Chapter Seven #2
But, unfortunately, one experience of Suzy hadn’t been enough to satisfy him.
He hadn’t even got a whole night with her.
And worst of all, every moment of that impulsive, hasty encounter was etched on his mind like a scar.
From her point of view, it must have been a pretty poor introduction to sex and that dented his ego and shamed him, but he hadn’t known, couldn’t have guessed that she would be that innocent.
Even so, he didn’t believe that let him off the hook.
And now he would never have the chance to show her how different it could be.
After her experience with her ex and then his own callous words in the aftermath, the last thing Suzy needed now was another man trying to put pressure on her.
He had promised that he wouldn’t do that. He had to keep that promise.
Ruy arrived home in time for dinner and found Suzy in the long portrait gallery with Manuel.
Manuel was carefully naming pieces of antique furniture in Spanish and correcting Suzy’s pronunciation while giving her a potted history of the characters in the portraits.
As most of them had led lives of stultifying boredom, Ruy was surprised to hear her laughter ring out.
He was already trying not to let his gaze linger too long on her long shapely legs in denim shorts and the perky tilt of her unbound breasts or even the glorious messy tumble of her curls.
That silvery peal of laughter only energised the throb at his groin.
‘Ruy!’ she exclaimed when she noticed him, tall and dark and devastatingly handsome in his silvery grey designer suit.
Manuel smiled and left them alone.
‘Poor Manuel,’ Suzy sighed. ‘He thinks you’re going to marry me and so he’s trying to get my Spanish up to speed and educate me about your home and your ancestors.’
‘My family were bankers to royalty for centuries. That’s just about all you need to know. What made you laugh?’
‘The one who had a whole string of wives,’ Suzy confided, an irrepressible twinkle in her bright eyes. ‘Your family’s version of Henry the Eighth.’
‘Except Diego’s five unfortunate wives died in childbirth,’ Ruy explained.
‘I suppose back then that was very common,’ Suzy remarked thoughtfully. ‘Thank goodness it isn’t now.’
‘My mother died in childbirth and my baby sister with her,’ Ruy heard himself admit in argument, startled to hear himself proffering that confidence, but there was something in the freedom with which she spoke and behaved with him that smashed his usual reserve and brought his own barriers crashing down.
Somehow she made him want to tell her stuff and he couldn’t explain that to his own satisfaction.
‘It’s less common, but it still happens. ’
‘What age were you?’
‘Rigo and I were five. Our world fell apart without her. She was very loving. My father, on the other hand, was more of a “spare the rod and spoil the child” parent.’
‘I’m so sorry. At least I was too young to be aware of my loss and Dad was very caring.’
‘You were fortunate. Our father didn’t have a kind bone in his body.
He punished my brother and I for the smallest infraction.
I excelled at school, but I still got punished for not doing well enough to please.
Rigo, regrettably, was not academic. As you can imagine, he suffered more,’ Ruy told her grimly.
‘My father made Rigo compete with me and never let him forget that I was the elder, the heir, the important son. It destroyed our relationship.’
‘So, you were never close to your twin?’
‘No. He grew up resenting me and that never went away...in our twenties, something occurred that destroyed any hope of a closer relationship.’
‘And what was that?’ Suzy prompted, hungry for more detail, conscious that Ruy rarely spoke so freely with her.
‘Rigo was addicted to drugs for a while. I don’t wish to share his history,’ Ruy admitted very stiffly. ‘That is his business.’
Suzy reddened, aware that she had asked one question too many and mortified as she took a determined step back from that angle. ‘What was it like for Cecile?’ she asked.
‘Cecile’s mother was my father’s mistress.
She didn’t grow up with us and he never officially acknowledged her as his daughter.
Rigo wants nothing to do with her because according to him accepting Cecile into the family is dissing my father’s memory.
Even though our father was cruel to him, he still regards him as the ultimate standard of what he should aspire to. ’
‘Life’s too short for an outlook like that.’ Suzy sighed ruefully, passing by him into the bedroom, relieved to have finished that conversation and backed away from it. ‘Do I need to change for dinner or anything?’
‘Not for my benefit, particularly when you look as incredible as you do in those shorts,’ Ruy told her with a slow smile.
Her face went pink as she watched him remove his jacket and tug his tie loose. The little intimacies of a shared room tugged uneasily at her and she walked restlessly over to the window. ‘Is that orange grove in the courtyard the one you were referring to?’
‘Yes, but there’s another wilder, larger version of it at the far end of the gardens beside the estate orchards. I remember playing hide and seek there as a child,’ Ruy imparted, his voice closer than she expected.
Suzy whirled round and there he was, a couple of feet away, clad only in boxers, almost every inch of his magnificent body bare for her perusal.
Involuntarily her eyes roamed over the expanse of his bronzed torso, lingering on the corrugated slab of his abs and flat stomach.
Her mouth ran dry, her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth.
‘Don’t look at me like that. I’m not good at self-denial,’ Ruy warned her.
‘Neither am I,’ Suzy croaked, noticing, well, she really couldn’t help noticing that he was aroused. Those boxers didn’t hide much. ‘How was I looking at you?’
‘Like you want me...like I look at you,’ Ruy framed hoarsely. ‘Dios mio! Even my grammar’s going to hell!’
Warmth mushroomed inside Suzy at the confirmation that he still wanted her but that, just like her, he was in conflict over it.
Still being tempted by him had seemed weak until he made that same admission.
‘I was so angry with you this morning...still am, because you aren’t the guy I thought you were and that threw me.
..and now I don’t have the right clothes. ’
‘I’ll get you more clothes,’ Ruy swore impatiently. ‘Little problems of that sort aren’t important.’
