CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I F YOU DON ’ T want this, this is the point where you tell me.’
‘I do.’ She couldn’t take her eyes off his mouth as she strained to press her lips to the sensuous curve. ‘I do want this. I want you.’
He kissed her back and the heat was instantaneous. It was a firestorm—and they were in the middle of it.
Holding her eyes, he pulled at the cord on her gown and slid it off her shoulders.
She closed her eyes.
‘No, look at me,’ he commanded, cupping her chin.
Her eyes flickered open and she looked into the searing heat of his stare. She stood there quivering with a need that rose up in her like a tide.
‘You are beautiful,’ he rasped, stepping back fractionally to allow his gaze free range over her body, from her small, high breasts with their plump rosy nipples to her soft belly and slim hips. ‘Perfect.’
His hands on her waist, he picked her up, and Clemmie wound her legs around his hips, her hands in his hair, and returned his kisses with a hunger to match his.
Instinct was totally in control as she plastered herself against the muscular hardness of his chest. She was only vaguely conscious of him laying her down on one of the deep padded benches along the orangery wall.
His eyes never left hers as with one knee braced on the bench he fought his way out of his shirt before tossing it away.
She gasped, staring hungrily at the taut, defined musculature of his chest and belly.
He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
He leaned over her, adjusting his position, inserting his knee between her legs, pressing against the aching core of her as he unfastened his belt and unzipped his trousers.
Clemmie reached up and tugged them down his narrow hips, revealing his muscular thighs and the black boxer shorts he wore underneath.
He stood up and slid them all the way down; a moment later the boxers joined them and were kicked away too.
Clemmie’s awed gasp was both flattering and arousing, and it brought a fierce grin to his face as he pushed a bunch of cushions to the floor, to give him room to plant a hand on either side of her shoulders. Another cushion hit the floor, and the last one was about to receive the same treatment when he changed his mind and tucked it underneath her head.
As he lowered himself, their first skin-to-skin contact drew a low moan from her throat. He was like hot silk...and so hard.
He kissed her then, and she kissed him back, their kisses becoming a primal rhythm as his tongue plunged and retreated into the moist recesses of her mouth, exploring every crevice and secret corner. It became wild, teeth clashing, noses grazing, as she tangled her fingers in the dark silk of his hair and battled to increase the skin-to-skin contact as she arched her back under him.
‘I’m going to kiss every inch of you,’ he told her in a throaty whisper as he licked away the pool of salty moisture that had gathered in the hollow at the base of her throat.
She arched into the heat of him as he took one pouting nipple into his mouth, making her squirm and gasp beneath him. All the while his hands were moving over her body, touching, stroking, massaging in a restless exploration.
His gaze was searing as he watched her. She was trembling with the ache of a desire that was overwhelming. Her hands slid over his shoulders, loving the damp silk texture of his golden skin and the hardness of sinew and muscle, her fingers digging in when his exploration became more intimate.
She whispered his name over and over, panting as he parted her moist folds, his eyes never leaving her face for a moment. Rolling onto his side, he pulled her with him and, looping her leg over his hips, continued his exploration, sliding a finger into her as he led her hand to the silky iron hardness of his erection, murmuring words of encouragement as she tightened her fingers and cupped him.
‘You’re so tight...’
He groaned against her parted lips, pulled in a sharp breath as her fingers moved up and down his shaft. He was panting as hard as she was.
‘And you’re so...’
His nostrils flared. ‘It’ll be fine...don’t worry,’ he soothed. ‘It’ll be good. I promise.’
When he lowered her onto her back and moved himself over her, she grabbed his shoulders and pushed herself against his strategically placed knee to ease the ache between her legs. It didn’t ease.
‘I can’t!’ she cried in frustration as the sensations continued to drive her wild.
‘You can. We’re doing this together. Relax... I am very good at this.’
‘You’re so arrogant,’ she said, biting his lip a little too hard.
He bared his teeth in a provocative smile, running his tongue over the pinpricks of blood. ‘And don’t you love that about me?’
‘Yes!’ she groaned out. She loved everything about him.
‘Your voice is so sexy it hurts,’ he crooned huskily. ‘Now, wrap your legs around me.’
She did, her fingers tightening on his shoulders as she felt the imprint of his erection first against her lower belly and then, as he kissed her, lower still.
The external friction was exquisite and frustrating in equal measure.
‘God, you are good at this.’
‘Just relax,’ he breathed, fighting the overwhelming urge to thrust into her. ‘Let me do this...stay with me...’
She tensed a little as she felt his first intrusion, but quickly relaxed, sinking into herself as he entered her slowly. She took a little more of him with each thrust, until he slid a hand under her bottom and lifted her hips to take him fully.
