Passionate Protection

by Penny Jordan

  'To invade your privacy?' Jessica suggested shakily. 'You needn't worry about it happening again. I'm removing my clothes, because I'm also removing myself from your life. I'm going home.'

  'No!' The denial was grittily abrasive. 'Por Dios,' Sebastian suddenly added hoarsely, crossing the room and taking her roughly in his arms. 'I can endure no more—I will not permit you to go! You are carrying my child, and I will not allow you to go.'

  'But you wanted me to go,' Jessica reminded him shakily, wondering if he could feel the unsteady thud of her heart, and the quick race of her pulse. His arms felt like a haven—heaven itself, and she never wanted to leave them. She could see the faint beginnings of a beard growing along his jaw, and wanted to touch it. He smelled of the outdoors and fresh sweat, and the combination was unbearably erotic to her heightened senses.

  'Because I feared something like this would happen.'

  Within the circle of his arms, she raised her hand to push her hair back off her forehead, the brief gesture emphasising the gentle thrust of her breasts. Sebastian's eyes flared hotly as he studied the soft mounds, then with a savage imprecation he drew her against the hard pulsating length of him, letting her feel his arousal, his mouth moving blindly over her skin, touching and tasting, until he buried it hotly in hers, kissing her with an intensity that sapped her willpower and made her cling helplessly to him, offering herself up to whatever it was he wanted from her.

  'I won't let you leave me,' he muttered throatily against her skin. 'You are mine, Jessica, and mine alone. Dios, the torment I have suffered seeing you smile at my brother, my aunt—anyone but me! You cannot know how I have longed to see you look at me with love, how I have hungered for you to want me as I want you—not simply for the pleasure our bodies find in one another, but with your heart and soul!'

  She was unbearably moved, unable to deny the conviction in his voice, the emotion in his eyes as they searched her face as though willing a response.

  'You love me?' Jessica asked uncertainly, still not fully able to accept.

  'Do you doubt it?' He smoothed her hair back off her forehead, and she could feel the heated shudder of his body as she touched him. 'I wanted you from the first,' he told her softly. 'I hated you at the same time because of what you were. Or what I thought you were.'

  'I thought you despised me,' Jessica told him. 'You were so cold, so distant.'

  'Because I daren't let myself be anything else. All the time I was giving myself reasons why I shouldn't, all I wanted to do was to take you in my arms and make you admit that no man could give you the pleasure I could. I hated Jorge because he had been your lover, and when you threatened to stay in Seville and see him. I couldn't understand why he had stopped wanting you. I thought if he saw you again, he would do…'

  'And so you concocted that tale about needing a designer to save him from me,' Jessica supplied dryly.

  Sebastian smiled grimly. 'Nearly right, only it was because I wanted to keep you away from him and with me,' he supplemented. 'And then he arrived and my whole world was turned upside down. You weren't the girl he had met, you were someone else; someone about whom I knew nothing. Someone who might have a lover or a boy-friend in the background whose claims on you I couldn't destroy. And then Jorge gave me the perfect weapon. People were talking about us, he told me. He was concerned for you. I knew my aunt and Pilar intended to come and see you. I must admit I hadn't quite intended that we should be discovered as we were… some things cannot be controlled,' he added with a wry mockery that brought vivid colour to her skin, 'and you were so sweetly responsive I forgot why I had come to your room and remembered only how much I wanted you… loved you,' he amended softly, 'because by then I did, although I was loath to admit it even to myself.'

  'But when you married me you were so distant I thought you hated me!'

  He cupped her face and looked at her sombrely. 'Why didn't you tell me you were a virgin? Was it to punish me, to make me suffer?'

  Jessica didn't understand what he meant.

  'I tried to,' she told him huskily, 'in the car on the way back to the hacienda, but you told me how relieved you were that I didn't need "initiating" and after that I just couldn't…'

  'And so instead you make me suffer a thousand torments, hating myself for what I have done to you. It was bad enough when I simply thought I was forcing you into a marriage you didn't want. There was desire between us and I hoped that in time it might grow to something else. When I discovered that not only had I robbed you of your freedom, but that I had also taken from you the right to give your body and sweet innocence to the lover of your choice, I hated and despised myself…'

  'You were so cold,' Jessica whispered, 'so distant, and so hateful.'

