Emerald Mistress

by Lynne Graham

  ‘Please…’

  At the height of a tormenting pleasure that had reached an unbearable edge he pulled her under him and plunged into her yielding depths with strong, sensual power. Delight roared through her quivering body in a scorching wave. Eroticism personified, his powerful length stilled for an instant. He caressed her reddened lips with provocative expertise, letting the tip of his tongue dip into the moist invitation of her tender mouth.

  ‘You feel like you were made just for me, a mhilis,’ Rafael growled with raw satisfaction.

  He was a very powerful lover. His hard pagan rhythm exactly matched her deepest need. Excitement controlled her. Sensation took over. She was lost in the hot, sweet storm of endless pleasure. He carried her to a wild explosive climax of feeling. She reached a shattering peak of glory and, with a cry of rapture, plunged over the edge into ecstasy. Aftershocks of exquisite sensation rippled through her before she slowly sank into voluptuous abandon.

  Suddenly, and for the very first time in her life, she understood why the world she lived in seemed obsessed with sex. Sex was everywhere, she thought in a daze, in every magazine and every film, a hot topic of discussion that had never interested her before. Never in her life had she talked about sex. She had concealed her prudishness as best she could while secretly wondering what all the fuss was about. Only now could she appreciate that until Rafael had educated her by example she had had no way of knowing what real passion was. True fulfilment had evaded her until that timeless, glorious instant of wondrous release from the earthly confines of her own body. Yet she had never suspected that there actually might be something more to discover. How could she have guessed that there was another entire dimension still to be explored when she had never experienced that truth for herself?

  Rafael surveyed her with heavily lidded dark eyes almost screened by the density of his black lashes. With her copper hair spilling across the pillow and a slight flush on her cheeks she was amazingly pretty. Her skin was so fine, her eyes so clear and bright a blue. He liked her silence, the restful quality she always exuded, as if inviolable tranquillity sat at the very heart of her like an anchor stone. Her dazzled smile of contentment gave him an unexpected high. He knew he was good between the sheets, but she looked at him as though he was a god come to earth. He almost laughed at that absurd thought. At the point where he usually moved away from his lovers, with a perfunctory gesture of affection, he curved an arm round her and gathered her back to him again.

  ‘I would say that a repeat encounter is definitely on the cards, a thaisce,’ Rafael mused, his rich, dark drawl languorous with satisfaction.

  ‘What does that mean?’ she whispered, gazing up at him and deciding that she would never tire of looking at his lean, vibrantly handsome features. He had remarkable bone structure, eyelashes that were amusingly longer than her own, and eyes of quite extraordinary depth and colour. Once he had seemed so distant from her, she acknowledged absently, but now he felt familiar.

  ‘That you’re a treasure.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘That you’re sweet. A most rare virtue in my experience.’

  Harriet felt light-headed with happiness. She stretched with slow, newly sensual abandon, her limbs weighted with languor and contentment. She thought she could happily stay where she was for ever. Never had she been more relaxed or more in tune with the world. Feeling impossibly feminine, she rejoiced in every point of contact where her softer curves yielded to the taut, hard muscles of his lean, tough physique. The very scent of his damp bronzed skin enchanted her. Her fingers splayed in a possessive curve across the washboard-flat expanse of his stomach. ‘Luke…’ she whispered.

  And the instant she said it she knew her mistake, and was so utterly appalled by what she had accidentally said that she was struck dumb. She could not comprehend where Luke’s name had come from, or why it had leapt without prior thought from her tongue. In shock at her own indiscretion, she lay still as a statue, seized up by the horror and ghastly timing of her blunder. She felt Rafael tense against her, but the change in his body language was infinitesimal. Hope that he had somehow failed to pick up on her verbal bombshell surged through her. Perhaps her guardian angel had stepped in to distract Rafael’s attention at just the right moment.

  ‘I need a shower,’ Rafael murmured softly.

