The Dare Collection 2018. Taryn Leigh Taylor

I don’t talk about me. Call it a habit.”

      “I’ve already broken all kinds of habits since I came to Italy,” Maya said with a cheerfulness that should have felt forced. She was surprised to discover that it didn’t. “It’s fun. You should try it.”

      He stretched his legs out in front of him, leaning back farther in his chair. “There’s not much to tell. What you see is what you get.”

      “Oddly, I doubt that.”

      “I’m a simple man.” He grinned. “Feed me, fuck me, and I’m good.”

      Maya grinned back. “Then this must be a tragedy for you. I’m pretty sure you did the fucking. Then you went ahead and ordered the food, too. Maybe you’re not quite so simple after all.”

      She wasn’t sure he’d laugh at that, and he didn’t make a noise, but she could see it there in all that blue.

      “I think you’re looking for complications, babe. This is Italy. Everything is simple here, if you can afford it.”

      “Simple is what I’m after.”

      “Good.”

      And Maya had the strange notion that she’d just agreed to something, though she couldn’t have said what.

      Charlie stood, then helped her to her feet, though she didn’t need the help. She assumed he knew that. She didn’t say anything as he tugged her along after him, leading her out to the infinity pool tucked there on the edge of her balcony, promising views of nothing but sky and sea forever.

      He stripped off his towel, showing off that impossibly perfect butt of his. Then, while she was still trying not to swallow her own tongue, he waded in, and there was a part of her—the part that was used to men who quizzed her in every possible scenario, the better to negotiate what they both wanted out of anything from a take-out order to a life together—that was astonished that this man simply got naked and assumed that she would follow him.

      But maybe he assumed it because that was what a woman did when faced with the perfection of his naked body. She dropped the throw she’d wrapped around her and found her way into the warm, inviting caress of the water.

      And for a long while, they floated there, as the weather turned grim all around them. It didn’t seem to matter. If there was a better place to wait out the storm than tucked up in warm water with a man so big and so imposing, she couldn’t imagine where it would be.

      They clung to the edge together, their arms brushing, and it felt a lot like healing.

      Maya didn’t say that out loud, either.

      Until suddenly they weren’t brushing up against each other. Charlie turned, pulling her over him. She straddled his lap, her knees on the slick tile bench beneath the surface of the water. And she couldn’t help the moan that escaped her lips as he slid inside her. Still stretching her, so thick and hard.

      “Shit. I left the condoms inside,” he muttered.

      “I’m on the pill,” she offered.

      Another thing she never thought she’d say. Not to a man she hardly knew, who was already so deep inside her that she couldn’t seem to keep herself from clenching around him, then releasing, over and over, as if she could create her own rhythm that way.

      He muttered something and she thought he was going to get up and go—

      But instead, he wrapped his arms around her and surged deep inside her.

      His gaze locked to hers, and she didn’t know what was hotter: the fierce, possessive look on his face or the way he filled her.

      And as he moved her, taking control and guiding her body instead of letting her rock herself against him, it began to rain.

      The rain was cold, little shocks against her too-hot skin, but Maya didn’t care.

      He moved slowly, almost tenderly, though she knew better than to say something like that out loud. Or any of these things she kept thinking about this man whose last name she didn’t know. And hadn’t asked.

      There was nothing but the sloshing of the water in the pool and their breathing. The patter of the rain against the stone buildings and, far off, bells ringing out the time.

      And it was too much to hold his gaze like this, because she didn’t know what he could see in her. Maya didn’t feel simple at all. She felt split wide-open, naked and vulnerable, but she couldn’t seem to stop. She couldn’t look away.

      She had no idea what it was that gripped her—and him—so that every sensation felt sacred.

      No exorcism this time. Only the weight, the glory and the searing perfection of the way he fit inside her. The way their bodies moved together as if they’d been made to interlock just like this. The way she cried out as he came inside her, scalding her.

      Changing her.

      And better still, the way he said her name.

       CHAPTER FIVE

      THE NEXT MORNING when her phone rang, Maya saw that it was her parents’ home phone number. And ignored it.

      She felt guilty about it the second after she did it, but she couldn’t bring herself to answer it. She didn’t want to hear what else was happening back in Toronto. She didn’t want to explain—again—why she hadn’t chosen to stay there to drown in all the pity and embarrassment after her disaster of a wedding day. Not to mention the weather.

      And to add to her newfound rebelliousness, she declined to check her email, too. For the first time in...as long as she could remember.

      Work would have to get along without her.

      That was such a scandalous, insane, brand-new thought that she laughed out loud, startling herself.

      Thankfully, she was alone.

      Charlie hadn’t snuck away in the night as she’d assumed he would. He’d woken her up, rolled her beneath him and made her scream. Ruinously. That had been when dawn was only just beginning to turn the sky outside pink. He’d flashed that easy grin at her while they both lay there, panting. And then she’d stayed right where she was, wondering if she’d ever fully recover from the things that man could do to her, while he’d sauntered off to her washroom.

      She’d heard the shower go on, but she’d been too drowsy and dizzy to do much more than notice the sound of the water. She’d still been lying right where he’d left her, boneless and smiling, when he’d walked back out and pulled his clothes back on.

      He’d stamped on his boots, run a careless hand through his hair and then fixed that bright gaze of his on hers. He hadn’t flashed his grin. He hadn’t drawled something to break the mood.

      And Maya had felt her heart thump. Hard.

      She knew better than to read anything into a moment. A look. She was being ridiculous and she’d told herself so, then and there. He might have spent a long afternoon and the longer night with her, but all they’d done was have sex and eat.

      That wasn’t the kind of thing that led to goodbye kisses. Or should.

      But she thought a kiss would have been a lot simpler than the moment that had stretched out between them, fraught and hot and shot through with layers of things she was afraid to name.

      She’d been wide-awake when he’d left, without saying a word.

      Maya had decided that it was unwise to lie about in that bed, reliving the things that had gone on there, all over the wide king-size mattress. Besides, there was no need to relive it when she could feel it in every inch of her body. When she stretched. When she breathed.

      Every touch. Every thrust. His mouth and hands on every square inch of her body—

      It