SHEER disbelief had Cristina twisting to stare at him. ‘You are asking me to marry you?’ The words arrived gasping from her lips.
Anton’s face hardened, his whole demeanour turning to ice. ‘Take note, Cristina, that at no point in this discussion am I asking you to marry me,’ he said, very clearly. ‘This is a business arrangement. I need a wife,’ he repeated. ‘You happen to fit the bill. You are young, presentable, and still desirable.’
‘Even for badly used goods?’ she quavered.
‘As you say.’ He nodded. ‘You also need my money more than I need you.’
‘Why do you need a wife?’
‘That’s my business.’
‘You want a silent wife?’ She was unable to stop the slicing sarcasm from coming out.
‘You could say that—though I think it might be stretching my luck.’ He smiled in spite of the ice.
‘I wonder you are not putting your secretary in the role, then.’
‘She does not suit my requirements.’
‘But she would not say no to you.’
‘Are you thinking of saying no to me?’
Cristina was too busy trying to grapple with it all to say anything.
‘Maybe you would rather let Kinsella suffer my English touch than be forced to suffer it for yourself again.’
That did it. She turned on him, swivelling in the chair to burn him with a look. ‘I never once said I did not enjoy making love with you, Luis!’ she said hotly. ‘And stop throwing my six-year-old words back at me!’
‘Strong words, though, Cristina. Hard words from a proud Marques mouth.’
‘As you have already pointed out, what pride is there now in being a Marques?’ she countered, then had to heave in a deep, unsteady breath. ‘The name, like my reputation, is demolished. Do you think I am too stupid and too proud to have realised that for myself, long before you came back into my life?’
‘My apologies,’ he said.
She looked away from him and said nothing. An apology only meant something if it carried regret.
‘Am I allowed to ask what my role as wife to you is supposed to entail?’
‘Of course you may ask,’ he answered, so smoothly it was like a slap in her face. He was sitting there—relaxing there now—as if the anger of before had never been, while she …
Was hurt and fighting not to show it.
And afraid of what was going to come next.
‘Your role will be the same as any other wife,’ he told her. ‘You will keep my house, be my hostess and sleep in my bed. You will also make yourself available to me for sex whenever I desire it …’ He sat forward then, so he could look into her face. ‘And here is the bad one, Christina, so prepare for it because you are not going to like this,’ he warned. ‘We—as in you and I—are going to have to go all-out for a fast and probably furious attempt at conceiving a baby. I need you to be pregnant, you see, within a few months …’
Having shot his final past-avenging dart into her useless little heart, Anton watched, totally riveted—because it actually was like witnessing a murder take place. She seemed to die right there in front of his eyes.
‘Too much to ask?’ he prompted.
She didn’t answer.
‘Still protecting your gorgeous figure at all costs?’
She still made no response.
Something vicious tightened inside him. ‘Or perhaps you still cannot face the prospect of my half-English blood mixing with your blood?’
She breathed then—blinked. One of those very slow low-erings of fine-veined eyelids over terrible blank eyes. As they lifted again so did Cristina, rising out of the chair like a zombie. Then she just turned and walked towards the door, leaving Anton sitting there, stunned and so damn angry that she could do this to him—again!
He threw himself to his feet. ‘I see that we have found your ceiling price,’ he fed harshly after her. ‘But know this, Cristina. The deal remains in place only until you reach that door!’
She stopped walking, trembling from hair root to toe tip.
‘I hate you, Luis,’ she whispered painfully.
‘I am so gutted by that, querida,’ he drawled in return. ‘Do you go or do you stay?’
She spun on him then, her beautiful face blanched of its warm golden colour, dark eyes shot through with a kind of agony that had him folding his arms across the sudden tightness trying to band his chest.
‘Stay for what?’ she cried out shrilly. ‘So that you can take more revenge for that precious ego that I bruised so badly once?’
‘Did you bruise it? I don’t remember.’
‘I battered it!’ she spat at him. ‘I crushed it in my fist and flung it to the ground! You want more of the same from me, querido? You want to feel the same rejection again?’
