by Lynne Graham
She stilled in astonishment at the sight of the waterfall tumbling down over a jutting outcrop of limestone rock into a wide glistening tranquil pool below. The water was so clear she could see each individual pebble below the surface. It was very beautiful. But she was obviously not on the same path she had used before.
Joaquin was going to kill her, she conceded ruefully. Bending down, she dipped a finger into the water. It was deliciously cool. Slowly, she raised herself again. She listened to the silence. Even the birds had gone quiet. She was so hot that her damp clothes were sticking to her skin, and getting mad at Joaquin hadn’t helped. Just a quick two-minute dip, she decided, succumbing to temptation. Then she would retrace her steps, for goodness knows where she would end up if she stayed on the path she was on!
Peeling off her skirt and top with a sigh of relief, she stepped into the pool. Heavenly. She scooped up water and splashed herself all over, revelling in every sparkling water droplet that cooled her overheated flesh.
‘Freeze, Lucy…’
Joaquin’s drawl was so much quieter than its wont, and such an unwelcome shock, that for a split second she did freeze with appalled chagrin, her lack of clothing her most overriding concern. Automatically her head then jerked up and she began to whip her hands over her bare breasts, and then what she saw in that one mortified upward glance filled her with absolute terror…
CHAPTER SIX
IN THE deep shadow below the trees, no longer screened by the thick vegetation, stood the most huge and terrifying beast Lucy had ever seen outside a zoo.
The jaguar was barely fifteen feet away on the other side of the pool. His big golden eyes were drilling holes into her and her mouth fell open. So intense was her fear that she could neither draw breath nor remove her shattered gaze from the animal. And then, with a sudden movement that scared the living daylights out of her and provoked a startled gasp from her straining lungs, the great muscular cat sprang through the trees and was gone.
‘Oh, my heaven…oh, my…oh, my!’ Lucy spluttered through chattering teeth, her near nudity now the very last thing on her mind.
A pair of powerful arms lifted her out of the water and brought her back on to dry land. Trembling violently with fear, she couldn’t have spoken to save her life.
‘You know the Maya believed that when night fell the sun turned into a jaguar that prowled the underworld,’ Joaquin murmured as he peeled off his shirt and dropped it round her shaking shoulders.
‘They also called it “the beast that kills its prey with one b-bound”!’ Lucy stammered sickly.
‘They are rarely aggressive towards humans.’
‘Thank the good Lord that he didn’t fancy getting those big paws wet!’ she gabbled, clutching at a bare broad male shoulder to keep herself upright.
‘He is an excellent swimmer, querida. This is the pool where he catches fish. You were trespassing.’
‘Get clothes on,’ Lucy mumbled, not keen to hear any further revelations of the big cat’s habits.
Joaquin crouched down to gather up her discarded garments. She crouched down with him, pale as death and still shaking like a leaf. ‘I was scared—’
‘That’s good, querida. That’s more sensible than skinny-dipping in a rainforest when twilight falls.’
‘Never again,’ Lucy promised in a wobbly voice.
In a deft movement, Joaquin dropped the gypsy top over her head and freed her from his shirt. ‘But in all my vast experience I do not think that I ever saw anything as lovely as you were in that brief instant before I saw that you had attracted another admirer.’
With complete calm, he then began inserting her arms into the sleeves of her top while she knelt on the ground in front of him, still virtually paralysed by shock. ‘Lovely?’ she queried unevenly.
‘You…exquisite…your breasts, your hair, the way the light fell on your skin…’
‘Oh…’ Lucy collided unwarily with shimmering green eyes, conscious of a soaring wicked response she could no more have prevented than she could have denied herself air to breathe. She moistened her dry lips.
‘No…’ Joaquin decreed in a low-pitched undertone, as if she had spoken.
Only she didn’t need to speak to know what he was talking about, and it gave her the most extraordinary sense of power to note the slight tremor in his lean brown hands as he extended them to help her back to her feet. He proceeded to feed her shaky lower limbs into her skirt. She recognised his dexterity without surprise and was amazed by her own lack of concern at being dressed by him. She tried to picture how she must have looked to him in the pool. Clad in nothing but a pair of panties that were wet and probably transparent.
