Bride in a Gilded Cage

by Abby Green

  He carried her back into his bedroom and unceremoniously dumped her on the bed, where she fell in an ungainly sprawl. She immediately moved to escape to the other side of the bed, but Rafael grabbed her ankle and stopped her. She turned back, breathing heavily, to see Rafael’s hand snake higher and higher, over her calf, her knee, her lower thigh…her upper thigh. And suddenly she wasn’t fighting any more.

  His long, lean, naked and aroused body was pressing down over hers again, and once again she was rendered mute, a slave to this man’s touch. She trembled.

  ‘Are you sore?’ he asked innocuously.

  Isobel shook her head. She wasn’t sore. Yes, she ached a little, but there was another ache building, and only one person was capable of assuaging it.

  As if he could read her mind, he said throatily, ‘Good. Because I think that this time we might be able to make things last a little longer…And, Isobel, I do not want to hear the word space ever again—entiendes?’

  He bent his head to one pouting breast and clamped his mouth over one already hard and tight nipple, suckling through the delicate lace of her camisole. The action of his mouth mixed with the wet lace of her cami made Isobel squirm underneath him, groaning softly as all resistance washed away in a wave of heat.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WHEN Isobel finally woke again, some hours later, she was sprawled across Rafael’s bed, a sheet tucked around her. She knew that she was alone. She’d half woken earlier to hear Rafael getting dressed. She felt too lethargic to move, too lethargic to even blush when she thought of how long Rafael had made it last that time. How she’d been clawing his back with her nails, begging, pleading for release…

  She turned her head face down into the pillow and moaned. Her fears that intimacy would make her feel something for Rafael had been well founded. She was on a roller coaster of emotions and feelings that made her want to cry and laugh at the same time. She resolutely refused to look at the suspicion that these emotions went a lot deeper than simple morningafter fuzziness.

  Isobel flipped over on her back and looked up to the ceiling. It had to be just the natural feelings that arose from losing your virginity to someone. A natural biological result of sharing intimacy.

  The bedroom door opened and Isobel shot up in the bed, clutching the sheet to her, heart thumping. She wasn’t ready to see Rafael so soon. But it was Juanita coming into the room, with a tray holding some orange juice. She put it down beside Isobel, who flushed with embarrassment, but Juanita just smiled serenely.

  Isobel blinked, and watched as she opened the curtains to let the morning light in. Was this the same woman?

  Juanita turned and said jauntily, ‘Señor Romero has gone to the office. He said to tell you that I will be moving your belongings into his room today.’

  ‘But—’ Isobel started to protest, and then stopped under a baleful look from Juanita. ‘Okay,’ she said weakly instead, knowing that if she stopped Juanita from carrying out Rafael’s autocratic instructions he’d simply do it himself. No wonder Juanita was so pleased. She must feel that Isobel was finally being a good wife to Rafael. But it made Isobel nervous—as though Juanita knew something she didn’t.

  She didn’t even have the strength to let that thought annoy her as much as it should. All she could think of was the night to come, and the ones after that, repeating what she’d just shared with Rafael. In all honesty she didn’t think she’d be able to cope.

  By the time the weekend was over Isobel felt emotionally wrung out. Rafael filled her—mind, body and soul. They’d only been sleeping together for two nights, but already it was nearly impossible to remember a time when she hadn’t slept in the cocoon of his possessive embrace. He was consuming her utterly, and her already tenuous control of her emotions was rapidly unravelling.

  So when he informed her coolly over breakfast on Monday morning that he still intended to come with her to see the estate agent about her dance school, she protested. ‘Really, you don’t have to do this. I know how busy you are…’

  He just looked at her. ‘I’m coming with you, whether you like it or not, so get your things ready.’

  She didn’t argue any further, recognising the implacable expression on Rafael’s face.

  The effect of his presence when they arrived at the building in La Boca was almost comical. The estate agent she’d been photographed with blanched when he saw him, and within mere minutes the price was down so low that Isobel felt guilty.

