His Suitable Bride

by Cathy Williams/Abby Green/Kate Walker

  ‘No …’

  That made her bite into her lip even more and, unable to stop himself, he reached out a finger and laid it across her mouth, easing it away from the sharp teeth that worried at it.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, as much to himself as to her, because no sooner had he touched the softness of her skin than he wanted to linger, to stroke his fingertip along her mouth, feel its soft flesh give underneath his touch, perhaps even slide into the moist warmth at one corner. That way she would be forced to taste him, to know the flavour of his skin against her tongue.

  The need to taste her too, to know the softness and the warmth of her mouth under his, was like a savage clutch on his senses, tugging them into burning life. He wanted to take that slightly trembling mouth and crush it underneath his until it quivered in a totally different way, shaking in raw surrender to the passion he awoke in her. But still he held back. And he knew that that piqued and provoked her from the way that her elegant brows drew together in a quick, faint frown, one that she immediately hurried to smooth out again.

  ‘I don’t think she planned to run out on you when she agreed to the wedding.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No.’

  The word snagged in her breath, making her gasp as she spoke. Her reaction was as much to what Santos was doing as to the things she was trying to say. Those wickedly enticing, tantalising hands were still in her hair, smoothing and stroking, and every inch of the surface of her skin tingled in sensual reaction to the feel of his touch.

  And she had been so sure that he had been about to kiss her just a moment before. The way that that strange, light-eyed gaze had lingered on her mouth had made her throat dry in shock and anticipation. She could almost feel a sensation as if his lips were touching hers, so intent was that stare, almost a physical caress in itself.

  ‘She wanted the wedding to start with—wanted you.’

  ‘Until you persuaded her otherwise.’

  Something had changed, altering the atmosphere dramatically. His hand had stilled as he spoke and without the slow, hypnotic stroking she suddenly felt a chill creeping over her skin. There was something she had been forgetting—that her mind had dodged away from, but she should have been thinking of it all along. A man like Santos wasn’t likely to simply accept a platonic relationship. Not with the woman he had planned on marrying.

  ‘Don’t!’

  In a purely instinctive reaction she pulled her head away from his caressing hand, rounding on him sharply and wincing as a few tangled strands caught on his fingers and tugged painfully at her scalp.

  ‘Stop it!’

  Shaking himself free from the clinging tendrils, Santos lifted both his hands, fingers spread wide, but the dark mockery that gleamed in his eyes in the moonlight made a nonsense of the gesture of apparent surrender.

  ‘And what precisely, querida, am I supposed to stop?’

  It was meant to provoke and it succeeded.

  ‘If you think that I want to be mauled by someone who was my sister’s lover—or that I’m going to let into my bed any man who has only just left hers then you’ve got another think coming. I …’

  Her voice died in painful embarrassment as she saw the look that crossed his face, narrowing his eyes and clamping his sensual mouth into a thin, hard line. Too late she realised the recklessly stupid mistake she had made, the way she had given away far more of the path down which her thoughts had been going than was safe for any sort of self-preservation or hope of retaining her composure. Biting down hard on her tongue, she could only be grateful for the way that the gathering shadows of the night and the pale light of the moon drained all the colour from the world and so, she prayed, hid the hot rush of blood into her face as she recognised just how much she had betrayed by her outburst.

  ‘Might I suggest, señorita, that you wait at least until you are actually invited into my bed before rejecting any offer with the outrage of an appalled virgin?’ he tossed at her with so much ice in his tone that Alexa almost felt the words like stabbing hailstones on her skin. ‘For one thing, I never slept with your sister.’

  ‘You didn’t?’ Embarrassment thickened her voice, heated her cheeks.

  ‘I most definitely did not. Perhaps that was my mistake.’

  ‘Your mistake? What sort of mistake?’

  In her uncertain, apprehensive mood, Alexa found that her control of her tongue had loosened and she seemed unable to force herself to think before she spoke. Nervousness just pushed the words from her mouth before she had time to consider if they were wise, or even appropriate. Smarting from that icy put-down, she only wanted to fight back and show him that she was not the gauche, naïve girl she had let herself appear to be.

  The gauche, naïve girl who had imagined him making a pass at her when in fact he had just been playing with her.

  ‘Do you think that just because she’d shared your bed that she wouldn’t be able to walk away from you? That, having had one taste of your lovemaking, she would have become so addicted that she’d have to stay around for more?’

  ‘We’ll never know, will we? And I think that you are very relieved that that is the case. I know that I am.’

  ‘Relieved?’

  Alexa frowned her horrified confusion, unable to work out just what he meant. He couldn’t have seen right through to her heart and sensed the way that, in spite of herself, in spite of the fight she had against it, she had felt a flutter of something close to reassurance at the thought that her sister and Santos had never been lovers.

  ‘You’re not making any sort of sense. Why on earth would I be relieved?’

  ‘Because, as you put it so eloquently just a moment ago, you are not going to let into your bed any man who has only just left your sister’s. And now that you know that Natalie and I were never intimate, you are free to indulge your own needs, which I am sure is what you really want.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  NO!

