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"Katrin!" She heard Santiago's voice behind her but she didn't stop shoving through the people until she was outside and in the clean air. She heaved in deep gulps of breaths as she purposefully pushed the images of Jon and Marie-Claire out of her mind before she darted down the cobblestones. Why did she always remember those two every time she was on the cusp of being happy? How typical that memories of those two would rear their ugly heads now. She had just started to let go of everything from her past two years of Hell.
Santiago's hand on her upper arm made her feet skitter to a stop.
"Don't—" She flung herself around and stared, wild-eyed, at the dark confusion on his face.
"Whoa," he held up his hands in surrender. "It is just me." People bustled around them, chatting and laughing as they hurried on their way to the next pintxos bar. The world was totally unconcerned with the hot mess her life just descended into.
Santiago ran a hand through his hair. "I am sorry for Azarola. He is a complete ass. I did not even know he was back in the country. And as for Elle—"
Katherine quickly held up a hand. "Please. I really don't want to hear about your girlfriend."
"She is not my girlfriend."
"Sorry. Lover."
Santiago frowned. "Nor is she that. She is—"
Katherine closed her eyes and tried very hard not to scream in frustration.
"Inconsequential." Santiago finished.
Katherine exhaled harshly. "I'm going back—to your villa. I need to get out of here, out of this bloody country." It was making her crazy. Completely out of her mind. One minute, she was perfectly happy in her guardian role, the next, eating and drinking like she was on some joyous holiday, just this morning she was having dry sex with this man and thoroughly enjoying it and now? She glanced down the narrow street, running away and inwardly screaming like a crazy person. This place was not good for her. Being out of her comfort zone was not good for her. She needed to regain balance somehow. Right now.
"Katrin. Calm yourself. You are not leaving the country. Azarola and I have been rivals since boyhood. This is nothing." He shook his head, clearly confused. "He enjoys doing his best to bait me."
Katherine gave him a disgusted look. "And Elle is the prize catch. Don't worry. I get it." She rolled her eyes and headed back down the cobblestones. This time she didn't stop when Santiago caught up to her and silently kept pace with her swift steps.
She wanted to kick herself. Repeatedly. Whatever made her think this little fantasy relationship with him was anything more than a distraction from his cause, taking her mind off the fact that she was kidnapped to this bloody country. The man was used to women like Elle. Petite little things exactly like Marie Claire. Not dowdy bookworms like her.
When the elevator doors finally opened to his loft penthouse, a thankful end to the painfully burgeoning intensity between herself and him in the carriage, she barely got one foot onto the Spanish tile before Santiago grasped her around the waist and herded her down the hallway.
"What the—?" She lost the rest of her words as her feet lifted off the floor.
"Before you get any ideas of taking off, you are going to listen to me." He ushered her through the bedroom doors at the end of the hall and set her down before he used his foot to press the door closed.
"I don't want to hear your explanation. It's completely unnecessary." She watched him cross his arms and lean back against the heavy wooden door. "I have absolutely no interest in your sexual partners." She gave a quick wave of her hand, though her eyes focused on the door handle.
He didn't take his eyes off of hers as he reached behind his back and snapped the door lock in place with a resounding click. "She is not my partner. And I do not know what happened back there or why you are all of sudden looking at me like I am a criminal, but I can assure you, this is not a situation that you will be allowed to retreat from. I am already familiar with how you like to annul things in the hope they'll vanish."
Katherine's eyebrows shot up before she glowered at him. "You don't know anything about me."
He lifted his own eyebrow. "Don't I?"
"I may not be a confrontational person, but there is no crime in that."
"There is when you're trying to get away with it with me."
"Oh please." She scrunched up her face in an attempt to discretely study the door lock. She could unlock it and be out of here in seconds if not for him standing there like a Buckingham Palace Guard. "This is macho BS. Sexist and backward and so crazy it borders on insanity."
Santiago smirked. "Says the woman who was caught setting fire to her wedding dress in the church parking lot on her wedding day."
Katherine's mouth fell open and her body went eerily still. "You know about that?"
"Have we not already discussed that I know all the facts about you? Just not the motivations? Why were you burning your dress, Katrin? I have always wondered."