‘Reject me, then. Use the door,’ he invited. ‘You never know—if you spread your net wide enough you might catch another withered old man willing to buy his way into that sensational body of yours.’
She flew at him then. It did not surprise him. He’d been goading her towards it since she’d first walked through the door. The tied hair, the grim suit—as a disguise they were useless where he was concerned. With every flash of her eyes and every smart-mouthed comment he’d seen the real Cristina lurking there. Now she was out, and he was going to make sure that she stayed out.
He fielded her arrival without having to do very much other than catch her as she arrived at his chest, wrap his arms around her and lift her clean off the ground. Their faces came level—hers whitened by stark fury, his as un-giving as rock. She hit out at him with her fists. He laughed—once—harshly, then treated her angry mouth to a totally carnal flat-tongued lick.
All hell broke loose with that one action. She quivered from wetted lips to slender thighs. A whimper broke from her—a sobbing, cursing protest. He did it again, only this time he took the lick inwards and turned it into a full-blown deep and devouring assault. Her angry protest vibrated through both of them. As he levered himself away from the table and started walking her fingers clawed into his hair.
Did those fingers attempt to pull his mouth away from her mouth? Not this woman. She held him down, held him right there, where she was greedy for him. He knew her. He knew what made her explode sexually—and what made her his!
When he reached the door that would give them access to his private suite, he flattened her against it with his body, so he could use his hand to seek out the handle. As the door swung open, with the weight of their bodies as impetus, he had to use his hands against the heavy wood to cushion the moment when it hit the wall behind and they followed it. Her feet found solid ground again, but she didn’t let go of him. So they remained there, pressed against the door, kissing like hungry maniacs for long lost minutes. Time in which he managed to rid her of her jacket. The skirt was too big. He had only to release the zip for it to fall in a heavy whisper to the floor.
Did she let go then? Did she come to her senses? Did she even know this wasn’t six years ago? Not this hot, greedy, sexually hungry woman who pushed his jacket from his shoulders with impatient fingers and sent it dropping to the floor with her own clothes.
Her hair came next, pins flying as he loosened that glorious mass of twisting ebony and let it tumble over his fingers. She was working free the buttons on his waistcoat when he lifted her up again. She wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, took his bottom lip between her teeth and bit.
It hurt. She had meant it to. When he winced out a curse she did it again. When he attempted to pull his head back she imprisoned it in her hands, then she was the one to instigate the next mouth and tongue-devouring kiss.
She was wild for him. He loved it. Exhilaration ran through him as he made the move to the bedroom by pure instinct. She clung. He pulsed. She moved against him. His hands gripped her bottom and she felt like satin, warm, too slender, too delicate to be real. He dropped her on the bed, then came down with her, the heat of need pounding through his body and scoring streaks across his hard taut cheeks.
His mouth ached, his jaw, his warring tongue. He broke the kiss to look down at her and watched as she gasped and panted for air.
‘Are you staying or going?’ he demanded in a voice as cold as an English winter. The stark contrast between his physical self and his mental self was so acute that she stared at him for a full ten seconds before reality finally sank in.
‘You want your pound of flesh!’
‘I want more than that,’ he responded. ‘I want your thankless little soul gift-wrapped and handed to me with a rock-solid guarantee that this time it belongs to me!’
Cristina looked into the hard, cold, face of this man she loved so much and had hurt so much, and wished there was a tiny molecule of hope for them.
But there wasn’t. ‘You will come to regret it,’ she told him honestly.
‘Are you staying?’
‘You will learn to hate me all over again.’
‘You are not here because I adore you, querida. You are here because I still want you.’
It should hurt to hear him say that, but it didn’t. How could it hurt when she did not deserve more than he was offering?
‘In your bed?’ She demanded confirmation.
‘Yes.’
‘As your obedient little sex slave?’
His green eyes began to gleam. ‘Most certainly that.’
A strange smile touched the corners of her hot pulsing mouth. ‘Gift-wrapped?’
‘Sim.’ He swapped languages so there could be no mistaking the answer.
