The Spaniard's Summer Seduction

Had he really wanted her…?

She breathed through the illicit thrill that raced along her nerve endings at the startling thought. The point was he was used to seeing something and getting it, and equally quickly losing interest. A car, a painting or a woman, and things went smoothly for him because people were there to make sure they went smoothly.

She was sure he had people whose sole purpose in life was to shield him from the unsightly.

Under normal circumstances their paths would never have crossed, but they had and he had thought, Why not.? Had he calculated she was worth the effort of a drive into the country, but when the effort had involved dust, tears and messy hair he had begun to regret his eccentric choice?

She tugged at the medallion that hung between her breasts and watched as he poured some amber liquid into the bottom of both glasses. ‘I don’t want a drink.’

He shrugged and lifted a glass to his lips. ‘Well, I do.’ He took the place she had vacated and looked at her over the rim of his glass; his ludicrously long, dark, spiky lashes cast a shadow along his razor-sharp cheekbones.

‘Well we’ve both gone off the idea of a one-night stand.’ She laughed and tried to act as though this were something that happened to her every day of the week. ‘So where do I sleep? I’m assuming I can cadge a lift back tomorrow morning?’

She was about as convincing as silicone implants. ‘You’ve never had a one-night stand, have you?’

Maggie considered lying, but decided it was doubtful she could pull it off. ‘Not as such.’ she conceded reluctantly.

A muscle beside his mouth clenched. ‘But you came with me. What were you thinking of?’

Outrage with no trace of irony…talk about double standards! ‘You invited me, but let me guess—it’s not the same thing. God, I haven’t actually been missing anything, have I? Simon probably did me a favour.’ Now there was a novel thought. ‘Men are a total disappointment!’ she concluded heavily.

Rafael, struggling to follow the angry diatribe, picked up on one word. ‘Who is Simon?’

He took a swallow of the brandy that appeared to have no effect on him, but Maggie, conscious that she was being uncharacteristically indiscreet, wondered if the effect could be passed on to her like a sympathetic pregnancy.

She was a sympathetic drunk; the frivolous imagery made her smile.

‘Simon is my…was my fiancé.’

A look of utter astonishment crossed his face. ‘You were engaged?’

Maggie lifted her chin. ‘Why shouldn’t I be engaged?’ she demanded in a dangerous voice. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ she asked, banging her chest. ‘Just what’s wrong with me?’ Her voice stalled on a quivering note of self pity.

‘Nothing is wrong with you.’

Maggie glared at his rigid blank face and snarled, ‘Once more with feeling! I actually prefer you when you’re incredibly rude. Mouthing polite platitudes you clearly don’t believe. It’s just so not you!’

‘I am not rude.’

The denial made Maggie roll her eyes. ‘No, you probably call it not caring what people think. Well, newsflash, buster, it’s the same thing!’ she informed him, tacking on seamlessly, ‘I think I will have that drink.’ Buster…? She really had to cut down on her intake of gangster movies.

‘Is that such a good idea?’ he asked, wondering about the man who had let her go. Clearly not very bright, that went without saying, but what had attracted Maggie to this loser and did he still have all his limbs intact?

She might look like Angelina, but Angelina’s daughter had definitely missed out on the statuesque calm gene; she was a real firebrand and bolshy with it, he thought, unable to repress the flicker of admiration.

Ignoring him, Maggie walked across to the bureau and picked up the glass. Surprised by the weight of the antique lead crystal, she weighed it in her hand before she lifted it in a silent toast. Rafael watched one brow raised, as fifty-year-old vintage brandy vanished down her throat on one gulp.

‘That must have hurt.’

Maggie lifted a hand to her throat, feeling the burn all the way down to her stomach. ‘It still is,’ she admitted, covering her mouth politely as she coughed.

Rafael found himself laughing. He went from being furious with her to enchanted. She really was delicious and not like any woman he had ever encountered. It was as if the less she tried to please him, the more he was fascinated.

‘Do they actually let you out without a keeper?’

‘Time off for good, possibly angelic behaviour. You know what my mistake was?’ The burn, she realised, had become a glow settling warmly in the pit of her stomach.