She closed her mouth and blinked her watering eyes. When she managed to recapture her wits and speak, her voice came out in an angry whisper. "There were never any charges." Her tone was far too defensive to ever be considered calm, but that wedding dress incident hit an exposed nerve. She still didn't know how she got through that day. The image of herself being led to a squad car, dressed in only her chemise with her charred wedding dress bunched between her shaking hands, the priest and other guests looking on from the church windows and doorways, mocked at her from the back of her mind.
"The one-time you kept matters out of the court system and within your family." Santiago looked impressed.
Katherine crossed her arms. "You have no business in my family's affairs. I've already told you that." And thank God it was a female police officer who answered the fire department's call once they doused her burning dress. That officer had taken pity on her and not lain charges, and instead offered to arrest Jon and his partner for indecent exposure. Apparently, Jon wasn't the first cheating man the officer had had to deal with.
"So it was also an affair your husband had? He did not consummate your marriage and had an affair instead?"
"With a young co-ed if you must know," she whispered angrily then accusingly, "who looked remarkably like Elle back there." She glanced again at the door handle and lock before she stared around the darkened room. The city lights twinkled outside the large windows, and the first stars in the sky glittered off of the calm water. What a peaceful deception. "And he is not my husband for the thousandth time."
"Nor is Elle my lover." Santiago pointed out. "So, you caught him cheating soon after your wedding?"
"At the ceremony. Now, is this interrogation over?" Because it was starting to feel like the day they first met. Him sitting at his desk, arrogant and satanically cocky. Her standing there, answering his numerous questions as if she'd just been called into the principal's office. She resented his intrusion then and didn't like it any better now.
"Ah." Santiago nodded with satisfaction. "So, that is why he did not secure consummation on your wedding night."
"Secure consummation?" Katherine inhaled a long, calming breath. "Look, Santiago, this has all been nice. Really. Painfully cathartic even, but I would like to go home now."
"I can understand why you were triggered by Elle." His face softened and he uncrossed his arms. "I would never do that to you, Katrin. Cheat on you or take another lover after we were together."
She almost screamed in derision. "What alternate universe do you live in? It doesn't take a genius to see that Elle is your kind of woman. She ticks all the right boxes for a man like you."
His face darkened and he pushed off the door. "A man like me? Exactly what do you mean a man like me?"
She drove a thumb over her shoulder. "The whole bar back there could see the territorial pissing contest going on between you and Azarola."
He gave a short laugh. "A pissing contest between Azarola and me? Over territory? Perhaps, some of that is true, but Elle is not the territory that made us cross swords." Santiago prowled right up to within an inch of Katherine's body space. "You, Katrin are the only territory I am interested in, and Azarola now thinks to steal you away from me, but that will never happen." He stepped further into her space, making her put a hand on his chest and retreat as he crowded her backward until her skirted knees hit the edge of the bed. Forced to sit, she looked up at him, her hand still holding onto his chest.
"I have waited for you for more than a year, and no one, especially not Azarola is going to take you away from me." He crawled over her with a growl, somehow gripping her hips in the process and moving her into the middle of the bed.
"Santiago ..." She couldn't take her eyes off of the inflamed determination in his steady gaze.
He ignored her and sank himself to his elbows and fitted his warm hard body into her soft one. The caging movements sent her heart barreling into her chest as her inner thighs flushed with hot tingles that spread into her womanhood. She opened her mouth, intent on protest, only to wantonly gasp when he spread her legs with his knee, his firm muscles resolute to keep her exactly where she was—spread out beneath him, his hips pinning hers in place.
"You are not going anywhere." His mouth descended on her lips, a soft willful force that drew out her next breath before he slid his tongue into her mouth, effectively halting any further objections she might have. In just a few heartbeats, she found herself kissing him back, accepting his tongue before chasing and tangling it with her own.
"This is all that I want. You are all I have waited for." He stroked his hips against hers and whispered even more uncensored sultry words that made her increasingly restless and pliant beneath him, her mind succumbing to the sexual cocoon he expertly spun around them. Life outside of the erotic bubble he created slid away. Jon and Marie-Claire, her long-ago annulment, even the recent bar scene, disappeared from her mind to be replaced with only her and Santiago and the heated delicious things he was doing to her body and senses.
