The Alcolar Family
Now he tossed the sliver of cerise material from him, aiming it back over his shoulder so that it landed on the bright blue tiles that surrounded the pool.
‘Joaquin!’
Cassie didn’t know if her startled response was one of reproof or delight, and clearly Joaquin didn’t care as he settled her into an ever more intimate position between his powerful thighs, the thrust of his manhood hard against her, and brought his mouth down crushingly on hers.
And while he kept her mouth from speaking, effectively stopping her thoughts from functioning too, once more those wicked hands were busy, twitching loose the ties on her bikini top and letting it fall free, floating on the top of the clear water.
‘So now you too are naked.’ He spoke huskily, looking deep into her eyes, resting his forehead against hers. ‘Naked and—aroused?’
He echoed her own words, adding an upward, questioning note at the end of the sentence, but Cassie had no doubt that he knew exactly how she was feeling.
He must know it from the way that her pulse was thudding, her heightened breathing and the vein at the base of her throat giving away too much. And the pressure of his hands at her hips was lighter than her own instinctive movement towards him, the way that she was writhing softly against his heat and hardness, revelling in the extra sensation since he had tossed aside her clothing.
And when his hands, cool and wet, came up out of the water to cup her breasts, softly teasing their peaking nipples, she knew it was impossible to hide her need from him. She didn’t even want to try.
‘What do you think?’
She whispered it against his ear, her head lifted to press against his cheek, and she let her teeth graze the skin of his earlobe very slightly, feeling the long body crushed against hers shudder in instant response.
‘I think…’
Those knowing hands were on the move again, wandering over her body, stroking the swaying curves of her breasts.
‘I think it might be so. But I also think…’
His fingers slid down under water, travelling over the flat plane of her stomach, smoothed through the wet curls at the juncture of her thighs, slid lower…
‘Joaquin!’ Cassie gasped as his daringly intimate touch made her insides clench, her whole body convulsing on a wave of hungry need. ‘Oh, please…’
‘I think that you should say—that you should tell me how you feel—don’t you?’ he urged softly, a knowing smile curving up the corners of his wickedly sensual mouth in the same moment that his deep, deep eyes took in the unconcealed evidence of the effect his touch was having on her.
‘Joaquin…’ she moaned as a searching finger slid into the moist cleft, found the tiny, pulsing bud and touched softly, creating an effect much like setting light to the fuse on a powder keg.
‘Tell me…’ he persisted, almost roughly, clearly determined that she should say exactly what she wanted even though it had to be so blatantly obvious that it was impossible he didn’t know. ‘Cassandra, querida, tell me.’
‘I think—I know—I want you! Want you!’
And now that she’d said the words, she couldn’t hold them back, but repeated them over and over in a growing litany of need.
‘I want you, want you,’ she muttered with her mouth against his shoulder, her teeth scraping his tanned skin, her fingers digging into the tight muscles.
She heard his muttered curse, felt the struggle he was having to contain himself, control himself, and was determined to break it down totally, absolutely.
‘Want you here with me, close to me, inside me… Joaquin, I need you!’
‘And I want you!’
It was a cry of surrender, an admission of total loss of control. His eyes were wild and blazing, his face set in a mask of urgent need as he stood up, hands closing over her, swinging her up into his arms and hoisting her bodily out of the pool and up the shallow steps, trailing dripping water behind them as he carried her over to one of the wooden loungers and set her down, not exactly gently, on the green-and-white striped cushions.
‘Now…’
This was what he wanted, Joaquin told himself as he looked down at Cassie, sprawled on the lounger, her wet blonde hair struggling loose from the pony-tail in which it had been fastened.
This woman, hot and hungry and wild—this was what he wanted from the relationship. This was what was worth having, worth putting up with any other uncomfortable feelings for. This burned away the unease, the doubt, leaving room for only one, blazingly powerful emotion.
Lowering himself to kneel at the side of the lounger, he picked up one slim, elegant foot, still damp from the swimming pool, and pressed a kiss against the big toe.
