by Penny Jordan
‘I want you here…now…’ His mouth touched her breast, his tongue gently savaging her nipple. Excruciating darts of pleasure pierced her body.
‘I want you, too…’
Shelley wasn’t aware of uttering the shaming words until Jaime gently released her, carefully fastening her bra and tugging closed her blouse. His face was still slightly flushed but not as flushed as her own, she felt sure. And there had been a distinct gleam of satisfaction in his eyes as he released her. The speed with which he had got himself under control made her feel gauche and very inexperienced.
Why on earth had she admitted her desire to him? She shivered as he stepped away from her, stiffening as he reached back towards her.
‘What is it?’ He looked down at her, and then, shaking his head slightly, said huskily, ‘Am I going too fast with you; is that it? If so you must forgive me, querida, but you see, I think I have been a little in love with you ever since I came back from France and saw the portrait your father painted of you the year you were twenty-one.’
‘Are you trying to tell me you fell in love with a painting?’
She managed to make her voice sound passably light, trying not to betray her shock. A declaration of love was the last thing she had expected.
‘Maybe. Certainly I can assure you that I am not normally so…impetuous on such a short acquaintance. You’re still frightened of me, aren’t you?’ he said.
Shelley felt too bemused to lie or to conceal her feelings. ‘I don’t go in for casual affairs,’ she told him truthfully, forcing herself to hold his eyes and not blush. ‘We hardly know one another, Jaime…and I do find it slightly alarming to be rushed into…’
‘Falling in love? Very well, we shall take it more slowly. Get to know one another…but you can’t deny that the feelings are there, querida. For a woman who claims that she does not like to be touched…’
Her face clouded immediately and he made a sound that was harshly derisive.
‘I think I’d better take you back to the quinta, otherwise I might forget that I said we’d take things slowly.’
He watched her face and asked softly, ‘What is it? Am I wrong? Don’t you feel the same as I do?’
Shelley shook her head. ‘No…I mean yes…it’s just that it’s all so unexpected. You’re not the sort of man who falls in love just like that, and especially not with someone like me. I…’ How could she voice her doubts, her fears that he was simply pretending to want her?
‘You’re wrong, I am just exactly that sort of man, and besides, I’ve already told you I fell in love with you when you were twenty-one.’
As though he sensed her bemusement, he took her arm and led her gently back to the top of the stairs. As she turned to go down them he touched her, holding her back.
‘Before we go…’
She looked up at him questioningly and felt her body burn under the passion in his eyes.
‘I wanted you to come here with me and see these portraits. One day perhaps we will show them to our children.’
He laughed at the quick flush colouring her skin, and bent to whisper in her ear, ‘I like it when you blush, Shelley. It shows you are not as cool and indifferent to me as you try to pretent.’
Was that how she seemed? She was anything but cool and indifferent to him. Everything seemed too unreal. Jaime in love with her… wanting her… A panicky feeling rose up inside her, closing her throat, and she was glad that he had said they would take things slowly. She would need time to adjust herself to the unreality of it all, time to try and believe that Jaime did love her, time to get to know him, not just as a man but as a person.
CHAPTER FIVE
ALTHOUGH nothing was said, Shelley sensed that the Condessa knew about and approved of the new relationship between herself and Jaime, and certainly she now seemed to be taking it for granted that Shelley would be accompanying them to Lisbon.
A telephone call to London had established that there would be no problem in her taking the extra time off work. She was owed back holidays from the previous year, and her boss assured her that there was no need for her to worry about rushing back.
Three days after he had taken her to the villa, Shelley stood on her balcony watching as Jaime strode into the courtyard. He had been working all morning in the caves where the maturing wine was stored, checking that everything was in order to receive the new season’s harvest. Every morning they had breakfast together, and by some tacit agreement neither the Condessa nor Carlota appeared until Jaime had gone to work. Now she was slowly learning about the work of the quinta, and more importantly, she was also learning about Jaime himself.
She was happier than she had ever been or hoped to be in her life, and yet underneath her happiness ran a deep vein of insecurity, of fear that somehow her happiness was ephemeral and could all too easily be snatched out of her grasp, a sensation that the control of her life had passed out of her own hands—something that made her feel deeply fearful.
Logically she knew that her insecurity sprang from those early years with her grandmother when the latter’s bitterness had led her to slowly destroy a child’s confidence. Jaime was not her grandmother and neither was his family. He said he was in love with her; he showed his feelings for her every time he looked at her or touched her, and yet…
Yet what? she asked herself impatiently as Jaime looked up towards her balcony and saw her.
‘I’m going out to inspect the vines. Come with me.’
She knew that he rode out most mornings to inspect the vineyards, but she shook her head.
‘I’m not a very good rider. I’d only hold you back.’ As always, she was torn between wanting to be with him and her fear that his love for her was something that wasn’t quite real, and therefore not to be trusted.
She watched his quick frown, and wanted to call back the words, but it was too late, he was already disappearing inside the house. Telling herself that it was silly to feel disappointed and reminding herself that she would see him at lunchtime anyway, Shelley continued to pack what she thought she would need for the trip to Lisbon.