  Within an indecently short space of time she and Rafael were standing in a huge empty room with high ceilings and massive windows. Isobel was a little shell-shocked.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ Rafael asked, rocking back on his heels with hands deep in his pockets.

  She shook her head quickly. ‘I love it. It’s just…all happened a bit fast. I’d kind of envisaged this being a slow process.’ She shot him a wry smile. ‘I think for most mortals it is a slow process.’

  Isobel saw Rafael’s eyes drop to her mouth. It tingled, and Isobel could feel warm colour flood her cheeks. An intense spasm of lust made her belly clench, and down lower she flooded with liquid heat. God, if he was to tip her onto the floor right now and make love to her she knew she wouldn’t, couldn’t object. She didn’t move as Rafael prowled towards her with all the threat and grace of an indolent panther.

  She lifted her chin helplessly, eyes snared by his. He reached out and hooked a hand to the back of her neck, drawing her towards him slowly and inexorably. He took her right hand and lifted it up. His other hand moved slowly down from her neck to her back as he pulled her into a tango embrace. Through an open window came the faint strains of a waltz from where street performers had set up outside.

  ‘Rafael—’ Isobel croaked out, terrified that he would try and make love to her and see just how wanton he made her feel.

  ‘Shh.’ He halted her protest and started to dance with her.

  In flat shoes Isobel had to stand on tiptoe. She couldn’t help but sink into his embrace. Rafael’s lead was all too easy and seductive to follow. Isobel wasn’t sure how long they danced around the empty room, with dust motes floating in the air, to the music of someone else’s dance, but when they finally stopped she was breathing hard and felt disorientated. Weak as a kitten. Dancing a tango with Rafael before they’d slept together had been cataclysmic, but dancing it now, after having been intimate with him…

  Rafael bent his head and feathered a kiss to the corner of Isobel’s mouth. ‘If you’re happy with this place then I’ll arrange for everything to be put in motion.’

  Isobel was struggling to find her equilibrium, seriously scared at how easily Rafael managed to turn her whole world upside down with just a touch, a dance, a light caress.

  She nodded her head, moving back, pushing herself out of his arms. She needed space to think. Right now he could have pointed to a tiny galvanised garden shed and she would probably agree to take it as the studio.

  ‘Yes…that sounds…good.’

  He took her by the hand to lead her out of the building, and without his intense focus on her Isobel felt as if she could draw breath again. She was very afraid of confronting what was in her heart now she had little or no reason to hate Rafael any more.

  She’d told him that he’d never know her, but she hadn’t counted on what it would do to her to know him.

  The following day, as she helped Juanita to move the last of her things into Rafael’s room, Isobel saw the housekeeper holding a box.

  ‘What do you want to do with this?’

  Isobel recognised the rosewood box she’d taken from the estancia. She’d forgotten all about it. She explained to Juanita that she’d brought it to try and get someone to open it, so she could see what was inside, and Juanita led Isobel outside to a garage at the side of the house, where Rafael’s general handyman was working. Isobel said a shy hello, realising that she hadn’t really made an effort to get to know the rest of the staff yet.

  Within a few minutes, and with minimal
damage to the box, Carlos had it open. Having given him an effusive thankyou, Isobel went back into the house and into her now empty suite of rooms. She sat cross-legged on her stripped bed and opened the box.

  In it she found bundles of letters tied together with ribbons. Opening them with shaking hands, she realised that they were love letters. For a heart-stopping moment she thought they were letters from her grandmother to someone other than her grandfather, but then realised that they weren’t. They were between her grandparents—both sets of letters, from both sides. Right from when they’d met as teenagers up until they were married.

  Carved into the inside of the lid was the inscription ‘Together for ever, my love.’ Isobel already had tears threatening before she’d even opened the first letter.

