by Jennie Lucas
“Go to sleep,” he whispered against her hair. “I will watch over you tonight. I will keep you safe.”
And he did. For hours. He held Annabelle, listening to the rise and fall of her breath as she slept. He breathed in the scent of her hair, their heads on the same pillow. He held her body in the darkness, caught between the need to protect her and the agony of not making love to her.
He’d never slept all night in bed with any woman. Even Rosalia, the subject of his youthful infatuation sixteen years ago. He always left a woman’s bed after he was done making love to her. He’d never slept with a woman like this. As Stefano held Annabelle in his arms, listening to her rhythmic breath, even in his torment of sexual need he found himself lured into a strange sense of peace. Of home. He closed his eyes.
“Stefano.” Annabelle suddenly turned around in his arms, wrapping her arms around him. She clutched him closer to her naked, nubile body as he tasted the sweetness of her skin, suckling her breasts as she moaned his name in bed.
He woke from the sensual dream with a start, realizing his hands had started to reach for her breasts in reality.
Maldita sea. He sucked in his breath, wiping his forehead as he glanced out the window. He was overwhelmed with relief to see the first pink curls of dawn appearing over the eastern horizon. Morning, at last. Thank God. He looked down at Annabelle. She was turned in the opposite direction, curled up with a pillow clutched in her arms. He was unable to see her face but knew she was asleep by the soft rhythm of her breath.
The night of torture was over.
He had passed his test.
Carefully, Stefano moved away from her, rising from her bed. He stared down at her for a moment, then fled on silent feet back to his own bedroom and the cold shower he sorely needed.
After toweling off and putting on clean jeans and a white T-shirt, he went downstairs to the kitchen. It was dark. Even Mrs. Gutierrez wasn’t up yet. Making himself a breakfast of dry, slightly burned toast rather than wake the elderly housekeeper, he gulped down a taza de café drunk so black and hot it burned his tongue.
Grimly, he went outside.
The world was still quiet and dark in the hush of dawn. He went to the old stables and took a deep breath of the saddle soap, horse sweat and clean hay. He was desperate to start work, determined to grind out his body’s tension through hard labor. Annabelle.
How on earth had he managed to sleep nearly naked in her bed all night without touching her?
He exhaled. He’d wanted to kiss her and never stop, and yet … she’d been so bewildered, so frightened by her dream. More than making love to her, he’d wanted to protect her and keep her safe. He’d never felt this way about any woman.
Annabelle was so strong. And yet, vulnerable. Almost. innocent.
What dream could have possibly affected her so horribly?
Stefano looked around the old stables. The ancient stalls had been meticulously repaired. The tools and equipment that were always carefully put away in their place had been cleaned and brought to shine. He grabbed a pitchfork and furiously shoveled piles of fresh hay, putting his back into it.
He thought again of how she’d sobbed after her dream, how she had refused to tell him about it, how she hadn’t even allowed him to turn on the light.
He paused, leaning on his pitchfork.
Perhaps he was making a mistake, getting involved with Annabelle Wolfe. His instincts were starting to warn that an affair with her would not be light. Or simple. Or easy.
All the things he usually insisted upon in a brief relationship.
But she intrigued him. Her cold exterior was just armor to protect her vulnerable heart.
She might be from an aristocratic English family, he thought, but she was nothing like the rest of her class.
As a boy, Stefano had once envied wealthy men such as his father’s employer, who bought and sold horses and lavish estates, and could change other people’s lives on a whim. It had taken Rosalia and her father’s long-ago betrayals to teach Stefano how artificial and heartless those people truly were. Now, he despised the cold, glittering world of the international jet set. He stayed away from the cities and the racing circuits where the upper crust traveled, and only had to endure their company once a year.
His annual polo match and gala raised money for his charitable foundation. Important.
Valuable. But, oh, how Stefano dreaded it. Just a few days more.
He exhaled, shoveling another pile of straw, and pushed his thoughts back to a more pleasurable topic.
How many lovers had Annabelle had? Not many, surely. She was too prickly for that.
And she could certainly afford to be choosy. So how many men had she invited to her bed?
Less than ten? Less than five?
Stefano scowled. It irritated him to think of Annabelle with other men. Hypocritical of him, surely, since he’d taken so many lovers himself. He could barely recall half of the women he’d made love to, any more than he could remember satisfying other physical needs over his lifetime. Sex was a physical need like any other. He couldn’t remember every single blanket he’d used in winter, every glass of wine he’d drunk or every bite of food he’d eaten.
Why would he remember every woman who’d warmed his bed?
But if he ever made love to Annabelle. He shuddered. That he knew he would remember.
But would he have her?
You’ll never have me, Stefano. Never.
So she’d said. But training horses had taught him to pay attention to nonverbal cues.
And in many ways body language was the same for women as horses. The way her eyes wouldn’t meet his. The way she skittered from him, backing away. The way she resisted his touch. The way she seemed to tremble—and if he drew too close, the way she would lash out.
Whatever she said with her words, he could read her body as clear as day.
Seducing her was going to be far more challenging than he’d thought. But he would not fail. Could not.
