She couldn’t help it. She leaned in and took a deep breath.
Mmm. It smelled like him, only more concentrated. Pure sexy male. The tang of his aftershave, a subtle hint of soap, and even the bite of his sweat. The pleasure centers in her brain lit up like wildfire, and she pushed away. She could not afford to get even more turned on by him. Not after ogling him just now and making a fool of herself. Getting distracted by his hotness would only mean more opportunity to be a fool.
And she’d had enough of that this week. Hell, enough in the past few years.
She set her folded clothes on the toilet seat and her toiletries case on the counter, next to his, pulling out a few items and trying not to let her curiosity get the better of her, but she failed miserably.
She peeked inside his case.
What was it about this guy and her self-control? Even in her early days of dating Jason, when they were at their hottest and heaviest, she’d never felt like she couldn’t stop herself from touching him, from knowing him in every way.
But less than an hour in Komarov’s presence and she wanted to burrow deep inside of him and never come out. He pulled emotions out of her that she rarely showed to anyone but her family, and all within minutes of their meeting.
She gently rummaged through his toiletries. Dental floss, an unlabeled tube of something, an old travel bottle of conditioner, and—three condoms? The curiosity was practically killing her. Was he the kind of guy who packed them, just in case, or did he regularly have sex on the road?
Lily wrinkled her nose and slid one out of the case. Size large. She gulped. Well, she knew that already, but having it confirmed was doing something funny to the place between her thighs. She checked the expiration date. Less than one year from now. These had been bought quite some time ago, then.
It shouldn’t have been important. But she couldn’t stop herself from feeling relieved that they weren’t freshly bought condoms. Now her imagination was running wild, thinking about how she would straddle him, roll one of these on, and then mount him, letting him stretch her, taking all of him.
At that moment, she knew it would be great. Scorching hot. The best sex of her life, and what sex should be like.
The thought that she would be teased like this with something that she couldn’t have—wouldn’t take, anyway—was too depressing. She slid the condom back into the case and turned on the shower, stepping inside with a sigh.
That’s when she figured out what had been off about the bathroom when she had first entered. The porcelain tub was freezing cold. There had been no steam fogging the mirror and warming the bathroom.
Komarov had taken an extremely cold shower.
…
Bruno had just taken the coldest damned shower of his life. Too bad, because only a few minutes out of that polar-ice-cap-degree cold and he was practically sweating with the need to release himself inside of Lily. The way she had looked him over—leisurely this time, with eyes burning hot and ready—had almost destroyed his willpower.
But he would not hook up with an unknown woman in a hotel room in Chile. Or anywhere, for that matter.
As much as he liked to fantasize about a one-night stand with her, in truth it wasn’t his style. Even his shortest relationship ever had still lasted two months, until Mami and Rosa had sat him down and explained that Natalie had to go.
That was the only time they’d directly interfered with his love life. Mami dropped hints regularly, and sometimes gave outright suggestions, but they had never said anything about the individual women he dated. He could see the disapproval on their faces, though, every time he brought home another one, just like the ones before. Nice enough girls, with no particular aspirations other than to be a rich man’s wife, give him babies, and go to lunch or play tennis with friends.
Natalie hadn’t been nice enough, though, and her cattiness had been the reason why his mother and eldest sister had asked him to break it off.
But he supposed that some part of him had been choosing that kind of woman on purpose. Precisely because all they had wanted was marriage to someone with deep pockets, one wealthy man interchangeable with another, he had felt safe in the knowledge that he would never have settled down with any of them. He had wanted more. So much more, he realized, that he had been afraid that he would never find it. He would be doomed to hoping and searching for something that would never come his way. So he had dated women with absolutely no potential for becoming his lifelong partner, not even bothering to take a chance on someone more suited to him lest she turn out to be less than perfect.