They were leaving in the morning and Carlota had already spent several hours outlining the pleasures in store for them once they reached the capital. Like any other teenage girl, she was a fanatical devotee of fashion, and complained that the single boutique in the nearest town was hopelessly behind the times. Carlota had also confided to Shelley that she found the pace of life and the inhabitants of the Algarve very old-fashioned. Only last night, while sitting crosslegged on Shelley’s bed, inspecting the clothes Shelley was putting in her suitcase, she had confided, ‘Round here they still go in for arranged marriages. It’s really archaic. A girl only has to be seen out walking with a boy, and unless they’re engaged, her reputation is ruined.’ She grimaced and pulled a wry face. ‘Lisbon is much more up to date. I want to go to college there, but I don’t know if Mother will agree. She’s rather old-fashioned about girls having careers.’
Sensing that she was being sounded out as a possible ally, Shelley had made a diplomatic response, and decided that the whole matter was something Carlota ought to talk over with Jaime. Privately she sympathised with Carlota’s desire for a career and independence, but sensibly recognised that so far she had only heard one side of the story; teenagers were notorious for their ability to be rather blinkered when it came to seeing a parental point of view.
She was thinking about Carlota when her bedroom door opened, but it wasn’t her stepsister who came in, it was Jaime.
‘What…?’
‘I’ve come to take you riding. Don’t tell me again that your lack of experience will hold me back.’ He came towards her, sliding one lean hand along her throat and into her hair, tipping back her head so that he could look down into startled eyes.
This close, she could feel the heat coming off his body, and a sudden tension in her stomach made her touch her tongue to dry lips, her heart pounding with the surge of sensation his presence always produced.
She shook her head, too bemused by the sensual stroke of his fingers against her skull for evasion. ‘My grandmother. I used to think as a child that she hated me, but I realise now that she was simply taking her hatred of my father out on me.’
‘Then realise also that there is nothing more I want more than your presence by my side, that that is far more important to me than anything else.’
Her eyes slid away from his, her senses shaken by the rough emotion in his voice. When he was close to her like this it was impossible to think. He overwhelmed her, his masculinity so alien and outside all her previous experience that it awed her even while she responded to it.
How could this devastatingly sensual man possibly want her? She was not experienced…not ravishingly beautiful, not…
‘Where is it you go to when you drift away from me like this?’
He grimaced and then the harshness went out of his eyes to be replaced by a certain bleakness.
‘Can’t you understand what a strain it is for me to have you so close to me, living in my house, eating at my table, and yet not sharing my bed at night?’
The subdued violence in his voice made her shake, her body tensing as his hands gripped her shoulders.
What was the matter with her? She loved him, didn’t she? Of course she did; how could she help it? And he loved her. Loved her and wanted her. But why? How could a man like Jaime want a woman like her?
‘You’re doing it again—trying to escape from me.’
She could feel his leashed frustration in the hard grip of his fingers, and her body was convulsed by a wave of heat.
‘Jaime, I—please don’t rush me. I need time.’ She needed more than that. She needed to come to terms with her own fears and doubts.
‘You want time.’ He sighed harshly and touched her cheek gently with the tip of one finger, tracing a tormenting line along her jaw to the corner of her mouth. ‘How your mouth trembles beneath my touch! Don’t you know how it makes me ache to feel your body tremble beneath mine, to hear your soft cries of love and to know that you belong only to me?’
The fierce note of possession in his voice made her throat ache. With the raw sensuality of his words he was conjuring up a picture that made her senses swim. His hand cupped her face, his thumb stroking her bottom lip, probing into the softness of her mouth, pressing against her teeth.
A compulsion she couldn’t control made her touch that hard pad of flesh experimentally with her tongue. Jaime wrenched away from her so violently that she couldn’t comprehend what she had done; her eyes widened with shock and anguish.
‘Don’t look at me like that! Have you no idea what you do to me?’ The words were grated against her ear, rough with barely controlled emotion. ‘I want you. I want you now. I want your mouth and hands against every part of my body. I want your desire and your need. I want your body and your soul, but most of all I want your love, and it’s driving me insane not to pick you up and carry you to your bed right now and show you with my body what I can’t find the words for with my tongue. Let me tell my mother we want to be married, Shelley.’
‘No…no…not yet!’
She didn’t know what made her say the words. There was nothing she wanted more than to be Jaime’s wife, and yet part of her was deeply afraid, intensely distrustful of this gift being offered to her by life. What if she agreed and they were married and then Jaime found out that he had made a mistake, that he didn’t love her, that it was simply an infatuation, a dream he had woven round a portrait seen when he was an idealistic young man? Dreams had no substance in reality, and she couldn’t bear to commit herself to him and then lose him.
‘I need time, Jaime,’ she pleaded. ‘I’m not like you…I don’t have your…your experience…’
‘Do you think I don’t know that? Is that what worries you?’ He was frowning now, watching her with faintly narrowed eyes.
‘Partly,’ she told him truthfully. ‘It puts us on an uneven footing, making it impossible for us to meet as equals.’
He looked at her incredulously.
