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Richard’s incredulity surpassed his. “You’re serious?”
“I am. I...”
His thoughts stalled. She’d started walking into the ballroom, but her uncertain steps, her darting eyes and the way she fiddled with the long chain of her purse revealed her discomfort. Everything about her unconscious grace and reluctant demeanor made something rev behind his sternum. It intensified with her every step until he had to rub the heel of his hand against it.
“How could this be real?”
“It isn’t.”
Richard’s response startled him. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud. “How can you say that?”
“I can because she’s just another pretty blonde.”
He looked at his friend as if he’d grown a third eye. “She’s not blonde. Are you even talking about the same woman?”
Richard seemed about to argue, then changed his mind. “Whatever. Just go initiate your incursion.”
“It won’t be an incursion. I will approach her with utmost finesse.”
Richard frowned. “I’m talking about Ferreira.”
“Forget Ferreira. I’ll...”
Rafael stopped as he realized something. He couldn’t approach her. He’d been scrupulous about keeping any photos of himself out of the media. But if anyone knew what he looked like, they were down there at the ball. He didn’t want to risk anyone recognizing him, not now that he’d decided against making an appearance. This evening had suddenly become all about establishing contact with this magical being.
He turned to Richard. “Cobra, bring her to me.”
His former handler blinked. “What’s wrong with you, Numbers? You’ve never reacted to a woman like this before.”
“She’s not just ‘a woman.’”
Richard snorted. “Oh, yes, that’s right. She just slithered out of a fairy tale.”
Rafael gritted his teeth, impatience shooting through him. “Just go down and get her up here.”
“You want me—the man famed for putting people at such ease—to approach a woman I don’t know and command her to come with me...to meet another man she doesn’t know? A man who currently looks deranged? You expect this fairy being to be a total moron, too?”
Richard’s derision tripped some still functioning logic circuits. That scenario did seem implausible.
But he had to get that woman alone.
Suddenly, another idea came to him. “I’ll go down with you and stand outside the ballroom. You just get her to me. I’ll take it from there.”
“I’m your protector, not your pimp, Numbers.”
“Oh, shut up. And move it.”
With one last glance as if to a madman, Richard turned and headed downstairs. Rafael dogged his steps, scenarios crowding in his overheated imagination.
What if this excitement fizzled out once he saw her up close? Worse, what if it didn’t...but she didn’t reciprocate it? Or what if she was interested, but like all other women, her attraction was based purely on his looks, wealth and power? Worst of all, what if she was already taken?
No. This last possibility he categorically rejected.
She wasn’t taken. He just knew it.
At the edge of the ballroom, Richard looked back as if hoping he’d come to his senses. Rafael only shoved him forward.
Grunting a curse, Richard walked away, cutting through the crowd. At six foot six, he towered a head above everyone, making it easy for Rafael to monitor his progress.
Then he saw her. Pressing to the periphery, as if taking refuge from the crowd, wishing she were anywhere but there.
Everything inside him tightened, anticipating the moment Richard pointed her in his direction. Or something. He had no idea what his friend would do or say to get her to cross the ballroom to meet him.
Richard was feet away from her when she suddenly turned her elegant head. And looked straight into his eyes.
A bolt hit him through the heart. A growl escaped his lips as the current forked within him. Then again as her eyes widened and her tense features went slack.
He wasn’t imagining this. She’d felt his focus, and it had made her home in on him, even across the distance and with him in shadows. He’d had the same effect on her.
And without volition, holding her mesmerized gaze, he raised his hand and...beckoned.
Her stare faltered, her throat worked. Peach stained her chiseled cheekbones and her gaze darted around, as if unable to believe she was his target.
Look back. Look back at me.
As if against her will, her eyes dragged back to his.
Satisfaction surged through him. She’d felt his need and had been unable to resist it. Testing his theory, he beckoned again, taking a step backward deeper into the shadows.
She stepped forward, looking surprised, as if she hadn’t intended to move. He took another step back. She once again moved in his direction, the confusion on her exquisite face deepening. This live wire of attraction that had sprung to life between them was reeling her in to him. He hadn’t needed Richard’s help after all.
The steely Englishman glared down at her as she bypassed him in a daze. Realizing his mediation was no longer needed, he shook his head in exasperation and strode away. Richard fell off Rafael’s radar as he focused on the vision he held in thrall, just as she held him. He continued to recede and beckon, drawing her toward him.
It took forever for her to weave through the throngs of people who turned to stare at her trancelike advance. Then at last, at last, she entered the deserted corridor. He took her deeper into his home where no one would come. She kept advancing after he stopped. Lips parted, eyes wide, face tilted up, she finally halted within arm’s reach. The sconces illuminated her face and figure in golden radiance and soft shadow.
