CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHT
Diaz’s bedroom was breathtaking . As with the rest of the villa, the walls were painted brilliant white, the marble flooring a softer white with subtle blues and terracotta threading in natural random patterns throughout. The main colour came from the dusky blue drapes of the ceiling-high double aspect windows and long velvet sofa and ottoman of the same hue, but it was the enormous bed and its cream and gold-threaded bedspread that was the real focal point, and Rose’s belly quivered just to look at it.
There was something inherently sensual in the simplicity of this breathtaking room, a femininity, too, that she hadn’t expected from a man as soaked in testosterone as Diaz. Nowhere near as feminine as the guest room she’d been using but a dreamy blend of masculine and feminine combining to create a room both sexes could come together and find either pleasure or sanctuary…
Pressing tight to her stomach in a futile effort to contain the butterflies loose in it, she was relieved to escape into the privacy of her own bathroom.
It, too, was divine, a gorgeous feminine blend of traditional Spanish tiling and ultra-modern luxury combining to create a sanctuary as complete as Diaz’s bedroom. She gazed at the sunken bath, unable to nullify the image of sharing it with him, and of them…
Closing her eyes, she inhaled large gulps of air and reached for the hair clip she used when she didn’t want to get her hair wet when showering. It had been placed on the left-hand side of the sink unit with her hairbrush. Taking a closer look around, she saw her toiletries had all been placed in exactly the right positions for their purposes, her shampoo, conditioner and shower gel lined up on the long ledge running alongside the waterfall shower. Everything placed as if they’d always been there. As if they belonged.
Shaking the strange thought off, she stripped her clothes, pinned her hair and stepped under the shower, blocking the memories of the last time she’d showered before bed from surfacing.
But she couldn’t block herself from the painful acceptance of why she was showering now.
She was cleaning herself for him. She was soaping flesh abuzz with an anticipation that burned strong enough to melt bone.
She couldn’t pretend to herself that she was going along with this solely for the sake of her daughters. She was going along with it for her own sake too. Because she couldn’t not.
Any attempt to resist would end in failure. Diaz only had to touch her for her skin to melt.
Her body had bound itself to him when she was seventeen and it had belonged to him ever since.
Somehow, though, she had to find a way through this night…the whole summer…possibly her whole life…without giving him everything again. Without losing the whole of herself to him. A way to give him everything and take everything while keeping the most essential part of herself safe.
Teeth and hair brushed, face moisturised, she looked at her fevered reflection. The pretty cream negligee she’d selected was virtually transparent, her dusky pink nipples a shimmer of colour through it. She shivered to know that soon, very soon, he would be stripping it from her, and soon, very soon, he would be taking those nipples into his mouth…
She swayed as a tight, heavy sensation formed in her breasts, and unthinkingly cupped one, imagining it was his hand holding it. The flush of colour on her cheeks deepened.
An impulse that came from nowhere had her tugging the negligee off, and she stepped out of it and stepped to the door before she could change her mind.
It was only her heart she needed to shield from him.
He was already in bed. His hair had that freshly washed and towel-dried messiness she’d seen so many times over the years, his jaw that freshly shaved smoothness she’d seen all those times too…but never in a bedroom. Never when he was propped against a headboard, sheets draped to his waist, the soft lighting creating shadows over the beautifully honed torso with its perfect smattering of fine dark hair. Never when he was clearly naked.
There was a stillness about him, the illusion of flesh wrapped in marble. The only sign of life was in his eyes. Even with the distance between them she could feel the heat contained in them, as if he’d stretched an invisible arm and stroked the flesh above her pounding heart.
The heavy tingles in her pubis thickened. Deepened. All the tentacles spreading from it thickened and deepened too.
The sheets on her side of the bed had already been turned over so she could slip in beside him unhindered.
Unhindered by anything except her own fear.
She must, must, must keep a lock on her emotions, she dimly beseeched herself.
Almost sick with longing, she unrooted her feet from the cool flooring and walked towards him.
