Bride in a Gilded Cage

by Abby Green

  Isobel just looked at Rafael, and felt the earth shift and sway under her feet.

  Rafael’s chest felt tight with the way Isobel was looking at him. Her gaze was so…penetrating, and full of some indefinable emotion. Something was rising within him and he knew only one way to avoid looking at what that was.

  In three long strides he’d crossed the room and cupped Isobel’s face in his hands. He felt her startled breath against his palms and his body tightened with need. Her eyes were huge and intensely dark. She opened her mouth, and the desire rushing through Rafael’s blood made him say, more curtly than he’d intended, ‘No. I don’t want to hear it. Enough. Tonight you’ll be in my bed, Isobel.’

  A short while later, changed for the charity function, Isobel had herself rigidly in control. She was aware of Rafael flicking her glances in the back seat of the car, and each one fell like a hot caress on her bared and too sensitive skin.

  She wore a strapless cocktail dress, fitted to the knee, and her legs were primly together, slanted to the side, as far away from Rafael as possible. She was still reeling from the revelation of finding out exactly what Rafael had been working on and how wrong she’d been. It made her feel now as if a layer of protective skin had been ripped away, leaving her exposed and vulnerable. Too exposed and vulnerable to face the prospect of sleeping with Rafael that night.

  She cast him a quick, surreptitious glance. He was looking ahead, coolly remote, and Isobel shivered. She couldn’t hide any longer.

  After a short journey they pulled up outside one of Buenos Aires’s oldest and grandest hotels. Isobel’s door was opened by a liveried doorman and she stepped out to be greeted by Rafael taking her hand in a firm grip. Quashing the urge to pull away, she gritted her teeth against the sensations shooting up her arm and let him lead her into the thronged and glittering function room.

  Hundreds of dinner tables were set around a dance floor, which was currently occupied by tables showing off the lots for the charity auction. After dinner, when the lots had been auctioned off—Rafael having spent a ludicrous amount of money—the staff started clearing the dance floor.

  Despite herself, Isobel’s distaste for this superficial social scene rose up again. Rafael leant close, and it took all her restraint not to move back. His evocative scent was teasing her nostrils mercilessly.

  ‘What is wrong with you? You look like you’ve swallowed a lemon.’

  Isobel tightened her jaw. ‘I just find it hard to sit here and watch the elite throwing their money around when the charity in question probably gets a bare percentage just for the privilege of having its name mentioned in such exalted circles.’

  Rafael’s voice was deep and close, lightly mocking. ‘You’re too quick to judge again.’

  Isobel burned at being reminded of how quick and absolute her judgment had been.

  ‘It’s all a game, just like everything else. The people you see here are the most powerful in the country. To a large extent you’re right in your assessment. But you’re discounting what goes on in tandem with this—for instance, the fact that I’ve donated a disgustingly large amount of money to a cancer charity chaired by the Marquesa Consuela Valderosa, who is holding court on the table over there, means that she will now feel compelled, in the nicest possible way, of course, to lend her illustrious name and support to a much less monied charity of my own choice. It’s all about getting what you want from people. You just have to know how to play the game, Isobel.’

  Isobel looked at him speechlessly. His eyes were dark and hypnotic, and she had the strong suspicion he was talking about the games he had accused her of playing with him. She felt hot inside.

  Just then Rita leant across the table and said excitedly to Isobel and Rafael, ‘They’re playing that tango music from Scent of a Woman. Would you two dance for us…please?’

  Isobel looked at Rafael helplessly, her belly quivering as she remembered how he’d strode across the room earlier and taken her face in his hands. He hadn’t even kissed her, but when he’d turned and walked away she’d been trembling all over. She turned to Rita and started to say, ‘I’m sorry—I don’t know if—’

  But Isobel felt her hand being taken and then she was being urged up to meet Rafael, who was looking down at her with a glint in his eye. ‘Of course we’d love to dance a tango—wouldn’t we, carino.’