‘Joaquin…’ Cassie protested, but only faintly. ‘We’re out in the open…’
‘And there isn’t another house for miles,’ he returned smoothly, moving on to all the other toes in succession. ‘No one to see us. Besides, that didn’t trouble you that other time.’
‘We were in the pool then—the water—oh!’
She broke off sharply, her eyes closing, her head moving restlessly against the cushion as his warm mouth closed over one toe and his tongue circled it enticingly.
‘We’re as private here as in the bedroom,’ Joaquin told her, abandoning her toes and turning his attention to her foot, kissing his way from her instep to her ankle. ‘So just lie back and let me pleasure you.’
If the truth were told, he didn’t know if he was pleasuring her or himself, he admitted inwardly as he made his slow, caressing way up her leg, heading for the softer inner skin of her thighs, one of the parts of a woman that he loved most of all. There were times when only the hot, hard rush of fiery passion would do, when speed and urgency were everything. And there were times when the slow, sensual build-up, the piling of delight upon delight, was what it was all about.
And this time was one of those.
This was a time to savour. To enjoy to the fullest the pleasures of the flesh.
But at the touch of his mouth on her thigh Cassie moaned aloud, her hands reaching down, reaching for him, pulling him up to cover her until their mouths met, clashed, clung in a soul-searing kiss that was hotter than the sun in the sky.
‘Querida!’ Joaquin muttered against her lips, the sensation of her naked, sun-warmed body under his pushing all his earlier thoughts of patience, of slow sensuality, right out of his mind. ‘Cassandra, querida, you are all that a man could ever ask for in a woman—in a lover.’
His strong, tanned legs pushed at her slimmer, paler ones, opening her to him so that he lay between them, the essential heat and hardness of him just nudging against her exposed flesh.
‘Joaquin…’
It was a soft, moaning whisper, the sound of his name an enticement, a caress and a reproof all in one.
And the reproof was because she was getting impatient. He could see it in her face, read the gathering storm of hunger in her eyes.
That was what he had always enjoyed so much about this woman.
The fact that she not only matched his desire head-on, but that her own passion often surged ahead, leaving him breathless with the need to equal her, satiate her, appease the hunger her demands woke in him.
He had never had a sexual partner like her. Never known someone who satisfied all his fantasies in one glorious, sensual, physical package, and yet somehow always managed to leave him hungry, looking for more.
Cassie’s clutching hands held him where he was, close on top of her body. The soft, sweet pressure of her breasts against his chest was a torment of sensuous delight, making him harden even more.
With his lips taking delicate, nipping little caresses, he kissed his way down her neck, making her stir and murmur faintly, tilting her head back against the cushions. The movement opened the way to the rest of her upper body, taking his kisses over the slopes of her breasts, one after the other, so she arced ever higher, exposing the hardened, thrusting nipples to tempt him.
A temptation there was no way in hell he could resist.
‘Oh, dear heaven…!’
The uncontrolled cry escaped her as his mouth fastened tight over the pink nub, suckling hard, grazing the skin faintly with his teeth.
‘Oh, Joaquin…’
Her body convulsed under his, her legs opening wider, exposing the innermost core of her, inviting…
With a single, forceful, uncontrollable thrust, he answered that invitation, taking himself into her body and into the realms of pure sensation in the space of a split second.
There was no room for thought in his head. No room for anything but sheer physical delight. Hunger, passion, burning, blazing excitement that exploded inside his brain, took him higher, further…
And Cassandra came with him every inch of the way.
Having been together for a year, their bodies were attuned. Each knew the other’s private pleasure spots, and used that knowledge shamelessly to entice, to tantalise, to arouse even further. And the warmth of the sun, playing over bare flesh, the evening scent of the plants in the garden, the sound of the birds chirping in the trees, were extra enhancements to the erotic pleasure that swamped their thoughts.
They were lost, abandoned. Totally absorbed in each other. Totally given up to each other, the primitive rhythm pulsing harder, hotter, faster, higher. Until it took them right over the edge and into the mind-blowing explosion of perfect ecstasy, falling headlong into an oblivion of delight.
