‘Deus!’ Diego exploded. ‘Press the damn thing and tell the maintenance staff to get us out of here right now.’
‘Diego...are you okay?’ Clare stared at him. His jaw was clenched and he was oddly pale beneath his tan. When he pushed his hair out of his eyes she saw beads of sweat on his brow.
‘I dislike lifts.’ He caught her questioning look and muttered, ‘I have an irrational fear of confined spaces.’ Sweat ran down his face. He swore and wrenched off his jacket. A voice speaking in Portuguese sounded over the intercom and Diego answered with a few curt words, and Clare guessed it was lucky she did not understand.
‘The concierge says he has called the engineer and the lift will be repaired as soon as possible,’ he relayed to her.
She couldn’t disguise her shock that he had been fearless in the rainforest, and had even wrestled with a python, but he suffered from claustrophobia. ‘How did you spend years working underground in mines if you hate confined spaces?’
He shrugged. ‘It was the only way I could earn a living, so I had to do it or starve. Getting into a lift cage packed with men to be taken underground was hell—it still is—but fortunately the mine shafts in the Old Betsy mine are a reasonable size to work in.’ He wiped a hand over his sweat-damp face and said with an attempt at humour, ‘Anyway, your heart only feels like it’s going to burst out of your chest for the first few hours of a shift and, however bad you feel, you just have to get on with the job.’
The discovery that Diego had a vulnerable side to him evoked a curious tug on Clare’s heart. ‘Do you feel this bad every time you step into a lift? That must be difficult considering you live and work in the Cazorra skyscraper.’
‘I don’t usually take the lift; I use the stairs.’
‘But you live on the thirtieth floor.’
‘It keeps me fit,’ he muttered.
‘So did you only take the lift tonight because of me?’
‘I couldn’t expect you to climb thirty flights of stairs.’
Clare bit her lip. ‘You should have told me. I feel terrible. But probably not as bad as you’re feeling,’ she conceded, seeing the sheen of sweat on his face. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘Not...unless you can come up with a distraction technique to take my mind from the thought that we are trapped in a metal box,’ he said through gritted teeth.
An idea came to her, and she acted without pausing to question whether it was wise or not as she stepped closer to him and cupped his face in her hands. ‘Perhaps this will distract you,’ she murmured before she covered his mouth with hers and kissed him.
She felt the jolt of surprise that ran through him, but he responded instantly and opened his mouth to welcome the gentle probing of her tongue. He was content to follow her lead, and as she continued kissing him she felt the terrible tension that gripped his muscles gradually lessen.
‘Is it working?’ She finally had to stop and allow them both to breathe.
‘I’m not sure,’ he said thickly. ‘You’d better try again.’
He did not look quite so pale, she thought as she stood on tiptoe so that she could reach his mouth. This time he took control and deepened the kiss until Clare’s senses were swamped by the taste of him, the scent of his aftershave, the feel of his strong arms sliding around her waist to pull her even closer to him—so close that she could not mistake the hard ridge of his arousal.
‘Something’s definitely working,’ he drawled, sounding more like the laid-back Diego she knew—and did not love. Of course not. It was just a silly saying that had slipped into her mind.
The lift suddenly lurched and then continued its ascent. Clare sprang away from him, hot-faced with embarrassment that in trying to distract him from his phobia she had aroused him, and herself, she acknowledged ruefully as she glanced down at the outline of her nipples jutting beneath her dress.
Moments later the doors opened directly into the penthouse and she heard Diego exhale heavily as he followed her out of the lift. As they walked in silence along the hallway leading to their respective bedrooms she did not know what to think, or what was going to happen next. But she knew with sudden clarity what she wanted to happen. Becky had warned her that Diego was a heartbreaker, but Clare had no intention of letting him anywhere near her heart.
Disappointment swooped in her stomach when he walked straight past the door to his suite without trying to persuade her to sleep with him. Maybe he did not desire her as much as she’d thought.
