And it was ten years ago again, at that New Year’s Eve party, before her accident, when he’d made his first pre-emptive strike to sever her existing tie and claim her for himself. He renewed his onslaught now, the need to recapture her roaring in his blood, no thoughts of holding back like that first time.
He hardened beyond agony, simulating the ultimate intimacy they’d once perfected. His hands ran in a frenzy of memory over her hair, her face, melting down her neck to her breasts. He wrenched his mouth away and she moaned. He met her eyes, dimly realized he must look exactly like that. Delirious, in extremis. They’d always driven each other to incoherence.
And she’d been able to walk out on him. To have enough of him. She’d been able to stay away. For eight years.
She couldn’t stay away for eight heartbeats now, whimpering with the few seconds’ deprivation. Her hands flailed the urgent worshipping that had once made him believe she’d felt the same, running down his back, convulsing on his hips, dragging them to her core, as she, too, shook in the grip of the brutal need for satisfaction.
He’d satisfy her. He’d satisfy her until she begged for the pleasure to end, to never end. He had eight years to make up for. Right now, later tonight—all through the whole expedition—would only make up for the first few hours of her desertion.
He yanked off his vest, tore open his wet shirt, clawed at her rain-plastered one.
He longed to slide down her body, wallow in the tormenting ecstasy of unhindered contact. Then, when he’d hoarded enough pleas, he’d bend over her, sweep his tongue along the scar that snaked from her left pubic bone, across her midriff, below her left breast, fading to nothing in her armpit. Only when he had her weeping in arousal, he’d take pity on her, on himself, and thrust inside her…
Shaking, his every tremor resonating in her body, he fumbled to undo her bra and she arched up to help him. He growled deep in anticipation as he rose to look full on her exposed beauty—and everything inside him stilled. There was no scar!
Breath emptied out of him on a jolt of horror. It was as if he’d woken up in mid-trance to find himself making love to a stranger. Then realization hit him like a punch in the gut.
She’d had whole-body scar revisions, not only facial.
This was what her body had been like before the accident. Only better. Time and nature had imbued it with a feminine ripeness that sent his every male fiber into distress. He wanted her now—now, hard and fast and agonizingly satisfying.
But he felt her stiffening, passion draining from her hands and eyes, self-revulsion and fury replacing them. His shock had lasted for heartbeats, but it had shocked her, too, back to the reality of their estrangement and conflict.
She pushed at him. “Get off me, Roque.”
He pressed harder into her. “Don’t even think of going cold on me now, not after I’ve felt you, felt what you feel. If you’re thinking it’s wrong or too soon, let me put you straight. It’s not wrong and it’s eight years too damn late, amor. Let me—”
“You don’t need this.” Her rasp was as painful as a dull knife cutting through his words and thoughts. “If my absence is holding up your American citizenship procedures, just say so.”
Roque stared down at her, for what felt like an hour.
Then, in measured movements, he removed his body from hers and she scrambled away, struggled to put her clothes back in order, to suppress the pangs racking her flesh at losing contact with his.
He unfolded to his full height, still staring at her, making no effort to button his shirt. She kept her burning eyes on his face, watched a black frown forming there. Was he upset that she’d worked it out?
She hadn’t. Others had worked it out for her. They’d said that as a rich, broken innocent who’d been discarded by all, starting with her parents and glamorous milieu and ending with the appearance-obsessed modeling world, with only Michael wanting her still, for her parents’ connections, she’d been the perfect means to all of Roque’s ends. The one stone with which to take his revenge on Michael for depriving him of a lucrative position, to get that position, money and a Green Card.
But she’d never confronted him over these allegations, had decided not to listen to anyone, letting time tell her the truth.
But time, compounded by their soaring passion and his too wonderful, too careful, too calculated treatment of her, had only compounded her insecurity. She sometimes thought she might have overcome it all, even come to accept his motivations in marrying her, until she’d discovered what would have ended even a healthy marriage. After her miscarriage she would have done anything to end it. She had said anything to make it end.
But even in their last explosive scene, the citizenship issue hadn’t come up. She’d hurled far-fetched insults at him, not her real suspicions, to get him to let her go.
Now she just wanted him to stop scowling and answer her!
His scowl dissolved, but he still didn’t answer. Instead, a huff escaped him. Then another. Then he burst out laughing.
She endured a whole minute before she snarled, “Laugh any more and I’ll probably have to intubate and ventilate you!”
He began to choke. She circled him, thumped him between his shoulder blades. His laughing fit sputtered to a coughing one.
She smirked. “You can now thank me for saving your life.”
He wiped his tears, still rumbling raspy chuckles that abraded her, as if her nerves lay over her skin. “You probably have. You should issue alerts before dishing out something like that. I never dreamed you were funny, Jóia.” Then his chuckles died out. “Or at least you would have been if this was a joke. But it isn’t, is it? You actually believe I want American citizenship? What for? I never had any intention of living anywhere but in Brazil. And I was always welcome in the States or anywhere else, even before I became an entrepreneur.”
“A what?”
Roque felt oppression fisting around his heart at her incredulity. At the new blow she’d dealt him.
