The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo (11 page)

Rafael glanced at her. ‘You sound very knowledgeable. Is that from personal experience?’ He cocked an eyebrow at her.

She gave a smiling, self-dismissive shake of her head. ‘No. I’ve never done more than bodysurfing.’

Rafael kept his enquiring glance on her. Had it been a boyfriend, then, in years gone by, from whom she’d learnt about surfing? Someone from before whatever had traumatised her in her modelling career.

‘Surfer boyfriend, then?’ he asked laconically.

Like a shutter coming down, her face closed instantly. Just as it had when Australia had been mentioned.

Frustration bit at him. He had no wish to probe into what he knew must have been some trauma caused by the likes of Karl Reiner early in her modelling career, but he wanted to know a little of the ordinary things about her—did she have family still? Where had she been raised?—just as he had told her of his own background, and how he’d won a scholarship to an Ivy League university that had given him the opportunity to make his way in the world, and how his parents had been killed in an earthquake when he’d still been an undergraduate.

Yet she had told him so little!

But now she answered him. It was done reluctantly, he could see, because she did not quite meet his eyes as she spoke, but let them flicker away out to the sea beyond their table.

‘My father,’ she answered. ‘My father surfed. My mother used to tell me tales about him when I was growing up.’

Rafael heard the past tense in her speech.

‘What happened?’ he asked quietly.

She looked at him. She bit her lip, her expression drawn. ‘One day there was too rough a sea—’

She broke off. The server was at their table, depositing their plates in front of them. Rafael could have cursed her, but it was too late. Celeste’s expression had changed. The sadness in her eyes was gone. She made an appreciative murmur at the exotic seafood salad, smiling at the server to thank her.

‘This looks delicious! Thank you!’ she exclaimed.

The server smiled back. ‘Enjoy,’ she said, and headed off.

They started to eat, but Rafael’s mind was racing. So she had lost her father young—how young he couldn’t tell, but young enough for her mother to have been the one who had told her about her father’s love of surfing. A love that had proved fatal?

Another thought struck him. Was
that
behind her clear reluctance—shown to him twice now—whenever Australia was mentioned? Was it because it had been while surfing in Australia that her father had died? He wanted to ask but felt it would be too intrusive, too inquisitive. Instead he chose another response. One that resonated with his empathy with her.

He looked across at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘It is hard—hideously hard—to lose a parent, whatever our age.’ He took a breath. ‘I can still remember the day when I heard that my parents had not survived the earthquake that had hit my home village. I was at university, almost a grown man, but I broke down and wept like a child—’

There was a catch in his voice. He could not stop it. Found himself blinking. Then there was the touch of a hand on his wrist. Fleeting, momentary, but there all the same.

‘To be so far from them must have made it even harder for you,’ Celeste said softly. ‘But perhaps...’ She chose her words carefully. ‘Perhaps you can take a little comfort from knowing how proud they must surely have been of you for gaining entry to such a formidable, elite place of education, and how relieved they must have been to know that you were not caught up in the disaster yourself.’

He nodded, taking another breath. ‘Yes, you are right. And I owe it to them—to their endless encouragement of me as a child to fulfil their dreams for me, which they worked so hard to enable me to realise—’

Rafael’s eyes rested on her. His parents had dreamed of a better life for their son—a life free of the endless toil they had spent their years enduring. But they had dreamed of something even more important for him, he knew.

They wanted me to find that special person—the one I could make my life with, the one I could cherish and care for, who would cherish me in return, with whom I would have the grandchildren they never lived to see...

His eyes drank her in, this beautiful, pale-haired woman sitting opposite him to whom he was so drawn, whose beauty was not just in her face, her graceful body, but was also in her temperament, her sweetness of nature, her sensitivity and kindness, in the determination he had witnessed when she had got the hapless Louise out of the ruthless clutches of Karl Reiner.

Emotion moved within him.

Is she that one? Is she the one my parents dreamt I would one day find? Is that why I am drawn to her as I have been drawn to no other woman?

Madeline, he thought bitingly, would never have been the woman his parents would have wanted for him. She would have half scared them, half repelled them. And, as for Madeline, she would have wanted him to discard them as she had discarded her own lowly parents.