‘I know I will probably regret asking this, but what was your mistake, Maggie Ward?’

‘I thought I could become another person just like that.’ She snapped her fingers to illustrate her point. ‘But you can’t… I should have started with a motorbike or a tattoo…with you I was…’ She watched him shake his head in utter confusion but didn’t try to explain—he’d never understand. ‘You’ve got to keep it real and know your limits.’

Rafael, to whom real was fast becoming a dim and distant memory, took the half-full glass from her hand. The scary part was she was still well under the legal limit. ‘And I am not real?’

‘You’re a mistake,’ she admitted. ‘Jumping in the deep end. I wanted to prove to Simon… Millie, my mum…no, myself…’ She looked shocked by the admission and sat down abruptly. ‘I really don’t know what I was or am doing…a lot of things have been going on in my life just lately.’ And he really wants to know this, Maggie, she admonished herself.

‘Sometimes the past is better left undisturbed.’ He could see how delving into a background, searching for roots, might make a person question their life.

Maggie lifted her eyes, a little bemused by the intensity of his fixed regard.

Did he think she had a past? She almost wished she did have. Either way, she wasn’t about to admit she was actually a blank boring page, especially when it came to men and sex.

God, I don’t want to die a virgin.

She tried to think of a suitably enigmatic response and blurted, ‘But doesn’t the past make us what we are?’ His past had to be littered with glamorous, beautiful women.

‘I like to look forward, not back.’ And when he looked back on tonight, would it be with regret?

Regret that he had resisted the temptation that was driving him slowly out of his mind? Or regret because he had ignored the nagging voice of his conscience?

Did he want her so much because she was out of bounds? he speculated. And why was she out of bounds? What had changed between first seeing her and now? They were two consenting adults—why should they not enjoy each other?

‘What were you thinking when I came in? You looked very deep in thought.’

‘Isn’t that looking backwards?’

‘Touché!’

Her eyes slid of their own volition to the sensual curve of his sculpted lips.

Simon had never made her feel attractive.

The way Rafael had looked at her when they’d met, she had felt more aware of her femininity than Simon had made her feel in four years.

‘You have a very impressive home.’ He was a very impressive man.

‘Are you changing the subject?’

‘Yes.’

He released a laugh. Maggie tilted her head back as he got to his feet, and shuffled to the far end of the sofa as he sat down beside her.

‘Are you feeling better?’

‘Better, but a bit…’ Her voice died to a whisper when he reached across and trailed a finger down her cheek. ‘Near-death experiences will do that.’

She felt intense relief mingled with troubling regret when his hand fell away. ‘I just keep thinking what if I hadn’t met you tonight?’

Was she wondering about the confrontation with her birth mother? For the first time he considered today from Maggie’s point of view.

She might have dreaded the meeting. It might have taken her weeks to work herself up to the moment and, perhaps not fully committed, still wondering if she was doing the right thing, she had stepped back.

Was she regretting it now? Was she wishing she had not allowed herself to be diverted?

‘If you hadn’t brought me there, would those children have.?’ She shook her head.

He watched a visible shudder pass through her body and realised it was another ‘what if’ that was plaguing her.

‘They are fine, you are fine.’ A nerve in his lean jaw jerked as the slow-motion replay of the event in his head reached the moment when he had thought she would not be fine. ‘You can’t live your life thinking what if.’ he continued hoarsely.

Maggie turned her head, their eyes meshed and Maggie felt some of the tension leave her body. She sighed slowly and nodded and said, ‘But what if…?’

He loosed a husky laugh and lifted a finger to her lips. ‘Enough.’

It wasn’t the firm admonition that silenced Maggie, but the confusing combination of sensations that was coursing through her body.

His thumb stayed at the corner of her mouth, his eyes sealed to hers; the air was thick with an almost electrical charge that made it hard for her to breathe.

He leaned into her close, very close, but not touching. Her heavy lids half closed as she swayed closer as though drawn by some invisible thread that connected her to him. ‘Your skin smells.’ He exhaled and she felt his brandy-scented breath on her cheek.

He stopped and she thought, Bad…good? Say something…do something…touch me.

‘It’s late. We should go to bed.’ He had never in his life felt a need so raw, so primal to possess a woman.