Her room was next to his. He halted outside the door and casually swung the jacket that he was carrying over his shoulder. But there was nothing casual about the smouldering intensity in his eyes, and his voice was a rough growl that grazed her skin and sent a quiver of excitement down her spine. ‘Are you going to invite me in?’
‘Yes.’ Simple, direct. She was tired of playing games. ‘But there is a condition.’
His brows rose in silent query.
‘I won’t pay off my debt with sex and after tonight I will still owe you a million dollars. I’m inviting you into my bed because I want you. But I won’t be your mistress. You will be my...’ she had been going to say lover, but reminded herself that love was not involved ‘...stud.’
He gave a husky laugh that evoked a coiling sensation low in her pelvis. ‘You are something else, Clare.’ There was a curious note that she almost thought was admiration in his voice. He opened her bedroom door, placed his hand at the small of her back and pushed her into the room. ‘Be careful what you wish for, querida.’ He slid his hand down and caressed her bottom, his touch burning her through her dress. ‘You want a stud and, as you can feel—’ he pressed up against her so that his erection nudged the cleft between her buttocks and their clothes were a frustrating barrier ‘—I am very willing to oblige.’
* * *
Diego knew he was going to have to cool things down. He was fiercely tempted to drag Clare’s dress up to her waist, pull her knickers down and bend her over the end of the bed so that he could take her hard and fast, the way his body was aching to do. Adrenaline was still pumping through his veins from when they had been trapped in the lift, but his urgent need to make love to her was more than a primal urge to have sex.
Deus, she had been so sweet when she had kissed him to distract him from his stupid, irrational fear. If she knew the truth of why he hated confined spaces, maybe she would understand that his gut-churning terror of being confined was not irrational. But he had never told any of his mistresses that he had been to prison, so why would he tell Clare?
He realised she was watching him with a faint uncertainty in her eyes that made him dismiss his thoughts and focus all his attention on her. She’d said she wanted a stud, but her only experience of sex was when he had taken her virginity. What she needed from him was patience and tenderness. It occurred to him that he would enjoy teaching her the many and varied pathways of pleasure that she had never experienced with any other man. Diego frowned. This possessive feeling was a new experience for him and not one that he wanted to think about too deeply.
He threaded his fingers into her hair that felt like silk against his skin and lowered his head to claim her lips in a kiss that started out as gentle. But her eager response stoked the fire inside him so that he thrust his tongue into her mouth in an erotic imitation of thrusting his throbbing arousal into her.
She tugged open his shirt buttons and ran her hands feverishly over his bare chest. He gave a half-laugh, half-groan. ‘How can I make love to you slowly and gently when you are so damned hot?’
Clare curled her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers, pressing her curvaceous body up against him so that Diego could feel the hard points of her nipples scrape across his chest. ‘I don’t want slow and gentle. I don’t mind if you are rough,’ she whispered against his lips. ‘I just want you now, now.’
‘Deus, you will be the death of me, anjinho.’ He ran her zip down her spine and tugged the gold dress. She wasn�
�t wearing a bra and her bare breasts spilled into his hands, firm and plump like ripe peaches, and utterly delectable when he kissed the creamy mounds, before he closed his lips around one pouting nipple and then the other.
Her soft moans of delight nearly drove him over the edge, and when she fumbled with the zip on his trousers and her fingers brushed across his arousal he knew he had to take control. He swiftly dragged her dress over her hips so that it slid to the floor, leaving her in just a tiny gold thong and high-heeled strappy gold sandals. Diego knelt and removed her shoes and then scooped her up and deposited her on the bed, but he resisted her attempt to pull him down on top of her.
He stood at the end of the bed and pushed her thighs apart. ‘I’ll explain how this is going to work, querida. I am going to kiss every inch of your body, and I mean everywhere,’ he warned her softly. ‘Now lie back.’
* * *
He could not actually mean everywhere, Clare thought as she stretched out on top of the satin bedspread while Diego knelt above her and lowered his head to capture her mouth in a sensual kiss that added fuel to the flame of her desire. He trailed his lips over her throat and breasts, paying special attention to her nipples until she whimpered with pleasure. ‘Enough,’ she pleaded in a breathy voice she hardly recognised as her own.
