by Lynne Graham
‘No, some things are private,’ she whispered ruefully, letting a questing fingertip rub along the hard, masculine angularity of his jaw line. A faint dark bluish shadow of stubble roughened his bronzed skin and somehow made his beautiful, sensual mouth seem even more appealing, she reflected dizzily.
Antonio lowered his arrogant dark head and let the tip of his tongue flick the swollen pinkness of her lower lip. She gasped at his touch and her legs wobbled. ‘If the secret relates to a problem there is a very good chance that I could sort it out for you,’ he intoned gravely.
Sophie squeezed her eyes tight shut to rein back the stinging surge of tears his offer had unleashed. She loved his pride and his confidence and his immediate conviction that he could come up with a cure for everything short of death. Not to mention his very traditional assumption that it was somehow his duty and responsibility to deal with anything that worried her. ‘Not this particular one,’ she told him gruffly.
‘Trust me…’ But even as he said it he was wondering if her secret related to her inability to have children. He did not want to think about that. Never before had he experienced that reluctance to consider an issue. But he discovered that he did not even want to think about why that particular issue was such a hotbed of sensitivity even for him.
‘No…’ Her voice was muffled because she was pushing her tear-wet face into his shirtfront and fighting to get a grip on her strong emotions.
There was no need for him to know that she was barren, no need at all. Who could tell how he would react? She could not bear the idea of him pitying her. Even worse, he might begin viewing her as flawed, less of a woman and not quite so attractive. She had learned that, without really thinking about it, people tended to associate fertility with all sorts of other feminine attributes.
‘Some day you will trust me, gatita,’ Antonio swore with fervour and, closing his arms round her, he lifted her right off her feet. He crushed her to his hard, muscular chest and sealed his mouth to hers in a passionate, drugging kiss. Her ribs complained and oxygen was in short supply, but she loved that enthusiastic demonstration of all-male strength and protectiveness.
With immense care he laid her down on the bed and then cast off his jacket and tie where he stood.
‘There really hasn’t been anyone since…?’ Sophie prompted shyly.
He ripped off the shirt without ceremony and smiled down at her. ‘For the first time in my adult life, I’ve lived like a celibate.’
Sophie kicked off her shoes and lay back against the pillows like an old-style temptress, back arched, bosom prominent, knees slightly raised to display her legs to their best advantage.
‘You’ve been practising the seduction pose,’ Antonio breathed with amusement.
Sophie shifted a narrow shoulder in a languid movement to let the strap of her dress slide down, allowing just the hint of a pouting breast to be seen.
‘And the effort has paid off,’ Antonio conceded in another tone entirely, much impressed until he was assailed by an uneasy suspicion. ‘You haven’t been doing this for any other guy…have you?’
Sophie shot him a shocked look. ‘Of course not…I’ve been behaving myself too!’
Antonio breathed again. ‘I should have flown back and sorted this out more than a week ago.’
‘Maybe you weren’t ready.’
Antonio was still not sure that he was ready for the enormous complexity that had disrupted his once smooth and calm existence. He had not chosen the situation, but now at least he felt in control of it again. He surveyed Sophie with unashamed masculine possessiveness. He could not comprehend how he had ever dismissed her as only very pretty. Her slanting cheekbones were distinctive and her clear bright eyes were beautiful and her skin had the creamy bloom of perfection.
‘Why are you staring at me?’ Sophie whispered anxiously.
‘I like looking at you, querida,’ Antonio murmured thickly, sinking down on the edge of the bed and lifting her on to his powerful thighs.
A tiny shiver ran through her as he undid the tiny hooks holding up the delicate bodice of her dress. He brushed the fragile fabric out of his path and discovered that she was not wearing a bra. Her face flamed and she stopped breathing altogether, madly conscious of the jutting swell of her bare breasts and the straining prominence of her rosy nipples.
