And she wanted all of him. For ever. It was that simple. And that impossible.
Was this how Donna wanted Simon? she wondered, and realised why, in spite of everything, she’d found herself pitying the girl who’d given everything to a man she adored and watched him take it and walk away.
Because Diaz would be no different, she told herself. He had no choice in the matter. They were who they were. His father’s son, her mother’s daughter. Nothing could alter that.
But at least he’d been honourable enough not to pretend, or to make promises he wasn’t prepared to keep.
He might want me, she thought, but he’s never mentioned love.
He said he wanted to wipe Simon from my mind for ever and erase his own need for me at the same time. And maybe he can do that. But I—I can’t. I might not have known it then, when I was in his arms, but I do now.
And when I told myself it was enough—that I would make it enough—I was lying. I can’t let myself be chained to him for the rest of my life by the memory of a night’s pleasure.
I need to save myself. Somehow.
She released her hand from his clasp and sat back. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, her answering smile polite, even faintly regretful. ‘But thank you, anyway. Because you’ve helped me to achieve what I wanted. Some uncommitted experience, without any untidy emotions in the way.’
She paused. ‘So please don’t feel guilty that you didn’t make the earth move. After all, it was hardly likely under the circumstances. And now my curiosity’s been satisfied, at least, so I’ll know what to expect in future—what the possibilities could be. I’d much prefer to settle for that—for the time being.’
She shrugged gracefully. ‘Everything else can wait until I fall in love.’
There was a silence, then Diaz said expressionlessly, ‘How neat. How tidy.’
She looked away. ‘Maybe the events of the past few months make order and decency in my life seem strangely attractive.’ She added abruptly, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ It was his turn to shrug. ‘It’s your decision, and I can’t argue with that—much as I’d like to. Because I suspect that with you, Rhianna, those possibilities you mention could be endless.’
He paused. ‘But I hope at least you’ll allow me to kiss you goodbye when the time comes?’
‘Why not?’ She drank some more sangria, praying she’d never be obliged to touch it again as long as she lived, because it would always—always—bring this moment back.
The time I did the right thing, she thought, and felt myself die inside.
She added, ‘I know we probably won’t see each other again after this, but I’d like us to part friends. If we can.’
‘A nice thought,’ he said silkily. ‘But hardly feasible. Under the circumstances.’
He emptied his glass, pushed his chair back and rose. ‘Dinner will be early this evening, and I suggest you get some rest after it. You won’t get much sleep once we reach port.’
He hesitated, looking down at her. ‘And if you’re speaking from someone else’s script, you need more rehearsal. Because right now it doesn’t work. Not for me, and probably not for you either.’
He added flatly, ‘I’ll see you later,’ and walked away to the bridge.
Dinner was paella, produced by Enrique with a delighted flourish, and Rhianna smiled and said, ‘How wonderful,’ and ate her share, even asked for more—although every mouthful tasted like cardboard, and her stomach was twisted in knots anyway.
She’d expected it would be a quiet meal. That after her rejection of him Diaz would not have a great deal to say to her, but she was wrong. Clearly his male pride hadn’t been dented too badly, she told herself wryly, as he chatted lightly, amusingly, and above all impersonally, keeping the topics of conversation general, and making it easy for her to pick up a similar tone.
While in between, very carefully, ensuring that his attention was safely on his food, she watched him from under her lashes with passionate concentration, etching every line of his dark, mobile face into her consciousness, then closing it away in some secret compartment in her mind which she could unlock sometimes. Not every day, she promised herself. Just when the loneliness and the need became too much to bear.
‘Tell me something,’ he said suddenly, when the coffee had been placed on the table and Enrique had returned to the galley. ‘What made you choose acting as a career?’
‘It was something I’d always loved to do,’ Rhianna said, after a startled pause to register that they’d moved from impersonal to personal again. ‘But my aunt had different views, so I didn’t have much opportunity until I went back to London. There were evening drama classes at one of the education centres, and I went along.’
She shrugged. ‘My teacher thought I had something, and arranged for me to audition at stage school. I got a place, plus a bursary I never knew existed. And the people I was living with—the Jessops—were absolutely wonderful, and refused to take a penny from me while I was training.’
She bent her head. ‘I can’t help imagining sometimes how different my life would have been if they’d been allowed to foster me when my mother died. They wanted to, but Aunt Kezia insisted on taking me away. I never understood why, because she never wanted me or even liked me. She made that quite clear. And she inflicted me on a place where she knew I’d be unwelcome, when there was no actual need.’
She sighed. ‘I’ve never been able to figure it.’
He said quietly, ‘She was certainly a strange woman.’
‘Stranger than you know.’ Rhianna paused. ‘Apparently she used to take these really terrible, pointless photographs of people, as if she was deliberately catching them off-guard.’
His brows lifted. ‘What people?’
‘Your aunt and uncle,’ she said, adding reluctantly, ‘And your father. There are lots of your father.’ And your mother in a wheelchair, but I’m not mentioning that. Or the cheque. In fact I wish I’d said nothing about them at all.
‘You have these photographs?’
‘The Hendersons found them at the flat and passed them on to me.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘My sole Trewint legacy.’
‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘You have that amazing hair, like some beautiful dark red cloud. That’s an inheritance to treasure.’
Which was altogether too personal, Rhianna decided. She finished her coffee and rose.
She said politely, ‘If you’ll excuse me? I think I’ll take your advice and get some sleep.’ And turned away, only to find him beside her at the companionway.
She said crisply, ‘I know my own way, thanks.’
‘Of course,’ Diaz said, and smiled at her. ‘But you seem to have forgotten you promised me a kiss.’
Her heart thudded. ‘When we said goodbye,’ she returned. ‘That was my understanding of the agreement.’
‘But there’s always such hassle at airports,’ he said softly as they reached her door. ‘Let’s make it goodnight instead.’
She hesitated uneasily. ‘Well—if you insist.’
It’s a kiss. That’s all. Don’t make a big deal about it, or let him see it matters. Just get it over with.
‘Well, yes,’ he said, faint amusement in his voice. ‘I think I do.’ He reached for the handle and opened her door.
She gave him a startled glance. ‘But there’s no necessity for that. Right here and now will be fine.’
‘Except that I prefer privacy,’ he said. He picked her up and carried her into the stateroom, kicking the door shut behind him. ‘And comfort,’ he added, putting her down on the bed and coming to lie beside her.
‘You said a kiss,’ she reminded him, her voice shaking.
‘Did I specify a number?’ He drew her to him. ‘I don’t think so.’ He lifted a strand of scented hair and carried it to his mouth. He said gently, ‘You are loveliness itself.’
He began to kiss her without haste, his mouth touching her forehead, her eyes, her cheekbones, the soft vulnerability b
elow her ears, and the trembling corners of her mouth.
His lips were warm as they parted hers, and infinitely beguiling. His tongue began a lingering silken quest of the inner contours of her mouth, and her breath sighed with his. He gathered her closer, holding her against the hard length of his body, letting the kiss deepen slowly, endlessly.
When she could speak, she whispered brokenly, ‘Diaz—this isn’t fair.’
‘I’ll spare us both the obvious cliché.’ He put his mouth against her throat as his fingers began to release the long row of buttons at the front of her dress. ‘If this is all I’m to have of you, Rhianna, then I intend to make the most of it. And I’m still only kissing you,’ he added huskily. ‘Even if it’s not how—or where—you expected.’
As the edges of her unfastened dress fell apart, Diaz looked down at her for a long moment, then bent, his lips brushing the creamy swell of her breasts as they rose from their lacy confinement.
Lifting her slightly, he freed her from her dress, tossing it to the end of the bed, then dealt with the hook of her bra, taking the tiny garment from her body and sending it to follow her dress.
He began to kiss her breasts, circling her nipples with the tip of his tongue, bringing them to hot, aching life, before taking each soft, scented mound into his mouth and laving their tumescent peaks with slow, voluptuous strokes that made her moan aloud.
His lips moved down her body, leaving a trail of fire over her ribcage and the flat plane of her stomach, his tongue teasing the whorls of her navel, while his hands deftly removed her remaining covering of silk and lace as if brushing aside a cobweb.
It was only then that Rhianna realised where this downward path was leading, and as his mouth reached the silky triangle at junction of her thighs she stiffened in panic, her fingers tangling in his hair as she tried to push his head away.
‘No!’ She choked the word. ‘God—no…’
Effortlessly Diaz captured her wrists, holding them at either side of her shocked body, before he bent to her again, kissing the smooth length of her thighs, and their soft inner flesh, every brush of his lips a silent enticement, coaxing them to part for him, until she could resist no longer and sank, sighing, into the promise of this new and startling intimacy.
His mouth took possession of her with a gentleness that was almost reverent, kissing the secret woman’s flesh she had yielded to him, then slowly and sensuously deepening the caress into explicit exploration.
His tongue was a quiet flame flickering against her, at one moment probing delicately into her innermost self, at the next seeking out her tiny hidden bud and urging it to swollen, delicious arousal.
Offering her with patience, tenderness and untiring, unhurried grace, a glimpse of an unknown, undreamed-of world of pleasure.
Time was suspended. There was only this endless—exquisite—torment. This intolerable, unceasing delight. She was consumed by sensation, conscious of it building inside her with all the irresistible force of a giant wave. Aware that each lingering, sensual stroke of his tongue was carrying her away, sweeping her inexorably, helplessly, towards some trembling, anguished pinnacle.
And when the wave broke, and she was flung out into some shimmering, shattering void, she heard herself cry out in sobbing triumph at the glory of her first sexual release.
Diaz wrapped her in his arms, his hand cradling her head, until she stopped shaking and her body began to relax into peace.
When she could speak, she said, ‘Is—is it always like that?’
‘I don’t know,’ he returned softly. ‘I’m not a woman. But I hope so.’
She remained still, her lips against the column of his throat, her hand pressed to the wall of his chest, feeling the thud of his heartbeat through his shirt, thinking dreamily she’d be content to stay where she was for ever.
Yet at the same time it occurred to her that there was an incongruity about being naked in his arms when he was still fully dressed that made her feel almost shy. And how ridiculous was that, considering what had just taken place?