He pulled his mouth from hers and buried his face into the hollow of her neck as he ground his hips into hers, and laid a palm across her breast. Katherine relaxed her thighs and kissed him again with a new fervor.
"Yes, my love." He raised his head with a satisfied smile, and leaned on one elbow, a lock of his hair falling across his face. She reached up and moved it, then tugged at the elastic that held it in place, leaning up to kiss him as the soft mass brushed against her cheeks.
He kept his eyes on hers before he lowered his head to the hollow of her neck and kissed his way down to the rise of her breasts. His fingers reached for the buttons on her blouse then paused. "It is only us here, and I want to know everything about you. Every secret desire you have hidden away."
"Okay..." she breathed out and arched her back, lifting her breasts up to his waiting hands. He understood immediately and tugged open her buttons and laid open her blouse until she lay naked to the waist, her breasts openly bared to the intensity of his eyes and his ravenously hot lips.
She reached down and pulled up his shirt, and he helped her to tug it off and toss it to the floor before his mouth was back, this time hot on her nipples, pulling and sucking until her skin piqued and tightened and she begged for more.
"Tell me everything," he ran his hands over her hips and in between her thighs before he stroked his fingers across her satin panties. "Where you like my mouth. The places you like the pressure of my fingers. I am going to study your every reaction, touch and tease you every place until I know all the things that I have not yet learned you like."
Santiago continued to stroked her, licked at her and tease her nipples until she writhed beneath him. And even then he did not stop his sensual assault. "I already know that you love this," he boasted as he slid his hand between their bodies and pressed his thumb against the centre of her pelvis; warm dampness flooded her panties in response.
"Ohhh, Santiago..." She lifted herself to the wonderful pressure he put on her g-spot.
"I learned that our first night at dinner." He kissed her mouth then whispered against her lips. "But I also know you chase this feeling even more." He slid his hand up her skirt and into her damp panties before he stroked her bare clit until she moaned his name.
He smiled against her mouth. "It has been too long for you not to have had a man. You climax and pique with barely a touch."
Embarrassed heat flared across her face and she turned her head away from his indulgent grin.
"No," he turned her face back with his finger. "I like you this way." He continued to stroke her skin and kiss her mouth. He increased the pressure of her fingers until she stretched and arched and gripped his hair, her embarrassment forgotten as she incessantly sighed his name and undulated beneath his touch.
"Yes, Katrin. You are mine. Give yourself to me. I will never hurt you." He took her delicate bundle of flesh between two gentle fingers and stroked delicately upwards until she squirmed and writhed, her bodybuilding and climbing, cresting and breaking. He spread out his hand across her damp mound, immediately stilling her rising climax, her body thrumming beneath his paused palm. She bucked and pressed up against his heavy hand, wantonly chasing back the now elusive promise of orgasm.
"Say yes to me." He slid his tongue into her mouth then lifted his head slightly, his eyes darkly serious on hers. "Say yes."
She parted her thighs and pushed against his hand, desperate to revive that wonderful rise that ached and pulled between her restless thighs. "Yes." The acquiescence fell from her lips with ease. "Please... yes ....make love to me."
"Take off my pants." His eyes stayed on hers as she fumbled to do his bidding, tugging urgently at his zipper and sliding her fingers down into his slacks. She pushed the material off his hips at breakneck speed then took his long, hard mass in her hands, stiff and ready, stroking him from root to tip, secretly measuring the size and width in preparation. "Madarikatua, Katrin, you have me out of my mind. Put me inside of you."
He slid his longest finger inside of her first, and when he crooked it and massaged her g-spot, she cried out and yielded her entire being to the sudden heady feeling that swamped her senses. She squeezed his length with one hand and clutched at his shoulder with the other. He groaned and bucked within her grasp.
"Sorry ... sorry," she said quickly against his lips. "I'm not very good at this."
"Nonsense; you are perfect." He untangled her fingers and took himself in hand. "I am yours, Katrin, to do with as you please, and you are mine to take and make my own." He tugged off her silken panties, the two of them giggling as she helped him discard the scrap of material from tangling down her leg.
