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He’d never wanted to kiss a woman more. Not even Alicia, not even back then. There was a force at his back, a steel-like drive pushing him to her, and yet he held his ground, determined to triumph over even his own desire.
‘I will not kiss you unless you ask it of me.’
She bit down into her lip. ‘I can’t do that.’ Her eyes showed confusion. ‘I won’t. Graciano, our past—’
‘The past is irrelevant to this,’ he interrupted angrily, even when he knew the past had defined him in every way that mattered.
‘Graciano...’ Now his name was unmistakably a plea, and she leaned in, surrendering to him, so he exulted in the victory as he crushed his lips to hers, claiming her with all the need, anger and resentment that had stitched their way into his soul a long time ago.
Alicia almost jumped with the electrical current that arced inside of her when their lips touched. This was not a gentle kiss. It was not a kiss of two people reconnecting after years apart. It was a kiss of total dominance and, yes, of anger. She felt it in the bruising way he commanded her, demanded of her, and yet she didn’t—couldn’t—mind. She was angry, too, angry in a way she’d never allowed herself to be because of how futile that anger was. But how could she not feel it now? The waste of it all. The devastation wrought by her father’s behaviour, by Graciano’s disappearance.
She’d had their child, and kept her a secret from him.
He’d said the past was irrelevant. He’d said they weren’t themselves this week. And if that were true, then anger wouldn’t matter, but they couldn’t really step out of the past.
Anger was a natural way to feel, for both of them.
Her hand in his shirt moved to his shoulder and she was pulling him harshly down on top of her, fury swirling with hunger and need and fear, because Graciano had awakened something inside of Alicia she’d thought long dead.
A voice in her head screamed at her to stop this madness, to see sense, but she’d done the sensible and right thing for ten long years and Lord if she didn’t want to give in to desire just once, now. To satiate a hunger that had overtaken her, not bit by bit, but rather as an avalanche, all at once.
‘Please,’ she groaned against his neck as he moved his mouth to the flesh beneath her ear, then dragged it lower, to the pulse point at the base of her throat. He flicked his tongue against her skin and she whimpered, squirming, because her body was alive with flames and only he had the power to douse them. But first, he stirred them, fanning them, making her too hot, too desperately hungry for him. He lifted up a little, staring down at her with an expression she couldn’t understand, and then his hands pulled at her shirt, popping the top two buttons to reveal the delicate lace of her bra.
She panted as his hand moved to cup the underside of one breast, as if appraising it, evaluating it. She lifted her pelvis, no longer in control of her body, totally overcome by needs that were beyond her ability to temper.
His fingers brushed her nipple and she cried out, the touch electric and intimate, and so unfamiliar. Not since Graciano had anyone done this to her.
Always, he’d had this power over her.
Always, she’d been his.
But he’d never been hers. Not really.
Where she had loved him completely, and carried that love inside her, along with their child, he’d moved on as soon as he’d left Seville. The broken pieces of her life had been hard to order. How she’d needed him in that first year. How she’d pined for him.
Her grief flooded her, reminding her of the catastrophic after-effects of what had happened between them, and it was enough to kill her libido, to douse the fever pitch of need he’d stirred so ruthlessly.
‘Stop.’ She pressed a hand to his chest now, her breathing uneven, panic making her skin pale and clammy. ‘We have to stop this.’
Oh, God. What had she been thinking? She couldn’t be kissing this man! She shouldn’t even have agreed to come here. Everything was far too complicated. They shared a daughter, a daughter he knew nothing about. She’d kept Annie from him and at first that had made sense. But now? What justification did she have for lying to him about their daughter? How could she explain it?
It was so complicated and tangled, and terrifying, because Annie washerdaughter. Graciano had given up his claim on her a long time ago. At least, that’s what Alicia had been telling herself. But could a parent ever really give up on their own child, without being informed of the child’s existence?
Panic set in, pummelling her lungs so the air left them completely and she couldn’t reinflate them no matter how hard she tried. Her eyes filled with stars and her skin drained of all colour.
She wasn’t conscious of much, except for Graciano’s steady, confident hands lifting her into a seated position, then bringing her head forward, dropping it lower, his hand on her back rubbing rhythmically, his voice, Spanish words, low and soft, musical, reminding her of the way he’d spoken to her in Spanish back then, teaching her phrases, helping her learn his dialect.
Tears filled her eyes, but at least she could breathe again.
He evidently felt the steadiness return because he pushed to standing and moved away from her, staring out of the window for several long seconds, which she used to pull her shirt back together as best she could when the buttons were missing.
‘That was a mistake,’ she whispered, quivering fingers lifting to her lips and pressing against them. She closed her eyes and saw Annie’s face and felt as though she’d been felled at the knees. She was a mother first. Her personal wishes were a lot less important than what she owed to Annie.
He turned to face her slowly, hands on hips, expression impossible to read—only there was darkness in the set of his features, a danger that made her tremble.
Whatever love there’d been between them, even if it was just from her, had turned to something else. Something dark and angry. Hate.
‘You don’t want me to kiss you again?’