  The letters were at first as gentle and loving as she might have expected, but to her utter surprise, as their relationship had become physical—well before their marriage, by all accounts, which had a blush stealing into Isobel’s cheeks—they became by turns heated, passionate, cajoling, jealous and sometimes downright X-rated, bringing Isobel vivid memories of her own from the last few nights. It gave her a whole new insight into the rather idealised love she’d imagined her grandparents to have shared.

  After closing the box again, Isobel vowed to put it where it belonged—in her grandparents’ burial vault. She felt emotionally strung out at having borne witness to something so intimate and private, and couldn’t help the tears spilling over, sliding silently down her cheeks. She angrily brushed them away, but they kept coming, thick and fast. She tried to tell herself it was just grief for the past…but it wasn’t, and she couldn’t keep fooling herself.

  It was grief for the fact that she’d never know that kind of requited love.

  Lying back on the bed, she had to face up to what was really going on inside her own heart. She was head over in heels in love with Rafael. Everything she’d just read summed up exactly how she felt, and she couldn’t deny it any more. It had been there, growing stealthily, since that night he’d first kissed her, when he’d set the bar so high that every other man had fallen far short.

  It had been in her unconscious desire to save herself for him—as if on some level her body had already known that only he would be able to wring such a sensual response from it. It had been there in the way he’d consumed her utterly since he’d walked back into her life. It was in the way that at every turn he’d proved himself to be the opposite of the man she’d believed him to be, making her see depths and shadows that made him achingly vulnerable even though she knew he’d rather die than show it.

  She knew now that she’d been fighting Rafael so desperately not because she’d feared the external prison of a life behind gilded marriage bars, but a much scarier, more internal prison.

  Rafael walked into the darkened bedroom and saw Isobel’s sleeping form on the bare bed. Hot anger rushed to the surface as he assumed she was going to insist on staying in this room, despite sharing his bed, but then he stopped in his tracks.

  He cursed softly when he saw the unmistakable signs that she’d been crying: dried tear tracks like delicate silver trails down her cheeks. A hard knot twisted tight in his chest and he felt momentarily winded.

  He saw the rosewood box near her hands and recognised it. Reaching down, without disturbing her, he opened it up and plucked out a letter, flipping it open. As he read his face grew sombre.

  Silently he folded it back up and replaced it, straightening just as Isobel stirred and her eyes opened. Rafael saw the way her cheeks leached of colour when she saw him there, and a knot twisted tight in his gut.

  ‘What time is it?’ she asked huskily. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’

  ‘It’s 7:00 p.m.’

  Isobel sat up, looking deliciously tousled, her hair standing up on her head. It took all Rafael’s strength to not flatten her back down and shut out the clamour of disturbing voices in his head by making love to her. But that was a luxury he couldn’t afford right now.

  ‘I thought you were working late?’

  ‘I was meant to be…but I’m afraid I need you for a little damage control.’

  Feeling unbearably exposed and sensitive after her afternoon of revelations, not to mention from sitting beside the man who made love to her with such intensity that her whole body quivered like a tightly strung bow just to be near him, Isobel was retreating back to where she felt safe, trying her best to push Rafael away again. Despite knowing how futile her efforts were, because he’d already breached every defence.

  He’d explained to her that Bob Caruthers was jittery after witnessing their dramatic public display the other night; they’d run out without even saying goodbye. Not to mention the fact that he’d also been with them the night Rafael had had to all but carry an inebriated Isobel out of the restaurant.

  Mortified, because Isobel now knew what was at stake, she’d said, ‘I’m not the only one to blame, Rafael. I’m not the one who initiated a tango display more suited to the back streets of La Boca.’

  His mouth had been a grim line. ‘I told you that one of the reasons I wanted to get married was to stop public speculation and talk. So far we’re not doing a very good job of it.’

  Isobel’s hands had clenched at being reminded of the loveless nature of their union. ‘Well, that could be in part because this marriage was never a mutual decision. We were thrown together, thanks to events outside our control.’