‘You are perfect,’ Antonio groaned, bending her back over a strong arm and letting his hungry mouth roam over her tender flesh with a skill that wrenched shaken little cries of helpless response from her. ‘The entire time I’ve been away I’ve been thinking about making love to you…I’ve hardly slept for wanting you.’
‘I dream about you,’ she muttered feverishly.
Antonio stood her up between his spread thighs and sent the dress skimming down to her feet. He hooked a finger into her pale pink panties and sent them travelling in the same direction. Wide-eyed, she stared at him, her face hot. Scorching golden eyes melded to hers, he nudged her thighs apart and explored the warm, damp entrance below the caramel curls crowning her feminine mound. A fiery, raging ache stirred low in her belly. Excitement clenched every muscle in her body and her legs shook.
‘You’re ready for me, enamorada,’ Antonio husked with raw, masculine satisfaction.
He swept her up and tumbled her down again on the foot of the bed. Her heart was pumping fast; she was quivering, unable to stay still. Her body was super sensitive and burning up with painful longing. He was magnificently aroused and he plunged his hot, hard heat into the tight, tender core between her legs. She lifted up to him in a torment of wild pleasure. Then nothing existed for her but his passionate dominance and the frenzied climb to the peak of ecstasy. He drove her out of control and inhibition into a world of voluptuous abandonment. She clung to him as the sweet convulsions of heart-stopping excitement claimed her and released her from her own body in an intoxicating explosion of sensation.
‘Don’t even think of going to sleep, querida,’ Antonio warned her, pinning her flat under him to capture her reddened lips in a sensually savage kiss.
Sophie gave him a dazed smile. Her body was still humming and purring with wicked little after-quakes of pure pleasure. It was amazing how the mechanics of actual sex had once struck her as being the most ridiculous arrangement ever. Yet when Antonio got passionate, she felt as if intimacy was the most wondrous joy ever and a positive passport to paradise. She linked her arms round him, breathed in the thrilling scent of his damp bronzed skin and marvelled at the feeling that he had been invented and indeed created solely for her benefit.
‘You’re fantastic,’ he drawled, holding her close. ‘And the best thing of all is that you’re mine.’
‘For a while,’ she qualified without even thinking, needing simply to remind herself of that reality.
His lithe, strong body tensed from head to toe. ‘It could be for a very long while.’
Sadly, Sophie did not think it would be. She did not feel that she would hold his attention that long. Eventually his craving for freedom would surface again. Then he would be grateful that he wasn’t in a normal marriage and tied down to a wife and children… Her thoughts switched course at that point. Her smooth brow indented as she realised that on neither occasion on which they had shared a bed had Antonio made use of any protection. She was astonished that he had been so careless. My goodness, had he assumed that she was on the contraceptive pill?
She lifted her head, but not high enough to meet his eyes. ‘You haven’t taken any precautions…er, you know, in case of pregnancy,’ she muttered awkwardly.
Suddenly Antonio was very still and calling himself a fool, for that oversight might well have betrayed his knowledge of her condition. He did not want to distress her by admitting the truth. ‘My mistake…I thought perhaps you might have taken care of that.’
‘No.’ Relaxing again, she nestled her head back in below his shoulder.
‘I promise that I’ll be more careful from now on,’ Antonio swore and his arms tighten
ed round her. He smoothed a soothing hand down over her tumbled curls until the tension had left her small, slight frame and pressed his mouth to the tiny vivid butterfly tattooed on her shoulder.
But Sophie could not get over how careless he had been. Then she thought of all the babies born to men who seemed to want nothing to do with them and decided that such recklessness was possibly a common male trait. Was there even the slightest possibility that she might conceive? For the first time in her life she allowed herself the indulgence of toying with that unlikely prospect. When she was twelve years old, her father had told her that the doctor had thought it was doubtful that she would ever have kids of her own.
‘Isn’t there even a chance?’ she had asked then.
‘Yeah, he said there’s always a chance, but not much of one. Why are you worrying about it? Kids spoil your life. You’ll be better off without them.’