‘I’ve barely begun,’ he told her as he moved down her body, kissing her stomach and the tops of her thighs. She trembled and instinctively tried to scissor her legs together, but he firmly held them open so that she was utterly exposed to him apart from a fragile strip of gold silk. He pushed her thong aside, and as Clare felt his silky hair brush against her inner thighs she suddenly realised that he really did intend to kiss every bit of her.
‘I’m not sure...’ It seemed like a step too far, too intimate. Yet she was curious, and her body was burning up with need that intensified when she felt his tongue flick across the tight nub of her clitoris. She jerked her hips involuntarily towards his mouth and gasped as he proceeded to lick his way inside her.
Sweet heaven... She clutched the bedspread and held on for dear life as the pressure inside her built with every thrust of his tongue, taking her higher, taking her towards ecstasy. She came so hard that it almost hurt, her vaginal muscles squeezing and contracting with fierce, fast spasms that left her wanting more.
‘Please...’ Was that really her voice sounding so guttural, so desperate? Clare was shocked by the intensity of her desire. Diego had called her a wildcat, and he turned her into one. With him she became wild and wanton and she practically purred with anticipation as she watched him strip and slide a protective sheath over his awesome erection.
When he dipped his head between her legs again, she made a husky protest. ‘No more. I want...’ Her voice faded as Diego ripped her thong apart with his teeth.
‘I know what you want,’ he growled as he lifted himself over her. ‘You want this...’
* * *
He had tried to be gentle, Diego assured himself, but the combination of his urgency and Clare’s eagerness created a simmering chemistry that was about to combust. He looked down at her gorgeous, curvaceous body, her pale thighs spread wide in readiness for him to possess her. Anticipation sharpened his desire to a primitive need he could no longer deny and he thrust into her and drove deep, drawing a gasp of surprise from her as her internal muscles were forced to stretch to accommodate his solid length.
She was so tight, so hot. He paused to give them both time to snatch a breath and felt a curious tightness in his chest when she smiled. Deus, she was so beautiful. The sweetness of her smile felt like a punch in his gut. What the hell was happening to him? Diego asked himself grimly. First he had quoted romantic poetry to her, and now he felt emotions surge though him that he did not dare examine.
It was just sex, he reminded himself. He was good at sex, as his numerous ex-mistresses could verify. Clare had told him she wanted a stud and he was confident he wouldn’t disappoint her.
He began to move inside her, to thrust and withdraw in a powerful rhythm as he took her stroke by measured stroke while she moaned and writhed beneath him. He could feel his climax building, but he did not falter, driving into her faster, harder until she gave a keening cry and her body shuddered with the intensity of her orgasm.
It was his signal that finally he could take his own pleasure and he surged forwards once more and let himself come. The intensity of his release tore a groan from deep inside him, and in the aftermath, as his heartbeat slowed, he was strangely reluctant to move and disjoin from her.
At last he rolled away and stared up at the ceiling, searching his mind for something banal to say that would shatter the emotionally charged atmosphere. He frowned when Clare snuggled up to him. He did not do snuggling and, however good it felt to have her soft body pressed up against him, her hand resting lightly on his chest, he could not risk falling asleep in her bed. He never knew when his sleep would be disturbed by a nightmare, or what secrets his dreams might reveal.
Her long auburn eyelashes lay on her cheeks and the sound of her even breaths told him she had fallen asleep. He resisted the temptation to wake her and take her again. She would be staying in Brazil for three weeks to work on the PR campaign and that was more than enough time for him to sate his desire for her. No doubt by the time of the DC Diamonds launch he would have grown bored of her. He refused to think of the problems that would lie ahead if she had actually conceived his child.
Taking care not to disturb her, he slid off the bed and draped the bedspread over her before he silently left the room.
Clare watched Diego exit her bedroom with a sense of disbelief that was rapidly turning to anger. She had been drifting off to sleep when she’d felt him move, and at first she had thought he was visiting the bathroom. But as she watched him walk over to the door she realised that he did not intend to spend the night with her.
