Wed for the Spaniard's Redemption

by Chantelle Shaw

  And then his mouth was on hers once more and he was kissing her—unhurriedly at first, and then with increasing passion when she responded to him with a fervency that made him groan. His pressed his lips to the pulse beating erratically at the base of her throat before he kissed his way along her collarbone.

  Juliet felt his hand on the bare skin of her back and only realised that he had tugged the zip of her dress down when the strapless bodice fell away from her breasts. The air felt cool on her heated skin and her nipples swelled and hardened beneath Rafael’s avid gaze.

  ‘No bra,’ he said thickly.

  ‘I’m too small to need one.’ Her tiny breasts were a constant regret to her.

  ‘You’re perfect.’

  Dark colour ran along his cheekbones when he cupped one breast in his hand. Reaction shivered through Juliet as he rubbed his thumb-pad across her nipple, teasing the sensitive peak so that she made a choked sound. The pleasure of his touch was so intense that she could not control the little quivers that ran through her. Rafael was a sorcerer and she was spellbound by his magic.

  She held her breath when he lowered his head to her breast. Moonbeams danced across his dark hair and Juliet sank her fingers into the rich silk as he captured her nipple between his lips and flicked his tongue back and forth over the dusky tip.

  Darts of pleasure shot down to the molten place between her legs. Her ability to think was lost in the wondrous sensations he was creating with his mouth and his hands on her body. She was startled to realise that the husky moans that bounced off the walls of the summerhouse were coming from her throat.

  Rafael pulled the bodice of her dress down so that it bunched at her waist and then leaned his head against the back of the sofa, his eyes glittering as he subjected her to a slow appraisal.

  ‘You are exquisite,’ he said, in a rough tone that made Juliet ache everywhere.

  He cradled the pale mounds of her breasts in his big hands and played with her reddened nipples. The ache deep in her pelvis became an insistent throb. When he shifted their position, so that she was lying on the sofa and he was stretched out on top of her, she gloried in his weight pressing her into the cushions. He nudged her legs apart with his thigh and she felt the hard length of his arousal press against her feminine core through the dress.

  And all the while Rafael kissed her with a mastery that made her shake with an incandescent need that blazed and burned until she was only aware of the heat of his body and the sweep of his hands across her skin.

  He lifted the hem of her dress and skimmed a path up to her thighs, tracing his fingers over her tiny lace panties. Lost in the sheer delight of his caresses, Juliet held her breath and willed him to move his fingers higher. She shuddered when he dipped into the waistband of her knickers and stroked his finger lightly over her moist opening.

  It was a very long time since a man had touched her so intimately. There had only been one other man before Rafael and she didn’t want to think about Bryan and her solitary, uninspiring experience of sex with him. But the word floated in her mind. Was that where this was leading? Did Rafael want to have sex with her?

  He was as hard as a spike beneath his trousers, and she imagined him pulling his zip down and pushing the panel of her panties aside so that he could drive his erection into her.

  She was eager for him to make love to her. But like this? A frantic coupling in the dark in a glorified shed before they returned to his grandfather’s birthday party?

  More importantly, she wasn’t prepared for sex—and while she had forgiven herself for one accidental pregnancy, two would be utterly irresponsible.

  Even so, the temptation she felt to allow Rafael to continue caressing her with his clever fingers was strong, and her body throbbed with unfulfilled longing when she tore her mouth from his.

  * * *

  ‘I’m not on the pill.’

  Rafael froze as Juliet’s words kick-started his brain, which until that moment had been clouded in a red haze of desire. His first reaction was frustration that he wasn’t carrying condoms in his jacket, as he invariably did on evenings out in London. He saw nothing wrong with one-night stands if both parties understood the rules.

  But Juliet was not a woman he had picked up in a nightclub—she was his wife. In name only. That was what he had assured her when he’d suggested their marriage deal, and in all honesty he hadn’t expected that he would want to take his unappealing bride who had behaved like a sullen teenager at the register office to bed.

  He had been blind to her beauty and unaware of her vulnerability, which was evident now in her wary expression as he lifted himself off her and offered her his hand to pull her up from the sofa. The shadowy interior of the summerhouse could not disguise the flush that spread over her cheeks as she dragged the top of her dress up to cover her breasts.

  ‘Will you zip me up?’

  She presented her back to him and his stomach clenched as he pushed her silky fall of hair over one fragile shoulder so that he could fasten her dress.

  ‘I can’t face going back to the ballroom,’ she said in low voice.

  Rafael studied her kiss-stung lips and the betraying hard points of her nipples, visible through her dress, and it occurred to him that his grandfather would have no doubt that his marriage was real if he saw evidence that he and Juliet had slipped away from the party to indulge their passion for each other.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to humiliate her in front of his family, who had already judged her so harshly because of their misplaced belief that money and an aristocratic lineage made them better than a cash-strapped single mother.

