‘There haven’t been many.’
Feeling like she’d been punched, she sat up and tightly said, ‘I just said I don’t want to know. I had no claim over you, and you had no claim over me, and I don’t ever want to hear about or know which women you’ve shared this bed with.’
He gave a half smile and cupped her cheek. ‘Only you.’
She went to slap his hand away, but ended up clasping it tightly. ‘Liar!’
‘Beth, this place was our dream home. I couldn’t bring another woman here. It would have felt wrong.’
Oh, why was he saying such things? ‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘Why not?’ His eyes didn’t even flicker. ‘We’ve always been honest with each other. I bought this place with you in mind.’
She could do nothing to stop her burst of cynical laughter. ‘Sure you did.’
‘I think I always knew we’d end up back together.’
‘Well,Ididn’t, so it’s just as well I’ve been too career-focused to let another man sweep me off my feet, isn’t it? Fully off my feet, that is,’ she hastened to add. She would never let him even guess at the truth, and she was angry with herself for letting her jealousy at his other women seep out. ‘Otherwise, you’d have bought this place for nothing and your wish to keep control of the Rosbel Group would have been screwed.’
He grinned. ‘When you put it like that, I consider myself a fortunate man.’
How shehatedhis grin. Hated that it made her pelvis melt. Hated that it made her mouth want to reciprocate into a wide smile of its own. ‘So you should. Who knows what I’d do with the shares if I were already married? I might feel obliged to sell them to one of those sharks to stop my husband being jealous about our history.’
He lifted his head, his grin widening. ‘You wouldn’t do that.’
‘Wouldn’t I?’
He palmed the underside of her breast and stretched his thumb to her nipple. ‘You’ve changed in some respects but not in the ways that really matter. You’re not someone who would do anything she didn’t want to do and you wouldneverscrew another person over.’
‘Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.’ Oh,whydid she keep trying to give him these damned cryptic warnings?
Holding her waist, he sat up and bowed his head to take her nipple into his mouth. ‘I don’t care how many men you’ve been with since me,’ he said between licks and sucks. ‘I know you better and more intimately than anyone.’
Sensation was filling her again, the heat in her pelvis bubbling back to life, and when he trailed a hand down her side to her thigh, she let him gently coax it over his lap so she was straddling him.
This was what she’d wanted when she’d agreed to marry him. Sex. Lots of sex. Not pointless pillow talk that hurt her heart.
What she must not do was allow herself to believe his lies, even if her heart ached for his words to be true. Xavi hadn’t bought this gorgeous baroque building with her in mind. He was just saying what he thought needed saying to protect his interests.
He moved his attention to her other breast. She clasped the back of his head and raised her bottom so she straddled his arousal.
He gazed up at her with glazed eyes. ‘No one could ever compare to you,mi vida. No one.’
Blocking his words out, she sank down on him with a long moan of pleasure.
‘Does this place have a swimming pool?’ Beth asked. Despite making love twice, she was still wide-awake, too many thoughts crowding her head to allow sleep to snake its way into her. Too many thoughts she didnotwant to let loose.
‘You want to go swimming,now?’
Her cheek on his chest, the beats of his heart a steady, comforting—too comforting—sound, he didn’t see her wistful smile that he still knew her well enough to know that when she asked a question like that, it generally meant she wanted to do it right away, not at some future date.
‘Yes.’ She lifted her chin to gaze into his eyes, and seductively added, ‘But I don’t have a swimming costume to hand so it’ll have to be skinny-dipping.’
He made a groan-like laugh and shook his head before flashing his perfect teeth at her. ‘What the hell. Come on. Let me show you my swimming pool.’
Her nudity wrapped in her silk kimono, Beth happily let Xavi, who’d slung a pair of shorts on, lead her out of the bedroom to a flight of stairs at the end of the corridor.
She climbed them and stepped out into the heady scent of night-blooming jasmine and twilight heat. Enough of the city was asleep for the black sky above them to glitter with stars, a sight that had her gaping—she couldn’t remember seeing a star in the Madrid night sky before.
