Читать книгу Latin Lovers: Passionate Spaniards - Кэтти Уильямс, Cathy Williams - Страница 9

‘SO …YOU like it here? Benito is very proud of this place.’

‘It’s beautiful. I didn’t expect anything quite like this,’ Isabella admitted nervously, glancing round her.

‘He told me to tell you that you enhance it with your own beauty.’ Leandro took her breath away with a raffish grin. ‘But now you must tell me why you are walking the Santiago de Compostela.’ Leaning back on his elbows, he regarded her with nonchalant ease …as if he had relaxation down to an art form. It made Isabella ultra sensitive about her own state of discord with her body. She felt jumpy and apprehensive around him, as if she were contemplating touching burning blue flame. With one penetrating glance, she somehow got the notion that he intuited the very heart of her feelings and she had to admit that unsettled her perhaps more than anything. She shivered. Outside, as if to echo the mounting agitation inside her, the rain lashed loudly at the thickly paned windows as though threatening to come inside. Curling a still damp strand of ebony hair round her fingers, Isabella sent up a silent plea for guidance. Never had she needed it more!

‘I told you …I’m writing a book on why people choose to walk it. My grandfather was quite a devout Catholic and he talked about it so much that I—’

‘Most pilgrims do not walk the Santiago de Compostela for religious reasons—as I am sure you have already found out, Isabella.’ Leandro’s devastating smile contained just the tiniest hint of mockery and she knew at that moment that he intuited much more about her than she was comfortable with. Those clear grey eyes of his would be ruthless in discerning the truth. Her thoughts would be as transparent to him as though he looked upon a still, unrippled lake, right down to the bottom.

‘I needed some inspiration …as well as a new challenge.’

Finally, deciding to express herself without her guard up for once, Isabella let go of her damp tendril of hair and walked across to the window, carefully bypassing the bed on which Leandro had arranged his disturbingly masculine body with such breathtaking ease on top of the gold satin counterpane. ‘I mean, I love my job at the library, but for some reason I started to feel a bit dissatisfied. I suppose I got stuck in a rut. Actually, the sameness of it made me want to scream sometimes! Some people thrive on routine, but I realise I don’t. Life shouldn’t just be a predictable drudge. There should be some adventure, don’t you think?’ She shrugged as the strength of her feelings took impassioned hold and she glanced back at the window in a bid to compose herself. ‘Anyway …I wasn’t totally sure what I wanted to do to make things better, but one of the things I did know was that I wanted to write this book. The idea had been there for a long time but frankly I kept talking myself out of it. I thought—I thought people would think I was overreaching myself in some way …you know? Trying to be too clever.’ For ‘people’ read her family and Patrick. ‘I had to make some tough decisions. I broke up with my fiancé and cancelled our wedding. I wasn’t being callous …It would never have worked anyway and I thought if I don’t do this now—the pilgrimage and the book—then I may never again have either the courage or the chance. So here I am. I think I’m walking the Camino to find some courage and inspiration to live a different sort of life …to discover who I really am and what I’m capable of …Do you know what I mean?’

Hearing the self-conscious edge to her voice, Leandro silently applauded her honesty. Such a candid response to his question was quite refreshing when he considered the duplicity of some other women he’d been with. She must have felt very strongly about her need for change to call off her wedding. Considering the highly desirable qualities this woman possessed, as well as her enchanting looks, Leandro concluded that her ex-fiancé must have suffered considerable regret about losing her. Isabella Deluce was a fascinating, indisputably sexy woman, who any man could not fail to be affected by. Uncoiling his body from the bed, he strolled casually across to the window to join her.

‘Isabella …’

Examining the rippling silk that was her rich dark hair, he gently parted some strands with his fingers and softly blew his warm breath onto the back of her neck. He saw her exquisitely sensitive shiver and was fiercely glad that he had brought her here to Benito’s luxurious hotel in the middle of the night where there was little possibility that any paparazzi would be following him. If they did …Benito knew exactly what to do to get rid of them. Now all Leandro aimed to do was to devote himself to Isabella for the whole of the rest of the night without interruption. ‘Every footstep you take on the Camino is taking you back to yourself …your true self,’ he told her. ‘I promise you that. By the time you reach the Cathedral in Santiago at the end of your walking and pass through the famous Door of Glory as millions of pilgrims have done before you, you will have much more clarity of mind and heart.’