  He looked away from her, struggling to bring his rampant libido under control. ‘You can go into the house via the kitchens and use the back staircase to go up to the apartment so that no one sees you. I’ll say that you were feeling unwell and have gone to bed.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Instead of walking out of the summerhouse when he opened the door she stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his cheek. His pulse kicked when he breathed in her feminine fragrance—perfume mixed with something muskier that clung to his fingers—and he recognised the scent of her womanhood.

  ‘Rafael...’

  He did not want a post mortem on what had happened between them. What definitely should not have happened and what must not happen again.

  ‘I should get back to the party before my absence is noticed,’ he said.

  The flash of hurt in her eyes at his abrupt tone convinced him that he should have listened to the warning voice in his head when she’d fled from the party and he had chased after her.

  * * *

  Rafael stayed in the ballroom until after midnight, when the last of the guests departed. His grandfather had retired to bed some time ago and it had given him an excuse to remain downstairs and act as host.

  When he entered his private suite he headed straight for his study and spent another half an hour there, nursing a large cognac. Juliet would surely be asleep by now, he thought as he entered his dressing room and threw a pile of bedding onto the sofa.

  His cufflinks hit the dressing table, followed by his tie. He shrugged out of his shirt and undid his trousers, wincing when the zip brushed against his manhood, which was still semi-aroused several hours after he’d nearly lost his sanity in the summerhouse.

  ‘I only discovered today that this is where you have been sleeping.’

  Juliet’s soft voice came from the doorway between the master bedroom and the dressing room.

  ‘I assumed there were two bedrooms in the apartment and you were using the second one.’

  He glanced at her and felt his blood rush south, his erection instantly and embarrassingly hard. Juliet had shimmered in the sequined ball gown, but in a black satin chemise with semi-transparent lace bra cups that exposed a tantalising amount of her small but perfectly fo
rmed breasts she simmered with sensual promise.

  Once again he wondered how he could have dismissed her as drab. The uncomfortable truth was that he had seen what he’d wanted to see, Rafael acknowledged. The irony of finding himself fiercely attracted to his little sexpot wife wasn’t lost on him.

  ‘There is only a master bedroom in my private suite. Obviously the house has other bedrooms—twenty-five, I believe, although I have never counted them. But we need Hector to think we are sleeping together.’

  ‘I can’t imagine that sofa is comfortable for someone of your height...’ Juliet hesitated and a rosy stain ran under her skin. ‘We could share the bed. I mean—it’s huge. Big enough for us to keep to our own sides of the mattress...unless you want...’

  Her voice trailed off and the shy look she gave him very nearly made him forget that she was off limits.

  ‘No,’ he said curtly. ‘That would be a bad idea.’

  The pink flush on her cheeks spilled down her throat and across the upper slopes of her breasts, tempting him to rip the confection of satin and lace from her body, sweep her into his arms and carry her through to the bedroom so that they could both enjoy that big, soft bed—but not to sleep in.

  He knew it was what Juliet wanted him to do. Her pupils were dilated so that her eyes were dark discs rimmed with brilliant blue. But he suspected that she wanted her sexual gratification wrapped up in a romantic ideal that he was incapable of giving her.

  ‘I didn’t get the impression earlier tonight that you thought our sharing a bed was a bad idea.’ Her tongue darted out across her bottom lip. ‘In the summerhouse—’

  ‘What happened between us there was a mistake.’

  ‘You wanted to make love...and so did I.’

  Dios, why not take what she was offering and satisfy his libido? Rafael asked himself. If Juliet expected hearts and flowers that was her problem.

  But the nagging voice of his conscience insisted that he was responsible for her. She had no idea what he was. He had been born in the gutter and had grown up in a slum where every day had been a fight to survive. He knew how to keep himself together, but that was all he knew. There was nothing inside him but darkness and ruthless ambition.

  Juliet had lost her parents when she had still been a teenager and he sensed her loneliness. She was looking for love, affection, caring—but he could not give her those things. How could he when he had never experienced them?

  ‘I wanted sex,’ he told her bluntly. ‘To scratch an itch. And you happened to be there.’

  The colour drained from her face as quickly as it had appeared. ‘So you’re saying that any woman would have done?’

  Her eyelashes swept down, but not before he’d seen a wounded expression that gutted him.

  Juliet was silent for a moment before her chin came up. Rafael though of all the other times she had picked herself up after life had delivered another knockout blow. Admiration curled through him when she met his gaze steadily. Only the faint tremor of her bottom lip betrayed her hurt, but she quickly firmed her mouth.

  ‘Then there is nothing more to be said. But it’s ridiculous for you to sleep on the sofa when I am so much smaller than you and will fit on it much better. You can have the bed and I’ll sleep here.’

  She turned towards the sofa and started to make up a bed. When she bent over to smooth out the sheet her satin chemise pulled tight across her pert derrière. Rafael swore beneath his breath. She would tempt a saint, let alone the sinner he knew himself to be.

  He snatched a pillow out of her hands. ‘Leave it,’ he said savagely. ‘Go—now—before I do something that we will both regret.’

