The Spaniard's Love-Child (13 page)

‘Most women would have been screaming their heads off,' he said. ‘But not Roxie. Do you know what she did?'

‘Why did you get divorced, Tristram? I mean, you're obviously still in love with her.'

Her companion began to hotly disclaim it, then caught Nell's eyes. He sighed. ‘We were both busy with our careers and we just drifted apart.'

‘Other people?'

‘That is always a problem in our industry. You spend so long apart. So, all right,' he sighed, catching Nell's expression, ‘that's no excuse. I guess it's true—you never appreciate what you have until it's gone,' he admitted.

‘And now she's with Raul.'

‘Yeah, it sort of looks that way,' he agreed gloomily.

Nell couldn't think of anything to say that would make
him feel better—not without lying. Tristram was charming, had a great sense of humour and liked women, but would any woman leave Raul for him? Nell didn't think so.

 

Feeling like a teenager who'd stayed out past her curfew, Nell crept furtively up the stairs with her shoes dangling in her fingers. She didn't go directly to her room; instead she looked in the children's rooms—both were dead to the world. The sleep of innocence, she thought with a tinge of envy.

Outside in the hallway Nell pressed her shoulders against the wall and heaved a sigh. There was an expression of poignant regret reflected on her face as she closed her eyes briefly and gathered her thoughts. She had wondered a lot over recent days how she would know when she should leave, but tonight the decision had been made for her.

This was where she wanted to be, but it wasn't where she belonged.

It would be best for everyone, including her. The children would miss her a little at first, but not for long; they had made new friends and a new life. She angrily blinked back the tears of self-pity that rose in her eyes and lifted her chin. She had fallen in love with Raul—but people suffered unrequited love every day of the week and survived.

So would she.

There were things that would be harder to survive, she reflected grimly, and if she stayed around here she'd experience them.

Her breathing quickened and her pupils dilated as she recalled the hunger stamped on Raul's hard, strongly etched features when he had looked at her. The memory of being held in his arms, feeling the erotic imprint of his hot, hard
body was something she would never forget, but it was something she couldn't let happen again.

She knew that Raul was a sensual man, a man with strong appetites. A man used to seeing something he wanted and taking it—hell, wasn't that part of what turned her on about him? But it wasn't enough for her.

She wasn't naïve or judgmental—people had affairs, it happened—but it wasn't something she wanted for herself. If there hadn't been a Roxie she might have been prepared to compromise her principles—actually there was no ‘might' about it. But Roxie was a fact, and one thing Nell couldn't compromise on was exclusivity. Neither would she be the other woman.

The problem was if Raul touched her, her high-flown principles would be history, and she knew it, which meant she had to make sure he never did, and fast!

People didn't really die of a broken heart, she told herself as she pushed open her bedroom door. She closed it behind her and leaned against it before reaching out for the dimmer switch.

‘Where the hell have you been? Do you know what time it is?
Three-thirty
…' Raul intoned grimly without consulting the watch on his wrist.

The shock of finding him like a dark avenging angel standing there momentarily sent her brain into shut-down.

His dark eyes raked the slim body standing before him. ‘Do you realise how inconsiderate this sort of behaviour is? Well?' he demanded, taking an impetuous step towards her frozen, wide-eyed figure.

The action jolted Nell to a weak response.

‘What are you doing in my room? In the dark?'

Her hungry eyes swept over the hard contours of his hard, masculine body. Devastatingly beautiful—
always
—but no longer perfectly groomed. His tie and jacket were
gone, and his shirt buttons undone to mid-waist—
Do not go there, Nell!
His normally sleek dark hair was standing up spikily. The image evoked two very strong but contradictory desires in Nell. She wanted to smooth back his hair and rip off his clothes.

Not necessarily in that order.

‘Do you?'

Nell blinked.

‘What sort of message are you sending Katerina with this kind of behaviour?' His mouth compressed in a thin, disapproving line as he visibly fought to contain his feelings.

‘She's asleep,' Nell rebutted weakly. ‘And I'll be up in time to take them to school.'

Eyes like black ice drilled into her.
‘School…?'
he echoed contemptuously. ‘This isn't about school!' he thundered.

‘Then what is it about?' she asked quietly.

The question halted him quite literally in his tracks. Nell, who had never seen Raul, the master of the cutting one-liner, at a loss for words before, found it disorientating to see him struggle to express himself.

