She came awake slowly, whispering his name, and a pleasure so deep it shook his soul swept through him. It was his name she said, even before she was fully awake, his mouth she sought as she embraced him and drew his head down to hers, his kisses for which she hungered.
Her flesh was hot as flame against his. Hot and silken. He angled his mouth over hers, deepening the kiss, opening her to him with the tip of his tongue. She moaned softly, threaded her fingers into his hair and touched his tongue with her own.
Ai, Deus, she tasted of morning sunshine, of honey and cream, of all that he had remembered during the past endless months.
“Carin,” he whispered, her name as sweet as her taste, “Carin, amada, desejo-te. I want you, sweetheart. I want you so badly that I ache.”
Her eyes turned dark. She put her hand around the back of his head, drew his mouth to hers for a kiss that was all the answer he needed.
Rafe drew back, watched her face as he slid the blanket from her body, saw the way her lips parted and her breathing quickened as on that long-ago night. He saw the sudden leap of her blood in the hollow of her throat, the expansion of her pupils until they seemed to fill her eyes.
“You are beautiful, querida,” he said softly, and then he let his gaze move slowly over all the rest: the mauve-tipped breasts, the narrow waist, the softly rounded belly and the triangle of dark curls at the juncture of her thighs.
“Carin,” he whispered, and he bent his head, kissed her mouth, drank in the taste of her as he slid his hand over her, cupping her breast, curving it along her hip, tracing the line of her thigh. Her soft sighs of pleasure mingled with his, her body melted against his, and he gave up trying to think because there was no way to think, not when she was in his arms.
Rafe kissed her throat and shoulder, the soft swell of her breasts. She moaned his name as his head dipped lower; when he tongued the swollen crests, she made a little sound of pleasure that was almost his undoing.
“Rafe,” she whispered.
Her sigh became a groan as he kissed his way to her belly.
“You’re even lovelier than you were, amada,” he whispered.
It was true. She was. A fierce sense of need swept through him, to take her, possess her, make her his at last. He knelt above her, let his fingers seek the silky curls that guarded the core of her femininity, slid his hand between her thighs and cupped her.
She was hot against his palm, wet with wanting him, and it almost drove him over the edge. He told himself to go slowly. He was afraid of hurting her; he had never made love to a woman who’d given birth to a child only weeks before…who’d given birth to his child.
He whispered her name, told her how beautiful she was, how much he desired her, the soft words of Portuguese slipping from his tongue as he eased himself down her body. Gently, he pressed his mouth to her belly, then to those silky curls. She gave a startled cry as he spread her thighs, put his hands beneath her and lifted her to him.
Then he put his mouth to her.
Her cry rose into the silence of the room, not the cry of a woman in pain but of one in ecstasy. His world trembled; he groaned, lost in the taste of her, in the knowledge that she was ready for his possession. He kissed her, tongued her, and when she arched towards him and came against his mouth, he moved up over her, knelt between her thighs, entered her slowly, moved within her slowly, his concentration almost savage as he focused not on the pleasure, oh, Deus, the sweet, sweet pleasure of all that satin heat around him but, instead, on whatever shreds of self-control he had left, knowing he must not ride her hard, that he must not hurt her—
“Rafe,” she said, and she lifted herself to him, impaled herself on him, and he lost everything, his control, his logic, himself, as he exploded within her.
He collapsed against her, breathing hard, spent, filled with a joy he had never before known. Carin held him close, whispered his name against his throat. He put his arms around her, murmured sweet nonsense words to her in Portuguese and in English, and kissed her.
They lay that way while time slipped past, heartbeats slowing, breath sighing, until Rafe realized that his full weight was pinning his wife, his delicate wife, his wife only weeks past childbirth, to the bed.
He cursed softly, started to roll off her, but she tightened her arms around him.
“Don’t,” she said unsteadily. “Please don’t leave me.”
He thought back to that night, how she had frozen beside him, how they had left each other, and he kissed her.