‘You can have me like that without marrying me.’
‘I had you like that once before. Didn’t like it. So the marriage thing stays. It comes with the package.’
As the baby did? She wanted to weep all over him—but she didn’t.
‘The gift-wrapping?’ she asked.
‘The rock-solid guarantee of a marriage certificate—written in blood if need be. I will not compromise,’ he warned huskily.
Take it or leave it. Take this man when you know that you should not. Take everything he wants to dish out to you in the name of revenge when you know you will end up having to walk away.
Again.
Eventually.
‘So, are you staying?’
She made no answer, her beautiful eyes so painfully, hauntingly bleak that something too close to fear grabbed at the muscles in Anton’s chest. He did not want to be hooked by her again. He wanted Cristina firmly hooked by him.
‘Answer or leave,’ he ground out roughly.
She looped an arm around his neck and drew his mouth back down to hers.
Was it an answer?
He was going to take it as one. Choice was something ripped away from him the moment her tongue made a sliding caress over the top of his. She lifted a long silken leg to loop it around his hips in one of her old, uninhibitedly sensuous and possessive moves, and on a surrendering growl he let himself fall prey to the whole wild experience that was Cristina Marques, the enemy of his once bitten ten times shy heart.
Mouths open, hot and fused. Her fingers back at his waistcoat. She all but ripped it from his body, setting the tight satin muscles in his shoulders rippling as she tugged it down his arms. His tie came next—an impatient yank at the slender knot and silver silk slithered apart—and she was already opening the buttons on his shirt. Eager, needy, her fingers made familiar contact with the whorls of dark hair covering his thundering breastplate, curling, then scoring into his flesh to make him shudder with pleasure as he brought his own impatient fingers to the hem of the cotton T-shirt she wore.
They had to break the kiss so he could strip the T-shirt over her head. Separation brought with it a moment of sanity as he felt the thinness of the fabric. Well washed and well-worn, he saw, and made a mental note to buy her a new wardrobe as he tossed the scrap of cotton aside.
Then he saw them. Proud, unfettered, full and firm. Two golden globes tipped by long dark nipples standing up in bold and brazen demand. On a growl he pounced, sending her slender spine arching on a high-pitched quivering cry as he took possession in an open-mouthed, wet-tongued, hungry claim.
His shirt hung open. Her fingers crawled all over hard muscle and taut male flesh. When he sucked, she writhed beneath him, and he ground out a soft curse as electric sensation shot to his thighs. As if she knew, she located the fastener for his trousers and began an urgent attempt to strip him of those.
It was no use. He was forced to help because there was no way she was going to succeed while he still wore his socks and shoes. Sitting up with a growl of impatience, he reached down to remove the obstructing articles while her hands slid beneath his shirt and began a sensual exploration of his satin-smooth back.
His shoes hit the floor, followed by his socks, then he stood up to remove the trousers. She watched him, her eyes like burning rubies, coveting each new piece of hard male flesh he revealed.
No other woman had ever looked at him the way Cristina looked at him.
‘Greedy,’ he muttered as she reached out to touch him, brushing feather light worshipping fingers along his full length. He throbbed and swelled and hardened so fast it was almost an agony. He had to fight with uncoordinated fingers to release cufflinks so he could remove his shirt.
Stripped naked he was beautiful. ‘Bonito,’ Cristina murmured.
Still beautiful … always beautiful. Her Luis, she thought helplessly as she drifted her eyes over his tall dark stance, with its arrogant masculine pride in his own prowess.
He came down beside her, stretching out along her slender length, then sliding an arm beneath her shoulders and lifting her towards him. He held her like that, with her hair rippling behind her and her passionate mouth parted, ready for the hungry onslaught of his.
Eyes like glowing emeralds looked deep into her eyes. He didn’t speak. She didn’t want him to. If he did they would fight, and all she wanted to do was make love. Would he know, afterwards, that he had been her only lover ever? Could men tell these things?
He moved then, claiming her mouth with a hot, deep, probing assault that pressed her back against the pillows so he could cover her with his warm naked weight. After that it was a voyage of rediscovery, hot and intense and achingly poignant. Neither bothered to look for restraint.