  As she’d watched him, it had seemed to her for a moment as if some of his golden-olive colour leached from his face. But then he’d turned, fixing her with that black, glittering glare. Isobel’s heart had thumped.

  ‘Save it, Isobel,’ he’d bitten out. ‘Just try to pretend we’re in this together tonight.’

  Silent for the journey, Isobel felt her head ache.

  She let Rafael take her by the hand to lead her into the exclusive restaurant. They greeted Bob and Rita, and for the entire evening Isobel drew on every single piece of social training she’d received growing up.

  Rafael caught her eye, and Isobel felt a frisson of approval transmitted from him to her. For a moment she basked in a heady sense of pleasure, only to realise later what it meant. She was falling headlong into that world—the world she’d always fought against—and yet she wasn’t feeling oppressed. There wasn’t even a hint of wanting to rebel within her. It was giving her immense pleasure to be supporting Rafael.

  She was realising this and feeling extremely tender as Rafael followed her into the house when they returned home. She turned abruptly, inarticulate words on her lips, suddenly wanting to talk to this man who felt like a stranger and yet at the same time like someone she’d known for ever. But he put a finger to her lips and then replaced his finger with his mouth, spearing his hands into her short hair, caressing her skull, kissing her senseless.

  He pulled away, and it was a struggle for Isobel to open her heavy eyelids. He just looked at her intently. ‘Thank you for this evening. Bob Caruthers told me while you were getting your coat that he’s going to sign the last contract to let me set up the business here…we did it.’

  Relief flowed through Isobel, but it felt as if she was standing on quicksand, knowing that she’d never thought she would be concerned about something like this. ‘I’m glad,’ she said huskily. ‘I’d hate to think I’d played a part in sabotaging something so important.’

  Rafael moved closer, bringing Isobel flush against him, and through the thin silk of her dress she could feel his burgeoning arousal. Liquid heat invaded her veins and made her feel wobbly.

  ‘See? We can be good together.’

  Isobel’s heart was thumping hard. She felt as though she was stepping over a fine line in the sand. One more step and she’d be committed to something untenable—a life half lived with a man who would never love her…and whose love she was beginning to crave with an awful, desperate hunger.

  ‘Maybe…’ was all she could say.

  ‘Maybe nothing,’ he replied harshly,
and in the next second Isobel was lifted into his arms and carried upstairs.

  A month later Isobel was feeling dazed from the intensity of the lovemaking Rafael had subjected her to the previous night. She felt as if there was no space in between to grab her breath. Each time they slept together it was more intense than the last, taking another piece of her soul, her heart. Dragging her deep into a dark vortex of bittersweet pleasure mixed with emotional pain.

  She was getting ready to greet the guests coming for dinner to the house that evening. Putting gold earrings in her ears, she couldn’t believe how much her perception of Rafael had changed; a huge part of his work was pure philanthropy, and the reason it wasn’t more well-known was because of his own innate humility. He simply didn’t want people to know, believing he got more out of clients and colleagues if his charitable work was done anonymously.

  After a last cursory inspection, Isobel left the bedroom to join Rafael downstairs. She steeled herself, locking away her tender secret core in a bid to protect herself from the pain of Rafael’s emotional distance. Her heart clenched as she remembered a day just a couple of weeks ago, when he’d surprised her by encouraging her to take the vintage Bugatti out for a drive, despite her protestations.

  She’d been terrified and exhilarated in equal measure, and when they’d arrived back at the house she’d been unable to keep the huge grin off her face, believing for a moment that perhaps Rafael was opening up to her. But it had been a mirage.

  Within seconds she’d watched as Rafael had visibly closed up in the face of her joy. The afternoon had been ruined, and since then she’d been careful not to read too much into anything, no matter how intense their lovemaking might be. Clearly Rafael didn’t and would never feel anything more for her.