by Lynne Graham
‘Bella…’
Her pale skin burned under the golden flare of his arrested gaze, but the driving need to give, to share, was far more powerful than the fleeting recall of her own sexual inexperience.
‘This is just you and me,’ she reasoned in a breath of sound as the jacket slid off her shoulders, her slender form quivering with sudden awareness of her own daring. ‘And this is what I want.’
Every poised inch of his lithe, powerful length exuded the raw force of his tension. Bella looked bravely back at him, still clothed, but naked to the world as she had never before allowed herself to be. It was a risk she had to take, a leap of faith, and even though she knew that she might regret her own unquestioning generosity she also knew that she would regret it for the rest of her life if she simply hid behind her own insecurities.
‘Sí…’ He moved with an abruptness then that shattered her—reaching for her, dragging her into his arms, every restraint overpowered by the hunger which blazed in incandescent gold from his fierce gaze. ‘No regrets?’
He wanted a passport to freedom before he even touched her. Pain trammelled through her. She might have turned away then, devastated by the reality of how little he offered and too proud to take on such terms, but he closed his mouth in devouring passion over hers and the ability to be rational was violently torn from her.
He invaded the moist interior of her mouth, his probing tongue a raw, masculine imitation of an infinitely more intimate penetration. She trembled, every physical sense leaping into automatic response. Control was wrested from her without remorse. He unleashed the turbulent force of his desire on her and she drowned mindlessly in the tidal wave of her own shock. It was no slow, gentle seduction which took account of her innocence.
‘You’re a witch, querida…’ Rico groaned. ‘I am no saint to resist such enticement.’
‘Enticement’? Some faint shred of reasoning absorbed the word, shrank from it. But he took her mouth again, made love to it, enveloped her in the staggering surge of her own helpless excitement. He lifted his dark head and she opened her heavy eyes. He had bared her breasts. The pale mounds rose in shameless supplication to his heated appraisal.
‘You are so beautiful.’ He cupped her sensitive flesh with firm hands, his smouldering golden scrutiny raking over her as a flush of pink crept up over her cheekbones.
He bent his head. She watched him, shameless in the grip of her own anticipation and yet so afraid that in some sense she might not meet his expectations.
The tip of his tongue skidded down the valley between her breasts before circling the engorged thrust of one pink nipple. She gasped, her lashes sweeping down, her back arching. Thought was suspended. The erotic tug of his mouth on the sensitised buds was unbearably erotic. Her hands rose of their own volition and speared into his hair, caressing him, holding him to her as the sweet torment of her own arousal plunged her into ever deeper response. In all her life she had never dreamt that such pleasure existed.
She was so hot that she couldn’t stay still. His fingers smoothed over the quivering tautness of her stomach and located the tangle of curls at the junction of her thighs. Her whole body jerked, out of control. Her breath rasped dry in her throat, her thighs parting in a spasm of intolerable need. He laughed softly and covered her mouth again, teasing this time, nibbling and tormenting with devastating expertise.
Instinctively she moved against him, her hips rising. He explored the damp, silken warmth at the very heart of her, every expert caress making her sob with the crazed heat of that intimate pleasure. Lost in the depths of an extraordinary passion, she was at the peak of an intense excitement, tortured by the desperate ache of unfulfilment.
He shifted over her then, ravishing her swollen lips one more time, and then, abruptly, he drew her up to him with impatient hands and plunged inside her. She hadn’t expected the pain that tore at her as he entered her. Her shocked eyes flew wide and she bit her tongue so hard that she tasted blood in her mouth.
‘Madre de Dios!’ Shattered golden eyes held hers, and then his teeth clenched as the momentum of his own desire made him drive deeper still, his swollen shaft forging a path through the tender tissue that had sought to deny him.
‘That hurts!’ Bella panted.
With a sharp intake of breath he stilled, and long fingers knotted painfully into her tumbled hair. ‘I didn’t know!’
