Exotic Affairs: The Mistress BrideThe Spanish HusbandThe Bellini Bride

by Michelle Reid

‘It means I’ve only been an entity in their lives for a few months.’ In profile she caught the slight hint of a grimace. ‘Since my father died, in fact,’ he tagged on, ‘and it was revealed that he had left his estates, his money and his title to the bastard son they’d all preferred to pretend never existed.’

  Sitting there beside him, Caroline took her time absorbing this information, because it helped explain so many other things about Luiz that had been a mystery to her until then.

  ‘Did you know about him?’ she questioned softly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Always?’

  ‘More or less,’ he replied. Economical and to the point.

  ‘But he never acknowledged you until recently,’ she therefore concluded.

  Luiz turned the car in through the gates of the villa and drove them beneath the arch into the courtyard. As the engine went silent neither tried to get out of the car. Caroline because she sensed there was more information coming, and Luiz because he was, she suspected, deciding how much he wanted to tell her.

  ‘He tried, once,’ he admitted. ‘Seven years ago, to be exact. But it—didn’t come to anything.’

  Seven years ago. Seven. Caroline’s lungs suddenly ceased to work. ‘Why?’ she whispered.

  Luiz turned to look at her, his closely guarded eyes flickering over her pale, tired, now wary face, and it was like being bathed in a shower of static. For, whatever he was thinking while he looked at her like that, she knew without a single doubt that his thoughts belonged seven years in his past and most definitely included her.

  Then he flicked his eyes away. ‘He wasn’t what I wanted,’ he declared, and opened his door and climbed out of the car, leaving Caroline to sit there, making what she liked of that potentially earth-shattering statement.

  Was he was talking about her? Was he talking about them? Was he talking about seven years ago, when he must have been here in Marbella to meet his father and had instead got himself involved with an English girl and her gambling father?

  Her door came open. Luiz bent down to take hold of her arm to help urge her out. She arrived beside him in a fresh state of high tension, trembling, afraid to dare let herself draw the most logical conclusions from her own shock questions.

  But Luiz couldn’t have meant that she had been what he had wanted seven years ago, she decided, or he would not have fleeced her father dry at the gambling tables the way he had done.

  ‘Come on,’ he murmured gruffly. ‘You’ve taken enough for one night.’

  Yes, he was right; she had taken enough, she agreed as a throbbing took up residence behind her eyes. She didn’t want to think any more, didn’t want to do anything but crawl into the nearest bed and fall asleep.

  The house was in darkness. Luiz touched a couple of wall switches as they entered and bathed the hallways in subdued light, then led the way to the bedroom.

  Once inside, she didn’t seem to have energy left to even undress herself. Luiz watched as she sank wearily down onto the edge of the bed and covered her aching eyes. After a few moments he moved across the room to begin opening cupboards, then she heard his footsteps crossing the cool marble floor towards her and something silky landed on her lap.

  Drawing her hand away from her eyes, she saw her own smoke-grey silk nightdress. With a cool disregard for her utter bone-weariness, he pulled her to her feet and aimed her towards the bathroom. ‘Wash, change,’ he instructed.

  She went on automatic pilot, and came back a few minutes later to find that Luiz was no longer there and that the bedcovers had been turned back ready for her to crawl between. She did so without hesitation. She was just sinking into a blissful oblivion when the door opened and he came back in.

  The distinctive clink of ice against glass brought her gritty eyes open in time to watch him place a jug of iced water on the bedside table, along with a couple of glasses, then he strode off to shut himself away behind the bathroom door without uttering a single word.

  Caroline lay there, not sure if she should be jumping up and making a run for it while she had the chance, or whether she should just give in to everything and let him do whatever it was he had planned to come next.

  She didn’t run, was too tired to run. And his next, was to reappear wearing nothing but a short black robe that exposed more of his tanned skin than it covered. He brought the clean scent of soap into the room with him—and a heightening of tension because he looked so damned sexually sure of himself, the way he obviously thought he could climb into this bed with her—and naked, by the looks of things!