  Isobel hissed at Rafael as he led her to the dance floor, where a few couples were trying unsuccessfully to emulate the famous movie scene. ‘My dress is too tight. I won’t be able to dance properly.’

  Rafael swept a look down and bent. All Isobel heard was a faint ripping sound. When he led her forward again she gasped as she felt a breeze, and looked down to see that Rafael had effortlessly ripped her dress to mid-thigh.

  He brought her to the middle of the dance floor and she looked up at him, ‘What on earth do you think—?’

  But her words were cut off as Rafael expertly pulled her into his arms in a quick staccato move, forcing her weight forward and into him. His embrace was close and tight, their chests all but welded together as he started to move.

  Isobel’s feet followed naturally and instinctively, but this tango was not like the first time they’d danced in Paris. There was a simmering sensuality about this one, and it was worlds away from the kind of tangos their grandparents would have danced.

  Isobel could feel the rip in her dress give way even more as Rafael led her in a dizzying series of steps. She had to close her eyes when she saw that other dancers were stepping back to give them space and watch.

  Isobel felt the slide of Rafael’s leg between hers, forcing her leg up into the high kick known as a bolero. Her heartrate was out of control. Then he displaced her weight and she had to lean into him even more.

  When he twisted, so that she had to hook her leg under his, she could feel the tension in his powerful thigh muscle against the back of her leg. Her eyes opened with a mute plea for him to stop this sensual torture. His dark gaze glittered down at her, green and golden flecks standing out, making her throat dry. His intent was written all over his face: tonight he was going to make her his.

  For a heart-stopping moment Isobel thought he was going to kiss her, and an instant fine layer of sweat seemed to spring up over her skin, but then Rafael broke the intense eye contact and kept dancing, pulling Isobel close again. She felt utterly exposed; this tango had become a display of Rafael’s sensual domination over her, and with every move it felt as if he knew more and more just how badly she hungered for him. Along with everyone else watching.

  Her fear of intimacy with this man, and what it might reveal to him and worse to her about her feelings for him, was hanging by a mere thread.

  Finally the last chords of the achingly melancholic music died away. Isobel was breathing so hard she felt faint. She was in the classic supplicant tango pose, bent back and looking up into Rafael’s face. People were starting to clap, but it was the triumphant look in his eyes that did it. Isobel acted completely on instinct. She ripped her hand from his and slapped him across his face.

  Instantly silence fell. The clapping stopped. Isobel stood up awkwardly and attempted to walk off the floor, aghast at her reaction and what she’d done, but her wrist was caught and she was effectively twirled back into Rafael’s hard body.

  Before she could react everything disappeared as his mouth crashed down on hers, and the entire world seemed to explode inside her head. His mouth was hard and hot, the slide of his tongue too erotically seductive for her to fight. Angrily she matched him, aggressively stroking his tongue with hers, teeth nipping and biting at his lower lip. In that moment she truly hated him for reducing her to this tumult of feelings.

  Her whole body was arched into his, as if she wanted to fuse with him there and then. It felt as if she was finally boiling over to a place of no return, all restraint washed away in an overwhelming tide of need. And then Rafael pulled away and stepped back, still holding Isobel’s hand. Stunned, exposed, and very shaken, I
sobel could only follow on wobbly legs as they walked off the dance floor. To her abject relief, other people had started to dance again.

  Isobel was aware of Rafael issuing a curt instruction to someone and then they were out in the lobby, emerging into the cool night where his car was already waiting. In the back of the car, Isobel was still feeling crazily out of control.

  She blurted out heatedly, ‘I’m not going to apologise for that. It could have been a perfectly normal dance but you…you turned it into something positively indecent.’

  Isobel shot him a glance to see his face stark. He ran a hand through his hair. She felt waves of tension crackle off him.