  Juliet’s eyes widened. But she must have realised that his self-control was at breaking point and without another word she sped back into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

  * * *

  Juliet put off taking Poppy down to breakfast for as long as possible. She knew that Rafael was in the habit of drinking several cups of black coffee in the morning, while he sat on the balcony and glanced at the day’s newspapers before he left for work at the Casillas Group’s offices in Valencia. But she couldn’t face seeing him.

  She was mortified at the memory of how she had thrown herself at him and he had rejected her, so she read Poppy two more stories until the little girl hopped off the bed and ran over to the door.

  ‘I’m hungry, Mummy.’

  It was past nine o’clock—he must have left by now. ‘Okay, munchkin. I’m coming.’

  She followed her daughter into the kitchen and her heart leapt into her mouth when she saw that the bi-fold doors were open and Rafael was outside, sitting at the table with a newspaper propped against the coffee jug.

  Poppy greeted him excitedly and climbed onto the chair beside him. ‘Raf, will you read me The Three Bears?’

  ‘Rafael has to go to work,’ Juliet said quickly. She avoided his gaze and fussed over Poppy’s breakfast. ‘Would you like a peach with your yoghurt?’

  ‘I’m not going to work today,’ he told Poppy. ‘And I’ll read the book if you eat all your breakfast.’ He picked up the cafetière and looked at Juliet. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly, feeling her colour rise.

  Her unsubtle suggestion that they should share the bed came back to mock her. She wished she didn’t blush so easily. She wished Rafael wasn’t wearing sunglasses which hid his expression. She wished she could prevent her eyes from straying to his broad chest and the denim shirt that was open at the neck, revealing a sprinkling of black chest hair.

  Thankful that her body’s reaction to his sexual magnetism was hidden beneath her robe, she hugged her coffee cup like a security blanket while Poppy chatted away to Rafael. His patience with the little girl surprised Juliet again, and made her wonder why he had been so vehement when he’d said he did not want children of his own.

  She looked up when the nanny stepped onto the balcony. ‘Would Poppy like to come and play with the twins in the garden?’

  ‘Keep your sun hat on,’ Juliet instructed as Poppy trotted off with Elvira.

  She really did not want to be alone with Rafael, but just as she was about to rise from the table he pushed a plate of churros—little sticks of dough which had been deep-fried and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon—towards her.

  ‘You should have some breakfast.’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ she muttered, her chair scraping on the stone floor as she stood up.

  ‘Sit down and eat.’

  Rafael’s exasperated tone made Juliet feel like a naughty child. After a moment’s hesitation she sank back down onto her chair.

  ‘Sulking is not an attractive trait,’ he drawled.

  ‘I am not sulking.’ Releasing her breath slowly helped to control her temper. ‘I’m tired of the games you play. You blow hot and cold. I don’t know where I am with you, or what you want from me, and frankly I don’t care.’

  She forced herself to look directly at him and ignored the leap of her pulse. Okay, he was so gorgeous that her heart did a flip every time she looked at him. Get over it, she told herself. He was also unbelievably arrogant and had an ego the size of a planet.

  To her surprise, Rafael looked away first. ‘We are having lunch with my mother and her husband Alberto. My dear mamà is desperate for my grandfather to choose my half-brother as his successor and she will do anything to discredit me.’ His voice was emotionless. ‘Delfina must not suspect that our marriage is fake.’

  ‘I’ll do my best to pretend that I think you’re God’s gift to womankind,’ Juliet told him flippantly.

  His heavy brows lowered. ‘Do not test my patience, chiquita.’

  ‘Or you’ll do what?’

  He pulled off his sunglasses and scowled at her. But the hard gleam in his eyes was not temper but desire, and the heat of it scorched Juliet even as it confus
ed her.

  Last night he had told her that he’d wanted sex with any woman who was conveniently to hand and it had happened to be her. But he was staring at her now as if she really was his fantasy woman—as if she was the only woman he wanted.

  The air was so still that she could hear the rasp of his breath and the unevenness of hers. Awareness prickled across her skin. Sexual tension sizzled between them and suddenly she was afraid—not of Rafael, but of the way he made her feel. The way she made him feel if the hunger in his gaze was real...

  She broke eye contact and took a deep breath. ‘You said we should get to know each other so that we can convince Hector and other members of your family that we are genuinely a couple. I’ve told you a lot about me, but I know virtually nothing about you.’

  He put his shades on again and leaned back in his chair, watching her. She had no idea what he was thinking.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Why is there such animosity between you and your mother?’

  He shrugged. ‘A clash of personalities.’

  ‘I assume your parents are divorced as your mother is remarried and you have a half-brother? Do you keep in contact with your father?’

  ‘No.’

  The word shot from him like a bullet.

  Juliet said nothing, and he must have realised that she was waiting for him to continue because after a moment he muttered, ‘My father died years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ he said harshly. ‘I’m not.’

  She could not hide her shock. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say about your own father.’

  ‘He was a terrible man.’

  Rafael shoved a hand through his hair, and although Juliet could not see the expression in his eyes she sensed that he was agitated—something she would not have believed possible for a man whose self-control was formidable.