She had made no secret of the fact that she had bought her working-class parents a luxury bungalow in Bournemouth, then never gone near them again. She would have expected him to do the same—to settle his parents comfortably, then cut them out of his globetrotting, glitzy life to spend his time exclusively with her, being a glittering, glamorous golden couple, living in Manhattan, frequenting only the most fashionable and expensive restaurants, jaunting about the world in a private plane, entertaining the rich and famous, making more and more and more money...

That’s not what I want! Not any more.

Once he had enjoyed that lifestyle, with Madeline at his side. But since they had parted—since she had opened his eyes to what she truly was—his outlook on life had slowly changed. Now he knew with a deep inner resolve that what he wanted was right here in front of him, around him. A beautiful place to be, nature in all its cultivated bounty, and the company of a woman who wanted it, too.

And who wanted him. Wanted him as he wanted her...

Celeste. The only woman in the world he wanted...

His eyes rested on her, met her gaze which had returned to him. He smiled at her and drank her in.

And she smiled back at him...

There was sympathy in her smile, and kindness.

And intimacy.

And promise...

Rafael felt his heart lift—lift and sing.

CHAPTER TEN

C
ELESTE
DRESSED
ESPECIALLY
carefully that evening. Her body felt wonderful after the massage, and she seemed to have a glow about her. Her eyes looked more luminous to her tonight, her hair more lustrous. She’d left it loose completely, and it cascaded down her back in silken folds, feeling cool and sensuous on her skin. She slipped her dress over her head—layers of gauze-fine cotton in shades of blue...azure and cobalt and deepest turquoise in a haze of colour. It was worn off one shoulder, and fleetingly she remembered that the dress she’d worn that evening at the charity fashion show had been, too.

The first time she’d set eyes on Rafael.

A little tremor of emotion went through her.

I never dreamt then that I would be here, with him—now, like this!

Was it possible? Was it truly possible that she was here with him?

But as she joined him on the terrace for their customary pre-dinner drink she knew it was vividly true. The physical impact of his presence overwhelmed her, and his smile, as he saw her approaching, made her breath catch. He took her hands as she came up to him, stepping back from her to survey her.

He said something in Spanish she could not catch and smiled down at her again. And though his smile was warm his eyes were warmer still...

Warm with desire...

She felt a little thrill go through her—a shimmer of awareness, of more than awareness.
Intimacy.
She had felt it earlier that day at lunch, when Rafael had told her of his parents just after she had told him about her father, his life cut short so young.

A sense of wonder came over her as she thought about that. She had been so reluctant to say anything at all of herself, even of the distant past and her childhood. The past was dangerous—all of it. Yet somehow she had found it possible to tell him something of her father’s life, even if only that brief fragment. Tragedy had struck them both, she realised, losing their parents far too young, and perhaps that realisation was another thread that was drawing her to him.

Drawing her closer and closer yet.

How close?

The question hovered tantalisingly in her mind as they went down to dinner, her hand still loosely held in his.

It felt, she thought, with that little thrill again, the right place for her hand to be...the only place...

This is right—it is the right thing to do. To be here with Rafael. To accept all that has happened, all that will happen...

Certainty filled her. And a sense of peace. Rafael had been right all along. She could remake herself. She could leave the past behind.

She would give herself to what was between them wholly and fully, with no more reluctance or resistance.

The past is gone—there is only the present. The wonderful, magical present that has Rafael in it.

Happiness glowed within her, radiant in its power.

* * *

They ate, that evening, once again at the French cuisine restaurant by the shore. They had tried others, but this had proved their favourite. The setting was so spectacular, almost at the sea’s edge, and the lights from the hotel were shaded by the palm trees and plants framing the restaurant’s terrace.

After they had dined they walked along the pathway that led in the opposite direction from the beach, out onto a little headland beyond, where they paused.

‘Look,’ said Rafael.

Celeste followed where he was indicating.

A sliver of new moon was rising in the east—a slender crescent of silver. Rafael took her hand, nothing more than that, standing beside her as they stood in silence. His clasp was warm and strong.

She felt his fingers twine between hers. Felt her heart-rate quicken. Felt her head turn towards him. Felt the dark glow of his eyes holding hers. So rich, so full...

For one terrible moment she felt panic rising in her, clutching at her throat...then she felt it fading...fading in the warmth of his lambent gaze.

‘Celeste,’ he breathed, and then slowly, so very slowly, his mouth came down to hers.

