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‘I’m not playing.’ Antonio claimed a long, hard, potent kiss that made her grip his arms for support and left her head swimming. ‘Believe me, I didn’t bargain on this—’
‘You can’t plan everything—’
‘But I do,’ he growled in frustration, coming back for another fierce and hungry taste of her. ‘This shouldn’t be happening—’
Her small fingers delved into his luxuriant black hair to pull his head back. ‘Then…stop!’
His smouldering golden gaze struck sparks from hers. ‘I can’t…I wanted you the first time I saw you nearly three years ago. Now I want you even more.’
At that admission, her troubled eyes shone like stars and she screened them. But she still wanted to shout her joy from the rooftops. What he felt wasn’t love, but then she had never hoped for love from Antonio. His desire was enough to satisfy her deep, desperate need for some kind of response from him. It wouldn’t last, naturally it wouldn’t, she thought feverishly. But a desire to match her own was there for the taking now and she was not too proud to seize the moment.
He crushed her lush lips beneath his again. The sweet, stabbing invasion of his tongue in the tender reaches of her mouth made her gasp out loud. He lifted her effortlessly up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom. His strength left her breathless. Resting her down on the bed, he undid the towel. Unprepared for that instant unveiling, she crossed her arms over her nakedness in an instinctive movement.
Antonio surveyed her startled eyes and hot cheeks in surprise. ‘You can’t be shy with me…’
‘I’m not shy,’ Sophie denied to the best of her ability, taking advantage of his momentary stasis to shimmy away. Pulling back the bedding, she slid speedily under it with more than a suggestion of a crab scuttling below a rock for cover. ‘Not the slightest bit shy,’ she added with determined emphasis, and she sat up to embark on the buttons on his shirt in an effort to distract him.
‘Let me look at you, then.’ Antonio closed long fingers into the sheet she had wrapped below her arms and tugged it down before she could even guess his intent. The tantalising jut of her pert breasts provoked a ragged groan of appreciation from him. He caught her to him with one powerful arm, bent her back against him and explored the firm creamy swells with unashamed expertise. His slightest touch set her tender flesh on fire. Her teeth clenched, her hips shifting on the sheet beneath her. When he toyed with the rosy crests that were swollen and sensitised by his attention, she was unable to suppress the moan rising in her throat.
‘You’re even more beautiful than I thought you would be, querida,’ Antonio breathed thickly, hungry dark golden eyes welded with all-male admiration to the ripe, rounded curves he had revealed. ‘And a hundred times more responsive.’
Straightening up to his full height, he finished unbuttoning his shirt and peeled it off. As he shifted position sleek, strong muscles flexed in his strong brown torso and accentuated the powerful breadth of his chest and the rock-hard flatness of his abdomen. Ebony curls liberally shaded his pectorals. She pulled in a sudden gulp of air to her starved lungs. Her heartbeat had quickened to a pulsing thump behind her breastbone: he was spectacularly male. She couldn’t drag her mesmerised attention from him until he unzipped his trousers and embarrassment claimed her, forcing her to drop her gaze.
‘Come here,’ Antonio urged softly.
She scrambled up on her knees, glancing up at him from below her curling lashes, her face burning from the awareness of her nudity. With a husky groan, he just reached for her as though she were a doll. With his hands spread across the feminine swell of her hips, he raised her higher and clamped her hard up against his lean muscular frame. Warm and silky smooth and interestingly rough, his body was an electrifying mix of different textures against her softer skin. She was insanely aware of the hot, hard thrust of his erection and of her own feverish yearning for his touch. She felt programmed, enslaved by the wanton promise of the pleasure he had already given her.
‘Touch me,’ she mumbled shakily.
‘Until you beg me to stop.’ He tumbled her back across the bed and came down to her, strong and bronzed and pagan in his sexual intensity. He lowered his proud dark head to the prominent pink buds of her breasts and let his tongue lash the straining tips. She arched her spine and cried out when he intensified that sensation with the graze of his teeth and his knowing mouth. Heat burned low in her pelvis.
‘Don’t stop,’ she whispered urgently, shifting her hips in a restive movement against the sheet, wildly, wickedly conscious of the growing ache at the very heart of her.
Golden eyes molten with desire, Antonio parted her thighs. With sure skill he parted the cluster of curls crowning her womanhood and touched her where she had never been touched before. That intimacy smashed her tenuous control to pieces. He found the most sensitive spot in her entire body and a burning, drowning sweetness of sensation took hold of her and blanked out all other awareness. As the twisting spiral of pleasure tightened to the edge of near pain inside her, she writhed.
