LITMIR.BIZ

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backs of her eyes, forcing her to blink them away before he saw them? Why she turned her face to search for his kiss, only to realise that he was far more intent on bending his dark head to lick at her nipple? But then his movements grew more rapid as he shafted up deep inside her and all her doubts were put on the back burner because suddenly Emily was rediscovering sex—big time. His body was hard and powerful. His skin felt like satin against her fingers and she was like a woman possessed as she writhed beneath him, moaning things like, ‘Please...’ and, ‘Oh, yes...’ and, ‘Yes, that... That.’

      ‘You mean like that?’ he clarified, withdrawing almost completely before driving up deep inside her again.

      ‘Yes...yes...’ she breathed. ‘Exactly like that.’

      And then it happened, almost without her expecting it—that heady rush of promise which morphed into perfect bliss as her world exploded into countless dazzling stars. Emily clung to him, crying out helplessly as her body spasmed around him before she heard his own shuddered moan and felt his driving jerks as he spilled his seed inside her. Spent, he collapsed on top of her and those next few moments were the closest thing to sanctuary she’d felt in a long time. For a while she just lay there, cocooned in his strong arms, feeling as if she were floating on some warm and rippling sea until Alejandro’s words shot into her thoughts and scattered them like a spray gun.

      ‘I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be quite so easy,’ he remarked.

      ‘Easy?’ she echoed, wondering if she might have misheard him.

      ‘Mmm...’ He turned onto his side and stared at her, his green gaze smoky and assessing. ‘But I’d forgotten how hot you were. Hotter than any other woman I’ve ever had.’

      Emily didn’t answer straight away. You don’t have to answer, she told herself. You’re not on some game show with the clock ticking away. You can take as much time as you want. All the time you need to get your head around the fact that you have just slept with your boss.

      Unwrapping his arm from where it was coiled so comfortably around her waist, Emily rolled away from him. It would be tempting to jump up from the bed. To grab her clothes and rush from the room—maybe even slamming the door behind her so that it echoed through the vast penthouse suite. But that wouldn’t be the behaviour of someone who was mature and responsible, would it? It was difficult to come back from something as dramatic as that, and didn’t they need to move on—or not—from what had just happened? He thought she was easy—and could she really blame him? So why not go along with that? Let him think she was sexually rapacious, just as he was. Especially since the alternative was to wail and wonder why she’d done such a stupid thing, which ran the risk of making her look both reckless and indiscriminate.

      So she fanned her face exaggeratedly with her hand. ‘Thanks.’

      He looked momentarily perplexed. ‘Thanks?’

      ‘Mmm... It’s always nice to be described as hot,’ she remarked blandly, seeing his face inexplicably darken in response. ‘Quite literally in this case. Boiling hot, actually—despite the air conditioning. Any chance you could rustle us up a glass of water, Alej?’

      He looked outraged—there was no other word for it—but Emily told herself she didn’t care. What good would it do her if she fell back into his arms and told him that she was only ever hot with him? Such an admission would show weakness and she’d already made herself weak enough in his eyes.

      But despite his obvious disapproval of her question, he nonetheless accommodated her wishes, sauntering out of the bedroom in all his glorious nakedness and giving her time to snap the light on and scramble back into her clothes. He seemed unsurprised to find her fully dressed when he returned minutes later with the requested water and—rather disturbingly—the notebook she’d been scribbling in earlier, just before her jet-lagged state had caused her to pass out on the sofa. He yawned and positioned himself back on the bed, waiting until she had gulped down half a glass of water before holding the notebook aloft.

      ‘What’s this?’ he questioned, his finger jabbing at the grid diagrams she had drawn earlier.

      She shrugged. ‘It’s life-coach stuff I use when I’m working with new clients. You know. All about reality and perception and fixed ideas. I’m guessing you probably don’t want a complete breakdown of the meanings?’

      ‘You’re right. I don’t.’

      ‘Mainly it’s about what it is possible to change in your life,’ she elaborated, as still he continued to look at her enquiringly.

      ‘And the M?’

      There was a pause as Emily felt her cheeks growing warm. ‘You’re contemplating a massive change and you probably need to simplify your life. Stop jet-setting quite so much and make more of a base in Argentina, especially as that’s going to be your home when you go into politics.’

      ‘I asked about the M,’ he emphasised silkily. ‘Which you have circled and underlined several times.’

      The hotness in her cheeks increased. ‘Part of your “problem”—which plenty of men wouldn’t actually define as a problem—’

      ‘Get to the point, Emily.’

      She drew in a deep breath and watched his gaze flicker to the wobble of her breasts. ‘Is the woman thing.’

      ‘The woman thing?’

      She nodded. ‘That’s what lets you down every time. Not just the book Colette wrote, which was probably motivated by bitterness that you didn’t marry her. But also the way you seem to attract women like a magnet. Like Marcus said earlier—you can’t seem to help it. The online edition of one of the Australian tabloids is even carrying a photo of you taken with Kate Palmer tonight—there must have been a long-lens photographer at the harbour. And the author who took a surreptitious selfie at the same party has already put it up on her social-media page—and she’s got over thirty-one thousand followers.’

      ‘None of this is new,’ he pointed out.

      ‘No, but it only fuels your reputation as a commitment-phobe who plays the field like mad—and those are not the kind of qualities which ordinary people want from the person who is representing them.’ Somehow she met his bright green gaze without flinching. ‘The M stands for marriage. You need a wife, Alej. And before you look at me that way, why not? Would-be politicians have been making judicious marriages since the beginning of time. It would be an instant badge of commitment and respectability which would only help your career.’

      ‘But I don’t want to get married,’ he observed caustically. ‘I never did. Not with Colette. Not with anyone.’

      She shrugged. ‘And that’s your dilemma.’

      Yes.

      His dilemma.

      Or maybe not.

      From his vantage point on top of the rumpled bedclothes, Alej studied the woman with whom he’d just had the best sex he could remember, and yet here she was calmly discussing his marriage to someone else. A wave of something like bitterness ran through him. Was she really such a hard-hearted bitch that she could coolly advocate he go and find himself a wife and not really care? Did he mean so little to her? Of course he did. Nothing new there, either. Yet the irony of the situation didn’t escape him because deep down he knew that if she’d displayed sadness and resentment at the thought of him marrying someone else, she wouldn’t have seen him for dust.

      But maybe Emily was exactly what he needed. For now, at least. He’d thought she’d cared for him all those years ago but he’d been wrong, just as he’d been wrong about so many things. But back then she had been barely eighteen with the world at her feet. She must have believed anything was possible and had since discovered that it was not. Because surely it hadn’t been her life’s ambition to end up running some crummy little business and living in a tiny London apartment. Didn’t she miss the riches she had grown up with while she lived in Argentina and the kind of lifestyle

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