His kiss was as soft as the breeze, as gentle as the caress of the new-risen moon. Moving slowly, sensuously, tenderly over her lips.

Wonder filled her, and as he drew back from her she could only gaze up at him, eyes wide, lips parted.

His free hand lifted to cup the side of her face. ‘Will you come to me, Celeste? Will you give yourself to what there could be between us?’

His eyes were searching. His fingers tightened on hers.

He took a breath, speaking with more care than he’d known he possessed. ‘I know that this has not been easy for you.’ And now his voice changed, became both hesitant and more resolute. ‘And I know you have scars on your soul.’ He took another breath. ‘I know that something bad happened to you a long time ago.’

He made himself go on, for this had to be dealt with—the buried poison in her had to be drawn out at last.

‘Perhaps something similar to the fate you saved that
ingénue
Louise from. No!’ he urged, for he had seen the flinching in her eyes, the pulling away of her hand, which he had to reclasp. ‘I say this to you only to show you that I understand, that I wish with all my heart that you could leave all that behind you. I ask nothing—only that you trust me. Trust me to share with you what
should
be between a man and a woman...this precious gift that nature gives us.’

His fingers at her face splayed, spearing gently into her hair, stroking with sensitive tips. She felt warmth dissolve through her, felt the terrible fear that had knifed her at his words fade. Her eyes fluttered, her breath caught.

‘This precious gift,’ he said again, and now his mouth was dipping to hers.

His kiss was as slow, as careful as before, as tender and as sensuous. But now, as his lips moved over hers, he eased hers apart, deepening his kiss. His hand slid around her skull, shaping it, holding her head. His body stepped forward into her space. She felt a rushing of sensation, felt her eyes close, her free hand wind around his strong, muscled back.

His kiss deepened more.

Wonder filled her. To be held, embraced, kissed like this! By Rafael... Here, on this magic isle, beneath the moon and the stars...

As he released her to gaze down at her, his eyes lambent in the starlight, the moonlight, she felt her heart sing—felt it soar. Wildly, like a bird set free.

For one long moment more he gazed down at her. Seeing in her face all that he had longed to see.

He brushed her lips with tender brevity. ‘Come,’ he said to her.

And she went with him. Went with him along the winding paths, beside the little waterfalls and fountains, beneath the trees with their glowing white flowers heady with fragrance. Walked hand in hand with him, wordless, for no more needed to be spoken between them. Their bodies would speak now.

He led her inside his cabana-villa, turning on no lights, locking no doors, leading her into the room with the wide, waiting bed.

‘How beautiful you are! Celeste...my Celeste!’

It was all he said before his hands reached to her, drew her into his arms, holding her wand-slim body against his. He was kissing her again, tenderly, softly, deeply.

For one last moment she thought she could feel the pain of the past seek to catch at her, to leave its slimy trail across her skin. Then it was gone. Replaced by the healing touch that was in Rafael’s lips, in the tender, arousing caresses of his fingertips at the nape of her neck, in the strong, cherishing warmth of his body embracing hers.

A sense of wonder—of freedom—swept through her.

This—
this
was how it should be between a man and a woman! This was where desire and passion met—in tenderness and sweet, sensuous cherishing! Never again would the echo of a foul touch pollute her with its poisoned tendrils...

She was free—finally free of the past that had netted her in its prison of rank and fetid memories.

Rafael had freed her! Set her free with every touch, every caress, every sweet and nectared kiss.

Slowly, sensuously, his hand unfastened her dress, peeled its gauzy layers from her. She wore no bra—she needed none—only a wisp of lace around her hips, soon shed, just as his unnecessary clothing was swiftly shed.

His eyes feasted on her, and then, as he laid her gently, tenderly on the waiting bed, his mouth lowered to her. Her hands reached to him—she let her fingers graze wonderingly along the lean, muscled lines of his torso, fold around his back, outline each sculpted plane and curve. His lips were on her skin, arousing her with each soft and sensuous caress in whorls of sweetest pleasure, whorls that seemed to meld and join, until her whole body was a mesh of sensuous delight.

She could hear a moan in her throat, low and husky, feel a quickening of her pulse, a mounting restlessness in her limbs. Her hands pressed into his body, drawing him closer, wanting him closer, wanting to feel that lean, hard weight against her.