And six years was a long time to starve a fever. It was hungry and it wanted feeding. They fed it. Oh, yes, they fed it. The rest of the world might have come to an end and they would not have noticed or cared.
Neither heard the quiet footsteps making their way across the living room. Neither recalled that they’d left the doors to the conference room and bedroom hanging wide open. Kinsella Lane stood in the bedroom doorway. She had been there for a long time, watching like a voyeur and listening to everything they said, with the cold blue eyes of hate.
She wanted Anton. She had always wanted him, from the moment she’d first seen him when she was only a very junior secretary at the Scott-Lee Bank, much too low in the ranks for him to notice her. She’d worked long and hard to gain entry into his select circle. She’d made a careful study of all the different women who’d floated in and out of his life. He liked blondes. She’d become a blonde. He liked them slender and neat, supremely elegant and sophisticated. She’d learnt how to achieve that elegance and sophistication. She’d honed and pruned and sculpted herself to meet the specifics of his sexual criteria. And he had begun to notice her. She’d seen the warmth grow in his eyes when he looked at her—felt the telling sting of his attraction towards her begin to catch light.
When he’d brought her along on this trip to Rio she’d thought it was because he was ready to deepen their relationship. His rejection of her in the lift the other day had hurt. But then two other employees had been present, so she’d understood and learnt yet another lesson—get your timing right. Or so she’d thought.
Now look at him, locked in the arms of the complete opposite from everything he had ever been attracted to. She was dark, she was small; she wore ugly clothes. Her hair was a mass of wild black twists and her breasts were too big. And there was no sophistication in the way she kissed him or touched him or taunted him or even spoke to him. Yet he was mad for her!
It was there in the way he shuddered when she caressed him. No finesse. No smooth, slick seduction. Just animal hunger and hard, hot sexual feast. Even the way he was covering her now and reaching round to wrap her legs around him showed an animal with no grace.
His lean golden flanks rippled as he made that first lunging thrust into her body. Her cry of pleasure echoed round the room.
Turning away in disgust, Kinsella left as silently as she had entered, stepping over discarded clothes and touching nothing, not even bothering to close those doors.
As soon as she gained the privacy of her office she opened the safe and took out the file Anton had placed there that morning, after his private meeting with a man called Sanchiz. Ten minutes later and she was replacing the folder in the safe, then picking up the telephone and dialling London.
‘Mrs Scott-Lee?’ she said. ‘I think you should know that your son is intending to marry a Brazilian woman. A young widow—Cristina Ordoniz.’
There was a long silence, then a faint, slightly tremulous question. ‘Ordoniz, you say? Are you sure of that name?’
‘Yes,’ Kinsella confirmed.
‘And young, you said? How young?’
‘About my own age, Mrs Scott-Lee,’ Kinsella answered. ‘I understand that her husband was an old man when she married him for his fortune. Not quite the person you’d want as a wife for your son, I would think.’
Anton’s mother made no response to that. And there was another one of those silences before she said, ‘I will be catching the next flight to Rio. Thank you for helping me with this, Miss Lane …’
He’d forgotten what it was like to have her breathe his name all over him. Forgotten too much, Anton realised as she blew six years of other women to absolute Hades and rolled him up, tied him up and packaged him with a label—Belonging to Cristina Marques.
Did he care? The hell he cared, he thought as he made that first driving thrust inside her, then stopped, watching in dark eyed fascination as she tensed, then cried out in an echoing response to their first time together, when she’d given him her virginity without bothering to warn him that it was there.
‘Long time, querida?’ he questioned huskily.
‘Sim,’ came the gasping reply.
Her fingernails were scoring deep grooves into his shoulders, and the slender arch of her body was an instinctive attempt to fight off his invasion. For a short, frowning second he thought of withdrawing, but she opened her eyes and looked directly into his.
Her mouth shook, but she said, ‘Don’t you dare, Luis.’
