Читать книгу Modern Romance July 2019 Books 1-4 - Мишель Смарт, Sharon Kendrick - Страница 16

‘GUAU!’ THE WORD escaped from Alej’s lips like a murmured curse as he sank on top of Emily’s soft and eager body and felt the first contact of her breasts. He could feel the hard thrust of her nipples pinpointing into his chest as he pulled her closer, his hands sliding down to reacquaint themselves with her legs. Blood pooled into his groin as he stroked her thighs through the soft cotton of her yoga pants.

‘Alej,’ she moaned as if she was asking him a question, but he didn’t press her to elaborate because it was pretty obvious what she wanted—judging from the urgent way she was circling her hips against the rocky pole of his erection like some kind of wildcat on heat.

Once again the thought of another man doing this to her filled him with a blind rage but, ruthlessly, he drove it from his mind. Because anger and jealousy would detract from his purpose and all he needed to think about was this one thing. Of losing himself deep inside her and riding her to fulfilment. Ridding himself of this damned fever which had lain dormant inside him for too long and been brought to a head when he’d seen her standing with the Argentinian sun bouncing off her blonde hair and her arms around a mangy horse’s neck.

He’d thought that time might have diluted his reaction to her and when he saw her again he would feel nothing but indifference. But he had been wrong. Badly wrong. Because every night since that recent meeting he had dreamt of her. Had imagined doing this to her. Touching every inch of her curvy frame and then plunging into her tight wetness—long and hard and deep. He wanted sex and nothing more, but first he needed to assess whether she wanted the same.

‘Que quieres?’ he demanded roughly.

She shook the head which was slumped against his shoulder, as if words were beyond her, but Alej asked again. He needed to ask it, even if the idea of her refusal was unendurable. But he would endure it. Hadn’t he endured more than most men would have to face in a lifetime? Reaching to turn her face towards his, her shuddered breath warm against his fingers, he asked again, this time in English. ‘What do you want, Emily?’

‘You!’ she burst out, as if an inner floodgate had opened inside her. ‘I want you!’

It felt like a triumph, but only a momentary one because the exquisite ache between his legs was warning Alej that he needed to keep his wits about him or this would be over too quickly. Already he wanted to explode like a teenage boy on his first time and that wasn’t going to happen, for he had waited too long to squander a single second of this.

His mouth found her neck, the tip of his tongue trailing a feather-light path along its surface, which quickly had her wriggling with pleasure. His groin bucked as she circled her hips against him with urgent hunger, which made his heart race. He had forgotten just how responsive she was. How her receptive body thrilled to just about anything he did to her. Maybe that was because the two of them had taken foreplay to a whole new level and then redefined it. There had been long months of denying themselves that final penetration and when they had...

Against her neck, his lips hardened.

When they had...

Bitterness rushed through him but he forced himself to shelve it because nothing was going to detract from this. He could feel her moving against him, turning her head towards his face in silent plea. She wanted him to kiss her, he knew that. But he didn’t want to kiss her—at least, not there. He didn’t want to do anything which might masquerade as true affection and he certainly wasn’t going to give her the pleasure of imagining he felt anything for her other than lust. Because he didn’t. The only thing he wanted from Emily Green was her body. Her sweet and tempting body.

With a low growl he got off the sofa and then bent down to pick her up in his arms. She was heavier than she looked but he liked that. He liked the solidity of her firm flesh as he carried her through the enormous room, past the white piano and colourful displays of flowers. Past the giant picture windows with their views over the Melbourne rooftops and the skyscrapers which were glittering like jewels in the night.

‘Where...where are we going?’ she gasped.

‘Where do you think we’re going? To discuss some of your “clear objectives”?’ he growled sarcastically. ‘I’m taking you to bed.’

Her eyes were huge and dark as she stared up at him. ‘We’ve never...we’ve never actually been to bed before,’ she whispered.

