He wore a banyan of scarlet silk embroidered with roses. Tiffany was sure she could smell them as he stood there gaping at her. For the longest time he said nothing, and simply stared as if all his wits had deserted him at once.
Her bravado seemed determined to go with them. She had to fight the urge to fidget. ‘Well?’ she said, as he continued to gawp.
‘Well?’ he repeated helplessly.
‘Are you?’
‘Am I’—he swallowed—‘going to … come to … you …’
‘Santiago, are you quite well?’ Concern replaced her annoyance, and she moved closer, her hand outstretched to feel at his forehead. He stared wildly at her as she did, but didn’t stop her. ‘Do you have a fever?’ He had been behaving oddly this week. All that business with the horse and the stableyard pump.
He swallowed again, and shook his head.
‘Is your arm paining you?’
He shook his head as if he didn’t know what arms even were.
Tiffany let her hand drop. ‘Then are you going to answer my question?’ she said, resisting the urge to wrap her arms defensively around herself.
She had dressed in her prettiest night rail and dressing gown, trimmed with lace and almost sheer. It was something Aunt Esme had told her she would need in her trousseau, but she wasn’t sure if it was having the correct effect. Santiago looked like someone had just hit him with a mallet.
‘Question?’ he said faintly.
Tiffany wanted to stamp her feet in frustration. ‘You have made me wait over a week now. Nearly a fortnight. Have I done something to offend you?’
‘No,’ he said, as if the idea was an offence in itself.
‘Do I— Do I repulse you?’ At this she did wrap her arms around herself.
‘No! It is the very opposite of that,’ he assured her. His eyes roved her figure, especially where her folded arms were pushing her bosom up. That was a mistake. Elinor had despaired of her unfashionable shape. Clothes did not sit well on such a bosom. Long stays had better be worn. Large breasts were for wet-nurses. Et cetera, et cetera.
All of a sudden tears welled in her eyes, as they had on all the nights he had not come to her. ‘I know I am not accounted a beauty,’ she said, as matter-of-fact as she could. ‘I am an insipid, colourless little thing, but—’
‘You are no such thing!’ He stormed closer to her, fury darkening his face. ‘Who has told you this? I will cut out their useless eyes.’
Well, that was quite a sensation. ‘There is no need to be so dramatic,’ Tiffany said, secretly pleased.
‘There is. Tiffany, you are so beautiful. Exquisite. I cannot take my eyes off you.’
‘You don’t have to be kind—’
‘I am not,’ he said firmly, and he looked her up and down in a way that suggested he could see through her clothes, and very much liked what he found there.
Flustered, she said, ‘I am merely asking why you have not come to me. I was led to expect—’
‘Yes?’
She took in a deep breath, and it shuddered slightly with the force of her nerves. ‘I believed you would come to me once we were married and we would … consummate.’ Her face burned. ‘That it is my duty to … to … but you do not want me?’
He exhaled as he ran his hands through his hair, and it sounded almost like a laugh. Tiffany turned away, humiliated. But his words stopped her.
‘You think I don’t want you? Tiffany, mi amor—I want nothing but you.’
She turned back, eyeing him uncertainly. ‘You do?’
He nodded, taking a step towards her, his hand outstretched. ‘I think of nothing but you. My thoughts are filled with you. Did you not see me making a fool of myself this week? I cannot concentrate on estate business. I cannot hold a conversation. I have spent half my nights—well, you don’t need to know what I’ve spent my nights doing,’ he muttered, face flushing. ‘But every moment has been about you.’
His eyes were dark as a storm. His voice shook. He took her hand, his bare fingers against hers, and thrill ran through her.
‘Then why didn’t you come to me?’ she whispered.
‘Because I made you a promise,’ he said. ‘At the ruins. I said I would never touch you unless you asked me to.’
‘That promise?’ she said. ‘But— Oh, Aunt Esme warned you not to make promises! Or bargains! Mind you, if we had not made that bargain, we might well not be married,’ she said, and the prospect of that—of having missed out on even this, of remaining unmarried while some other woman took him to her bed and shared his life—that was too terrible to think about.
‘What bargain?’ Santiago sounded distracted; he was looking at her breasts again.
Tiffany threw up her hands. ‘What bargain? You don’t remember blackmailing me?’ She scowled at him. Maybe she would keep the marriage unconsummated after all.
