One with You (Crossfire #5)

“I got close a couple times.” His voice was hoarser now. “Had a drink while I waited for each one to finish flirting and signal they were ready to leave. I figured I backed off the first time because she just wasn’t doing it for me. The second time, I knew no one would do it for me. No one but you. I was furious. At you for denying me. At them for being inferior. At me for being too weak to forget you.”

“That’s how I felt,” I confessed. “Every guy I met was wrong. They weren’t you.”

“It’s always going to be that way for me, Eva. Just you. Always.”

“I’m not worried about you cheating,” I reiterated, standing. I took off my tank top, then my shorts. My nude lace Carine Gilson bra and panties followed. I stripped quickly, methodically. No tease whatsoever.

Gideon lounged, watching, unmoving. Like the sex god he was, waiting to be pleasured.

Then I saw him through someone else’s eyes, my husband sitting just like that in a crowded Brazilian club, the silent demand for sex pouring off him in waves of heat and need. It was just who he was, an intensely and insatiably sexual creature. Was there a woman alive able to resist the challenge of him? I hadn’t met one yet.

I moved to him. Straddled him. My hands slid over his broad shoulders, feeling the warmth of him through the cotton of his T-shirt. His hands went to my hips, burning my skin. “The women who see you will want to do this,” I murmured. “Touch you like this. They’ll imagine it.”

Looking up at me, Gideon stroked his tongue slowly over his bottom lip. “I’ll be imagining you. Just like this.”

“That’ll only make it worse, because they’ll see how bad you want it.”

“How badly I want you,” he corrected, moving his hands to cup my ass and urge me against his erection. The lips of my sex, parted by the spread of my thighs, hugged his cock through the lace. My clit pressed against his hardness and I rolled my hips with a gasp of pleasure.

“I can see them finding the best vantage point,” I told him breathlessly, “staring at you with fuck-me eyes. Running their fingers down their cleavage so you appreciate their assets. They shift on their feet, crossing and recrossing their legs because they want this.”

I cupped his hard, thick penis and stroked it. He flexed in my palm, vitally alive and eager. His lips parted, the only break in his control.

“Your mind’s on me, so you’re hard. And if you’re sitting like this, with your legs spread, they can see how big your cock is and how ready you are to use it.”

Reaching behind me, I circled his wrist with my fingers and pulled his left arm up to drape over the low back of the sofa. “You look like this. Don’t move.” I moved his other arm to his lap. “You’ll have a tumbler in this hand, with two fingers of dark cachaça inside it. You sip it every now and then, licking it off your lips.”

I leaned forward and stroked my tongue over the sensual curve. He had a gorgeous, sexy mouth. The lips were full, but firm. They were often stern, giving little clue to his thoughts. He smiled rarely, but when he did, he could flash a boyishly playful grin or a smugly confident challenge. His slow smiles were erotic teases, while his wry half-smiles mocked both himself and others.

“You’ll seem distant and remote,” I went on. “Lost in your own thoughts. Bored by the frenetic energy and pounding music. The guys ebb and flow around you. Manuel always has a hot beauty on his lap. A different one every time you look. As far as he’s concerned, there’s more than enough of him to go around.”

Gideon smiled. “And he has a fondness for Latinas. He totally approves of my choice in wives.”

“Wife,” I corrected. “Your first and last.”

“My only,” he agreed. “Hot-tempered. Hot-blooded. My one and only permanent one-night stand. I know exactly how it will be between us, and then you go and take me by surprise. You eat me alive, every time, and want more.”

I cupped his jaw in one hand and kissed him, still stroking his penis in long, leisurely pulls. “Arash stops by with a new drink for you every time he makes his way around the room. He tells you stories about what he’s seen while circling and you briefly look amused, which drives the women watching you wild. That little flash of intimacy and warmth only makes them want more.”

“And Arnoldo?” he murmured, watching me with hot dark eyes.

“He’s detached, like you. He’s wounded and wary from his broken heart, but he’s accessible. He flirts and smiles, but there’s always that sense of something unreachable about him. The women who are too intimidated by you will go for Arnoldo. He’ll make them forget you, even while he’s forgetting about them altogether.”