"I don’t have any protection," Santiago groaned as he laid his hard length between her thighs. "But I will not ... ah!" He growled when she lifted herself to him and forced his tip just inside her tight passage.
"It's okay. I trust you." She ran her fingers over his muscled bottom then stroked his heavy balls. "We've done this before and it was okay." She continued to stroke him, her fingertips more demanding as she raised her hips to his, bringing his solid length and tip even further into her warm opening.
"Madarikatua." His eyes became feral as he pushed himself into her waiting body.
Lightening and heat sparked and sizzled up Katherine's legs, washed over her sex and spiraled around her g-spot and clit. She lifted and pressed and moaned against his lips, moving and adjusting to the pained and pleasured invasion, and when he pushed against her natural barrier, she arched like a bow as he surged forward then froze at her tight resistance.
"Katrin ..." he lifted his head as his mushroom tip strained against her little tried cluster of internal constricted muscles. "You are so tight. It is as if you were ..." realization lit fire to his dark eyes before he started to shift away.
"Please, don't stop." She instinctively clutched her womanly muscles around his length, clamping as hard as she could. "I don't want you to stop."
"Jesus." His hot length pulsed and grew inside of her. "You have not done this before and—" his hips jerked with a primal need for possession.
"Don't stop ..." she whispered and rolled her hips, even though he was clearly trying to reign himself back, her movements forced him to jerk forward and push his hot length all the way past her virginity.
"I am already taking you," he gripped the sheets and fisted his fingers into the mattress. "I cannot stop."
Katherine held onto his shoulders as she adjusted to his size then slowly moved her body beneath his, the halted rush gently building again. Each time he twitched or his pelvic muscle pressed into her heightened g-spot, she flooded his length with intimate juices. He answered her sexual call with a visceral push that brought them fully fitted together, his entire length inside of her passage, balls-deep, to where they joined.
"My God, Katrin, do not move." His muscles bunched and strained as he forced himself to remain still.
She couldn't help moving against him, shifting herself unexpectedly ruffling and tangling their most intimate hair. Santiago responded to her sensual overture with a storm and thrust her deep down into the bed with a guttural cry. He circled his hips and forced himself deeper, growling like an animal each time he rioted inside of her body.
"Santiago!" She slid her ankles around his hips, desperate to entrap the feeling he was building. She pounded herself upward each time he pushed down and pulsed inside of her, his hips anchoring her to the bed as he worked himself with agonizing slowness alongside her into a torturous pleasurable rhythm. He built them both to an unbelievable height that she knew there was no possible way to come down from. She never wanted to come down from this fantastic feeling anyway.
His name caught in her throat and came out in desperate whimpers until— he pulled himself from inside of her body and with a savage groan took himself in hand and convulsed his hot seed all over her naked skin.
She gripped the sheets in confusion and pure frustration as all the pent up sensation inside of her fell flat. She closed her eyes with frantic need as the wonderful feelings she'd just enjoyed cooled over her skin. What had just happened? She'd climaxed with him before. What had gone wrong? Tears burned behind her closed lids when she felt his weight completely leave hers.
She would not cry.
His hands encircled her waist and lifted her hips to his mouth. "Wh—what?" Her eyes flew open to see his head buried between her thighs.
"Shhhh," he stilled her between his hands then sunk his tongue inside of her soft folds. She bolted her hips off the bed and cried out hoarsely as the most incredible feeling tore through her womanhood. She grabbed at his head, but he pinned her wrists to her sides and slid his tongue inside her passage. She thrashed and bucked her hips, but he expertly used his body to hold her still for his onslaught. He pulled out his tongue and used it to rub circles around her heightened bundle of hard nerves.
Hot. Delicious. So completely forbidden, she lifted her hips to his mouth and crested against his lips, as he slid his tongue inside of her and out, around her nub then pulled her hard flesh between his lips and sucked.
"Oh God, Santiago!" She grasped the sheets beneath her and begged. "Please..."
He continued to suck on her nub until she jerked against his hot mouth, and his hands held her tighter before like a fish out of water, captured on a spear, she thrashed as her womanhood burst over the edge of pleasure and throbbed between his lips, the uncontrollable pulses setting her completely free.
*****