As their breathing gradually slowed, Joaquin buried his face against her neck, under the now-dry, tangled fall of her hair, and kissed away the faint sheen of perspiration from her skin.
‘This is why you’re mine, Cassandra,’ he muttered, his voice thick and rough with satisfaction. ‘This is why we’re together, why we’ve stayed together. Why we’ve lasted this long.’
His breath escaped in a long sigh that stirred her almost-dry hair.
‘You’re mine!’ he declared possessively, making it plain that that was as much as he wanted.
And at that moment, replete and totally exhausted by the blazing, primitive ardour of their lovemaking, Cassandra allowed herself to believe that perhaps, after all, for now that might just be enough for her too.
CHAPTER THREE
THAT comforting delusion stayed with her at least through the rest of the night. The truth was that she didn’t have time to think of anything else.
She had barely recovered from the whirlwind assault on her senses of Joaquin’s lovemaking, her breath still coming raggedly and unevenly, the sheen of perspiration drying on her skin in the cooling sun of the evening, when he had picked her up and carried her into the house.
‘Joaquin…’ she tried to protest feebly, but he blithely ignored her, padding over the tiles in his bare feet as he took her through the hall and up the staircase to the bedroom.
There, he laid her carefully on the bed, coming down beside her, and drawing her close, crushing a hard, impassioned kiss onto her mouth.
And Cassie surrendered all thought of protesting further, or even of trying to talk. She simply melted into the sensual appeal of his embrace, revelling in the feel of his hot, hard body against her own flesh, the scent of his skin in her nostrils.
Tonight, she told herself, for tonight she would forget her worries, put aside her concerns. Tonight she would not think of a tomorrow or ask for a future. Tonight she would simply enjoy what Joaquin offered, and only that. And she would not ask for more.
And right now what Joaquin did offer was good enough for her. More than good enough, she thought on a swooning sense of pleasure, as, muttering a litany of praise in his native Spanish, his lyrically accented voice roughened by growing desire, he kissed his way once more down from her lips to her throat, from her throat to her shoulders, her breasts… And as his mouth closed, hard and hot and hungry, over the tightened tip, still achingly sensitive from his attentions just a short time before, she felt the sting of desire speed along every nerve path, making her writhe restlessly against him.
‘Joaquin…’ she muttered again, but this time in open yearning, hungry demand rather than protest. ‘Oh, dear Lord, Joaquin…’
And it all began again.
She had no idea what time they surfaced from the wild, erotic storm that had raged over them. She only knew that at some point Joaquin left their bed and went downstairs. He came back a short time later, carrying with him a tray laden down with plates of bread, cheese, fresh fruit and a bottle of one of the very best wines from his own vineyard, together with two beautiful, fine crystal goblets.
He fed her by hand, breaking off small pieces of bread or cheese, picking the finest grapes, the freshest apricots, and offering them to her as a mother might feed a child, so that all she had to do was to accept the delicacies from his hands. He held the glass to her mouth, tilting it so that she could sip the rich red liquid, finally kissing away the faint stain that marked her lips with a gentleness that made her heart clench in sharp response.
When the simple meal was done, he put aside the tray, laying it on the table at the far side of the room, before coming back to take her hands in his, drawing her from the bed and taking her with him into the bathroom. There they showered together, Joaquin brushing the breadcrumbs from her skin, washing the faint stickiness of fruit juice from where it had dribbled onto her breasts. There too, inevitably, they made love yet again. This time with a slow, tantalising sensuality, that built up and up, taking them both totally out of themselves and into a world where nothing mattered but their bodies, their touch, their kisses, and the heat that flamed between them. And ultimately that heat, that passion pushed them over the edge into a pulsing, shuddering climax that drained what little was left of even Joaquin’s strength and left them with barely enough energy to make the brief journey from the shower to the bed before they tumbled headlong into the total oblivion of a sleep so deep it was like unconsciousness.