The statue on the bed made no movement but the heat of his stare burned through to her core.
She slipped between the silk sheets with closed lungs and faced him.
Eyes locked.
The unbreathable air of the silence engulfing them was so highly charged it threatened to choke her.
The strong throat moved and then the statue came to life as if in slow motion, a hand reaching through the charged atoms enveloping them to spear through her hair.
Slowly, slowly, he trailed fingers down her neck and onto her shoulder, sending shivers of delight fizzing through her entire being, and she moaned softly when those same fingers skimmed at the same unhurried pace over her unbearably heavy breasts.
Consumed with the need to touch him as he was touching her, Rose pressed a shaking palm to the base of his throat, saw the pulse flare in his pupils and felt the subtle shudder of reaction. With the same rigidly contained pace his fingers were caressing her, she tiptoed her fingers up his smooth neck to scrape through hair that was the only softness to be found on the whole of his beautiful body.
Unable to tear her stare from his face, she drank in every last detail with an openness she had only permitted herself that one night.
Diaz was beautiful. The entirety of him. As masculinely beautiful as it was possible to be.
His breaths heavy, the stare locked on hers molten, the sensuous mouth that had been her gateway to heaven inched forwards. Lips buzzing with the same franticness as the beats of her heart, Rose closed her eyes.
The brush of his lips against hers sent a shock of electricity through her…and an equal bolt of terror, strong enough to make her turn her face so their cheeks came together instead of their mouths.
This was how she must protect herself, she realised dimly over the pounding in her head and heart.
She’d lost control, heart, body and soul to Diaz before. Her body was beyond her control but her heart and soul needed her to do everything possible to protect them from the fresh agony only he was capable of inflicting on her, and of everything she’d spent so long trying to forget, his kisses had haunted her the most. The tenderness and passion contained in them had opened the gateway to her heart when all along they’d been speaking his lies the loudest.
There was a long moment of stillness before he moved his head back and locked his searching gaze to hers, an infinitesimal hold but one that stretched to the moon until she placed a finger to the lips she ached to kiss and gave a small shake of her head.
Another infinitesimal stretch of silence and then his eyes pulsed and his nostrils flared in silent acceptance of her wordless condition…followed by another pulse, a resolve that brought the statue fully to life.
In one fluid movement he’d wrapped an arm around her waist and laid her down as if she weighed nothing, pinning her beneath him with a barely restrained force that knocked the little air she had from her lungs.
She stared up at the taut face hovering over her, gazed into the hooded green eyes blazing with a sensuality she felt all the way to her bones, and pleaded with herself to hold on.
‘You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for his,’ he whispered gutturally. And then he bowed his head to her neck.
The ravaging of her delicate skin sent a shock of sensation rippling right down to her toes. Lips and tongue devouring her neck and shoulders as if they were laced with edible sweetness, he slid a hand down her side and between her legs, skimming the heat of her desire with a stifled groan before scraping the tips of his fingers up and over her belly and ribs to cup a breast, and when he rubbed his thumb over a taut peak, she cried out at the pleasure, crying louder when his hungry mouth closed over it.
Greedily, he sucked first one breast then the other, tongue encircling, teeth grazing, tantalising the oh-so-sensitive flesh until the pleasure became so acute it became a form of pain and she was cradling his head and writhing beneath him, moaning helplessly, her moans becoming cries of protest when he abandoned this sensory assault.
But there was no abandonment. Not an inch of her enflamed flesh went untouched. He kissed and stroked every inch of skin, sought every hollow, explored every hidden part before lifting her thighs to kiss her most intimate, feminine part, stroking her inside and out with his tongue and fingers until all sense was abandoned and she was nothing but a coiled flame of hot, sticky need desperate for release.
She’d forgotten, she thought, in the deepest recess of what remained of her consciousness. Forgotten…deliberately…just how painfully, gloriously intense the pleasure had been.