She saw the anger and the shock etching his bronzed features into rigidity and she could not bear the sight. If he turned from her now he would never come back to her again. She knew that as clearly as though he had spoken and she fought it with her instincts, reaching up, touching his sensual mouth with the soft promise of hers, refusing to let him go.
‘Rico…’
And it was done. In the circle of her arms he trembled, far less in control than he had sought to pretend. His rigidity broke, his body surging against hers again in a rhythm as old and as relentless as time. With a stifled groan of earthy satisfaction he completed his possession of that place which had once been hers alone.
The pain had gone as though it had never been. Renewed heat flooded her as he thrust into her again, fast and deep, his hands sinking beneath her hips to press back her thighs. She gasped as he moved inside her and enforced the pace to a level of shattering, driving intensity. Her heartbeat thundered, her pulses madly accelerated. She was controlled, dominated, excited to a pitch beyond her belief. When she went over the edge into the tumultuous, shuddering pleasure of release she cried out his name as if it were a talisman in the swirling darkness that blocked out everything else in the world.
Except his withdrawal. It could not block out that. Within seconds of that climax Rico dragged himself free of her arms. The shock of that abrupt severance was immense. Bella opened dazed eyes and focused on him. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Qué pasa? “What’s wrong?”’ Rico sliced the repetition back at her with stinging derision. ‘You dare to ask me what’s wrong?’
It was like a bucket of cold water on sunburn. Bella sat up, every lingering and pleasurable sensation stolen from her. With a shaking hand she drew the blanket over her. But Rico stood there, unashamedly naked, every taut line of his magnificently masculine body exuding fury.
She had never felt more agonisingly confused. She would not have given herself without love. And with the people she loved Bella was a giver of unparalleled generosity. She asked for nothing in return. But did she love him?
‘I don’t know what’s wrong.’ She couldn’t yet think straight and opted for honesty, searching his hard, dark features with a pain concealed by the veil of her lashes.
‘What’s your game? What do you want from me? What was that sweet little seduction scene angled at?’ he demanded with raw hostility. ‘Had I known I was to be the first I would not have touched you!’
‘I think that was my choice to make,’ Bella muttered, lowering her head, the sting of tears furiously blinked back.
‘Por Dios…it was certainly not mine! I believed I was making love to an equal partner. I do not sleep with virgins,’ he said darkly, with a positively vicious bite.
‘I told you I was—’
‘But you were aware that I did not believe you. If there’s one thing you don’t look it’s innocent!’ he condemned. ‘And innocent in thought and deed you’re not. Tell me now…what is this likely to cost me?’
‘C-cost you?’ she repeated blankly.
‘The honey trap and then the price,’ he drawled with chilling menace. ‘I’ve been down that path before. This scenario has a deeply sordid familiarity for me. If you’re the fertile type I expect I’ll be supporting you for the next decade and a half at the very least!’
Every icy word fell like a whiplash on her exposed back. Bella was appalled. He had made love to her with incredible passion, and now he was rejecting both that passion and her with a brutality that paralysed her. ‘Rico…?’
‘I warn you now… I will not marry you,’ he imparted with icy emp
hasis. ‘I will never marry again.’
Again? He had already been married? Even in the midst of her turmoil Bella was struck by that unexpected revelation.
‘So, if you are cherishing some pitiful fantasy of Cinderella catching her prince, let me assure you that even a pregnancy wouldn’t persuade me to make that ultimate sacrifice!’
Bella sucked in badly needed air to fill her seemingly squashed lungs. She studied her tightly clenched hands. ‘You’re not my prince, Rico. Relax,’ she whispered painfully. ‘Learn to enjoy life as the toad who didn’t deserve to be kissed and transformed. This particular Cinderella doesn’t believe in fairy tales.’
He expelled his breath in an audible hiss. She sensed that whatever he had expected from her it hadn’t been that. In that sense they were equal. She had been thrown violently off balance by his accusations. Where she had given, he saw deliberate enticement. Where she had expected nothing, he demanded to know the cost. It was impossible to believe that mere minutes ago they had been as intimately close as a man and a woman could be. For when Bella had trustingly dropped all her defences Rico had raised his with a savage hostility which took her breath away. And her pride revolted against the image he had formed of her.