‘Antonio…’ His name was like a prayer on her lips. She could no longer contain the wildness sweeping over her in potent waves. Her hips squirmed up in a sinuous rhythm as old as time, tiny whimpers breaking low in her throat.
‘Enamorada…you intoxicate me,’ he confessed fiercely as he came over her. ‘I intend to give you more pleasure than anyone has ever given you.’
When he drove into the slick, wet depths of her, excitement roared through her every skin cell with the ferocity of a forest fire. The sudden sharp pain induced by that bold invasion took her entirely by surprise. Her eyes widened in shock and she muffled her involuntary cry against his shoulder.
Antonio stilled and looked down at her. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No…’
He stared down at the luminous clarity of her beautiful eyes. ‘I know I hurt you,’ he breathed huskily. ‘Was I too rough?’
Hot pink washed her hairline, for she was mortified but far too proud and cautious to admit that he was her first lover. ‘Of course not—’
‘You excite me beyond all control,’ Antonio confessed thickly, sinking by slow, skilled degrees into her now more receptive body. ‘I forgot how small you are, how fragile.’
His every subtle movement engulfed her in hot, sweet pleasure. The tempo stepped up. Passion gripped her in a flashing surge of high-voltage sensation. He sank his hands below her hips and tipped her up to him, plunging back into her with raw, demanding urgency. Her heart hammered and she fought to breathe in short little spurts. Need and excitement had combined and the ache for fulfilment was a torment. Her hunger peaked in a shattering release. Losing herself in the voluptuous shock waves of convulsive pleasure, she cried out in joy and amazement.
In the aftermath, Antonio curved her round him, kissed the top of her head and studied the ornate ceiling with brilliant golden eyes. He had both arms wrapped round her in a possessive hold. He had never had such fantastic sex. And she was his, signed, sealed, delivered, even ringed. He wanted to punch the air and shout. Indeed he felt hugely satisfied with life in general. He had ditched a mistress who had been downright boring and, if truth be told, a whiner, only to discover that his bride had a magnificent gift for passion. And unless he was very much mistaken his bride had brought him a very special gift that he had never dreamt he might receive on his wedding night: she had been a virgin. He thought that was absolutely amazing. He thought it was fate that she had miraculously conserved her perfect body for him. He did indeed owe her a humble apology for assuming the worst that night he had seen her coming off the beach. At about that point he remembered their agreement and he was stunned that he could have forgotten it…
Sophie was happy. In fact she could never recall feeling quite so happy except of course in those dreams she sometimes recalled when she first wakened. Wonderful dreams in which she wandered hand in hand through sunlit places with Antonio. Antonio had had a starring role in her best dreams for so long that he was almost a fixture there. And now she had learned that he lived up to every secret fantasy she had ever had about what he might be like in bed. His future in her dreams was now assured for a lifetime, she conceded buoyantly and snuggled closer.
For the first time in almost three years she was letting herself recall the fact that she loved Antonio. Although he was destined never to know it, he had stolen her heart at their first meeting. She had yet to decide what she found most attractive about him. His cleverness, his looks, his wonderful manners, his fabulous smile? Whatever, even though she had known even then that loving him was stupid, no rival had managed to supplant him. That was why she was so oversensitive and prone to losing her temper around Antonio, she acknowledged ruefully. He could hurt her so easily and when it came to him she lost all common sense. Did that explain why she had just given her virginity to a male who had announced up front that he wanted to be a womaniser at the same time as he pretended to be a husband? So what was he pretending to be now? Her happy feelings dive-bombed faster than the speed of the light.
Antonio decided that he was doing far too much thinking. Why complicate things? Why look for trouble that wasn’t there? He rolled Sophie off his chest, confined her beneath one powerful arm and kissed her breathless. ‘You should have warned me that you were a virgin, querida,’ he told her softly. ‘I could have made it less painful.’
Emerging from a kiss that made her head swim and her toes curl, Sophie was aghast at that comment, for it meant that he had noticed what she had assumed he would not. ‘What gives you the idea that I was a virgin?’ She forced a laugh, for she was convinced that there was no way he could know for sure. ‘I mean, how likely is that at my age?’
