The Gold Collection. Maggie Cox

countered harshly. He stood up, his eyes fixed intently on her, and the blazing fire in their golden depths sent an answering heat coursing through her veins. ‘I tried to forget you—but, Dios! You were always there in my mind. Even on the day of my father’s funeral I found myself thinking about you,’ he revealed grimly, his voice laced with self-disgust, because in the midst of his grief he had closed his eyes and imagined himself resting his head on Lauren’s breasts. Of course he had not wanted to be comforted by her, he told himself angrily. He had wanted sex: the physical satisfaction that for some reason was so much more intense with her than with any other woman.

      She should move, Lauren told herself as Ramon strode towards her. She should run for the door and keep on running. But her feet seemed to be welded to the floor, and her heart was beating so fast that her breath came in sharp little gasps.

      He was so close that she could see the flecks of gold in his eyes, and a rampant, undisguised sexual hunger that filled her with fear and shameful longing. ‘Leave me alone,’ she said shakily, putting out a hand to ward him off.

      He laughed and caught hold of her, dragging her up against his hard, aroused body. ‘Oh, querida, I would if I thought for one minute you meant it. But your body gives you away—see?’ He curved his hand possessively around her breast, his smile mocking as he stroked his thumb lightly across her nipple and it instantly swelled and jutted against the sheer fabric of her dress.

      Why couldn’t she feel the same disgust she had felt when Guy had touched her? Lauren asked herself despairingly. But Ramon was no clumsy, drunken boor. He was a highly skilled lover, with a wealth of experience in the art of sex. More than that, he was the man who had stolen her heart, her one love, she acknowledged silently, unable to tear her eyes from his as he slowly lowered his head.

      She had expected his kiss to be hard and demanding—a demonstration of his power over her. But the gossamer-soft brush of his lips across hers was so exquisitely gentle that her defences instantly crumbled. Slow and sweet, his mouth explored hers in a sensual tasting that evoked a desperate yearning inside her for him to hold her close and never let her go. He explored the shape of her mouth with his tongue, and there was no thought in her head to resist him when he probed between her lips in a caress that was so intensely erotic that she trembled with need.

      And yet she recognised the restraint he had imposed on himself. She was clinging to him, pressing her slender curves eagerly against his rock-solid body, but for some reason he held back, dampening the passion between them to a slow burn rather than allowing it to blaze into a wild firestorm.

      She realised that he was giving her a choice. He would not force her into his bed. But she was ashamed to admit that she wished he would sweep her into his arms and carry her into the bedroom. She did not want to think about the implications of having sex with him. She wanted him to seduce her and make love to her with all his considerable skill, so that conscious thought was obliterated and she could lose herself in the sensual mastery of his touch.

      He traced his mouth over her cheeks, her eyelids, little teasing caresses that tormented her until with a soft moan she cupped his face with her hands and brought his mouth down on hers. Parting her lips beneath his, she initiated a bold exploration with her tongue.

      Ramon’s tenuous hold on his self-control shattered. ‘Is this what you want, querida?’ he growled, tightening his arms around her until she was welded to his hard frame and could be in no doubt of the urgency of his arousal, jabbing insistently between her thighs. She was his woman, and he kissed her with a fierce possessiveness, his hunger for her an unstoppable force that demanded appeasement.

      Suddenly, explosively, the barriers shattered into pieces, releasing their mutual desire like molten lava flow from a volcanic heart. Lauren’s lips were swollen when Ramon finally lifted his head and trailed burning kisses down her throat, over the smooth slopes of her upper breasts. Her nipples were tight and hot, tingling in anticipation of his touch, and she gave a shiver of pleasure when he drew the straps of her dress over her shoulders, lower and lower, until her breasts spilled into his hands.

      ‘Your breasts were always incredibly sensitive,’ he murmured hoarsely as he rolled her nipples between his fingers, squeezing and releasing until she made a keening sound in her throat. ‘I have never wanted any woman the way I want you.’

      The admission was torn from him as she tugged clumsily at his shirt buttons and ran her hands over his bare chest and abdomen, her fingers stilling when she reached the waistband of his trousers. His erection was so hard that Ramon feared he would come at any second, and with an impatient growl he reached around her, unzipped her dress, and tugged it down so that it pooled at her feet.

      Tiny black lace knickers covered her femininity. He hooked his fingers in the elastic and deliberately held her gaze as he slowly drew them down her legs. ‘You want me, Lauren,’ he told her harshly, and to prove his point he slid his hand between her thighs and discovered the slick wetness of her arousal. ‘You can’t deny your need is as great as mine.’

      Lauren could not deny it; she did not even attempt to try. She had missed him so much, ached for him for so many nights, that she simply did not possess the will-power to resist him. Everything seemed strangely distant—Matty, the knowledge that she could never mean anything to Ramon, her colleagues and bosses downstairs. Would it be so wrong to have this one night with him? her mind argued.

      Recriminations could come later—but when Ramon dropped to his knees and parted her womanhood with gentle fingers, before closing his mouth around the sensitive nub of her clitoris, she curled her fingers in his hair and sobbed his name.

      He explored her with his tongue, delving into her moist heat and stretching her a little wider with his finger to intensify her pleasure. ‘Oh, now—please now.’ Delicious little spasms were rippling through her, building quickly to a crescendo, but she wanted more.

      ‘Tell me what you want, querida,’ he demanded.

      For a crazy second she wondered what he would say if she revealed that she wanted him to love her. But of course he never would, and at that moment nothing mattered but that he should possess her.

      ‘I want you…inside me.’ For a few tense seconds her confession simmered between them, and then with a muttered oath he swept her into his arms and strode into the bedroom. He dropped her onto the mattress and she watched, wide-eyed, as he stripped with violent haste, his boxers hitting the floor to reveal the powerful length of his arousal.

      Lauren’s mouth ran dry, but when he pulled her to the edge of the bed, spread her legs and stood between them, her faint wariness disappeared beneath a tidal wave of excitement and desire. He swiftly donned protection, and then with slow deliberation rubbed the tip of his penis up and down the silken folds of her opening. She gasped, and instinctively bent her knees to allow him to penetrate her, closing her eyes blissfully when he filled her with his thick, iron-hard shaft.

      ‘I’ve missed you.’ The stark admission caused her lashes to fly open, and as she met his gaze she glimpsed a fleeting emotion that disappeared before she could define it, leaving his expression once more unfathomable. She wanted to tell him that she had missed him too, that her very soul had felt empty without him, but her words were lost beneath the pressure of his mouth as he crushed her lips in a hungry kiss at the same time as he began to move within her.

      She was so tight, Ramon thought as he sank deeper into her warm velvet embrace. And her eagerness suggested that she hadn’t had sex very often during the past eighteen months. The thought filled him with a primitive satisfaction. It was time he reminded her just how good they were together. He thrust deeper and harder, setting a rhythm that soon elicited little whimpers of delight from her.

      A coiling sensation was growing low in Lauren’s pelvis, tightening with every powerful thrust as Ramon drove into her again and again. The sensations he was arousing were indescribable. Her entire body was thrumming with pleasure, and when he closed his mouth around first one nipple and then its twin, sucking hard on each rosy crest, she writhed beneath him.

      She stared up at him—at the bunched muscles of powerful shoulders and the beads of sweat that glistened on