“I’m not quite buying it, but I’ll let it go for tonight.” His raspy voice was right in my ear. “Let’s sleep, I might want another taste in the morning.” He slid a hand under my panties when he said that and on instinct I made space for him.

I groaned and shook my head. “How did you manage to hide this extremely filthy side of yourself for so long?”

“Because I had to keep the boundaries very, very firm with you, Alba. You were much too tempting.”

He slid his muscled thigh between my legs and something swooped in my belly. I’d always been hyperaware of Theo. It was hard not to be when the man practically swallowed up the oxygen of any room he walked into. But I’d managed to convince myself that it was because he was my boss and I wanted to stay in his good graces. I liked doing a good job, so it was only natural to be attuned to him. But now I knew that it had always been more than simply being aware of him. For three years we’d been circling each other like a pair of Dominican roosters waiting to see who pecked first. Which reminded me...

“Some of your Spanish slipped out by the pool.” I was still looking away from him, but I felt him freeze at that.

“You know how it is, it comes out when you’re about to explode.”

I chuckled, nodding. “No matter in what context, the mother tongue slips out. It happens to me all the time, but I didn’t realize you even spoke Spanish.” His hands that had been roaming over me stopped, just for a second, and then they slid down my legs again. I’d heard him speaking in Greek to his dad on the phone a ton of times, but I couldn’t remember ever hearing him say much in Spanish. Not even to Cecilia, who spoke with a thick accent and fell into Spanish with anyone she knew was bilingual.

It took him a while to answer, so long that I started to worry I’d upset him. Fluency in Spanish could be a sore subject for immigrant kids.

“My mom’s English is not good, and I always spoke with her in Spanish,” he told me. I recalled that the few times she’d called she didn’t even attempt to speak to me in English. “She went back to live in the DR when I was twelve and I was with her for a couple of years.”

I turned my head so I could look at him. “I never knew you lived in the DR! Were you in Santo Domingo?” I asked, heart beating a little faster now that I knew we had this in common.