Did she let go then? Did she come to her senses? Did she even know this wasn’t six years ago? Not this hot, greedy, sexually hungry woman who pushed his jacket from his shoulders with impatient fingers and sent it dropping to the floor with her own clothes.
Her hair came next, pins flying as he loosened that glorious mass of twisting ebony and let it tumble over his fingers. She was working free the buttons on his waistcoat when he lifted her up again. She wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, took his bottom lip between her teeth and bit.
It hurt. She had meant it to. When he winced out a curse she did it again. When he attempted to pull his head back she imprisoned it in her hands, then she was the one to instigate the next mouth and tongue-devouring kiss.
She was wild for him. He loved it. Exhilaration ran through him as he made the move to the bedroom by pure instinct. She clung. He pulsed. She moved against him. His hands gripped her bottom and she felt like satin, warm, too slender, too delicate to be real. He dropped her on the bed, then came down with her, the heat of need pounding through his body and scoring streaks across his hard taut cheeks.
His mouth ached, his jaw, his warring tongue. He broke the kiss to look down at her and watched as she gasped and panted for air.
‘Are you staying or going?’ he demanded in a voice as cold as an English winter. The stark contrast between his physical self and his mental self was so acute that she stared at him for a full ten seconds before reality finally sank in.
‘You want your pound of flesh!’
‘I want more than that,’ he responded. ‘I want your thankless little soul gift-wrapped and handed to me with a rock-solid guarantee that this time it belongs to me!’
Cristina looked into the hard, cold, face of this man she loved so much and had hurt so much, and wished there was a tiny molecule of hope for them.
But there wasn’t. ‘You will come to regret it,’ she told him honestly.
‘Are you staying?’
‘You will learn to hate me all over again.’
‘You are not here because I adore you, querida. You are here because I still want you.’
It should hurt to hear him say that, but it didn’t. How could it hurt when she did not deserve more than he was offering?
‘In your bed?’ She demanded confirmation.
‘Yes.’
‘As your obedient little sex slave?’
His green eyes began to gleam. ‘Most certainly that.’
A strange smile touched the corners of her hot pulsing mouth. ‘Gift-wrapped?’
‘Sim.’ He swapped languages so there could be no mistaking the answer.
‘You can have me like that without marrying me.’
‘I had you like that once before. Didn’t like it. So the marriage thing stays. It comes with the package.’
As the baby did? She wanted to weep all over him—but she didn’t.
‘The gift-wrapping?’ she asked.
‘The rock-solid guarantee of a marriage certificate—written in blood if need be. I will not compromise,’ he warned huskily.
Take it or leave it. Take this man when you know that you should not. Take everything he wants to dish out to you in the name of revenge when you know you will end up having to walk away.
Again.
Eventually.
‘So, are you staying?’
She made no answer, her beautiful eyes so painfully, hauntingly bleak that something too close to fear grabbed at the muscles in Anton’s chest. He did not want to be hooked by her again. He wanted Cristina firmly hooked by him.
‘Answer or leave,’ he ground out roughly.
She looped an arm around his neck and drew his mouth back down to hers.
Was it an answer?
He was going to take it as one. Choice was something ripped away from him the moment her tongue made a sliding caress over the top of his. She lifted a long silken leg to loop it around his hips in one of her old, uninhibitedly sensuous and possessive moves, and on a surrendering growl he let himself fall prey to the whole wild experience that was Cristina Marques, the enemy of his once bitten ten times shy heart.
Mouths open, hot and fused. Her fingers back at his waistcoat. She all but ripped it from his body, setting the tight satin muscles in his shoulders rippling as she tugged it down his arms. His tie came next—an impatient yank at the slender knot and silver silk slithered apart—and she was already opening the buttons on his shirt. Eager, needy, her fingers made familiar contact with the whorls of dark hair covering his thundering breastplate, curling, then scoring into his flesh to make him shudder with pleasure as he brought his own impatient fingers to the hem of the cotton T-shirt she wore.
They had to break the kiss so he could strip the T-shirt over her head. Separation brought with it a moment of sanity as he felt the thinness of the fabric. Well washed and well-worn, he saw, and made a mental note to buy her a new wardrobe as he tossed the scrap of cotton aside.
Then he saw them. Proud, unfettered, full and firm. Two golden globes tipped by long dark nipples standing up in bold and brazen demand. On a growl he pounced, sending her slender spine arching on a high-pitched quivering cry as he took possession in an open-mouthed, wet-tongued, hungry claim.
His shirt hung open. Her fingers crawled all over hard muscle and taut male flesh. When he sucked, she writhed beneath him, and he ground out a soft curse as electric sensation shot to his thighs. As if she knew, she located the fastener for his trousers and began an urgent attempt to strip him of those.
It was no use. He was forced to help because there was no way she was going to succeed while he still wore his socks and shoes. Sitting up with a growl of impatience, he reached down to remove the obstructing articles while her hands slid beneath his shirt and began a sensual exploration of his satin-smooth back.
His shoes hit the floor, followed by his socks, then he stood up to remove the trousers. She watched him, her eyes like burning rubies, coveting each new piece of hard male flesh he revealed.
No other woman had ever looked at him the way Cristina looked at him.
‘Greedy,’ he muttered as she reached out to touch him, brushing feather light worshipping fingers along his full length. He throbbed and swelled and hardened so fast it was almost an agony. He had to fight with uncoordinated fingers to release cufflinks so he could remove his shirt.
Stripped naked he was beautiful. ‘Bonito,’ Cristina murmured.
Still beautiful…always beautiful. Her Luis, she thought helplessly as she drifted her eyes over his tall dark stance, with its arrogant masculine pride in his own prowess.