  ‘The only thing indecent about that dance was the intensity of sexual frustration. I was no more capable of keeping that dance clean than you were of not twining your seductive body around mine like a purring cat.’

  Isobel flushed as she recalled how it had been to feel the slide of his thigh between her legs. The cliché of the tango being a vertical expression of a horizontal act really wasn’t such a cliché. The truth was, the dance had been exhilarating.

  But right now one of her hands was holding the ripped sides of her dress together, in a futile attempt at some sort of modesty, and it felt as if she’d just been made love to in front of an entire audience.

  ‘Need I remind you,’ she said now, desperately trying to claw back some dignity, ‘that you were the one who ripped my dress like some kind of caveman.’

  They were at the house. Rafael said nothing and got out. Before Isobel could scramble out herself, Rafael was there. With a squeal Isobel saw Rafael duck low, and then she was out of the car and over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. She clamped her mouth shut, knowing that it would be futile to say a word, and the sensation of Rafael’s powerful shoulder under her body was rendering her speechless anyway.

  He climbed the stairs with ruthless intent in every step, and then walked all the way to his bedroom door, opened it and stepped inside, and then kicked it shut with a foot.

  Suddenly Isobel was back on her feet and breathing harshly. A wild excitement mixed with fear sang in her blood. She knew she was powerless now, in the face of this overwhelming desire. She had no defences left. Rafael had chipped and picked away at them remorselessly.

  It made her blurt out unthinkingly, ‘Don’t come near me. You’re a Neanderthal.’

  Tension and coiled energy bounced off Rafael in angry waves. A muscle twitched in his jaw. His eyes were black. Mere feet separated them, but Isobel fancied in that moment that she could feel his heart beating, thundering like hers. She wanted him to close the distance, haul her into his arms and silence the cacophony of voices in her head and in her heart.

  But then, as if a switch had been flicked, the tension disappeared. Rafael stepped back to the door. Isobel felt her body move slightly, as if they were joined by an invisible thread.

  Rafael’s face was carved from stone. Unreadable and harsh. And then, in a low blistering voice, he said, ‘Damn you, Isobel.’ And turned and walked out through the door.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE minute he’d gone Isobel physically sagged, as if some life force had been stripped from her. She staggered back and sat heavily onto his bed. What had just happened? Every step of the way Rafael had met her head-on, time and time again. And suddenly…he hadn’t. He’d walked away. Proving once again that his control was far greater than hers. Her body felt tight and aching with burning need.

  When he’d put her down and she’d stepped away from him jerkily something had flashed across his face. Something that had looked tortured. Isobel recognised it now, because it was exactly how she felt. How she’d been feeling for a long time, although she’d been denying it to herself. Pushing it away, hiding from herself in the worst possible way.

  She winced now when she thought of how carelessly she’d hurled those words at him, the way he’d flinched minutely and then shut down.

  A compulsion rose and gathered force deep within her; there was only one thing to do, one place she wanted to be, one person she wanted to be with. There had only been one person since Rafael had kissed her on her eighteenth birthday.

  A deeply feminine part of her wanted to make her mark on this man and she couldn’t deny it any more. That was what it came down to. And she didn’t have time to think about the ramifications or her precious integrity.

  Rafael stood looking down into the dying embers of the fire Juanita must have lit earlier. He took a deep sip from the drink he’d just poured himself with a shaking hand. A shaking hand.

  He grimaced, his head was in a tangled knot and his body burning thanks to that temptress upstairs. He tried to articulate to himself why he’d let her get to him again. Why hadn’t he just tipped her back onto his bed? Right now he could be slaking his lust in a very satisfactory way. Exorcising this gnawing need in his body.

  It was because he wanted Isobel so badly that he couldn’t think straight. He’d realised in that moment upstairs that he’d never wanted a woman as badly as he wanted her. Not even Ana, and he’d thought he loved her. And when he thought about the implications of that—

  He heard a sound come from the door and tensed.

