They had barely spoken a word to each other all night, Cassie reflected now. Talking hadn’t been needed; it had seemed superfluous. They had let their bodies, their hands, their mouths, their senses do all the contacting that was necessary and they had communicated on such a basic, primitive level that there had been no need of words at all.
But that had been then, and this was now, she told herself uncomfortably. Last night had been an experience enclosed in a bubble, a moment out of time. A time when she had told herself that she would let things ride and not spoil what was happening by stirring up things that would only muddy the waters of their relationship.
Now she had to face those things, whether she liked it or not. Now she had to talk. There were things she had to ask Joaquin; things she needed to discuss with him, and she couldn’t let it wait any longer.
But Joaquin wasn’t in the bed beside her. The pillow still bore a dent where his head had rested, and the scent of his body lingered on the cover, in the sheets, but of the man himself there was no sign. A hasty check of the bathroom showed that it too was empty, something Cassie noted with an inward sense of relief.
Even though the room was cold and still, no trace of the steam and heat that had filled it last night, she still felt the echoes of the hungry coupling they had shared. The reverberations of the passionate climax still seemed to hang in the atmosphere, making her senses quiver, her nerves clenching in response, so that she hurried out of the bathroom, too uneasy to linger longer.
It was as she hurried back into the bedroom that the door opened quietly and Joaquin came in, the sight of him stopping her dead in surprise.
‘Cassandra…’
His voice betrayed almost as much surprise as she was feeling. ‘I thought you were still asleep.’
‘You meant you hoped I was still asleep.’
The words were a mistake; she knew that as soon as she heard them hit the air. But she hadn’t been able to hold them back.
It was the way he was dressed that had done it. The sleek, elegant suit and crisp shirt, even the tie that spoke of formality and discipline and—damn it—work!
‘I didn’t want to disturb you, that’s true.’
Taking his cue from her, Joaquin was coolly formal. Not quite cold, but most definitely lacking in any warmth.
‘I thought you might want to sleep in after…’
The way his eyes slid to the bed, and the gleam she had caught in them before they moved away from hers, sent prickles of irritation sparking along her spine. But what made the sparks turn into open flames of resentment was the faint but definitely triumphant edge to the sudden smile that curled up the corners of his mouth before he ruthlessly imposed a new control and determinedly forced them down again.
And that smile pushed her over the edge, into words that she knew were a mistake even as they left her mouth.
‘After you had your way with me?’ she snapped viciously, bringing his head up sharply, something much stronger than her own annoyance flaring in the darkness of his eyes.
‘After we had our way with each other,’ he corrected stiffly, the exotic notes of his accent contrasting stunningly with the cold crispness of each word.
‘Whatever…’ she forced herself to mutter ungraciously.
If the truth were told, she much preferred to stay on the side of righteous indignation, even if it wasn’t actually justified. It felt more comfortable. And it seemed to square better with an uneasy conscience.
She didn’t want to feel this way, but she just wasn’t strong enough to stop herself.
One of the problems was the way that Joaquin was dressed, and the physical effect that was having on her.
She had always adored the way he looked when—as she had once put it—scrubbed and spruced up ready for work. Apart from the fact that he looked stunning, the dark good looks dramatically enhanced by the white shirt, every powerful line of his strong, lean body emphasised by the superb fit and tailoring of his suit, she had never been able to resist the appeal of the contrast between the controlled formality of his clothing and the fiercely uninhibited, passionate man she knew he really was underneath.
He had looked that way the very first time she had seen him, cool and sleek and totally in control. She had been working as a translator for an English wine importer who had been negotiating a major deal with the Alcolar Vineyards and who had asked her to attend this vital stage of the negotiations to make sure he got everything quite right. She had been sitting with her employer and his second in command at the huge, polished mahogany table in the Alcolar boardroom when the door had opened and Joaquin strode into the room.
It had seemed to Cassie as if the world had careered to a halt, jolting her out of her sense of reality and into a place where everything she had always believed in no longer had any sway. She had looked, stared, blinked, unable to believe what she saw, looked again and from that moment she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes off him. It was as if he were the most powerful magnet in the world and she were some tiny, pin-fine compass needle. She was drawn to him in an instant, held fast by the powerful pull of his burning sexual appeal, and she had never been able to tug herself free ever since.
And Joaquin had been the same.
She could remember the moment he had been introduced, the sear of electricity up her arm as he’d taken her hand, the murmur of, ‘Buenos dὶas, senorita,’ in that stunningly accented voice. Their eyes had met, locked together, and it seemed that from then on she had never looked away again.
But she must have done, because somehow the meeting had gone on, and the deal had been struck. She didn’t know if her employer had got the terms he’d wanted, or if Joaquin had arranged things his way, her concentration on the matter in hand so totally shot that it had been a miracle she had been able to translate at all. She only knew that when she’d spoken those jet-black eyes had been drawn to her face, fixing on it and watching her so intently that she’d actually feared that his gaze might mark her face, bruising it faintly where his eyes had rested. At first she had thought that he had been concentrating on following her translation; it was only much later that she’d learned that Joaquin Alcolar spoke English almost as well as she did herself, and that he would have been perfectly capable of conducting the meeting in his second language, if he had chosen to do so.
‘So you concede that it was not just me forcing my wicked attentions on you.’
Joaquin’s sharply enunciated words slashed into her memories like a sword slicing through silk, forcing her back to the present with an abruptness that had her blinking in unfocused confusion.
‘I—yes—of course…’ she managed, hoping she was answering what he had really said and not just what she thought she had heard.
She really must concentrate. This was too important just to let drift.
‘I—it was mutual,’ she managed hastily and saw his brusque nod of satisfaction, though none of the worrying expression in his eyes eased in any way.
‘I’m glad to hear that,’