And she hadn’t seen him since. Now she deeply regretted having brought the subject up. She should never have asked him why he didn’t want babies and marriage and most particularly she should not have mentioned Sofia’s name.
Wishing desperately that she could wind the clock back, Faith took a sip of water.
At some stage Maria had brought her some lunch, but she didn’t feel like eating. Her stomach was churning and she felt horribly sick but she knew it was just nerves.
She was totally on edge and unable to relax. She’d tried to understand him and in the process she’d driven him away and now she didn’t know how to solve the new problem she’d created. He was very upset, she knew that much. When Raul was cornered, he fought and when he couldn’t fight, he retreated.
It reminded her of the day she’d told him about the baby. He’d immediately proposed, bought her a ring and then proceeded to absent himself on business. At the time she’d just assumed that was normal for him—after all he was a staggeringly successful billionaire with a corporation to run—but now she knew him better she could see that he’d been doing an entirely different sort of running. The sort that left a problem far behind.
And she wasn’t much better, was she?
Hadn’t she done exactly the same on their wedding day? True, he’d made a grossly insensitive remark but she wished now that she’d stood her ground and forced him to talk about it.
Yes, she’d been devastated about the baby but running hadn’t helped.
They were both as bad as each other.
Except that she wasn’t running any more. Nor was she going to try and push him to talk to her.
She was handling him all wrong, she could see that now. The more she pushed, the more he resisted. Somehow she needed to persuade him to come to her.
She stared at the food on her plate, deep in thought, her mind once again drifting back to the comment Sofia had made about Raul being like a difficult stallion. In a way she was right. There were similarities. Raul was aggressively masculine, assertive and dominant. And the way to handle that sort of personality was with gentleness and patience. There was no way she was going to force a man like Raul to tell her anything he didn’t want to.
She had to earn his trust.
He hated talking about emotions, so she’d stop doing that.
She’d stop dwelling on the past and concentrate on the present—on being happy together. Even he had agreed that they’d been happy before she’d become pregnant. All she needed to do was try and recapture that. And as for what was going to happen in the long term—well, she wasn’t even going to think about that now.
The sight of the food making her feel ill, she rose to her feet and wandered down to the beach with a book but she couldn’t concentrate on that either, so she went to the stables instead, and worked alongside the grooms for the afternoon.
Being with the horses calmed her slightly but still she couldn’t stop thinking about Raul and kept one eye on the drive, desperately hoping to hear the throaty roar of his car or the sound of the helicopter which would have announced his return.
Eventually she gave up watching and returned to the Beach House for a shower.
Still he didn’t appear and she picked up the phone, intending to call him, and then put it down again instantly, afraid of looking needy—afraid that in his current mood he’d think she was hassling him.
Where was he?
Had she driven him away for good this time?
Exhausted and miserable, she lay down on the bed and turned out the light. What was the point in waiting up for him when he so clearly didn’t want her company?
Having spent the day trying to work off his dangerous mood, Raul waited until dark to return to the Beach House, assuming that Faith would be asleep and he’d avoid another bout of female confrontation.
He spoke five languages fluently but never, ever would he understand women.
First she’d been angry with him and now she seemed to think he might need to talk about his feelings.
With an impatient frown, he threw his jacket down on the chair and poured himself a large drink.
Why was it that women thought that spilling their guts was a good thing?
As far as he was concerned it was a pointless exercise, designed to make everyone feel a thousand times worse. In his opinion, the secret of success lay in the ability to stifle and suppress any emotions that threatened one’s equilibrium.
And thanks to Faith’s persistent probing, his emotions were definitely threatening. She’d opened parts of his mind that he’d kept safely sealed for years.
His hand tightening around the glass, he swallowed the drink in one mouthful, ruthlessly pushing back against the thoughts that were closing in on him, cursing Faith for her desire to know him better.
She didn’t want to know that part of him, he thought grimly, depositing the empty glass on the table.
Intentionally or not, she was edging him closer to something that he’d avoided for his entire adult life. It loomed in front of him, a dark, deadly swarm of dirty, foul emotions from his past.
Suddenly his phone rang, cutting through the silence, and he gave a soft curse and reached for it, afraid that the sound would wake her.
‘It’s me.’ She stood in the doorway of the bedroom, her voice soft with sleep, the phone in her hand. ‘I’m the one ringing you.’
‘What for?’ Bracing himself for more confrontation, Raul felt every muscle in his body tense to snapping point. ‘Why are you ringing me at three in the morning?’
‘Because I was worried.’
He scanned her in a single sweep of his gaze. Her feet were bare, her cheeks were flushed from sleep and she wore a tiny, flimsy sheath of silk, apparently designed with the express intention of driving a man out of his mind.
Raul instantly forgot to be angry. In fact his mind emptied itself of everything except thoughts of sex. His body responded with electrifying force, his groin sending urgent signals to his fevered brain. In the grip of an arousal that bordered on the painful, he eyed the sofa.
Hot and fast. Right here. Right now.