‘Did I look sexy?’ she heard herself whisper with helpless curiosity.
Joaquin closed big hands over her shoulders and flexed his fingers. ‘Like a water nymph in an old painting.’
A water nymph was next door to a wholesome cherub in Lucy’s mind. He urged her back the way she had come. Her legs felt ridiculously wobbly. Time itself felt dislocated. Traversing the periphery of the ruins, Joaquin turned into the original path where a big four-wheel drive now sat parked. He lifted her into the front seat, hands steady now, and impersonal. As he reversed the vehicle she studied his bold bronzed profile in the dusk light, her heartbeat hammering out a dangerous tattoo. In all her life she had never wanted so badly to touch anyone as she wanted to touch him.
When had they stopped talking? When had the silence fallen and the tension begun to build? She didn’t know, only that she was awesomely aware of that crackling tension and of him. He flipped on the air-conditioning, the click sounding preternaturally loud. He turned towards her, dense spiky lashes screening his gaze to a glimmer of the purest jade. Her fingertips curled in on themselves as she fought the crazy, shameless need to reach out to him.
In the rushing silence she noted everything about him. The faint sheen on his high proud cheekbones, the powerful lure of those bright eyes, the roughened darkness of his uncompromisingly male jawline in contrast to his beautifully modelled mouth. A tiny pulse was flickering like mad at the base of her throat as she let her head fall back and just looked at him.
‘You like to flirt with danger, querida,’ Joaquin commented, his accent rough as sandpaper gliding over silk.
Never before, probably never again, her rational mind responded. She was dizzy with the tension that held her wire-taut, outrageously aware of the heavy fullness of her breasts and the tiny little twisting sensation curling in the pit of her stomach. He looked and she burned and she melted. It was that simple, that basic, and way too potent a force for her to control. It both thrilled and terrified her to feel the magnetic pull of that power he had over her.
‘It’s not fair to blame me…’ she muttered, dry-mouthed.
Joaquin lifted a lean hand and rested a fingertip against the pulse fluttering wildly at her collarbone. ‘No…’ he conceded, drawing out the word huskily. ‘Desire is rarely so immediate as it is between us. That intrigues me, but it won’t hold me. Don’t fantasise about a future beyond tomorrow…’
Lucy heard what he was saying and she understood, but she couldn’t think about it. She let the words sink unmourned into her subconscious, her whole being concentrated on the mesmeric brilliance of his eyes, the delicious, utterly electrifying sensuality of that light and confident finger now tracing the full curve of her lower lip.
‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ she whispered breathlessly.
He cupped her cheekbone, watched her curve her face instinctively into his palm. ‘Only teenagers talk like that, Lucy,’ he censured with lazy mockery.
‘Maybe…’ she framed, sealing up the pain of that put-down as soon as she felt it, stowing it away with his words earlier, banishing all that she could not deal with.
‘You want me…I want you,’ he countered. ‘Sexual hunger needs no other label.’
Releasing her then, he turned back to the steering wheel and drove off. She was all of a qu
iver, intoxicated with longing. She closed her eyes but she couldn’t bear it. She had to look at him again. Sexual hunger? Not a label she liked. She pushed that knowledge away hurriedly, afraid to face it.
Darkness had fallen at bewildering speed. In the path of the headlights, Lucy watched him shoot the car to a halt in a courtyard which she assumed lay to the rear of the house. He sprang out and strode round the bonnet. Opening the passenger door, he just scooped her out into his arms.
A shaken laugh escaped Lucy as Joaquin lifted her high in a wholly unexpected manoeuvre that reminded her just how volatile he could be and also deprived her of her shoes, for they fell off. Simultaneously, she noticed that the lights burning in a couple of the ground-floor windows had mysteriously dimmed since their arrival, possibly to allow any staff looking out a better view of what was happening outside.
‘My shoes…Joaquin, put me down, please,’ she urged, hot-cheeked.
‘Not until we hit the bedroom.’
