Page 75 of Settling the Score

She stroked his cheek.

‘How have you made sure of that?’

‘I have my ways,’ he joked, employing a thick, sort of Eastern European accent.

She shook her head. ‘Don’t push me away.’

His face sobered. ‘Come on, Si. It doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t even be talking about this.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s going to stir up a hornet’s nest neither of us wants to deal with.’

Her heart felt like it was dropping out of her body.

‘I’m going back to New York. You’re going home to Ashbury. We both have rich, full, complicated lives. So let’s not drag the past into this. You’re the one who said it was just sex – and you’re right. It is. It has to be.’

It has to be.

This wasn’t a choice for him. Their chemistry was the same as it had been all those years ago, and now Sienna wondered if other things were, too. Like her ability to get under his skin. To drive him crazy. To scare him, because of how much he might one day feel for her again.

It has to be.

He wasn’t willing to risk it.

And nor was she.

Because they really were the same people they’d been then, in all the ways that mattered, and Aiden was the one guy who could break her down and destroy her. She’d be ridiculously naïve to run that risk again. Particularly when he was saying, from the outset, that it wasn’t what he wanted.

‘Yeah, okay,’ she said, forcing a bright smile, glad that the threatened tears hadn’t eventuated. ‘Secret sex,’ she added. ‘It’s going to be way easier – and more fun – if we keep this between us.’

‘Is that your way of saying you’re not done with me yet, Mastrangelo?’

She glanced across at him.Crap.She’d totally been taking it for granted that they’d keep doing this for as long as they were on the island.

‘I mean’ – she infused humour into her tone – ‘if you’re busy, I can always see if Chuck’s available…’

His eyes flashed to hers and for a second, she saw it. The intensity he was afraid of. Jealousy. Fierce, unmistakable. And she got it. She didn’t for one second think he would ever, ever hurt her. He just wasn’t wired that way. But she understood why he’d spent his adult life running from even being in that position.

And suddenly, his string of girlfriends made sense. Those short-term relationships, never serious, never long. Sienna had thought it was because he was a playboy, but she realised now he’d been running over baking-hot sand his whole life, doing everything he could to avoid putting down roots and getting close to another person.

She would have groaned, except Aiden was moving quickly, bringing his body over hers, kissing her until she was panting with need, and completely ready to surrender to him all over again. It might have been ‘just sex’, but she fully intended to make the most of having it – and him – on tap while they were on the island.

* * *

‘Sienna?’ She hardly heard the voice at first. Her whole body, her whole being, was in a whirling current of desire and satiation, courtesy of Aiden. Her cells seemed to be catching fire, one by one. ‘Can I borrow your straightener? Mine just died.’

‘Sienna.’ It was Aiden, pushing up onto his elbows to stare down at her, his cock buried deep inside of her, his butt-naked body on top of her. ‘Someone’s at the door.’

‘What?’ she whispered, looking around and catching sight of them in the reflection of the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed and their arrangement was most definitely NSFW.

‘Your friend.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Which friend? What?’

‘Sounds like the blonde.’

‘Bella,’ she hissed.