It was both the right thing and the wrong thing to say. It filled him first with fury and then with intent. Because he had only ever been good enough for the stable, hadn’t he? Hidden away like some guilty secret amid the spiky bales of straw. Played with as if he were a puppet. She’d had him on the end of a string and whenever she had tugged it, he’d come running, hadn’t he? The low-born illegitimate son of a servant who had been punching well above his weight by romancing the rich man’s stepdaughter. Well, the tables had most definitely turned, he thought grimly, as he planted his foot in the centre of the door and shoved it open with a forceful kick.

‘No, we haven’t. And right here just happens to be about the biggest and most luxurious bed you can imagine,’ he said as the door swung shut silently behind them and he carried her towards the snowy-covered king-size. ‘Don’t they say the best things in life are worth waiting for?’

A trickle of apprehension ran down Emily’s spine as Alejandro’s words washed over her like dark silk and she wondered if it was just her imagination or whether they were underpinned with danger. For one terrifying moment of clarity she wondered how she had allowed this situation to arise—just as she wondered if there was still a chance to come to her senses and put a stop to it. But the truth was that she didn’t want to, even if such a thing were possible. Because by then he had laid her down on top of the bedcover and was peeling off her vest top and the last of her misgivings were dissolved by the sweet touch of his fingers against her bare skin.

The sexual hunger which he had ignited earlier now began to build to an unbearable pitch as he touched her. Like somebody with a bad fever, she was trembling uncontrollably as he began to explore her skin, murmuring something in Spanish which she’d never heard him say before. Was she imagining that it sounded almost like anger? But by then he was sliding down her yoga pants so she was lying there in just her bra and knickers. Almost thoughtfully he ran his finger around the dip of her navel, circling it ever so slowly before moving it down towards her sensible cotton pants. To make it easy for him, Emily parted her thighs and felt herself stiffen with growing excitement.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘Oh, what?’ he mimicked lazily as he whispered his fingertip lightly over the already damp gusset.

Her heart started punching loudly in her chest and she felt almost bashful as hot colour flooded her cheeks. But this wasn’t the time or the place for shyness, she told herself. It wasn’t as if they’d never done this before. But the weird thing was that, although she’d been more intimate with him than with any other man, the fact remained that right now he seemed like a very sexy stranger and it was making her a little bit apprehensive.

Stop thinking like that, she urged herself. Concentrate on the pleasure he’s giving you. ‘That feels so good,’ she managed, because surely that was the sort of thing she should be saying.

‘Does it?’ She could hear the smile in his voice. ‘I haven’t even started yet, Emily.’

‘I’d forgotten...’

‘What?’ he prompted softly, his finger still teasing her with those unbearable feather-light little touches.

As her eyelids fluttered helplessly to a close, Emily thought about telling him the unvarnished truth. She’d forgotten how he could make every inch of her body feel like a newly discovered erogenous zone. She’d forgotten because she’d made herself forget—along with all the other X-rated memories of the things they’d done together. Like the time he’d once made her come with his fingertip stroking the crotch of her jeans, instantly arousing her despite the barrier of the thick denim—and she had felt so deliciously grown-up and decadent as she’d stood shuddering in a darkened corner of the stable. She’d filed away those recollections because they seemed to have belonged to another time and another person. They certainly bore no resemblance to the sexually barren woman she had become.

‘I don’t remember,’ she breathed.

‘What a pity,’ he mocked. ‘I was waiting with bated breath.’

He stopped touching her and stepped away from the bed to begin removing his own clothes and, although Emily was aware that she was behaving passively, somehow she felt powerless to respond in any other way. Because wasn’t she afraid he’d discover that he was the only man she’d ever had sex with? Wouldn’t that slightly laughable admission display her vulnerability and leave her open to being hurt? Wouldn’t it be like handing him a great big fistful of power, when he already had much more than her? So she said nothing and lay back on the bedcovers, watching him. And, oh, he was definitely worth watching.

She’d only ever seen him removing casual and dusty clothes, either jodhpurs or jeans, not an immaculate lightweight suit which must have cost a small fortune. But the end result was the same—it didn’t matter if he wore denim or silk, it was the body beneath which was the ultimate jewel. Shrugging off his jacket, he unbuttoned his silk shirt to reveal his honed and gleaming chest, and Emily’s heart pounded with delighted recognition as she ran her gaze hungrily over it.

