Six

      “I assume you have protection this time?”

      Rafael disengaged from Eliana with the same caution he would distance himself from a bomb.

      Just as guardedly, he said, “I don’t.”

      “There’s a pharmacy nearby that delivers merchandise,” she murmured.

      He shook his head, as if it would change what he was hearing. “What’s come over you?”

      She raised one eyebrow challengingly. “That’s why you’re here, right? The untold pleasure thing you said we promised each other? So let’s cut the chase.”

      “You mean cut to the chase.”

      “No, I mean what I said. You seem to want me the more I resist, so I’m ending the chase. Let’s do it.”

      “Stop saying it.”

      “What do you want me to call sex?”

      “Don’t say that, either. When I take you it won’t be ‘sex.’”

      “You like to refer to it as ‘making love’?”

      “I never ‘refer to it’ as anything.”

      “You just do it, huh? Fine by me.”

      “I said stop it, Eliana.” He scowled at her, but those eyes of hers were unrepentant. And they inflamed him even more for it. His lips twitched. “But if I must give what we’ll share a name, it would be something like...plunging in passion.”

      The twist of her lips told him what she thought of his flowery descriptions. He couldn’t fault her ridicule. He was stunned at what kept spilling from his lips himself.

      He exhaled forcibly when she kept looking stubbornly at him. “Why the sudden change of mind?”

      She shrugged. “I doubt I’ll ever want a man like I want you, and you want to have sex—oh, sorry—to plunge in passion with me. Probably to uphold your record of never having a woman say no to you. But I no longer care about your motive. I just want to find out what the fuss is all about. Once you’re appeased, you’ll walk away again and that will be that.”

      “First, I don’t have a record. Second, I didn’t walk away in the first place.”

      “So you say.”

      “So you didn’t believe my explanations?”

      “They’re no longer relevant. So if you want to take me to bed, I want that, too. But let’s be clear about what it will be—a one-night stand or at most a very brief liaison.”

      His insides tightened. This was spiraling out of control, going where he never expected. “Is this what you want?”

      Another shrug. “This is what will happen.”

      “Is this about my wealth and power again?”

      “It’s about everything that you are. I always held my own with anyone, but I can’t with you. You are way out of my league.”

      “Stop saying that, too,” he growled, exasperation soaring.

      “It’s the truth, as your horror of a friend said.”

      “Seems he has more than I thought to answer for.”

      “He just pointed out what I was trying not to see so I can have some time with you. But I need balance in any relationship, no matter how fleeting, and the gross imbalance of power between us is something I can’t deal with.”

      He reached for her hands carefully, as if afraid she’d bolt away and never let him near again. “Those tiny hands turn me to mush. I am powerless where you’re concerned. And since you’re the one who has the will to resist me, that makes you the one with the power in this relationship.”

      She snatched her hands away, hugging herself in a defensive gesture. “We don’t have a ‘relationship.’ And if you haven’t noticed, that will to resist you lasted about an hour. So here I am...offering myself like I did last night. But this time I know what to expect. So take me or leave me. Your choice.”

      Frustration boiled over at her finality, which he knew in his bones was no act. “You believed me last night without reservations. Why do you doubt everything I say now?”

      Her shoulders jerked on what felt like dejection. Then she kicked off her sneakers and sat down on the armchair by the couch, curling her legs beneath her.

      She looked so small and vulnerable, nothing like the entity who’d sizzled with energy and enchantment as she’d entertained the children. Yet she was the most formidable force he’d ever encountered. Her hold on him was growing by the second. He suspected it might already be unbreakable.

      She sighed. “Something changed when you walked away. And I guess I...woke up. I did try to cling to the fantasy, but you and your partner thankfully made it impossible. So though your explanation is so lame it should be true, since you could have come up with something better if you were lying, it doesn’t revive the trust I felt in you. You’re no longer the man I trusted implicitly, just another person I have to take my usual precautions with. That’s why I need the upfront terms to guarantee I won’t end up feeling like I did last night.”

      And that was where he’d miscalculated. He’d come here counting on that trust to make his justifications readily acceptable to her but hadn’t realized he’d already pulverized it. And that her being so in tune with him would actually backfire. She now saw through the fakeness of his explanations, just as she had sensed the truth of his every word and emotion last night.

      So he didn’t deserve her trust, not where her father was concerned, but he’d meant every word he’d said to her—and about her. And now that he’d made sure her orphanage work was all benevolence, he was free to surrender to what he felt for her.

      How this would work in tandem with his revenge on Ferreira, he had no idea. And for now, he didn’t care. He just needed her trust and spontaneity back.

      And he would do anything to have all of her again.

      He crouched down beside her armchair, struggling not to haul her out of it and crush her in his arms. “Then give me a chance to take you back to the fantasy and I will make it a reality. I will erase the change that happened inside you.”

      She curled tighter, like a cat shying away from petting. “The change I felt happened inside you. I can’t explain it, but it...hurt.”

      Had she felt his hatred and aggression when he’d seen her father, and it had pained her that much? She was that supremely sensitive to everything he felt?

      “I know I didn’t know you long enough to have the right to feel or say any of that...”

      He took the hands twisting on her lap to his aching lips. “You have every right to feel and say anything. We already agreed what we share transcends time.”

      “I agreed to that when I was still under your spell.”

      “Then let me cast another one.”

      She wrenched her hands out of his. “No thanks. Sex is all I want from you now, all I have to offer. If you want to play more games, I’m no longer available for those.”

      “No games, Eliana. Never any games. This is deadly serious to me.” He succumbed to the need to wrap his arms around her, laid his head on her breasts, listening to the music of her heartbeats. “I spent the night in a fever, my mind flooding with images