From Enemy's Daughter to Expectant Bride

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“There you go again with unrealistic expectations.”

His lips twisted. “You think I’m false advertising?”

“It’s me who has performance...or rather conformance anxiety. I don’t think I can meet your demands in quantity. It’s out of the question I could in quality.”

“Just leave everything to me. As you’ve done so far.” He took her on his lap, caressing her all over. “Any complaints?”

“Only one.” She fidgeted over the massive hardness beneath her, the simmering inside her flaring up again. “That you seem to have created a monster.”

Those perfect teeth flashed as he pressed her against his arousal. “You want more.”

“I want you,” she moaned.

“Not as much as I want you. Ah-ah-ah...” He placed a silencing finger on her lips when she started to protest. “You just have to trust me again on this. Now...your promise.”

She pushed out of his arms, trying to scramble off his lap. “I can’t. My brain feels like I was in a collision and I...”

He let her separate them, his face suddenly chiseled from granite. “Are you regretting it?”

“God, no. It was...beyond magical. But...but...”

“It’s too much, too fast.”

She nodded, anxiously probing his reaction. And it felt as if a cool balm had spread over her burning flesh. There was only self-deprecation on his lips, empathy in his eyes.

After the way she’d surrendered to him, another man would have accused her of leading him on, then playing hard to get. A few men had even called her a tease.

But he wasn’t like those men. He was like no other.

She wanted to kiss him for being so wonderful. But a kiss might destroy his control, the only thing that stopped her from getting in over her head. More than she already had, that was.

“It isn’t too much or too fast, not for me,” he said, his voice a dark caress. “Every second with you is how I’ll define perfection from now on. But I will slow down—for you.” He swept her into his arms again and she succumbed on a ragged sigh, sank back into the luxury of his embrace. “But there are so many more intimacies I need to share with you, many untold pleasures. I need to keep kissing and touching and talking to you. So when everyone goes away, you’ll stay.”

“Yes.” Then she frowned. “But what do you mean stay?”

“The night. In my bed. In my arms.”

“I got that. But stay where?”

“Stay here, of course.”

“You’re staying here?”

“I should think so. I own the place.”

And suddenly, all the details she’d missed—in him, in what he’d said, which should have made sense before now but hadn’t—coalesced. Into one big wrecking ball.

It swung into her so hard, it knocked her out of his arms again. “You’re...him?”

Three (#ulink_2ff8bce7-91e9-504c-b097-efe876543d1b)

Ellie gaped at the man who’d given her her life’s most intense experience. He was...he was...

“I’ve been referred to in some extremely unflattering ways before,” he drawled. “‘Him’ wasn’t among them.”

“I mean you’re...that man?”

“‘That man’ is also not what I want to hear on your lips.”

“God...it’s just... Okay, stop! Let me breathe.” Shaking her head, she splayed her hand on his chest as if to ward him off, but really to steady herself. “You’re...Moreno Salazar?

He took her fluttering hand to his lips. “To you...I am only Rafael.” He punctuated his words by suckling each finger. “You will moan my name into my lips...scream it against my flesh...all through the night.”

She was a molten mass by the time he pulled her other hand, wound her arms around his neck. But she still had to say...something. Anything.

“But you said you won’t make love to me.”

That wasn’t the issue here. Or what she’d meant to say.

He kissed the arms hanging limply around his neck. “I think I proved there are other ways of pleasuring you.”

“But I thought you understood, agreed that I need to—to...”

“Regroup? Yes, I know. And I won’t do anything to cross your comfort zone anymore.”

This man seemed to be reading her hectic mind, defusing her agitation, saying just the right thing.

But... “That’s still not it.”

“Then what is it?”

“You even have to ask? It’s who you are. It changes everything.”

His lips stilled on the sensitive flesh of her inner arm, then he raised his head, a spectacular frown descending over his leonine brow. “It changes nothing. I’m still the man you lost your mind over, the man you wanted with every fiber of your being. And that’s the man I’ll remain to you.”

“Yes, but you’re also Rafael Moreno Salazar, and I’m here attending your ball because my...boss is here to court your favor. And this complicates everything.”

“This complicates nothing, I tell you.”

“Oh, but it does. It tangles business with pleasure in a way I couldn’t have expected in my wildest dreams. Now I can’t spend the night with you. I don’t even know how everything will be affected by what we’ve already shared.”

