He stood quietly, looking at the pants and underwear in his hand. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Do you want to go?” It wasn’t what she wanted.
Michael looked from his semi-erect cock to her fully erect nipples. “No. I want you.”
“Then take me. You said something about using your mouth.”
Afterwards, Michael lay on his side next to her in bed. He gathered her into his arms and kissed her. “That was wonderful. You were wonderful.”
“It will be even better when we have condoms.” But at her words she sensed his withdrawal.
“This can’t happen again.”
Ileana raised her head, stunned with disbelief. How could it be the end? Her dream hadn’t even come true yet because he hadn’t been inside her. “Why not?”
“It just can’t. Tonight has to be enough.”
“What do you mean ‘tonight has to be enough’? We just got started. This was the best night of my life.” Ileana’s voice rose. She wrenched out of Michael’s arms and sat up in bed facing him.
The sated feeling left Michael, replaced by a tension that tightened his shoulders. He sat up, too. He’d been reacting since he saw her in the church, so he hadn’t had time to think of a plausible reason they couldn’t be together, but he couldn’t lie to Ileana. She wouldn’t believe him anyway after what they’d done to each other. Unless he acted like a real bastard.
But he couldn’t do that either.
“I can’t see you again and what just happened has to be our secret.”
“Michael, what are you talking about? What’s going on?” Ileana crossed her arms under her naked breasts. The sight was hugely distracting.
“I’m not capable of anything more than this.” He waved around the rumpled bed. There, the truth, although not the truth that mattered.
But Ileana’s face softened. She reached for him. He wanted to hold back, but his body went on autopilot into her arms. She lay back against the sheets bringing him with her.
“I know you’re afraid,” she said.
“I’m not afraid.” Well, that wasn’t exactly true.
“Michael,” she chastised softly.
There was something decidedly wrong with this situation. His body was hardening again in response to the naked woman in his arms and he was telling her they couldn’t ever be like this again? Hell, he couldn’t foresee a time when he wouldn’t want to get naked with her. He had it bad for her.
“I can’t do a relationship,” he admitted.
“You can if you start slowly. Baby steps.”
“We’ve already had oral sex. We skipped the baby steps.”
She smiled at him. “Did you want to go slower?”
“Hell no. Waiting to get you naked was killing me.” He shouldn’t think about that in this position. He had almost a full hard-on already.
“You’re not making any sense.”
“I can’t make sense when your breasts are pressed against me.”
Ileana rubbed the hardened tips up and down his chest. He gripped her hips and ground himself against her. How could he not be sated—he’d had two orgasms already. He’d taken her in every way save one. Maybe that was the reason—until he’d had intercourse with her he’d always want her.
“Why don’t you have any condoms?” he growled to himself and her, thrusting between her legs.
“Why would I when I don’t date?”
Michael froze. “What do you mean? You’ve done this before.”
“Sure I have. With my
novio
when I was seventeen.”
He knew she was close to thirty now. “I don’t understand.”
“My
novio
, Roberto Herrara, died when I was seventeen. A
novio
is like a fiancé. We were to be married. He was my
novio
from the time I was fifteen. I’ve been in mourning since then.”
“And you don’t date? At all?”
“That’s what being in mourning means.”
His mind couldn’t process what she’d said. She’d given herself to him, was in the act of giving herself again to him, when she’d been in mourning for nearly a dozen years. She hadn’t looked at another man with lust until him.
And he had to give her up?
Hell no. No, he had to have her. So he brought her to orgasm with his mouth and hands once more and let her do the same to him.
As they lay gasping afterwards, Ileana’s muffled voice came from beneath him. “Why didn’t you have a condom?”
All his defenses were down when he answered. “I haven’t had a date since my brother died.”
• • •
Michael and Ileana showered and changed the sheets together. She didn’t argue when he said he was staying the night. He’d been vulnerable and they both knew it. He needed loving arms around him and she was happy to provide them. He couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about how his brother’s death had changed him. She knew some of the ways. It was enough for now that he stayed after he’d made his admission.