Instinctively Isabella knew that Leandro was right and his words definitely raised her spirits. Already, after days and miles of walking, sometimes in silence, sometimes with the companionship of other walkers, and at night as bands of them joined together in various villages dotted across Northern Spain for the nightly pilgrims’ mass, Isabella knew a deeply profound change was taking place inside her. As Leandro had said, most people did not walk the Camino for religious reasons. Undertaking the challenging five-hundred-mile trek on foot walking through vineyards and the ancient kingdoms of Northern Spain in the hot sun, wind and rain certainly gave a person plenty of time to reflect.

Already Isabella knew it would impact upon her life for ever and she hadn’t even completed it yet. But she’d already discovered on the way that there was so much more to Isabella Deluce than just being a dutiful daughter and a good librarian. She had cut loose from a fiancé who secretly mocked the true meaning of love and was bereft of any feeling of loyalty towards her whatsoever, and had also turned her back on the advice of a family who saw only pitfalls ahead in making the decisions she had. Isabella had relinquished these things to find herself in a part of Spain that was so far away from the frantic tourism of the Costas that it was almost like another country entirely. A part of the country that endured disparate extremes of weather—the rain pounding down on the red clay of the mesas one minute and the baking sun turning the earth into a veritable oven in the next. It couldn’t fail to arouse a sense of wonder and mystery in the soul of anyone who surrendered to its magic.

If that wasn’t enough, now with Leandro she found herself surrendering to magic of a different kind …His teasing breath feathering the back of her neck was a sweet melting heat that rippled over Isabella’s senses like a sensual summer breeze. Leandro Reyes was blessed with the kind of sizzling sexual allure that would induce a clarion call of longing in any woman whose gaze happened to collide with his. Even the air around him seemed to be charged with his deeply affecting presence.

‘You smell of the wild flowers in the mountains.’

‘Do I?’

She turned round to gaze into his fascinating silver-grey eyes, feeling his melting glance bathe her in sensuous moonlight. His lashes were astonishingly luxurious considering they belonged to a man so masculine, and with startling realisation Isabella silently and nervously acknowledged the burning haze of desire that was shockingly directed towards her. ‘I’ve spent days and days walking in nature.’ She offered him a wry smile. ‘Maybe some of it’s rubbed off on me?’

Her smile slowly dissipated in the disquieting absence of his reply. Instead, her body silently shook with the need for him to touch her. Isabella knew his taste now and because she knew it, she craved it. In that moment it was hard to envisage anything that would excite and please her more. She was getting used to expecting the miraculous on this journey; the heavens answered her prayer. She’d hardly taken her next breath when Leandro started to run his hands slowly down the outside of her arms, bringing her trembling form into disturbingly close contact with his own. ‘You are one of nature’s exquisite mysteries too, Isabella. You remind me of the most rare of beautiful wild flowers …of the delight of spring after a long, harsh winter. And you stir in me a heat so powerful, it is like the burning sun that scorches the mesas …’

‘I do?’ Her voice descended to a whisper.

‘Sí …you do. I want to seduce you, Isabella …very much …and I have waited too long already.’

Bending his dark head towards her, Leandro touched his mouth to hers. Isabella’s startled gasp was swept away on a blissful wave of unutterable delight as he kissed her. His lips tasted faintly of Albarino wine and dark Brazilian coffee, and right then she could not have envisaged a more arousing combination of flavours—deliciously heightened by the unmatchable essence of the man himself. The ravishingly hot sweep of his tongue was a sensation she wanted to revisit again and again and again …There would never be such a thing as ‘too much’ where Leandro was concerned.