She was more than he’d thought from afar, her impact on him fiercer up close.
And she most definitely wasn’t blond. Such a mundane word didn’t describe her cascade of spun silk with its thousand shades. Each strand had the tones of Rio’s beaches, its Sugarloaf Mountain and its sunrays at every time of day.
In contrast, her skin, from forehead to fingertips, was flawless cream. As for her body, it was the body sculpted to his every requirement, to accommodate his every desire and demand. At once willowy and womanly, unconscious femininity screamed in its every line and swell and curve.
Richard had been wrong about something else, too. She wasn’t pretty. Or beautiful. She transcended such descriptions. From the intelligent forehead to the elegant nose to the lush lips, her face was a tapestry of perfections, embodying his every taste and fantasy. But it was her eyes, where her essence resided, that snared him. Wide, heavily fringed, a magnificent shape and slant, he’d thought he’d imagined their color as she’d approached. He hadn’t. They were an intense, luminous tawny. The hue of fire. And just as dangerous.
But her effect wasn’t about her physical attributes. Something about her just made him want to...devour her. He’d never been so ferociously attracted, or aroused. It was incomprehensible, but all he wanted was to unwrap her then bury himself inside her.
Even in his state, he realized that course of action wasn’t advisable. Even if she was willing. Which, from her glazed stare and agitated breathing, she probably was.
“Obrigado, minha beleza.”
He heard his hungry rasp, thanking her, calling her his beauty in his mother tongue. Though most of tonight’s guests weren’t Brazilian, he had a feeling she’d understand. And though he only thought in Portuguese and hadn’t spoken it since he’d been abducted, it felt the only language personal enough, intimate enough, to do this moment justice.
“Wh-what for?”
His breath caught. She had understood, yet answered in English. Cultured, American English. And she sounded as shaken as she looked. Her voice was a soft, sultry caress, made to moan enchantments in his ear, against his flesh, in long, pleasure-drenched nights.
“For coming when I summoned you.”
She blinked, as if emerging from a trance. “Summoned me?”
She obviously took exception to his choice of words. He wanted to tease her, say that she had obeyed his summons. But he couldn’t talk—he needed to make that first contact. Holding her gaze, he reached out and cupped her cheek.
His breath hissed out as her flesh filled his palm, as he absorbed its texture and heat. She trembled in his grasp, pouring molten steel into his erection. Then her eyes darkened into burning coals and singed away his control.
Two urgent, stumbling steps had her back to the wall, plastering her between its unyielding barrier and his. Hot resilience cushioned his aching hardness and ripped a rumble from his gut. Her echoing gasp filled his lungs with her scent. A hint of jasmine, a mist of pheromones, a gust of compulsion. Hunger writhed inside him until he could no longer bear not tasting her.
Holding her stunned eyes with his, he hovered over her trembling lips for one last anticipation-laced moment. Then he obliterated the distance between them.
A spark arced between their lips, making him jerk up. Her eyes displayed shock, too; her lips trembled with it. But the rise and fall of her breasts was that of excitement, not distress. Then arousal seeped into her eyes, weighing down her lids, and made her lips swell, as if he’d already ravished them.
She wanted this. Wanted him. Like he wanted her.
And he didn’t want just a kiss anymore. He wanted everything.
They’d exchanged two sentences—phrases—and he knew nothing about her. But this would follow no rules. The passion that had exploded into existence between them obliterated any.
He would take her first. As she wanted him to. Everything else would come later. Satisfying this overpowering hunger was the most important thing now. The only thing that mattered.
He bent, swept her up in his arms. She only gasped and went limp against him, her eyes enormous orbs of surrender.
Triumph and elation fueled his strides to his study. Kicking the door shut, he put her back on her feet and pressed her against it. Her feverish eyes assured him this was exactly what she wanted. Everything with him. Now.
“Sim, beleza, sim...tudo comigo...agora.”
And he crashed his lips on hers.
Two (#ulink_01a0662f-5533-54a4-817f-17b52c249644)
Ellie was drowning. In pleasure. The pleasure of this man’s kisses. The man she’d met only minutes before.
But it was okay to drown. Since this had to be a dream.
In the waking world, it was unthinkable for her to lose her head at the sight of a man, let alone her sense of self at his touch. Perfect pleasure like this couldn’t possibly exist. Not for her. She was the last woman on earth to get zapped by attraction at a literal hundred paces. And then came this man. He was what proved this must be a dream. He couldn’t be real.
No real man could have compelled her like this. Even the way he’d materialized out of the darkness had been unreal.
One thing explained all this. She must be dozing off in her car, lost in the most outrageously erotic dream ever.