‘But what about Yolanda?’ she gasped, distinctly taken aback by that open avowal of intent.
‘My sister has gone to Guatemala city to stay the night with her cousins,’ Joaquin imparted. ‘Retail therapy will hopefully improve her temper.’
‘Retail therapy?’
‘Shopping,’ Joaquin rephrased, in some surprise that the explanation was necessary.
He swept through a door off the courtyard to mount a back staircase while still holding her as if she weighed no more than a child. He paused on the lofty landing above to claim her lips in a slow, sensual kiss that she found totally electrifying.
Hot and breathless in the aftermath, Lucy opened eyes she didn’t remember closing and found herself spread across Joaquin’s imposing bed. Her critical faculties were not working at speed and her entire attention was absorbed by the fact that Joaquin had just finished extracting her from her skirt. As she sat up in some confusion, for matters were moving faster than she had naively expected, Joaquin settled crystalline green eyes full of intent on her and peeled off his shirt.
‘Oh…’ Lucy gasped.
‘Oh…what?’ The most glorious smile she had ever seen curved Joaquin’s mouth.
She was just dazzled by that smile. Heart going nineteen to the dozen, she rested back on her elbows and just stared at him. Shorn of his shirt, he was magnificent. Bronzed skin, black hair, whipcord muscles. As he embarked on his chino trousers she could feel her face hotting up, but she could not resist her own curiosity when that lithe powerful physique was being revealed inch by tantalising inch.
She focused on his washboard-flat stomach and the tantalising silky furrow of hair arrowing down to disappear below his waistband. Then her scrutiny strayed lower and she blinked, jolted out of her voyeuristic reverie. The potent thrust of his arousal was patent. Enervated by the sight, and suddenly desperately self-conscious, she jerked her head away and stared a hole in the door instead.
Nervous as a kitten now, she sat forward, hands linking together. Curiosity had certainly been satisfied. Long past time too, she told herself urgently. Here she was, pushing twenty-three and a virgin. She loved him. He might not love her, but if she chose to overlook the fact that was her business, wasn’t it? But if being in a bedroom just watching Joaquin remove his clothes struck her as being the ultimate in intimacy, how was she going to handle what followed? Oh no, she thought, gripped by sudden panic, suppose he realised that she wasn’t the experienced lover he thought she was?
‘Joaquin…?’ she began tautly.
‘Getting impatient?’ Joaquin teased in his dark deep drawl.
‘Well…er, no—’
He came down on the bed beside her and separated her hands so that he could divest her of her top. The operation was so slick she started talking again, only to discover that what she was saying was being muffled by the fabric.
‘Cómo?’ Joaquin prompted with a frown.
Lucy tugged the gypsy top from him before he could dispose of it and ventured, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t be rushing into this—’
‘Do you feel rushed?’ Joaquin rested his hands lightly on her slight shoulders and very gently eased her back against the pillows. ‘You are very tense, querida.’
‘Yes, but…b-but…’
‘I love your mouth,’ Joaquin confessed as he leant over her, his breath fanning her cheek, his proximity sentencing her to stillness.
She stared up into his burnished eyes. He lowered his arrogant dark head and very gently brushed her lips with his. ‘Oh…’
‘You were saying?’
‘Nothing…’ Engaged on stroking her fingers through his hair, Lucy blinked and turned her mouth up under his in a move so instinctive she didn’t even have to think about it.
With a sexy sound, low in his throat, Joaquin pulled her under him and tasted her parted lips hungrily with his own. The concept of escape had evaporated from her mind. As he crushed her into contact with every angle of his overpoweringly male body, she was in more danger of expiring from over-excitement. Her pulses were racing. With the achingly familiar scent of him in her nostrils, every sense she possessed went into overdrive.
He lifted his head and whisked away the crumpled top which still lay between them. His hand curved over the small pouting mounds of her breasts and she quivered, heat curling in her pelvis, making her restive.
‘I love your breasts too,’ Joaquin muttered unevenly as he disposed of her last garment.
