Because she didn’t want to fight. She didn’t want to struggle against her own feelings, her own desire to meet his kiss with her kiss, his caress with her own gentle touch. Even after just that one kiss, the feel of his arms around her, her whole body ached with a need that she could hardly control. She yearned to crush herself closer to him, to feel the heat and masculine power of his body against her own.
‘Not now…’ Joaquin echoed.
His mouth was on her throat now, making a slow, seductive journey from her shoulder to her jaw, kissing his way along. And Cassie would never have thought that there could be such variety in the simple sensation of a kiss.
But now it seemed that a kiss could be both hard and soft, light and then forceful against her neck. It could be oh, so tender and enticing, so that she felt she would almost weep at the gentleness of it. And then again it could be sharply, faintly cruel when his teeth grazed her skin, occasionally nipping lightly so that she gasped in shock.
‘Not now,’ he repeated, the words forming against her jaw-line in the warmth of his breath. ‘Now I am not manhandling you, but treating you as a woman should be treated. As a man should touch his woman—as I want to touch my woman.’
My woman.
The words were like a slap in the face, forcing her out of the heated daze into which she had fallen and making her look reality right in the eye.
My woman.
The darkly possessive tone revealed more of Joaquin than anything else could.
‘So, mi belleza, perhaps we should continue this somewhere more comfortable, hmm?’
Mi belleza. My woman.
Always, to Joaquin, it was what he owned, what he controlled, what he had power over that mattered. He ran his life with a ruthless, almost brutal discipline. Everything was as he wanted it and nothing happened without his approval.
It was what had brought him his success and what kept him right where he was. Always at the top of his game, always on the peak of the mountain.
Always having things on his own terms, and only his terms.
She had come into his life on his terms, lived with him on his terms. And would she be expected to leave on his terms too? To walk out the door when he said it was time, whether she wanted to or not?
Was she only ever going to let him dictate things to her?
‘Querida?’
Joaquin had noticed her sudden silence, the withdrawal that had taken her away from him, mentally if not physically.
‘What is it?’
Cassie opened her mouth to reply, found that her throat was too dry and tight to form any words, and had to clear it harshly before she could manage to speak.
‘I thought you came home to work. And I really need that coffee.’
At least her voice was croaky and raw enough to make it believable. She sounded as if she had a ton of sand roughening her throat and she had to lick at her lips nervously to stop them from drying out. The way his eyes followed the betraying movement had a hawklike intensity that made her shiver deep inside.
‘I’m parched.’
His stillness betrayed the way he was feeling, the anger he was holding in check. Joaquin Alcolar wasn’t a man who gave in to rages and blazing tempers. The fury he felt was cold, hard as ice, bitter as a cruel winter wind, but it was no less savage for that.
And it was always preceded by one of these sudden silences. The freezing of his long frame into the total stillness of a hunting predator who had spotted his prey and had every muscle tense and bunched, waiting for just the right moment to pounce.
‘You’re thirsty?’
His tone made it plain how ridiculous he thought it. How impossible it seemed to him that anyone could want to choose the simple practical need for a drink over the sensual banquet he had obviously intended enjoying.
‘Yes.’
It was all she could manage. That and the brief, uncomfortable ducking of her head, carefully avoiding his burning gaze. If she looked into his eyes she would see the anger there that wasn’t in his voice and she knew it would destroy her nerve to go on.
‘I said I was thirsty when I came down. I’m still thirsty now. I was on my way to make a coffee…’
‘You’re joking, sὶ?’
He couldn’t believe it, she realised uncomfortably. He really couldn’t believe that she would reject his seductive advances. That she would turn them down—turn him down.
And even worse, he hadn’t ever thought that she could resist him. He had assumed that she would be putty in his hands, easily distracted from her purpose by what he wanted. That she would do as he wished, without any questions. That she would respond to his whim as swiftly and obediently as a trained dog. And that if he told her to jump then she would simply ask how high.
‘Why should I be joking?’
She tried to assume an airy carelessness that she was very far from feeling. The look in those deep-set eyes was dangerous, and the strong body was still too taut, too unmoving for comfort.
‘Cassie…’
Whatever he had been about to say, he didn’t finish. Even as he spoke her name in that harsh way of his, the edge on the word so rough that it scraped its way over her exposed skin, there was the sound of another key being inserted into the lock behind them.
A moment later the door was pushed open, swinging back on its hinges until it slammed against the wall with an ominous-sounding thud. A man, tall, dark, strong like Joaquin, stood in the doorway framed against the still-burning sunlight outside.
‘Cassie?’
Her name was spoken in a voice so very similar to Joaquin’s, the intonation, the accent an almost exact match for his. But where Joaquin’s tone had been so cold and distant, the warmth and welcome in this one were so evident that she turned to him in instinctive relief, her eyes lighting up, her mouth curving into a ready smile.
‘Ramón! Come in!’
‘Ramón.’
Joaquin’s echoing of his half-brother’s name held none of the warmth and welcome that Cassie had shown.
‘What are you doing here? And where the hell did you get the keys to the house?’
‘I was invited,’ Ramón returned casually. ‘And keys—well, Cassie lent hers to me so that I didn’t have to hang about outside. Here, querida…’
He tossed the keys and a smile in Cassie’s direction and as she caught the clinking bundle she saw the brooding look in Joaquin’s dark eyes and was unable to suppress a faint smile herself.
So Joaquin was none too pleased with his brother’s sudden appearance. Perhaps even a little jealous?
Surely that was a hopeful sign? Perhaps even something she could play on to find out the real state of her lover’s feelings?
Taking a couple of quick steps forward, she enfolded Ramón in a warm hug, pressing her cheek to the lean, hard planes of his.
‘Come in, Ramón. Would you like a drink? We were just about to have coffee.’
And the look on Joaquin’s face as she led the way down the hall towards the kitchen gave her a sudden lift to her spirits that made it almost worth the risks she had taken by provoking him in this way.
CHAPTER TWO