She gave a fractured sigh. Her heart rate quickened but her body relaxed. It seemed right. ‘Yes.’

He met her eyes shining with promise and trust and he heard himself say, ‘Perhaps this is not a good idea.’

She felt her smile slide off her face, and flinched as if he’d just thrown cold water in her face. Not water, Maggie, just a reality check. This is what happens when you start thinking you’re irresistible.

She lifted her chin. ‘I am a bit tired.’ She gave an artistic yawn to demonstrate the point, then spoilt the pretence by adding, ‘I’m not drunk, you know.’

‘I know you’re not.’ Scruples, he decided, were very overrated and painful, and what would be achieved by depriving them both of an experience that would, he knew, be pleasurable?

She felt the mortified heat reach her cheeks. To have one man politely excuse himself from her bed was one thing; two. There had to be something seriously wrong with her.

‘This day started quite well, and this may sound dramatic but it really is turning into the worst day of my life. You’ll laugh, but actually I thought…’ She stopped, shook her head. He wasn’t laughing; he was staring at her with a fixed intensity that she was not going to mistake for blind lust. ‘I really do feel like an idiot.’

‘You’re not an idiot.’ He took hold of her elbows and looked down into her heart-shaped face, gazing deep into her liquid dark eyes. ‘But you do have a smudge on your nose…right there,’ he said, kissing the spot.

Do not read anything into it, Maggie… ‘It’s fine—you don’t fancy me…perfectly understandable…look, you’re not the first man to be able to resist me. I’m not going to take it personally. I’m not really—’

‘Shut up!’ He hooked a finger under her chin and he captured her eyes and like a primal blast the blaze of hunger in his drove the air from Maggie’s lungs in one shocked gasp.

She melted, paralysed by a combination of raw lust and desperate longing, unable to catch her breath; her fingers closed around the hard muscles of his upper arms.

‘Do you want to spend the night alone, Maggie?’

Maggie’s eyes closed as he kissed the corner of her mouth, her body twisting and arching as she tried to insinuate herself closer. ‘No,’ she whispered against his mouth. Then she opened her eyes, looked at his lean dark face so close to her own, and said, ‘No!’

He smiled at the defiant declaration, a slow, predatory smile that sent her stomach into a spasm of raw excitement. The tension in the air between them thickened; it shimmered.

‘Neither do I.’

CHAPTER NINE

THE raw hunger in his kiss blazed along Maggie’s nerve endings, vaporising any lingering doubts or fears. This was what she wanted, Rafael was what she needed.

She held his face between her hands as his lips moved expertly over her own, the slow, languid exploration a torment and a revelation. At the first erotic incursion of his tongue into her moist mouth she moaned deep in her throat and opened her mouth to invite him deeper, meeting his tongue with her own.

They kissed with a frantic hunger and all the time he touched her, his hands sliding over her soft womanly curves, dragging moans from her lips.

When he did lift his mouth fractionally from hers it was to rasp, ‘I love your mouth. It is a miracle. You are a miracle…so soft.’ He ran a finger down her throat, his eyes darkening as he felt the deep shiver that rippled through her body. ‘So sensitive to my touch.’

‘You won’t stop, will you?’

She felt the rumble of laughter vibrate in his chest as he pulled her under him and laid her full length on the sofa. There was no laughter in his face as he stared down at her, just a fierce, relentless hunger that tightened the knot of excitement low in her belly.

‘Not any time soon,’ he promised huskily as he lowered his body onto hers. ‘I don’t believe any man could resist you. It is not possible… Madre mia, I have wanted you from the moment I saw you.’

Maggie gasped, her eyes flying wide as she felt the pressure of his arousal against her belly. Her arms slid around his middle, pulling him closer. She was revelling in the amazing feel of his lean hard body against her and pleasurably conscious of the fresh rush of liquid heat between her thighs.

The heat burned between them as they kissed, he touched her everywhere. Maggie slid her hands under the hem of his shirt. She heard him gasp at the touch of her fingers on his bare flesh and would have pulled her hand away but he caught her wrist and, holding her eyes, placed it back on his body, spreading her fingers and saying huskily, ‘I want to feel your hands on me, querida.’

