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And on nights like this, she thought she could see it, too. She really could almost see it. Because that woman in the mirror looked as alien to a Kansas cornfield as Cayetano had. Delaney thought that really, she looked a bit regal.
She wasn’t surprised when Ferdinand led her into a new and different room this particular evening. The Signorina liked to keep things fresh, always moving to a new room, a new group, a new scenario. Training Delaney to stay forever on her toes.
Not that she cared to admit it, but she’d come to like the game.
Delaney was already halfway through the room, the doors closed behind her, when she truly took in the fact that the figure waiting for her tonight was not the diminutive Signorina.
It was Cayetano.
At last.
As if she hadn’t learned a thing. As if she was back in that dusty yard, mystified and too hot, his dark glory almost too hot to bear.
And that suddenly, she was nothing but a farm girl all over again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CAYETANOCOULDSEEthe exact moment Delaney registered his presence, because she actually stopped still. Her eyes went wide. It was charming, really. A doe in headlights right here in his private dining room, and his body reacted in what was becoming a predictable way to the little puzzle that was Delaney Clark.
His farm girl who insisted she was no princess when tonight, she looked like a goddess.
That red gown was a wonder, sweeping from one shoulder as if she was competing for a spot in the pantheon. Her black hair was set in a complicated French twist with hints of something sparkly to catch the light.
God, how he wanted her.
That ill-considered kiss had set off a wildfire in him, and even though he’d kept his distance these last two weeks, the sparks remained. One look at her and he could feel them all begin to smolder.
He liked the way she flushed at the sight of him. He liked that he could see exactly how aware she was of him. And he suspected that he was not the only one remembering how that kiss had tasted. And the heat.
That silken, delirious heat that had nearly made him forget himself.
But there was more to concern himself with tonight than the memory of that kiss. For one thing, she no longer in any way resembled that farm girl he’d encountered that day, dirt on her cheeks and all over her clothes.
Her attendants had worked the precise miracle he had entrusted them to perform. There was no hint of overalls and kerchief about her tonight. Her gown skimmed over her figure and made her skin seem to glow. Her hair was not left to the weather and its complex elegance highlighted the fine, inarguably royal features she’d inherited from a long line of Montaignes. That sophisticated nose. Those soaring cheekbones.
He wanted her. This was true. It was always true. He had become uncomfortable with how true it was these last weeks, but tonight it was on another level. She took his breath away.
Because tonight he saw the diamond, not the rough.
And it was a complicated triumph that pumped through him then. Because Cayetano was attracted to her either way, and the man in him wanted nothing more than to explore her femininity with all the tools at his disposal. His mouth. His hands. His sex.
Until they were both weak with desire.
But the warlord in him, who meant to be King at last, saw his Queen.
And it took more willpower than it should have to stay where he was. To stay put, there at the far end of the room, waiting to see if she would continue to come to him or stay frozen where she was.
Waiting to see what he would do if she stayed put, staring at him as if he was an apparition.
But one that made her cheeks red and her eyes overbright.
He wasn’t sure which he would prefer, now that he considered it. Because looking at her was no hardship.
Neither was imagining what he would do with each and every version of her. Farm girl. Vision. Princess. Queen.
And all of them his.
All of them as wild and hot as she’d been in his arms.