‘Have you been waiting up for me?'

The quiet question earned her a glare of profound disbelief.

‘Whatever gives you that idea?' He ran a savage hand through his disordered hair and took a deep breath. ‘I spent an hour looking for you at that damned interminable party before some idiot mentioned he'd seen you go off with Nichols.' There was a rasping vibration in his forceful drawl as he lowered his eyelids abruptly over a look of seething fury. ‘The least you could have done was let someone know you were leaving.'

‘I don't see why. Do I have a curfew?'

‘What you're supposed to have is self-respect,' he lashed contemptuously.

Nell's cheeks burned with angry mortification. ‘You've got no right to speak to me that way. You're not responsible for me.'

‘Well, someone needs to be because you're quite obviously not fit to look after yourself.'

In her turn Nell was becoming angry. ‘At least I'm not a hypocrite.'

His eyes narrowed on her angry face.
‘Meaning?'

‘Meaning,'
she choked, ‘when was the last time you spent the night in your own bed? And just for the record I've been looking after myself with reasonable success since I was eighteen,' she retorted, resentful of this incompetent female tag he had attached to her.

‘Is that including the years you lived with my brother?'

‘My life would have been very different if Javier hadn't been there for me,' she agreed quietly. ‘He was a very special person.'

The anger abruptly drained from his face, leaving him looking very much like a man who'd spent a sleepless night. He ran a hand over his jaw where the heavy shadow looked bluish black. ‘My father was never the same after he left,' he revealed unexpectedly. ‘And I know that obeying Father and not contacting Javier was the hardest thing that Mother ever did.'

‘I suppose they were glad they still had you…?'

She was disappointed but not surprised when Raul displayed no inclination to enlarge upon his previous comments; she had already noticed that he didn't like to talk about himself. He was very adroit at
not
answering personal questions. All part of his self-contained, self-controlled in-charge persona.

‘Where have you been? I know you didn't go back to his flat.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘Because I went there,' he revealed in a driven tone.

‘You did?'
Nell stared at him. Had he taken Roxie with him on this save-Nell-from-herself expedition? ‘Well, I wasn't there.' For a moment she contemplated the scene that might have occurred if she had gone back for coffee and Raul had arrived in this belligerent mood.

‘I know that now,' he snarled ‘But where else was I supposed to look?' he muttered thickly. ‘You were drunk, and that sleaze is just the type to take advantage,' he pronounced before muttering something dark in Spanish.

Nell felt impelled to defend this slur on Tristram's good name.

‘Tristram wouldn't do anything of the sort.'

Raul's jaw tightened aggressively; the bands of colour that were highlighting the strong masculine angles of his cheekbones had deepened several shades.

‘But I would, I suppose.' And wouldn't she have some justification to think this? Wasn't the reason he didn't think Tristram could have spent the evening with her without making a move that he was sure as hell he couldn't have!

Nell looked startled by the abrupt accusation. ‘I didn't say that. I know you don't like him because of Roxie,' she said, injecting an understanding note into her voice even though inside she felt like screaming, ‘but Tristram is really a very nice man and he wouldn't do anything like that.'

‘Unless you asked him to.'

There was a pulsating silence. An angry tear slid down her cheek. She brushed it carelessly away.

‘Maybe I
wanted
to be taken advantage of,' she flung recklessly. ‘But not by him.'

Raul inhaled, the sound loud in the room as his chest
expanded. Eyes dark as obsidian melded to Nell's scared, iridescent blue gaze, he slowly exhaled. There was no discernible expression on his face to give her a clue to what he was feeling, but the tension in the room had zoomed off the scale in the past few seconds.

‘We didn't…I didn't…we went to a club and talked…'
Why am I telling him this? Why did I have to say anything at all?

Nell wanted the floor to open up and swallow her. She had as good as handed him an invitation and he hadn't responded. It was pretty difficult to interpret that as anything other than rejection, which was what happened when you were rash and foolish enough to reveal your innermost feelings. It was a blessing that her wayward tongue had stopped short of expressing her undying love!

The night is still young, Nell,
the voice in her head contributed drily.

‘A lot of talking.' His expressive upper lip curled contemptuously as, hands thrust deep into his pockets, he began to pace up and down in a tight circuit. ‘No wonder Roxie left him.'

‘I think it much more likely you're the reason she left him,' Nell retorted acidly.