‘Very unlikely,’ Antonio agreed silkily, pinning her against the pillows and rearranging her into a rather more intimate position. ‘But please don’t get the idea that I’m complaining about your lack of form in the bedroom—’
‘No?’ Sophie’s interruption was a little jerky because her teeth were gritted. That reference to ‘form’ which was normally applied to a horse and its racing performance, struck her as the ultimate in humiliation. Any minute now he’d be slapping her on the rump and offering her extra oats.
In fact Antonio seemed delighted that she had proved to be a complete novice in the sex stakes. But Sophie was unnerved and mortified by the speed with which he had deduced that reality. If she didn’t watch out he would soon be questioning the significance of why she had yielded her precious virginity to him. He would guess that she was a lot keener on him than appearances might suggest. And if that happened, she knew she would die a thousand deaths from shame and never look him in the face again.
‘Not at all, enamorada,’ Antonio confirmed with lazy cool, running a confident and appreciative hand along the quivering line of one slender thigh. ‘I suspect we’re going to have a huge amount of fun filling in the blanks in your education.’
Employing all the self-control she could muster, Sophie pulled back from him. ‘You’ve got me so wrong. I may have acted the innocent to amuse myself, but there is just no way I was a virgin and I can’t believe you should think that I was.’
‘Why are you trying to deny the obvious? Why should you be embarrassed about the fact that you didn’t sleep around? Why would you want to persuade me otherwise?’ Brilliant golden eyes full of incomprehension rested on her. ‘I think that you being a virgin on our wedding night is an amazing achievement. You should be proud.’
Her small hands coiled into fierce fists. He knew what he knew and her secret was a secret no more. Her clumsy attempt to blow dust over her tracks had failed. His awareness that he had been her first lover made her feel horribly exposed and vulnerable. Gripped by the growing suspicion that she had behaved very stupidly with him, she scrambled out of the bed.
Snatching up the towel on the floor, she dragged it round herself again as though it were her only cover in a life-threatening storm. ‘Look, stop going on about it!’
‘Come back to bed,’ Antonio murmured as gently as if he were dealing with a wild creature.
‘No, been there, done that,’ Sophie slung with jewel bright green eyes full of angry defiance, dull coins of pink burning over her cheekbones. ‘You were great and you did me a favour, but let’s leave it at that!’
‘A favour?’ At that contemptuous dismissal, Antonio went rigid and any desire to humour and soothe left him.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u7d823bf7-6058-5267-83f5-3d906768b913)
‘YOU said I did you a favour. Explain what you mean by that,’ Antonio instructed with lethal cool.
Playing for time, Sophie dragged in a ragged breath. ‘Can’t you guess?’
Hard dark golden eyes rested on her with uncompromising force. ‘Answer my question, por favor.’
‘OK.’ Sophie lifted and dropped her slim shoulders, attempting to strike a casual note while she frantically plumbed her imagination for a suitable explanation. She was totally terrified that Antonio would guess why he had found it so easy to get her into bed. ‘I set you up,’ she claimed daringly.
Unimpressed, Antonio elevated an aristocratic black brow. ‘No me diga…you don’t say!’
His apparent calm only made her more desperate than ever to save face. ‘I’m nearly twenty-three years old and I thought it was way past time I stopped being a virgin,’ she spelt out, ‘so I picked you to do the deed.’
That brazen claim hit home and outrage powered through Antonio. ‘You did…what?’ he raked at her in raw disbelief.
The atmosphere could have been cut with a knife and Sophie was so nervous she was trembling. Forced to defend her story, she paled. ‘You’ve been around,’ she muttered in haste. ‘So I reckoned you’d make the experience reasonably pleasant…and you did. Can we drop the subject now?’
Antonio might have dismissed that fantastic claim had he not remembered her walking in to join him clad only in a towel and then virtually luring him down into the cushions. Scorching golden eyes lit on her like lightning bolts. ‘You selected me like some kind of stud to have sex with you?’
‘Look, least said, soonest mended,’ Sophie mumbled, hot-cheeked, while wishing that she had come up with a less inflammatory story.
In a towering rage, Antonio sprang out of bed and began to get dressed at speed.
The intense claustrophobic silence intimidated and frightened Sophie.
‘Antonio—?’
‘Silencio!’ His tone of derisive distaste sliced back at her, his lean, darkly handsome face grim. ‘I had begun to think of you as my wife. Qué risa…what a laugh! I won’t make that mistake again. I may have misjudged you the night after your sister’s wedding, but you think like a slut and behave like one. It will be a cold day in hell before I share a bed with you again!’