Unable to restrain her own need, Isabella groaned hungrily into his mouth as he cupped the back of her head to bring her closer still and followed the curve of her spine with his free hand, straight down to her bottom. Squeezing and kneading her flesh, Leandro provocatively aligned her hips with his own, then moved them teasingly apart again—repeating the action with even more deliberate and devastating precision until Isabella seriously feared for her sanity if he were to continue with such a sexy little game for much longer. She wanted him inside her …her body demanded it. Even as the thought made her cheeks burn, her hips had seemingly softened in preparation for his lovemaking. Her breasts had grown heavy and she felt shivery and weak all over—a completely intense reaction that was quite unlike anything she’d ever experienced with any other man before.

There was the devil’s own smile on Leandro’s mesmerising face as his lips broke contact with hers and Isabella left her hands either side of his taut lean middle so that she wouldn’t lose her balance, because there was a real danger that she would. Words deserted her but she held his melting, knowing smile with a steady answering gaze even as her heart quietly pounded.

‘I want to make love to you all night …Do you know that? Even then, I seriously doubt whether that will satisfy my need to possess you!’ Threading his fingers through her hair, Leandro focused on her with laser-like concentration.

Overwhelmed by his attention, Isabella clamped her teeth down self-consciously on her lip. Her heart was now beating with hypnotic rhythm inside her chest. ‘By rights I should really be getting some rest,’ she told him breathlessly, suddenly terrified by the virtual forest fire of lust they had ignited between them. ‘I—I have another long walk ahead of me tomorrow.’

‘We will make love …then we will rest.’

Possessively clasping her hand, Leandro commandingly steered Isabella over to the bed. He sank down onto it pulling her onto his lap. His hands were warm and hard and she sensed the urgency in them. The only other sound in the room was the gentle creak of the mattress and the now less violent hiss of the rain as it hit the windows. As Leandro studied her face her gaze held his with a silent devastating plea, and the deep river of lust that was compelling him to be with this woman flowed with even more forceful demand in his veins. Had he ever witnessed such palpable longing in a woman’s eyes before?

As he tipped up Isabella’s chin the edges of Leandro’s lips lifted a little in a deeply satisfied smile. Her brow was so smooth and fair with little obvious hint that she’d been walking in strong sunshine for days now and her compelling eyes were as dark as the black robes of a nun.

Running his glance across her sexy mouth, he saw that her lips still carried the faint trace of moisture from his and as he observed them with increasingly ravenous thirst he witnessed just the tiniest quiver. If she were an actress and he were directing her in a love scene, he would be instructing the most heart-stopping close-up of her features right now and her lovely face would stay in the mind long after the closing credits had rolled.

Heady desire sweeping through him like a fierce tornado, the buttons on Isabella’s shirt irresistibly beckoned and Leandro obeyed the deep, silent, fevered impulse to undo them. A trickle of sweat sluggishly meandered down the middle of his back and clung to his heated skin as he did so. The heat in the room was bordering on sultry and weighed on the air like a heavy overcoat but he knew too that later on tonight it would be a different story. In early May, as it was now, the mornings could be piercingly chill to the point of ice, but by midday the sun would be roasting, burning down on the landscape in a relentless haze. More compelling to Leandro, however, was the fever of carnal need that had taken his body prisoner. His mind became emptied of every thought but Isabella, conjuring up rich, erotic fantasies of what they would do together, his strong abdominal muscles bunching hard to constrain his rapidly escalating desire. He should not overwhelm her …this enchanting English girl who was walking the Santiago de Compostela trail to ‘find’ herself. He had no wish to be the one discordant note in her symphony of self-discovery. Yet Leandro would not deny himself this exquisite opportunity to discover her in the most intimate way. He wanted her far too much for that and so he would take what he wanted without regret.

Isabella gasped when Leandro’s lean, bronzed hands practically tore open her blouse and pushed it down over her shoulders. Her full breasts bounced a little in her white balconette bra and she felt her nipples pinch tight. When she dared a greedy glance at the beautifully hewn masculine features and light copper skin that was so close to her, she immediately ached with almost violent need. Nothing could adequately convey this man’s stunning allure, she was certain—but Isabella knew her memory would not fail her. Now his hungry stare grazed lasciviously on her breasts and she ached for the sweet release of his hot mouth caressing them, unconsciously pursing her lips to moisten them a little at the flagrantly erotic thought.