  ‘I won’t sleep with you,’ she informed him flatly.

  He was hanging his clothes away in the cupboard when she spoke, but he paused, glanced at her. ‘Sleep as in sleep?’ he asked. ‘Or sleep as in make love?’

  ‘Both,’ she replied. ‘And I don’t know how you’ve got the arrogance to think that I would.’

  He didn’t answer that one straight away. Instead he went back to what he had been doing while Caroline followed his every movement with a heart that was trying hard not to beat any faster.

  It didn’t succeed very well—especially when he turned towards the bed and began to approach. And his face was wearing that hard, implacable look she didn’t like very much. Bending down, he braced himself with one hand on the pillow beside her head and one right by her curled-up knees. He looked very dark, very dangerous—and very, very serious.

  ‘Let’s just get a couple of things straight, Caroline,’ he suggested quietly and chillingly. ‘As far as I am concerned our deal still stands. If you decide not to go through with it, then you know the consequences. They haven’t changed because your father was taken ill,’ he pointed out. ‘But,’ he then added, ‘if you decide to keep your side of our bargain, then I will expect you to convince your father, and everyone else for that matter, that I am what you want more than anything else in your life. Understand?’

  Yes, she thought dully, she understood. Her choices here were still non-existent. ‘If anything happens to him,’ she said thickly, ‘you know I’ll never forgive you, don’t you?’

  He allowed himself a small grimace at that. ‘I think I had already worked that one out for myself,’ he replied dryly.

  ‘And if you try to touch me now, tonight, I shall probably be sick.’

  This time it wasn’t a grimace but a weary sigh, and his dark head came closer—close enough for her to feel the warmth of his breath caress her face. ‘If I touched you now, Caroline, you would probably burst into tears—then cling to me as though your life depended on it,’ he taunted softly.

  And to prove his point he brushed his mouth across her mouth. Sure enough, even as he straightened away, the tears were flooding into her eyes.

  And she didn’t feel sick. She felt—vulnerable. Too vulnerable to say another word as Luiz reached out to flick a switch that plunged the room into darkness. A few seconds later there was a rustling of fabric before she felt the other side of the bed depress.

  He didn’t attempt to reach for her, didn’t try to cross the invisible barrier that ran down the centre of the large bed. She fell asleep still struggling with a mix of emotions ranging from the bitterly resentful to the wretchedly disgusted with herself—because he was right, and she did want to cling to him.

  She awoke during what was left of the night, though she wasn’t sure what it was that had woken her. But in those few drifting moments before she remembered just where she was, she was only aware that she was lying on her stomach, sprawled diagonally across the bed, feeling so sublimely at peace with herself that it came as a shock to realise that not only was it Luiz’s bed she was lying in, but that her cheek was pressed up against his satin-smooth shoulder and her arm was lying across his hair-roughened chest.

  And, worse, he was awake. She knew he was because he was lying there on his back, letting his fingers stroke feather-light caresses along her resting arm. It wasn’t a sexual gesture; she knew that instinctively. More an absent stroking, as if he was l
ying there maybe staring into the darkness, lost deep in his own train of thought.

  It was nice.

  So nice in fact that she didn’t really want to end it. Though she didn’t know if she could simply go on lying here pretending to be asleep when she wasn’t, because already she could feel her pulse-rate picking up, feel the even tempo of her breathing alter.

  It was a long time since she’d last felt the warm strength of a man lying beside her. Seven long lonely years, in fact.

  And even then it had been this man. This same dark, sensually attractive man, with the same clean, slightly musky scent that was so intoxicatingly familiar.

  It seemed ironic now, to find herself in this situation when it was Luiz who had spoiled her from wanting to go to bed with another man.

  He released a small sigh. Caroline wished that she could do the same, only she knew it would give the game away. Then her defences would have to go back up, the tension would return, the need to keep on fighting him.