So maybe there was a one-in-ten-million chance that a miracle might occur and she would conceive. Why was she even thinking such nonsense? Antonio, she thought painfully, would be absolutely appalled if she were to fall pregnant. He would already have an image of the kind of woman he would choose to become the mother of his child. She was willing to bet that the likely lady would be blue-blooded, beautiful and fancy just as he was. But that woman would still be only his second wife. Well, at least she’d have been the first wife and nobody could take that away from her, Sophie reminded herself dully. Although she had to remember that she was only a wife because of Lydia and only in bed with Antonio because he had an overactive libido. Wasn’t that the most likely explanation of all?
‘I’ve arranged to take a couple of weeks off,’ Antonio confessed, striving for a casual note. ‘I need to spend more time with you and Lydia.’
Sophie splayed small fingers across the hair-roughened expanse of his virile chest and released a contented sigh. ‘You definitely do.’
He rolled over, swinging her under him to gaze down at her with smouldering dark golden eyes. ‘Do you think you could keep me entertained for that length of time?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Sophie surveyed his lean bronzed face from beneath her curling lashes, a newly playful light in her sparkling gaze. ‘After all, the boot will be on the other foot.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Josias might be a tough act for you to follow.’
Reluctant appreciation of that sally lit Antonio’s appraisal even as his big, powerful body tensed at the impudence of that challenge and suggested comparison. ‘Anything he can do…’ Antonio shrugged with magnificent assurance. ‘Can you doubt it, gatita?’
Her heart swelled with love, for his supreme confidence made her feel safe. ‘I have no doubts about you at all—’
‘That sounds ominous.’ Antonio finally slotted in a question he had been holding back for quite a few minutes in search of the right light moment. ‘I saw that interview you did with the magazine—’
‘Wasn’t it amazing? Didn’t the cameraman make me look really special?’ Sophie exclaimed with pleasure. ‘I did it for a charity…you’d be amazed at the size of the donation the magazine made to their funds. The interviewer said really nice things about me too—’
‘Journalists generally do in publications of that nature. If they were unpleasant, people would not give them access to their lives and their homes,’ Antonio said drily.
‘I never thought of that. But I was hoping you would see the interview and be proud of me. What did you think?’ she prompted eagerly.
That, aside of the business news, a Rocha should only receive a mention in print on the occasions of birth, marriage and death. That was Antonio’s attitude to all such publicity.
Antonio sidestepped the question. ‘I wondered who the Ferrari in the photos belonged to—’
‘Josias…’
Antonio was learning that the mere mention of a name could set his teeth on edge.
‘He gave me a lift from Reina’s apartment to a restaurant. Of course, if you take me out to eat at least once a week, promise to teach me how to drive and constantly tell me that I’m fantastically beautiful and fantastic fun, I could probably get by without Josias,’ Sophie told him deadpan, dancing green eyes pinned to his frowning incredulity.
‘Yes to the eating out. No to the driving— I’d be a hellish teacher. As for Josias’s seduction routine, I don’t copy,’ Antonio informed her huskily, rearranging her under him to his own very precise requirements and with a sexual intimacy and finesse that made her shiver in wanton anticipation of the pleasure to come. ‘I have my own methods, mi rica.’
But it was the smile that transfixed Sophie. That dazzling, charismatic smile that was purely for her and the conviction he gave that nothing was more important than her at that moment. It was her dream, and shutting out her misgivings and her fears, she surrendered to living her dream.
CHAPTER NINE
SIX weeks later, Sophie sat in the bright and colourful nursery watching Antonio demonstrate in all seriousness to Lydia how to crawl. Amusement was threatening to crack her up, but she managed to keep a straight face. All his life Antonio had been a high achiever and, having read a book on child development, he had learned all the important milestones and was keen to see Lydia sprint ahead of her peers.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ Sophie warned him gently. ‘Some babies may crawl at this age, but I don’t think Lydia is likely to be one of them. She’s too laid-back and contented to rush into making that much effort.’
