‘Tell me that you’re kidding?’ Rafael exploded with incredulity.
‘Why would I be kidding?’ She shrugged and made to look away but he held her chin in his hand again and she shot him a sullen look from under her lashes.
‘We’re here,’ he gritted, ‘but this conversation isn’t finished.’
His driver disappeared as seamlessly as he had appeared and they entered his sprawling place in silence. She could feel the simmering tension inside him and defiantly told herself that it was a perfectly reasonable question to have asked, given the circumstances of their relationship.
He slammed on lights and then spun around to look at her.
‘Sorry,’ Sofia said stiffly, keeping her distance, ‘I don’t know what made me ask that. None of my business, as I’m sure you’ll rush in and point out, and if you don’t mind I think I’ll go upstairs and go to sleep. Will I be in the same room as before?’
‘Apology not accepted,’ Rafael returned, standing with his arms folded, as immovable as the rock of Gibraltar and as menacing as a bouncer facing down a vagrant outside a posh night club.
‘Actually, I don’t feel too good.’
‘Too bad.’
‘I need to have some water. I need to sit down.’
‘You can have a bottle of water and sit by all means, but you’re going to tell me what the hell you meant by that.’
‘Or else what?’
She looked at him and felt a slow burn as his dark eyes travelled from her mulish gaze to her parted lips.
‘I just think I have a right to know who to steer clear of. Those women at the restaurant were stunning.’ She ploughed on recklessly. ‘Who knows if you’re having fun with one of them?’
‘They’re wives of friends. Jesus, this is getting more unbelievable by the second.’
‘Since when does that make a difference? I’ve had married men hit on me in the past.’
‘Don’t go there, Sofia...’
Suddenly the fight went out of her. Her stomach was back to churning and she could feel a headache coming on.
‘I don’t want to have this conversation, Rafael.’ Her voice hitched and she stared down at the expensive shoes. ‘I feel sick and tired and...overwhelmed...’
‘You have an annoying habit of starting conversations you don’t want to finish.’ He raked his hands through his hair then, without warning and just as she was about to take a few tottering steps towards the kitchen, her mouth as dry as the desert, he covered the distance between them.
She froze, and then promptly un-froze when he scooped her up in one easy movement, carrying her towards the kitchen and kicking the door open with his foot while she wriggled and tried to disentangle herself.
‘Keep still,’ he warned.
‘Put me down!’
‘I intend to.’
He deposited her on one of the kitchen chairs and then stood back as she straightened herself with one shaking hand, barely able to meet his eyes.
‘Why did you do that?’ she asked accusingly.
‘Because I got fed up having a long, going-nowhere conversation in my hall with you.’ He turned and fetched her a glass of water. ‘Drink this. You need to hydrate. Do you want something to eat?’
‘Something like what?’
‘God, you’re the most difficult woman I have ever met in my entire life.’
‘Well, that doesn’t augur well for this marriage of ours!’ Sofia couldn’t contain her sarcasm and he suddenly grinned. Her pulse-rate accelerated into overdrive.
‘Like I said, the one thing it ain’t going to be is boring,’ he murmured. ‘Now, stop talking for five seconds and listen to me carefully. I don’t have relationships with married women. Never. I don’t care how many of them throw themselves at me and I don’t care what they look like. A married woman is out of bounds.’
‘But you would be happy to have an affair with another woman even though you’re married!’ Sofia threw at him for the sake of argument, promptly forgetting all good intentions to keep things cool and civil between them without emotions of any sort getting in the way.
‘As we both know, this isn’t the real deal. If it were, then there is no way I would go near any woman. Believe it or not, I may have relationships but I like to stick to one woman at a time. You look sick. You need to go to bed.’
‘I drank too much,’ Sofia conceded. She stood up but her legs were suddenly wobbly and she had to stand still to gather herself for a few moments. She knew that he was looking at her, so cool, so urbane, so sophisticated. So much the opposite to her.
And just like that the tears she had been desperately trying to hold back began to leak out.
Horrified, she stared down at her feet and clenched her jaw.
‘You’re...crying. Are you crying, Sofia?’
Sofia shrugged. She didn’t trust herself to speak but she heard him curse softly under his breath and then he was lifting her up again, as if sweeping her off her feet was becoming a habit, and this time she didn’t bother to put up a fight.
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Her dress was riding up, exposing her thighs, but she couldn’t be bothered to redress that by trying to tug it down.
Instead, she kept her eyes shut while he laid her very gently on the bed, then she immediately turned away and buried her head in the crook of her arms.
‘Wait right there,’ Rafael said gruffly. ‘I’m going to bring up a jug of water and some tablets. And something to eat. You need to put food into your stomach. Don’t move.’
How long was he gone?
She didn’t know. She was aware of him putting the water on the table by the bed, and after a while she heard the sound of the door shutting quietly. When she peeped out, it was to find that an inelegantly enormous door-wedge of a sandwich had been made for her, which made her smile.