Then he kissed her, splaying his palm against the back of her head to hold her fast, and it barely took even a second for Isabella to pay him back with the hot, hungry response his lips almost brutally demanded. The explosion between them was a nuclear fusion of white hot heat. Already Leandro’s sizzling X-rated kisses had ruined Isabella for life. Withdrawing from her with a teasing little smile, he practically ripped open the buttons of his shirt to reveal a chest so beautifully defined with lean, hard muscle that Isabella sucked in her breath and let it out slowly again, in awe. After that, she couldn’t have said who undressed whom, all she knew was that taking their clothes off had become an imperative tide that they could not turn back from, and as hands grasped and mouths clashed Isabella likened the furore of sensation soaring through her blood to a fire ripping through a dry forest …a fire that could not be doused with even a lake of water.

With passionately voiced whispers of appreciation and encouragement, Leandro caressed her hips, her breasts, her thighs, his deliciously erotic hands elevating the tension between them with every stroke, heatedly encouraging Isabella’s growing desire to break all its previously guarded bounds and simply surrender. Her nervousness dissipated like a snowflake in the sun as she relinquished her natural inhibition, and discovered a spontaneous lustful side to her character instead. A quality that frankly was a revelation to her. And she no longer had to hope or wish or yearn to have the attentions of Leandro’s mouth on her breasts—not when he was in turn taking her exquisitely tight nipples deep into the moist cavern of his mouth and driving her near mad with the need to have him inside her. His body was a mouth-watering study in masculine perfection too. Lean but muscular—every perfectly delineated, smooth-as-silk muscle in that copper skinned torso was a fascinating revelation never to be forgotten.

Briefly thinking about the promised phone-call to her sister, Isabella knew she’d already abandoned the idea. If Emilia even guessed that her ‘principled’ big sister had wound up in bed with a man she’d only just met and that man happened to be the very man she’d dispatched Isabella to try and win an interview with for her magazine …then Isabella would never hear the end of it! But once she started back on the Camino trail tomorrow, no one would be able to contact her, thank God. She would once again know some peace from her demanding family.

‘Isabella …’ Leandro’s hot breath skimmed erotically over the delicate skin on her ear ‘ …usted es tan hermoso, asi que fino.’ She recognised the Spanish for ‘beautiful’ and ‘fine’ and shivered with pleasure.

***

A woman’s scent had always been the biggest turn-on for Leandro, but surely Isabella’s had the undeniable power to drive a man ‘loco’ with desire? He decided this because he wanted her with an almost feral lustfulness that left him breathless and aching as he had never ached for a woman before. His body was all but crying out for him to make that final inevitable connection with hers and it was strange—but he almost intuited a sense of destiny as he stroked his hands over her temptingly curvy hips and slid his muscular, more hirsute legs down over hers. Quickly dismissing the unsettling thought, he told himself that sexual desire could stir the most outrageously fanciful ideas in a man and he should be careful. Isabella was a beguiling woman, that was true, but at the end of the day all Leandro wanted to do was enjoy her beautiful body for a while …not marry her! When his fingers slid over the scalding heat of her womanhood, then inside her provocative wetness, he heard her sharp, excited intake of breath and momentarily lost himself in the stunning eroticism of the highly charged moment. The sensation almost unravelled him right there. At her small ecstatic moan, he smiled, kissed her softly on the mouth, then raised himself up from her trembling form and leaned across the bed to reach for his jeans. Taking out his wallet from the back pocket, he withdrew one of two foil-wrapped condoms that had been concealed in the zipped compartment and, sitting back, carefully sheathed himself with it. When he returned to Isabella, his knee urged her trembling legs apart—his expression a deeply masculine study in unleashed passion as he did so—and gratifyingly sensed her clasp his body tightly with her slender silken thighs. Then, slowly and with almost agonising pleasure, Leandro eased his hard, aching shaft deep inside her. Madre mia! She was fire and satin, this exquisite woman, and her expressive dark eyes locked sensually onto his as he started to ride her.