Maggie’s throat was too congested with emotion to speak. She nodded mutely and trailed her fingers slowly across the ridges of muscle on his flat belly.

Rafael closed his eyes, sucked in a breath, then lowered his head and kissed her with a driving ferocity that made her head swim. His mouth still connected to hers, he raised himself off her, unfastened his shirt with one hand and stroked her face with the other, his fingers tangled in her hair.

Maggie opened her eyes just as the fabric parted. Weak with lust and longing she stared, her passion-glazed stare moving hungrily over the gleaming hard lines of his greyhound-lean, muscle-ridged bronze torso.

A deep, sobbing moan was wrenched from her throat. The sound made the hairs on the nape of Rafael’s neck stand on end and propelled him into frenzied action.

Slowed only by the tremor in his fingers, he unbuckled his belt and slid his jeans over his hips before kicking them away.

Kneeling astride her, clad only in boxers—the erotic image, she knew, would be permanently etched in her brain—he began to undress her.

Every brush of his fingers on her hot skin sent shimmies of tingling sensation along her sensitised nerve endings.

As he peeled her bra from her shoulders a deep gasp was wrenched from deep in the vault of Rafael’s chest. His golden skin glistened with the need that drove him as he stripped off her pants, sliding them with tantalising slowness over her smooth thighs.

Suddenly overwhelmed by self-consciousness she gasped, ‘This isn’t me!’ And tried to cover herself.

Rafael caught her hands and pinned them above her head, holding them lightly there with his hand.

‘Look at me.’

Maggie reluctantly turned her head. Without a shred of self-consciousness he divested himself of the boxers she had imagined concealed nothing; it turned out they did. She swallowed and felt her cheeks burn as guiltily she wrenched her eyes higher.

‘This is me, and you are allowed to look, and want and touch. There is no shame, just sex. This is natural and good.’ He had a very poor opinion of the person who had made her feel differently. ‘This is you…and I will look. I will look because you are—’ he swallowed as his glance dropped ‘—Dios mio, your are perfect…so unbelievably perfect.’

He cupped one pink-tipped breast in his hand, drawing the straining point between his fingers, rubbing the sensitised flesh before he lowered his head and applied his tongue to the engorged nub.

Maggie writhed under his touch, her fingers sinking deep into his hair. Her hips lifted as he ran his tongue down the soft curve of her belly, then lower.

As he parted the delicate folds, stroking her, Maggie squeezed her eyes tight closed and cried his name over and over until she could bear no more.

‘This is…please…’

Satisfied that he had brought her to the brink and barely able to control his own driving hunger, Rafael settled between her parted thighs.

His hot, hungry eyes broke through the last shreds of Maggie’s shredded control. Face flushed, dark velvet eyes glazed with passion, she spread her thighs wider and, reaching for him, whispered, ‘Please, I need you inside…’

And then amazingly he was and she had not come close to imagining how impossibly marvellous, how incredible it could feel to have him throbbing hard and hot, filling her.

He registered her incredible tightness and her cry as he entered her and it took a few seconds for his brain to link the two and produce the explanation.

Her body tightened around him and Rafael could no longer resist the temptation to sink deeper into her silky smoothness.

Maggie’s legs wrapped around his hips. It was incredible. She kissed his chest and hung on as each thrust of his body sent her deeper into a blissful delirium.

Above her his face was a rigid mask as he struggled to control himself to give her a taste of the pleasure she had never experienced.

When it hit her, the first wave of orgasm shocked a fractured cry from Maggie. Her head went back and she clung to him as another and another hit her, then exploded into a deep pulse of pleasure that went all the way to her toes. As the wave receded she felt Rafael stiffen above her and shiver as the heat of his release filled her.

Holding her head against his chest, Rafael stroked her dark hair. Their bodies slowly cooled. Maggie lay listening to the beat of his heart slow before she lifted her head and smiled at him.

Rafael did not smile back. He didn’t say a word. He just lifted her up and, draping a throw around them both, carried her from the room and through the silent maze of hallways into a room that was dominated by a large four-poster bed.

