He held up his left hand, showing off his wedding band.

I scoffed. “You know how many women are going to pay attention to that when you’re trolling through Rio with your crew?”

“They’ll pay attention when I point it out.”

“Then one of the guys will let slip that it’s a bachelor party and they’ll just try harder.”

“Trying won’t get them anywhere.”

My gaze ran over him. “You’ll be irresistible in graphite gray dress slacks and a black V-neck shirt—”

“You’re remembering that night at the club.”

He obviously did, too. His cock thickened and lengthened, tenting his sweatpants obscenely.

I almost moaned as his arousal proved what I’d suspected: He was commando beneath the soft cotton.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you after you left my office,” he murmured. “Couldn’t get the vision of you out of my mind. Then I called you at work and you taunted me, telling me you were going home to play with your vibrator when my cock was hard and ready for you.”

I squirmed, recalling every detail. He had been wearing a V-neck sweater that night in New York, but what I imagined him wearing in Rio made allowances for the tropical climate and the steamy press of bodies in a nightclub.

“In my mind, I saw you on your bed,” he went on, reaching between his legs to stroke his erection through his pants. “Your legs spread. Your back arching. Your body naked and shiny with sweat as you pushed a thick plastic cock in and out of your creamy cunt. I was half crazed with the idea of it. I’d never felt lust like that. It felt like I was in heat. The need to fuck was a fever inside me.”

“God, Gideon.” My sex ached. My breasts felt swollen and tender, the nipples tight and sore.

He watched me, his eyes hooded. “I went out before I arranged to meet you. I was going to find someone who wouldn’t say no like you did. I was going to take her to the hotel, spread her out, fuck her until the madness went away. Who she was didn’t matter. She was going to be faceless, nameless. I wasn’t going to look at her while I was inside her. She was just a stand-in for you.”

A low sound of pain left me, the thought of him with someone else in that way too agonizing to bear.

“I got close a couple times.” His voice was hoarser now. “Had a drink while I waited for each one to finish flirting and signal they were ready to leave. I figured I backed off the first time because she just wasn’t doing it for me. The second time, I knew no one would do it for me. No one but you. I was furious. At you for denying me. At them for being inferior. At me for being too weak to forget you.”

“That’s how I felt,” I confessed. “Every guy I met was wrong. They weren’t you.”

“It’s always going to be that way for me, Eva. Just you. Always.”

“I’m not worried about you cheating,” I reiterated, standing. I took off my tank top, then my shorts. My nude lace Carine Gilson bra and panties followed. I stripped quickly, methodically. No tease whatsoever.

Gideon lounged, watching, unmoving. Like the sex god he was, waiting to be pleasured.

Then I saw him through someone else’s eyes, my husband sitting just like that in a crowded Brazilian club, the silent demand for sex pouring off him in waves of heat and need. It was just who he was, an intensely and insatiably sexual creature. Was there a woman alive able to resist the challenge of him? I hadn’t met one yet.

I moved to him. Straddled him. My hands slid over his broad shoulders, feeling the warmth of him through the cotton of his T-shirt. His hands went to my hips, burning my skin. “The women who see you will want to do this,” I murmured. “Touch you like this. They’ll imagine it.”

Looking up at me, Gideon stroked his tongue slowly over his bottom lip. “I’ll be imagining you. Just like this.”

“That’ll only make it worse, because they’ll see how bad you want it.”

“How badly I want you,” he corrected, moving his hands to cup my ass and urge me against his erection. The lips of my sex, parted by the spread of my thighs, hugged his cock through the lace. My clit pressed against his hardness and I rolled my hips with a gasp of pleasure.

“I can see them finding the best vantage point,” I told him breathlessly, “staring at you with fuck-me eyes. Running their fingers down their cleavage so you appreciate their assets. They shift on their feet, crossing and recrossing their legs because they want this.”

I cupped his hard, thick penis and stroked it. He flexed in my palm, vitally alive and eager. His lips parted, the only break in his control.