He kept touching her, as though he couldn’t help it. They woke twice in the night when Michael tried to enter her, scrambling to separate in time, and then they pleasured each other with hands and mouths, a hint of desperation in their couplings.
When Ileana finally woke, it was late-morning and she felt thick with sleep.
Michael stood beside the bed with his clothes in his hands. “I have to go.”
She reached for him. “Come back to bed.”
He avoided her hand. “You’re sore and I don’t think I can get it up again today.”
“Come back to bed anyway.”
“I have to go to work...”
“It’s Sunday.”
“I’ve been gone all week and I’ll be out of the office tomorrow.”
“Why?”
Michael hesitated to tell her. Suddenly her mind fog lifted and she knew. “Your mom?”
He nodded. “She’s having a radical mastectomy tomorrow. I’m sitting with my dad during the surgery then with her afterwards.”
“I’d like to come with you.”
Mixed emotions crossed his face. “Thanks, but no.”
“I’d like to be there for you.”
“I can’t. I told you that. This has to be good-bye.”
Ileana scrambled from the bed, dragging the sheet around her body. She would fight for what they had. “It’s not good-bye. I won’t let you throw away what we have because of fear.”
“And I won’t let you hang onto me. I can’t. It won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too big a risk.”
“And you don’t risk. Not since your brother died.”
“No. I can’t afford to.”
He was throwing away what they had. That had been more than pleasure between them in her bed last night. That had been two souls bonding...just like it had been with Roberto.
“We’re not finished, Michael. You want to know how I know? I dreamed about you, with the Sight. I dreamed we were lovers, but not like last night. In this dream, you were inside me. That hasn’t happened yet.”
Frowning, Michael insisted, “It was just a dream.”
“But it’s going to happen. My dreams always come true.”
“My worst nightmare might come true if I see you again. I can’t risk that.”
“You mean that someone you love might die?”
Michael inhaled and paled.
Ileana reached for him but he stepped back. “I can’t.”
He turned and took a step towards the door. Despair stabbed her. He wasn’t willing to risk losing someone he loved. Time slowed as he took another step. But Michael didn’t love her, so he didn’t risk losing her. Who would he lose if he continued to see Ileana? He loved his parents.
What
would he lose? Fragments of memory stirred.
Her father’s smug face.
Michael’s fear in the church when he asked, “What are you doing here?”
His insistence that last night had to remain a secret.
Her father’s smug face.
“What did my father threaten to do to you if you kept on seeing me?”
Michael froze, stiffening. “What are you talking about?”
“Did he threaten your business?”
He stood there as the clock ticked the moments away. Then his shoulders slumped. He turned back to face her. “Yes. Now you see why we have to say good-bye.”
“No. Now I know how to fight for you.”
“You can’t fight your father over me and win,” Michael said in amazed frustration. “He’s the head of Calderon. He makes the decisions. And his opinions sway the other Cuban families.”
“My father doesn’t always dictate what I do.”
“You have nothing to lose. He’s part of what’s most important to you. He won’t exile you from the family.”
“I have something he values. It gives me a bargaining tool.”
“What could you possibly have that would make him forget I’m not Cuban?”
“The keys to an empire. Through me, my father wants to unite Cuban businesses.”
“But I’m not Cuban,” he repeated.
“There are other ways to further his interests, like vertical integration for one.”
Michael had trouble breathing. She had not just proposed to him although she’d certainly proposed a merger of some kind. She was ready to defy her father and basing that rebellion on certain assumptions, like a relationship between them lasting.
“What are you suggesting? That Calderon would sell to me, because I’m not in the market to sell Citadel.”
“I thought more of two principals in the same industry choosing to make a commitment to a joint venture where both benefitted. An exchange of promises. Sharing of assets.”
It sure sounded like marriage. “We hardly know one another. We don’t know what the future holds.”
Ileana looked at the bed. “I think we know one another fairly well.”
“It was meant to be one night.”
“Was it? Would you be leaving right now if we had a box of condoms and you weren’t exhausted?”
