Emily felt like a budding flower, opening and giving of herself so her lover could taste, savor and possess what she willingly and freely offered him. He was making her feel things she never knew existed.
The coil of pleasure between her legs spread upward. Arching, she threw back her head. His name erupted from the back of her throat in a fevered whisper of wonder. Her hoarse cry faded to soft whimpers that took Chris higher and higher until he exploded, shaking him with the force of their ecstasy.
Broad shoulders convulsed and shuddered violently as he collapsed heavily on her slender frame, the roaring and spinning continuing to shake him with the ebbing passion. It took several more minutes for him to return from the dizzying heights as he sucked much-needed air into his lungs before he shifted to pull Emily’s damp body over his until she lay on his chest. It had been much too quick. He had wanted it to last longer. Much longer. She stirred once, her warm breath filtering over his hot throat. A slight snoring indicated that she had fallen asleep.
Chris pulled her closer. He seemed not to be able to get close enough. He was addicted to her and there was no known cure. He found himself too wound up to sleep.
I can’t leave her. The realization haunted him. He couldn’t leave Emily in Ocho Rios; at that moment he knew he would not be able to board a flight to Mexico City and not have her beside him.
The long legs nestled intimately between his thighs would not permit the fire between his own to die out. Though he had sampled the sweep rapture of her delightful body, a part of his own anatomy refused to follow the dictates of his brain. He was tense, exhausted, yet he continued to crave her.
His hand cradled the fullness of her buttocks, holding her prisoner when his hardness stirred and surged up against her belly. Damn! He was as hot and randy as an adolescent. He had never been this way with other women—only with Emily. The gentle caresses on her rounded hips changed, becoming stronger. He had to have her again. He reached for another condom.
Emily awakened to Chris filling every part of her, gasping from the primal force of his total possession. Before she could recover he withdrew, placing her legs over his shoulders. When he reentered her with a forceful thrust, it shattered all traces of her lingering somnolence.
Bracing his hands on either side of her head, Chris lowered his body and smiled down at Emily as she arched and brushed her swollen breasts against his chest. He went completely still. She was so moist and yielding that everything ceased to exist except the sexy, exciting woman writhing beneath him. He forgot about Alejandro Delgado, William Savoy and any and every thing that had ever touched his life.
He began to move, his hips setting a strong, driving, pumping rhythm. He shifted Emily’s legs higher to allow him deeper access until he felt the contractions shaking her womb.
Emily’s cries filled the room and his savage moans supplanted hers as his dammed-up passions broke, drowning her with liquid fire. She shivered violently, not so much from her own release but from Chris’s primitive growl of complete satisfaction. He lowered her legs, sinking slowly down to the mattress.
His teeth closed gently on her shoulder before his tongue tasted the sweetness of her heaving breasts. Perspiration ran in rivulets from his quaking body, soaking the sheets.
Breathing heavily, he gathered her to his side. “Go back to sleep, darling.” He pressed a kiss over her eyelids.
“I’ll go,” Emily gasped weakly. “I’ll go to Mexico with you.”
Chris whispered a silent prayer of thanks as he closed his eyes. This time when Emily was swept away in a sated slumber he joined her. He had gotten his fill of her—for now.
Chapter 13
January 9
Puerto Escondido, Mexico
Emily was awed by the natural beauty of Puerto Escondido as Chris maneuvered the rental car along Mexico’s southern coast. The waters of the Pacific Ocean stretched out before them like an undulating blue carpet. It felt as if she had been traveling for weeks, even though it had only been four days since they had left Kingston.
Chris, aware of the Cole and Kirkland mandate against family members flying on commercial carriers, had chartered a private jet for their flight from Kingston to Miami. He overrode her protests that they use the ColeDiz corporate jet and reminded her that, as an elected official, the trip could be misinterpreted as a gift. They’d spent the night in a Miami hotel until arrangements for another private jet were confirmed for their trip to Mexico City.
The sight, size, noise and pollution of Mexico City had overwhelmed Emily, while the social contrasts were unimaginable to Chris. He had been disturbed by children begging barefoot on the streets, wizened old women slapping cornmeal into tortillas and roasting them in oil-filled caldrons over open fires and the obviously wealthy residents preening and trying to impress one another in their lavish homes and upscale restaurants. Their planned two-day stay in Mexico City was aborted, and the following morning they loaded the rental car with their luggage and headed southward.
The brilliant rays of the noon sun reflected off the large stone on the third finger of Emily’s right hand, and she turned it around until only the band was visible. She hadn’t wanted to wear Keith’s ring, but she had decided it was safer on her finger than in her purse or luggage in case she became separated from the latter. However, when Chris noticed the ring on her hand, his expression was marked with cold loathing.
Chris glanced at the thin gold watch with the black lizard band circling his left wrist. He expected to see the Delgado property within minutes. The directions he had received from the owner of a marina near the harbor were excellent. At the end of the road was the residence where Alejandro Delgado had come to live out his last days. The home where he’d been born and raised would also become his final resting place.