Compared to the user he’d just found out she’d thought him, the gigolo she’d once made him feel like sounded good. At least a gigolo was honest about his motivations, rendered an agreed-upon service.
He attempted another chuckle. It grazed him on the way out. “You never heard of the innovations I made to diagnostic equipment and procedures?” He gave a sarcastic snort at her widening gape. “Sim, contrary to your belief that I married an heiress and milked her dry, I actually got my fortune the legitimate way. The patents alone were bought for half a billion dollars by a medical appliances conglomerate. And I get paid very big money every time I tutor surgeons around the world.”
He watched his words hitting her, felt her grappling with his revelations and felt something inside him snap.
That was so unbelievable to her? She’d thought him incapable of succeeding on his own? Was that why she hadn’t divorced him? She’d been leaving him the opportunity to acquire the prized American citizenship she was sure he must crave to help him out? How generous of her.
And meantime, what had she used her marital staus for? Kept it secret, going by Dr. Johansson, then divulged it only as a deterrent when men wanted more? He wondered how many more men she’d devastated then abandoned.
Jewel watched Roque’s face hardening into a mask of wrath that again almost had her cringing.
Feeling small and foolish, she decided to just get it over with. She exhaled. “So you’re a business mogul now. What are you doing here, then? With your new clout, if you thought I was turning this expedition into a reality show, you could have just taken me off the roster, replaced me with whomever you thought suitable from among the hordes who now, no doubt, answer to you. You didn’t have to come here yourself.”
“Contrary to what you’re implying,” he ground out, “I never wanted to become a doctor to amass power and fortune. But they have come in handy, made me able to do my job on a far-reaching scale. And though you make it sound as if I sit in my rarefied medium, being waited o
n, field missions have always been an integral part of my schedule. The only difference is that for the past five years I’ve been able to finance as many as I like. They also have another advantage, they make me a far more effective doctor. After the energy drain in ORs, labs and meetings, being out in the open and out of the system for good chunks of time, reaching the people I became a doctor to serve is the best anti-burnout measure there is. And this is another such mission.”
Jewel had heard that same fervor before. When he’d spoken of his vocation, of what people with abilities and privileges owed the world. Back then she’d thought it had been part of his technique for landing gullible girls. Even then, it had left her with a growing dissatisfaction with her whole life, had been the catalyst that had made her start over after she’d left him.
It seemed it hadn’t been a line.
“As to why I picked this specific mission from the dozens I could have financed and joined, I already told you.”
“Yeah, to stop me from turning the expedition into a launching pad for my new career in reality shows. What do you think I would do after that? Go back to modeling? Or go on to a Hollywood acting career?”
He shrugged his indifference.
So. That was it, then. Why he was here. What he was now.
And that was what she was now. A hypocrite. She had been harboring an inane, insane wish that he was here for her. Even if for the ulterior motives she’d thought he had. Pathetic.
But even if those motives had been valid once, they were a thing of the past now he was far richer than both her parents combined. Now she’d better put this in the past, too.
She gave him her best effort at a smile. “Seems you had a meteoric rise. Very impressive, Roque. Congratulations. I hope you have all the recharging you need on this mission and that it won’t be a bother when I leave you with no second in command.”
With that she turned to the door, held it open for him. He put on his vest, prowled towards her, potent vibes she couldn’t begin to guess at blasting off him.
He took the door from her, pushed it wider until it clunked on the wall. Then he pressed her against it, imprinting her with every hard inch of himself. His gaze burned down on her, as if waiting for something. The shudder that shook her was it, it seemed.
At feeling it, his eyes fired, then one hand glided over her, from ribcage to breast to neck before melting to the back of her head. The other took the same journey downwards to cup her buttocks. He leisurely spread her unresisting body for a fierce thrust of arousal at her core, then, holding her eyes, absorbing every shocked tremor of pleasure streaking through her, quivering all over her face, he devoured her.
When her whimpers became incessant, when she was devouring him back, he slowly, too slowly, unfused their mouths and bodies, a cruel twist to his lips.
Then he turned around and walked away.
Before he went out of hearing range he tossed back a dark drawl. “As I said before, minha esposa, you’re going nowhere.”
She stood plastered to the door until someone passed by and asked if she was sick. She shook her head, closed the door with a measured click. Then she stumbled to her bed, fell on it face down, shame and humiliation, hunger and anger suffocating her.
He could have dragged her to bed and she would have begged him to hurry, as she always had, disintegrating with the unbearable need for his invasion, his completion.
But he’d walked out. Right after he’d made both of them sure that he could have had her if he’d wanted. And he hadn’t.
So why did he want her to stay? Not that he’d said he wanted her to stay, he’d told her she was staying. To what end? Now she knew his reasons for being here, she understood the cat-and-mouse game he’d been playing with her so far even less. But when had she ever understood him, or his motives…?
Roque felt rage entering the danger zone as he stomped up to his cabin. The humidity-soaked air only contributed to his spiking temperature.