  The sigh escaped anyway, so she tried to use it as an excuse to slide away, as if in her sleep. Luiz moved at the same time, his fingers tangling with her fingers at the same moment that he rolled onto his side and towards her. She wasn’t quick enough to close her eyes, and it was like looking into a mirror and seeing her own sombre mood reflected back at her. Only his eyes were dark—as dark as the night still surrounding them.

  He wanted her, she could see the need written there. And the mirror was in knowing that she wanted him. Too late to pretend. Too late to run and hide. He knew just as she knew. It was that simple, that final.

  With the use of their tangled fingers he drew her up against him, and even as she felt the aroused heat of his body pushing gently against her his mouth was hungrily capturing hers.

  And—oh, but it felt good, like finding something she had been mourning the loss of for too, too long. And perhaps because she didn’t fight him, didn’t even try to protest, he savoured the kiss, almost as if he was feeling the same way about it as she.

  Or maybe it had more to do with the lateness of the hour, their slumberous state, the relaxed warmth with which they had come together, or even that all-encompassing darkness itself.

  Whatever, this kiss was like no other kiss they had ever shared. It was slow and it was deep and it was unbelievably tender. And it went on and on and on, until she felt as if she were floating, lost to a beauty so profound that she had to reach up with her free hand and cup his cheek—just to check that he wasn’t a mere figment of her dreamy imagination.

  Her fingers found lean, taut flesh that rasped lightly with a five o’clock shadow. She touched his cheekbone, his nose, the corner of his mouth where it covered her own mouth, heard his low groan as if her exploration moved him.

  Gently rolling her onto her back, he came with her, untangled his fingers from hers and began to touch her face in the self-same way. But the kiss began to alter, subtly at first, then with a deepening of sensuality that quickened the senses.

  Linking her hands around his nape, she held him, and his touch begin to drift on a gentle exploration of her throat, her shoulders, and finally the satin-smooth slopes of her waiting breasts. As he brushed a caress across tightly budding peaks she gasped her response into his mouth. One of his hands began to dip low over her ribcage, and as she arched in response to his so-light caress he reached up, caught hold of one of her own hands and fed it onto his body.

  It was a command for her to match his movements. She remembered it from the last time they’d come together like this. Luiz had been her tutor in the art of arousing a lover. What he made her feel, he wanted to feel; what he did to her to make her go wild with pleasure, he expected her to do to him.

  But that had been seven years ago, and seven years of abstinence had made her unsure of herself. Her fingers fluttered uncertainly against his hair-roughened breastbone, found one small tight male nipple and began a tentative rolling of it between thumb and finger which had him groaning thickly. He wrenched his mouth from hers so he could string a line of heated kisses across her cheek and down her throat until he found and fixed on one of her own tightly drawn peaks.

  She cried out. It was such a wildly exhilarating sensation. He muttered something she didn’t catch, ran his hand down her body, lifting eager nerve-ends to the surface of her skin as he did so, then caught hold of the hem of her nightdress and deftly slipped it up and over her head.

  With the silk gone, his fingers began tracing the sensitive flesh along her inner thigh. Her mouth fixed on his shoulder; his returned to her breast. She could feel the heat of him, the burning, burgeoning power of him, pulsating against her hipbone.

  His hand was beginning to trail ever further upwards, and she knew that if he touched her where he intended to go next then he would expect her to touch him the same way. But—

  ‘Luiz…’ she breathed, needing something—reassurance maybe, or even a reprieve. She wasn’t really sure.

  ‘Shh,’ he commanded, deep, dark, tense with arousal.

  Did he think she was about to call a halt to it all? she wondered. But that was as far as it got—a question forming inside her head—before he literally sent her toppling over the edge as, with needle-point accuracy, he located the very life-force of her.

  It threw her into a paroxysm of gasps and whimpers. No warning, no mercy. She hovered precariously on the very edge of orgasm, and as if he knew it Luiz uttered a soft curse, caught her mouth again with a hard, hot, urgent kiss that mimicked what he was doing to her. Then he was covering her body with his own and positioning himself so he could enter her with a sure, sleek thrust.

