She was falling in love with her husband.
Every time he made love to her, every time they talked and laughed together, every time he looked at her the way he was looking at her now, she fell a little deeper.
She heard herself say in a small voice, “You won’t?”
“Never,” he whispered. Gently, he lifted her chin, smoothing back long dark tendrils of her hair. “I’m your partner. In bed.” He kissed her cheeks. “In business.” He kissed down between her full breasts, letting the tip of his tongue taste with a flick a tiny bead of sweat. “In life.”
Her knees went weak as she staggered back a single step, bracing herself against a thick wooden post on the edge of the large cabana.
“I trust you,” he said. Something in his dark eyes made her wonder if he was speaking to her, or to himself. There was something he wasn’t telling her. Some hidden fear.
But as her lips parted to ask, he fell to his knees on the sand in front of her. Leaning forward, he tenderly kissed the bare skin of her pregnant belly before he looked up past the full breasts straining the bikini top, to her luminous eyes.
“Forever,” he murmured.
Hana looked down at him. She heard the soft roar of the sea against the shore, the birds soaring through the palm trees above. She felt hot, trembling all over.
Silently, he reached around her back and loosened the tie of her bikini top, letting it fall to the sand. He cupped her breasts with his large hands. Leaning forward, he gently suckled a pink nipple, swirling it with his tongue, making her gasp before he moved to the other.
Still kneeling on the sand, he stroked down her waist to her hips, then undid the ties of her string bikini bottom, and that, too, fell to the sand.
He leaned forward, lifting one of her knees over his shoulder. He breathed in the scent of her, then kissed her there, between her naked thighs.
Holding her breath, she looked down at him kneeling between her tanned legs. Behind him, the gauzy white curtains shielding the cabana blew softly in the breeze, as flashes of golden light stroked patterns on his skin.
He lowered his head between her legs and tasted her, making her shudder with desire. Gripping her hips with his hands, with one of her legs still tossed over his shoulder, he licked and suckled her most secret places, until she began to shake, gripping her hands on the wooden pillar behind her as she cried out.
He rose to his feet, and yanked off his swim trunks almost violently, the hard shaft jutting from his body. Grasping her backside, he lifted her off the ground, pulling her legs to wrap around his hips. Leaning her against the pillar, he pushed slowly inside her, filling her inch by inch. She gasped, straining against him as he stretched her to the limit. He thrust again, and again, increasing the rhythm until he rode her, hard and deep. Panting for breath, she felt the world spinning around her, in Caribbean blue and pink sand and green palm trees, and at the center of it all, the man she...
The man she...
Tension twisted inside her, higher and higher, until her body shattered into a million pieces.
Across the beach, the seagulls echoed her cry, and with one last thrust, he roared as he exploded inside her.
Slowly, she came back to earth. She lowered her feet once more to the sand. Her husband held her, the two of them naked together in the cabana on the private pink sand beach. And he tenderly kissed her.
But as she pressed her cheek against his chest, her heart was pounding at what she could no longer deny.
She was in love with her husband.
It’s all right, Hana told herself desperately. It’ll be all right.
“You’re crying, querida,” Antonio said, touching her cheek. He gave a sudden wicked smile. “Am I just that good?”
“Yes,” she managed. “You’re just that good.”
And she tried not to think about how he’d told her from the beginning he wasn’t capable of loving anyone. She tried not to remember the pain in Ren’s words. I was stupid to let myself love you when I knew you wouldn’t love me back.
And Hana felt a cold hollow in her belly.
* * *
Happiness suffused Antonio’s body as he held his wife in the beachside cabana, the two of them still standing naked in each other’s arms. She was everything to him, he thought drowsily, playing with the ends of her long dark hair. Everything.
Then his eyes opened as he stared past her, out at the sea.
Yes, she was everything. She owned him now. Half of him. Half this island. Half this villa. Half his company. Half his soul. She could cut him right in half, anytime she chose. Cut him in half and just walk away—