Santiago’s eyes shot up at that. ‘I never blackmailed you,’ he said.
‘Oh!’ Tiffany nearly used one of Nora’s words. ‘You … you did! You said if I didn’t teach you how to be a gentleman, then you’d tell everyone I was a witch!’
‘That…’ he began, and shrugged awkwardly. ‘Tiffany, mi amor—I never intended to tell anyone. Surely you must know that?’
‘Then what was I teaching you for?’
But she knew, didn’t she? She knew he hadn’t really intended to tell anyone, and she knew why she’d wanted to spend time in his company. Because every time she looked at him, thought about him, closed her eyes and remembered the scent rising from his golden skin, her heart beat faster and heat rose in private places.
‘But we sealed the bargain,’ she whispered. ‘Magically. I felt it.’
Santiago reached out and very gently brushed the backs of his fingers over her cheek. Tiffany shuddered.
‘You felt that,’ he murmured. ‘I felt it too. Every time I have touched you. Tiffany.’ He had moved very close to her now. ‘I would never force you into anything. That bargain was no bargain. But the promise I made to you—magic or no magic, that was real. I will never touch you if you don’t want me to.’
‘But I do want you to,’ she whispered, and he reached out, and— ‘Wait a minute.’
Santiago exhaled sharply, his hand freezing. She stepped back and looked at him, at the darkness of his eyes, at the way his chest rose and fell, at the gleam of his golden skin in the candlelight.
Nearly two weeks she had lain alone, frustrated and desperate, loathing herself because he was repulsed by her, suffering nightmares of oppression and hopelessness, and all this time—
‘You mean to say,’ she said, ‘that all this time, all this time, you have been waiting for me to come to you and I have been waiting for you to come to me?’
‘You wanted me to come to you?’
‘I thought you would! Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?’
‘I don’t know, I have never been married before!’
In the next second laughter bubbled out of her. And in the second after that he was laughing too.
‘Oh, we are both fools,’ he said, and got no argument from Tiffany. He wrapped his bare fingers around hers and pulled her a little closer. ‘Let me be absolutely clear,’ he said, looking down at her with those dark, dark eyes of his. ‘You want me to come to your bed?’
‘Yes,’ she breathed. Her pulse was pounding, all laughter forgotten.
‘And I want you to come to mine?’
‘You do?’
‘I do,’ he said fervently. ‘Should we meet in the middle and make love in our dressing rooms?’
He had gathered her into his arms now, and his banyan was no barrier at all to the feel of his body pressed full length against hers.
‘I think,’ she managed, ‘we should meet right here.’
‘Excellent idea,’ he breathed, and his mouth descended, and— ‘Just to be clear,’ he murmured, lips just brushing hers.
Tiffany wanted to scream with frustration. Her whole body arched towards him. ‘I want you to kiss me, and make love to me, and do all the things husbands and wives do in bed,’ she said. ‘Is that clear enough?’
‘Perfectly,’ he said, and the last syllable had not left his lips before his mouth was on hers and oh—oh! This was what she’d wanted!
Tiffany had not only never been kissed, she’d never even seen a kiss. Polite pecks on the cheek were all that passed between Elinor and Cornforth. They showed no more affection to each other than they did to their children. But other girls whispered rumours, and even Tiffany had heard them.
She had never imagined it would be like this.
She felt almost feverish, her body trembling as his mouth took hers. His lips coaxed, caressed, and teased, and then his tongue was in her mouth and the intimacy of it shocked her. Her body knew what it wanted though, and pressed up against his, her arms twining around his neck and her hips arching shamelessly.
His hands were in her hair, and she’d never expected that to feel so good. His fingers caressed her scalp, her neck, and her skin tingled where he touched her. Then his arm went around her waist and pulled her hips in tight against his, and she felt—well, she had never felt anything like it before, but thanks to Aunt Esme she had a pretty good idea what it was.
And it terrified her, but she wanted it.
‘Mi amor,’ he breathed against her lips. His eyes were unfocused. ‘Oh, Tiffany.’ His fingers went to the lace at the front of her dressing gown. ‘How do I—?’