She had never imagined anything could feel this way. She had never imagined the sheer, intense excitement of him inside her, the pleasure building and building, the sensation growing more intense until suddenly she wasn’t staying with him. She felt as if she was losing herself. And then, just when she could not bear it, she was whole again, and the dam inside her broke, releasing wave after wave of toe-tingling pleasure.
She was conscious at some level of a feral groan as he sank heavy and hot against her...
Joaquin looked at her, marvelling at how anyone who looked so fragile could be so fierce and so strong. He waited for the post-coital sense of dissatisfaction to hit him. It didn’t. And as he looked at her lovely flushed face he was conscious of a surge of possessiveness he’d never experienced before. But then he had never slept with a virgin before...
He rolled onto his side and pulled her across him until her head lay on his chest.
They lay there, the sweat on their skin cooling. And lying there naked, with the most beautiful man on earth, Clemmie thought she’d feel self-conscious—but she didn’t. She just felt a glow and a sense of rightness .
‘We don’t want to fall asleep here,’ said Joaquin.
‘It sounds like a good plan to me.’
He laughed as she attempted to burrow into him. ‘I think we should make it to the bed this time.’
Her head lifted. ‘This time?’
‘This time. Next time we’ll play it by ear.’
Laughing at her expression, he thought he couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed in bed with a woman, or even smiled. It had all become a purely mechanical exercise, he realised.
He slid out from under her and stood there holding out his hand. She took it, marvelling at his lack of self-consciousness.
‘I can walk, you know,’ she said without much enthusiasm. It was not an unpleasant sensation to be lifted into the arms of a naked sex god.
‘Humour me,’ he suggested as he strode off, Clemmie in his arms, through to the house, where the only sound was their combined heartbeats, the tick of a clock and the odd creaking floorboard.
Joaquin was just about to fall asleep when he heard a phone. He glanced at the time and grimaced. The sound of a soft grunt beside him came as a shock. He reached out and felt a warm, squirming body next to him, and he felt something that came close to sleepy contentment despite the screaming phone.
It took Clemmie a few seconds before she came fully awake too. With a gasp, she slid out from under his heavy arm and, rolling onto her side, reached for her phone.
He watched her dropping it. He lay back with a sigh. The view of her bottom, the dip of her narrow waist and the smooth elegant curve of her back was a good way to start the day—and it was day. The sun was filtering in through a gap in the heavy drapes, casting a pool of light close to her head, sparking fiery lights in her hair.
‘Let me.’
He pushed up against her back, leaning over her to grab the phone and hand it to her before settling back, his face pressed to her neck and his body pressed hard against hers.
He allowed his thoughts to drift with gloating approval over the night they had shared.
‘No, you didn’t wake me, Mum,’ Clemmie lied, glancing at the clock and repressing a guilty groan. ‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘More than fine...’ he whispered into her ear.
Then he dragged himself towards her, his body effectively pinning her legs down, and started kissing a wet, wandering path up her belly.
‘No...what? No, Mum, I’m fine. Totally recovered this morning.’
She met the wicked eyes that held hers. With a sigh, she swivelled her legs over the edge of the bed.
There was a hesitation, and then her mother asked, carefully casual, ‘Have you remembered anything?’
‘Yes, I have, Mum. Things are coming back to me now,’ she said, feeling wistful for her previous ignorance, when she hadn’t known what the painful memory she’d been protecting herself from was.
She had paid heavily for that temporary blissful ignorance.
The only surprise was that the illusion she had built up had lasted so long. All it had taken to smash it to a million pieces was seeing the ring that was intended for another on her own finger.
She loved Joaquin—not just as a friend but as a man.
‘Oh, darling, that is so marvellous. I can’t wait to tell Harry.’
‘Harry sounds like one of the good ones, Mum,’ she said, feeling ashamed that she’d half wanted her mum’s new love to be a loser, like his predecessors. She really hoped he wasn’t. The Leith women deserved to be happy in love!
‘Oh, he is, but—’
She listened, holding the phone so that Joaquin could hear as her mum explained that Harry, who had been due to arrive later that day, would now not be coming.
‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ Clemmie said, meaning it.
‘His mother is very elderly and quite frail. She’s had a fall and she’s in hospital awaiting surgery.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘He’s suggested I go there and keep him company, but I’ve explained that that’s out of the question.’
‘I don’t see why.’
‘Because... Well, you need me here, Clemmie. You are only just out of hospital.’
Clemmie frowned—she could tell from her voice that her mum was torn.
‘Good morning, Ruth... Yes, I am here,’ Joaquin said, smiling provocatively as he ignored Clemmie, who was miming a frantic zipping motion across her lips as she held out her hand for the phone.
He evaded her attempts to snatch it from him by levering himself lithely out of the bed. And Clemmie sat there simmering as she listened to the one-sided conversation and tried not to be distracted by his state of arousal.
She failed.
‘Yes, she is... I was listening in,’ he confided, before laughing—leaving Clemmie wondering what the hell that laugh was about. She dreaded to think as he went silent, clearly listening.