Stefano heard a noise and looked up. Through the stable window, he saw a shadow and recognized Annabelle’s slim figure silhouetted against the gray-and-pink dawn.
Strange. He’d once thought of her color as gray, but now he realized he’d been wrong.
She wasn’t like winter twilight at all. Annabelle was a January dawn. Cold, brittle—and yet with a pale mist curling upon the edges, soft pink promise like a whisper, wistfully dreaming of spring.
My work is all that matters. It is all I care about, she’d said.
Madre de Dios, that a woman like Annabelle should think such a thing!
He wanted to free her from that tight self-control. He wanted to see her smile, give her joy, hear her scream with pleasure—
“Oh.” With an intake of breath, Annabelle stood blinking in the stable doorway. Her blond hair was pulled back in her regular tight chignon, and she wore a soft pink linen pantsuit and plain, sensible shoes. She pulled her camera down from her face. “I didn’t expect you to be up so early.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” He looked her over, relishing the image of her slim body. “Not after I left you.”
“Oh. Right.” She bit her lip. “About last night. Thank you for staying with me. I’m rather embarrassed by the whole thing …”
“Don’t,” he said sharply. “You had a bad dream. It happens to everyone at times.”
Turning away with an unintelligible mutter, Annabelle lifted her camera and snapped pictures of the wood-slatted ceiling, of the horse in the closest stall, of the dust motes floating in the air from the first light of sunrise flooding through the open door.
The camera was her protection, Stefano suddenly realized. It was her mask.
“Put the camera down,” he said.
“I’m almost done,” she replied, taking pictures of the well-swept wooden floor. “Then I’ll leave you alone.”
“I don’t want you to leave me alone.”
Reluctantly, she lowered her camera. “I did have
a question.”
“Sí?”
She pressed her lips together. “I wondered. if there was any reason you left my bedroom this morning,” she said finally. “If you … saw something … that made you leave.”
He stared at her. “I left because of you.”
She looked up at him, her lovely face stricken. “You did?”
“I wanted you so badly it almost killed me not to touch you.” He gave a low, self-mocking laugh. “It was a new skill for me to learn, sleeping next to a woman I desire without seducing you. By dawn, my self-control was almost entirely lost.”
“Oh.” The creamy complexion of her cheeks turned the color of roses. “That was very
… gentlemanly of you.”
He snorted. “I’m no gentleman. But I know you did not ask me to stay in your bed last night for sex. You needed comfort. So that is what I gave you.”
She lifted her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered.
He broke eye contact deliberately. He looked at her clothes. “Another elegant suit.”
She looked down at her designer pantsuit in pale pink, then lifted her chin. “I always wear a suit. I’ve dressed like this in the Gobi Desert, Tahiti, everywhere. Why should I treat Santo Castillo any differently?”
“You might prefer jeans and a cotton shirt for the hard work we do here,” he said frankly. “I could send for some new clothes for you in Algares.”
She shook her head. “I’m fine as I am.” Stefano set down his pitchfork. He started to pull off his white T-shirt. “Work as you please, then.”
She stared at him with an intake of breath. “What—what are you doing?”
“Working as I please.” He dropped his sweaty T-shirt to the floor, leaving his chest bare. Annabelle’s eyes fixed on his chest, her eyes the color of hot embers as her gaze slowly followed the trail of dark hair down his bare chest until it disappeared beneath the waistline of his jeans.
“Annabelle.”
Her eyes looked up. “What?”
Her tone was belligerent, but beneath her defiance he could see the flush of her skin and the way she swayed forward—even as her feet inched away.
If he hadn’t been hard for her before, he would be now. Painfully. “Come here.”
“What do you want?”
He looked down at her.
“I want to kiss you,” he said in a low voice. “I want to pull that suit off your body and kiss your naked skin all the way down to your feet. I want to take you right here. I want to push you down against the soft, clean hay and make love to you until we’re both hot, sweaty and exhausted with pleasure.”
Her jaw dropped.
“That is what I want,” he said quietly. “But for the moment, I will be satisfied just to talk to you. If you will come closer.”
“I … I can’t,” she choked out, backing away. “I need to get back to work.”
“Are you still afraid of me?”
She clutched her camera in one hand, staring up at him. Then she tossed her head.
“Why would I be afraid of some Spanish playboy?”
“If you’re not afraid, prove it,” he whispered. His gaze fell to her lips.
With a gasp, she jumped back two steps. Stefano wondered if she even knew she’d done it, or if it had been pure reflex.
The beam of morning light from the door illuminated Annabelle’s hair, making it a million shades of gold. She licked her pink, heart-shaped mouth, staring up at him with her big gray eyes.
Stefano swallowed. He’d never felt desire like this before. It was magic. He was caught, ensorcelled by desire.
“You’re so beautiful, Annabelle,” he whispered. “I’ve never seen your equal.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes wide. Then she clenched her hands.
“Just because you comforted me last night, I won’t fall at your feet now.” She shook her head fiercely. “I won’t let you seduce me.”
Beneath her defiance, Stefano saw the increasing tremble of her body. He saw her nervousness and fear. He knew if he came closer to her, even a single step, she would flee.