“I will never leave you again,” he said, in a husky whisper. “But surely, amada, I am crushing you.”
He felt her lips curve against his throat. “You aren’t.”
“Sim, I must be.” He kissed her again, more slowly. Her mouth was softly swollen and he loved the way it clung to his. “You are so tiny…”
“Tiny?” She laughed softly, brought her hand to his face and stroked the damp, tousled hair back from his forehead. My husband, she thought, this is my husband. “I’m not ‘tiny,’ senhor.”
“Delicate, then.” He rolled to his side, gathered her close, smiled into her eyes. “Delicate, and so beautiful it takes my breath away, to look at you.”
A soft rosy hue flooded her cheeks. “And mine, to look at you.”
Rafe grinned. “This is not a time to tell me I have taken a wife who can’t tell a good-looking man from a big, ugly gaucho.”
“Stop fishing for compliments.” Carin ran the tip of her finger down Rafe’s nose. “You’re not big and ugly, and you’re not a gaucho.” She gave him a smug look. “I still remember my sixth grade geography. Gaúchos are cowboys.”
“Sim,” he said, and caught her finger gently between his teeth.
“And they’re from Argentina, not Brazil.”
“Are-zhen-teen-ah,” he said, and smiled. “But here, in this part of Brazil, we speak of gaúchos, too, and of the pampas.”
It was lovely, lying in Rafe’s arms and talking this way, as if they’d always known each other. She shifted closer to him, only wanting to feel all of him against her, but the simple action changed things instantly. His smile tilted; she felt the quickening of his body and the hot, sweet quickening of her own.
“Querida.” He took a deep breath, curved his hand around her cheek. She could see the sudden tension in his face. “Esposa, I think—I think we should get up now.”
“Get up?”
“Yes.” Deus, he could feel his muscles knotting. “You know. Take a shower. Have breakfast…”
“…Find out what happened to last night’s guests.”
Rafe laughed. “I suspect they gave up waiting for us, and…” He groaned. “Don’t do that, querida.”
“Do what?” she said softly, and moved, ever so slightly, again.
“The shower is best,” he said quickly. “A long one, that is very, very cold…”
“I have a better idea,” Carin whispered.
She reached between their bodies and closed her hand around his erection. He growled, rolled her beneath him, caught her hands and pinned them against the pillow on either side of her head.
“You play with fire,” he said thickly.
“Yes,” she whispered, dizzy with desire and with her power over him.
Rafe summoned up the last of his self-control. “I don’t want to hurt you, querida.”
“You could only hurt me by telling me you don’t want us to make love again.”
“I will never tell you that,” he said softly. Slowly, his eyes never leaving her face, he eased himself into her. “Take me inside you, esposa. And look at me, as you do.”
She opened her eyes. Rafe was all she could see. His wonderful face. His eyes. His mouth.
“Look at me, and say my name.”
“Rafe,” she whispered.
He moved, moved again.
“Say it, minha esposa.”
“Rafe,” she sobbed, as he filled her, “Rafe…”
“Who am I?” he said fiercely. “Tell me
what I want to hear.”
“You are my husband…”
Her words, and the arching of her body, tore him from reality. He thrust harder, deeper. Carin dug her fingers into his biceps and cried out. And just before Rafe let go of his carefully ordered, tightly controlled world, an emotion that had nothing to do with sex flashed like lightning through his head, and through his heart.
* * *
Carin awoke to a room filled with golden sunlight.
She was alone, but not in the way she had been on that night so many months before. Rafe’s presence was still here, in the warmth of the sheet where he’d lain beside her, in the clean scent of him on his pillow as she gathered it in her arms.
Carin sighed, rolled onto her belly and closed her eyes.
What an incredible night it had been. They’d been so furious with each other…who could have imagined all that rage would dissolve and turn first to tenderness, and then to passion?
Her husband was a remarkable man.
