Secret Heir (Dynasty #1)(85)

“I don’t think this is such a good idea,” I say finally, still feeling totally lame because the words are a total understatement. Raph had been right that day in the forest when he said this was a mistake. He’d been right to try to stop it. It was my fault for pushing him, for making him tell me what he was wise enough to know could never matter.

But his face just tells me that he doesn’t agree with that at all.

He doesn’t say anything, though, diving cleanly into the pool instead. He surfaces after a moment and I can feel my body tensing as he swims towards me.

He stops a few inches in front of me and the closeness is not doing great things for my self-control.

“Is that so?” he ask finally, quirking an eyebrow.

I force myself to swallow.

“Yeah, it is. I mean—I think you had the right idea about this being a mistake. Because—you know nothing can ever come of this. So, maybe we should just stop now before things get—”

He cuts me off then as his head dips and his lips make contact with the side of my throat. I think I let out a moan as he trails those open mouthed kisses along my neck which drive me insane with need and make my skin come alive at the same time.

My hands grab onto his shoulders instinctively, my fingers digging into his skin as he licks and sucks at the sensitive spot where my pulse is hammering beneath the surface.

“The only mistake was not doing this the first moment I saw you on that damned beach.” He speaks the words against my skin and I shiver at the sensation it causes.

When he pulls away, his eyes blaze into mine and the hunger inside me is reflected in them.

Still, I try to hold onto the resolve that’s fast slipping away.

“Raph … I’ve never … I don’t do this …” My words are as incoherent as my thoughts. But Raph hears them.

He cups my cheek with his hand and the hunger blazing in his eyes turns into something deeper, a different type of fire, with the ability to incinerate my entire universe, if I let it.

“I know, Jaz.”

I let out a long breath then.

“You can have any girl you want and I know what you’re used to … I can’t measure up to that and I can’t let myself do this, when I know there are other—”

He cuts me off. “You have no idea, Jaz. I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. I’ve been with other girls, yes. But none of them ever meant anything to me. I don’t even think I really wanted them. I just wanted to distract myself, I was just trying to find something to fill the void. But none of them ever could.”

He drops his gaze and shakes his head almost ruefully.

“I guess I was just searching for something, although I had no idea what until you came along.”

His words leave me breathless and when his impossibly blue eyes lock onto mine again, I think I stop breathing altogether.

“I don’t know how I know this, but I’m certain that I’ll never want anyone the way I want you. No other girl can even come close, Jaz. Not one.”

Those words floor me and I can feel the last of my resistance being burned away under the intensity of his gaze.

“We can’t,” I say again in a last attempt to hold onto reason, but I hear the weakness in my own words.

“This—it’s wrong. You were right—we can’t want each other like this.”

“We can’t,” he replies, drawing even closer, until his bare chest is pressed up against my breasts, with only the thin material of my bikini top separating us.

“But we do.”

I back away from him in an attempt to distance myself from that all-consuming fire, but he follows me until my back hits the tile of the pool wall and there’s nowhere else for me to go.

“Do you want me, Jaz?” he whispers, as he trails featherlight kisses along the outer shell of my ear, along my jaw line.

I clamp my lips shut to stop myself from answering, because I know the answer won’t be the right one.

Beneath the waterline, I feel his hands move from my waist, down to my hip and further still until he’s cupping the most intimate part of me, the part that he and he alone now knows only too well. His free hand closes around one of my thighs and I think I stop breathing when he hitches that thigh higher so that my leg curls around his waist.

All thoughts sweep out of my mind and I feel like I’m coming out of my skin as those skillful fingers draw aside my bikini and thrust inside me. My back arches against the tiled wall at the sensation and I cry out his name at the same time as he groans into my neck.

He repeats the question again, this time with his fingers buried deep inside me.

“Do you want me, Jaz?”

“Yes,” I gasp out before I can stop myself, because who the hell am I fooling. I do want him, I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my entire life. More than could possibly be right, more than could ever make sense.

I feel his lips curve against the corner of my lips and he nips my bottom lip with his teeth before his mouth crashes into mine. There’s not a single protest left in me as his fingers move inside me at the same rhythm as his tongue moves against mine. Distantly, I’m aware that we’re in the glass-walled natatorium; anyone could walk in and see us. Hell, they don’t even have to walk in because the show would be visible through the glass walls. But I’m too far gone to care. Way too far gone. And there’s something wickedly thrilling about the prospect. I’m surprised at myself for the thrill, but then again, Raph awakens parts of me that I hadn’t even known existed. He told me once that I had turned his world upside down, but he was wrong—it’s he who has turned mine, making it come alive in a way that makes me sure I wasn’t really living before I met him. The thought is a frightening one, because I don’t know how I can ever give that up, how I can ever give him up.