Could any man be as beautiful as Alejandro Sabato? she wondered longingly. His limbs were long and strong and his washboard abs reminded her of the disciplined way he’d always lived. The way he’d exercised his hard body until it was coated with sweat. Her gaze moved further down as he unzipped his suit trousers, letting them fall to the ground before kicking off his suede moccasins, so that he was left standing in nothing but a pair of dark and silky boxer shorts. And how could she look anywhere other than at the tantalising line of dark hair which ran downwards, drawing her attention to the rocky bulge at his crotch?

Did he see where she was looking? Was that why he stroked his fingertips over the steely outline of his erection with deliberate provocation, so that she bit her lip with frustrated voyeurism as colour flooded into her cheeks?

‘Frustrated, Emily?’ he questioned softly, but there was a definite touch of cruelty and control edging his question.

A number of answers sprang to Emily’s mind, though it was difficult to concentrate on anything when she was being confronted by such a glorious sight. She could have asked him not to tease her. Not to use his expertise and mastery to make her feel even more inexperienced than she was. But she needed to grab back some control. She was no longer a nearly eighteen-year-old virgin whose whole world revolved around a dashing young polo player she’d known since she was twelve, but a woman of twenty-six. If she was going to have sex with Alejandro—which she certainly was, or else she wouldn’t have been lying here naked and aching while watching him undress—then shouldn’t it be on as level a playing field as possible?

So she levered herself up onto her elbows, noticing the way his gaze swivelled to the bounce of her breasts as she did so, before fixing him with a steady look. She thought about all those films she’d seen—where confident women smiled, as if it was perfectly normal to have sex and to say exactly what it was you were feeling inside. Or not feeling. Concentrate on the sensation, she told herself—and leave emotion out of it.

‘Yes, I’m a little bit frustrated. Surely you must be, too,’ she answered, with the flicker of a smile as she removed her bra and pants with hands which weren’t as still as she would have liked them to be. ‘So why don’t you hurry up and get over here?’

That shocked him. Of course it did. She suspected he was a little bit old-fashioned at heart and she would never have said anything like that before—not in a million years. She watched his face momentarily darken before he dropped his shorts, walking towards her with supreme confidence in his aroused nakedness, in a way she doubted any other man could match.

‘You mean like this?’ he questioned as he lowered himself down on her.

‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘I mean exactly like that.’

‘Are you going to tell me how best you like it?’

‘I’ll...’ The word came out in a gasp. ‘I’ll leave that to you.’

Alej positioned himself so that his weight was on his elbows, putting him in a perfect position to see the darkness of her sapphire eyes. Her lips were parting and their moist gleam was enticing but still he couldn’t bring himself to kiss her. So instead he ran the tip of his tongue down her neck and then to her chest, before making a moist path along the hollow between her breasts. He could taste the salt of her sweat and she moaned a little as he moved his head to concentrate on one pert mound, teasing the nipple until it was rose-dark and puckered before turning his attention to the other breast.

‘That’s...’

‘What?’ he prompted huskily as the word was bitten off by her teeth digging into her bottom lip.

‘Amazing,’ she breathed.

‘I should hope so.’ He smiled before sliding his tongue over her belly and as he sensed her growing frustration, that somehow pleased him. Restlessly, she tried to lift her hips in impatient demand but he stilled her by teasing light circles over her skin before tiptoeing his fingers down towards the soft bush at her groin. Her little moans had stopped and he could tell she was holding her breath, wanting him to touch her where she most wanted to be touched. For a while he teased her some more by holding off and when his middle finger alighted on her sweet spot and began to strum, she almost shot off the bed, convulsively clutching him by the shoulders. And as her nails dug into his flesh, Alej felt a brief flare of something he couldn’t define. Maybe it was his own little bit of rebellion which made him wonder how she would deal with it if he calmly removed himself from her body and told her he’d changed his mind.