The dusty road led to a paved path bordered by a thick undergrowth of ancient banana trees, which ended with a stone wall rising more than twenty feet above the ground in a towering arch. He slowed the car and maneuvered under the arch to an expansive courtyard. The stone entrance led to a flower-filled interior courtyard. Massive terra-cotta pots crowded the space with an overabundance of flowering plants. He stopped, then put the vehicle in park without turning off the engine.
Emily turned her head, staring at Chris’s profile. His expression was closed, revealing none of the anxiety merging with the deep-seated hostility he had repressed for most of his life. She felt his tension as surely as if it were her own. He had flown thousands of miles to meet the man who had fathered him—a man who was a stranger—a stranger whose life was now being measured by each sunrise and sunset.
Chris stared through the windshield, not realizing he had been holding his breath until he felt the band of tightness around his chest. He had arrived. He had come to Mexico to meet the vengeful man whose genes he shared—the vindictive father who had used his wealth and influence to abduct his young son.
Reaching over, he covered Emily’s left hand with his right one, squeezing gently. “I’ll be right back,” he said in Spanish. She offered him a comforting smile.
He removed his hand, feeling her loss immediately, then pushed open the door and stepped out of the cool automobile into the afternoon heat. He counted the steps it took him to reach a loggia.
The moment Chris raised his hand to lift the massive iron door knocker fashioned in the shape of a lion’s head, he chided himself for leaving Emily in the comforting coolness of the automobile. She should be standing beside him when he met Alejandro for the first time. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to silently taunt the elder Delgado and flaunt his love and devotion to a woman he had coveted for years.
The sound of the heavy knocker resounded dully in the quietness of the afternoon. If the grounds of the hacienda hadn’t been so immaculately kept, Chris would’ve suspected that it had been abandoned. There wasn’t a person, au
tomobile or living creature in sight. There was only the lazy droning sound of invisible flying insects seeking the hypnotic sweetness as they darted in and out of the brilliantly colored blossoms.
He raised his hand to lift the knocker again but was thwarted when the door opened suddenly. The wizened face of an elderly woman appeared through the opening. Her dark eyes, faded with age, squinted through a network of lines that had recorded years of wars, civil unrest, corrupt administrations, poverty, prosperity and countless masses for baptisms, church holidays and funerals. The eyes had recorded more than three-quarters of a century of Mexican history, but she had never expected to see Señor Alejandro Delgado in his youth twice in her lifetime. Squeezing her eyes tightly, she shook her iron-gray head, a single braid swaying between her frail shoulder blades. The young man standing before her, with the exception of his graying hair, was an exact duplicate of her employer, who had disappeared without a trace more than thirty years earlier. She opened her eyes, staring mutely.
“I’ve come from the United States to see Alejandro Delgado,” Chris said in Spanish, the words flowing fluidly from his lips.
“One moment, sir,” the housekeeper replied. Her voice was weak, trembling. The three words came out like the sound of wind blowing through a profusion of thin reeds along a riverbank.
“Who are you talking to, Wilma?” asked a feminine voice, this one stronger and filled with a modicum of authority.
Wilma turned, glancing over her shoulder. “A gentleman wants to see Señor Delgado.”
“What’s his name?”
Wilma focused her attention on Chris. “¿Cómo se llama, señor?”
“Cristobal Delgado,” he replied. A slight smile played at the corners of his mouth when the older woman reacted visibly to the name. However, his amusement was short-lived when the door opened wider and a younger, more elegantly attired and professionally coiffed woman stared at him as if he were an apparition.
Making the sign of the cross over her ample breasts, she laced her fingers together in a gesture of prayer. “¡Dios mio!”
Chris inclined his head in a respectful gesture. “Buenas tardes, señora. Me llamo Cristobal Delgado.”
“You are Alejandro’s son.” The question came out as a statement. “You are the image of him before he…” Her words trailed off when she closed her eyes, as if she could will away the painful memories of another time. She opened her eyes. “I’m Sonia Medina de Delgado-Quintero. I’m your father’s youngest sister and therefore your aunt.”
A jumble of confused thoughts and feelings assailed Chris as he looked at the impeccably groomed, petite woman staring up at him. He had come to Puerto Escondido to confront Alejandro Delgado about his past, but not once had he thought that he would meet other relatives—people with whom he shared blood ties. Sonia Medina had announced that she was Alejandro’s younger sister, as if that was an exalted honor.
Recovering quickly, smoothly, he leaned down and kissed her thin perfumed cheek. “Mucho gusto en conocerle.” And he was pleased to meet her. It would help facilitate his imminent encounter with her brother. He refused to think of her brother as his father. Matthew Sterling was his father, not Alejandro Delgado.
Sonia opened the door wider. “Please come in.”
“I did not come alone, señora. Mi novia is waiting in the car,” Chris said smoothly. He had referred to Emily as his fiancée, as if it were something he had done many times before.
Nodding, Sonia offered him a warm smile, tiny lines fanning out at the corners of her golden brown eyes. “I would be honored if you would address me as tía. Please invite your novia to join us.”
Turning, Chris made his way back across the loggia and the length of the courtyard, placing one determined foot in front of the other. He was grateful Alejandro Delgado had not come to the door, because it permitted him the time he needed to prepare for their inevitable encounter.