He didn’t take her to the bed. Instead he walked into the adjoining bathroom, a massive room of startling decadence with a vast sunken marble bath, armchairs and a carved fireplace with candles set in the grate and along the mantle.

With her in his arms he walked straight into the walk-in shower and switched on the water. As she watched the spray run over his dark face, making his skin glisten, he set Maggie on her feet.

Then still without a word he took the citrus-scented gel from an applicator and began to lather her skin. Gently but thoroughly he washed her, moving his hand in firm circular motions until she tingled everywhere.

Maggie didn’t break the silence she just stood passively, her throat constricted by a myriad conflicting emotions she didn’t want to analyse. The warm water was soothing, easing the aches and bruises on her body.

There was nothing remotely sexual about his ministrations, even though she could hardly not notice the fact that he was aroused.

It was all a little surreal. She felt as though she were watching the scene from outside her body, and strangely the experience was on one level even more intimate than what had preceded it.

Finally he switched off the water. He carefully wrung the excess moisture from her hair and swathed her in a towel, using another to dry her from head to toe before picking her up once more and striding back into the bedroom. The fire in this room was lit. Flames crackled as he pulled back the covers on the bed and laid her naked body on the crisp sheets.

She watched as Rafael used the damp towel to cursorily blot the moisture on his own body before climbing in beside her.

He pulled her to him, fitting her curves into his angles before tilting her face up to his.

Finally he broke his silence.

‘Now, querida, we will do this thing the way it should be done.’

‘I thought it was fine the first time,’ she admitted, feeling so relaxed that she was boneless, though sexual awareness remained like a prickle under her skin.

He kissed the pulse spot at the base of her slender neck and the prickle became an itch.

‘You are not a woman who should settle for “fine” and I am not a man who delivers it.’

He delivered this not as an arrogant boast but more in the form of a simple statement of fact, and Maggie accepted it as such. When it came to matters carnal she was quite prepared to accept that Rafael was the expert.

‘But?’

He touched a finger to her lips. ‘And afterwards we will discuss how it is that you were a virgin.’ His eyes darkened; the discovery was one that would stay with him for ever. ‘I could have hurt you and that would have…’

The expression of self-loathing on his face as he broke off and swallowed hard drew a cry of protest from Maggie. ‘You didn’t—you were perfect.’

His mouth curved into a complacent smile. ‘Yes, you mentioned that. Don’t blush—a man likes to be appreciated.’ The smile faded from his face. ‘Now let me show you how much I appreciate you.’

Maggie’s eyes darkened. ‘Please,’ she whispered.

Much later as he lay still sheathed in the heat between her thighs Rafael struggled to make sense of his reluctance to break the physical connection even though his sexual hunger and hers were satisfied—finally.

He looked at her face pressed against the curve of his shoulder her lashes dark on her cheek as she surrendered to sleep and he realised it was foolish to analyse such things. It was not as if it were a meeting of souls; they were sexually compatible. Maggie was an amazingly passionate woman and an incredibly intuitive lover.

Rafael suspected there was still more passion there just waiting to be awakened. It was a pity that she would not be here long enough for him to unlock that promise.

CHAPTER TEN

MAGGIE put down her coffee cup and stared at Rafael. She waited for the maid who had fetched fresh coffee to leave before she replied to his invitation.

‘You’re suggesting I spend the rest of my holiday here, with you.’

Rafael refilled his own cup. ‘It seems logical.’

His idea of logic and hers were very different. ‘Not logical—mad.’

‘How so?’

She looked at him in astonishment. ‘It’s totally crazy.’

‘That is not an argument and, anyway,’ he said, considering her freshly scrubbed image with a smile, ‘I think you need some crazy in your life.’

She shook her head. ‘Last night was enough crazy to last me a lifetime.’

‘I seriously doubt that.’ He planted his elbows on the table and leaned towards her, a knowing look on his face. ‘You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?’

She responded to the goad with a frown and firm denial that she almost immediately cancelled by saying, ‘I couldn’t?’

‘But you want to.’

‘I have plans.’

Rafael, who knew about her plans, said, ‘Dump your plans.’

She tried to look amused when she asked, ‘Do women always dump their plans for you?’ Because of course she knew they did and she knew why.