She let go of him to unfasten it, and stumbled. He caught her, and used the opportunity to kiss her again. And he didn’t move his mouth as his hands followed hers, and found the ties of her dressing gown and unfastened it, pushing the lacy fabric off her shoulders to fall unheeded to the floor. His banyan followed it, and beneath it he wore only his shirt and breeches, his feet bare.
Then he swept her back against him, her full body pressed against his with only her thin night rail and his shirt separating her breasts from his chest.
She wanted to touch him everywhere. Desire for him swept through her like a fever, and her body arched against him without restraint. When his fingers caressed her bare arm she shivered with need.
She was so lost in him she barely felt him draw her down onto the bed, until he ran his hand up her bare leg and she gasped, sharply.
‘I want to see all of you,’ he said, and Tiffany nodded fervently.
‘But only if I can see all of you,’ she said, because the memory of his golden skin and dark hair and those black inked lines had been haunting her.
‘Whatever my lady wants,’ he promised, and drew back from her to stand, pulling his shirt off over his head as he did.
Tiffany could only stare. In the candlelight he truly was golden, like a statue. Only statues didn’t have dark hair on their chests and arms, and they didn’t have muscles that moved and flexed, and they certainly never had designs etched into their skin.
A turtle swam on his chest. A swallow flew on his arm. A serpentine dragon coiled its way over his ribs. Tiffany’s mouth went dry. She wanted to trace those lines with her tongue.
On the underside of his right arm was a healing scar, livid red against the gold. He could have died that day, and instead he was hers.
‘I know,’ he said, following her gaze. ‘I look like—’
‘You’re beautiful,’ she gasped.
‘—a common sailor.’ He blinked, and a tiny frown appeared between his brows. ‘What did you say?’
Tiffany knelt up on the bed. ‘I said you’re beautiful,’ she said, and traced her fingers over the turtle’s shell. Santiago shivered, just as she did when he touched her. She did it again, feeling his chest rise and fall beneath her fingertips. The hair there was coarser than any she had, and short, curling over his warm golden skin and tickling her in a way that she felt right down to the core of her.
Her breath came out in a ragged exhalation, and Santiago groaned.
‘If you keep touching me like that,’ he panted, and took her hand from his chest to kiss it. But not on the knuckles; on the palm, his tongue licking her in a way that made her gasp. He sucked one of her fingers, then a second, into his mouth, his eyes on hers.
She squirmed and shuddered, a sort of pressure beginning to build in her. When Santiago let go of her fingers and said, ‘Take off your night rail,’ she scrambled to comply.
She wanted—she needed—to feel his bare skin against hers. To press her body the length of his, see what that coarse hair felt like against the aching tips of her breasts, to feel the heat of him surrounding her.
He stepped back, unfastening the fall of his breeches, and by the time she’d pulled her night rail over her head he was naked.
Tiffany froze, night rail in one hand, and felt her eyes get wide.
Aunt Esme had warned her this process might hurt, and she had forgotten about that until now. But now she’d seen his … er, his himness, she could quite see how.
‘Oh Tiffany,’ he said, somehow not noticing her shock. ‘You are exquisite.’ He reached out and cupped one heavy breast in his hand. ‘I have had dreams about this bosom. Oh this bosom.’ His thumb brushed her nipple. ‘This bosom! It haunts me in the very best of ways.’
Tiffany whimpered. What was haunting her right now was the very frank advice Esme had given her about what was to transpire. She knew she was staring, and she couldn’t stop.
Santiago moved in to kiss her, and stopped when she didn’t rise to meet him. ‘Tiffany? Is everything…?’ He followed her gaze. ‘Oh.’
He straightened up, and Tiffany tried to calm her breathing. She was panicking. She thought the dragon on his chest was beginning to move.
‘Mi amor, it is nothing to be scared of.’
‘It—’ began Tiffany, and swallowed again. ‘It is just that I, um—that is—er, on statues—not that I look all that closely, of course, because what if they came to life? But they are not as… There is less … um…’
Santiago put his hands on his hips and cocked his head. ‘I think there was a compliment in there somewhere,’ he said.
She dragged her gaze up to his and tried to smile.
He sighed. ‘Tiffany. Mi amor.’ He sat down beside her on the bed, all that lean muscle and golden skin right next to her. The hairs on his thigh tickled her leg as she sat back on her haunches as if this was all perfectly normal. ‘If you have changed your mind, say so. We can stop.’
