A Facade to Shatter(53)

“It’s nothing,” he said, surprised at the trembling in his fingers as he reached for his wine. “Forget it.”

She kept staring at him, her eyes large and liquid. “You are a man of integrity and honor,” she said. “I do not doubt that at all.”

“I tried to pay you off and send you away, Lia. Or have you forgotten?”

She picked up her glass. “I have not. But I understand why you did it.”

“Because I’m an arrogant bastard with an unhealthy sense of self-importance?” He meant it to be self-deprecating, but he recognized the truth in it, too. He’d had his family consequence drummed into him from birth, after all.

“I wouldn’t have put it that way,” she said carefully, and he laughed.

She looked at him in confusion, and he didn’t blame her. Just a moment ago, the conversation had been so serious, so dramatic. Now that it had moved away from the deeply intense and dark things residing in his soul, he could find humor in her reaction.

“Because you are too sweet,” he said. He reached for her hand. The heat that sparked inside him was always surprising.

She frowned. “I don’t feel particularly sweet. I feel quite cross at the moment, actually.”

He brought her hand to her mouth, nibbled the skin over her knuckles. “I think I know how to change that,” he murmured.

Lia’s insides were melting. She didn’t want to melt just yet, but she realized she had no choice in the matter. Sparks were zinging and pinging inside her like a fireworks display on New Year’s eve.

She was still concerned about the things he’d said, about the self-loathing beneath his mask, but it seemed the subject was now closed. She’d been allowed a peek at the raw, tormented nature of Zach Scott, but now he was wrapped up tight again and she wasn’t getting in.

She wanted to know the man who dreamed, who worked hard to make those speeches and ignore the triggers that could send him spiraling out of control. She wanted to touch the heart of him, she realized.

The way he’d touched hers.

He tugged her toward him until she got up and went to his side. Then he was pulling her down on his lap, tilting her back in his arms. His eyes gleamed with heat, and a hot wave of longing washed through her with the same kind of relentless surge of the ocean beyond.

“No more talking, Lia,” he said, his fingers gliding over the skin beneath her collarbone.

When his lips replaced his fingers, her head fell back against the chair. His mouth moved over her, teasing, tormenting. The ocean pounded the shore a few yards away, and the trade winds blew, and Lia shuddered and gasped and knew she’d found heaven.

Her heart hurt with everything she felt: passion, hot and bright; fear, cold and insidious; and love, warm and glowing, like the sun as it had been right before it sank into the sea. There was a rightness about this, a rightness that felt like destiny and perfection.

She was meant to be here, and Zach was meant to be the man she shared her life with. She shivered again as he unbuttoned her shirt and peeled it back to reveal her shoulders and the soft swell of her breasts against the silk of her bra.

“Bellissimo,” he said, his voice a silky purr. “Ho bisogno di te, Lia.”

I need you.

Lia shivered again, her entire body on fire from tip to toes as his gaze raked her with that naked hunger she’d come to crave.

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

His mouth came down on hers, and she was lost to anything but this molten hot fire between them. She wrapped her arms around him and shifted in his lap—and felt the hard evidence of his arousal pressing against her bottom.

His body tightened beneath her—and then all that beautiful power was lifting her, carrying her into the house while she clung to him and pressed kisses to his jaw, his neck, the delicious skin of his collarbone.

Soon, she was on her feet in the master suite. The doors were still slung open to let in the breezes, but they were completely alone out here on this remote stretch of beach. Zach stripped away her silky top and tailored trousers until she stood before him in nothing but her bra and a tiny scrap of silk that covered her sex.

His eyes darkened as they drifted over her, and a thrill shot through her.

“You look good enough to eat, Lia,” he purred.

A fresh wave of heat pulsed inside her. She was wet, hot, and she wanted him.

But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t take those three steps to him, couldn’t wrap her arms around him and be a wanton, seductive woman. Always she feared she wouldn’t do it right, that he’d disapprove, or that he’d push her away and tell her she wasn’t good enough, after all.