The Most Expensive Lie of All

by Michelle Conder

  All through dinner he’d imagined doing this. Touching her, tasting her. He’d been harder than stone all night and he wasn’t sure if he’d committed to five hotels in China or fifty. Nor did he care. Right now he’d put a hundred on Mars if someone asked him to.

  Aspen moaned again and shifted beneath his pressing thumbs.

  ‘Harder or softer?’ he asked, the rough timbre of his voice reflecting his deep arousal.

  He heard her breath catch, and then his did as well as her gorgeous bottom brushed his fly.

  ‘Harder,’ she whispered, and a shudder ripped through him.

  The musky perfume of her skin was ambrosia to his senses and he trailed soft kisses across her shoulders. Her head fell forward and she braced her hands on the side table in front of her. Cruz registered her position on a purely primal level and knew all he’d have to do was lift that long silk skirt, tear whatever excuse for a pair of panties she was hiding underneath, bend her a little more forward and slide right into her—and he very nearly did.

  But he wanted more of her taste in his mouth first, and with unsteady hands he gripped the side of her waist and trailed tiny moist kisses down the column of her spine until he reached the small of her back.

  She undulated for him, arching backwards, and unable to hold himself back any longer he rose, spun her around to face him and slanted his mouth across hers. Not softly, as he had done earlier in the stables—he was too far gone for that—but hard, with barely leashed power and a deep driving hunger to be inside her.

  She opened for him instantly, her fingers impatient as they delved into his hair to anchor him to her. That was okay with him. He barely noticed the bite of her short nails, concentrating instead on the throbbing sense of satisfaction as his tongue filled her mouth. He tasted coffee and cream and couldn’t suppress a groan.

  Somehow some of her earlier hesitation seeped into the minute part of his brain that still functioned on an intellectual level and he attempted to steady himself—before he just dragged her to the floor and had done with it.

  Then her tongue stroked his and his mind gave out. Sensation hot and strong coursed through him, just as it had every other time he’d kissed her, and he couldn’t help curving her closer so that they touched everywhere.

  The silky fabric of her dress slid against his jacket in an erotic parody of skin on skin. Which was what he wanted. What he needed. And, keeping his mouth firmly on hers, he shucked out of it and then lashed at the buttons on his shirt.

  She moaned, her warm hands pushing the fabric off his body as she shaped his arms and his shoulders before clinging once more around his neck.

  Cruz reached behind her neck. His fingers felt clumsy in his desperation as he finally managed to undo the two pearl-like buttons that held the top of the dress together.

  Aroused to an unbearable pitch, he smoothed a hand down to the small of her back, his lips cruising along her jawline until he could tug on the lobe of her ear. She was wearing tiny gold studs and he tongued one as he bit down gently on her flesh and brought his hands around to cradle both breasts in the palms of his hands. She trembled delightfully and her responsiveness rocked him to his core.

  His thumb caught her nipple and she cried out, gripping him tighter. Cruz knew that neither of them was going to make it to the bedroom so he didn’t even try. Instead he lifted her onto the side table and hoped it would hold.

  It did, and he pulled back and looked down at her.

  Her nipples pebbled enticingly beneath his lingering gaze and he plumped one breast up. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he breathed, taking the rosy tip into his mouth.

  Arousal beat through his body, hot and insistent, and he urged her thighs wider so that he could settle his erection between her legs. Unfortunately the table wasn’t high enough for him to take her on it and he knew he’d have to lift her onto him when the time came.

  ‘Thank heavens you’re wearing a dress,’ he growled around her tight, wet nipple, his impatient hands delving beneath the reams of fabric to find her.

  Moments later he felt her panic in the stiffening of her thighs and the press of her fingernails on his shoulders.

  ‘Wait!’

  His blurred mind tried to take in the change and he mentally pulled back.

  ‘We might need some lubricant,’ she blurted out against his neck.

  Lubricant?