He ran an exploring fingertip over a swollen pale pink nipple and then he dropped his head and let his mouth close round that straining peak instead. The hot rush of physical pleasure took her by storm. She jerked, her whole body trembling. Her skin felt super-sensitive, the force of her own response shocking her, but there wasn’t time to dwell on that discovery. His erotic appreciation of her tender flesh was utterly absorbing—until her rising need demanded more.
‘Please…’ she moaned then.
Eyes glittering, Joaquin surveyed her and let a relaxed hand skim down a taut thigh. Her muscles contracted. She reached up to him, possessed of a fever she barely understood but which nonetheless controlled her. The forceful kiss he claimed only partially eased her nagging tension.
‘So you really do want me…’ Joaquin husked, hauling her even closer with glittering eyes full of conquest.
‘Don’t you know that?’ She gave him a bemused look.
‘Women are better liars than men.’ He studied her with slumbrous satisfaction. ‘But if you had tried to fake your response I would have known it, gatita.’
He smoothed a possessive hand over her quivering length. He let his tongue delve between her reddened lips, stoked the hunger she couldn’t hide with a carnal level of expertise that she could not resist. As he traced the hot thrumming centre of her body, she arched her spine, a sob of response escaping her convulsed throat. The pleasure became so intense she writhed, driven mindless by her own lack of control.
And then, when she was at the stage when she might have pleaded could she have found her voice, Joaquin came over her, settling between her thighs. ‘You’re so small, I’m afraid I’ll hurt you, querida,’ he complained raggedly.
Duly forewarned, she still retained enough brain power to react and tense. ‘Joaquin?’ she gasped.
‘Cristo…I know,’ he groaned feelingly, scanning her with glittering eyes filled with need. ‘I can’t wait any longer either. Never have I been so hot for a woman as I am for you!’
In an instant, the incipient panic she was fighting vanished. Lucy had a vision of herself as the kind of woman who drove a man crazy with desire. She loved that vision. He moved against her. She closed her eyes, and then he was there and it was the most extraordinarily intense moment. Her whole being was centred on that alien intrusion, the sharp stab of momentary pain which made her grit her teeth, but then, caught up in returning excitement, she stopped thinking and started just feeling again.
‘You feel incredible, gatita,’ Joaquin groaned, driving deeper inside her, provoking the
most awesomely pleasurable sensations.
From that point on she was lost in her own stormy response. Heart thumping, breath catching, she was caught up in the wild passion he generated. With every smooth rhythmic thrust, he drove her hunger for him higher. She was burning, reaching for the mindless peak of ultimate fulfilment. And then she was there, plunged into ecstasy, crying out in surprise at the height of that pleasure before slowly sinking down to planet earth again.
In the aftermath, she studied Joaquin with wondering eyes. She remembered him shuddering with a driven growl of raw release and she quivered, cocooned in a feeling of decided smugness as she curved up against his big damp body and kissed his shoulder. She was awash with sunny feelings and satisfaction and appreciation.
‘You’re wonderful,’ she whispered dreamily.
‘It was good…’ Joaquin purred like an indolent jungle cat above her head, accepting the compliment as his due with complete cool. ‘In fact, it was spectacular, gatita.’
He rolled over, carrying her with him. Then he rearranged her on top of him. He looked down at her, smoothed her tumbled curls back from her brow and slowly eased her back up level with him again to study her with almost frowning fascination. ‘I want you all over again.’
‘Sí…’ Lucy said, suddenly feeling confident enough to tease him.
A heartbreaking smile curved Joaquin’s beautiful mouth and he relaxed even more. ‘And again,’ he confided with a husky laugh. ‘And again. How many repeat encounters am I allowed?’
She blushed, and pushed her happy face into a broad brown shoulder. ‘Who’s counting?’ she whispered shyly.
He kicked back the sheet. Then he frowned and sat up. She followed the path of his gaze and froze in dismay and chagrin, for there was a small bloodstain on the sheet.
‘Por Dios…’ Joaquin exclaimed.
Thinking faster than she had ever thought in her life, Lucy muttered, ‘My knee…I fell when I was scrambling round the ruins this afternoon—’