She was holding her own. The finishing line was almost within reach. But Joaquin’s tanned arms, his dark head, were drawing level, matching her stroke for stroke.
She saw him turn his head. Caught the swift, brilliant flash of white teeth against the dark olive of his skin as he grinned in wicked triumph. Another forceful kick from his muscular legs, an extra spurt of speed, and he had passed her, tanned fingers reaching out and touching the edge of the pool just bare seconds before her own paler ones.
‘Okay, you win!’
Somehow all the uneasiness of earlier that afternoon had evaporated, leaving her with a rush along with her gasps for air as she regained her breath. Letting her feet sink slowly to the base of the pool, she stood upright in the shallower water, wiping her hands across her skin and back over her hair in order to brush away the lingering water, clearing it from her face and her eyes.
Joaquin lounged just feet away, half in, half out of the water, his back against the tiled edge of the pool, his hair, jet-black and slicked back, clinging to the fine shape of his skull. Once more those white teeth flashed in a wicked, triumphant grin.
‘Show-off!’
But of course he had every right to show off, she admitted inwardly. Unlike herself, he was hardly even breathing faster; the broad, muscled chest rose and fell as easily as if he had just had a short, casual stroll along the side of the pool and not powerhoused his way through the water after her.
Glinting in the sunlight, tiny drops of water slid over the bronzed skin and came together in a tiny rivulet that trailed its way through the black body hair and down over the flat plane of his stomach. Cassie found that her mouth had dried suddenly, her throat tightening on a wave of response, and she tried to swallow as inconspicuously as possible in order to ease the constricting sensation.
Joaquin treated her to another wide grin, eyes gleaming knowingly.
‘Maybe, but I still won! So now you owe me.’
Something tightened deep in Cassie’s stomach, twisting sharply on a touch of nerves.
It was no good trying to pretend that she didn’t know what he meant. From the very first time when he had discovered how much she liked to swim, and how fast she was in the water, he had issued a challenge, tempting her to race him.
‘And to make it interesting,’ he’d said, ‘we’ll compete for a prize. Whoever loses owes the winner a forfeit—whatever they demand.’
So now, seeing that taunting smile, hearing the words ‘you owe me,’ Cassie knew just what was going through his mind.
‘It wasn’t a proper challenge!’ she hedged warily.
‘Which it wasn’t the last time—when you won,’ Joaquin reminded her. ‘But as I recall you still claimed your prize.’
That gleam in his eyes brightened vividly, reminding her without words just what the prize she’d claimed had been, and letting her know that he remembered only too well. She felt as if her whole body must be blushing, her skin suffused with rich colour as she recalled the passionate way he had responded to her begging him to make love to her right here, in the pool, under cover of the darkness of late evening.
But that had been over a month ago. It was five weeks since they’d last raced in this way. Five weeks since they had even swum together. Five weeks in which Joaquin had had little time for relaxation, little time for leisure, little time, it seemed, for her. So that now things seemed so very different. The unspoken split that had opened between them had turned into a gap and from a gap into a chasm, until she was beginning to wonder if it was possible to bridge it at all.
And the worst thing was that she knew she was partly responsible. That her own inability to hide her feelings, her constrained, preoccupied mood, had driven a wedge between them and she hadn’t been able to stop it.
This time she did slick her tongue over her painfully dry lips. She just couldn’t stop herself.
‘So what is it that you want?’
Watching that gleam flare into flame, blazing suddenly in the darkness of his gaze, she knew just what was in his mind. But a second later, to her bewilderment, he closed down on the heat in his eyes, and instead let his stare fall to her mouth.
‘A kiss,’ he said softly. ‘Just a kiss. Is that too much to ask?’
But would it stop at just a kiss? She doubted it.
A kiss that would lead to an open mouth? A kiss that would lead to a caress, the smoothing, stroking of his hands all over her body? A kiss that would lead to lovemaking?
Was that what she wanted?
But did she care?
There was no room inside her head for the memory of the uncertainty of earlier that day. And other thoughts were crowding into her mind, making it spin even more wildly.
The exhilaration sparked by the race was still fizzing through her veins, buzzing inside her head so that she couldn’t think clearly. The sheer sensual pleasure of standing here, with the sun warm on her head and shoulders, the cool water lapping around her waist, was enough to make her forget any colder, calmer, common sense. And there were other feelings too. Feelings sparked by the sight of Joaquin’s lean brown body, the tight lines of his muscles still glistening with traces of moisture. The stunningly carved face was turned towards her, gilded by the sun, black eyes brilliant as jet, the high, slanting cheekbones sharp as blades under the bronze skin.
She felt dizzy with excitement, tension, admiration.
Need surfaced, caught and held.
And need she gave into, reaching out a hand that shook faintly to smooth it over the broad, straight lines of his shoulders, the strength of his arms and then along the ridges of muscle that lined his powerful chest, tracing tiny, erotic circles in the dark body hair that hazed his flesh.
‘Cassandra…’
Joaquin stirred convulsively under her touch, his voice husky and soft.
‘So do I get my kiss?’
Like someone in a trance she leaned forward, pressed her lips softly against the hard plane of his lean cheek, feeling the faint roughness of male skin beneath her mouth, tasting the intensely personal flavour of him. On a sigh she inhaled the equally intimate scent of his body.
And knew that she was lost.
And that she didn’t give a damn.
‘That, querida,’ Joaquin complained as she withdrew slightly, ‘was not a kiss. It does not pay the forfeit you owe me.’
With an effort Cassie forced herself to look up, into the sensually darkened pools of his eyes, knowing from his smile that he saw his answer in her own gaze.
‘Oh, doesn’t it?’ she managed huskily. ‘Then I shall have to do better.’
‘Much better.’
‘Then what about this?’
She had barely finished speaking before she took his mouth, teasing and tantalising him with her own lips, letting her tongue run along the warm cleft that separated the finely carved upper lip from the fuller, more sensual lower one. And she knew his reaction when she heard him catch in a breath on a faint gasp, his mouth opening under hers, his tongue meeting the tentative exploration with an erotic enticement, drawing her in deeper and closer.
‘That’s more like it,’ he muttered, rough and urgent against her mouth. ‘That is a kiss. The sort of kiss I wanted.’
And as his kiss encouraged her, so his arms drew her closer too, fastening tight around her slim waist and pulling her sharply towards him. So sharply that her feet left the bottom of the pool and she floated towards