It was man fare, but it tasted wonderful.
And then, still feeling sick but so, so relieved to be in bed, she found herself drifting off.
The day she had been dreading was at an end. She would put all thoughts of her father on hold for the moment. She would definitely put all thoughts of Rafael on hold! Although, she felt herself smiling again at the sandwich he had made for her, stuffed full of cheese and ham but lacking everything else.
She fell asleep to the throbbing of a dull headache.
When she next opened her eyes, the room was pitch-black and it took her a few seconds to surface and remember exactly where she was.
In Rafael’s house, with the duvet cover loosely draped over her, because she had obviously kicked it off at some point during the night.
Her half-closed eyes peeped from beneath the duvet but she was already registering what she wanted her startled eyes to confirm. The lilac dress had been removed, as had the shoes she’d been wearing when she had been deposited on the bed.
No bra! But then, she hadn’t been wearing one. Her underwear, the lacy thong for her eyes only, was still there...
With a groan of horror, she began sitting up...and there he was, a dark shadow in a chair next to the bed.
He’d dragged over the chair by the dressing table and positioned it so that he could stretch out his long legs. His hands were linked loosely and his computer was on the ground next to him. She could see the dull flicker of the screen, which had gone into sleep mode.
Was he asleep? Awake? Something in the middle? He’d changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
She’d begun to sink back under the duvet when, as calmly as if he were continuing a conversation they’d only just been having, ‘You’re awake. How’s the head?’
‘What are you doing here?’ She shuffled into an upright position, making sure that the duvet was tightly tucked around her, although she could feel the press of her bare breasts against the silky cotton.
‘You were sick
during the night.’
‘I wasn’t!’ Had she been?
‘Too much alcohol. Happens.’
‘You took my dress off.’
‘I took your dress off. One of us had to do it and it wasn’t going to be you.’
‘How could you?’ she half-sobbed.
‘Sofia, you were half-asleep and clawing at it because you were uncomfortable. No one can sleep in something that’s as close-fitting as a second skin. You’re probably embarrassed, but you don’t have to be. You’re not the first naked woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.’
Sofia drew her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them, wishing, more than anything else that he would just disappear—poof, like a genie heading back into the bottle where he belonged.
It was okay for him—so she was just another half-naked female body!—but it wasn’t okay for her. This wasn’t supposed to have happened.
‘I’ve never felt so mortified in my entire life!’ she all but wailed, then froze as he levered himself up and moved to sit on the bed right next to her.
‘I didn’t lay a finger on you,’ Rafael said roughly. He shifted and she drew back.
‘That’s not the point. I wouldn’t have expected you to. It’s not as though you’re attracted to me. But I just hate the thought of...of...’
‘Not attracted to you?’ Rafael laughed shortly. ‘What ever gave you that idea? And you don’t get to clam up on me this time and go into hiding because you’re finding the conversation you started a little uncomfortable. Have you looked in a mirror recently, Sofia? Do you have any idea how sexy you are? Especially in a dress that was made to be torn off.’
‘Made to be torn off?’
‘I saw you walking towards me and I discovered what it felt like to forget how to breathe.’
‘You don’t mean that!’
‘I was attracted to you the first time I ever set eyes on you.’
‘You weren’t, Rafael.’ Her nerves were racing and she knew, she knew, that she shouldn’t be having this conversation, because it was as dangerous as throwing a match onto tinder, but she couldn’t help herself.
And she liked it. Liked hearing what he was saying.
‘You went out to Argentina to check me out, to see whether I would pass muster for the rich father I’d never met. You pretended...’
‘Pretended that I was attracted to you? Hate to burst the bubble of self-righteous hostility, Sofia, but I’m not that good an actor.’
Sofia could barely breathe. She was spellbound by the intense glitter in his dark eyes, mesmerised by his softly spoken words. She didn’t know whether he was saying stuff he wanted her to hear, but why would he do that? What would be the point?
‘You made sure to tell me that this wasn’t a real relationship,’ she pointed out accusingly. ‘You made sure to let me know that you intended to be off doing your own thing while I pottered and did whatever I fancied doing for a year, buried in a cottage in the countryside.’
‘Think that was because I didn’t want you in my bed?’ He leapt to his feet, leaving a cold, empty space next to her on the bed. She watched as he restlessly paced the room when the only thing she wanted was for him to return to the bed. Her head was as clear as a bell but the darkness gave her courage to say what was on her mind. She felt a surge of reckless, heady daring. When she thought about what he’d said, everything inside her melted.
Eyes wide, she followed his jerky progress through the room. When he finally came to stand in front of her, she didn’t huddle into a defensive ball. Instead, she stared right back up at him with a degree of boldness she hadn’t known she possessed.
So he fancied her. So she hadn’t been the only one to feel that fierce, uncontrollable attraction.
‘What else was I supposed to think?’
‘This conversation is...’ He shook his head and looked away for a few seconds, but his eyes swerved back to her upturned face.