‘Oh, I agree,’ he said after a long pause. ‘Well, actually, Ruth, this could work out well. My mother has been in touch and she’s invited us to go to the castle for the annual family party. Everyone is anxious to meet Clemmie. Yes... Obviously we said we couldn’t, because Harry was coming, but now... Well, that’s sorted, then.’
He fielded Clemmie’s killer glare with an insouciant shrug.
‘I can promise you she will keep you up to date, and if there is any issue we will contact you. In the meantime, I will look after her for you. Here she is now.’
He handed the phone back to Clemmie who, aware that he wasn’t looking at her face, dragged the sheet up over her breasts.
The rest of the conversation was short, as calling Joaquin a liar was not really an option when her mum sounded so relieved at the new arrangement.
‘I told Ruth we’d pop down and see her after breakfast. When you’re dressed. Are you cross with me?’ he asked when Clemmie had hung up.
She sighed. ‘Well, I am grateful. Mum obviously wants to spend some time with her Harry.’
‘You’ve changed your tune. I thought you wanted Harry out of the picture.’
‘I never—I just want my mum to be happy...’
‘And you being away with me in Spain will achieve that?’
‘Not really in Spain, obviously. Once she’s gone the gatehouse will be empty.’
‘Have you really thought this through? What if someone sees the lights on and informs the police? Neighbourhood Watch will consider it their duty to keep an eye on the place.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
She knew she didn’t sound as confident as she had intended. Community spirit, of which there was a lot locally, did have its downsides.
‘We could simply go to Spain.’
‘Your mother hates me.’
‘I don’t think she particularly likes me either. Aria is not really the warm, maternal type. What are you looking at me like that for?’ he asked.
She shook her head, still picturing him as little boy with no one to hug him. These days he had plenty of hugs. A therapist might suggest that was why he seemed to be searching for love, but any therapist would ditch that theory after five seconds in Joaquin’s company and diagnose a man who didn’t believe in love. Let alone go out looking for it.
‘Hate is a strong word,’ he said now. ‘But, yes, she would loathe it if we arrived. And I cannot see that being a bad thing. It is time I drew a few lines in the sand,’ he said grimly.
‘I never realised what a vindictive person you are.’
‘That does put you in the minority.’
‘If we turned up, we would be shown the door quick-smart.’
‘No,’ he said calmly. ‘We wouldn’t.’
‘All right, I would be shown the door—you would be embraced as the prodigal son.’
‘It’s my door, Clemmie—did you not realise that?’
He felt a weird pang in his chest when he saw the confusion flashing in her eyes. She had always seen him in a way no one else did. But it was time that she saw him as he was if they were ever to have any sort of future.
He froze, his eyelashes flickering as he asked himself where that thought had come from?
Did he want a future in which Clemmie saw him as he actually was?
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘I mean that my grandfather left everything—the entire estate—to me when he died. I was twenty. Sure, Mum owns this place, but the rest of the property portfolio is mine. I was “the best of a bad lot”—and I am quoting. If anyone is going to be doing any throwing out it is me.’
‘You own the castillo ?’
Clemmie had seen photos, obviously, and the building was iconic. What it represented was outside her experience. The manor was big, but the place she’d seen photos of online and in magazines was on a different scale.
‘Why did I not know this?’
‘It must have slipped my mind to mention it. Or maybe we don’t share everything?’
‘I don’t have any secrets.’
‘You never revealed you wanted to kiss me!’
She lifted her chin. His taunt felt like a slap—a piece of deliberate cruelty. ‘Been there, done that, and burnt the tee shirt!’
‘Look, we both know that you’re not comfortable with lies—’
‘You make me sound like a freak! And that wasn’t a lie!’ she said, finding that she couldn’t not look at his mouth when she said that.
‘Freak? I wouldn’t go that far. But it does limit you in normal everyday life. You must realise that at some point your mum will see past your telling her I’m in Spain, Mum, having a great time and will come rushing back. However, if you are in Spain?’
‘You are not seriously suggesting...?’ She gave a disbelieving laugh.
He didn’t laugh back. He just shrugged. ‘Why not?’
‘Why not ?’
‘Think of it as a dirty weekend, if that helps.’
‘It doesn’t. You just want to use me to get back at your mother.’
‘I am happy for you to use me back—especially if you are sitting naked in my bed. And you can’t tell me you wouldn’t enjoy a little payback for what she said about your mum.’
‘I suppose...’
‘That’s settled, then.’
‘What time did you say to Mum we’d drop in?’
‘I left that open, so there’s no rush,’ he said, catching hold of the sheet she was still holding and dragging it down to reveal her unfettered breasts before leaping into the bed.
‘Do you mind? It’s cold!’
‘I’ll soon warm you up,’ he promised, lifting the sheet in a billowing tent above his head and letting it settle over them as he slid down beside her.