Page 33 of Their One-Night Rio Reunion
Ana took her leg down from where it was flung, far too close to an area of Caio’s anatomy that fascinated her. She rested on an elbow. ‘Tell me about your first time.’
Caio lay back and looked at the ceiling. Ana resisted the urge to let her eyes drift up and down his spectacular body. She felt the stirrings of a resurgence of desire.Already.
‘It’s really not that exciting.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
Caio sighed. He looked at Ana, almost scowling. ‘I don’t do this, you know.’
‘Do what? Talk?’
‘Talk after sex.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it tends to send mixed messages.’
‘Such as that you might actually like a woman you slept with?’ Ana tried to hide an amused smile.
‘Something like that.’
‘You don’t have to worry about me getting mixed messages—after all, I practically had to hit you over the head and drag you up to my lair to make love to me, so it’s not as if I’m under any illusions.’
She said the words lightly enough, but they felt heavy in her gut.
Before he could respond to that, Ana said quickly, ‘Anyway—your first time. What was it like?’
‘Mind-blowing.’
Ana immediately hated his first lover with a passion that scared her.
Caio said dryly, ‘But you have to remember that men are simple creatures. It wouldn’t have taken an awful lot to blow my mind at sixteen years old.’
Ana felt marginally mollified. ‘Who was she?’
‘A friend of one of my brother’s girlfriends. She’d come to a party. She was older than me. I think she’d have preferred to be with one of my older brothers, but he wasn’t interested. She found me lurking in a corner, watching the party, and took me to a private space and...initiated me.’ He continued with a thread of self-disgust in his voice. ‘The worst thing was that afterwards I was so awed and pathetically grateful. I thought I loved her. I followed her and told her I wanted to see her again. She humiliated me.’
Ana’s hatred at the thought of his first lover turned to pity. She said, ‘That wasn’t nice.’
‘No, it wasn’t. But she did me a favour, really. She could have strung me along and made a much bigger fool of me than she did. I learnt my lesson early.’
‘What lesson was that?’
But Ana already knew.
Caio turned and looked straight at her. ‘Not to confuse sex with love.’
Ana opened her eyes wide and sat up, clutching the sheet to her chest. She made her lips tremble a little, ‘You mean, you don’t love me now, Caio? But what we just did...what just happened...it was so special—’
Caio moved so fast she didn’t have time to think or speak. She was pinned under his big body, one leg between hers, another part of his anatomy stirring back to virile life, and he said, ‘Very funny. I was a young, nerdy and naïve sixteen-year-old. You know a lot more than I did.’
Ana moved against him suggestively and wound her arms around his neck. ‘I’m not sure I entirely grasp the concept—I think you need to show me again.’
Caio didn’t need any encouragement. His mouth claimed hers with a ferocity that almost blanked her brain, but not quite. Because she knew she might have fooled Caio into believing that she was more savvy than he’d been at sixteen, and that she wouldn’t be so naïve as to confuse sex with emotion, but she hadn’t fooled herself.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WHENANAWOKEAGAIN, she was alone in the bed. It was still dark outside, which added to the sense of timelessness and also comforted her. It made her think of Romeo and Juliet, and Juliet’s insistence that it was the nightingale they heard as dawn approached after their night together, and not the lark.