Her eyes drifted closed as the growing sensual tension inside her inexorably built with each demanding thrust into her body. They swiftly opened again in shock as Leandro said fiercely, ‘Look at me, Isabella! Do not hide your pleasure from me! I want to witness everything!’ As the tension reached an exquisite plateau and sensual waves ebbed through her with force Isabella’s heartbeat went wild. In those highly charged moments, she knew a deepening sense of destiny. For whatever reason fate decreed …she had been meant to meet Leandro Reyes …even if it was just for this one night. A harsh, soul-deep cry left his lips just then and punctured the sultry air—the surprising sound resonating with force in the room and momentarily silencing the sound of the rain as his body quivered hard with release. Isabella was enthralled by that uninhibited shout of pleasure and for long moments she just allowed herself to simply bask in her woman’s power. The idea was a new and exciting revelation to add to her already growing store of new discoveries.

Curling her hands round Leandro’s sleek, hard biceps, she felt her heart hammer inside her chest almost as heavily and as fast as the relentless rain that pummelled the window-panes. Then she moved her fingers through his mane of thick dark hair, secretly loving the sensation of his muscular body covering hers, pressing her down deep into the mattress—the erotic sheen of his sweat glazing her skin and her senses filled with the scent of their lovemaking.

‘You have confirmed my suspicions quite emphatically, Isabella. Rest will be the furthest thing from my mind now that my body has known the deep, deep pleasure of joining with yours.’

Along with this wry, hungry observation, Leandro accorded Isabella with the most dangerously challenging smile she’d ever received. If that seriously fever-inducing gesture wasn’t enough, the look in his clear grey eyes literally made her heart leap. ‘Instead we will make love and listen to the rain and make love again until we are close to exhaustion, my sweet Isabella,’ he asserted.

His deliberately possessive ‘my’ resonating with undeniable delight throughout her entire being, Isabella sensed renewed desire swiftly build inside her even as Leandro bent his head and his lips hungrily claimed a breast. She slowly released a softly ragged breath, the ache between her legs almost painful. ‘I want that too,’ she whispered, without any trace of doubt or inhibition …

The arrival of the morning sneaked into her consciousness far too soon. Awake as soon the sky started to lighten in the east, spreading the pink tinge of dawn across the previously black canvas of the night, Isabella breathed out softly as she studied the arresting sleeping features of Leandro beside her. Although clearly surrendering to fatigue now, they’d paid scant attention to sleep during the past few hours. As she felt her face suffuse with warmth as she recalled how emphatically she and her Spanish lover had whiled those precious night-time hours away the corners of Isabella’s lush mouth couldn’t help but edge upwards into a smile. This morning she was a different woman again from the one that had been slowly emerging during the pilgrimage. She’d already been feeling braver and stronger but now after last night …she felt daring too. And her body brimmed with a new vitality even though she ached in every muscle …her tender spots arising because of the amazing man lying beside her.

Isabella might well smile. Just then Leandro stirred, rubbed a hand round his beard-roughened chiselled jaw and opened his eyes. It was like staring right into a pool of silvery starlight …Isabella’s stomach dived straight to her feet in stunning awareness of the shock of that direct arresting gaze.

‘Buenos días.’

Before she could even reply, Leandro slid his fingers beneath her chin and claimed her mouth in a deeply satisfying—and bordering on ravenous—kiss.

‘Good morning,’ she croaked, her black-coffee eyes wide with surprise and pleasure.

As Leandro lazily surveyed Isabella’s early-morning face, her bewitching beauty undimmed by lack of rest, her long dark hair spilling over her smooth bare shoulders and her tentative smile intriguingly self-conscious, his stomach clutched with surprising regret at the thought of having to say goodbye to her today. This woman had given him such stunning and unforgettable pleasure—both with her body and her company and he was not quite ready to relinquish either. Leandro found himself wishing that they could spend the rest of the day in bed and let the world carry on without them. But inevitably they must part—he to return to his house to catch up with some urgent reading of new manuscripts and work proposals before returning to Madrid to embark upon his latest cinematic project—and she to continue this most ancient of pilgrimages, presumably followed by her own return to her homeland …

‘I could wish to be woken in such a satisfying way every morning, my fair Isabella.’ There it was again …that very appealing and possessive ‘my’. Used in such a seductive way, the huskily voiced note of ownership could not possibly offend her …quite the opposite. Allowing him to pull her against his chest and smooth back her tousled dark fringe from her face, Isabella breathed in Leandro’s addictive soft musk scent as he grinned at her suggestively.