Emily’s head came up quickly when the door opened. Her penetrating gaze took in everything about Chris in one glance. The stubborn set of his lean jaw and the shimmer of determination radiating from his midnight eyes indicated that he was in complete control of himself and his emotions.
Slipping behind the wheel, Chris flashed a lazy smile. “I’m going to park the car along the side of the house, then we’re going in.”
Emily nodded. She wanted to ask him if he had seen or spoken to Alejandro but decided against it. She had come along as a spectator and not a participant in a thirty-two-year-old, unresolved drama. And despite the level of intimacy she and Chris had shared, she felt what he had to discuss with his biological father was still too personal for her to become involved with.
Chris assisted her from the car, and together they made their way down the loggia with its floor of tiles laid out in hues of faded beige, brown and green. Potted palms, ferns and flowering plants in large clay pots lent a tropical flavor to the contemporary coffee table that added a modern touch to the centuries-old stone pilasters and butacas, leather sling chairs.
The elderly housekeeper opened the door at their approach, her gaze surveying the attractive sun-browned couple. “Please follow me. Señora Medina is in the sala.”
Emily slipped her hand in Chris’s, and she gave him a dazzling smile when he glanced down at her. His fingers tightened on hers as they followed Wilma through a spacious entry to the grandeur of a grand salon. She noticed twin elaborately decorated vargueños, traveling desks, flanking a set of massive oak doors leading to the salon. As they walked into the room, she forced herself not to stare at the antique pieces. She had inherited her love of antiques from her mother, who had furnished the home in which she had grown up in a Santa Fe suburb with a skill usually reserved for interior decorators.
A short woman with a rounded body swathed in gold silk rose from an armchair with an embroidered seat and cushioned back. Her liberally streaked gray hair was pulled off her face in an elaborate chignon. Tiny lines around her eyes crinkled in a friendly smile that parted her crimson lips. Emily estimated that she was in her sixties. She wasn’t pretty, yet she would never be referred to as homely. Her jewelry was exquisite. A gold bracelet with precious and semiprecious stones graced her wrist, a pair of brilliant diamonds glittered in her pierced lobes and the third finger of her left hand boasted a gold band of glittering alternating diamonds and emeralds.
Curving his arm around Emily’s waist, Chris pulled her closer to his side. “Me gustaría presentarle a mi tía señora Sonia Medina de Delgado-Ouintero. Tía Sonia, éste es Emelia Kirkland.”
Emily successfully concealed her surprise. Chris had just introduced her to his aunt as if he had known Sonia Medina for years, instead of only minutes.
“Mucho gusto en conocerle,” she replied politely.
Smiling, Sonia extended her tiny hands to Emily. “It’s my pleasure to meet you, Emelia. How is it you speak perfect Spanish with a name like Kirkland?”
Emily smiled. It wasn’t the first time someone had questioned her about her Anglo surname. “My father’s mother was a Cubana.”
“My sobrino has chosen a beautiful novia.”
Novia? Emily turned and stared at Chris’s impassive expression. What had he told his aunt? Did Sonia Medina believe they were engaged to be married?
Forcing a smile she did not feel and taking the older woman’s hands, Emily mumbled a barely audible, “Gracias.”
Keith Norris had perpetuated one lie about her being engaged to him, and it appeared that Christopher Delgado continued the prevarication with his own claim that they were to be married. What was it about her that prompted men to propose marriage? There were women who couldn’t get one date, while she had lost count of the number of online proposals she had received since becoming a television news correspondent.
“Please sit down,” Sonia urged, directing Emily to a chair
positioned next to a small, round table. The highly polished surface of the table held a silver tray with a crystal pitcher filled with an icy beverage and a set of four matching goblets. She waited until Chris sat down, then said, “Do you mind serving, Emelia?”
Giving Chris a sidelong glance, Emily glared at him. She hadn’t missed his mocking grin. She wasn’t used to serving, but being served. However, she was in another country with customs that were not her own.
“Not at all,” she said between clenched teeth.
She filled the goblets, serving Sonia first, then Chris. He lifted his curving eyebrows before winking at her. Taking a sip of the drink, she savored the tart taste of differing fruit juices as it slid down the back of her throat.
Emily and Chris had taken turns driving to Puerto Escondido. They had driven more than 400 kilometers from Mexico City to Acapulco, stopping to spend the night. After securing a bungalow with a private patio at Pierre Marqués, she had scheduled a session with a stylist, a manicurist and a masseur, while Chris opted for unwinding by swimming laps in one of the luxury hotel’s three pools. They had fallen asleep without making love, content to savor the other’s closeness and warmth in the air-cooled bedroom.
Looping his right leg over his left knee, Chris stared at the toe of his leather slip-on. His gaze shifted upward, lingering on his aunt.
“You must be very tired,” she said perceptively.
“We’ve spent two days driving from Mexico City,” he offered as an explanation.
“How long do you plan to stay?” Sonia asked.
Chris glanced at Emily, who raised her eyebrows in a questioning expression. He calculated quickly. She had said she wanted to return to New Mexico by the middle of the month. And that meant they could only afford to spend a few days in Puerto Escondido.
Private Passions Page 12