Page 34 of Their One-Night Rio Reunion
Ana scowled at herself. She wasn’t usually given to flights of literary fancy, no matter how much she wanted to go to England and study literature.
She stretched luxuriously, revelling in all the new aches and twinges in her body...the tenderness between her legs. She felt decadent, and she focused on that rather than anything more emotional.
There was no sound from the bathroom, so she slipped into the robe on the floor and went in search of Caio, not really caring if she seemed needy. They had one night and she wanted him again.
Forever. She blanked that thought out.
All was quiet downstairs; the kitchen was empty. Then she heard a sound from the area of the study/library, where she’d confronted Caio in the blue dress. That felt like an aeon ago now. She felt like a different person.
She stopped in the doorway. Caio was standing much in the same place as he had been the last time. At the drinks cabinet with his back to her. Except his back was bare this time and he wore those sweatpants again. And, if she wasn’t mistaken, she thought she could see the faint marks of her nails on his back.
He turned around. ‘I tried not to wake you.’
I’m glad I woke.
Ana didn’t say that. She just shrugged. ‘I don’t think you did. I woke and you were already gone.’
He held up a glass. ‘Drink?’
‘Sure.’
Ana sat down in a big chair and curled her legs underneath her, accepting the glass that Caio had had in his hand. He poured himself another.
She sniffed it, and the scent made her nose wrinkle and caught at the back of her throat. She’d been too nervous previously to wonder what she was drinking. ‘What is it?’
‘The same as before—a very expensive Irish whiskey.’
Ana looked up. ‘Won’t Luca Fonseca mind?’
Caio tossed back the golden liquid in one gulp. ‘I’ll replace it.’ He poured himself another shot and took a seat in a chair just a few feet away.
She arched a brow. ‘We survived a year of marriage but now I’m driving you to drink?’
Caio looked at his ex-wife. She was driving him to something. A kind of insatiable insanity.
Even now, after the last time—after he’d been sure that he was done, that his body could not possibly take or generate more pleasure—all he could see was her, sitting in that chair looking so innocent, her legs tucked up under her delectable body.
The robe gaped slightly, showing a tantalising curve of breast. He didn’t have to see the puckered nipple to imagine it and know how it would taste, stiffening into a hard bud against his tongue.
When he’d woken a short time before it had been to find himself entwined with Ana again. He’d looked out of the window and felt both perversely relieved and frustrated that there was no sign of the dawn.
He’d come down here to put some distance between them and try to drown out the ever-present hum of desire in his body with the burn of alcohol. It was as if a switch had been flicked and he couldn’t switch it off again. For the first time since they’d arrived on the island he felt claustrophobic. But it was an inner claustrophobia. A sense of wanting to get away from himself. Irritating and disconcerting.
Ana, oblivious to the maelstrom happening inside Caio, took a sip of the liquid. She made a little face. ‘It burns...and it’s smoky. Earthy. I like it.’
‘It’s peaty, from the bogs.’
‘I’ve never been to Ireland.’
‘You can go now. Nothing stopping you.’Deus.He couldn’t string a sentence together.
‘Maybe I will.’
The thought of Ana going off to explore the world on her own suddenly made Caio feel a mixture of things. Rudderless, and also panicky.
‘What are you going to do with your newfound freedom?’ Ana asked, slicing through the heat in Caio’s brain.
He frowned. ‘Work.’