‘Is what?’
‘Dangerous,’ Rafael said softly.
‘Okay.’
‘Okay? Is that all you have to say on the matter?’
‘I feel better about you taking the dress off.’
‘Because you wanted it off or because you now know that you turn me on?’ He didn’t take his eyes off her when he said that.
Heat crawled through her. She felt the pinch of her nipples and a spreading dampness between her thighs. She’d never wanted anyone as much as she wanted him, right here and right now. But she just didn’t have it in her to take that final step and brazenly invite him into bed with her.
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.
‘Sofia, I made a conscious decision not to do anything about the attraction I felt for you because I didn’t want to complicate an already complicated situation.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you think I mean? I wanted this to be about business. Emotions have a way of stealing the show and never in a good way.’
‘My emotions or yours?’
‘I don’t have emotions.’
Sofia opened her mouth to tell him that he surely didn’t mean that but then realised that he really did. Or that was what he told himself, because when she thought about how devoted he was to his godfather she knew that he was far from being the unemotional hard case he purported to be.
So what did they have here? Stripped down to the bare bones, what they had was a physical attraction that was as strong as a riptide, as darkly powerful as the swirl of a dangerous whirlpool in the middle of still waters.
‘Nor do I,’ she said boldly. ‘Not for you, at any rate.’
‘What are you trying to tell me, cara?’ Rafael asked thickly.
‘I’m trying to tell you that I wish you’d come sit on the bed again.’
Rafael looked at her for a long moment and she wondered whether, having reached a crossroads, he would now turn his back and walk away, stick to following his head.
She’d come so close to opening herself up to him physically when they had been out in Argentina before the truth had spilled out. She was at that point again, all cards on the table.
He slowly moved towards her and she felt her breathing slow as she watched him. So beautiful, so graceful, so mesmerisingly alpha male.
Her eyes tracked a leisurely route from face to torso and then down to where his jeans pulled tightly across his thighs.
‘You’re playing with fire,’ he said shakily, but his hand was resting lightly on the zipper of his trousers and she stared, fascinated, as he undid it.
She didn’t want to give herself time to think or even to remember that this was not the sort of thing she’d ever done before. She didn’t want her head to start following his lead and take control of the situation.
She didn’t want her own negative experiences in the past to determine what happened at this precise moment in time.
‘Maybe I am,’ she agreed in a low voice. ‘I’ve never played with fire before.’
‘Never?’ He smiled, lowered himself next to her on the bed and stretched out, arms folded behind his head. Sofia remained upright but shifted so that she was looking down at him. His gaze slid across to her and stayed there.
‘No. Have you?’
‘Once. Doesn’t everyone need a learning curve? Let me see you.’
‘See me?’
‘You know what I mean.’ He trailed a finger along her collar bone, beneath which the duvet was still pulled up tightly, shielding her naked breasts.
She slowly let the duvet drop and watched with increasingly heated excitement as Rafael sat up, barely breathing, eyes trained on her nakedness.
Her nipples were pink and swollen and she released a long sigh, relaxing her whole body into his caress as he manoeuvred himself into a position from which he could take one bud into his mouth and gently suck on it.
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He propelled her back so that she was lying flat, then pinned her hands above her head and straddled her.
‘You have no idea how much you turn me on,’ Rafael offered huskily. ‘Everything about the way you look is a turn-on. The second I laid eyes on you, every other woman on the face of the earth faded into insignificance.’
Sweet words, she thought helplessly, but so meaningless in the context of what we have. But what’s the point of analysing? When we’re bound together through convenience and destined to part company before the ink on the marriage certificate has time to dry?
Meaningful or meaningless...did either matter when the physical need he aroused was so explosive?
She turned him on and that thought was as powerful as a rush of pure adrenaline...
She moved sinuously against the sheet and felt a rush of feminine empowerment as his nostrils flared and his eyes darkened in the grip of lust.
When he straightened to sling his legs over the side of the bed, he left behind a cool void that made her want to touch herself.
Should she tell him that she was not going to be able to live up to all those racy model types he dated? She’d known from the minute she’d begun developing what it felt like to have boys drool over her. Her first girlish crush had been a mistake, and her experiences after that had rammed home to her that the only reason men looked twice at her was because of her appearance. She hadn’t asked to be born sexy, but she had been, and she had grown wary over the years. So wary that the touching and experimentation that should have been part and parcel of entering adulthood had passed her by.
The constant travel hadn’t helped matters either.
Now, here she was, and he was in for a shock if he expected high jinks between the sheets.
Caught up in her thoughts, she gasped when she realised the T-shirt had been removed and the jeans were being dispatched to join it on the ground.
The bulge of his erection distorting the shape of his boxers brought hectic colour to her cheeks and she went as stiff as a board as he joined her on the bed under the duvet, pulling it up so that it covered both of them, drawing her close so that her breasts were squashed against his chest.
Shock Marriage for the Powerful Spaniard Page 10