Ellie’s arms slid off his shoulders and she slumped back. She felt as if he’d hurtled out of her reach when just minutes ago she’d felt he was closer to her than anyone had ever been.

She pitched forward, dropped her head in trembling hands. “Oh, God, why couldn’t you have just turned out to be just another guest here, just a regular man?”

“Well, I’m not.” He pulled her back into the cradle of his arm. “Which is why I can have you. A regular man wouldn’t dream of coming near you.” Before she could scoff at the exaggeration he’d said with such conviction, he went on just as seriously, “But I don’t care that business interests are involved. I’m even thankful they are, since they brought you here. I’m in your boss’s eternal debt for being the reason I met you. So if he is any good, I’ll do business with him. And that will have nothing to do with us.”

She squirmed to put some distance between them. “How can you say that in the same breath you say you’d do business with my boss for me?”

“I did stipulate he be at least ‘any good’ at what he does. I won’t prove my interest in you by gambling on a losing proposition. I’m into winning and would go to any constructive lengths to win you.”

“Constructive lengths.” A giggle escaped her. “Now, that’s an innovative way of putting it. Though you didn’t have to go to any lengths, constructive or otherwise. You stood there and cast your spell, and I ran and flung myself into your arms.”

“You neither ran nor flung yourself. But you will.”

She sighed, acknowledging his confidence. “So will you always be the magnet, with me the helpless iron filings, or is there hope of you doing some running yourself?”

“Command me, and I’ll run as long and as hard as you wish.” His fervor felt so real. But why not, when she felt the same? “I would have run to you this time, too, but I had to draw you away from the crowd.”

Something slotted in her mind with a thud. “You didn’t intend to make an appearance tonight, did you?”

His shrug was dismissive. “Whatever my intentions, I saw you...and nothing else mattered after that.”

“Same here. But you were going to pull another no-show tonight, right? Do you keep gathering people so you can watch them when they think you’re not around? Is this your method of vetting prospective partners?”

“It’s currently a partner. In the singular.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize you’re looking for only one.”

“I am.” The flare in his eyes said he was no longer talking about a business partner.

A thrill darted through her, and she sighed as he gathered her closer, soaking up his warmth and desire. “You do know the moment you touch me you nullify my thought processes, don’t you?”

“Not touching you is like holding my breath. I can only do it for so many minutes at a time. So will you stop pulling away? We can discuss whatever you like, for as long as you like, just with you in my arms.”

Sighing again, she relaxed in his hold, resigned to the fact that she wasn’t strong enough to resist both her need and his.

His lips curved. “So you think I’d judge those I’m considering for such a vital partnership by spying on them in a party? Would I disqualify them for stepping on their partner’s feet or talking with their mouth full?”

“I bet you’d see everything you need to make an accurate judgment in observations like those. Just like you always do.”

His eyebrows rose. “How do you know what I always do?”

“Are you kidding? The past couple of hours are worth a year of intensive...exposure. And I’m connecting what I’ve just learned about you with what I’ve long known of you.”

“And what, pray tell, do you think you know about me?”

“Well, as a virtuoso in your field, you have such nonlinear, multidimensional analytic powers, you have the world begging for your Midas touch. You got where you are by judging every situation and person you’ve dealt with throughout your career perfectly. As perfectly as you judged me from a literal hundred paces.”

He wove his fingers into her hair, wrapped a handful around his wrist and inhaled it. “Get yourself out of any comparison. Nothing with you had anything to do with anything I’ve ever experienced before. There was no judgment involved on my part, not when you zapped me from a literal hundred paces, too. And you did that to me when I had my back to you.”

She blinked. “Really?”

“Really. I was at the mezzanine when your aura lashed me with a thousand volts of delight.” He bent and kissed the tops of her breasts that bulged above the now too-tight bodice. “We’ve already agreed there was magic at work.”

“Yes.” There was no contradicting him on that point. “So you’re not orchestrating events only to watch the attendees, at least to weed out those who prove to be blatantly unsuitable?”

“Don’t you think someone as exceptional as you advertise me to be would let résumés choose for me?”

Suddenly she realized what was going on. They’d moved from blinding passion, bypassing any expected awkwardness in the wake of its temporary sating, and plunged right into delightful banter. The seamlessness of it all had her heart soaring.