CHAPTER THREE
LUIS was not so afflicted. He shut the door and shot home the bolt she had stupidly forgotten when she’d come in here. Then he turned, leant his wide shoulders back against the door, pushed long-fingered hands into the pockets of his well-cut trousers, fixed his steady gaze on her agonised face and simply waited for her to make the next move.
Dressed in a dark lounge suit and white shirt he looked big and hard and absolutely in control. The room was too small, too brightly lit, and he was too close for comfort, the electric charge vibrating from every pore of him so violently sexual it grabbed her attention and refused to let go.
Mouth running dry, she took in every hard, honed inch of him like someone seeing the chance of life restoring water after a six year drought. Nothing about him had changed—nothing. His hair was still short black and silky, his skin still golden and smooth. Eyes the colour of a sensual green ocean glowed at her from between half lowered eyelashes, and the unsmiling shape of his mouth did nothing to spoil the passionate promise it made.
‘When you fled in here like a frightened rabbit I knew you would forget to lock the door, because you always did forget to lock doors, so I thought—why not join her and relive some of the good old times?’ he drawled.
Her insides quivering madly, Cristina lurched unsteadily to her feet, fingers searching for and clutching tensely at the sink behind her for support. ‘W-what do you want?’ she demanded shakily. 37
‘Now, there’s a good question.’ The twist of his mouth was dryly sardonic as he sent his mocking gaze around the room. ‘We could fill the room with hot steam, if you like, strip off our clothes and get down to some really physical reacquainting?’ he suggested. ‘I can see by the way you look at me that you’re up for it, querida, and I’m certainly up for it. So what the hell?’ He gave a shrug of his wide shoulders. ‘We could do it against the bath, in the bath, in the shower, or right where you were sitting just now. Or you could coax me down flat on the cold marble floor like an offering and crawl all over me. You used to like crawling all over me, Cristina, do you remember? You used to love to make me beg, then laugh in my face as you took me inside you. Got you, Luis, you used to purr in that greedily possessive, husky, triumphant voice of yours. Mine, you used to say.’
‘Shut up!’ she gasped out shrilly. ‘How dare you speak to me like this? Get out of here, Luis—get out!’
He did the opposite, pushing those muscled shoulders away from the door and striding forward so purposefully that Cristina found herself pressing back hard against the sink. It was like being trapped in a cage with a lean, dark green-eyed predator. She had never felt so afraid.
‘No,’ she breathed as a set of long fingers closed over a bare shoulder.
The other set lifted to curl around her nape. As she arched her back in an effort to put space between them he stepped in close. The solid bar of his hips made contact with her stomach. She quivered. He smiled—then stopped smiling. His eyes glittered, his lips parted, then he tugged her head forward and captured her mouth.
The predator—the predator—the hungry predator. She was devoured without mercy, lips prised apart and her mouth invaded by the kind of kiss that locked every muscle tight with shock. Her mouth filled with the taste of him, sensitive tissue untouched for too long pulsing with pleasure and crying out for more. He explored her teeth, the excruciatingly sensitive roof of her mouth, her fiercely retracted tongue.
Long fingers stroked across the satin skin of her shoulder, then slid to her back, to begin a slow gliding down the length of her spine. She was quivering all over by the time he heaved her tight up against him. The heady scent of him, the sensual knowledge of his touch, the unholy eroticism of his kiss wiped away six years without having to try hard, and as her arms lifted up and around his neck she marked her surrender to him with a pained little moan.
After that they were kissing like sex-starved wild things, hotly, deeply. It was mad. Moving against each other, heaving and panting, gripping and clawing—or she was. Anything—anything—to keep this from stopping. The heels of her shoes were screeching against marble, her fingers clutching at his silk dark head. Her skirt had rucked up round her hips, aided by the seeking slide of his hand, and he was touching with the intimate familiarity of a passionate lover—her thighs, the tight curve of her bottom—pressing her legs that bit wider to accept the taut, probing thrust of his manhood, straining against the zip of his trousers, while she tasted him, clung to him, moved and invited him.
It was desire gone rocketing out of control. She was hot, yet shivering, appalled with herself, yet desperate for more.
‘Now?’ he posed softly. ‘You want it right here and now, viuva de Ordoniz?’
The widow Ordoniz. It was an icy douche that brought her gasping back down to earth.
Opening her eyes, she found he was standing there studying her through eyes that were cynical and cold. Oh, he was aroused. She could feel the power and strength of that arousal pushing against her. But the man himself was in complete control.
Unlike her.
His hand still claimed the heated dampness of her arousal. Shame had her push it away, only to release a revealing shudder at its removal. He found it so easy to let go and take a step back that she wanted to die where she stood.
‘Who do you think you are to treat me this way?’ she choked out, desperately tugging at the hem of her dress.
‘The bit of rough you are clearly still partial to,’ he answered, watching her go pale as his cutting reference hit home. Then he turned away. ‘Now, pull yourself together.’ It was hard and cold. ‘We need to talk and we don’t have much time.’
He glanced at his watch as he said that, not a crease on him, not a hair out of place. While she was a sizzling, quivering wreck he was a man so completely contained that tears of self-disgust stung at the backs of her eyes.
‘We have nothing to talk about.’ She just wanted him to get out of here.
‘Oh, we do,’ he turned to insist. ‘You are in deep trouble, Cristina, not least because I am back in town. But we will deal with that some other time. I have a proposition to put to you.’
‘I want nothing to do with you.’
‘But you will by the end of this evening,’ he assured her with cool confidence. ‘And stop looking at me as if I’m some kind of snake because you find that you’re still hot for me. It’s in your favour that you do feel like that, or I would be leaving you to the hungry wolves out there.’