‘Why, then? Why did you give yourself to me?’
In a sudden movement Bella scrabbled for her clothes where they lay about the bed. A deep, sustaining anger made her hands tremble. Well, you lived and you learnt. There was no surer truth, it seemed. She had been a fool to expose herself to such an extent to a male who understood her about as well as he might understand an alien being. Where emotions were concerned she was dealing with a male so impenetrably thick that he ought to be locked up for his own safety, she thought furiously.
‘Bella…?’ he pressed harshly.
‘I wanted you! Lust… what else?’ Magnificent green eyes flashing, she shot him a look of vibrant derision, unperturbed by his sudden stillness and the freezing of his strong features. “There was no hidden agenda.’
He stared at her, forbidding dark eyes, fringed by lush ebony lashes, nailed to her with mesmeric intensity. His sensual mouth compressed into a cold, hard line.
‘I thought that might shut you up.’ Bella let loose a not quite steady laugh as she pulled on her jacket and rummaged beneath the blanket to haul up her skirt. ‘Lust is OK for you but not for me, right? Did you think I was about to delicately beat about the bush like your fancy lady-friends?’ she hissed. ‘Or did you fondly imagine that I was going to tell you I had fallen madly in love with you and just couldn’t help myself? Get real, Rico!’
With that final, ringing statement Bella sprang out of bed and strode through the beaded curtain. She turned on the water full force at the sink and leant back against the door, trembling on legs that briefly didn’t feel strong enough to keep her upright. Love grabs you by the throat when you least expect it and rips the heart out of you, she thought sickly. I don’t want this…I don’t need these feelings!
Stripping off, she began to wash the scent of him off her body with slow deliberation. It had been a mistake and she wasn’t too proud to admit to mistakes. Sometimes you played and you lost. Sometimes you made a fool of yourself. That was life. But as long as you hung on to your pride and your integrity you would recover. That was life too.
A knock sounded on the door. Bella said something very rude and was then ashamed of herself. The use of bad language was childishly offensive. But, for the first time in a lot of years, her thoughts and emotions were in real chaos. She hurt. The shock of that pain sliced through her, sharp, piercing and inescapable. She had only to think of the manner in which she had thrown herself at him and she felt sick with humiliation.
Rico and she didn’t fit, didn’t suit in any way. They lived in different worlds. Had fate been kind they would never even have met. They didn’t have a thing in common. Rico was an ambitious, ruthless, fully paid-up member of the workaholic financial fraternity. He didn’t have a creative bone in his body.
For heaven’s sake, this was a guy who wore pinstriped suits, kept his desk tidy, thought of precautions against pregnancy in the midst of stormy passion! He maintained a rigorous leash on every spontaneous impulse. Her virginity had not been a gift, it had been a threat to him! How could she possibly think that she had fallen in love with someone like that? She studied herself, wide-eyed, in the mirror, searching for signs of incipient insanity.
Where had her intelligence gone over the past hour? Of course it wasn’t love! Their imprisonment had twisted and confused her emotional responses, magnifying them into something they were not. When those bullets had hit the container she had been terrified and Rico had been protective. The release from that terrible tension had sent her emotions into overload. He had offered her comfort and warmth and she had been so grateful for his presence and in such mental turmoil that she had wildly misinterpreted her own feelings.
Really, Bell…is that why you recklessly gave away the virginity you were saving for your future husband? She paled, crushing that inner voice. But right through her teens Bella had been indoctrinated by her grandfather’s moral standards. It had been an education. Cleo had had an ‘anything goes’ outlook on the morality front. But her lifestyle hadn’t made her happy.
Bitterly aware of that reality, Bella had decided that the field of sexual experimentation was not for her. If she loved someone and he loved her, and a future together was on the cards, that would have been different. But passion without love… That had been the biggest ‘do not’ in Bella’s rulebook. And she had just broken that rule. Received her just deserts in record time too, she acknowledged on another wave of pain.