  Delicate tissue unused to this kind of intrusion tensed on a moment’s protest at his potent demand. Then she sighed softly, slowly relaxed the tension out of her thighs so that she could draw him in deeper. He responded with a husky groan. After that it became a powerful example of intimacy at its most intense level. Mouth close to mouth, breast to breast, hip to taut hip, they began to move as a single entity. Her hands clutched at his silk taut back while his held her possessively beneath him. Her breath shivered from her parted lips to mingle sensually with his. And with her eyes captured by the burn in his everything else was temporarily forgotten. Past betrayals, present mistrusts—nothing else seemed to matter but what they were feeling.

  And feel it they did—together—together so perfectly that when her breathing grew shorter and her body more anxious he knew the exact moment she was about to leap, and drove them over the edge with a fierceness that was completely soul-shattering.

  Afterwards, when it was eventually over and Luiz lay heavy on top of her with his face buried in her throat, there was even something perfectly shared in the way neither seemed able to move or speak. Nevertheless, Caroline was glad of the darkness to hide away in when Luiz did eventually find the strength to move. Rolling onto his side, he took her with him, holding her with arms that gave her no room to escape.

  ‘You’re mine now,’ he said, and that was all.

  Caroline didn’t even bother to answer. For it didn’t take genius for her to work out that she had always been his, even during seven years of never setting eyes on him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE next time she woke it was to find a voile-defused daylight eddying around her. She was alone, she realised, lying sprawled naked on her stomach once again, amongst a sea of tumbled white linen, with her arm thrown out in a way that told her exactly what it had been thrown across until that warm male body had slid stealthily out from beneath it.

  Her heart performed a dramatic flip, the memory of the previous twenty-four hours enough to hold her still with her eyes closed tight while she tried to come to terms with knowing just how easy she had been for him.

  It was scary. Because even as she coped with the inevitable clutches of shame that knowledge brought with it, she was also aware of a gentle pulsing deep inside that was warm and soft and infinitely sensual as delicate muscles searched for the silken force which had given them so
much.

  ‘Luiz…’ she breathed, then wished she hadn’t, because even whispering his name was a sensual experience.

  I should hate him, she told herself. I want to hate him for doing this to me again. No wonder it all felt so very scary.

  A light tap sounded on the bedroom door then, jolting her into a sitting position in the middle of the bed. She had just managed to scramble a white sheet around her nakedness when the door came open and a young woman appeared carrying a breakfast tray.

  She was smiling shyly. ‘Buenos días, señorita,’ she murmured politely. ‘Don Luiz instructed me to waken you in time to meet him at the hospital at noon.’

  Noon. Hospital—her father! Oh, dear God, how could she have forgotten him as thoroughly as she had? She was about to leap from the bed in panic when the little maid added, ‘El señor also say to tell you that your papá is well, and will be discharged later on today.’

  And as Caroline sat, needing long seconds to take this reassuring information in, the girl walked forward and put the tray down on a small table, then turned to enquire if there was anything else she wanted.

  ‘Er, no—thank you,’ she answered politely. But as the young maid walked back to the door, a sudden thought hit her. ‘Did el sẽnor leave the address of the hospital?’ she asked. ‘Only I forgot to make a note of it in the panic last night.’

  ‘He has placed Señor Martinez at your disposal,’ the maid explained. ‘He will know where he is to drive you.’

  With that she was gone, leaving Caroline to wonder just who Señor Martinez was. The maid seemed to think that Caroline already knew.

  She soon found out an hour later, when, dressed casually in soft doe-coloured trousers and a pale pink V-necked top, she stepped into the villa courtyard and found the croupier-cum-waiter and now chauffeur standing waiting for her by the black BMW.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Newbury,’ he greeted politely. Deep-voiced, smooth-toned, he had the same pleasant American drawl as Luiz.

  Which made him—what, specifically? she wondered as she watched him move to open the rear door of the car for her. Luiz’s personal bodyguard? His jack-of-all-trades assistant? His friend?