He smiled then, amused by how well she too was remembering that first time, when he had tried to withdraw only to have her stop him. And, like that first time, he reached up to brush her hair from her face, then lowered his mouth to gently soothe her with soft kisses while he waited for the tension to ease.
Familiarity should breed contempt, but not in this case. Familiarity was everything when she lifted up her hands to cup his face, then began whispering soft words of love against his lips. In one way he did not want to hear them spoken; in another way he lapped them up with true macho arrogance as she told him everything she was feeling, everything she wanted to feel, and eventually, as the tension eased from her body, everything she demanded he give.
And he gave it all. He gave everything. They matched. They’d always matched—in hunger, in passion, in what they wanted and demanded and made sure they received. They kissed, they touched, they rolled, they built it. It was hot and it was fevered. Each surging thrust overpowered the previous one; each coiled-spring meeting of their bodies drove them closer to the edge. He kissed her mouth, her breasts, her fingers when they came back to his face. When he felt the first ripples of her growing climax he lost it completely and quickened the pace. She came as she’d always come—wildly, noisily, gasping and shuddering and tugging him with her over the edge.
Afterwards they lay in a heap of tangled limbs and sweat-slicked skin and shuddering senses. He could feel the thunder of her heartbeat and the quiver of her lips against his throat.
‘Well, that was worth the six-year wait,’ he murmured eventually.
‘Don’t talk,’ she said, and he grimaced.
Maybe she was right. Talking was bound to spoil everything. Rolling onto his back, he took her with him so she lay along his length with their bodies still joined and no desire on either side to separate.
Her hair was stuck to his face and he reached up to brush it away, then gently rearranged her into a more comfortable position, with her cheek in the damp, cushioning crook of his shoulder and her boneless legs resting along the sides of his.
He was sated, he realised, then thought, Strange, that. Because the feeling had nothing to do with the sex but with this—having Cristina lying on top of him like a warm, sleek, sleepy cat.
Reaching for one of her hands, he lifted it to his mouth and began idly tasting each slender finger while he attempted to work out why he was feeling like this.
Cristina, on the other hand, was trying to work out how she’d break it to him that marriage was out of the question, no matter what slant he wanted to put on what they had just done.
Why did he need a wife, anyway?
Or a baby?
The thought of the latter addition made her start to tense up. He instantly soothed her with the featherlight brush of his fingers down the length of her spine.
Luis was always like this after making love, she remembered. Wide awake, but relaxed, content to keep her this close. Any minute now he would start to instigate a second loving. She knew it because she could feel him inside her, still a bold, probing force, even though he was not quite fully erect. And this time it would be slow, more deeply intense and sensually exploring.
Did she let it happen? Did she give in and steal just one more escape from reality before she told him that his deal was not going to happen?
‘You told me you still love me,’ he remarked idly.
‘I did not!’ she denied, lifting her head up from his shoulder so that she could glare that denial into his impassive face.
He was so beautiful her heart turned over. His slumbrous eyelids lowered as he sucked her index finger into his mouth and wrapped his tongue right around it, then began a slow mimic of a different act that set him hardening and swelling inside her.
Her soft gasping quiver had him releasing the finger.
‘You did,’ he insisted, then reached up and brought her mouth down on his before she could answer. A few seconds later and she had forgotten what they were talking about as it all began again in a slow deep mutual loving—just as she had predicted.
Just this one more time, Cristina told herself as she let him take her over.
Back in London, Maria Ferreira Scott-Lee was standing by her dressing table. In her hand she held a small package from Estes & Associates, Advocates of Law, Rio de Janeiro. The package had arrived the same day that her son had flown out to Brazil. Inside it was a jewel box and a letter. The jewel box held an exquisite, priceless diamond-encrusted emerald ring. The letter was personal—deeply personal—handwritten by Enrique himself.
Don’t mess with what you do not yet understand, Maria, Enrique had written as a warning footnote. Our son will marry the widow of Vaasco Ordoniz and you will forget that you ever knew that name if you value our son’s love for you.
But she could not forget Vaasco Ordoniz. She could not forget that Anton would have been Vaasco’s son if Enrique had not got in the way.