He felt her desire and answered it, covering her body with his, splaying over her as his mouth sought and found hers again. Her tender breasts peaked against his chest, her long legs winding with his. His pace quickened, became more urgent, and it drew from her a matching quickening, a matching urgency of desire that sought fulfilment.

A fulfilment he could feel her straining against him to attain. Fire filled him. With swift urgency his thigh parted hers and he felt her lift against him. His hands meshed in hers, pressing them down upon the pillows as he took her mouth again, seeking and melding even as their bodies sought and melded.

She cried out—he could hear her—and he gentled instantly, fearing to hurt her. But her hips lifted to him, drawing him deeper. Fire flamed between them, burning fiercer and more fiercely, glowing with the white heat of a passion he had never felt before, an intensity that possessed him, possessed him utterly. He felt her body changing beneath his, felt its heat, its molten fusion with his.

He cried out, deep in his throat, and heard an answering cry from her, and then the living flame enveloped them both, consuming them.

It burned away from her all that she had feared for so long. The purifying flame seared through her, through every atom of her body. And as it ebbed she knew with absolute certainty that everything had changed—for ever.

Wonder filled her—and more than wonder. She clung to Rafael, clung to his sweated body, warm and heavy on her. She could feel his heart racing beneath the hard wall of his chest. Feel hers racing, too. His arm folded around her back, hand splayed over her spine.

He kissed her, his breathing heavy, smoothing back her hair with his hand. His eyes poured into hers. He said something to her in Spanish, which she did not understand. His voice was warm, and rich with emotion.

And then his forehead drooped, his body slackened. The arm around her back loosened. She saw his eyelids close, felt her own grow heavy. And even as sleep swept over him, so it did her, too.

Bodies still entwined, still fused, they lay together.

* * *

‘Ready?’

‘Yes!’

‘OK, let’s go.’

They lowered themselves off the rear platform of the boat into the translucent waters. Adjusting the mouthpieces of their snorkelling gear, they dipped down their heads and started to flap lazily across the surface of the sea, their flippers making their motion almost effortless as they gazed down, entranced, into the ocean beneath them.

She could feel her T-shirt billowing in the water. Wearing it was essential for her pale skin—unlike Rafael, with his natural dark tan. Her gaze wandered from the fish, to him, feasting on his honed, sculpted body, clad only in a pair of hip-hugging swimming shorts.

Emotion speared her. Could she really be here with him, now, in this paradise time together? After all her lonely, solitary years, imprisoned by her past, was it really so simple...so easy?

And yet it was! That was the wonder of it—the miracle. That in his arms she had made herself anew, stepped free of the prison of the past.

So easy—in the end, so miraculously easy...

So easy to be with Rafael, by day and by night, to be with him all the time, separated by nothing—not even the gardens of the hotel. She had moved into his cabana-villa and, whilst she was still insisting on paying her own share for meals and any activities, such as this morning’s snorkelling expedition, Rafael had refused to accept any contribution to his accommodation. It was costing him nothing to share it with her, he’d pointed out with irrefutable logic, and on that issue she’d had to concede.

And so she was here—here, as Rafael had said, for as long as they both could be. She, for her part, had emailed her agency, saying she would not be back yet, and Rafael had ruthlessly cleared his diary of anything other than remote interactions that he could conduct, if necessary, from the hotel’s business centre.

Because Celeste was his priority. Nothing else. Disbelief still washed over him sometimes, to think that she had finally found the courage to trust him—trust him not just with companionship but with passion and desire. For it had taken courage, he knew that. Whatever it was—that ‘something bad’ that she had glossed over—it had scarred her badly, poisoned her badly. Kept her in that lonely state she had been in, separated from all that she should have been free to give herself to.

But she’d stepped out of the long shadow the past had cast over her. Taken the hand he’d held out to her, stepped back into life—warm and joyous and passionate. To share it with him.

Share it
all
with him.

All that their time together could give them...

After their snorkelling Rafael could hardly wait to get her back to the cabana. ‘Time for a siesta,’ he told her, the glint in his eyes also telling her that sleep would not be high on their agenda for a while...

Celeste threw him a teasing glance. ‘Aren’t we going to have lunch first?’

‘No,’ he said, and kissed her to prove his point. ‘You are all I want to feast on,’ he told her, as they gained the cool privacy of the villa and he took her in his impatient arms.