AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I’ve never tried to own a woman in my life. And you see this is why you don’t talk in bed—it gets too serious and now you’re freaking yourself out and stressing again,’ Ruy censured, dropping a kiss down on her parted lips, trailing his own slowly down her neck to her shoulder, lighting up a tingling trail of arousal through her trembling body.
‘I’m still furious with you!’ she protested, struggling to ground herself again and yet at the same time inwardly rejoicing at the concept of her own freedom from constraint, the precious ability to do as she liked for once.
All her life, after all, she had been the good dutiful daughter, instinctively tailoring herself to the role her father needed her to fill. She hadn’t had the liberty to choose a career once she had grasped that her father couldn’t afford to pay anyone else for the work she did. In the same way she hadn’t experimented with any young men because, working at the pub, she couldn’t risk acquiring a free and easy reputation, which would only encourage the often married men who tried to chat her up.
‘Why would you be?’ Ruy reasoned in what appeared to be genuine surprise as he stared down at her with smouldering dark golden eyes. ‘I’m solving problems for you.’
‘But I don’t need you to solve my problems.’
‘There’s no shame in accepting help when it’s available.’ Ruy kissed a rousing trail across one delicate shoulder, lingering on her collarbone, making her shiver convulsively, heat curling at the secret heart of her. ‘I’ll be disappointed if you decide not to model for me or accompany me to Spain but if those are the choices you make, I will respect them,’ he swore.
With those words, that assurance that she was still free to do as she wished, he broke the last chain of constraint holding her back. Bribery and blackmail only worked with the addition of pressure and he was removing the threat of that pressure. ‘You promise?’ she pressed tightly.
‘I promise, querida,’ Ruy husked, lean fingers spreading across her curvy derriere to angle her into collision with his erection. ‘I can take no for an answer when to do otherwise would make a woman feel intimidated.’
Her heart raced as she felt his readiness. ‘Take off your clothes,’ she urged helplessly, impatient and greedy now that he had soothed her fears.
Ruy vaulted off the bed and stripped at speed. Boots, sweater, jeans hit the floor in a messy heap, leaving him standing there before her for a split second, almost naked, and breathtaking in a way she had never known a man could be. He was very tall, very lean and all muscle from his sculpted torso and flat, corrugated stomach to his powerful arms and legs. Her attention lingered on the thrusting evidence of his arousal, clearly delineated by the boxers he sported, and her face burned, curiosity and anxiety melding as he strode into the bathroom and reappeared to toss a handful of condoms down beside the bed.
A handful? Surely he wasn’t planning on them doing the deed more than once?
He released the catch on her bra, cupped a firm full mound and suckled a straining nipple and an arrow of damp heat raced through her and settled into a dulled throb between her thighs. Her spine arched as she surged up to him, alight as a crackling fire craving oxygen. His mouth crashed down on hers again and the heat inside her surged even higher. Her hands danced over every part of him she could reach, toying with his hair, caressing his wide smooth shoulders, skating down the long line of his flexing back, fingers curling as he addressed his attention to her other breast and tugged on the sensitive tip until she moaned low in her throat.
An impatience more powerful than anything she had ever felt assailed her. Hunger clawed at her, a wanting, a need she had never before experienced. He took her mouth again, urgently tasting her, and every delve of his tongue made her temperature rocket.
He lifted his dark head, struggling to catch his breath. ‘Slow down,’ he urged. ‘We’re not in a hurry.’
Her eyes closed tight against the compelling contours of his beautiful face, defiance racing through her trembling frame because she didn’t like to be controlled and just then, as the giver of pleasure, he was controlling her. He might not be in a hurry, but she was. She ran a hand down over his flat stomach and stroked him, surprised by how smooth and yet hard, like steel wrapped in velvet, he was, delighted when he shuddered against her and groaned out loud, as responsive to her as she was to him and she liked that, really liked that feeling of power. She pressed him back against the pillows.
A glint lighting his dark golden gaze, Ruy used his hands to roll her over instead. ‘This that two-vote equality thing you mentioned earlier?’ he teased huskily, stretching a hand down to whisk off her panties before reaching for protection.
‘Maybe...’ Arms wrapping round him, Suzy pulled him down to her again, nibbling at his lower lip before passionately kissing him, unable to sate her longing for his mouth on hers again.
Ruy traced a finger over her swollen wet centre and a whimper of sound was torn from her as she lifted up to him by instinct, desperate to ease the drumbeat of need driving her, barely recognising herself when she was lost in that fierce craving. He slid between her trembling thighs and entered her in a powerful surge, and she jerked at the burn of his entrance into her untried body. It hurt and she gritted her teeth, shocked because she hadn’t expected pain. She closed her eyes tight and endured until the burn lessened, faded, turned into something else, a something that soothed and aroused and entrapped her afresh.
A ripple of excitement built in her pelvis and the promise of pleasure was so strong it held her spellbound. He felt extraordinary. Waves of heat and sensation shimmered through her sensitised body, exquisite sensation tugging at her with every thrust of his lean, powerful length. He ground down on her and went deeper and her world just exploded round her in a white-hot electrifying shower of response that lit her up inside and out. She tumbled back against the pillows, shattered by that climax, fascinated by an experience that had been so much more powerful than she had ever dreamt it could be.
Ruy pulled back from her and immediately saw the blood on her thighs and on him and he remembered the way she had hidden her face, the incredible tightness of her, and suddenly he registered that he had been a complete idiot and he was furious. Nobody was less able to cope with the suspicion that he had slept with a virgin than Ruy. Indeed, he had gone through a phase after his nightmare with Liliana of checking beforehand that no woman he slept with was an innocent. As a rule, though, the risk wasn’t great because Ruy rarely took younger women to bed.
‘How old are you?’ he suddenly demanded of Suzy.
Her smooth brow furrowing at the rawness of that enquiry, Suzy sat up. ‘Twenty-one...why?’
Dark golden eyes as hard and unyielding as the stone in his bathroom, Ruy surveyed her grimly and sprang off the bed. ‘You were a virgin. I had no idea and I wouldn’t have touched you had you warned me.’
‘Warned you?’ she repeated in shaken objection to his attitude. ‘Why would I have warned you?’
‘Because I didn’t sign up for this scenario,’ Ruy lanced back chillingly. ‘I don’t sleep with virgins...ever! I don’t want you attaching expectations to what just happened between us because sex means virtually nothing to me. I’m not about to fall madly in love with you and suggest that we have a serious relationship either... I don’t work that way. I’m sorry.’
A shuddering wave of humiliation engulfed Suzy as she stared back at him in shock. Unapologetic eyes challenged hers before he swung away to stride into the bathroom and the door slammed shut.
