Free The Affair: Week 8 by Beth Kery Page A

wrong for her neglect, but she was trapped by her selfishness. I think she
wished
she could have been different.”
    “I know she did,” Emma agreed, stroking his shoulder.
    His gaze flashed up to meet hers. “I never told you this, but the night before you were in that accident, I swam out again.”
    Her caressing hand stilled. She knew what he meant by “swam out.” He meant that he’d tempted fate again, tested whether or not he would ever be taken like Adrian had been.
    “Something happened to me out there,” he admitted starkly.
    “What?”
    “I remembered more than I’d ever recalled about the day when Adrian died. I’d always thought that I’d let go of him, that I hadn’t held on tight enough, that I wasn’t strong enough to save him . . . but that’s not what happened.”
    She waited, her naked skin prickling with amplified awareness. He looked into her eyes, and a shiver coursed through her.
    “I didn’t let go,” he said. “I was ready to go down with him.
He
let go of
me
,” Vanni stated succinctly. “His hand didn’t slip away. He pulled his hand out of mine, and I zoomed to the surface like a balloon.”
    “You mean . . . he intentionally released you?”
    Vanni nodded, a strange, awed expression creeping over his face.
    “It was like he was telling me to . . .”
    “Live,” Emma finished for him.
    His glance at Emma was a mixture of doubt and longing and hope. “Maybe I’m wrong. But that’s what it
felt
like, when I remembered it out there that morning.”
    “You weren’t wrong. Adrian released you all over again, and this time you
felt
it. Vanni, that’s amazing,” she whispered.
    His gaze sharpened on her. He cupped her jaw. “No.
You’re
amazing.”
    “Me? What have I got to do with it?” Emma asked, stunned.
    “
Everything
.”
    Her lips parted, and suddenly his mouth was covering them, his tongue sliding between them, and he was rolling her on her back and coming down over her, his heat and arousal stunning her. She hadn’t realized as he’d spoken that desire had coiled just below the surface. He was heavy and hard when he lowered his trunks a moment later. He entered her, filled her completely, his fierce gaze on her the entire time. She gasped as he ground their pelvises together, circling slightly with his hips, applying a delicious pressure on her clit.
    “If it wasn’t for you—for your grace, and your kindness, and your example—I would have never gotten here, Emma,” he stated gruffly, keeping his hips still. He leaned down and kissed her parted lips gently while his cock pulsed high and hard inside her.
    “I would have never even considered forgiving Cristina,” he said next to her trembling mouth. “I
certainly
never would have forgiven myself. I would have kept on, a dead man walking in the world of the living. It’s all down to you,
mon petit ange
. You’ve pulled me into the world of the living, and now that I’m here, I’ll never let you go,” he assured her heatedly.
    He braced himself with his hands on the cushion and began to move.

Keep reading for a preview of the latest novel in the One Night of Passion series
    ONLY FOR YOU
    Available December 2014 from Berkley

 
    Two and a half years ago
    His final project for the benefit ball cast admiring looks at her many reflections as she sashayed out of the room. Not without good reason, Seth acknowledged with wry amusement as he glanced at the Alien Ice Queen’s ass gloved in a clinging blue gown. The starlet paused in the act of appraising herself from all angles.
    She had ample opportunity to adore herself in the luxurious, but garish, dressing room where they stood. No less than a dozen gilded mirrors adorned the suite, including a large one on the ceiling. Daphne DeGarro, the heiress-turned-reality-show-star and hostess for the Cancer Research Benefit Ball, had opened several rooms in her Hollywood Hills mansion that night for the transformation of her guests. She’d reserved