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“No one has ever spoken to me the way you do,” she said, still smiling. Even her eyes were shining, bright enough to rival the path of the moon across the water. “I still don’t understand why I like it so much. Or don’t hate it the way I should. It was one thing when I was the Crown Princess and you could reduce me to nothing but a half-wild woman with a few dirty words. But now I really am nothing but a woman, and still. It has the same effect.”
Joaquin couldn’t listen to this. He couldn’t engage with her in this way.
Allowing her to talk at all was the problem. He knew that. Because he wanted, still and always, to glut himself upon her. There was no changing that, apparently. There was no pretending otherwise.
But he saw no reason why he should risklikingher again. When he looked back, he could pinpoint that as the disaster that had precipitated all the rest. Liking Amalia had been the beginning and the end. When had he everlikedanyone?
His life had not lent itself to such luxuries. It had all been about extremes. Living by his wits on the streets, viewing others as marks or possible future marks as he’d set about getting out of Bilbao. And then teaching himself a rudimentary understanding of finance, mostly because he had once encountered a group of hotshot bankers in Madrid who had sneered at him and told him to get a job.
I’ll take yours, he had replied.
And so he had. By virtue of buying everything that particular group of bankers had put their grubby fingers in, then firing each and every one of them. Simply because he could.
He had liked every step of the journey. He had liked how easy it was, once he put his mind to something, to make it happen. He had certainly liked firing the men who had thought themselves so much better than him on a city street.
But that was liking things he did. Not who he was.
Joaquin had never had friends. He had allies or enemies, with no in between. And well did he know that a friend one day was often an enemy the next.
He banked on it.
It had not been until Her Royal Highness Princess Amalia had gazed at him as if he was a sheer delight—there on a patio he’d built in the sweet Spanish sun he’d always taken for granted—that he had discovered there was something else.
He hadn’t understood it at first. What was this overwhelming compulsion he felt when he was near her? Not merely the urge for sex. He was used to that. He had always had healthy appetites.
It was only Amalia whosecompanyhe desired.
And look what it had got him.
He rubbed at his chest, annoyed that his heart still beat there. And worse, that he could feel it, as if it was a commentary on his behavior.
Joaquin could not allow this to happen again.
He would not.
“You were a virgin,” he told her now, his voice dark. Almost as dark as the sea outside, gleaming beneath the moon. “You do not know the ways that men are with women.”
And he could see the hint of a crease appear between her brows. He knew she would argue. Or say something that he would ignore in the moment and then spend the next eternity turning over and over in his head.
So he took her mouth instead.
And he wrested the sheet from her fingers, letting it pool at her feet, before lifting her up and wrapping her legs around him. Because surely, if he sank into her completely—if he indulged himself completely—he would burn this out, whatever this was.
This unwelcome poltergeist of sensation inside him that had never abated.
No matter how he had tried these last few years to blot her out as if she had never existed.
He carried her back to the bed and lowered them both down.
Her sighs were like music. Her taste was addictive.
But he’d already answered the question to his own satisfaction. She’d been a virgin that summer and he had been foolish. Neither of those things applied to this situation. Neither of those things were factors any longer.
He did not have to be careful with her. He could treat her as he had treated any woman, though he rarely allowed them more than a night. Perhaps a weekend, on rare occasions, usually because he needed a date for some or other event in some far-off locale. He always made certain the women he took with him knew where they stood.
If they didn’t like his bluntness, he was always more than happy to find someone else.
Joaquin Vargas was known for his business decisions, ruthless and sometimes cruel. He treated women the same way.