But he couldn’t. Even though she had betrayed him and treated him like dirt. Even though hers had been the first act in a chain of events which was to darken his life for ever, he couldn’t pull back. Even if he were about to die, he couldn’t think of anywhere else he’d rather be right now, with the warm, potent scent of sex in the air, and the only sound their shuddered breathing as he felt himself grow so hard that he wanted to explode. He’d planned to make her come every which way—first with his finger and then with his mouth. He’d planned to further increase his desire by making himself wait before finally thrusting into her molten heat and driving up to the very hilt of her, but he could see now that wasn’t going to be a possibility. He wanted her now.

‘Oh!’

She made a single syllable of disappointment as he withdrew his finger from her sticky heat.

‘Always so impatient,’ he observed.

Her teeth were digging into her lower lip again and now there was anxious query in her sapphire eyes, as if she’d suddenly realised he’d been having second thoughts. ‘Alej?’

He paused for just long enough to make her anxiety real before he relented. ‘Don’t worry, querida,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll be right back. But first I need to get some protection.’

She nodded. ‘Of course.’

As he removed himself from the bed, Emily was overcome with a rush of remorse and shame. What was the matter with her? Was Alej aware that if he hadn’t intervened she would have happily taken him unprotected into her body, desperate to feel his unsheathed hardness inside her? How insane would that have been—if she’d ended up pregnant with Alej’s child? Yet the idea didn’t fill her with the horror it surely should have done. Instead she got a frighteningly vivid image of herself cradling a black-haired baby in her arms and she experienced a pang of something which felt like wistfulness. Or regret.

It was only when he turned his back on her to dig into the pocket of his suit trousers that she noticed the scar which snaked across his back—a livid zigzag, dark red and angry against the olive skin. It was the only disfigurement on an otherwise perfect physique but it was big enough to make her gasp out loud.

He must have heard her because he turned around—the glint of the foil condom matching the sudden forbidding glint of his eyes.

‘Oh, Alej. Whatever happened to your back?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t want to talk about it. Especially not right now.’

‘But it’s—’

‘I said, I don’t want to talk about it. Do you want me to repeat it in Spanish?’

The harsh note of finality in his voice was deterrent enough, but by then he was back beside her and suddenly the scar was forgotten. Everything was forgotten and her attention was inevitably drawn to other things as he opened the foil with exaggerated care before stroking it onto the erection which was nudging hard against his belly. A wave of something like shyness washed over her as she saw how aroused he was and Emily’s heart warred with her mind about what it was she was expecting from this. Her body had certainly been brought to life and already she felt poised on an erotic knife-edge, where the slightest thing would send her hurtling over the edge. But something was missing. Something she couldn’t put her finger on.

‘Now,’ murmured Alejandro as he moved over her and she could feel his hardness pressing against her. ‘Where were we?’

She was running her fingertips hungrily over his bare back, her fingertips encountering the raised surface of the zigzagging scar for the first time. But he shifted his position slightly and she said nothing more about the disfigurement, concentrating instead on his husky question. ‘I’m not...sure,’ she answered.

‘Then how about I remind you, Princesa?’

It was a long time since he’d called her that but this time the nickname was underpinned with a harshness which had never been there before, which in any other circumstance might have made Emily think twice about what was about to happen. But it was already too late. He was licking her breasts and her blood was pulsing warm and thick as she felt the experienced flick of his fingers against her clitoris. She heard him murmur his approval and then her thighs were spreading open as if no power in the world could stop them and he was entering her. He was pushing deep inside the slickness which awaited him and filling her completely. Emily moaned and instantly he stilled, his eyes narrowed in question.

‘It’s good?’

Wordlessly, she nodded. Of course it was. It was better than good. Better than anything she’d ever experienced—but it was a shock, too. Alejandro had always been big—not that she had anyone to compare him to, of course—but their first time together had been so loaded with emotion that she hadn’t had time to appreciate it properly in the way she could now. But she couldn’t tell him that. She didn’t want to stir up bad feelings about the past and neither did she want to confess to another possibility—that her body had become unaccommodating and tight in all the intervening years, because it had been so starved of pleasure.