‘Perhaps all she needs is encouragement,’ Antonio informed her stubbornly while his niece chuckled at the sight of him on hands and knees and held up her arms to be lifted.
‘No, Lydia’s not the physically active type. You can tell by the way she behaves. Belinda was like that. She loved to be lazy. I could hardly get her out of bed in the morning.’
‘But her daughter just might take after my side of the family—’
‘I think we’d know by now if that was on the cards,’ Sophie interposed. ‘We’d have found her barking out orders to the staff through the bars of her cot, setting her own developmental targets and threatening to leave home unless we let her sit up to watch the stock market close.’
A slow grin curved Antonio’s handsome mouth. ‘I don’t bark out orders…’
‘Well, you do it very politely, but you are an incredibly bossy person,’ Sophie told him, watching him surrender to Lydia’s pantomime of pathetic pleading and hoist his delighted niece in the air. ‘Just promise me one thing…that you’re not going to be disappointed with Lydia if she fails to set the world on fire.’
Antonio shot her a look of reproach. ‘Of course not. As her parents we can hope and pray that she enjoys good health and happiness as she grows up. But beyond that her life will be what she chooses it to be.’
His common-sense outlook impressed Sophie and she scolded herself for worrying that he might have too high expectations of Lydia. After all, in recent weeks she had come to appreciate that Antonio was demonstrating all the signs of becoming a fantastic father. For a start, Lydia just adored him. Her little face shone with trust and love and pleasure the instant Antonio appeared. Antonio might have started out spending time with Lydia because he knew that that was what he ought to do. But his niece’s enthusiastic response to his attention had swiftly won her his interest and affection for her own sake.
As for Sophie, she was simply basking in the kind of happiness she had never dared to hope might be hers. Six weeks ago, Antonio had swept her and Lydia off to a Caribbean villa for the best part of a month. They had had a wonderful time. He had taught her how to sail and swim and snorkel, and she had taught him how to make the sort of basic sandcastle that Lydia could then be allowed to destroy. Even with a baby in tow the number of staff looking after their needs had ensured that the holiday was a honeymoon in every sense of the word.
There had been long, endless days when they had barely stirred further than the sunlit privacy of the terrace beyond their bedroom. Days the
y had barely got out of bed and surrendered body and soul to the overwhelming magnetic attraction that kept on welding them back together again when satiation ought to have long since set in. She studied him with a secret smile. He was an incredible lover and in that department they appeared to be a perfect match. He might not be able to keep his hands off her, but she was equally useless at keeping her hands off him, she conceded with hot cheeks. Every time she saw him she wanted to connect with him in some way just to convince herself that he was still hers.
Since returning from the Caribbean they had spent most of their time at the castillo. There the more leisurely pace of life and the vast swathe of countryside encompassed by the Salazar estate allowed them a peaceful seclusion that they could have found in no other place. Sophie had got to know the staff, had managed to handle a couple of semi-formal dinner parties and was gradually becoming acquainted with the tenants as well. She now had quite a vocabulary of Spanish words and expressions and had agreed to teach new stitches to the needlework group that met in the village. Her skill with a needle had crossed the barriers of language and nationality and had done more than anything else to help her to win acceptance as Antonio’s wife.
Antonio closed his arms round her as she straightened from settling Lydia into her cot. ‘Lunch…’ he growled soft and low.
The feel and the familiar scent of him hit Sophie like an instant aphrodisiac and she wriggled back shamelessly into the hard, muscular shelter of his lithe, powerful body.
‘Keep on doing that and you’re likely to go hungry until we dine this evening,’ Antonio promised in a husky purr.
Her knees went weak at that sensual threat. She leant back into his impressively male frame, wickedly conscious of the helpless awakening of her own body. He used a certain tone of voice and looked at her with those spectacular golden eyes in a certain way and she just melted into a pitiful puddle of eager longing.