  There was nothing in his intonation to persuade her differently and he detached himself from her with unhurried grace. Yet she felt the cold in him pierce her with the deep inner chill of his reserve and knew immediately that he had noticed. Of course he had noticed, she raged at herself in disbelief. He was not hard of hearing! He could scarcely have missed being called by another’s man’s name at such a very personal moment.

  ‘Rafael…I don’t know how it happened!’ she exclaimed, a sense of panic making words brim from her lips so fast that they almost ran together. ‘You probably imagine now that I was thinking about Luke, but I swear that I wasn’t! He hasn’t once crossed my mind today…of course I wasn’t thinking about him! Why would I be thinking about him when I’m with you?’

  A broad bronzed shoulder shifted in the very slightest shrug of dismissal. His lean, strong face was impassive, his eyes dark as sloes and without a shade of gold. Cold fear spread inside her like an icy pool: she knew he wasn’t listening to her excuses.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Rafael enquired silkily.

  ‘Yes, it does matter—very much!’ Harriet gasped. ‘I’ve been clumsy and thoughtless, but please believe that it doesn’t mean what you think it does.’

  ‘Don’t presume to know what I think.’

  Every scrap of colour ebbed from below her fair complexion. Her skin turned clammy, her tummy queasy. He was untouched, indifferent. He moved with the same measured grace into the bathroom and an instant later she heard a shower running. Her teeth were chattering, until she realised and clamped them together to still that nervous reaction, but she still felt icy cold and bereft. She was in shock, could not comprehend how it all could have gone so wrong at such terrifying speed. One moment everything had been wonderful and the next it had been gone, like a mirage, leaving only a taunting memory behind…

  His magnificent bronzed body rigid with raw, leaping tension, Rafael leant back against the limestone wall of the power shower area, which was big enough to host a party, and very slowly and carefully uncoiled his clenched fists. With absolute force of will he subdued his temper. Of course he was angry with her. That was only natural. After all, such a thing had never happened to him before. He had heard others tell tales of similar experiences and had felt secure in the belief that no woman would ever commit such an error of good taste in his radius. To be addressed by another man’s name in his own bed was deeply offensive. Her even more tactless attempt to cover her tracks had increased his annoyance. He was not a fool. Of course she had been thinking about Luke, possibly even closing her eyes in his arms and trying to pretend that he was her ex-fiancé! Cold rage and disgust lanced through him afresh.

  When Rafael emerged from the bathroom the phone was ringing. A towel wrapped round his lean angular hips, he swept up the receiver. He listened to the caller with a darkening brow, stated that he would deal with the situation, uttered a flat apology and concluded the call.

  ‘Can you be ready to leave in fifteen minutes?’ he asked Harriet grimly. ‘I have to get back to Ballyflynn in a hurry. Una’s bolted from school again.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ she exclaimed in dismay, rising from the dressing table where she had been brushing her hair. ‘Have you to call at the school first?’

  ‘I see no point in going to St Mary’s at this hour of the day. If I know my sister, she’ll already be halfway back home by now.’ Even as he spoke Rafael was getting dressed in a series of quick, economical movements. ‘Right now I need to call her mother and her sister to find out if either of them have heard from her. As usual I’ll be treated to a load of time-wasting bull, because nobody has either the guts or the interest to tell me the
truth!’

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘No, this time Una is the one who will be sorry.’

  Harriet could not conceal her concern. ‘Rafael—’

  ‘Have you any idea how much at risk Una is? Every time this happens I have to ask the police to check out that she hasn’t been kidnapped. She’s very young, and very stupid when it comes to her personal security,’ Rafael framed with icy clarity. ‘The last time she did this she hitched lifts halfway across Ireland to get home. Suppose she picks the wrong car and the wrong driver to trust?’

  Harriet paled. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  Samson was rudely snatched from his comfortable doze in the kitchen. He let out a cross little growl of complaint. Harriet held the tiny animal aloft and studied him with rampant disbelief. ‘What was that?’

  His liquid dark eyes blinked and he squirmed, looking as ashamed of himself as a chihuahua could look. ‘No more bad temper,’ she warned, tucking him under her arm.