So she put her hands on his shoulders and sucked in a deep breath. ‘Is it good for you, too?’

‘Oh, Emily. You have no idea,’ he groaned in response. ‘Especially when you play the part of breathless little innocent so effectively. Aren’t you a little old to be cast in the role of disingenuous virgin?’

For a moment she scented more danger. He thought she was playing games, or acting a part? That this was just a cynical approach she was adopting to inject a little excitement into their lovemaking? She wanted to tell him the truth—that this was so beautiful that deep down she did feel as innocent as the first time she’d lain with him. But she guessed he would dismiss such an idealistic sentiment and, anyway, her thoughts were blotted out by his next potent thrust.

At first his movements were slow—as if he was determined to emphasise how utterly he filled her—and Emily was taken aback by how intimate it felt. One flesh, she found herself thinking. Was that why those stupid tears began to prick at the backs of her eyes, forcing her to blink them away before he saw them? Why she turned her face to search for his kiss, only to realise that he was far more intent on bending his dark head to lick at her nipple? But then his movements grew more rapid as he shafted up deep inside her and all her doubts were put on the back burner because suddenly Emily was rediscovering sex—big time. His body was hard and powerful. His skin felt like satin against her fingers and she was like a woman possessed as she writhed beneath him, moaning things like, ‘Please...’ and, ‘Oh, yes...’ and, ‘Yes, that... That.’

‘You mean like that?’ he clarified, withdrawing almost completely before driving up deep inside her again.

‘Yes...yes...’ she breathed. ‘Exactly like that.’

And then it happened, almost without her expecting it—that heady rush of promise which morphed into perfect bliss as her world exploded into countless dazzling stars. Emily clung to him, crying out helplessly as her body spasmed around him before she heard his own shuddered moan and felt his driving jerks as he spilled his seed inside her. Spent, he collapsed on top of her and those next few moments were the closest thing to sanctuary she’d felt in a long time. For a while she just lay there, cocooned in his strong arms, feeling as if she were floating on some warm and rippling sea until Alejandro’s words shot into her thoughts and scattered them like a spray gun.

‘I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be quite so easy,’ he remarked.

‘Easy?’ she echoed, wondering if she might have misheard him.

‘Mmm...’ He turned onto his side and stared at her, his green gaze smoky and assessing. ‘But I’d forgotten how hot you were. Hotter than any other woman I’ve ever had.’

Emily didn’t answer straight away. You don’t have to answer, she told herself. You’re not on some game show with the clock ticking away. You can take as much time as you want. All the time you need to get your head around the fact that you have just slept with your boss.

Unwrapping his arm from where it was coiled so comfortably around her waist, Emily rolled away from him. It would be tempting to jump up from the bed. To grab her clothes and rush from the room—maybe even slamming the door behind her so that it echoed through the vast penthouse suite. But that wouldn’t be the behaviour of someone who was mature and responsible, would it? It was difficult to come back from something as dramatic as that, and didn’t they need to move on—or not—from what had just happened? He thought she was easy—and could she really blame him? So why not go along with that? Let him think she was sexually rapacious, just as he was. Especially since the alternative was to wail and wonder why she’d done such a stupid thing, which ran the risk of making her look both reckless and indiscriminate.

So she fanned her face exaggeratedly with her hand. ‘Thanks.’

He looked momentarily perplexed. ‘Thanks?’

‘Mmm... It’s always nice to be described as hot,’ she remarked blandly, seeing his face inexplicably darken in response. ‘Quite literally in this case. Boiling hot, actually—despite the air conditioning. Any chance you could rustle us up a glass of water, Alej?’

He looked outraged—there was no other word for it—but Emily told herself she didn’t care. What good would it do her if she fell back into his arms and told him that she was only ever hot with him? Such an admission would show weakness and she’d already made herself weak enough in his eyes.