On the verge of grabbing her and spreading her flat, he caught the look in her green eyes and saw something that stopped him.
Concern.
She really had been worried about him.
Trying to remember the last time that anyone had worried about him, Raul stifled his instinctive desire to flatten her underneath him, sensing with an unusual degree of insight that this would not be a good move.
On the other hand, not flattening her underneath him didn’t seem like a good move either.
‘Are you all right? You’re so, so tense. I can feel it from here.’ She was staring anxiously at his face and Raul realised that she had absolutely no idea that she was responsible for the rocketing levels of his tension.
Exasperated with himself for not being able to control himself around her, he scanned his options swiftly.
‘I need air,’ he ground out, turning and striding out onto the beach in the hope that fresh air and distance might succeed where logic and will power had failed.
What was the matter with him?
Since when had his mind focused on nothing but sex?
He’d always had a high sex-drive, yes, but sex had never before intruded on his every waking moment until the day he’d first met Faith.
He inhaled deeply, searching for some semblance of the control on which he’d always prided himself.
Faced with nothing but the dark expanse of the ocean, the nagging throb in his body eased slightly and some of the tension left his shoulders. But his respite was short lived because he suddenly felt her arms slide around his waist. She leaned her head against his back in an affectionate gesture that took him by surprise.
‘I love you.’ She spoke the words softly but he heard them nonetheless and her honest declaration knocked the last of the breath from his lungs.
He felt at a loss and he never felt like that and
when she walked round to stand in front of him, he braced himself for yet another serious disturbance to his emotional well-being.
But she didn’t say a word.
Instead she lifted her hands and slowly undid the buttons on his shirt and slid her hands over his chest. Her fingers were warm and gentle and he sucked in a breath as she pushed the shirt from his shoulders. Then she touched her mouth to his flesh and the arousal he’d been fighting returned with twice the intensity.
Driven by the throbbing ache low in his body, Raul followed his instincts and slid his fingers into her hair, holding her still for his kiss. Passion exploded between them and his mouth devoured hers with explicit, erotic intensity. He felt her slender frame quivering against his, her uninhibited response sending his own levels of arousal soaring into the stratosphere.
But before he could follow his instincts and lower her onto the sand, she eased away from his grip and slid her hands over his chest.
‘You’re an incredible kisser.’
More than happy to demonstrate the full breadth of his skills, Raul reached for her again, but she evaded his grasp and pressed her mouth against his chest, her mouth slowly tracing the line of his body hair.
Then she dropped to her knees in the sand.
Her blonde hair was bright in the moonlight and her green eyes sparkled like jewels as she threw him a look that blew the circuits in his mind. She was pure, lethal seductress and while Raul was still recovering from the shock of that look, she’d apparently finished the task of undressing him because he suddenly discovered that he was naked.
Accustomed to always being the aggressor when it came to sex, Raul’s mind was still dragging far behind his body when he felt the scrape of her nails on his thighs and the warm flick of her tongue.
He uttered an oath and her response was to slide her mouth closer to his potent masculine arousal.
‘Don’t talk,’ she ordered and Raul was more than happy to comply with that particular request because he no longer had the ability to string a sentence together. The subtle brush of her fingers against his bare flesh was so shockingly good that his abdomen clenched in violent anticipation. His body pulsed and throbbed but instead of doing what he ached for her to do, she teased him, as he had teased her so many times before, with lips, tongue and fingers, seducing and exciting until every bit of his body was pumped up and hard with arousal.
Just when he thought he was going to explode, she took him in her mouth and an earthy groan of disbelief tore from his throat.
His mind went totally blank and his entire world centred on that one, throbbing part of him. Nothing existed for him except the raging, burning heat in his loins and the incredible, unbelievable sensations created by her warm, damp, knowing mouth. That part of him was so shockingly sensitised that he was hyper-aware of every tiny movement she made—the flick of her tongue, the warmth of her breath, the brush of her fingers—and then it all merged and he felt his self-control splinter and crack as he was hurled headlong into the most all-consuming, violent, incredible climax of his life.
Completely unaware of time, Raul stood with his eyes tightly shut and his jaw clenched, waiting for his body and brain to return from that place of blind, sexual ecstasy.
Finally he opened his eyes and found himself staring straight into hers.
He opened his mouth, closed it again and then gave up on speech because this was one occasion when actions would definitely speak louder than words.
He lifted her and tumbled her gently down on the sand, his body covering hers in a decisive, possessive movement but immediately she pushed at his chest.
‘I want you on your back,’ she breathed. ‘I haven’t finished.’
Raul rolled away from her immediately, too dazed even to question her. Part of him thought it only fair to warn her that he doubted his capability for more after what he’d just experienced, but already she was straddling him lightly, the smile on her lips pure temptress.
‘Are you feeling OK, Raul?’
He was about to attempt some sort of response when she lowered herself onto his throbbing shaft and he discovered with electrifying force that his need for this woman knew no limitations.
She moved her hips slowly and skilfully and his hands closed on the curve of her bottom in an instinctive masculine need to increase the pace.
