Raul said nothing. Yet his look heated her skin. His mouth was a sensual line of temptation she had to resist.
Luisa’s heart drummed an urgent tattoo. Part of her wanted nothing more than to touch him. To feel his power beneath her hand. That was why she forced her hands behind her back and kept them there.
Did he read her desire? His brilliant green eyes were hot with an inner blaze and Luisa realised how close she came to being singed.
‘We married for legal reasons.’ Her words were slurred because her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. ‘So you can inherit. Remember?’
‘I remember.’ His voice was low, resonating through her body to places she didn’t know existed before. ‘I remember how it felt to kiss you too. Do you recall that, Luisa? The fire between us? The need?’
She shook her head and her veil swirled between them. It snagged on the gold braiding that marched across his tunic, emphasising the breadth of his chest.
‘It wasn’t like that. You just …’
Her throat closed as he untangled her veil. His fingers were centimetres from her breast and she sucked her breath in, trying not to think of him touching her there.
But breathing meant movement. Her breast brushed his hand. She gasped as sensation pierced her and she trembled.
He didn’t look up but she saw his lips curve.
‘I’m not some passing amusement.’ She gritted her teeth, trying not to breathe too heavily.
‘I never thought you were. I take you much too seriously for that.’ His eyes snared hers and she forgot about breathing. His hands dropped away to hold hers, warm and firm. ‘You are my bride. You’ll be the mother of my children. I don’t take you lightly at all.’
His mouth curved up in the sort of smile mothers had warned their daughters about for centuries. Luisa felt its impact like a judder of power right down to the soles of her feet.
Her heart raced—in indignation she assured herself. Yet indignation had nothing to do with the hunger coiling inside or the febrile heat flooding her body.
‘I never agreed to share your bed.’
She tried to summon anger but discovered instead a jittery thrill of dangerous excitement.
‘You don’t want children?’ His brows rose.
‘Of course I want—’ She stopped and tried to harness her skittering thoughts. ‘One day.’ Once she’d dreamed of a family. But with Raul? She’d thought this a paper marriage. Or had she deliberately deceived herself? Heat poured across her skin and eddied deep in her womb.
The trouble was he tempted her with the very thing she’d tried unsuccessfully to deny wanting: him. From the first she’d been unable to prevent herself responding to him at the most basic level.
He took desire for granted but for her it was momentous. Life-changing. She’d learnt distrust too young.
His smile would reduce a lesser woman to a puddle of longing. Luisa it merely turned to jelly. Her knees gave way with a suddenness that astounded her.
Why didn’t it surprise her when he swept her up against his chest in one fluid, easy move?
‘I never said …’
He crossed the room as if she weighed nothing, entering another chamber and kicking shut the door. This room held a wide bed that seemed to stretch for hectares. The sight of it dried her mouth.
He lowered her and Luisa shut her eyes, wishing she didn’t delight in the friction of each slow, tormenting centimetre as she slid against him.
‘I thought you had spirit, Luisa. Why are you afraid?’ His tone sharpened. ‘Did someone hurt you?’
Her eyes snapped open at his husky anger.
‘No. I wasn’t hurt.’ Not physically at least.
Yet he was right. She was afraid: of these new overwhelming feelings. Afraid she’d lose herself if she gave in to this longing. That it was a betrayal of her moral code—giving herself to a man she didn’t love.
Yet standing here, bereft now of his touch, feeling the heat of his breath on her face and his body so close, desire twisted deep. Hunger for an intimacy she’d never had. Would never have with love, not now she’d given herself in a cold, practical bargain.
He’d robbed her of that chance.
The realisation was an icy hand on her heart.
She’d never experience true love. Would never have what her parents had shared. That was what she’d always hoped for, especially after the disaster of her first romance.
The knowledge doused her fears and made her angry as never before. Scorching fury rose, stronger than regret or doubt.
Raul had taken so much from her.
‘Is it so wrong to find pleasure together?’ He voiced the thoughts that already ran, pure temptation, through her head. ‘You disappoint me, Luisa. I thought you woman enough to admit what you feel.’
Luisa stared up into his hot gaze and wanted nothing more than to wipe away his smug self-satisfaction. For him desire was easy. No longing for love. No doubts or fears.
A tumble of images cascaded in her head. Turning on her heel and storming out. Or walking serenely, with a cool pitying expression on her face as she left him behind. None of them did justice to the roiling tide of emotion he’d unleashed.
Instead Luisa stepped in, slamming hard against his body. She took his face in her palms and kissed him full on the mouth. She leaned in to him till, with a flurry of billowing silk, they collapsed onto the bed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS like holding a flame, or a bolt of lightning.
Luisa was all urgent energy. Her touch, her body, igniting explosions in his blood.
Sensation speared through him. White light flickered behind his eyelids as she pushed her tongue into his mouth in an angry, urgent mating. There was little finesse but her hunger incited the most possessive urges.
She grabbed his scalp as if to imprison him with her scorching passion.
Raul welcomed it, meeting her questing tongue in a desperate kiss that was more like a battle for supremacy than a caress.
He felt alive as never before, caught by a throbbing force that drove every thought from his head but one.
The need for Luisa. Now.
He growled in his throat as he lashed one arm around her waist and the other lower, clamping his hand on her bunched skirts to pull her tight against his groin as he sank back on the wide bed. He was on fire.
Splayed over him, she wriggled as if she too couldn’t get close enough. He pushed his hips up and felt her legs slide satisfyingly wide to surround him.
Yes!
It was as if she’d smashed the lock on his self-control. All those primitive urges that he, as a civilised man, had learned to suppress, roared to the surface, stripped bare by this woman who kissed as if she hated him.
He knew passion, used it as a release from the difficulties of life under the spotlight. But never had it been this blistering current of untrammelled power.
Again he rocked up into her encompassing heat and she pushed down to meet him with a jerky movement that spoke of need rather than grace.
Raul scrabbled at the mass of her skirts, pulling it higher and higher around her back till finally he touched silky bare skin. His pulse throbbed in his throat and his groin simultaneously as he clamped both hands to the taut warm silk over her backside. He could almost swear flames crackled around them.
The sound of her cry, a wordless mew of encouragement against his mouth, notched the tension impossibly higher.
Holding her tight, he drew her pelvis to his in a circling movement and sparks ignited in his blood.
A moment later he had her on her back, a tumble of silk and lace and femininity. Hands around her slim waist, he tugged her higher up the bed with a strength born of urgency.