‘You’re not allowed to buy me anything more,’ Suzy reminded him. ‘You keep your money to yourself.’
Ruy reached out and closed his big hands round her smaller ones to tug her closer. ‘Anything you want. I need you to be happy.’
‘It doesn’t take money to make me happy,’ Suzy mumbled. ‘Well, except when it came to saving Dad from Percy.’
‘There’s an exception to every rule,’ Ruy conceded generously while stilling in the act of edging her even closer. ‘We’re not supposed to be doing this.’
‘That’s your rule,’ Suzy pointed out helplessly.
And he kissed her, and a long breathless sigh of relief escaped her.
The tension holding her fast snapped and propelled her into the muscular heat of him, her hands sliding up to his shoulders and stretching round his neck, her entire body melting and pliant.
‘I want you,’ she whispered daringly. ‘But not if you’re liable to freak out afterwards. ’
‘Absolutely no freaking out,’ Ruy swore raggedly half under his breath. ‘Are you sure about this? I’m still the same guy who doesn’t want a relationship.’
‘Do we have to put a label on it? I don’t want a relationship right now either, not after escaping Percy. Do you think you could go with the flow just for once?’ Suzy murmured softly as she backed him towards the bed.
An unholy grin lit Ruy’s lean dark features as he realised what she was doing. ‘Just for once,’ he agreed, angling his lean hips against her, further acquainting her with his arousal.
A kernel of pure exhilaration, unlike anything Suzy had ever felt before, sparked and glowed at the heart of her, igniting an impatient pulse of need.
He tugged her down on the bed and kissed her until she was pushing up against him, eager for more.
She was with him every step of the way. He extracted her from her top, teased the pouting tips of her breasts and buried his mouth there to take advantage of her passionate response before beginning to remove her shorts.
Her body felt as though it was already racing ahead of her, taut and trembling with seething anticipation.
‘You’d run away if you knew the things I want to do to you,’ Ruy growled against the slender column of her white throat, his mouth nipping along the tender slope of her neck, making her squirm and gasp while he delicately stroked and traced the damp triangle of cloth stretched between her thighs.
Her heart was racing at an insane level.
It was a crazy challenge simply to catch her breath.
Sheer physical excitement had gripped her in an unbreakable hold.
He peeled her out of her last garment. The burn at her core was relentless, tiny ripples of tension already ringing her pelvis and building in demand.
He spread her trembling legs, lowered his head and used his tongue on her tender flesh while he eased a finger into her.
Irresistible sensation engulfed Suzy in a heady wave and a rosy flush warmed her entire skin surface as she rocked her slender hips.
Erotic bliss, a whole world of sensual extremes, captured her and wrung powerful responses from her sensitised body.
Flung up to an ecstatic height that made her cry out, she felt fireworks flare through her entire being and light her up until she fell back against the pillows to marvel at the tiny convulsions of pure pleasure still currenting through her.
Her shimmering green eyes locked to him. She lifted a feathery copper brow. ‘You’re allowed to shock and awe me in bed,’ she conceded with deadly seriousness and no small amount of complacency.
After a disconcerted pause, Ruy flung himself back on the bed and laughed with raw appreciation.
No other woman had ever given him such a sense of freedom.
He reared back up again to crush her parted lips under his and let his tongue delve deep, that carnal kiss reawakening the sensual hum deep inside her.
‘Dios... I’m burning up for you,’ he told her hoarsely.
He reached for protection, carefully rearranged her supple body and plunged into her hard and fast. Her back arched, her hips rose, a formless sound of need quivering from her lips.
His fierce rhythm sent compelling surges of delight through her and the excitement climbed, little paroxysms of convulsive sensual heat tying her into a tight knot of anticipation until the pleasure rose to an uncontrollable height, loosened the knot of need and blew her away again.
‘See...no freak out,’ Ruy breathed huskily in the aftermath, gazing down with smouldering dark golden eyes at her hectically flushed face.
‘The earth definitely moved,’ Suzy told him with dancing eyes of admiration as she smoothed a possessive hand down over his heaving ribcage. ‘Do you think you can keep that standard up for a whole week?’
‘A week...why only a week?’ An immediate frown tensed Ruy’s lean dark features.
‘Because I’m only here for a week,’ Suzy reminded him cheerfully.
Ruy unclenched his taut jawline and thought about it.
A week was a very long time for him with a woman.
In fact, he had never spent that much time or that many nights with one particular woman.
The sex was spectacular but that could possibly be a mere side effect of his artistic obsession with her.
By the time he completed his sketches and started to paint her, he would probably be far too preoccupied by his art to care too much about her departure.
Ruy closed an arm round her. ‘I intend to make the most of this week.’
And so did Suzy, lying there dreamily compliant in her sensual daze.
She would make the most of Ruy and her trip to Spain and then return to her normal life.
A life in which she would make changes, she planned reflectively with a little leap of anticipation that for once had nothing to do with Ruy.
If her father no longer needed her to work at the pub, she would be free to decide her own future and there were a dizzying number of options available.
Although perhaps there weren’t quite so many options open to someone like her without higher-level education, she acknowledged ruefully.
Perhaps the first move she would have to make would be signing up to study towards better qualifications.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Ruy pressed, sensing her abstraction and irritated by it.
‘Going home,’ she told him truthfully.
His brilliant dark eyes glittered like polished jet. At that moment he didn’t want her thinking about anything but him, and the very strangeness of that thought disconcerted him.
It was because that desire of hers to return home put pressure on him to complete the painting, he reasoned uneasily.
And possibly just a little because he wanted her full attention to be on him—and that was normal, wasn’t it?
Particularly for a guy who had never had to fight for a woman’s attention before. ..
OK, Ruy thought with sudden ferocity, challenge accepted.