‘I could almost shake you, Shelley. Do you really think it makes any difference? There have been women in my life, I admit that, but none of them have heard me say the words I have said to you. Can’t you understand? You’re the first woman I’ve ever wanted as my wife; as my partner both in bed and out of it. Today you’ve refused to come riding with me because your ability does not equal mine. When the time comes will you refuse to make love with me for the same reason? Are you really so afraid of life…of love? Don’t you trust me?’
Of course she did, didn’t she?
‘I can’t help it,’ she told him huskily, ‘I’m not like you, Jaime. I don’t have your self-confidence, your ability to believe in yourself.’
‘Then believe this,’ he told her, coming to her and cupping her face in his hands. ‘I have promised you that I won’t rush you, and I will stand by that promise, but I’m also going to promise you that we will become man and wife, Shelley, even if I have to drag you to the altar. You possess a remarkable degree of stubborness, for someone who claims to be so lacking in self-esteem. I think you know you love me, but you refuse to admit it. Well, I will hear you say it, even if I have to wait until I hold you in our marriage bed to do so.’
It was in moments like these that she glimpsed the full complexity of his mixed heritage, Shelley recognised, his words raising goosebumps along her skin. Crazily, she half wanted to goad him into…into what? Making love to her? The thought shamed her.
‘Put on a pair of jeans and come with me now. I promise you we will find you a quiet mount. Inspecting the vines is part of my work, Shelley, part of my life, and I want to share it with you. Come with me.’
How could she refuse?
He was waiting for her in the stable yard talking to the man who held the head of a pretty Arab mare.
‘This is Josefina,’ Jaime told Shelley, reaching her to draw her close to his side. ‘She is very ladylike and gentle; see how she looks at you.’
It was true that the mare did seem to have particularly soft brown eyes, which she had now fixed on Shelley with an expression of melting trust.
Shelley had ridden before but it had been many years ago, on a pony-trekking holiday organised by one of her foster-parents. Jaime helped her into the saddle, while Josefina stood reassuringly steady.
They rode out of the stable yard side by side, and Shelley felt her confidence slowly growing.
There was a very special pleasure in being alone with Jaime like this, in being at his side, listening to his voice as he explained the various stages in growth of the grapes. The crop was not yet ready for harvesting, but she could smell the scent of it in the air. A light breeze freshened the late morning heat, stirring her hair and flattening her tee-shirt against her breasts. Happiness tingled through her and she turned impulsively towards Jaime, reaching out to touch him. Instantly his hand captured her, lifting her fingers to his mouth. His tongue tip stroked erotically over her fingertips, making her shudder on a spasm of unexpected pleasure.
‘You see, you feel it too…’
Dizzy with reaction, Shelley watched him dismount and quickly tether both set of reins. When he lifted her out of the saddle she felt too weak to move and so slid helplessly into his arms, her back warmed by the satiny coat of the mare, her body wantonly welcoming the hard imprint of Jaime’s against it. His mouth moved roughly on hers, but she welcomed its fierce pressure. His hands removed her tee-shirt and bra, freeing her breasts to the heat of the sun. His shirt was open at the throat, and her need to see and touch all of him showed openly in her eyes.
‘Take it off for me.’
He moaned the words against her ear, drawing her away from the horses and down on to the soft grass.
This couldn’t be her, making love in the open where anyone could see, and not caring in the least, not c
aring about anything other than this consuming compulsion to go on, to know more of him.
Her fingers trembled as she unfastened his shirt. She felt his tension as she reached the last button, and slowly pushed back the white cotton so that she could gaze in dazed pleasure at his body. His skin was much darker than her own, his waist narrow below the firmness of his rib cage. Silky-fine dark hair shadowed his skin, and she touched it tentatively.
Above her she heard Jaime groan, and then he was taking her hand, spreading her fingers against his skin, bending to ravish her mouth with sweet fierceness in a kiss that went on and on.
Both of them were naked to the waist, her skin pale against his. Shelley caught her breath as she felt the delicious friction of skin against skin, tensing in protest as Jaime lifted himself slightly away from her.
His mouth found her throat, caressing it slowly and lingeringly, his thumb stroking the vein that pulsed out its frantic message of arousal.
He wasn’t rushing her at all, his mouth taking a lazy inventory of her collar-bone, his palms flat on the earth either side of her, keeping the weight of his body off her. She should have been pleased that he was going so slowly, but she wasn’t. The moist heat of his mouth as it stroked across her collar-bone had become a refined form of torture. The whole of her body ached, gripped by primitive tension.
His tongue touched the hollow at the base of her throat and then moved slowly downwards. Too slowly. Her body arched, her fingers curling desperately into his shoulders.
‘What is it? Am I going too fast?’
His voice was slurred and almost unrecognisable, making her shiver as it whispered in her ear. She could almost have screamed with the frustration of having that delicious downward trail of his mouth stopped. His tongue touched her ear and she shuddered, clinging to him as he trailed tiny kisses along her jaw before teasing them against the parted softness of her lips.
She ached for him to kiss her properly…to touch her properly. She wanted to feel the hard male weight of him pressing down on her, soothing the ache that pulsed deep within her body.