‘I haven’t changed my mind,’ she said, darting a glance down to his groin.
‘I won’t mind,’ he said.
Tiffany gave him an incredulous look. ‘You won’t? “Your bosom haunts me” and you won’t mind if we stop?’
He let out a strangled laugh. ‘Well—yes, I will mind, but I won’t…’ He shoved a hand through his hair. ‘I won’t be angry, or upset. I don’t want you to do this if you’re not … comfortable.’
Tiffany gave him a sideways glance and said, ‘I didn’t think comfort was exactly the aim.’
‘This is true, but being terrified isn’t, either.’
She thought about denying she was frightened, then said, ‘You can be scared and still want something, you know.’
He blew out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. ‘This is also true.’ He touched her hand, caressed her fingers. ‘Listen, I will promise you something.’
‘Don’t make it binding,’ Tiffany said.
‘I will.’ He held their clasped hands to his bare chest. ‘I will do everything I can to make this good for you. I promise I will bring you as much pleasure as I am capable of, and as little pain as possible. And remember, mi amor, it only hurts the first time.’
‘Is that true?’
He shrugged awkwardly. ‘Well, so I am told. I have never been with a virgin before.’
Tiffany felt she should respond to that. ‘Neither have I,’ she said, and he laughed.
‘Come. Do you accept my promise?’ She nodded. ‘Do you trust me?’
She looked up into his handsome face, and remembered him windswept and soaked on that hilltop, asking her the same question.
‘I do,’ she said, and he kissed her softly.
At least, it started out soft. As he slid her naked body against his, passion swept through both of them. An ache grew in Tiffany that she prayed he could satisfy. His hands caressed her, learning the shape of her hips, her thighs, her breasts. He seemed particularly fascinated by her breasts. When he explored them with his mouth, she whimpered and trembled, but it was nothing to what was to come.
‘I am not lying when I say your bosom haunts me,’ he murmured, breath hot against her skin.
‘I have never liked it,’ she confessed.
He shook his head. ‘It is magnificent. Perfect.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you had to wear stays reinforced like the Iron Bridge.’
His fingers played on her thighs, and she shifted restlessly, because the ache was worst between her legs. ‘Please,’ she gasped, not knowing what she was asking for, and Santiago gave her a devilish look as he suckled on her nipple. His fingers slipped between her legs, and what he touched there made her cry out and clutch at him.
Her fingers were probably pulling his hair, but he didn’t seem to mind. ‘Good?’ he enquired, and she nodded wordlessly, barely able to breathe. ‘Mmm. There’s more.’
‘More?’ gasped Tiffany, as he played with her. How could there be more than this? She arched towards his hand, silently begging him, and he kissed her mouth for a long, intoxicating moment.
Then he kissed his way down her body, settling himself between her legs and gazing at a part of her Tiffany hadn’t even seen herself. And before she could ask what he meant by this, he put his mouth where his fingers had just been.
The sound she made was almost a shriek. Santiago froze, but when she gasped, ‘More!’ he grinned at her, and resumed his task.
Tiffany slid one hand into his thick, dark hair, rested her arm over her eyes and tried to remember to breathe. It was all too much and it still wasn’t enough, because the pressure inside her was building to something and she needed him to show her how to get there. Her hips writhed on the bed as he licked and licked at her, and she was almost there, almost—
His fingers pushed inside her and without any warning, stars exploded inside her head.
Her fists beat against the mattress. Her hips twisted and arched, and inarticulate sounds came from her throat.
‘Too much, too much,’ she gasped eventually, and pushed his head away. As she lay there, gasping like a landed fish, he came to lie beside her, holding her gently in his arms until she thought she might be able to speak again.
‘What,’ she began, and got no further.
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ Santiago seemed rather pleased with himself. When he kissed her, she could taste herself on him, and that felt absolutely wicked. ‘And there is more.’ His hands stroked her hips, her thighs. She was still trembling.
‘I’m not sure I can take more,’ Tiffany whimpered.
‘No?’ He stopped stroking. ‘Then we will stop—’
‘Don’t you dare,’ she said, grabbing him by what she would politely call his hips, and shoving him against her. He throbbed hotly against her belly. ‘I want everything.’ She felt drunk. ‘Please.’
He smiled, and kissed her sweetly. ‘Whatever you want, mi amor.’