‘No.’ She leaned forward and teased his mouth with hers, the new angle of her body creating a wicked, delicious friction that drew another groan from deep within him.
He was on fire again, his entire body pumped up and primed to thrust but she didn’t let him. Instead she teased him relentlessly, lowering her body and taking him deep and then staying perfectly still for just long enough for the desperate urgency in his loins to make a partial retreat.
Again and again she prolonged the agony until his body was screaming for completion and her eyes were glittering with her own excitement.
Driven past the point of control, Raul gripped her hips, positioned her as he wanted her and drove into her quivering, shivering, pliant body with an uninhibited wildness that bordered on the shocking. He felt her inner muscles grip him violently and for a moment they were both suspended in the grip of fierce, unbelievable pleasure.
Then she collapsed against him and he closed his arms around her, feeling the softness of her hair brushing against his jaw.
He was the first to break the silence. ‘You’ve never done that before.’
‘You’ve never given me a chance,’ she said huskily. ‘You just take the initiative every single time. I used to think I was quite a strong woman, and then I met you.’
‘That’s just because I can’t look at you and not want to be inside you,’ he groaned, his impossibly frank confession drawing a soft laugh from her.
‘You’re very dominating, do you know that?’
‘Never again,’ Raul vowed, stroking her soft hair with a reverential hand. ‘It was amazing. You were amazing. From now on I’ll just lie there and let you do all the work. I’ll be passive.’
‘Passive?’ She lifted her head and her eyes sparkled into his. ‘You couldn’t be passive if you tried. You and passive are like oil and water, you just don’t mix.’
‘So why did you choose tonight?’
Her smile faded and there was a sudden shyness in her eyes. ‘We had a problem. I didn’t know how to get through to you.’
‘I thought you said that sex doesn’t solve problems.’
‘It’s always worked for you,’ she muttered. ‘I thought it was worth a try.’
‘It worked.’ He gave a groan and cupped her face in his hands, drawing her mouth to his. ‘Dios mío, it definitely worked. Any time you want to be dominating again, just go ahead.’
Faith woke to find Raul sprawled in a chair, a brooding expression on his handsome face as he watched her yawn and stretch.
‘It’s lunchtime,’ he informed her smoothly and her eyes widened in surprise.
‘It can’t possibly be that late!’
‘You just crashed out and you haven’t moved since.’ His eyes scanned her features with disturbing intensity. ‘You are as pale as marble. I am going to ask the doctor to see you.’
‘No.’ She sat up and rubbed her eyes, embarrassed that she’d just slept for so long. ‘There’s no need. I’m fine, really. I was just tired. The last few weeks have been stressful.’ The moment the words left her mouth she regretted them because she felt the immediate increase in his tension.
‘I know, and since this is clearly the time for apologies, I’m willing to accept that some of this is my fault.’
Rendered speechless by that uncharacteristic declaration, Faith stared at him and he frowned.
‘Don’t look at me like that. Believe it or not, I am capable of apology when the need arises.’ His eyes darkened and he looked at her for a moment and a faint smile of self-mockery touched his firm mouth. ‘It’s just that the need doesn’t usually arise.’
She gave a wobbly smile. ‘You don�
�t have to apologise. I can see now why you were so upset.’
‘You are very forgiving, but I shouldn’t have made that comment at the wedding,’ he breathed. ‘It was insensitive of me and in a way I can understand why you ran away. I gave you no reason to believe our relationship could work, but it can, cariño. I do care about your feelings and just to prove that I’ve arranged a very special trip for us.’
‘You have?’ She sensed the change in him but didn’t understand it. Was this to do with last night? Whatever had caused it, she wasn’t about to question it and risk ruining it in any way.
‘You missed out on a honeymoon,’ he drawled softly. ‘So that’s what I’ve arranged. I’m very aware that when you first came to Argentina you planned to travel around the country and meeting me stopped all that.’
Faith curled up on the bed, butterflies in her stomach as she watched him. He was so confident and handsome, so utterly sure of himself, how could any woman ever resist him? Looking at him now, she wasn’t surprised that she’d made the decision that she had. ‘I don’t regret anything, Raul.’
‘I’m taking you somewhere really special. You deserve it.’
‘When will we go?’
‘How soon can you dress?’ Raul’s glance was faintly mocking. ‘My pilot is waiting for us.’
Faith gasped and slipped out of bed. ‘Right now?’
‘Of course. Why not?’
His response made her smile. With Raul everything had to be right now. His capacity for waiting for anything was severely limited. ‘I can be dressed in two minutes,’ she assured him, reaching into her wardrobe for something comfortable to wear. ‘But I need to pack.’
‘That’s all been dealt with.’ Raul flipped his phone out of his pocket and spoke briefly to his pilot. ‘Just bring yourself.’
Faith selected a pair of shoes from the dozens of pairs he’d given her. ‘But where exactly are we going?’
‘We’re going to play tourist.’ Taking her hand in a firm grasp, he led her out of the Beach House towards the helipad that was positioned just behind the polo fields.
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