  Harriet met up with Rafael again in the hall. ‘Any news yet?’ she asked.

  ‘None.’

  She had to almost run to keep up with his long impatient stride on the path to the helipad. ‘Obviously Una is extremely unhappy at school—’

  ‘Una is extremely unhappy at being forced to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Until I entered her life she did exactly as she pleased and she played truant for weeks at a time.’

  ‘She’s sitting exams at the minute, and that has definitely put her under pressure,’ Harriet persisted gently. ‘I think she may be struggling to cope with her schoolwork.’

  ‘Like Valente, Una is cleverer than a cartload of monkeys, and equally manipulative. She hopes that if she gets chucked out of yet another educational establishment I’ll surrender and let her leave school for good this summer. I’m sorry, but you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rafael concluded, in cool and cutting dismissal of that suggestion.

  In the sensitive mood that Harriet was in, it was a painful snub. She was dismayed and annoyed to feel tears prickle the back of her eyes, for crying was not something she did easily. But the warmth and intimacy between them had gone as if it had never been. Did she blame him for that? She tried to imagine how she would have reacted to being called by another woman’s name. It would have hammered her self-esteem. She would certainly have wondered if she was a second best substitute for some female whom he would have preferred to be with. Ultimately, however, being of a practical rather than melodramatic nature, she would have calmed down.

  Rafael might have been offended, but he was certainly intelligent enough to accept that that kind of error could be a mere slip of the tongue and nothing more. On the other hand, it was perfectly possible that nothing she had said or done was responsible for creating the fresh detachment she now sensed in him. It was a mortifying thought but perhaps, having slept with her, his interest in her was simply at an end.

  With her temper rising rapidly at that lowering suspicion, Harriet had to force herself to concentrate on Una’s plight instead. She was very worried about the younger woman, and concerned that Rafael would be too tough on her. Although she was very wary of interfering in something that was none of her business, she felt that she ought to at least show Rafael that misspelt note from his sister. Incredible as it seemed to her, he did not appear aware of Una’s low level of literacy, or of the difficulties that this had to be causing her at school. He seemed to believe that only wilful defiance lay behind the teenager’s problems. He might be right too, she conceded ruefully. How well did she really know Una?

  When they landed at Flynn Court, Rafael walked her over to the Lamborghini to run her home immediately.

  ‘There’s something I want to show you. It relates to Una,’ she said awkwardly when he drew up outside the cottage. ‘Will you wait for a moment?’

  She was surprised to discover Peanut waiting for her in the house, rather than in the barn where Fergal had said he would leave her overnight. But in a rush Harriet rifled through the kitchen drawer to find the note and hurried back outside again. Standing out of the car, with his arms braced on the driver’s door, Rafael treated her to a cool, measuring appraisal as she moved back to him to extend the note.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked drily, before he had even looked.

  Annoyance and mortification made her stiffen. She wondered if he imagined that she might be using delaying tactics to keep him with her. ‘Una wrote it to me a few weeks ago…I thought you should see it.’

  Rafael stared down at the crumpled sheet in his hand and then strode out to the front of his car, where the outside lights shone down with greater clarity on the paper. ‘Una wrote this? Is this a joke?’ he demanded.

  ‘She can’t spell very well—’

  Rafael shot her a look of raw incredulity. ‘But this is like something a child in nursery would write!’

  ‘I think she tries very hard to hide the problems she has, but could this explain her failure to meet work targets at school? Whenever she gets the chance she seems to use a computer spellchecker, but most of her schoolwork has to be handwritten. When I last spoke to her on the phone she was really unhappy…I suspect it was the stress of the exams she was about to sit.’

  Rafael was an ashen colour below his vibrant olive-toned skin. He looked devastated. ‘I’ve never seen Una write or read anything. I had no idea there was a problem.’

  ‘I’m sure that with the right help she’ll be able to catch up, but you’ll need to be careful how you discuss this with her,’ Harriet warned him. ‘She’s ashamed of the difficulties she has, and she does seem to think of herself as stupid—’

  ‘She’s not stupid,’ Rafael breathed in gruff interruption, long brown fingers crushing the note. ‘She’s probably dyslexic. Like me.’