Even now, her feet were inching back toward the stable door. It was only the knife’s edge of pride that held her.
“Why are you so afraid?” he asked in a low voice.
“I’m not!”
“You’re trembling. You’re so afraid of me, that if I take one more step toward you, you’ll bolt for the door.”
She tossed her head, but he saw the desperation hidden beneath the bravado. “Don’t be ridiculous!”
Slowly, deliberately, Stefano raised his black leather boot above the rough wood floor in a single step.
With a hoarse intake of breath, Annabelle stumbled back, dropping her camera with a clatter as she turned and fled the stables.
Annabelle had barely taken a dozen pictures so far that morning, testing the early light, before she’d found him in the stables. The last person on earth she wanted to see.
Stefano.
He’d seen her at her worst last night when she’d screamed in her recurring dream, the horrifying nightmare that always clung to her like cobwebs after she awoke. Annabelle could never awake from it completely. She’d lived it.
“Please don’t hit her! Stop it, stop it!” her little brothers had screamed and cried over the rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack of the whip cutting her flesh as her drunken, enraged father savagely beat her in Wolfe Manor. Annabelle was curled up in a ball on the floor, too weak to protect herself from the continuing blows. She knew her father wanted her to cry and beg for mercy, but she couldn’t do it. If she did, she feared his anger would turn on the little boys crying behind him.
She could barely see little Sebastian and Nathaniel through the sheen of blood as she gasped to them, “Stay away! Run, get out of here!” But they wouldn’t abandon her, even at such risk to themselves.
Then Jacob had burst into the hallway. Her eldest brother, so tall and strong at eighteen, had knocked their father aside with a shout, snatching up the whip as he punched their father away from her with a single resounding blow. Annabelle saw their father fall, fall, fall as if in slow motion. She heard a loud terrible bang as his head hit the bottom step of the staircase, and their father’s violent life had come to an abrupt end.
It was always the same nightmare when she was under stress, ending with the same shocked look in her father’s eyes.
His death hadn’t been her fault. She’d told herself that again and again. But she didn’t quite believe it. He’d stared straight at her as he’d died. Whenever Annabelle had the dream, she always woke with a sob, woke to loneliness and despair.
But last night, like a miracle, she’d woken to find Stefano’s arms around her. She’d felt safe. Comforted. With him beside her, she’d fallen back asleep, knowing nothing bad could happen when he was keeping watch over her.
Then she’d woken up and he was gone. Her embarrassment that he’d seen her in a vulnerable state was bad enough. Then she’d wondered if he’d seen the scar on her bare skin in the morning light, and it had been her ugly face that drove him away.
You’re ugly beneath that makeup, Annabelle. A hideous monster.
Rising from her bed, she had showered and dressed. She’d pulled back her hair and applied her makeup with a trembling hand. Then, not wanting to face Stefano at breakfast, she’d gone straight outside. She’d tried to focus on taking pictures, but amid the silence of the morning, his low, husky voice invaded her soul.
I want you, Annabelle. And I intend to have you. I will seduce you slowly, bit by bit, until you cannot resist me. Until you are mine. In my bed. At my pleasure.
When she’d found him in the stables, when he’d challenged her after everything that had happened between them, she’d been overwhelmed. Blood rushed through her veins as she’d tried to hold her ground. She’d clung to her pride.
Then he’d taken off his shirt.
She’d seen a man’s bare chest before. But looking at his tanned t
orso, taut and lean with muscle, with a scattering of dark hair pointed downward like an arrow, she hadn’t been able to look away.
Stefano had taken that single step toward her, and a surge of fear had ricocheted down her body. She couldn’t explain what happened next. She’d just bolted. Her feet had scrambled back, nearly tripping as she fled. She hadn’t stopped running until she was across the farthest field and gasping for air.
Now, as Annabelle finally caught her breath, she became slowly aware of the morning songs of birds, the noisy rippling of the stream. She was alone in the forest, standing by a stream of water on a rocky hillside. She looked up at the beams of morning light shimmering through the dark, shadowy trees.
She blinked. How far and fast had she run?
Breathing in the fresh, cool air, she knelt by the stream and splashed cold water on her face. Gradually the rapid pounding of her heart slowed. As she rose from the rocky banks, she looked around the forest.
No doubt Stefano was still laughing himself silly back at the stables.
Why did he have this effect on her? Even now, she craved his touch. It frightened her.
She couldn’t allow herself to be vulnerable to any man—but especially not Stefano! As protective and kind as he’d been last night, a playboy had only one objective. To bed a woman
… and forget her.
Annabelle’s cheeks became hot as she recalled the look in Stefano’s dark eyes as he’d taken that single step toward her in the stables … and how, in spite of all her defiance, she’d fled from him like a coward. Like a pathetic virgin.
But a virgin was exactly what she was. She closed her eyes. A pathetic virgin.
“C’mon, don’t act like some pathetic virgin,” the older boy had said, leering at Annabelle’s low-cut lace top. She was just fourteen, and she’d snuck out of Wolfe Manor to follow her twin brother Alex to a party in the village with his older friends. Then her brother had seen her.