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What had it been like for him? The son of Eduardo Zaforteza’s mistress, his mother isolated by a relationship that had been flaunted rather than more acceptably concealed. Behind her lover’s back, Pilar must have been shunned and despised, and how had that affected Raul? Until his father had adopted him, nothing had been certain or safe in Raul’s life.
Raul must have developed his own defences at an early age. After his mother’s death, he’d lived as a bitter bone of contention in a destructive, acrimonious marriage. He had once remarked that in disputes between couples the child was often the weapon, that she had to know that as well as he did, only at the time she hadn’t picked up on what he was telling her about his own background. In the same way, she remembered his unexpected outrage when she had made a crack about what he might consider a ‘decent mother’. She had never dreamt what a sensitive subject that might be, and now winced at the recollection.
Finally she was beginning to understand the man she loved, but her dismay increased in proportion to that new understanding. At some stage in that damaged childhood and adolescence Raul had begun protecting himself, by keeping emotional ties that might threaten his equanimity on a superficial level. It showed in his relationships with women, even in his hopelessly defensive attitude to his estranged grandfather. He didn’t risk himself, he held back, and yet he didn’t hold back with Luis, Polly conceded painfully. He loved their son with unashamed intensity, and was conte
nt, indeed happy to focus his emotions on their child.
And that meant that she herself was still chasing hopes that were unattainable. Raul would never love her. If their marriage was to survive, she had to get her priorities in order and stop expecting more from Raul than he was capable of giving her. And yet, according to Melina, a little voice gibed with cruel effect, he had loved her...
Sprawled with elegant indolence on the rattan seating, a look of amusement on his bronzed features, Raul studied Polly while she watched the dancers on the beach with unconcealed fascination. The tambores—African drums made out of hollow logs—supplied the frenzied beat for the male and female figures twisting and shaking with abandonment.
‘I thought you would enjoy this,’ Raul murmured with lazy satisfaction. ‘That’s why I organised it.’
Meeting his stunning dark golden eyes, Polly burned. She had to drag her attention back to the dancers. The intensely sensual movements of the gyrating couples were becoming ever wilder.
Raul curved a long arm round her and she felt her whole body quicken with instant awareness. Over the past twelve days Raul had taught her to value every hour that they spent together, and every morning she got up, apprehensively waiting for him to announce that they were leaving the villa. After all, this coming weekend the fiesta would be held at the ranch. But right now Polly wanted time to stand still, because here nothing else seemed to touch them.
Raul made a lot of phone calls and used a computer to stay in touch with the world of business, but he was with her almost all the time, more relaxed and less restless and driven than she had ever known him to be. He never seemed bored. In fact he was rather like he had been in Vermont, she registered, with slight surprise at that acknowledgement. Talking to her, interested in her, amusing, entertaining, even tender, all the tension gone, the sole difference being that sexual intimacy now deepened their relationship.
As the dance appeared to be reaching a climax, Polly was astonished when another woman stepped in. With frantically twitching hips she shoved the original female dancer away from the male and triumphantly took her place.
‘A comment on the fickleness of the male sex,’ Raul drawled, amused at her bemused frown over such an unromantic development. ‘You’re so innocent, querida.’
Not so innocent, Polly reflected tensely, enervated by that unexpected change of partners that came too close for comfort to her own deepest fears.
How long was she going to live with the secret terror that Raul might some day return to his discreet liaison with Melina D’Agnolo? Melina had already made it abundantly clear that she was prepared to wait for him, and no doubt she was equally ready to do whatever it might take to get him back. When would fidelity become a challenge to a male who didn’t love her? At what stage would her novelty value in the marital bed become boring and predictable? Disturbed by the insecure thoughts with which she was tormenting herself, Polly shut them down.
After thanking the dancers, they went back indoors to the marbled splendour of the spacious villa. Set beside a secluded palm-fringed beach of golden sand, complete with crystal-clear water to bathe in, the villa rejoiced in the surroundings of a tropical paradise.
They tiptoed in to see Luis, out for the count in his cot. Raul curved his arms round her from behind. ‘He really is special,’ he said huskily.
‘Naturally...he’s yours,’ Polly teased. ‘And because he’s your son, he is the most super-intelligent and advanced baby on this planet!’
‘You think so too, querida,’ he reminded her in a sensual growl as he slowly spun her round to crush her soft, willing mouth hungrily under his own. Her body sang with feverish hot excitement.
He carried her through to their bedroom and settled her on the bed, standing over her, intent golden eyes roaming over her slender length with the bold and unashamed desire that never failed to ease her secret fears. How could Raul want her so much and have room to even think of any other woman? How could he make love to her day after day and night after night with a seemingly insatiable appetite for her body and find anything lacking in her?
In heaven, Polly closed her eyes as he peeled off her clothes, piece by tantalising piece, pausing to kiss and caress every newly revealed curve and line of her until there wasn’t a single part of her quivering, wantonly aroused being that didn’t ache for him to possess her.
‘I’m going to teach you to dance like that with me,’ Raul murmured.
Polly’s eyes opened very wide on his devastatingly handsome face. He actually looked serious.
‘But only in private. I don’t want anyone else seeing the way you look at me, the way you move against me...’ he admitted hoarsely.
He was so intense about sex. In fact, for someone who had informed her that sex was merely another physical appetite, Raul seemed to be set on proving that every time he touched her it was another variation on an endlessly fascinating theme that pretty much absorbed him more with every passing day. He couldn’t keep his hands off her. He had gone from being a male who was not remotely tactile out of bed to a male who usually had her anchored in some way to him no matter where they were.
She framed his cheekbones with possessive hands and let the tip of her tongue dart provocatively between his lips. With a groan of hunger, Raul practically flattened her to the bed and kissed her with a fierce sexual need that melted her skin over her bones. And all cool was abandoned at that point.
A long while later, she lay limp with satiation while Raul abstractedly wound a strand of her hair round a long brown forefinger. ‘Tell me about the first time you fell in love,’ he invited without warning.
Polly glanced at him in surprise. Raul didn’t ask things like that. And it was an awkward question. One crush and one short-lived infatuation were all she had to talk about, barring himself.
He shrugged a bare bronzed shoulder. ‘Curiosity.’
‘He was called—’
‘I don’t want to know his name,’ Raul intervened instantly, jawline hardening.
