LITMIR.BIZ

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stud. He’d loved passionately once, long ago. Since then, he’d enjoyed mutually satisfying liaisons with a fair number of women. Sophisticated women for the most part, who knew how the game was played and enjoyed playing it. Luis had worked hard to give them as much pleasure as they’d given him. He’d also made sure he parted with each on amicable terms.

      But this one, this reserved, self-contained beauty, challenged his masculinity in a way no other woman had. Even in their most intimate moments, she held back a part of herself. Luis hadn’t minded at first. He understood and respected her need for privacy in some corners of her life. He was a man with many secrets himself.

      Yet what had begun as a familiar, sexual dance had gradually become a test of his will. And hers. One day, he vowed, he’d break through the wall she’d built around her heart since her husband’s brutal murder.

      “Dinner will be ready shortly,” she said as the door closed behind him. “I just have to broil the…”

      He snagged her arm, tugged her around.

      “First things first.”

      Depositing the wine he’d brought on the hall table, he thrust his free hand into her hair. The strands threaded between his fingers like air-spun silk.

      “I missed you while I was in Cartoza, preparing for President Andrews’s visit.”

      “I missed you, too.”

      She came into his arms readily and her mouth opened under his. That should have been enough. That, and the way she hooked her arms around his neck and rose up on tiptoe to return the kiss.

      Despite her ready kiss—or perhaps because of it—Luis wanted more. Perhaps it was his still-simmering frustration over the president’s canceled trip. Perhaps it was the insult from that ass, Fogarty. Whatever it was spurring him sharpened his desire for this woman to a deep, driving need.

      He angled his head, found her tongue with his. His hands roamed her back, slid down to cup her bottom and press her against him. He was already hard and aching for her, which made her draw back a little.

      “Before dinner?” she asked, with a smile in her eyes.

      “Before, during and after,” he growled, scooping her into his arms.

      His heels rang on the hardwood stairs as he carried her up to the master bedroom. The decor was all Claire—oyster-colored walls, framed Impressionist prints, an inch-thick Turkish carpet in muted jewel tones. Nothing harsh, nothing jarring, everything perfect and in place.

      Including the photo in a crystal frame on her bedside table.

      Luis wasn’t jealous of the husband Claire had loved and lost. On the contrary, that soul-shattering experience had moulded her into the woman she was today. Strong. Self-reliant. Incredibly skilled, both in her profession and the dangerous undercover ops she worked for OMEGA.

      Too strong at times. Too self-contained. What ate at him was the knowledge she’d entered this relationship for the same reasons he’d entered it. For friendship and intellectual stimulation, as much as sexual satisfaction. The problem was, she seemed content with that.

      The atavistic urge to disrupt the tranquil harmony of both the room and the woman in his arms gripped him. A little roughly, he deposited her on the bed and stood over her while he unbuckled his belt and shed his clothing.

      Her gaze swept down his chest and flat belly to linger on the erection jutting from the nest of dark hair at his groin. “You have missed me,” she said with a teasing smile.

      Luis was in no mood for teasing. He wanted her wet and hot, as hungry for him as he was for her. At some deeper, primal level, he also wanted her to acknowledge him as a mate as worthy of her as the husband she’d lost.

      He took time only to unstrap the ankle holster that was as much a part of him as his suspicious nature and various scars. Naked, he came down beside her. Stretching her arms above her head, he captured her wrists with one hand and yanked at the ties of her slacks with the other.

      Her eyes widened, but she obligingly kicked off her sandals and raised her hips. In one swift move, Luis rid her of both slacks and lacy briefs. He tugged up the hem of her blouse, well aware of the fact that she rarely wore a bra at home.

      She didn’t need one. Her breasts were small and firm and tipped with pink nipples that rose to stiff peaks when he suckled them. Mounding the creamy flesh with his free hand, he bent his head.

      Claire dragged in a swift breath. She wasn’t sure what lay behind this sudden, Neanderthal approach to sex, but her body responded to it. Her back arched as Luis used his tongue and teeth on her. Pleasure streaked from her breasts to her belly, and her womb clenched in a tight spasm. She could feel the tension building, feel her nerves ignite every place his silky mustache prickled her skin.

      His mouth was hot and demanding, his knee insistent, as he wedged it between hers and pried them apart. The psychologist in Claire analyzed the negative cognitions of sexual dominance even as the woman in her responded to his strength and unerring skill.

      “Luis,” she panted, tugging at her wrists. “Let me touch you. Let me pleasure you.”

      “Next time, querida. This time, I want to pleasure you.”

      He was good at it. So damned good. His muscled thigh pressed against her sensitive flesh. His mouth claimed hers. When he finally released her wrists and hooked an arm around her waist to position her under him, Claire was wet and ready. And very grateful for the fact they didn’t have to resort to condoms.

      She’d started birth control again before deciding to yield to Luis’s blatant attempts at seduction, but was well aware of his numerous past conquests. They’d been cautious at first, always using the extra protection of a condom. She trusted him enough now, though, to believe him when he swore she was the only woman in his life.

      For the moment, anyway. She had no idea how long that would last, but until circumstances changed, she had not the slightest hesitation about welcoming him eagerly into her body.

      When he entered her, she could feel each hot, ridged inch. His first thrusts were swift, hard, possessive. She lifted her hips to meet them, and they soon moved together in a rhythm that grew more urgent, more intense, with each grind of their hips.

      Her climax began as a swirl of tight, dark sensation. She felt it spiraling up from her belly, tried to contain it. When the sensations exploded in a starburst of exquisite pleasure, she threw her head back, arched her spine and rode the crest.

      

      “Well, we certainly worked up an appetite.”

      Smiling, Claire sipped her frothy cappuccino and surveyed the remnants of the dinner they’d eaten on the deck. A fat candle flickered inside a glass hurricane lamp. Tiny white lights strung through the vines twisting around the trellised roof added to the glow of a full moon.

      She’d pulled on lacy briefs and a celery-colored silk caftan. Luis’s scent still clung to her skin, mingling with the fragrant cherry-and-rum aroma of his thin cigarillo and the chocolaty steam rising from the cup she held cradled in both hands.

      He sat across from her. He’d raked a hand through his dark hair and left his shirt hanging out, half-buttoned. She liked him this way, Claire mused, as her gaze drifted to the V of bronzed skin dusted with curling black chest air. Relaxed. Comfortable. He was usually so polished and urbane. So much in control. The colonel might have left the military years ago, but the military hadn’t left him.

      “Tell me what happened in Cartoza,” she requested.

      “I’m damned if I know.” He leaned back in his chair and blew out a cloud of smoke. “I thought everything was going well. President and Señora Diaz welcomed the Andrews to Cartoza with a family luncheon. That afternoon, the two presidents attended the opening session of the Organization of American States. Andrews was welcomed warmly despite the United States’ difficulties with some Latin-American countries.”

      “Like Venezuela,”

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