Raul's eyes narrowed and his head reared. ‘I do not sleep with married women.'

‘Wow!' she gushed insincerely. ‘That must really cramp your style. Actually, I'd have thought married women were
just
your style. Being as they're so much less likely to require anything approaching commitment, aren't they?'

There was a white line of fury etched around Raul's sensually sculpted lips. ‘For the record, I met Roxie about two years after they split up; a lot of water had passed under the bridge in that time.'

‘And men.' Under his ironic stare the apples of Nell's
cheeks turned a mortified pink. She deeply regretted the catty riposte the moment it left her lips, but her attempts to put things right emerged sounding pretty unconvincing even to her. ‘I really like Roxie. I think she's a very honest person.'

‘Sure,' he mocked. ‘The warmth and sisterly sentiment just jumped out and hit me when you were calling her a tart. Perhaps you should try for a bit of that honesty yourself.'

‘I wasn't calling her a tart,' Nell denied hotly. ‘And, considering how you've been coming out with snide, slanderous comments about Tristram all night, I don't really think you've got any room to talk. I don't know why you're being so nasty about him. If anything had happened tonight it would have been me that was taking advantage; Tristram is obviously on the rebound.' And desperate to rebound back to his ex-wife.

‘I've seen heartbroken and he wasn't it.'

‘God, you're a callous bastard,' she accused. She took a deep breath; when you started name-calling it was time to call it a day. ‘Look, this is going nowhere. I'm really sorry if you were concerned…or was it Roxie who was concerned?' If Roxie had had him running around looking for her traumatised ex all night that would explain his vile humour and obvious frustration.

‘Roxie went on to a club,' he revealed shortly.

‘Without you?'

‘As I am standing here, obviously without me.' This hadn't pleased Roxie. In fact Roxie hadn't been pleased with him full stop tonight.

Raul had told Roxie a long time ago that there was just no spark. But Roxie had known that being seen as a couple would give her a lot of expensive publicity for free. Tonight
she'd suggested that free publicity wasn't worth going around with someone who acted as if you were invisible.

‘I'm sorry if you missed out because of me.'

‘I was out of my mind with worry because of you,' he interrupted starkly.

‘Well, that does seem a little excessive.'

‘Excessive,' he repeated in a low, impassioned accent.
‘Excessive?'
No longer low, his voice rose to a heavily accented bass bellow of outrage. ‘Shall I show you excessive?'

I
N TWO
steps Raul had reached Nell. It took another heartbeat for him to frame her face in his hands and seal his mouth to hers with a hungry force that sent her arching backwards.

When he eventually lifted his mouth from hers Nell's heart was hammering; she could feel the blood throbbing through her veins. Her senses were swimming. All thought of rejection had been blitzed from her mind the moment he had touched her. She wanted him, his possession, in every fibre, every cell of her body! The wanting left no room for any other thought in her head.

‘Oh, God!' His dark features swam before her eyes. She blinked and tried to focus. ‘That was perfect,' she cried, leaking self-control fast. ‘
You're
perfect.'

‘This is going to be perfect,' he promised thickly.

‘What is?'

Though his expression was fiercely needy, a glimmer of wry amusement flashed across his face. ‘I think you know,' he suggested throatily.

Her eyes still welded to the strong lines of his amazing bronzed face, Nell gave a tiny nod of acknowledgement. ‘I just wanted to hear you say it. I want to know if it sounds the way I imagined,' she revealed with a mixture of self-consciousness and defiance.

‘I am going to take you to bed and make love to you.' His head lowered as he ran his thumb over the full curve of her full, pouting lower lip before catching the soft, sen
sitive flesh in his teeth and tugging gently. ‘How does that measure up to your fantasies?'

‘I think I prefer the real thing,' she confided shakily.

‘This real?' Taking her hand in his, he pulled it onto his body.

Nell felt the hard ridge of his erection pulse against the constriction of his trousers. He grinned as her eyes widened in shock and then, with his eyes still fastened to hers, he slid his tongue inside her mouth. The skilful, sensual penetration made her groan.

Nell shuddered as liquid warmth filled the lower half of her body. Her body went limp and his supporting arm tightened across her narrow ribcage.

Raul gave a gleaming smile of predatory satisfaction. ‘I've been wanting to do that for a long time,' he confessed throatily.

Nell found her back pressed against the wall without having any recollection of how she had got there. The pleasure of his touch bordered on the intolerable. Could a person overdose on bliss? Nell felt as if she were drowning in his eyes.