She smiled, threw out her arms and let them flop across the mattress. Not just remarkable. He was also—he was also…
Carin buried her face in Rafe’s pillow.
It was silly to blush when you were all alone but she was sure that was what she was doing, blushing a bright red from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. It was just that Rafe was the most wonderful lover. Sex, what little she’d experienced of it, had never been anything like this. Rafe had stroked her, kissed her, touched her everywhere. The last time, she’d refused to let go of him and when they’d fallen asleep, he was still inside her.
She smiled. She felt sated, boneless, ecstatically happy.
She felt—she felt loved.
Carin’s smile faded. She turned over, drew the covers to her chin and stared blindly at the ceiling.
They’d made love. That didn’t mean she was loved. Not that she wanted Rafe to love her. Why would she? They could have a perfectly good marriage without love…whatever “love” was.
Her mother had loved her father, once, and he’d loved her, but would two people who really “loved” each other have ended up hating each other, instead? Her stepfather professed to have loved all his wives…Yeah, right. Carin huffed out a breath. Jonas’s definition of the word wasn’t worth thinking about.
Okay. So Amanda and Nick were crazy about each other. Being in the same room with them could even be embarrassing, because you always had the feeling that as much as they were polite and gracious around other people, what they really wanted was to close the door and be alone.
It was like that with her stepbrothers and their wives, too, but none of that was love.
It was lust.
Carin got out of bed, grabbed the robe that lay at the foot of it, pulled it on and went into the bathroom.
And that was fine. “Lust” was what had brought Rafe into her life; it was what had sent them into each other’s arms, last night. And if they were lucky, it would be what kept them together, that and their devotion to their little girl because yes, Rafe was right, Amy was entitled to a home with both a mother and a father.
She sighed as she did all the mundane morning things that were anchors to reality, then plucked a brush from the top of the shiny black marble vanity.
“Love” was what she thought she’d found with Frank.
I love you, Carin, he’d said, not just once but often. She’d never used those same words to him but she’d thought them, and look how that had turned out. Frank’s idea of “love” had led him into another woman’s arms. Hers had left her jilted, nursing a broken heart…
Her hand stilled. Slowly, she opened the bathroom door and walked back into the bedroom.
That wasn’t the way it had been. She hadn’t nursed a broken heart, only an angry one. She’d never loved Frank. If she had, she’d have wanted to spend the nights in his arms. She’d have felt a little rush of joy whenever she saw him. She’d have dreamed about him, longed for him, been angry at him, sometimes, but with a passion that made loving him all the sweeter.
And she’d have longed for his kisses, as she longed for Rafe’s. She’d have sighed when he touched her, as she’d sighed all this morning. She’d have stood wrapped in his robe, as she was wrapped in Rafe’s, and buried her face in the collar, and inhaled his scent and wished, oh, wished, that she were in his arms…
Carin lifted her head and stared blindly at the window. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. What she felt for Rafe was—it was desire. It was respect, too, she could admit that, now, though she’d have denied it only yesterday. And she liked him. Why wouldn’t she? He was intelligent, he was funny, he was generous…
But she didn’t love him.
She didn’t want to love him. Love was dangerous. It was uncertain. It made you vulnerable to the worst kind of pain…
“Bom dia, querida.”
She swung around and saw Rafe in the doorway, a silver serving tray in his hands.
“Did I startle you?” Smiling, he elbowed the door shut and came towards her. “I thought you might be like me. I am not worth bothering with until I’ve had my morning coffee.”
That wasn’t true. He was very much worth bothering with. Her heart gave a quick, crazy thud. Rafe’s hair was tousled; his jaw was shaded with early-morning stubble. He was wearing jeans, zipped but unbuttoned, and nothing else except that sexy, devastating smile…
“Don’t look so worried, querida.” He grinned, put the tray on a small table near the windows and sat down on one of the two love seats that faced it. Carin sat down opposite him. He poured two cups of coffee from a silver pot, got up, went to where she sat and handed her one. “I didn’t make it myself,” he said, sitting beside her, “Elena did.”