Cruelly, as if sensing she was on the brink, he shifted his attentions away from where the flame burned brightest. Fingers biting into her skin, he caressed his way back up her body, taking a breast almost whole into his mouth with a barely controlled savageness that made her want to weep at the darts of painful pleasure it induced.
Clasping his skull, she scraped her fingers through his hair, and when he brought his face back to hers and his demanding arousal pressed urgently into the top of her thigh, she was a breath away from fusing her lips to his.
It took all her strength to turn and deny herself this, her desperation for his possession of her mouth as acute as her need for his full possession of her. Swallowing hard, she lifted her head and pressed her cheek to his, nuzzling into him, soaking in the musky scent of his skin, fingers dragging over the plane of his chest and abdomen to take hold of him.
He mumbled something unintelligible as she moved her hand up and down the hard velvet length, his groans of pleasure feeding her arousal until the pain became unbearable. Raising her thighs to encircle his hips, she guided him to the place they both desperately needed him to be.
In the beat of a heart, he’d filled her with such completeness it shocked the breath from her lungs.
There was a long moment of stillness before he lifted his head to gaze into her eyes, and suddenly she could see it, all the passion and emotions that had been there their one other night together.
Just as suddenly, fear she could barely comprehend gripped her heart, and she pressed her mouth into his neck and closed her eyes, tightening her hold around him as she blocked out everything but the incredible feelings that had taken possession of her, and encouraged him with her body to make love to her.
He withdrew slowly then drove back fully, again and again, over and over. Slow, driven thrusts that she fell into and savoured, the powerfully heady sensations washing away all her fears.
This was what she’d craved. What she needed.
Diaz inside her. A part of her.
Slowly but surely, the tempo increased and her craving grew with it. Rose followed her body’s demands slavishly, holding him tightly and wrapping her legs around his waist, inviting his ever deeper penetration until a groan came from his throat and he lost control, thrusting into her without restraint, driving a rhythm that swept her away on a relentless tide of bliss that had her giving as much as she was taking, aware of nothing but the assent to rapture building with each hard, demanding stroke until she tipped over the edge and shattered into a thousand pieces.
As she clung to his sweat-licked body, clung to the convulsions of ecstasy, he drove into her one final, drawn out time with an agonised cry of her name.
* * *
The descent back to earth took so long Rose had the time to wish to never land back there. To just stay like this, with delicious thrills racing through her veins and the delicious weight of Diaz on top of her, his ragged breath hot against her skin and their hearts beating in perfect heavy unison.
Don’t think like that , the voice of sanity urged. Never think like that.
It didn’t matter what the voice of sanity said though. When Diaz went to move his weight off her, her primal reaction was to clamp her limbs around him to keep him exactly where he was.
He gave a hoarse laugh and kissed her shoulder. ‘I’m going to squash you if I don’t move,’ he said, easily escaping her hold and rolling off onto his side of the bed. When he hooked an arm around her to pull her close to him, her limbs and brain were still too liquid to resist.
For a stretch of time that seemed to pass without beginning or end, she lay replete, tucked in the safety of Diaz’s arms, breathing in the scent of his skin and luxuriating in the feel of his chest against her cheek and the slow strokes of his hand through her hair.
She sighed sleepily when he traced a finger over her cheekbone before shifting his body so they were face to face, still holding each other.
Trailing her fingers over his back, she marvelled at the smoothness and strength, and the way the muscles bunched and flexed at her touch, marvelled that the sensations she experienced at his touch were shared so perfectly and completely.
He pressed the tip of his nose to hers and huskily asked, ‘Am I allowed to kiss you now?’
All the happy, relaxed sensations and thoughts that had filled her disintegrated, and memories of their last post-coital conversation replayed itself with its unerring ability to slice her heart open into a fresh wound.
Stomach churning with fear at how easily she’d slipped into contentment with him, she said as evenly as she could manage, ‘What makes you think that?’
The hand gently kneading her lower back stilled. The eyes that had been gazing at her with a sex-satisfied gleam dimmed like a light being switched off.