She shuddered and said his name as he touched his tongue to the corner of her mouth. ‘You're so…so…mmm…' she breathed as his lips moved down the column of her neck. His kisses were addictive. He was addictive. Her fingers began to tug frantically at his belt.

Raul lifted his head, looked into her flushed, aroused face and shining, adoring eyes.

‘And you, my little one, are so beautiful, so desirable. First the black swimsuit, then this dress…' He drew a deep, ragged breath. ‘I have been through several sorts of hell thinking of someone else doing what I wanted to…' He covered her hand with his and helped her unfasten his belt.

The thought of Raul fantasising about making love to
her was more than her brain could cope with. ‘And what else did you want to do?'

‘Many things,' he told her in a voice that made her shiver helplessly with anticipation. ‘But first…' His hand moved confidently to mould the swell of one breast.

Nell's eyes widened with incredulous wonder and then closed tight as a wave of deep pleasure vibrated through her body. Biting her lip as his fingers found the prominent bud of her nipple, she pressed her face into his shoulder and gave a sob of pleasure.

Raul's hand went to the back of her head, his fingers massaging her nape, pressing deep into her thick, silky hair. The fluid musical flow of deep, vibrant Spanish made no sense to Nell but it was the sweetest, most exciting sound she'd ever heard.

He reached a hand behind her and pulled down the zip of her dress; it slipped over her shoulders. Eyes like flames licked down the pale curves of her partially clothed body. ‘Take it off, I want to see you,' he breathed thickly as he lowered his mouth to hers.

She stood there panting when he lifted his head.

Do you know what you're doing, Nell?
She let her eyes meet his and the answer to the question no longer seemed relevant.

There was an air of defiance that Raul found oddly touching as she slid the dress off her shoulders. It fell and so did his gaze. She stood there in a black strapless bra, matching pants and stockings. The ache in his groin intensified to a painful degree.

‘My God, you're beautiful.' There was an awed wonder in his raw observation.

Until he spoke Nell hadn't been aware that she had been holding her breath awaiting his reaction. As her body swayed towards him Raul grabbed the back of her head.

‘You are driving me crazy.'

They kissed, one passionate kiss blending seamlessly into the next, no two alike, all perfect and totally mind-blowing. Raul took his kissing seriously. Nell drifted along on the crest of a wave of discovery and delight until she felt his hands slide along her inner thigh, skimming over the sensitive skin towards the top of her stockings.

Raul felt her body jerk and stopped. ‘You don't like that?' he asked thickly.

She was finding it difficult to form words; her lips felt swollen and strange. She touched them with her tongue and saw the pupils of Raul's eyes dilate dramatically.

‘I don't like you stopping.' The force of emotions stronger than anything she had ever imagined possible wrenched the husky confession from her.

Raul gave a laugh of startled delight. The laughter was still vibrating in his chest when he placed his hands around her narrow waist and lifted her to waist-height.

‘Then I won't stop.'

Nell's legs automatically locked around him to seal their bodies at waist-level. An earthy groan was drawn from the depths of his chest as her arms went around his neck until her breasts were flattened against him.

As he walked backwards towards the bed Nell continued to press kisses to his face and neck. When the back of his knees touched the bed Raul sat down slowly, taking Nell with him.

Nell blinked to find herself sitting on top of him. She ran her fingers down his throat; his golden skin was covered with a faint sheen of sweat. She tasted the salty tang of it when she touched her tongue to the pulse-point that throbbed at the base of his neck.

She laid her open-palmed hand on his chest then, with a
sultry smile, straightened her elbow. The pressure sent Raul backwards onto the bed.

His deep, throaty laugh sent shivers of desire down her spine.

She made the most gloriously primitive sight. A red-haired beauty astride him, an elemental figure, she was the most incredibly erotic thing he had ever seen in his life.

‘I'm all yours.'

Having control placed firmly in her court, Nell experienced a brief flurry of panic—she didn't know what to do with it! Seconds later a latent sensuality in her make-up that she hadn't known was there kicked in and took control.

Eyes half shut, Nell leaned forward, her body loose and supple. The action caused her hair to brush lightly against Raul's face as she planted her hands either side of his head.

In response to Raul's slow fingertip exploration of the smooth flesh of her shoulders her head went back, exposing the long, lovely line of her white throat.