“Your mind’s on me, so you’re hard. And if you’re sitting like this, with your legs spread, they can see how big your cock is and how ready you are to use it.”

Reaching behind me, I circled his wrist with my fingers and pulled his left arm up to drape over the low back of the sofa. “You look like this. Don’t move.” I moved his other arm to his lap. “You’ll have a tumbler in this hand, with two fingers of dark cachaça inside it. You sip it every now and then, licking it off your lips.”

I leaned forward and stroked my tongue over the sensual curve. He had a gorgeous, sexy mouth. The lips were full, but firm. They were often stern, giving little clue to his thoughts. He smiled rarely, but when he did, he could flash a boyishly playful grin or a smugly confident challenge. His slow smiles were erotic teases, while his wry half-smiles mocked both himself and others.

“You’ll seem distant and remote,” I went on. “Lost in your own thoughts. Bored by the frenetic energy and pounding music. The guys ebb and flow around you. Manuel always has a hot beauty on his lap. A different one every time you look. As far as he’s concerned, there’s more than enough of him to go around.”

Gideon smiled. “And he has a fondness for Latinas. He totally approves of my choice in wives.”

“Wife,” I corrected. “Your first and last.”

“My only,” he agreed. “Hot-tempered. Hot-blooded. My one and only permanent one-night stand. I know exactly how it will be between us, and then you go and take me by surprise. You eat me alive, every time, and want more.”

I cupped his jaw in one hand and kissed him, still stroking his penis in long, leisurely pulls. “Arash stops by with a new drink for you every time he makes his way around the room. He tells you stories about what he’s seen while circling and you briefly look amused, which drives the women watching you wild. That little flash of intimacy and warmth only makes them want more.”

“And Arnoldo?” he murmured, watching me with hot dark eyes.

“He’s detached, like you. He’s wounded and wary from his broken heart, but he’s accessible. He flirts and smiles, but there’s always that sense of something unreachable about him. The women who are too intimidated by you will go for Arnoldo. He’ll make them forget you, even while he’s forgetting about them altogether.”

A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. “While I sit there stewing and brooding with a perpetual hard-on, missing you so badly I can’t have any fun at all?”

“That’s the way I’m picturing it, ace.” I sat back on his rock-hard thighs. “And the women will be envisioning themselves coming up to you and sitting on your lap like I am. They’ll want to push their hands up your shirt like this.”

I slid my palms beneath the hem of his T-shirt and pressed them against the rigid lacing of his abs. My fingers followed the grooves, tracing every muscle of his eight-pack that I could reach. “They’ll fantasize about how hard your body is beneath your clothes, how your pecs will feel when they squeeze them.”

My actions accompanied my words, my heartbeat starting to race at the feel of him beneath my hands. Gideon was so cut and strong, a powerful sexual machine. There was a primitive female drive that responded instantly to that. Craved it. He was a male worthy of mating with, an alpha in his prime. Vigorous. Potent. Eminently dangerous and untamable.

He moved and I stopped. “No, stay still,” I admonished. “You wouldn’t touch them back.”

“They wouldn’t be near me at all.” But he resumed the pose I’d put him in. A sultan of old, being worshipped by an eager harem girl.

I lifted his shirt. I pulled it up and over his head, pinning his shoulders back with the hard stretch of fabric. His head turned, his mouth latching onto my nipple and suckling, easy, gentle tugs of suction on the sensitive point. I whimpered and tried to pull away, too turned on to bear it. His teeth caught the hardened tip, trapping me.

My head bowed, my eyes riveted to the sight of his hollowing cheeks. Inside the heat of his mouth, his tongue lashed my nipple, his lean throat working as he swallowed. My core tightened and trembled, echoing the rhythmic pulls.

Reaching between us, I untied the drawstring of his waistband and pushed the elastic down enough to free him. I held him in both hands, my fingertips tracing the thick pulsing veins coursing along his brutally sexy length. He was wet at the crown, my hands gliding over the slickness of pre-ejaculate.