Disentangling herself from his hold, she sat up and tugged at the sheets to cover herself with shaking hands.
‘Rose…’
‘What?’ Mustering all her strength and channelling all the pain the fresh wound had given her, she met his stare. ‘Did you think that one bout of great sex would suddenly make me decide that everything’s all hunky-dory?’
Incredulity flashed in his stare. ‘That meant more than sex.’
Her heart thumping, she eyeballed him. ‘Did it, really?’
His lips tightened.
‘Don’t bother answering,’ she said before he could speak, tearing her stare away. ‘I’m not in the mood for a dose of déjà vu.’
He took a long breath and kneaded his temples. When he spoke, it was with patience underlaid with an edge. ‘Rose, I know I…’
‘Don’t bother,’ she interrupted again. ‘I don’t want to hear it. You got your way—I’m in your bed like a good little wife. I was even a willing partner in sex with you, and I’ll happily be a willing partner again because it really was wonderful—congratulations, you’re a great lover—but you don’t get to bully and blackmail your way into taking all of me. Not after what you did.’
Charged silence surrounded them; a different charge to the one that had been holding them in its spell.
This charge tasted of poison.
The charge broke when Diaz swung himself off the bed and strode across the bedroom floor, disappearing into the dressing room.
Her heart now in her throat, Rose puffed out a short breath of stale air and blinked vigorously to clear the tears prickling her eyes, guilt already stabbing at her for her outburst.
She’d deliberately provoked him but she’d had no choice. The fear had been too great.
She needed to protect herself. When it came to Diaz she was more vulnerable than she could ever let him know, and she couldn’t let herself forget that he had essentially blackmailed her into staying here with him…
But he’d given her the girls’ passports, she reminded herself wretchedly. He’d stuck to his word in that respect. If there was blackmail, she’d gone along with it. She’d agreed to try. Whether he’d have let her go home with the girls if she’d said no was an unanswerable question because she’d said yes.
Blackmail aside, it didn’t change anything else.
That didn’t stop her heart lurching when Diaz reappeared wearing a pair of undone jeans and holding a black T-shirt.
His eyes met hers across the divide. There was nothing knowing or sensual in the glitter firing from them. For the first time in so very long she saw his mouth twist in loathing. ‘I’m going out. Don’t wait up for me—I would hate for you to think it necessary to add sleep deprivation to my list of crimes against you.’
She watched him tread to the door, trying her hardest to keep her composure.
She’d known it was only a matter of time before Diaz’s true feelings for her resurfaced but there was no satisfaction in proving herself right. Only wretchedness…and a flare of anger that burst out when he turned the door handle.
‘Are you really going to run away and leave me alone in a bed again ?’
* * *
Rose’s furiously delivered words sliced through Diaz like barbs.
The pulse in his jaw throbbing, he turned slowly, breathing heavily to smother the turgid emotions boiling like a cauldron in his guts. ‘You push me away and accuse me of blackmail and bullying, and expect me to stay ?’
At her tight-lipped response, he dragged his fingers through the hair her own delicate fingers had threaded through only minutes ago.
‘I accept that I blackmailed you into staying here for the summer, but only because I know how impulsive and stubborn you can be,’ he said tersely into the silence. ‘Without that threat, you would never have given me a fair hearing, but I never bullied you into agreement. You agreed to try and make our marriage work.’
‘I am trying,’ she burst out. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘You are here in body but not in spirit. Not when you hold yourself back and then push me away at the first opportunity.’
‘What do you expect ?’ she cried. ‘I gave you everything before and look where it got me. Can you really blame me for wanting to keep something back now?’
Her heart bumping painfully, Rose closed her still-stinging eyes and willed herself not to cry.
The silence that enveloped them, so complete she could have heard a feather falling, was finally broken by a deep sigh.
Footsteps neared. The bed moved as he sat beside her.
Quietly, he said, ‘Of all my regrets, how I left you that morning is my greatest.’
Taking a tremulous breath, she met his stare.