  Cruz stilled, and was struck by how slight and vulnerable her body felt compared to his much larger frame curved over her. Instantly his libido cooled as he recalled those times she had flinched away from him when he’d reached for her. He frowned. Had she never experienced pleasure during sex?

  He brought one hand up between them to cup her jaw and brought her eyes to his. ‘Aspen, what’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m just...’ She licked her lips, her mortified gaze flitting sideways. ‘I don’t have much natural lubrication. I should have told you earlier.’

  Stunned, Cruz could only stare at her. He could tell she was serious but he had briefly felt her moist heat through her panties and knew she needed extra lubrication the way Ireland needed rain.

  As if taking his prolonged silence as a rejection, she shoved his chest hard enough to dislodge him and desperately scooted off the table.

  Only her stilettos must have come off when he’d lifted her because her feet tangled in the fabric of her dress and she pitched forward.

  Cursing, Cruz grabbed hold of her before she fell. ‘Aspen, wait.’

  ‘No. Let me go.’

  Ignoring her attempts to break free, he gently tugged her back into his embrace. She immediately buried her head against his neck and he brought one hand up to stroke her hair. His heart thundered in his chest as his dazed mind tried to process what was happening.

  He waited until he felt her breathing start to even out and then he leaned back so he could look at her face.

  ‘Who told you that you didn’t have any natural lubrication?’

  She groaned and burrowed even more fully against him.

  Cruz cupped her nape soothingly. ‘I know you’re embarrassed. Was it Anderson?’

  ‘It happens to some women.’

  Cruz had no doubt she was correct, but he had already felt how damp she was through her lace panties and, whatever problems she had, he very much doubted this was one of them.

  ‘I’m sure it does chiquita, but it hasn’t happened to you.’

  She pulled back. ‘You’re wrong. Chad and I... Can we not talk about this?’

  He was going to kill the moron.

  Cruz nudged her chin up until her baleful glare met his. He nearly smiled at her thorny gaze but this was too serious. ‘Did he hurt you?’

  She wet her lips, dropped her eyes.

  ‘Aspen?’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ She sighed. ‘On our wedding night Chad was... I was anxious. Chad had been drinking heavily and I knew I had made a mistake. Actually, I knew I’d made a mistake even before the wedding, but it became bigger than I was and I didn’t know how to stop it. And Chad could be charming.’ She gave an empty laugh. ‘You might not know that, being a man, but my friends thought he was wonderful. But the alcohol changed him and that night...’ She swallowed. ‘That night...’

  ‘He raped you,’ he said flatly.

  ‘No. It was my fault. I was nervous.’

  Cruz barely held himself in check. ‘Do not blame yourself.’ He guided her eyes back up to look at him. ‘He would have known that you were nervous.’ He cursed under his breath. ‘Hell, Aspen. You were all of eighteen.’

  She gave him a wobbly smile and Cruz enfolded her in his arms. He held her until he felt her trembling subside.

  ‘He didn’t mean to, Cruz. It just wasn’t easy.’

  Uh-huh. When he did kill him he’d do it slowly.

 
‘It’s fine. I knew this would happen anyway. You can let me go.’

  Let her go?

  She tried to pull away, and when he looked at her she had that same resigned look on her face that she’d had the previous night.

  ‘When I first arrived at Ocean Haven to work for your grandfather,’ he began tentatively, ‘I missed my family so much I cried myself to sleep every night for a month and I felt pathetic. You were right yesterday when you said it was a lot for a kid to take on. At the time, though, I thought I just needed to man up.’

  ‘Oh, Cruz.’

  Her hand curled around his forearm, and even though he knew he was sharing the memory with her to take her mind off her own past part of him still soaked up the comfort of her touch.

  ‘I thought my mother was turning her back on me. That I was an embarrassment to the family.’

  ‘No.’ Aspen shook her head fiercely. ‘I only met her yesterday but I know that can’t be true.’

