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‘You want me to get into the water clothed?’
‘If I were a man, I’d throw you in that bath!’ Sarah raged.
The last stud surrendered. ‘You do not need to throw me. I come willingly…with enthusiasm,’ he stressed.
‘I am not sharing that bath with you!’
‘You are a puritan. Don’t worry. We can overcome this problem.’ His sudden slashing grin radiated megawatts of inherent charm and the sort of ruthless determination that took Hannibal over the Alps.
For a split second she was transfixed by the powerful charge of his attraction. For a split second, he could have persuaded her to slow waltz on hot coals. After a staggered pause, she shot back, ‘I’m a very angry woman and I want you to leave!’
‘To go where?’ Rafael was giving the bath a nakedly regretful scrutiny.
‘To your own room, where else?’ She took advantage of his stillness and slid past him to jerk open the door and move into the bedroom.
‘You are in my room. I could always draw a chalk line down the centre of the bed. It would be like old times.’
Sarah swung round and almost overbalanced. ‘Your room? I’m not going to share this room with you!’
‘You will. We’re not having separate rooms,’ he asserted fiercely, all mockery banished by the look of horror on her face. ‘For years we have lived apart but now we are reconciled—’
‘I’m not reconciled with you!’ Sarah interrupted furiously. ‘I’m not one bit reconciled to what you did to me five years ago and I’m never going to be, either!’
‘I have as much cause to feel the same,’ he countered harshly. ‘But of what profit is it to us now? Sex is not a weapon, gatita, and I will not allow you to use it as one.’
Beneath her enraged stare, he strode back into the bathroom. Sarah dropped the towel and dived for her nightdress, feeling decidedly less exposed within its full-length folds. The early hours of the morning were not the best time for a confrontation. Tomorrow she would speak to Consuelo. No way was she sharing this room. And as for that bed? Birds would be singing in the heat of hellfire before she repeated that fatal error! Her attention fixed on the well-padded chaise longue to the left of the window. She trailed the bedspread off the bed and returned for a pillow.
Fury sparking through her, she battered the pillow into shape and curled up in her makeshift bed. How dared he make advances to her after what he had said in London? How dared he? Dear God, what did it take to satisfy him? They were here in Spain. Wasn’t that enough? She was reluctant to recall the ominous threats he had made in her apartment. He could not in cold blood drag her into that bed. In fact nobody was more aware than she that a marked lack of enthusiasm was all it took to hold Rafael at bay. There had to be certain ground rules in a situation like this and Rafael had to be made to realise that.
She had come here under pressure. On her terms, she had made a lot more than a compromise. Nowhere had she seen it underwritten that with their arrival a marriage that had fallen apart years ago was suddenly to be resurrected from the dead, regardless of how she felt about it! So much for the properly bloodless relationship he had talked about! It was her considered belief that someone of Rafael’s temperament had about as much hope of observing proper behaviour as an alien set down on planet earth.
Sex…she hated that word, hated the casual connotations she could not help attaching to it. Well, she was not a casual person and it was about time he realised that. Just because something that had always gone wrong had miraculously gone right in London was no reason to commit herself to a repeat experiment.
He reappeared, naked but for a carelessly knotted towel hung low on his lean hips. If all else failed, she reflected abstractedly with a suddenly dry mouth, she could always just sit and look at him. Caught red-handed on what was a very sexist thought, Sarah was both amused and shocked by herself. It belatedly occurred to her that in a funny way she was enjoying herself in this battle of wits. And since Rafael did not have a naturally modest bone in his body she read the towel as both concession and retreat.
A second later, she appreciated her mistake. Rafael bent down, scooped her up and dumped her back on the bed. He sent the towel sailing through the air and pinned her flat when she attempted to get up again.
‘That is a hideous nightdress. It would repel nine out of ten men,’ Rafael pronounced thoughtfully. ‘But I am still seeing you in the towel, that so very small towel. This is wasted on me.’
Resentment hurtled through Sarah. Rafael wasn’t playing fair. She could not fight his superior strength. ‘Is holding me down on a bed one more interesting facet of what you called a civilised marriage?’
‘Sarah,’ he reproached. ‘Surely you do not expect me to be civilised twenty-four hours out of every day? You told me you were a reasonable woman.’
‘This is not my idea of a relationship, Rafael.’
‘But we are still finding this relationship,’ he pointed out speciously.
‘All right, if you want it in simple English, I am not in the mood for another experiment!’ she snapped.
‘Tonight…’ His thumb moved caressingly over the sensitive inner skin of her wrist ‘…we make love, we do not experiment, and tomorrow, I paint.’
‘P…paint?’ Involuntarily, Sarah seized on the irrelevancy.
His dark head swooped down, his mouth pressing hotly to the tiny pulse flickering crazily beneath his thumb. ‘You have interfered with my concentration,’ he muttered absently.
An astonishing shiver of awakening awareness snaked through her lower limbs. It took tremendous strength of will to lie rigid. ‘If there was anything heavy within reach, your concentration would be the least of your problems.’ But her quip was shaky and indistinct. Something unforgivable had happened to her own concentration.
‘I like it when you argue with me.’ Rafael gazed down at her with eyes the sensuous shade of wild honey and that treacherous something gave a violent lurch in the pit of her stomach. ‘But not tonight.’
Without conscious intent her muscles were losing tension, easing into the gradually lowering embrace of his hard, virile body. Self-discipline slid, awareness creeping in. Her nostrils flared, reacting to the familiar, drugging scent of him and an elusive warmth began stealing through her. ‘No.’
‘De acuerdo,’ he murmured, choosing to misinterpret her entirely.
She stared up at him dazedly and somewhere inside her head a little voice of reason was screaming itself hoarse behind a locked door. Once again she could barely c
redit what was happening to her. He was barely touching her and her breasts were swelling, heat pooling in her pelvis. He carried her hand to his lips and the tip of his tongue very slowly inscribed an erotic tracery on her palm. It had the most extraordinary effect on her, a low moan breaking at the back of her throat. He brought his mouth teasingly close to hers and let his tongue dip in a single, hungry thrust between her parted lips in a caress that was sweeter than honey, headier than wine and her slender length jackknifed upward, inviting his weight.
‘You see,’ Rafael whispered softly. ‘Alcohol is not necessary.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
RAFAEL rolled sideways, carrying Sarah with him, heat and hunger blatant in the blaze of his eyes as he bound her to him with possessive hands. She could have lost herself in that moment as she slid deeper beneath the powerful spell he could cast. The air between them pulsed with emotional intensity and the unbearable tension jerked up another notch.
‘Touch me,’ he invited raggedly.
Warmth flooded her cheeks as he found her hand and spread her fingers. ‘I can’t,’ she gasped strickenly.
His mouth scorched hers like a burning brand, demanding and receiving her response, sending little tongues of flame through her weakened limbs. Her hand fanned over his lean, bronzed torso, feeling the wild thunder of his heartbeat and the enticing dampness of his skin. Her nightdress was tangled round her hips, forcing her into contact with his hair-roughened thighs. The muscles of his hard, flat stomach contracted violently beneath her roaming fingers and she jerked her hand away, reviling her own clumsiness.
‘Perdicion,’ Rafael groaned as if he was in agony.
His hands bit into her hips, a Spanish curse blistering her ears when he became twisted in the folds of her nightdress. The offending garment was dealt with mercilessly and his urgency melted her bones to water. Connecting with a broad shoulder in the darkness, she pressed her lips feverishly to the lure of his flesh.
Rafael reacted by flattening her to the mattress. ‘Por dios, he did not teach you so much.’ Primal satisfaction laced every syllable.