They had barely spoken a word to each other all night, Cassie reflected now. Talking hadn’t been needed; it had seemed superfluous. They had let their bodies, their hands, their mouths, their senses do all the contacting that was necessary and they had communicated on such a basic, primitive level that there had been no need of words at all.
But that had been then, and this was now, she told herself uncomfortably. Last night had been an experience enclosed in a bubble, a moment out of time. A time when she had told herself that she would let things ride and not spoil what was happening by stirring up things that would only muddy the waters of their relationship.
Now she had to face those things, whether she liked it or not. Now she had to talk. There were things she had to ask Joaquin; things she needed to discuss with him, and she couldn’t let it wait any longer.
But Joaquin wasn’t in the bed beside her. The pillow still bore a dent where his head had rested, and the scent of his body lingered on the cover, in the sheets, but of the man himself there was no sign. A hasty check of the bathroom showed that it too was empty, something Cassie noted with an inward sense of relief.
Even though the room was cold and still, no trace of the steam and heat that had filled it last night, she still felt the echoes of the hungry coupling they had shared. The reverberations of the passionate climax still seemed to hang in the atmosphere, making her senses quiver, her nerves clenching in response, so that she hurried out of the bathroom, too uneasy to linger longer.
It was as she hurried back into the bedroom that the door opened quietly and Joaquin came in, the sight of him stopping her dead in surprise.
‘Cassandra…’
His voice betrayed almost as much surprise as she was feeling. ‘I thought you were still asleep.’
‘You meant you hoped I was still asleep.’
The words were a mistake; she knew that as soon as she heard them hit the air. But she hadn’t been able to hold them back.
It was the way he was dressed that had done it. The sleek, elegant suit and crisp shirt, even the tie that spoke of formality and discipline and—damn it—work!
‘I didn’t want to disturb you, that’s true.’
Taking his cue from her, Joaquin was coolly formal. Not quite cold, but most definitely lacking in any warmth.
‘I thought you might want to sleep in after…’
The way his eyes slid to the bed, and the gleam she had caught in them before they moved away from hers, sent prickles of irritation sparking along her spine. But what made the sparks turn into open flames of resentment was the faint but definitely triumphant edge to the sudden smile that curled up the corners of his mouth before he ruthlessly imposed a new control and determinedly forced them down again.
And that smile pushed her over the edge, into words that she knew were a mistake even as they left her mouth.
‘After you had your way with me?’ she snapped viciously, bringing his head up sharply, something much stronger than her own annoyance flaring in the darkness of his eyes.
‘After we had our way with each other,’ he corrected stiffly, the exotic notes of his accent contrasting stunningly with the cold crispness of each word.
‘Whatever…’ she forced herself to mutter ungraciously.
If the truth were told, she much preferred to stay on the side of righteous indignation, even if it wasn’t actually justified. It felt more comfortable. And it seemed to square better with an uneasy conscience.
She didn’t want to feel this way, but she just wasn’t strong enough to stop herself.
One of the problems was the way that Joaquin was dressed, and the physical effect that was having on her.
She had always adored the way he looked when—as she had once put it—scrubbed and spruced up ready for work. Apart from the fact that he looked stunning, the dark good looks dramatically enhanced by the white shirt, every powerful line of his strong, lean body emphasised by the superb fit and tailoring of his suit, she had never been able to resist the appeal of the contrast between the controlled formality of his clothing and the fiercely uninhibited, passionate man she knew he really was underneath.
He had looked that way the very first time she had seen him, cool and sleek and totally in control. She had been working as a translator for an English wine importer who had been negotiating a major deal with the Alcolar Vineyards and who had asked her to attend this vital stage of the negotiations to make sure he got everything quite right. She had been sitting with her employer and his second in command at the huge, polished mahogany table in the Alcolar boardroom when the door had opened and Joaquin strode into the room.
