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‘Perhaps you’d have preferred something from Cartier or Tiffany’s?’
She shook her head, eyes flashing. ‘No, I wouldn’t prefer that.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m wearing the wedding band—isn’t that enough? Or maybe you’d prefer if I wore a diamond-studded collar with a lead attached so no one is mistaken as to whom I belong?’
Irritation vied with frustration that she was so consistently refusing to conform to what he expected. He curtly instructed his driver to turn around and go back to the castillo.
‘Why are we going back?’ Trinity asked.
Cruz looked straight ahead. ‘We’re going back to get you an engagement ring.’
‘I don’t need one,’ she said stubbornly.
He looked at her. ‘It’s not a choice. People will expect you to have a ring.’
She rounded on him, tense and visibly angry. ‘Oh, and we can’t have anyone suspecting that this isn’t a real marriage, can we? Do you really think an engagement ring will convince people that you fell in love with your brother’s widow?’
Cruz wanted to laugh at her suggestion of anyone in his circle ever being convinced that people married for love, but for some reason the laugh snagged in his chest.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he breathed, his awareness of her rising in an unstoppable wave in the confined space. ‘No one would expect that. They’ll know I’m protecting what’s mine—my heirs.’
‘And I’m just the unlucky pawn who got in your way.’
The bitterness in Tiffany’s voice surprised him. Anger spiked at the way his control was starting seriously to fray at the edges. ‘You put yourself in the way—by seducing my brother. By inserting yourself into my nephews’ lives so they’d come to depend on you.’
She went pale and looked impossibly wounded. ‘I’ve told you—that’s not—’
Before she could issue another lie Cruz’s control snapped and he acted on blind instinct and need. He reached for Trinity, clamping his hands around her waist, and pulled her towards him, vaguely registering how slender and light she felt under his hands.
He only had a second of seeing her eyes widen with shock before his mouth crashed down onto hers, and for a long second nothing existed except this pure, spiking shard of lust, so strong that he had no option but to move his mouth and haul Trinity even closer, until he could feel every luscious curve pressed against him.
And it was only in that moment, when their mouths were fused and he could feel her heart clamouring against his chest, that he could finally recognise the truth: he’d been aching for this since the night he’d kissed her for the first time.
* * *
Trinity wasn’t even sure what had happened. A minute ago she’d been blisteringly angry with Cruz and now she was drowning and burning up at the same time. The desire she’d hoped she could keep buried deep inside her was shaming her with its instant resurrection. Brought back to life by a white-hot inferno scorching along every artery and vein in her body.
Cruz’s mouth was hot and hard, moving over hers with such precision that Trinity couldn’t deny him access, and when his tongue stroked hers with an explicitness that made heat rush between her legs her hands tightened around his arms, where they’d gone instinctively to hang on to something...anything...so she wouldn’t float away.
His hands were still on her waist and one started moving up her torso, until it came tantalisingly close to the side of her breast, where her nipple peaked with need, stiffening against the sheer material of her underwear and her dress. She remembered what it was like to have his mouth on her there...the hot sucking heat...the excruciating pleasure of his touch.
A voice from the past whispered through the clamour of her blood—his voice. ‘It should never have happened.’ It was like a slap across the face.
Trinity jerked backwards away from Cruz. She was panting as if she’d just run a race. Mortification was swift and all-consuming. He’d barely had to touch her before she’d gone up in flames. Any hope of convincing him she didn’t want him was comprehensively annihilated. It wasn’t even a comfort to see that his hair was dishevelled and his cheeks were flushed.
Those amber eyes glittered darkly. He muttered, ‘I told myself I wouldn’t touch you ever again, but I can’t not touch you.’
She took her hands off him, but he caught them and held them tightly. The recrimination on his face was far too painfully familiar. She was angry and hurt.
‘So now it’s justifiable for you to kiss me, even if you still hate yourself for it? Because I’m your wife and not just a lowly maid?’
She pulled her hands free and balled them into fists in her lap.
Cruz frowned, ‘What the hell are you talking about—justifiable?’
Trinity tried not to sound as emotional as she felt. ‘You rejected me that night because you couldn’t bear the thought that you’d kissed your maid. I saw the kind of women you took as lovers, and you don’t need to tell me that I was nowhere near their level—socially, economically or intellectually.’
Cruz clamped his hands around her arms, his face flushing. He was livid. ‘You think I stopped making love to you because I was a snob? Dios Trinity, that was not the case. I had to stop because you were my employee and I had a duty of care towards you. I put you in a compromising situation where you might have felt too scared to say no.’
His mouth twisted.
