by Isabel Keats
“I’m glad I’ve managed to achieve such a feat, Miss Stapleton; remind me to give you two spanks later for your impertinence,” he said, slightly annoyed. “As I was saying, when I saw Atkinson kissing you—without much resistance from you, I must say . . .” At that, Cat made an indignant sound. “Anyway, I lost it. At that moment, all I could think was that you had to be mine. Everything else was wiped from my mind, and you know what happened next . . .”
“Yup, I know all too well.” The torrid images of their passionate night together returned to Catalina’s mind, as they had a thousand times during their long months apart.
“I don’t know what happened to me that night; I couldn’t stop touching you for even a second . . . I’d never experienced anything like it. Tell me the truth, Catalina. Did I scare you? Did I hurt you?”
Cat could hear in his voice all the pent-up anguish and remorse that he had been feeling for so long, and she knew then, without question, that she had to stop running away. She had to face up to what they had and be completely honest. “No, Leo, you didn’t hurt me. But I was scared.” She ran a hand across her forehead, as if trying to erase her tormented expression, then took his face in her hands and gazed into those eyes she liked so much. “I was so scared when I realized what I felt for you that I ran like a coward.”
Leopold stood very still, his eyes fixed on hers, trying not to let his voice tremble as he finally dared to ask, “And what was it you felt for me?”
“I realized that, for the first time in my life, I’d fallen in love.”
The absolute sincerity in her brown eyes, looking at him with so much love, made Leopold’s throat feel suddenly tight, and he was forced to swallow several times. Slowly, he took Catalina’s chin between his index finger and thumb, and, gently lifting her head toward his, his lips fell on hers like a starving man tucking in to a feast.
Cat’s hands linked around his neck and pulled him closer. Their embrace was long and fiery, and everything but the feeling of his firm lips disappeared. At one point, Leopold bent down and lifted her in his arms as if she were weightless, then carried her to his bedroom. The golden light of the afternoon, sifted by the window screens, flooded into the room. Gently, he placed her on the bed, then lay beside her. Leopold rested his head on his bent arm, and seeing Catalina’s face flushed with excitement and her lips reddened from his eager kisses, he thought once more that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. Then he bent toward her and whispered hoarsely in her ear. “Catalina, I need you . . . I’ve been without you for too long.”
Cat saw the wild desire in his face and knew it reflected exactly what she felt. Her brown eyes, big and warm, looked at him with profound tenderness. “Yes,” was her only reply.
Ever so carefully, Leopold began to unbutton her loose-fitting dress. This time, he was determined not to rush: he didn’t just want to sleep with Catalina; he wanted to show her the depths of his love. When he had undone all the buttons, he pulled the dress over her head, then unfastened her bra and cast it aside, doing the same with the rest of her clothes, before finally pausing to reverently look at her naked body. “You’re so beautiful . . .”
Blushing as she felt his burning gaze, Cat asked, “Even though I’m pregnant?”
“Even more so because you’re pregnant.” He softly stroked her belly before dipping his head and covering her silky-smooth skin with soft kisses.
Catalina’s hands entwined in his short gray hair and lifted his head, pulling him toward her and kissing him full on the mouth. “I want you,” she whispered against his lips.
“You’ve taught me how to live, Catalina,” he answered hoarsely.
Despite the heat generated by Leopold’s burning touch, Cat shivered at his words and squeezed him tight. She unbuttoned his shirt and took it off before doing the same with his pants and the rest of his clothes. Naked, they let themselves get carried away by their ecstasy and caressed each other until, breathless, they reached their limits.
Leopold parted her knees, and with a gentle thrust, he entered her, while Catalina wrapped her legs around his hips in an attempt to press him ever closer. At one point, still inside her, Leopold lifted himself up on his forearms and looked at her face, her eyelids barely masking the rapture of his touch. In a trembling voice, Cat asked him, “Is this some wicked new type of torture?”
He gave her the tenderest smile she’d ever seen, and answered: “No, this is love, because we’re doing it together.”
Catalina hugged him with all her might and pressed her mouth on his as she arched her hips against him. Powerless against her touch, Leopold responded to her passion, unable to contain himself any longer. With gentle, deep movements, he kept going until the two of them, panting, their bodies slippery with sweat, reached a throbbing climax that left them totally spent.