  The rejection of his arrogant assertion was like a scream in her head, begging to be flung right in his smug, egotistical face. She had almost opened her mouth to let it out when a far too belated streak of common sense caught up with her, making her catch it back, swallow it down. Hastily adjusting her mood and dragging up some degree of control from the depths of her mind, she forced herself to look him right in the face, managing to keep herself calm in spite of the mockery that made his eyes glitter in the moonlight, the touch of a knowing smile that curved his mouth at the corners.

  ‘I also said that I didn’t want to be mauled …’

  That smile grew a little wider, taking her words and her composure with it. But there was no matching lightening of his eyes, and his voice was cold and clipped when he took up the challenge in her words.

  ‘And you and I both know that I wasn’t mauling you. I have never mauled a woman in my life and I certainly was not doing so just now. For one thing you were enjoying it too much—’

  ‘I was not!’

  Oh, why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? She was giving herself away, digging herself in deeper with every thing she said. And he didn’t believe a word of it, the sceptical expression on his handsome face, the cynically raised eyebrow said it all for him without a single thing having to be spoken.

  ‘I was relieved to have my hair unfastened—that style felt as if it was pulling it out by the roots. And you were kind enough to help me …’ she managed when he didn’t speak but simply sat there, his face half in shadow, half in light, clearly waiting for her to continue. ‘And—obviously it was a relief …’

  ‘Obviously,’ Santos confirmed sardonically.

  And then he waited again. Waited for her to go on, to fill the silence that had descended. But there was nothing she could say, nothing that would not condemn her even further in his eyes, or make her look even more of a fool than he clearly already thought her.

  ‘And that’s it.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  The cynical drawl made it so obvious that
he didn’t believe that was it at all. And seeing the way his glittering eyes swept over her, seeming to sear off a much needed protective layer of skin cells, made Alexa shift uncomfortably in her seat, a sensation like cold pins and needles prickling its way down her spine.

  ‘Anything more is strictly in your imagination.’

  The way he inclined his head in what looked like agreement but actually said exactly the opposite was positively the last straw. She couldn’t sit here like this any longer, seeing the dark amusement in his eyes, listen to the taunt in his voice.

  ‘And now I’d like to go back to the hotel.’

  Pushing herself up from the bench, she got to her feet. Or, rather, she tried to get to her feet. But she had forgotten the way that her feet had been aching, the painful pressure that her shoes had put on her toes and heels, which was why she had kicked them off as soon as she had sat down. Freed from the cramped tightness of the leather, her feet had swollen and the raw spots were now fully exposed. As she tried to stand on the cool tiled surround, the force of her own weight only made things so much worse, so that she couldn’t hold back a yelp of distress as pain shot through her feet and made her close her eyes in distress.

  ‘What the …’

  From behind her eyelids she sensed rather than saw the way that Santos got sharply to his feet, his hands coming out instinctively as she swayed, almost dancing on the spot to avoid putting any more pressure on the soreness of her heels and toes.

  ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘My feet …’

  It was all that she could manage through stiff, taut lips that she had clamped tightly shut in order to hold back the weak whimper of distress at the pain. And when she opened her eyes to look up at him, seeing what looked like genuine concern in his shadowed face, the hope of saying anything more slipped right away from her in the blink of an eye.

  ‘Pies?’ Santos glanced down, apparently noticing for the first time the fact that she was barefoot, with her shoes tossed over to one side, almost hidden underneath the bench. ‘Here—sit down again.’

  Strong hands pushed her back onto the seat and she sank down with a sigh of relief as the movement took the pressure off her feet and enabled her to lift them up slightly, taking them off the ground once again.

  ‘Let me see …’

  Alexa could only blink in confusion and disbelief as in a stunningly graceful move Santos went down on one knee before her. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest as he leaned forward and picked up both feet, cradling them softly in his hands as he angled them towards the light. His touch was cool and gentle, soothing to the raw patches on her skin.

  ‘Madre de Dios!’ he cursed under his breath, the angry sound reaching her in the stillness of the night. ‘What has happened here?’

  The change of mood from the taunting of just moments before was so swift, so unexpected that it made her head come up sharply. And it was only when she saw how the outline of the moon had blurred so unexpectedly that she realised that sudden moisture was swimming in her eyes in response to the gentleness of his tone.

  ‘My shoes …’ she managed through a voice that was thick with the effort to hold back the tears. That earned her a swift, searching upward glance at her face as Santos caught the rough sound.

  If he showed any sympathy, if he was kind, then it might just finish her, Alexa admitted to herself. After the mocking attack earlier, just the thought of it made her head spin.

  ‘Your shoes!’

  To her relief his tone was far from kind. He sounded coldly angry, disbelieving, appalled even. ‘You wear shoes that do this to your feet?’

  Blinking hard, Alexa peered down at the foot he was holding up for her to see. The damage was far worse than she had anticipated, she acknowledged reluctantly, wincing inwardly at the sight. Her skin was rubbed red raw, the pattern of the straps almost etched into her skin, and there were spots here and there where the pressure had actually been so great that it had taken off the surface.