“Oh.”
Oh. She raised the cup to her lips and buried her groan of dismay within it. Was that the best she could muster, for morning conversation with her husband? With the man she’d fallen in love with? Except, of course, she hadn’t. She couldn’t possibly have…
The cup wobbled. She put it on the saucer, put both carefully on the table and gave him a smile she hoped was steadier than her hand.
“Well,” she said brightly.
“Well,” Rafe said, and smiled back at her.
“I, um, I have to check on Amy.”
“I already did. Her nanny gave her a bottle, and now she is fast asleep.”
“Oh.”
“I said we would be in to see the baby at lunchtime.”
“Lunchtime? But what will we do until…”
Carin’s eyes met his. It would have been difficult enough, facing him without embarrassment this morning. She’d known that. After all, she’d never awakened in a man’s bed before.
It was worse, now. It was impossible. She was scared, not of him but of herself. He could never know that she—that she thought she might love him. She’d never tell him, never let him suspect. You gave a man so much power over you, if you did that…
“Carin.” He took her hand, laced his fingers through her. “What’s the matter?”
Her lips felt bone-dry; she ran the tip of her tongue across them. “Nothing. I guess—I guess I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“You’re supposed to just let me look at you, esposa.” He brought her hand to his lips, turned it over and kissed the palm. “You are so very beautiful. I came close to waking you, to tell you that.”
She smiled unsteadily, tugged her hand back and put it in her lap.
“Thank you.”
“Something is wrong,” Rafe said quietly. “Are you feeling unwell?” His eyes darkened. “Did I hurt you, querida?”
“No! No, I’m fine. It’s just…It’s just that I’m not very good at this—this morning-after thing.”
His face went blank. “Why not?”
“Well…” She took a steadying breath. “Because—because I never awakened in anyone’s bed before.”
He didn’t speak for a long moment. Then he nodded, as if she’d told him no
thing more important than that it was going to rain.
“Didn’t you?”
“No.” She dropped her gaze, suddenly knowing she had to tell him this, that he had the right to know it, that she wanted him to know it, even if he didn’t sound as if he gave a damn, she thought with a sudden flare of anger. She looked at him. “Frank was the only other man I’ve ever been with.”
Rafe’s expression remained unreadable. “I see.”
She shot to her feet. “Am I boring you, Rafe? Because if I am—”
“Carin.” He caught her wrist and stood up. She could see something in his eyes now, some little flash of light. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Actually, I’m beginning to wonder.” Her chin lifted. “I had some silly idea you might be interested, that as my husband you’d want to know that I’m not—not promiscuous, that when it comes to sex—”
“Don’t stop now,” he said softly, with a little smile she couldn’t read. “Not when it’s just starting to get interesting.”
Color rushed into her cheeks. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I never spent an entire night with Frank, and that sex with him wasn’t—it wasn’t ever—”
Her voice faded. Rafe drew her to him, put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up.
“We made love last night, querida. There’s a difference.”
The breath sighed from her lips. “Yes,” she said softly, “yes, there is.”
“For a minute there, I was afraid you were about to tell me that Frank had been a lover you would never forget.”
“Is that what you…? No. Oh, no. That’s not it, at all. What I was trying to tell you was—was…” She stopped, bit down on her lip, then flashed him a bright smile. “Sit down. Let me pour you some more coffee.”
He nodded, then sat. She filled his cup and handed it to him. He was awash in coffee already but maybe, if he sat here long enough, he could figure out what in hell was going on. Carin had just told him she’d only been with one other man, and that it hadn’t been as good with that man as it had been with him.
Why had she told him that? Not that it wasn’t good, hearing it. She’d told him, very clearly, that the ghost that had hovered over their marriage had been put to rest. But if that were true, why did she look so unhappy?
The Alvares Bride Page 13