Rico had illuminated another light when she emerged. What had happened to conservation? she wondered nastily. But then she saw him standing in the shadows by the curtain and her ability to be sharp and critical momentarily deserted her. She was assailed by a blinding urge to rush back into his arms and that terrified her. It was as though there were two people inside her—one trying to be sensible, one racing out of control on an emotional roller coaster. What the beck was the matter with her? Rico looked as dangerous as a prowling predator and she had already found out the hard way that she bled when he clawed.
‘I believe that I have misjudged you,’ he conceded in his silky, accented drawl which trickled down her sensitive spinal column like the caress of rich velvet.
‘Forget it. I already have.’ But her nervous antenna went on to instant red alert.
The level of physical awareness splintering through the atmosphere between them shattered her. Instead of fading with satiation, as she had naively assumed they would, the sexual vibrations had merely intensified. Bella went into restive retreat. She turned away to the fridge, her skin heating, her brain suddenly a wasteland awash with a devastating wave of unbelievably unwelcome erotic imagery. Her body ached and burned with the memory of that wild passion.
‘Lust works for me as well,’ Rico murmured in a purring undertone.
Her lashes fluttered. She froze halfway into the fridge, certain that he couldn’t have said that. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she mumbled, intimate recollection having vanquished her defences.
‘Don’t be coy, gatita. It doesn’t suit you.’
Her cheeks burning fierily, Bella straightened. ‘Look, I made a mistake, and not one I intend to repeat…’ She had forced herself to look at him and her voice trailed away as she registered that his attention was no longer directed at her.
Reaching for the light, Rico took an abrupt stride forward and held it above the stove, his glittering gaze fixed on some point above her. ‘Infierno!’ he breathed.
Dazedly Bella watched him set aside the light at speed and reach up to touch the surface of the roof round the metal flue of the chimney. ‘What is it?’ she demanded.
‘Get me the poker!’
‘But—?’ Meeting the whiplash effect of his impatience, Bella moved to oblige.
Grasping the poker, he swung it up agai
nst the roof. A piece of something like plaster or cement broke away and fell to the floor. ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped.
But as he struck the roof again and more debris flew down, sending up a cloud of dust which made her cough, she realised exactly what he was doing. When the flue for the stove had been put in a hole had naturally been cut and, for simplicity’s sake, not a circular one. A rectangle of metal had been removed. She could dimly see the edges exposed and her momentary excitement faded.
‘They welded it back in after cutting it to take the flue.’
‘That isn’t steel!’ Rico gritted. ‘And it’s only spot-welded. It’ll come out!’
With punishing force he rammed the poker up against the insert, which buckled under the blow. Her heart in her mouth, Bella watched him batter it until it came loose, and then plant two powerful hands round the flue. The upper section lifted away and dim light filtered in. With a powerful push Rico rammed the section upwards, slamming it out onto the roof to clear the aperture he had exposed.
Bella’s fingernails, which had been biting into her palms, bit even harder. Acid tears hit the back of her eyes as she looked up. ‘It isn’t big enough to take either of us!’
Rico surveyed her with raw determination. ‘With a little help from me it’ll take you,’ he asserted.
Awkwardly she climbed up onto the top of the stove and raised her head through the aperture, her eyes flying up and down and around the rafters, the sheet-iron roof above the rusting hulk of an old tractor lying in the corner. ‘We’re in a barn,’ she whispered.
‘Santa María!’ Rico slashed from below her in raw disbelief. ‘You’re not up there to see the scenery!’
Before she could react a pair of hands closed round her thighs and forced her upwards, not even giving her time to hunch her shoulders. Her collision with the edges of the rough metal hurt and she uttered a stifled shriek to which he paid no attention at all. He simply lifted her again, and this time she automatically curved her shoulders in and she went through, snaking out her hands to brace herself in amazement on the roof. With his help she hauled herself through the rest of the way.