She reached up and began to unfasten his shirt, but he halted her.
‘Not now, my sweet.’
‘But don’t you want…?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But later. When we have all the time we need.’ He kissed her eyes and, gently, her lips. ‘Get some sleep now, and I’ll wake you when it’s time to go ashore.’
He lifted himself off the bed and covered her with the sheet, stroking her damp hair back from her forehead.
He said again, ‘Later,’ the promise repeated in his smile, and went.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE first thing Rhianna noticed when she opened her eyes was that the light was different. The next that the room wasn’t moving. The third that she was in a much bigger bed than the one on Windhover.
She was also alone, although the crumpled pillow beside her and the thrown-back covers demonstrated that this had not always been so.
She sat up, yawning, and considered her new environment.
Her actual arrival in Spain remained something of a blur. She could recall there’d been certain formalities to undergo before they’d been free to make their way to the car waiting on the quayside. The driver, an undeniably handsome lad, called Felipe with smouldering eyes and a sulky mouth, had stared at Rhianna with undisguised admiration until a quiet word from Diaz had recalled him to his duties.
It had been too dark to form any impression of the countryside they’d travelled through, and eventually, supported by the comfort of Diaz’s shoulder, she’d dozed again.
She hadn’t absorbed much about the house either, apart from being greeted by a stout woman with greying hair, who’d watched with an expression of faint disapproval when Diaz had swung her off her feet and carried her upstairs to this room.
She had a dim memory of him sliding into bed beside her at some point, and of turning into his arms with a murmur of pleasure. But after that—nothing.
And now here she was, all by herself.
For a moment a cold hand seemed to brush her skin, but she shook the feeling away. It was too late for regrets—for wishing that last night had not happened. No point in telling herself it had been a matter of male pride to show her that after pain there could be pleasure. Or that he’d tricked her.
She was out of her depth and drowning with all she felt for him, and she’d change nothing—apart from wishing he’d been with her when she woke.
She lay back against the pillows again, and looked around her with growing pleasure. It was a large room, its pale walls the colour of aquamarine, which appeared even more spacious because of the few items of furniture it contained. Apart from the bed there was only a large wardrobe and a tall chest of drawers, elaborately carved in some dark wood, and two smaller matching tables flanking the bed.
The shutters at the long windows were slightly open, and a bright shaft of sunlight was spilling across the tiled floor, while the drapes of unbleached linen stirred in the faint breeze.
Opposite the bed was a door leading to a bathroom, judging by the glimpse of azure tiles and creamy marble beyond.
What she couldn’t see anywhere was her luggage. Even the things she’d been wearing last night had disappeared.
But perhaps they were in that enormous wardrobe.
She got out of bed and, for want of anything better, took the sheet with her, winding it round her body in case the woman with pursed lips, whose name she recalled was Pilar, should suddenly reappear.
But the wardrobe and drawers contained only male attire, proving that this lovely room belonged to Diaz.
She padded into the bathroom, which was equally pleasing. As well as the powerful shower in its glass-walled cubicle, there was a deep bathtub, and twin handbasins set side by side in a marble-topped unit.
Indicating, she thought, swallowing, that she wasn’t the first to share his room. But she wouldn’t think about that—nor about the other women before her who must have sobbed their rapture into his
shoulder. Or those who would follow her into his bed. Particularly not those, she thought, fighting a sudden twist of pain as she headed back to the bedroom. Because that way lay madness.
‘Rehearsing for Julius Caesar?’
At the sound of his voice Rhianna turned, almost tripping on her trailing sheet. He was lounging in the doorway, his mouth curved in amusement, the towel draped round his hips his only apparent covering.
‘Auditioning for Tarzan?’ she retorted.
‘No chance,’ he said. ‘All that swinging through trees is far too strenuous. I’d have saved my strength for Jane.’ He paused. ‘You were sleeping like a baby, so I thought I’d go for a swim. But now,’ he added softly, ‘I’m back, and you’re awake. How very nice.’
‘I was looking for my clothes.’ She gestured helplessly. ‘Do you know where they’ve gone?’
‘Pilar, my housekeeper, has them. They’ll be returned to you later, beautifully laundered.’ His smile widened. ‘And speaking of later…’
He dropped the towel, walked across to her, and picked her up, carrying her back to the bed.
‘We can’t,’ she protested breathlessly as he took her in his arms. ‘Do you realise what the time is?’
‘Better than you, darling. But no one is looking for us. At least, no one here present,’ he added with a touch of wryness. ‘Pilar has shepherded her family off to Sunday Mass, and she’s left salad and stuff for our lunch—if we ever get round to eating it. She’ll be back to cook dinner this evening, but until then we have the house to ourselves.’
He bent over her. ‘And I have you,’ he whispered.
At the first touch of his mouth on hers she was drawn instantly, eagerly, into the world of the senses she’d discovered last night.
She kissed him back without reserve, her hands stroking their way over his cool skin, marvelling at the strength of bone and muscle, learning him through her fingertips.
Felt her own body respond with joy to his touch, to the caress of his hands and mouth, now suddenly as necessary to her as the air she breathed.
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