It had seemed to Cassie as if the world had careered to a halt, jolting her out of her sense of reality and into a place where everything she had always believed in no longer had any sway. She had looked, stared, blinked, unable to believe what she saw, looked again and from that moment she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes off him. It was as if he were the most powerful magnet in the world and she were some tiny, pin-fine compass needle. She was drawn to him in an instant, held fast by the powerful pull of his burning sexual appeal, and she had never been able to tug herself free ever since.
And Joaquin had been the same.
She could remember the moment he had been introduced, the sear of electricity up her arm as he’d taken her hand, the murmur of, ‘Buenos dὶas, senorita,’ in that stunningly accented voice. Their eyes had met, locked together, and it seemed that from then on she had never looked away again.
But she must have done, because somehow the meeting had gone on, and the deal had been struck. She didn’t know if her employer had got the terms he’d wanted, or if Joaquin had arranged things his way, her concentration on the matter in hand so totally shot that it had been a miracle she had been able to translate at all. She only knew that when she’d spoken those jet-black eyes had been drawn to her face, fixing on it and watching her so intently that she’d actually feared that his gaze might mark her face, bruising it faintly where his eyes had rested. At first she had thought that he had been concentrating on following her translation; it was only much later that she’d learned that Joaquin Alcolar spoke English almost as well as she did herself, and that he would have been perfectly capable of conducting the meeting in his second language, if he had chosen to do so.
‘So you concede that it was not just me forcing my wicked attentions on you.’
Joaquin’s sharply enunciated words slashed into her memories like a sword slicing through silk, forcing her back to the present with an abruptness that had her blinking in unfocused confusion.
‘I—yes—of course…’ she managed, hoping she was answering what he had really said and not just what she thought she had heard.
She really must concentrate. This was too important just to let drift.
‘I—it was mutual,’ she managed hastily and saw his brusque nod of satisfaction, though none of the worrying expression in his eyes eased in any way.
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ he commented cynically. ‘I have never forced a woman yet and I certainly do not intend to start with you.’
He didn’t have to, and well he knew it, Cassie told herself. If anything offended him it was the thought she might just be implying that his seduction technique was not the carefully honed skill that it was. The number of women, all of them beautiful, successful and rich, nearly as beautiful and rich as he was himself, who had passed through his life from the time that he had reached adulthood attested to his almost legendary prowess with the opposite sex, and he wasn’t likely to want to see that reputation threatened in any way.
‘No, I’m not claiming you forced me.’
‘Then what the hell is the matter with you?’
Joaquin was having a hard time adjusting to the woman he had discovered since he had come back into the room. He had left his bed reluctantly this morning, only forced out of it by the knowledge that there were business matters he had to deal with. Business matters that wouldn’t wait. And so, in spite of the fact that both his hungry body and his deepest instincts had been demanding that he stayed right where he was, taking Cassandra into his arms and kissing her softly awake, stern common sense and duty had forced him to get up and head for the shower.
He should have gone straight to work after that, aiming to reach his office well before the heat of the day really kicked in and made conditions much less tolerable. But he hadn’t been able to resist coming back into the bedroom to see Cassandra one more time before he left.
Only to find that she was no longer the softly sensual sleeper he had left curled up in the bed, as if still feeling his presence beside her. Instead she had turned back into the woman he had been having so much trouble with over the past weeks. The woman who was edgy, touchy, sharp-tongued and impossible to understand. The woman whose moods were difficult to predict, whose mind seemed so often to be elsewhere, lost in thoughts he couldn’t discover.
‘I thought—’
‘You thought that because we’d had a—a hot night—that I would be quite content to lie here, stark naked, and just wait for my lord and master to come back and take up from where we left off?’
‘Yes—no! Well—what the devil would be wrong with that?’
Okay, so he hadn’t expected her to lie there and wait for him, but he certainly wasn’t going to object to the idea of it! But how he wished she hadn’t said ‘stark naked’. He’d been aware of the fact that she had no clothes on, of course. No red-blooded male could look at that luscious body and not be aware of that. But they were often naked with each other, usually totally comfortably, and he was trying to be relaxed about it.