It wasn't until she registered the touch of cool air on her skin that she realised he had unfastened her bra.

Raul, unable to resist the temptation of the sway of her pink-tipped, unfettered breasts, took the weight of one soft mound in the palm and, drawing it towards him, fastened his teeth around one delicious tight bud.

‘Oh, God, Raul!' she gasped and squirmed against him as his tongue began to stroke and tease her sensitised flesh. She managed to endure the sweet torture for a matter of seconds before the strength went out of her arms and she collapsed on him in a soft, panting heap.

Raul slid his fingers deep into her hair, ran his tongue over the pulse at the base of her throat, and tipped her over onto her side. Nell, finding her hands free, grabbed his head and plunged her tongue into his mouth. She felt a shocked
quiver run through his lean frame before he began to kiss her back, matching and surpassing her raw hunger.

The fractured words of husky Spanish that fell from his lips when they weren't pressed to hers sent her deeper into the spiral of passion.

‘Yes,'
he murmured in throaty approval as her hands began to rip frantically at his clothes.

His shirt parted under her determined assault, and with a sigh of relief she spread her fingers across the warm, slightly damp skin of his chest, twisting her fingers into the whorls of dark body hair scattered across his lean, rippling torso.

Raul lay there with his eyes closed, breathing hard as she pulled back and her fingers skated across the flat expanse of his washboard-hard belly. She watched with fascination the visible contraction of taut muscle under her fingers.

‘You're perfect.' At her dazed whisper his eyes opened.

‘You want me?' he breathed, removing himself from her to slide his buttonless shirt from his shoulders.

Mutely she nodded.

Satisfaction male and primitive flared in his eyes as he slid his trousers over his lean hips and kicked them aside; his boxers swiftly followed suit—not that they had concealed much from her fascinated gaze to begin with. His body was a perfect blend of power and grace. Her throat ached and the fist of desire that clutched low in her belly tightened as she looked at him with helpless longing.

‘Now,' he announced, ‘it's my turn.'

Nell closed her eyes as she felt his hands mould her aching breasts, weigh them in his hands, tease the already engorged peaks before moving over her stomach, skimming over the gentle mound of her belly, before sliding lower,
his fingers peeling the tiny briefs back, and sliding them down her legs.

Her breath came in tiny gasps as he kissed the arch of her foot before touching the soft red-gold fuzz at the apex of her legs. His exploration deepened and her body arched, but she settled back and opened her legs in mute invitation.

It was an invitation he accepted without hesitation. His slow, sensual exploration drove her to the brink of release several times. By the time he settled between her thighs she was sobbing his name.

She gasped as she felt the touch of his velvet hardness and a keening cry left her lips as he thrust deep into her. The sensation of being filled was incredible. Better than anything she had dreamed possible. She was vaguely conscious of shouting something along these lines as he remained strangely immobile suspended above her, but part of her.

Her vocal semi-articulate appreciation continued as he began to move deep and slow within her, feeding the raw urgency in her blood, until she felt she could bear it no longer. Just as she felt the first quivers of an orgasm that began in the deepest part of her and spread out to involve every part of her body he cried out her name and slammed hard into her twice.

She felt the warmth of his release as her entire body was bathed in the golden glow of completion. She stroked his slick golden back as he lay spent on top of her.

It was a little while later, when his breathing had slowed, that he slid off her. He lay on his back looking at the ceiling, not touching her.

That bothered her.

‘You didn't sleep with Javier?'

His words gave her a sinking feeling. ‘Javier never
wanted to sleep with me.' It didn't even occur to Nell that she had to say she had never wanted to sleep with Javier.

The hand she had been about to place on his shoulder froze mid-air as her eyes met his furious gaze. ‘You are drunk…'

‘No, I'm not.'

‘
Drunk!
I slept with a drunk virgin. A drunk virgin who was thinking about my brother!'

‘I wasn't!'

Ignoring her bewildered denial, he leapt from the bed in one fluid motion and began to pull on his clothes with haphazard haste. ‘I have to go,' he said, avoiding her eyes.

‘Stay. We need to talk.'

His hot gaze roamed over her pale body. ‘If I stay, we won't talk, and I've no intention of making a bad decision worse by repeating it.'

Bad decision!

She cried for a while after he had gone and then, when she was all cried out, she sat up. With a decisive sniff she straightened her shoulders and blew her nose.

She knew what she had to do.