All the colour bled from Sophie’s heart-shaped face. ‘Don’t be like that. Stop being so angry with me—’
‘What else did you expect? Approval?’ Antonio dealt her a chilling appraisal. ‘Your standards are not mine. From now on, we stick to the deal we agreed.’
Her hands were shaking. She had really offended him. She spun away so that he could no longer see her shaken face. Her eyes were hot and scratchy with tears and she was stiff with shock. It was better this way, she told herself wretchedly. They should not have gone to bed together. She should have had more self-control. Almost three years back she had listened to Pablo talking enviously at his own wedding about his older brother’s phenomenal success with women. Naturally the act of sex would be a minor event to a guy like Antonio. Women were too easily available to him and who valued what was not in short supply? But what she could not bear was that Antonio should be so angry with her that he thought badly of her and condemned her for thinking like a slut.
She locked herself in the bathroom and studied herself with tear-filled eyes of pain and regret. If only the dream could have lasted a little longer, if only she had not settled on that stupid, shameless story of having slept with him purely to get rid of her virginity. Why had he believed that? Didn’t he know how irresistible she found him? But when and how had she forgotten that he had only married her in the first place so that she could take care of Lydia? She had promised to leave him free to live exactly as he pleased. That recollection suddenly became the source of deep distress.
After a very poor night’s sleep, Sophie got up soon after seven the next morning: Lydia would be awake and looking for her. She was really disconcerted to find Antonio in the nursery. He had Lydia in his arms and he was talking to her in soft Spanish.
Sophie hovered, determined to take the opportunity to clear the air between them. ‘I wasn’t expecting to find you in here.’
His keen dark-as-midnight eyes were level, his lean bronzed features unreadable. ‘I thought I ought to say goodbye to Lydia—’
‘Goodbye…you’re going somewhere?’ Sophie interrupted in dismay. ‘Thanks for not waking me!’
The instant she made that crack she regretted it, for even to her own ears it sounded juvenile.
‘I saw no reason to disturb you this early. I intended to phone later,’ Antonio imparted with unassailable assurance. ‘I have business to take care of. I had hoped to take a couple of days off and remain here, but it is not to be.’
Sophie had become very pale and tense. ‘When will you be back?’
‘I’m not quite sure,’ he admitted calmly. ‘I’m flying to Japan and then on to New York. After that, I must attend to matters in Madrid.’
‘Antonio…’ Hurt and disappointment and frustration were roaring through Sophie’s slight frame. ‘Don’t you think we should talk?’
‘I think that all that needed to be said was said last night,’ Antonio countered with chillingly courteous finality.
Pride and intense insecurity silenced the apologetic tale of woe and explanation on Sophie’s lips. She had met with rejection and disillusionment too often in life to deliberately court them. Why had she assumed that he would even be interested in what she had to say? After all, she was not an important element in Antonio’s exclusive world. Why risk exposing herself to more of his contempt? If he was still angry with her, she reasoned unhappily, maybe it was better to let the dust settle for a couple of weeks before tackling him again.
‘Buenos días, Sophie.’ Doña Ernesta walked out onto the shaded upstairs loggia where Sophie was sewing while Lydia played on a rug at her feet. ‘You must be the most industrious bride ever to enter this family. You are always at work.’
‘But this isn’t work…it’s enjoyment.’ As she placed a stitch in the fabric stretched over her embroidery frame Sophie glanced up. ‘I’m not used to being lazy.’
‘May I see your embroidery?’
Sophie obliged.
The old lady sighed in admiration over the intricate stitches and the fluid pattern of leaves and birds. ‘You must know that this is work of an exceptional standard. You are extremely talented. Who taught you? Was it your mother?’
‘I never knew my mother. It was a neighbour I used to visit as a child.’ Sophie’s eyes clouded with sadness as she remembered the elderly woman who had given her a much needed creative outlet. The chance to escape the noisy chaos of her father’s home and visit, however briefly, a peaceful, organised household had been equally welcome. ‘She taught me to sew when I was four years old and I was still learning from her ten years later when she died.’
‘You must have been a rewarding pupil. Perhaps some day you will consider taking a textile conservation course.’ Doña Ernesta lifted Lydia up onto her lap, smiling down at her great granddaughter with unconcealed pleasure. ‘There are many very old pieces of needlework here which would benefit from your attention.’
‘Even if I did a course, I don’t think Antonio would want me touching family heirlooms,’ Sophie muttered awkwardly.