  ‘Probably not. And what Anderson told you isn’t true either.’ When her eyes fell to the side Cruz tipped her chin up. ‘Aspen, you’re a beautiful, sensual woman and I want to prove that to you if you’ll let me.’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t see how.’

  He cupped her face in his hands, halting her words. ‘I want you, Aspen. I want to kiss you and touch you and make love to you until all you can think about is how good you feel. The question is, do you want that to happen?’

  The question might also be what the hell was he talking about? It was one thing to make a woman feel good in bed. It was quite another to want to slay her demons for her.

  Ignoring the fact that he had never donned the white knight suit before, and what that meant, Cruz waited for her answer.

  And waited.

  Finally, still clutching her dress to her chest, her eyes wide and luminous in the over-bright room, she nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then relax and let me take care of you. And, Aspen...?’ He waited for her to look at him from beneath the fringe of her dark lashes. ‘If you want me to stop at any time, then we’ll stop. Understand?’

  She paused and her green eyes opened a little wider. ‘You’d really do that, wouldn’t you?’

  For a brief moment Cruz savoured all the ways he would break every bone in Chad Anderson’s body, starting with his pompous head and working his way down.

  ‘In a heartbeat, mi chiquita. No questions asked.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ASPEN BREATHED IN Cruz’s warm, musky scent as he carried her to his bedroom and told herself to relax. But it was impossible. She was too embarrassed. Her old panic had returned full force when she’d felt Cruz’s warm hand slide between her thighs and now she clung to his neck like a spider monkey as he laid her on the bed.

  ‘Aspen?’

  The bedcover was cool at her back and his naked chest was hot at her front as he tried to prise her hands from around his neck. In her earlier fantasies about sex it was romantic and sensual. Dreamy and wonderful. Hot and desperate. This felt awkward and tense.

  She didn’t look at him as he turned onto his side, visualising how gauche she must appear, with her hair spread out around her and her body partially exposed, with the bodice of her dress undone and metres of silk twisted up around her waist. Keeping her eyes scrunched tight, she adjusted the skirt down her legs.

  ‘Can you turn out the light?’ She could feel it burning holes in her retinas even though her eyes were clamped shut.

  ‘I will if it makes you more comfortable, but I won’t be able to see you if I do that.’

  ‘That would be the general idea.’

  ‘Open your eyes, gatita.’

  ‘Is it a prerequisite?’

  His low chuckle had her squinting up at him. He looked lazy and indolent with his head propped in his hands, his gaze extremely male and hot as it met hers. Well, clearly only one of them was feeling awkward and tense.

  ‘You’re very comfortable with this, aren’t you?’

  ‘You will be too, very soon,’ he promised. ‘More than comfortable.’

  He brought his hand up to her face and started drawing lazy patterns with his finger over her cheeks and nose and down the side of her neck to her collarbone. It wasn’t easy for her to give him control, but Aspen lay as still as a stone, slowly recognising that her skin was tingling with a pleasant sensation and that goosebumps had risen up along her upper arms.

  ‘How much pleasure have you actually had during sex, mi chiquita?’

  She swallowed and would have turned from him then, but his magical finger edged along the loose side of her dress and feathered across her nipple. She sucked in a shallow breath, letting it out on a rush. ‘Not much,’ she answered honestly. None seemed too big an admission to make.

  ‘Mmm...’ Cruz ducked his head to her shoulder and trailed a line of kisses to the sensitive curve of her neck. ‘Then we’ll have to change all that. I am now taking it as my personal mission to teach you about pleasure.’

  He shifted closer so that she could feel the heat of his body burn into the side of hers.

  ‘Nothing but pleasure.’

  He looked at her as if he wanted to devour her. As if he couldn’t think of anything else but her. The thought frightened her, because her desire for him had grown exponentially over the course of a couple of days and she didn’t know how that had happened.

