A Price Worth Paying(45)

CHAPTER ELEVEN



‘I BROUGHT YOU COFFEE.’

Simone blinked, still half asleep and only half understanding what she’d heard. Something about coffee? And sure enough, the scent of freshly brewed coffee seemed to flavour air that was otherwise heavily laden with sex. Hardly surprising given they’d spent more time making love last night than sleeping.

But really, coffee? The man was built like a god, made love as if he actually cared that his partner climaxed, and he made coffee for her instead of demanding a beer?

She snuggled back into her pillow. She really must be dreaming.

‘How are you feeling?’

Her eyes snapped open. How am I what? He was freshly showered and wearing crisp, fresh clothes—another of those tops that skimmed the surface of his skin and made you want to peel it off, and trousers that accentuated the long lean contours of his legs—and he really was pouring her a cup of coffee. She sat up, snagging the bedding over her breasts, and pushed hair gone wild back from her face.

Outside, the windows the bay sparkled under a warm sun, a perfect autumn day. Inside her barometer wasn’t anywhere near as controlled.

‘I’m—’ shattered ‘—okay,’ she said, knowing she must look closer to the word she’d left unsaid. After the night they’d just spent, she couldn’t imagine what kind of mess she looked.

‘I thought you might be feeling tender. It was wrong of me to make love to you again this morning,’ he said, as easily as he might have asked her if she wanted milk in her coffee. ‘I should have given you some time.’

‘I’m not … I wasn’t …’

‘A virgin? No, I know, but it’s clear you haven’t had much experience.’

‘I have had sex before, you know. Several times. A lot of times, actually.’ She’d even had the odd orgasm before, although admittedly she’d had to assist, so hadn’t last night been a revelation? ‘I told you I’d been in a relationship.’

He smiled at that. ‘Oh yes. The boyfriend. I remember.’ He sipped his coffee as he looked out over the view of the bay. ‘Perhaps he wasn’t as experienced.’

God, he wasn’t as well endowed, more like it! She stared at her coffee rather than at him, so she wouldn’t be forced to make any more comparisons, beyond the width of their shoulders, or the muscled firmness of their flesh, for instance. She shrugged and slanted her eyes up, feeling his eyes on her, knowing she was expected to say something. ‘He wasn’t put together quite the same as you, that’s all.’

He smiled at her over his shoulder. ‘They say size isn’t important.’

Oh, they’re so very wrong.

And then she made the mistake of looking at the clock and saw it was almost noon and didn’t even have to feign surprise. Her cup rattled against the saucer as she sat up urgently, still clutching the bedclothes to her. ‘I need to call the hospital and check on Felipe.’

‘I already have. He is resting comfortably.’ He tossed her a robe—his robe, she realised, and it was all she could do not to lift it to her face and breathe in his scent. ‘I thought you’d want to visit so I said we’d be in to see him before lunch.’

She shrugged the robe around her shoulders, strangely touched, finding the armholes. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’

‘You don’t want to see your grandfather?’

‘No, I mean you didn’t have to call. I didn’t expect you to.’

He shrugged, looking out of the window at the view. ‘You were asleep. I thought you would want to know. Do you have a problem with that?’

‘Aren’t you worried I might think you were actually capable of being nice?’

She was half joking, but he didn’t seem to take it that way. He blinked. Slowly. ‘Whatever you think of me, I am not a beast. I am certainly capable of extending common courtesy where it is merited. Besides, don’t you think it would look odd if I did not ask after my new grandfather-in-law?’

He turned and stared at her for a moment, one wholly unsettling moment under an intensely dark gaze, that had her putting a hand to her unruly hair and imagining he must be wondering what he’d done to be stuck with her.

Then he crossed to the bed, lifted her chin and kissed her briefly on the lips. A peck, nothing more.

‘Besides,’ he said, her chin still in his hand, his eyes still searching her face, ‘you know better than to read too much into it.’