The frustrated anger had vanished. ‘I know building a sustainable relationship between us is going to take time but it will never work if you hold yourself back.’
‘But I need time, Diaz,’ she whispered. ‘We both knew we wouldn’t find harmony overnight. You can’t expect me to just forget everything that’s happened between us or stop being on my guard for the next time you turn against me.’
‘That will never happen.’
‘It just did. You promised not to push me.’ She sniffed back a threatening tear and clutched at the sheet. ‘I know I overreacted. You’re not a bully and I never should have said that, and for that I’m sorry.’ She raised her shoulders helplessly. ‘It’s just that everything’s all so overwhelming. The past still feels so present…’ She shook her head, frightened to finish, frightened he would see just how deeply she still felt the wounds of the past.
A large hand palmed her cheek. ‘I overreacted too, mi corazón , and for that I too apologise. I did promise not to push you. I know I need to be patient.’ He gave a low, rueful chuckle. ‘This might come as a surprise but I sometimes struggle to find patience.’
A floating atom of amusement danced into her veins and she covered the hand on her cheek without thinking. ‘I might have got that impression on occasion.’
The atmosphere between them lightened perceptibly.
With a loosening of his shoulders, Diaz turned his hand to thread his fingers through hers, and pulled it down to rest against his chest.
Gazing into the blue eyes no longer threatening him with fire and brimstone, he took a long breath before admitting, ‘I think it is possible I sometimes struggle to deal with rejection too.’
There was a flare of compassion he didn’t deserve.
‘Anyone with your parents could be forgiven for that,’ she said with a softness he also didn’t deserve.
Somehow surprised and yet not surprised that she’d associated rejection with his parents, he tightened his hold on her hand.
It shouldn’t be possible that such a small gesture as the taking of a hand could lift a weight off a heart or possible that, after all the years of bad feeling between them, they should know and understand each other better than anyone else ever could.
He’d behaved like a spoilt, entitled ass, he realised heavily. He’d known it would take time to break Rose’s barriers down, but in his arrogance he’d compressed the definition of time into nothing. At the first hurdle, he’d assumed the worst, just as he always had with her.
‘Did I tell you they’re now coming next weekend?’ he told her.
‘Not this weekend?’
‘They had a better offer.’
Another flare of undeserved compassion. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I. I try to accept them as they are, as my grandmother always told me I should, but they are such selfish bastards and I don’t understand how they can be that way.’
‘At least they want to see the girls,’ she said with a light shrug. ‘My father will never meet them.’
‘He’s said that?’
‘He doesn’t need to. Neither of us have suggested it and we never will. We’re strangers to each other. When Mum was alive she’d make me video call him every two weeks but since she died we don’t even video call twice a year.’
He knew this. Of course he did. And yet he’d never really thought about it before or considered what it must have been like for Rose to have been so comprehensively rejected by her father. At least Diaz had never doubted that his parents loved him in their own selfish way.
The clasp of her fingers tightened. Her voice dropped even lower whilst growing in fierceness. ‘He’s the reason why I will never stop you having a relationship with our daughters. Whatever happens between you and me, Diaz, I don’t want them growing up without a father. They need you, and the reason you will never understand your parents’ selfishness is because you don’t have that gene in you—you proved it a hundred times over with your sister and grandmother, and you’ve proved it a hundred times over with the girls. You put their needs first and you always will.’
Moved beyond belief at this assessment from the woman who not even an hour ago had accused him of bullying and blackmail, it was a long time before Diaz felt capable of clearing his throat to speak. ‘And what about you, mi corazón ? Do you think there will ever come a day when you need me too?’
Her fingers tensed in his before she slowly pulled them away. Instead of pulling away altogether as he braced himself for, she shuffled closer to put her head on his chest and wrap her arms around him.
‘I don’t know,’ she said starkly. ‘There are times when…’
Her voice caught.
He pressed his mouth into the top of her head and held her close. ‘When what?’
She shook her head. ‘I won’t make any promises other than to try. Just… Just try to be patient with me in return.’