And it was uncomfortable, at first, but it didn’t hurt. Perhaps everything else he’d done removed that possibility. Tiffany looked up at Santiago as he held himself above her, his jaw tight, and realised that she would never be more married than this.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, through gritted teeth.
‘Yes,’ she said, and kissed his nose. That startled him into moving, and that felt good. Tiffany rocked her hips against him, and he groaned and pushed further into her.
‘Yes. Oh Tiffany, yes.’
Her legs came up around his hips, because it seemed her body still knew what it wanted better than the rest of her. She moved with him, his chest straining as he arched and gasped above her. The hair on his chest tortured her nipples in the most delicious way. She felt the pressure building in her again.
The only words he seemed able to find were Spanish, but it seemed he spoke a torrent of endearments as he moved within her. His body was so large, so hard, so hairy and male. Tiffany grasped his shoulders and pressed her face to his neck and finally, finally licked his skin.
He made a whimpering sound and seemed to speed up. ‘Touch yourself,’ he gasped. ‘Where I—’
Yes. Yes, that was what she needed. Shameless, desperate to reach that peak again, she slid her hand between them and touched herself there, where they were joined. Felt him going in and out of her. Gasped out his name—and then she was exploding again, shuddering and spasming, and Santiago was gasping too as if he’d reached the same place she had.
She held him to her, shaking, her arms wrapping around his shoulders and her fingers clutching at his neck, his hair. Santiago’s heart hammered against hers, his breath coming fast and hard as he pressed his face against her neck. The world had ended and remade itself, and there were only the two of them left in it.
She breathed in his scent, and smelled … roses?
The carvings on the bed had sprouted into life. Roses twined around the posts and the canopy, a living bower of petals and thorns.
Well, it was a good job her husband knew she was a witch.
Eventually he lifted his head and smiled at her. ‘Mi amor?’
Tiffany patted his back clumsily. She had never been so wrung out in all her life. ‘My love,’ she replied.
He kissed her, a sweet, tender kiss that had her bones melting. Then he rolled onto his back, and while she felt the loss of his body it wasn’t for long. He snuggled her into his arms, pulled the covers over them, and sighed happily.
‘Are those roses?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you do that?’
‘I think we did.’
He laughed softly. Then he asked, ‘Are you all right?’
‘I can honestly say,’ said Tiffany, her head on his shoulder, gazing at the turtle tattoo as it waved at her, ‘I have never been better.’
* * *
She asked him about his tattoos, and he explained their significance to her. ‘The turtle is because I crossed the equator. More than once, actually, but I don’t need a whole colony of them.’
‘The dragon? Is it Chinese?’
Disconcertingly, as her fingers traced the ink, it seemed to ripple and move, as if the dragon itself writhed across his ribs. ‘Yes. After I … ah, returned from Madam Zheng,’ he indicated the scar on his cheek, ‘the other traders were so impressed they declared I was honorary Chinese and must be marked as such.’ He paused. ‘These were European traders, you understand. The Chinese do not have quite the same attitude to tattooing.’
‘How is it done?’
Painfully. ‘With a sort of hollow needle, and black powder is rubbed into the marks it makes. It takes a long time. The dragon was weeks of work. But I was looking for a distraction, what with my face being ruined.’
‘It isn’t ruined. It’s a very handsome face.’
She thought he was handsome. ‘With a very prominent scar.’
‘It makes you look dashing.’ Tiffany kissed the scar, and Santiago felt like a king. ‘There is a … a chicken on your ankle?’
He laughed. ‘Oh yes. It is a cockerel. De Groot and I got very drunk once. It… I think there was a bawdy joke involved. Anyway, we both woke up with them.’
Her fingers traced delicate patterns on his arm. He could swear he felt a flutter. ‘The bird here? Is it a swallow?’
‘Yes. I should have more of these, because they are meant to count miles travelled.’
‘How many?’
‘Five thousand each.’
‘And how many should you have?’
He shrugged. ‘Oh … five? Six? One for the Pacific at least…’ He tried to do a calculation but his brain wasn’t interested. ‘Maybe more. I have never truly counted.’
She was quiet a moment. Santiago played with a bit of her moonlit hair. The fire was burning low in the grate, the curtains were drawn, and he had just made stupendous love to his beautiful wife. Life was very good indeed.