  Isobel pushed the door to the main reception room open to see the tall figure of Rafael standing in front of the fire. She saw him lift his hand and take a drink. And then he said harshly, ‘Go away, Isobel. I’m not in the mood for any more of your games.’

  Isobel flinched, and her heart ached in a very peculiar way. She came in and shut the door behind her, her pulse flowing thick and heavy through her veins as she took in the sheer breadth and power of Rafael’s body in the black tuxedo. There was something curiously vulnerable about his stance.

  He still didn’t turn around, but seemed to have eyes in the back of his head when he said, ‘I thought I told you—’

  ‘I heard you.’ Isobel cut him off softly. ‘But I’m not leaving.’ This was a pivotal moment. She knew it, and trembled all over with the knowledge of it. The truth was she didn’t have the strength required to deny her attraction any more. She didn’t have the strength to worry about what would happen if she allowed herself to be intimate with him. Her need for him was too great.

  Rafael tipped back his head, drained whatever was in his glass and placed it too carefully on the mantelpiece. Slowly he turned around.

  All Isobel could see was those dark eyes across the room, boring into her, through her. Burning her. He’d ripped open his bow tie and it dangled from his neck; the top buttons of his shirt were undone. Her breath constricted in her throat.

  Rafael crossed his arms across his formidable chest. ‘Come to hurl more insults, Isobel? Play the tease again?’

  Isobel moved forward, but it felt as if she was wading through treacle. She stopped a few feet away from Rafael, her heart racing even harder. Her skin felt hot and tight, stretched across her bones. Her shoulders felt stiff.

  ‘I…’

  ‘I…what?’ Rafael all but sneered, and moved as if to turn away again.

  Instinctively, Isobel moved, too, and reached out, catching his jacket, feeling the strength of his arm through the material.

  He stilled and she stopped dead.

  ‘I…I’m sorry.’

  Silence throbbed between them. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her. Isobel knew that now. She let her hand drop but felt a fledgling sense of encouragement when he didn’t turn away again.

  Isobel bit her lip and then said in a rush, ‘I never meant to be any kind of tease. I shouldn’t have said…what I just said. I’ve been fighting you…fighting myself…and I can’t any more.’ She looked up at him, into his deep, unfathomable eyes, and spoke from the deepest part of her. ‘I want you, Rafael…’

  A harsh mocking smile touched Rafael’s mouth, sending splinters into Isobel’s heart.

  ‘You want me?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I think I need you to clarify that statement, Isobel. We wouldn’t want any confus
ion, would we? I don’t like being called a Neanderthal, or being reduced to such caveman responses. Perhaps it’s easier for you to sleep with a bleeding heart liberal than the corporate shark you believed me to be?’

  Isobel winced again and looked down, unable to take the censure in his eyes even though she knew she deserved it. She looked up again and had the feeling that this moment was going to be a test of everything she was, everything she held dear.

  All her preconceived notions had changed so much; the fact was that even if Rafael hadn’t proved himself to be a man of integrity she knew she would still be standing here right now. The world she’d so dreaded coming back to had become something else entirely.

  ‘I want you to make love to me, Rafael.’ She swallowed painfully. ‘I just…wasn’t ready before. I couldn’t—’

  Rafael jerked a hand out of his pocket and slashed it through the air, cutting her off. ‘Enough with the stuttering explanation, Isobel. It’s cute, but unnecessary. You’re here to tell me that you’re ready to go to bed with me—is that it?’

  Isobel blanched at his words, but nodded slowly.

  A long moment stretched, and then Rafael casually took off his jacket and threw it on the arm of a nearby chair before going over and sitting down. Isobel turned and watched him warily.

  With his elbows on the armrests, his face cast into dark shadow, he looked at her and said throatily, ‘Take off your clothes.’

  Isobel just looked back at him, cold horror trickling through her. ‘You want me to take my clothes off…here?’