LITMIR.BIZ

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her, grasping her buttocks and lifting her to him as he came. Her name on his lips sounded so raw it gave her a thrill. His breath in her ear was rapid, as if he’d been running.

      Veronica closed her eyes, her heart racing in time with his, blood pounding and body singing. She was happy. Right this moment, she was so incredibly happy. She felt as if she was flying and she didn’t want to look down, didn’t want to see the scorpion waiting to strike. She didn’t want this to end.

      But it would. She knew it would.

      “You’ve killed me,” he said. “Sacrificed me for your selfish pleasure. I’m done in.”

      Veronica laughed, ran her fingers up the damp skin of his back. “Oh, yes, my evil plan is complete. I intend to drain you, Rajesh Vala. Leave you an empty husk, unable to ever get it up again for any other woman.”

      She said it jokingly, and yet the thought of Raj with another woman pierced her to the bone.

      “Don’t do that,” he said softly, skimming his lips along her jaw, the shell of her ear. “Don’t put something between us that doesn’t exist.”

      She shuddered beneath him, her heart pinching tight in her chest. “I’m simply being realistic,” she said. Because there would be other women in his life, once she was gone. He was too sensual, too male. He couldn’t be tamed—but he could be caught, for a short time anyway.

      He tweaked her nipple, made a sound of approval when she gasped. “This is what’s real, Veronica.”

      A short while later, he carried her to his bed and proved that he was perfectly capable of sacrificing himself for her pleasure yet again.

      Raj came awake as the sea breeze blew into the windows and rustled the filmy netting. The covers had been flung off long ago. Beside him, Veronica was curled into a ball with her back to him. He traced a fingertip along her shoulder, her hip. Already, his body was stirring, wanting her again.

      She was a fire in his blood, this woman. She had been since the first moment he’d seen her. He spared half a thought for Brady, but she’d never been Brady’s to begin with. Veronica had chosen him, and he would not feel guilty for it.

      He kissed her shoulder, cupped a breast in his palm. She came awake with a smile, turning sleepily in his arms.

      She was as hot for him as he was for her. Thank God. Pushing him onto his back, she straddled him and sank down onto him with a groan. He closed his eyes, his body pulsing inside hers. He could live this way. He could wake every morning like this, Veronica undulating her hips and making him crazy with need.

      He gripped her thighs, slowing her movements before it was over too fast. When he looked up at her, her pale hair was swinging around her breasts as if she were Lady Godiva riding through the town square. Her nipples were hard little points that he wanted to suck.

      Except that he couldn’t move. If he moved, it would be over too quickly.

      She arched her back, lifted her arms and pulled her hair off her body. “Oh, yes,” she said, her voice little more than a throaty whisper. “Like that. Just there.”

      He suddenly wanted to shatter her control, wanted to prove he could, wanted her wild and wriggling beneath him. He wanted to know that she was his, that he was the one who made her quiver and sigh and cry out with pleasure.

      With a quick movement, he flipped her over, driving deeper into her body. Her legs wrapped around his hips, her teeth biting into her lush lower lip as she arched toward him.

      He lost whatever thread of control he’d been holding on to, driving into her until she shattered beneath him with a sharp, hard cry. But he didn’t stop there. He couldn’t. He kept stroking into her until she caught on fire again, until his body was burning up with hers, until they both plunged over the edge and crashed onto the rocks below.

      Mine, he thought. Mine.

      It was sometime later when he woke a second time. Veronica was asleep again, her lush body pale in the morning light. Her skin was red in places, and he realized he needed to shave. He climbed from the bed with a yawn and a languid stretch before making his way to the bathroom and turning on the shower.

      If he had any strength at all, he’d make love to Veronica in the shower. He imagined holding her against the slippery wall, imagined driving up into her body, and was half tempted to go wake her when he began to harden.

      Instead, he got dressed and headed for the dining room. Breakfast would be waiting, as well as his morning reports. He took a seat at the table and tore into the fragrant dosa.

      It had taken him several visits to convince the housekeeper that he didn’t want a traditional English breakfast every morning when he was in residence. Now that he’d been coming to Goa for the past few years, they’d slipped into enough of a routine that he could expect masala dosa in the mornings unless he specifically asked for full English.

      He flipped through the reports, finding nothing he didn’t already know in any of them. The doors to the terrace were open, and air fragrant with the spices being used in the kitchen blew gently through the house.

      “Good morning.”

      Raj looked up from the report he’d been reading. Veronica waltzed into the room, her hair a gorgeous mess pinned on top of her head, her lips full and swollen from his kisses, her skin glowing. She’d slipped into one of his shirts, which she’d rolled at the cuffs, the tails hitting her about midthigh.

      He’d always thought it a not-so-subtle attempt at claiming ownership when a woman put on one of his shirts the morning after sex. As if she were saying he belonged to her now that they’d spent the night in bed.

      But with Veronica, all he could think was that she belonged to him and that his shirt was a lucky bastard.

      “Don’t gape, Raj,” she said, grabbing a piece of dosa and a cup of chai that seemed to magically appear when she did, before she turned and went to stand in the open door. Beyond, the sea sparkled in the sun.

      Raj went to stand behind her, breathing in the scent of her hair. Aching to touch her again, right now. Right here.

      “It’s so lovely. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more relaxed.” She turned and winked up at him. “But I don’t think the relaxed part has anything to do with the view.”

      “It’s a very nice view,” he said—though he didn’t mean the scenery.

      She laughed and pulled the V of his shirt closed where it had gaped over her breasts. “Such a man.”

      “Definitely.”

      She took a sip of the chai and sighed. “It’s odd to think it’s nearly Christmas, isn’t it, when it’s so warm?”

      “I like it warm.”

      She turned to him. “You don’t like a traditional Christmas, with snow and hot chocolate and a big evergreen tree?”

      He shrugged. “Actually, I don’t care for Christmas much. It’s too commercial.”

      She blinked. “But what about presents? Surely you like presents.”

      “It doesn’t have to be Christmas for presents.”

      “No, that’s true. I just remember such fabulous Christmases when I was a little girl. When my mother was still alive, my father would take us to Switzerland or Bavaria. He’d rent a chalet, and we’d ski and do all the traditional things. It was wonderful. I never feel like it’s Christmas unless I’m cold.” She grabbed a slice of mango from the table. “What’s your favorite Christmas memory?”

      A dart of pain pierced him. He started to make something up, to give an answer that would satisfy her and let her keep chattering happily away.

      But he couldn’t seem to do it. The urge to speak the truth built in his gut until he was nearly bursting with it.

      “I don’t

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