Much later, her head resting on his strong chest, Catalina felt absolute happiness. Leopold held an arm around her waist, pulling her against him as if he could not bear the idea of losing contact with her skin even for a moment. Suddenly, Cat glanced up and let out a surprised exclamation. “Peter’s painting! Leo, it was you!”
Leopold looked at the painting and then back at her with a broad smile. “Yes, I bought it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Cat nuzzled his chest affectionately.
“I was embarrassed that you’d guess I couldn’t live without having something of you near me, though I initially told myself I’d only bought it as an art lover. The fact that I couldn’t sleep without staring at it for a while, or that it was the first thing I looked at when I woke up in the morning, didn’t seem to matter. But now . . .” Suddenly, his face grew serious. He sat up on the mattress, took her in his arms, and made her sit up, too, until her eyes were at the same height as his. With his gray eyes heavy with emotion, he added, “I want to see the real Catalina every morning for the rest of my life. Tell me you’ll marry me, Catalina. I won’t let you leave my side again.”
Cat gazed at him, making no attempt to hide her feelings, and answered, “Leo, I love you.” He squeezed her tight and kissed her until, through the mist of his passion, he noticed that Catalina’s hands were on his chest, trying to push him away.
“What is it?” he asked with concern.
“I’ll marry you, Leo, but on one condition.”
Seeing the golden specks flashing in her mischievous brown eyes, he frowned. “Hmm, I don’t like the sound of this.”
“I want you to admit that you believe in curses now.”
For a moment, Leopold didn’t know what she was referring to, but he soon remembered Catalina’s words of warning the first time he’d kissed her. His expression utterly serious, he placed a hand on his heart and admitted, “Catalina Stapleton, I confess that I was a terrible skeptic. When you warned me that anyone who kisses you falls hopelessly in love with you, you were right. You’re a sorceress.”
“See? That wasn’t so difficult, was it?” She gave him an impish smile.
“So you’ll marry me? Catalina, answer me, will you? I can’t stand this uncertainty,” he implored her, giving her a gentle nudge.
She lifted her nose snootily and adopted a serious tone. “My dear, uptight neighbor, of course I’ll marry you; I can’t wait to beat you again at chess.”
“You wicked woman!” He pounced on her and pressed her against him with all his strength.
“Ouch! You’re squashing me!” Cat protested, though her arms were wrapped around his neck, squeezing him as though she would never let go.
“Catalina?” The rough edge to Leopold’s voice, so close to her ear, set off an electric current that ran up and down her spine, making each vertebra shudder one at a time.
“Yes, Leo?”
“I don’t know how you do it, Catalina, but whenever I’m near you I feel like a wild animal. My whole being needs to make love to you again,” he whispered, as he sank
his head into the hollow of her throat and nibbled the soft skin of her neck.
Cat arched toward him, and her swollen breasts and belly pressed against his muscular torso. Leopold’s excitement instantly reignited. “An animal . . . hmm, I like it . . .” A burning, sensual tone in Catalina’s voice, which he’d never heard before, made any last hint of Leopold’s self-control disappear, and all he could think of was melting into her again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2015 Inés Valero
Isabel Keats is just an ordinary woman who one day felt like writing. A mother of a large family (dog included), she is lucky to have something more valuable than gold: free time, even if not as much as she’d like. She loves romance and happy endings, so in short, she writes romance because at this point in her life it’s what she most wants to read.
Isabel Keats—winner of the HQÑ Digital Prize with Empezar de nuevo (Starting Again), shortlisted for the first Harlequín Short Story Prize with her novel El protector (The Protector) and for the third Vergara-RNR Romantic Novel Contest with Abraza mi oscuridad (Embrace My Darkness)—is the pseudonym concealing a graduate in advertising from Madrid, a wife, and a mother of three girls. To date she has published almost a dozen works, including novels and short stories.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Photo © 2013 Thomas Frogbrooke
Simon Bruni is a literary, academic, and general translator from Spanish. In a career that has seen him translate everything from video games to sixteenth-century Spanish Inquisition manuscripts, he has found the pull toward literary translation irresistible. He is a two-time winner of a John Dryden Translation Prize, in 2011 for Francisco Pérez Gandul’s cult prison thriller, Cell 211, and in 2015 for Paul Pen’s harrowing short story, “The Porcelain Boy.” He has translated several novels for AmazonCrossing.