He’d had what he wanted, she thought bitterly. She had provided him with sex, and presumably he saw no reason to stay in her bed. Why was she surprised? She knew he was a womaniser, but she had conveniently forgotten that fact when he had deliberately seduced her with romantic poetry. She understood now that his motive for giving her the book of Byron’s poems had been entirely cynical. But, like an idiot, she had been beguiled by the tender expression in his eyes and, to compound her foolishness, she had been taken in by his apparent panic attack in the lift and his confession that he suffered from an irrational fear of confined spaces. Although when she remembered his clenched jaw and how his skin had turned sickly green, she conceded that he probably hadn’t been faking his claustrophobia.
She lay there for a few more minutes, but sleep was now impossible when she felt so churned up inside. Muttering an oath, she swung her feet on to the floor and pulled on Diego’s shirt that he’d discarded before he’d taken her to bed.
His room was bigger than hers, she discovered when she padded down the hall and opened his door. Unlike the neutral decor of the other rooms in the penthouse, the walls of Diego’s bedroom were covered in prints of the Amazon rainforest. But Clare’s attention was focused on the enormous bed where he was sprawled, his broad shoulders propped against a pile of pillows. He was reading, but looked up from his book and frowned when he saw her.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t leave a handful of dollars on my bedside table in payment for my services,’ she said tautly. ‘But then I remembered that you believe I should pay off my debt to you with sex. Let’s see. There’s three weeks until the DC Diamonds launch. That’s twenty-one nights, divided into one million dollars, which means it just cost you approximately fifty thousand dollars to have sex with me.’ To her annoyance she could not prevent her voice from trembling. ‘I hope I was worth it.’
‘Clare...’ Diego swore beneath his breath when he noticed the glimmer of tears in her eyes. He hated that she was clearly hurt, and he was responsible. ‘Querida...’
‘Don’t querida me,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’m not your darling. I’m your who
re. You made it perfectly obvious when you left my bed that all you want from me is sex.’ She tried to swallow her tears and choked. ‘You made me feel cheap.’
‘Deus,’ Diego growled as he leapt out of bed and strode over to her. ‘That was not my intention. I thought you had fallen asleep, and I didn’t want to disturb you.’ He caught hold of her arm to prevent her from rushing out of the door. ‘I don’t sleep well, and I usually read for several hours during the night.’
‘What are you doing?’ Clare had tried not to stare at Diego’s naked body when he’d got out of bed, but she couldn’t ignore his erection that was jabbing into her thigh. She tried to move away from him, but he swept her up into his arms and held her tight against his big chest. ‘I can walk back to my room,’ she muttered as he carried her into her bedroom and placed her on the bed. ‘Leave me alone.’ She tried to turn her head away as he slanted his mouth over hers, but he cradled her cheek in his hand and smothered her protest with a sensual, evocative kiss that tugged on her treacherous heart.
‘I think I’ve made it fairly obvious that I can’t leave you alone,’ he said drily, but his sardonic tone was laced with something deeper and more urgent. He deftly removed his shirt from her, and his eyes gleamed with feral intent as he ran his hands over her body, caressing her breasts before he moved lower and found that she was wet for him. ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he whispered against her mouth as he positioned himself over her.
But he would, she thought with a sudden fearful insight. It wasn’t his fault. He had been honest and admitted he only wanted to have a sexual relationship with her. It was her foolish heart that was to blame. If she had any sense she would insulate her emotions against his impossible to resist charisma.
CHAPTER NINE
‘CLARE. DEUS, YOU sleep like the dead!’
The sound of Diego’s impatient voice forced Clare to open her eyes, and she stared at him looming over her. As always, the sight of his handsome face and his blond hair falling across his brow made her heart flip. She noted that he looked wide awake and disgustingly energetic, which was impressive as he had not left her bed until some time around two o’clock. She could not be sure of exactly when, because he always waited until she had fallen asleep before leaving her and returning to his own room.
Master of Her Innocence (Bought by the Brazilian) Page 12