Ah, the tangles life could throw at you, she thought on a sigh that had her lowering herself onto the dressing stool. Enrique was the most handsome man she had ever encountered. Meeting him at Vaasco’s ranch had turned into the ruin of her life. Betrothed to Vaasco, in love with Vaasco, she had still fallen for Enrique’s charm and into his bed. When she’d fallen pregnant with Enrique’s child she’d had to tell Vaasco. It was natural that he’d thrown her out of his life.
‘Back to the gutter where you belong,’ he’d said.
Sebastian had come to her rescue. It had been Sebastian who flew her back to Rio and eventually brought her to England with him. Dear Sebastian, who had been in Brazil to buy horses from Vaasco. He’d come back with a broken-hearted, shamed and pregnant woman instead.
Now here was life making a tangling full circle, and the Ordoniz name was haunting her again. Who was this woman? How did Enrique know about her? Why had he sent their son to her? Who was playing a game with whom?
She was young, Kinsella Lane said. Vaasco had been a very wealthy man. He had trained horses for the polo field as a hobby, not to earn a living. Who was this—person who would marry an old man if she was not some kind of cynical fortune-hunter? And, having managed to inherit Vaasco’s money, was she looking to get her hands on Anton’s money as well?
Maria looked down at the ring box sitting on her dressing table, then at the words in Enrique’s note.
For you, Maria, in sincerest gratitude for the son you gave me and as a token of my regret for the life you had taken away from you on my account. Our son grew in my image. He deserves to know this. He deserves his share in my inheritance. Vaasco turned out badly. One day you will perhaps thank me for saving you from him. Think on that when you meet his widow. She is not what she seems and deserves your pity.
‘I pity no one who means to hurt my son,’ she murmured.
Maria’s son wasn’t hurting. He was sleeping the sleep of the thoroughly sated.
Lying beside him, Cristina watched him—just watched, as she’d used to love watching Luis sleep. He had a way of sprawling on his front across three-quarters of the bed, leaving her one quarter to curl herself into. She never minded. When he awoke, her quarter would become his quarter too, leaving the rest of the bed to grow cool.
Or it would if she intended to be here when he awoke. She had already delayed her departure for much longer than she should have.
But for now—for a few more precious seconds—she was content to reacquaint herself with the way his hair flopped over his forehead and how his face wore the relaxed expression of sleep.
Her tummy muscles quivered, her heart squeezing out a tight, painful ache. He was beautiful, her Luis. Passionate, demanding, insatiable—and the low-down pulse of just how insatiable still played its pleasure across the sensitive muscles where she loved to feel Luis most.
How had she lived six years without being with him?
How was she going to manage without him all over again?
They’d got up at one point between bouts of wild passion, gathering up clothes and closing doors. It had made her blush and him grin when they realised how they had left them standing wide open for anyone to come in and catch them.
‘My staff know better than to intrude on my privacy,’ he had stated with arrogant confidence.
Still, they’d been—noisy. She was blushing again now just remembering some of the gasps and cries she’d emitted in the throes of her pleasure. Or those tense little curses he’d rasped out as his control snapped, and the resulting driving sound of his breathing when he finally gave in.
He was no silent lover, this cool-headed half-Englishman she loved so much, Cristina thought with a smile. The desire to reach out and gently stroke that floppy lock of hair away from his forehead almost got the better of her.
But it was time for her to get up and go …
Stay a little longer, urged a soft voice inside her. See out the rest of the day, then the long dark night with him. Leave tomorrow.
No. The time to go was now … while she could.
Her heart gave that painful little squeeze in protest. At the same moment a pair of ink-black eyelashes lifted upwards and eyes the colour of a dark ocean focused on her face. It was as if he’d sensed what she was thinking, the way a set of long fingers reached up to brush a gentle caress across her cheek.
‘You’re still here,’ he said softly. ‘I was dreaming you’d left me.’
‘No,’ she whispered
Tomorrow, Cristina thought. I will leave tomorrow. ‘Kiss me, Luis,’ she begged.