Her companion regarded her in surprise. ‘But you are a part of this family now.’
A maid arrived with a tray. ‘I asked for English tea,’ Doña Ernesta confided. ‘And scones.’
At the old lady’s request, Sophie poured the tea into fine china cups. Over the past week an increasing number of Antonio’s relations and neighbours had made formal visits to meet Sophie and Doña Ernesta had been very supportive. Indeed the older woman was clearly intent on getting to know her grandson’s wife. Sophie felt guilty that her own unhappiness was making it hard for her to respond with greater cheer to Doña Ernesta’s more forthcoming manner.
‘Have you heard from Antonio?’ Doña Ernesta enquired gently.
Feeling very vulnerable, Sophie reddened. ‘No…not for a couple of days.’
‘He must be exceptionally busy,’ Doña Ernesta immediately assured her in a soothing manner.
But with whom was Antonio busy? Sophie wondered wretchedly before she could suppress that unproductive thought. What was the point of tormenting herself? She had no control over what Antonio did. The sick sense of misery that she had been struggling to suppress threatened to rise up and overpower her. It was no comfort to know that her own hasty words had destroyed the fragile new relationship developing between her and Antonio. It was eight days since he had left the castillo. Although he had phoned several times the conversations had been brief and any attempt to stray into more intimate areas had been mercilessly snubbed.
‘Sophie…may I speak freely to you?’ Doña Ernesta asked then.
Sophie tensed. ‘Of course…’
‘You seem unhappy. I have no wish to pry,’ the old lady assured her anxiously, ‘but is there anything wrong?’
Sophie made a harried attempt to mount the cover-up that she knew Antonio would expect from her. ‘Of course, there’s nothing wrong.’
‘It is natural that you should miss Antonio and very sad that you should be parted so soon after your wedding.’
Tears stung the back of Sophie’s eyes in a dismaying surge. It had not occurred to her that she would miss Antonio quite so dreadfully. But admitting even to herself that she had fallen very deeply in love with Antonio almost three years earlier and that indeed she had never got over him had destroyed all her natural defences.
‘It is too dull here for you when he is away,’ Doña Ernesta opined. ‘Why don’t you stay at our house in Madrid for a few days? You could shop and mix with the other young people in the family there. I believe you met some of them at your sister’s wedding.’
Sophie was disconcerted by that suggestion but immediately aware of its appeal. Sitting around doing nothing was draining her confidence and depressing her. But if she went to Madrid without Antonio having first invited her there, it might look as if she were chasing after him. He might also be annoyed. The terms of their marriage deal did not allow her much room for independent manoeuvre, she reminded herself unhappily.
Whether she liked it or not, she had agreed that Antonio could do as he liked. All she had asked for in return was the right to care for Lydia and she had received that. In fact in material terms she really was doing very nicely indeed out of their marital agreement. She had Lydia and she was living in luxury. To top it all, in spite of her worst fears, even Antonio’s grandmother was being really kind to her. So, really, she castigated herself, from where did she get the nerve to imagine that she had grounds for complaint?
On the other hand, hadn’t the wedding night she had shared with Antonio blown that original agreement of theirs right out of the water? Everything felt so incredibly personal now. By making love to her, Antonio had turned their platonic relationship inside out. Everything had changed and that was his fault as much as hers. Obviously she felt differently about him now and the chasm that had opened up between them truly frightened her. Overnight Antonio had become chillingly polite and unapproachable. The misunderstanding between them had to be sorted out, she reflected worriedly.
She decided that it would be best if she arrived in Madrid while Antonio was still abroad on business. That way her presence might look coincidental and he would not even need to know that he was being chased. If he were to ask her what she was doing there she would be able to say quite truthfully that neither she nor Lydia had anything to wear. Before the wedding, she had been too scared to spend his money on anything other than absolute necessities. Now, however, she was aware that Antonio was accustomed to perfectly groomed women. So, she too would get groomed to within an inch of her life. The hair, the nails, the cosmetics, the waxing, the whatever—she would go for the entire package. There was, Sophie acknowledged shamefacedly, very little she wouldn’t do to get close to Antonio again. And if she failed, well, it wouldn’t be for want of trying. After all, what did she have to lose?
Striding through Barajas airport, Antonio checked his watch with rare impatience. He would be at his Madrid home within the hour. It was almost three weeks since he had left the castillo and he was eager to see Sophie.