  It was Harriet’s turn to be shocked, and she could think of nothing to say but a muttered, ‘Oh…’ that made her wince at her own lack of verbal dexterity.

  ‘I have been so blind,’ Rafael ground out in a driven undertone of regret, his lean, strong face bleak. ‘I’m very grateful to you for bringing this to my attention.’

  Harriet went back indoors. Well, she’d had the fling she’d thought she wanted, and got her fingers burnt with painful thoroughness, she acknowledged tautly. But if she had managed to do Una a good turn, then at least something positive had come out of the experience.

  ‘Is Rafael gone?’

  Harriet almost leapt right out of her skin, for Una was poised a few feet away in the kitchen doorway. For once, the fifteen-year-old looked her age, and pretty pathetic at that, in her crumpled clothing with her eyes and her nose red and swollen from crying.

  ‘You almost gave me a heart attack…’ Harriet whispered shakily. ‘Where were you when I came in a few minutes ago?’

  ‘Trying to get to sleep in the guest room,’ the teenager muttered, hanging her dark head. ‘I know where Fergal leaves the spare key…’

  ‘Well, I’m really glad that you’re here and you’re safe. Will you ring your brother…or will I?’

  ‘No!’ Una sobbed. ‘Please don’t ask me to do that!’

  Harriet put a comforting arm round the distressed girl, fetched her a box of tissues and let the storm of tears run its natural course. ‘Why did you come here?’

  ‘I thought you’d be at home and we could talk, but you were out,’ Una mumbled unevenly.

  ‘Rafael is worried sick about you—’

  ‘No, he’s not…he doesn’t care about me.’

  ‘He does—’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. Do you know how Rafael found out about me? Mum was in a bad way, so Father Kewney went to Rafael and told him that I was his father’s kid. Rafael didn’t get a choice about taking me up as a charity case. I’m just a nuisance and an embarrassment to him.’

  ‘My stepfather raised me alone. He didn’t get a choice either, but even though he’s not related to me by blood he genuinely loves me,’ Harriet said quietly. ‘You are related to Rafael
, and he values that. You matter to him.’

  Una lifted her head and studied her through puffy eyelids. ‘Did he tell you that?’

  ‘No. He’s not the kind of guy who’s comfortable talking about stuff like that. But I’ve seen his concern for you, and I think he probably understands more than you imagine he does. He didn’t have a very happy home life either when he was growing up.’

  The teenager could not hide her surprise at that news. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Perhaps you have more in common with your brother than you think.’

  ‘Yeah, like I’m so rich and clever,’ Una mumbled.

  ‘He’s very cynical too.’

  ‘Is he raging with me?’

  ‘He’s more worried than angry. Please let me call him and let him know that you’re safe.’

  ‘No…I’ll do it,’ Una muttered tautly. ‘Are you dating Rafael now?’

  ‘No,’ Harriet answered, feeling that that was the truth as matters stood. ‘But he took me to the races at Leopardstown today.’

  ‘So when is a date not a date?’ Una hovered by the phone as if it was an actively hostile object, likely to leap up and attack her at any minute.

  When it’s over before it’s properly begun, Harriet reflected inwardly, suddenly taut and cold with misery. Why had she slept with him? How could that have seemed so right when it now felt so wrong in retrospect? How had she ever believed that she could handle a fling? What sort of a fool was she to know and understand so little about herself that she had believed she could abandon her principles with impunity? For now, in spite of her brave belief that she could enjoy passion without commitment, she felt cheap and silly and thoroughly unhappy. A few hours and it was over. She cringed at that awareness.

  Una rang Rafael on his mobile. Determined not to intrude, Harriet stayed inside when the teenager went out to greet the arrival of his car. A few minutes later Rafael appeared at the front door on his own. ‘Thank you.’ His dark eyes were unusually level and open. ‘This is the first time Una hasn’t treated me like the enemy. I owe you for that.’