Once he’d burst inside, he yanked his clothes off then stepped out on the aft sundeck, raised his eyes to the sky. Against a backdrop of blackness, the uncanny stars of Amazonia crowded in a random pattern of steadily gleaming jewels… jewels…
With a growl, he hauled himself up on the railing. He stood balanced for a moment, then he dove.
He cut the water surface in a clean slice, hurtled downward with the momentum of his thirty-foot dive. It felt like plunging into black ink, into a sense-distorting dimension.
He stopped descending, maneuvered himself upright and remained suspended in the depths for long, unearthly moments. When his lungs began to burn, he kicked his way to the surface.
He took a few deep breaths then swam out into the river, the gentle current boosting his crawl. The river was thirty miles wide here, making seeing its other bank hard even during the day. Now it felt like swimming into a void. That suited him fine right now.
With his thoughts slowing down, he did too, floated, let the current sweep him along. His unseeing eyes fixed on the starry dome as his inner vision crowded with memories. With her. Jewel. His precious, flawed Jewel who’d repolished herself, remolded and reinvented herself.
He had to admit it, turning from a model into a doctor, and the skilled one he’d seen, had been a staggering leap. undertaking humanitarian missions, no matter how self-serving the end, was as big. She’d achieved unimaginable growth in many areas.
And she’d thought he’d married her to use her. And though it made him want to shake her until her every bone rattled, he could see where her suspicions had come from, how they had polluted her view of his character, fueled her distance and aloofness, and led to that final mutilating showdown.
Now, as anger ebbed, premeditation, which had seen him through his meteoric rise, as she’d called it, which had made him certain of his abilities and dead set on his goals, settled in.
His goals… Right now he could only see one. Jewel. Working beside him, dueling with him, walking away from him, shuddering in his arms, on the floor, against the door…
Fire flooded his veins again. So even the Amazon River wasn’t enough to douse it.
But he didn’t want it doused. Now the past had been put in perspective, only one thing mattered. He still wanted her. Badly.
And she wanted him, too. No doubt about it. But this time the last thing he wanted was ever-afters. They may still be legally married, but all he wanted was an all-out affair, to purge the accumulated hunger. Once it had been, he’d be free at last.
The boat was now a tiny twinkle in the distance. He swept around, started the vigorous swim back, smiling all the way.
CHAPTER SIX
“GIVEN up on trying to sleep, minha esposa?”
The mocking words hit Jewel in the spine as she hastily retreated from the dining hall’s entrance.
She hadn’t made a sound. And he’d been facing away from the door. Talk about eyes in the back of his head. But just how had he known it had been her? And what was he doing here at this hour? She’d thought she’d be the only one here at 4:00 a.m.
Well, she wasn’t and she should walk back in and get her breakfast. She had a long day ahead of her and the sooner she was done the better. She turned, re-entered the hall, headed for the open-plan kitchen. There were no meals served at this hour. She’d make her own.
She circled as far away from him as possible, making every effort to keep her eyes off him. She still felt him rising from his chair, following her. And not because he made any sound.
“Having trouble sleeping, too?” She took her cue from him, asking the nonchalant question.
“With you around?” Lazy yet heated teasing permeated his voice. “Do you even need to ask? But you really have to do something about your attitude, Jóia. It won’t inspire team cooperation if you leave every room I’m in.”
She opened the refrigerator. “Have you had breakfast?”
A moment of silence stretched in answer. From the way her senses were going haywire, she could tell he
was now no more than a foot away. She kept her eyes on her chore.
He finally drawled, “At four a.m.? Hardly. Are you offering me some? That would be a first.”
And he was right about that. During their five-month marriage, she’d never fed him anything. Besides the dazed state in which she’d spent those months, she hadn’t even mastered boiling water. He’d cooked when he hadn’t brought takeaway coming home from work. He’d been handy with fast and simple yet delicious meals.
“And it would be a last, so enjoy it while you can,” she tossed over her shoulder. “You like omelets?”
“Doesn’t everybody? And why, pray tell, would this unprecedented occasion be an unrepeatable one?”
She placed the pan on the stove, got out a bowl to mix her ingredients. “Simple. As I already told you, I’m leaving. I doubt I’ll see you again.”
“Ah, that again. Another thing you really have to work on—this new habit of repeating yourself, amor.” His hands landed on her shoulder. When had he moved? Good thing she’d already put the eggs down. “Give me one good reason why you should leave.”
She shook her shoulders, and his hands dropped. “You.”
His hands were back on her instantly, turning her to face him. And he was naked!
Breathe. He wasn’t naked. Only down his wide-open shirt to his very, very low-hanging jeans waistband.
She remembered his every muscle and sinew. This was way more. He must have found time to upgrade his body among his preoccupations. Those field missions must have been rigorous, too. Her hands itched, her mouth watered. Oh, great. She was dying to grab at him, was drooling over him now.
She had to get out of here fast.
He waited for her stunned eyes to rise to his again then gave a mind-messing whisper. “Nice to know I’m a good reason.”
“The best,” she rasped.
Something primal rumbled in his gut as he closed the space between them, pressing her to the kitchen counter. “Jewel…”
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