‘This is the furthest I have ever travelled in my life,’ she said. ‘Before that, it was to Brighton.’
Brighton was a day’s travel from London. Santiago kissed the top of her head and said, ‘Then we shall travel. Anywhere in the world, I will take you.’
She made a small, sad noise against his skin.
‘The pyramids,’ he said. ‘The Taj Mahal. Mountains. Jungles. Ice. Deserts. Where do you want to go?’
She traced the dragon’s head with her fingertips. ‘You can’t leave the estate for so long.’
‘Eh, William is very competent.’
‘Or your business.’
‘I have agents. Besides, we could set up new business in new ports.’
‘And I… Will I be busy having babies?’
His arms tightened around her. ‘Will you?’ he said, his throat a bit tight.
‘It is the duty of a duchess.’
She sounded so terribly sad. Santiago said as lightly as he could, ‘Can a witch not control these things?’
‘Well…’ She looked up at him. ‘Actually, Madhu did give me a powder I could take. To … um, prevent that sort of thing from happening. But … you are a duke, you need an heir.’
And he wanted one. He wanted a family with her. Some pale, some dark, all beautiful. ‘We are young,’ he said. ‘We can wait. And listen, mi amor, children can travel. I did.’
‘Did you like it?’ Tiffany asked doubtfully.
‘Well … no, but that was because my father was a terrible man and my mother was miserable and they only had me to upset my grandfather with an unsuitable heir. But we will love each other, and our children.’
Tiffany twisted in his arms so that she lay facing him. ‘Your mother and father did what?’
‘Ah.’ He hadn’t meant to say it quite like that. ‘Er, yes. My father was … angry with his father for not getting him out of trouble. The duel, you know.’ He might as well tell her. After all, history had nearly repeated itself. ‘William’s mother. My father abandoned her, and so her brother challenged him to a duel, and died as a consequence. Evidently my father expected his father, the Duke, to come to his rescue, but apparently it was the last in a long line of misbehaviours, and he refused to help. So my father fled abroad, and eventually ended up in the Spanish colonies, where he met my mother. Why he chose to marry her out of all the others, I will never know. Perhaps the prospect of a child who looked more like a savage than an Englishman.’
‘You don’t look like a savage,’ she said, nobly ignoring his tattoos.
‘Well, that is because I have an English wife to civilise me. Don’t look like that, it’s fine if I say it.’
‘So…’ Tiffany laid her head back down on his shoulder. ‘He deliberately chose not to teach you how to be a gentleman, how to be a duke, just so your grandfather would be faced with an unsuitable heir?’
‘That’s about the size of it, yes.’ Plus his father clearly wasn’t very good at being a gentleman, and manners were probably quite hard to teach when you spent your life running from gamblers and angry husbands.
‘What a … a scaly, dunghill cove!’
Those words coming from her lovely lips in her neat and tidy voice made Santiago laugh. ‘Billy?’
‘Nora. But honestly, Santiago, I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but what a nasty thing to do.’ She cuddled into him. ‘I am glad you are a better man than he made you to be.’
His heart swelled. ‘You think I am a good man?’
She turned her head and kissed his shoulder. ‘I think you are the best.’
She fell asleep there, curled in his arms, and Santiago lay counting his blessings as he drifted off. He slept peacefully, dreamlessly, until suddenly he was punched in the gut.
He did not swear out loud, because a man who’d had the kind of upbringing he had learned to assess threats very quickly on waking. He did shy away from his assailant, realising only after he had that he had fallen asleep with Tiffany. The room was dark. The attacker could be anywhere. He had to protect her!
He was about to try to wake her, to warn her of the threat, when he realised she was the threat. She was thrashing in her sleep, and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw her pale limbs flailing in the sheets.
‘Tiffany. Tiffany, mi amor. Wake up. It is a bad dream. Wake up.’
She lashed out as he tried to take her in his arms, but then her eyes opened, and she stared wildly at him.
‘Who are you?’ she said, and for an awful moment it was as if someone else was looking out from her eyes.
‘Santiago. Your husband,’ he said, and for a moment she was still. Then she blinked a few times, and looked up at him in confusion.
‘Santiago? What is— Was I dreaming?’
‘A nightmare, mi amor. Come here, lie with me. I will keep you safe.’