She had to attempt at least twenty miles today through varying and challenging terrain if she was to catch up with some walking companions as arranged and the memory of that wicked and gorgeous smile of his was surely going to sustain her until she reached the monastery where she had planned to stay tonight …But at the thought of parting from Leandro, Isabella felt a hollow little flutter inside her chest and then the same again—only stronger—in the pit of her stomach. ‘You’ve hardly had any sleep at all and now I’ve woken you,’ she said apologetically.

‘And I was the very inconsiderate man who kept you awake most of the night because I could not keep my hands off of you! You should not be endowed with so many beguiling qualities to tempt me so much!’ He laughed huskily. Isabella wanted to say, I’ll miss you, but then she remembered that Leandro Reyes was a very well known and respected film director and once he had returned to his busy and demanding life her memory would be relegated very firmly to his past. She knew she wasn’t special. Working in the film industry as he did, he would have every opportunity to bed the most alluring women and probably did. She would be just one of many. Her stomach protested with a sickening twist at the thought …

‘I should get up and get dressed,’ she murmured, deliberately averting her gaze away from the cynosure of his piercing silvery eyes …the eyes that seemed to see into her soul. She’d best just start to forget him right now if that were possible and focus on the pilgrimage instead. ‘I’ve got to get back to my hotel and get some breakfast and fill my water bottle before I get going again.’

‘Benito’s driver will drop us both back when we are ready,’ Leandro responded immediately, ‘but we can breakfast here first.’

‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind? I have to make up quite a bit of time today.’ Moving away from him, she sat up, using some of the sheet to hide her nakedness. For some reason, a strong wave of protectiveness for the vulnerability the gesture exposed washed over Leandro. Once again he had cause to admonish himself for his uncharacteristic reaction. Isabella and he had had a good time in bed …an unbelievable time, in fact …but at the end of the day she was just another beautiful girl passing through and in a few days’ time, when she had completed the pilgrimage, she would be going home again to England. End of story …So long as she did not relate any of what had occurred between them to her sister or anyone else associated with the media, Leandro would relegate their time together to a very pleasurable and warm memory.

‘So?’ He sat up too, the warm skin on his thigh brushing up against hers. He sensed her answering shiver and felt a strong leap of desire. He quelled it. ‘When you go back to England …where is home?’ he asked casually.

A quizzical little crease appeared between Isabella’s fine dark brows, as though she was surprised he should ask such a question.

‘I live in Islington in London …the least posh part. Do you know it?’

‘I have heard of it.’ Leandro smiled. ‘And you work nearby?’

‘In Highgate. It’s not far away.’

‘And you will be busy working on your book when you return, sí?’

Isabella shrugged self-consciously, the movement dislodging the sheet and suddenly exposing her bare breasts. She quickly grabbed it back again and covered herself. ‘That’s the plan. And you …you’ll be working on a film I guess?’

Immediately the shutters came down over Leandro’s eyes and Isabella could have kicked herself. She’d hate to think that he might believe she would tell anybody anything that he’d told her …especially about his work or his private life. Considering that both were topics he’d deliberately avoided discussing during their time together, he must know he had nothing to fear?

‘I will be getting back to work, sí. Isabella?’

‘Yes?’ Her dark eyes widened as she watched his hand scrape through his tousled hair.

‘I would give you my phone number but it is not something that I do readily or easily. In my position, I have to be careful …you understand?’ His words confirmed she was not important to him in any way as well as reiterating his intense need to guard his privacy. Fielding the immense wave of hurt and disappointment that washed over her, Isabella briefly inclined her head. ‘Yes, I understand.’

‘Why don’t you use the shower first?’ he suggested smoothly and she could easily sense his withdrawal from her. ‘I have a couple of phone calls to make before we leave.’

‘Okay.’ She felt as if she’d been somehow dismissed from his life as though she were nothing but an afterthought, and Isabella’s heart was sickeningly heavy as she turned her back to get out of bed …