Was she trying to kill him with lust? He could picture that all too clearly. “Hell no.”
“Then we have nothing to worry about.”
“Lust wanes. What then?”
“I don’t plan on it waning any time soon. But I suppose you’re asking about times like now, when we’re exhausted.”
Her comment deserved a smile, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t imagine being sated by her any time soon either.
“Then we do what every other couple does,” she finished.
Michael didn’t trust his feelings. He couldn’t give Ileana the trump card she needed to win against her father. But he could give them a chance.
“We have to keep our relationship secret for now.” He held up his hand to forestall her protest. “Until we get to know one another out of bed.”
“Won’t that be hard to do if we can’t go anywhere together?”
“Miami’s a big city. There’s lots to do, plenty of places where we won’t risk running into people we know.”
“I won’t hide for long, Michael. I’m not ashamed to be with you.”
Part of his heart flooded with warmth. He slid his arms around her. She did the same and leaned her head against his shoulder.
“I’m not ashamed of you, Ileana. You’re beautiful, intelligent, passionate, and caring.” For each word, Michael placed a kiss on her face. “You’re everything a man could want.”
She raised her head and looked at him. “Even you?”
He swallowed his fears. “Even me. I want you.”
“Then that’s all that matters.”
“I don’t think we should have any more sleepovers over here.”
Her face fell, and then she rallied with the determination he was beginning to love. Her chin came up. “I won’t stop making love with you.”
A smile kicked up the corner of his mouth. “I hadn’t planned on it. How would you like to try out my bed?”
Her face lit. “Will there be condoms?”
He kissed her sassy mouth. “I’ll pick some up today.”
She squeezed his butt. “Get plenty.”
“We’ll still make love like we did last night, though, right?”
Ileana smiled. “I hear it’s called foreplay.”
Michael kissed her again. As usual, fire exploded between them. Her sheet slid down revealing her full breasts, but before they could get something else started, Michael broke away from her.
“I have to go to work.”
“What hospital and what time tomorrow?” she demanded.
He hesitated. Tomorrow was going to be traumatic. But he really wanted her there. “8:00
A.M.
at the Miami Medical Center.”
“I’ll be there.”
Satisfaction blasted through him. He dressed under Ileana’s proprietary scrutiny. Her approving gaze was like a touch. She checked the outer rooms of her apartment for relatives, and then it was time to leave. Momentous things had happened here in the past twelve hours. He was still reeling from some of them.
Michael took Ileana in his arms and kissed her soundly. She scanned the front yard for relatives and let him out the door.
“Michael.”
He stopped and turned to look at her. Wrapped in her bed sheet with her hair tousled and her lips swollen from his kisses, she looked exactly what she was—a well-loved woman.
“I can’t wait to see you again.”
He smiled at her. “Me, too.” And he knew he meant it.
• • •
Michael worked industriously all day updating himself on his business. The computer and his cell phone had made it easy to run his business from the road, but there were so many little things he’d ignored last week due to the press of time. Now, alone in his office, he caught up.
There had been no further incidents at any of his warehouses during the past week. Detective Washington had speculated it was because Michael had gone to the cops with his suspicions. Washington said he couldn’t swear Miami PD was free of corrupt cops who’d leak the information to the perpetrators and make them lie low for awhile. But the major crimes unit was keeping an eye on businesses involved in the tourist trade anyway. Michael was just happy to stop receiving late-night calls from his security.
Thoughts of Ileana intruded all day. So did the fear that her father would find out about them before Michael was prepared to go public with their relationship. He’d given Esteban Calderon his oath, and he’d broken it. That didn’t sit well on Michael’s conscience. In his business, contracts gave peace of mind. He’d reneged on a verbal contract with the father of the woman he wanted with every fiber of his being. What a way to begin a relationship.
The box of condoms—party pack size—in his desk drawer distracted him as well. He got breathless thinking about having sex with Ileana. As the day wore on towards evening, his body’s exhaustion gave way to fullness and aching. Ileana would not be disappointed by his performance. They hadn’t made a date for tonight, but why wait?