But despite his obvious disapproval of her question, he nonetheless accommodated her wishes, sauntering out of the bedroom in all his glorious nakedness and giving her time to snap the light on and scramble back into her clothes. He seemed unsurprised to find her fully dressed when he returned minutes later with the requested water and—rather disturbingly—the notebook she’d been scribbling in earlier, just before her jet-lagged state had caused her to pass out on the sofa. He yawned and positioned himself back on the bed, waiting until she had gulped down half a glass of water before holding the notebook aloft.

‘What’s this?’ he questioned, his finger jabbing at the grid diagrams she had drawn earlier.

She shrugged. ‘It’s life-coach stuff I use when I’m working with new clients. You know. All about reality and perception and fixed ideas. I’m guessing you probably don’t want a complete breakdown of the meanings?’

‘You’re right. I don’t.’

‘Mainly it’s about what it is possible to change in your life,’ she elaborated, as still he continued to look at her enquiringly.

‘And the M?’

There was a pause as Emily felt her cheeks growing warm. ‘You’re contemplating a massive change and you probably need to simplify your life. Stop jet-setting quite so much and make more of a base in Argentina, especially as that’s going to be your home when you go into politics.’

‘I asked about the M,’ he emphasised silkily. ‘Which you have circled and underlined several times.’

The hotness in her cheeks increased. ‘Part of your “problem”—which plenty of men wouldn’t actually define as a problem—’

‘Get to the point, Emily.’

She drew in a deep breath and watched his gaze flicker to the wobble of her breasts. ‘Is the woman thing.’

‘The woman thing?’

She nodded. ‘That’s what lets you down every time. Not just the book Colette wrote, which was probably motivated by bitterness that you didn’t marry her. But also the way you seem to attract women like a magnet. Like Marcus said earlier—you can’t seem to help it. The online edition of one of the Australian tabloids is even carrying a photo of you taken with Kate Palmer tonight—there must have been a long-lens photographer at the harbour. And the author who took a surreptitious selfie at the same party has already put it up on her social-media page—and she’s got over thirty-one thousand followers.’

‘None of this is new,’ he pointed out.

‘No, but it only fuels your reputation as a commitment-phobe who plays the field like mad—and those are not the kind of qualities which ordinary people want from the person who is representing them.’ Somehow she met his bright green gaze without flinching. ‘The M stands for marriage. You need a wife, Alej. And before you look at me that way, why not? Would-be politicians have been making judicious marriages since the beginning of time. It would be an instant badge of commitment and respectability which would only help your career.’

‘But I don’t want to get married,’ he observed caustically. ‘I never did. Not with Colette. Not with anyone.’

She shrugged. ‘And that’s your dilemma.’

Yes.

His dilemma.

Or maybe not.

From his vantage point on top of the rumpled bedclothes, Alej studied the woman with whom he’d just had the best sex he could remember, and yet here she was calmly discussing his marriage to someone else. A wave of something like bitterness ran through him. Was she really such a hard-hearted bitch that she could coolly advocate he go and find himself a wife and not really care? Did he mean so little to her? Of course he did. Nothing new there, either. Yet the irony of the situation didn’t escape him because deep down he knew that if she’d displayed sadness and resentment at the thought of him marrying someone else, she wouldn’t have seen him for dust.

But maybe Emily was exactly what he needed. For now, at least. He’d thought she’d cared for him all those years ago but he’d been wrong, just as he’d been wrong about so many things. But back then she had been barely eighteen with the world at her feet. She must have believed anything was possible and had since discovered that it was not. Because surely it hadn’t been her life’s ambition to end up running some crummy little business and living in a tiny London apartment. Didn’t she miss the riches she had grown up with while she lived in Argentina and the kind of lifestyle which came as part of the whole package?

Even more pertinently, wouldn’t she have learnt by now that no other man came close to him when it came to giving her physical pleasure? Her gushing and instant response whenever he touched her would seem to indicate so. Wouldn’t marriage add a deliciously dark element to the revenge he was determined to extract from her? Wouldn’t it ensure she would never really forget him, because what woman ever forgot the man who slid a golden ring onto her finger?

‘I think you could be right, Emily,’ he said, easing himself up on the bank of squashed pillows and slanting her a slow smile. ‘I need a temporary bride—and you are the obvious candidate.’