  'Because it was the only way I could stop myself from taking you in my arms and making love to you again and again,' Sebastian told her whimsically. 'I wanted you so much, I had to erect a barrier between us for your sake. I wanted to get down on my knees and beg your forgiveness, kiss every inch of your beautiful, precious body and promise you that never again would it know pain, but to do so would be to inflict my desire and love on you again, and I told myself that was something I would never do.

  'We both know how long my resolve lasted,' he added wryly, adding with a frankness that half shocked her, 'Your sweet cries of pleasure on that second occasion have haunted my nights like a siren song ever since.'

  'You made me sleep on my own,' Jessica accused, still not daring to believe that it was true and that he loved her.

  He smothered a groan. 'My sweet love, it was torture, but I had no alternative. I had promised myself that I would set you free, that it was wrong of me to hold you to our marriage. I couldn't forgive myself for taking your innocence when you didn't love me, and when I discovered you were to have my child…'

  'You were so cold towards me I thought you didn't want it,' Jessica interrupted bleakly. 'Then Pilar came and told me that you wanted me to leave, and…'

  'And you already believed that I had turned my back on my daughter,' he finished for her. 'Oh, Jessica, I can't tell you what it meant to me to think you carried my child! I longed fiercely to keep you here with me, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't,hold you on so fragile a thread. I'm a proud' man, as you have so often said, and my pride would not allow me to constrain my wife to stay with me only for the sake of our child.'

  'But if she loved you…'

  He cupped her chin, his eyes dark with emotion. 'If she loved me—if you loved me,' he corrected huskily, 'I would never let her go. When I saw that building and knew you were in it… If you had died then life would have had no meaning for me,' he told her simply.

  'You risked your life for us,' Jessica said softly. 'I…'

  'Do you think I would have let anyone else near you?' he demanded with a ferocity that surprised her. 'When everything a man holds of value in his life is in danger of course he trusts no one but himself to remove that danger. When you told me to take Lisa, even though I knew you were right, you'll never know what it cost me to go, leaving you there, possibly facing death.'

  'And you'll never know how I felt, seeing you disappear,' Jessica told him softly, 'wanting you so badly… and then you were so cold, putting me in that bedroom when all I wanted was the warmth of your arms, your…'

  'My…?' he questioned teasingly. 'Go on, querida, you are just about to get to the interesting bit, I think?'

  'Your… body against mine,' Jessica admitted hesitantly, laughing at her own shyness. 'Oh, Sebastian,' she sighed ecstatically, 'I fell in love with you almost straight away, despite all those dreadful things you said to me!'

  She frowned as Sebastian suddenly released her, picking up the piles of clothes from the bed and depositing them on a chair.

  'What are you doing?' she asked anxiously. 'Sebastian…'

  'I thought you wanted to be in my arms,' he reminded her with a slow smile, 'to feel my body against yours? Is that not right, querida?'

  'Oh, but…' She tri
ed to look scandalised and failed, laughing when he took her in his arms and said wryly,

  'What is the matter? Is it not permissible for a man to make love to his wife in the afternoon?'

  'I…'

  He nibbled the delicate cord of her throat, sending tremors of pleasure coursing over her. 'Why else do you think we have the siesta, amada?' he questioned softly. 'It is for children to rest, and for their mamas and papas to make love.'

  His fingers reached for her zip, pressing her against the taut length of his body, and the sudden urgency of the desire flooding through her made her expel her breath in brief shock.

  'I love you,' Sebastian murmured smokily as her dress slid to the floor.

  As he lifted her and carried her towards their bed Jessica wondered hazily if that first Rosalind had known this heady, enveloping pleasure; this depth and intensity of love and need for her proud knight. Possibly she had, she thought lazily as Sebastian drew her against him, his fingers playing lightly against her spine, his mouth teasing her skin. Certainly if he was anything like his present-day descendant, she must have done!