  ‘I didn’t realise they were that bad.’

  But Santos wasn’t listening. Instead he had reached under the bench and pulled out the offending shoes, frowning down at them in dark disapproval. The straps looked impossibly delicate as they dangled from his big, tanned hands. It was hard to believe that they could have inflicted such devastation on her feet.

  ‘What the devil possessed you to wear instruments of torture like these? You must have known they would cripple you.’

  ‘They were fine when I tried them on. But I’m not used to heels—or all those straps.’

  To be honest, she’d never thought to wear them in, and the stress of the day, the tidal wave of events that had overtaken her had made it impossible to dash back to the hotel or find some other, more comfortable footwear.

  He was looking down at the shoes that he still held in his hand, the dark frown that had drawn his brows together deepening as he did so.

  ‘You danced with me …’

  ‘Yes, I did. But …’

  Alexa couldn’t see where he was going with this.

  ‘You danced with me, wearing these damn shoes. You tore your feet to ribbons …’

  ‘I …’

  I didn’t notice, she had been about to say and it would have been the truth. In those moments she had felt as if she was dancing on air and any discomfort in her feet had just not registered on her pleasure-hazed brain. But to admit that was walking right into a trap. It was just giving him more ammunition for the arrogant assumptions he had been making earlier.

  ‘They weren’t hurting then. It was only when I came out here. I think that walking across the grass, coming down the steps …’

  He didn’t believe her, of course; his expression said that, the look he slanted at her from those pale, gleaming eyes making the words shrivel up on her tongue.

  ‘Come here,’ he said, holding his hands out to her.

  When she hesitated, unsure of what he planned, he muttered something rough and impatient under his breath. Then he stooped towards her, the bulk of his body blotting out the sight of the moon, the scent of him enclosing her, the soft fall of his hair brushing against her cheek in a way that sent a sensual shiver running down her spine. Tucked under the bench, her toes curled in uncontrollable response to his nearness.

  What are you doing …? She said the words inside her head, and she tried to speak them aloud but even though she opened her mouth her voice failed her and she didn’t even manage a sound. But then he bent even more, sliding his hands underneath her and lifting her bodily from the seat, taking her high into the air until he held her hard against his chest, his arms like steel bands underneath her, supporting her weight with impressive ease.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  This time she managed the words, feeling them pushed out of her by the rush of shock and confusion, the heated pounding of her pulse in response to this unexpected closeness.

  ‘Taking you inside.’

  He sounded surprised that she had even had to ask. Wasn’t it obvious what he was doing? his tone implied.

  ‘You can’t walk on those feet, so this is the best way to get you indoors before you injure yourself any more.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Silencio!’ The command was hard, sharp. She would be a fool to ignore it, that was plain. ‘This is what is happening—no argument.’

  No argument now, maybe, Alexa thought as he carried her back up the steps towards the house, but when they got back inside she would find plenty of argument.

  However, it was a struggle to collect up any rational thoughts to do so as every cell in her body seemed determined to respond to the closeness of Santos’s hard male body, the strength of his arms supporting her, the wall of his chest pressed up against her cheek. Under her ear she could hear the steady, heavy thud of his heart and her own pulse seemed to set up a matching beat so that she wasn’t sure where his heart rate ended or hers began. After a long and difficult day she knew a weak and foolish urge to simply l
ay her head against his strength, close her eyes and let everything drift. But a strong sense of self-preservation demanded that she should not give in to it. There was something here that she didn’t quite understand, some thread of darkness running through everything Santos said or did. And she needed to get to the bottom of it before she could allow herself to relax—if ever.

  ‘Here …’

  The lights inside the house dazzled after the gathering darkness outside, making her blink and bury her face against his chest once more. So she felt the change in his movements but only registered slowly what it meant, realising too late that he had carried her upstairs.

  ‘Now, wait a minute …’

  Her head came up again sharply, the words snapping from her as he kicked open a door.

  ‘Just what do you think you’re doing …?’

  ‘I’m trying to do something about your feet.’ Alexa could hear the faint touch of mocking laughter in Santos’s voice, setting her teeth even more on edge. ‘You need to have those cuts cleaned, and—’

  ‘In a bedroom?’

  She tried to struggle free but had her attempts thwarted when Santos simply dumped her down onto the soft, yielding surface of a wide double bed.

  ‘I’ll need water and cloths—both in the bathroom,’ he explained in a tone of such exaggerated patience that made his words anything but tolerant, ‘and you might need esparadrapos—sticking plasters. Besides which …’

  His arm swept in a wide circle to indicate the huge room and its décor.

  ‘I can assure you that is not my room!’

  Not unless he had suddenly developed a predilection for pink and frills, Alexa admitted, forcing herself to subside back onto the bed.

  He was right in one thing, she acknowledged privately. Her poor feet did need attention. She’d been a fool to keep on wearing the shoes when they had started to rub so badly, but then she had had no real choice. Her only other shoes were miles away in the hotel where she had prepared to be bridesmaid at the wedding—such a long, long time ago, it now seemed. And unless she was to go back there barefooted then she needed something to help make her more comfortable.