Which figured. After two days of continuous work, exhaustion had been another reason she’d hated having to go to that ball. She’d been asleep on her feet by the time she’d dragged herself home at three to throw on “something appropriate,” then driven to that mansion in Armação dos Búzios, the “Hamptons of Brazil.” The damn place was over two hours away. And she’d been lost an extra half hour before finding it.
After she finally did at six o’clock, she had memories of valet parking and walking through the ingeniously landscaped, multilevel gardens into the splendid, four-level edifice sprawling over what she thought was no less than ten thousand square feet. Outside, each spray of indirect illumination enhanced every white-painted arch, column and molding in its neo-Renaissance architecture, giving it the grandeur of a temple or cathedral. Inside, the pervasive, festive lighting came from an abundance of all-crystal chandeliers and antique brass lampadaires, giving the Portuguese-French–style gilded interior the feel of a fairy tale. Then she’d reached the ballroom, which was right out of one.
She remembered pausing at the threshold, wrestling with her dislike for crowds, then finally walking in since braving it was preferable to being subjected to more pleading.
Then as she’d kept to the periphery, avoiding the forced gaiety, she’d felt as if she was hit by lightning. Her eyes had jerked to the bolt’s origin. And she’d met his gaze.
As her heart had stumbled like a horse on ice, he’d raised a hand made of elegance and power, and beckoned.
Breath hitching, she’d looked around to see who he was beckoning to. Once sure he was actually motioning to her, she’d had no thought of resisting. He’d kept receding, and she’d kept moving toward him, no volition involved. Then she had been within touching distance, and nothing had remained in her stalled mind but...wow. Wow.
Even at five-foot-ten with four-inch heels, she was dwarfed by him. Besides his towering height, his shoulders, torso and arms were daunting, his waist and hips narrow, his thighs formidable. And his legs went on forever. And that was what she could see through his slate-gray suit. She couldn’t even imagine what his body would look like out of it.
But one thing she saw clearly. His face.
Ruthless planes and stark angles composed his forehead, nose and jaw. His cheekbones slashed so sharply against his polished teak skin, she felt she could cut herself on them. His lips were sculpted from decadent sensuality. Put together, his features were a standard of male beauty no one would ever come close to measuring up to. Not in her eyes.
But what captivated her went beyond his physical endowments and sexual magnetism. It wasn’t even those stormy eyes, surrounded by lashes as raven-black as the layers of his vital hair, and slanted to the same mysterious angle as his dense eyebrows. It was the entity that looked back at her through them.
Then he’d thanked her, for coming when he’d summoned her.
The dark spell of his voice hadn’t stopped annoyance from registering at his arrogance. Even when nothing else could describe the way she’d walked to him as if in thrall. Then he’d cupped her cheek and the world disappeared.
Nothing was left but his touch, and the building urge for something...more. And he gave her more. Like a hungry panther, he backed her against the wall only to hover over her lips, tantalizing her with the dizzying scent of his maleness and desire.
She started trembling, fearing her heart would stop if he didn’t kiss her. Then he did. And that intensity between them manifested into a literal spark, zapping what remained of her coherence. She looked up into his eyes when he jerked away, confessing her helplessness. And a change came over him.
As overriding as his approach had been up till that point, there’d been restraint in it. But now his eyes explicitly said there’d be none from this point forward. He wouldn’t stop at a kiss. He wanted more. Everything. Then he told her just that.
Yes, my beauty, yes. Everything with me. Now.
On some level, she realized this was insane. But when he swept her up into his arms, she melted in his hold, let him take her wherever he would.
Then he crossed into a semidark room, an opulent study. He set her back on her feet only to press her against the door. Before she could draw another breath, he thrust his tongue deeper in her mouth as he undid her hair clip. Her hair swished down over his hand, and he combed his fingers through it, sending pleasure cascading to every root. Then his other hand found her zipper and slid it down.
She moaned a sound she’d never before produced—the sound of relief-laced shock—as her bodice released her breasts with a rustling sigh. His lips swallowed her moans, drugging her with delight. One thing kept repeating in her brain.
She’d wake up any moment now.
But she didn’t wake up. And now she knew she wouldn’t.
This was just too overwhelming to be a dream.
This was real.
Another shock zigzagged through her as his fingers splayed against her back, and her flesh almost burst into flame. She jerked away from the burning, then pressed back for more. And he took his onslaught to the next level.
He yanked up her skirt, cupped her buttocks beneath her panties and hauled her up against him. She gasped at his grip over her intimate flesh, at his effortless power. Gasps became moans as he ground the steel of his erection against her core, flooding it with another rush of liquid heat.
Something scalding rumbled from him as he tugged one thigh, splaying her around his hips. Then he thrust against her to the same rhythm his tongue plunged inside her mouth. His powerful chest rubbed against her breasts, the friction of their remaining clothes pricking her nipples into pinpoints of agony.
