doing, he was sure of it—trying to distract him.
Slowly, tenderly, he leaned down and planted a kiss at the corner of her mouth, another near her nose, then across her cheek to follow a leisurely trail down her neck. By the time he reached the base of her throat, her pulse was frantic. He kissed her there, ridiculously reassured by this proof of her response.
Marisa wanted him. Had wanted him all along. It was just that she’d tried to side-track him to avoid answering questions.
His hand slipped between her legs as he moved lower to kiss her nipple. With a sigh she tilted her hips and he pressed harder, rewarding her responsiveness.
‘How many men, Marisa?’
She stiffened, her indrawn breath a hiss in the darkness.
Damaso feathered teasing kisses across her breast, his fingers delving into her most sensitive place. Marisa’s hands threaded through his hair, holding him close.
When she was soft again beneath him he stopped.
‘How many?’
‘You’re a devil, Damaso Pires.’
‘So I’ve been told.’ He nipped gently at her breast and watched her arch high. ‘How many?’ Deliberately he lifted his hand away. Still Marisa didn’t admit defeat.
It took ten minutes of delicious pleasure before she finally gave in, by which time Damaso was close to losing the last of his own control.
‘Two,’ she gasped, her body writhing beneath his.
‘Two?’ Damaso couldn’t believe his ears. Only two men before him?
‘Well...one and a half.’ She drew him down till he sank between her thighs.
‘How can there be a half?’ He groaned when he found his voice. She was slowly killing him.
Marisa’s eyes opened and for a moment he could have sworn he read pain in her eyes, though it should have been impossible in the darkness.
‘The first one seduced me so he could brag about it to his friends. After that...’ She looked away. ‘After that I found it hard to trust, so the second one didn’t get as far as he expected.’
Damaso braced himself high and joined them with one easy move that took him home. ‘Not this far?’
‘No.’
‘But you don’t mind...with me?’
Slowly she smiled and the tightness banding his chest fell away.
‘I don’t mind.’ She gasped when he moved and clutched his upper arms. ‘I could even...come to quite enjoy it.’
Quite enjoy it!
There was a challenge if ever he’d heard one.
Damaso made absolutely sure she’d more than ‘quite enjoyed’ herself before he was finished.
Finally she lay limp against him, curled up with her head tucked beneath his chin, her knee between his and her hand flung across him where it had fallen when he’d rolled onto his back.
Her breathing was deep and steady, and he told himself if she dreamed it was of something pleasant, not the disappointments and pain of her past.
Damaso was sure he had only half the story. But that was enough. Duped and betrayed by her first lover, hung out to dry by the uncle who should have protected her, scorned by the world’s press... Who’d been on her side?
Her twin, Stefan, who’d died just months ago.
Damaso had assumed the passion he’d shared with Marisa that first night was the product of two healthy libidos and a wildfire of mutual attraction. Yet he recalled the blind look on Marisa’s face as she’d tackled that notorious climb on the trek. She’d been lost in her own world and the blankness of her stare had scared him. Had that been grief driving her?
Had grief pushed her into his arms?
He swallowed and turned his gaze to the first grey fingers of dawn spreading across the sprawling city.
She’d had only one real lover before him.
One!
Damaso would love to think it was his sheer magnetism that had made her walk into his arms. But did that ring true with a woman who’d guarded her lack of sexual experience under the eyes of the gloating world press? Who, even when she partied all night, kept herself apart from casual sexual encounters?
There’d been a wealth of pain in Marisa’s voice as she’d spoke of the man who’d betrayed her. It made Damaso want to commit violence.
What had it done to her?
He’d thought Marisa sexy and alluring with a feisty, ‘don’t give a damn what society thinks’ attitude that matched his.
Instead he’d discovered she was a woman who needed careful handling. She had so much front it was hard to tell where the public persona ended and the real woman began. One thing he knew for sure—behind her masks of hauteur and unconcern was a woman who felt, and hurt, deeply.
His fingers twitched as she shifted, her breath hazing his skin. He wanted her again with a hunger he found almost impossible to conquer.
If she’d been the woman he’d first thought, he’d have had no qualms about waking her.
Instead Marisa was a unique mix of fragility and strength. A woman who, instinct told him, needed the sort of man he didn’t know how to be.
For the first time in years, he felt inadequate. Tension made his jaw ache as he contemplated the tangle that was their relationship.
Damaso wasn’t equipped to deal with the nuances of emotional pain. He’d experienced and witnessed so much trauma as a kid he’d all but excised feelings from his life until he’d met Marisa.
He didn’t know how to give Marisa what she needed.
Her vulnerability made him feel like a clumsy lout who’d blundered in and smashed what was left of her fragile peace by getting her pregnant.
A better man would regret that.
A better man would support her yet let her go.
Damaso had never been anything like a good man. He was too used to getting his own way. He’d been driven solely by the need to survive, then thrive.