  He had invaded her thoughts and her dreams and seemed to make a mockery of her declaration that she would never again be at any man’s mercy. Because here she was, lying nearly naked on his bed and feeling way out of her depth. And yet as scary as that thought was, as she looked at him like this, his face half in shadow from the bedside lamp, he looked amazing. His strong features and wide shoulders promised to fulfil all of her hidden desires and she felt utterly and completely safe with him, she realised with astonishment. Something she would have said she would never feel again in a man’s arms.

  Warmth returned deep inside her. Warmth and a sense of wonder that made her feel hot and restless. Her gaze fell to where her hands rested on his gorgeous chest and then she slowly returned her eyes to his. The look in his was both tender and hungry and it made her insides melt.

  Reaching up, she stroked the sexy stubble already lining his jaw. ‘Make love to me, Cruz. Please.’

  As if he’d been waiting for her to say those exact words he took one of her hands and brought her palm to his lips. His answer, ‘It will be my pleasure...’ rumbled through his chest and arrowed straight into her heart.

  His next kiss was hot and deep and sensation swamped her, sending sparks of excitement everywhere, cutting off her ability to think. Her inhibitions and worries seemed to be caught up with some primal desire and this time desire won out.

  There was just no room to consider anything other than Cruz’s big hands on her body, stroking her, adoring her. His whispered words of encouragement as he discarded her dress and moved her tiny thong down her thighs raised her level of anticipation to an unbearable pitch.

  Within seconds she was naked beneath him and his mouth was tracking a path to her breast. Aspen held still, already anticipating the heady pleasure his mouth would bring. And she wasn’t disappointed. Cruz drew the tight bud gently into his mouth, licked, circled, nipped and did things to her nipple that were surely illegal. Aspen felt dizzy and her hazy mind didn’t even register when his hand slid over the outside of her thighs. Then every neuron in her brain tightened and focused as she felt his hand drift inwards.

  ‘Still with me, chiquita?’ he asked, blowing warm air across her moist breast.

  ‘Yes, oh, yes.’ She curled her hands around the defined muscles in his shoulders. ‘But you’re still partially dressed.’

  ‘Not for long,’ he assured her. ‘But let’s take care of something first.’ He gently pressed
her upper body back down on the bed. ‘Lie back, gatita. This is all for you.’

  Aspen complied, but she still tensed when his hand returned to her closed thighs. She half expected him to open them and maybe move over the top of her, to push himself inside her. What she didn’t expect was that he would bend one of her knees up and start stroking her leg as one might a domestic cat. Or a startled horse.

  And then she couldn’t think at all, because he brought his mouth back to her breast and laved the tip with his tongue. She pressed closer, husky little sounds urging him on, and her lower body clenched unbearably with every tug of his lips on her nipple. Then his hand started circling higher on her leg. Slowly. So slowly it was sheer torture. She couldn’t stop herself from restlessly trying to turn towards him. She needed weight, she realised, and pressure.

  ‘Patience, chiquita,’ he implored, his breathing heavy.

  ‘I don’t have any,’ she groaned, and then gasped as his fingers lightly grazed over the curls between her legs before circling her belly and dipping down again, this time lingering a little longer and pressing a little lower.

  Unbelievably Aspen shifted her legs a little wider of her own accord and knew in that moment that she truly wanted this to happen. That she wanted more. That she wanted all of him. Inside her. Her fear of disappointing him, of failing, of him hurting her was completely eradicated as need spiralled through her and drove everything else out of her mind. If it didn’t work out she no longer cared. She just needed something. Him!

  She waited breathlessly as his finger ran along the seam between her legs again, only to exhale as it continued moving up to link with one of hers.

  ‘Cruz, please...’ She curled her free hand around his neck and dragged his mouth back to hers.

  ‘You want me to touch you, chiquita?’ he said against her lips.

  ‘You know I do.’ Then she had a horrid thought. ‘Don’t you want to?’

  He stilled and held her gaze as he brought the hand he held down to the front of his pants. He was huge. That was Aspen’s first thought. And her second was that she wanted to see him, touch him.