by Natalie Fox
‘Aren’t I allowed even that small weakness?’ she asked bitterly.
‘Only if I’m allowed one too.’
Because she wasn’t expecting it, her body wasn’t geared for defence. His hand shot out and slid round her waist and in one swift thrust she was hauled hard against him. His mouth was hot on hers, hot, demanding and deadly in the instant desire it sprang in her. His tongue eased past her lips, grazed heatedly over the soft inner skin of her lips, numbing her senses to why he was doing this.
A noise came from his throat, animal-like, predatory, uncontrollable. It was one she recognised and had always thrilled to in the past. An admission from him that the power of his love demanded her complete surrender, here and now and with an urgency that left her breathless. She had always matched his eagerness with a depth of desire that never ceased to arouse him to the limits of his endurance.
It was happening now, that turbulent flush of emotions coursing through her that had her aching so intensely for his penetration. His hand now sliding over the soft satin, now kneading her flesh beneath it till the white heat of desire scorched every negative pulse under her skin as if a virulent flame had flashfired over her body.
Her mind spun with the depth of the need, and so intense was it that she couldn’t register that this was just a punishment, his revenge, his torment. His hands, burning now, hard with intention, thrust beyond the thin fabric, scored across her breasts, drawing a deep gasp from Gemma’s throat.
He held her breast fiercely to guide her aroused nipple to his mouth, drew deeply on it as if he was sampling some rare, sweet wine and wanted to savour the very last drop.
Gemma’s hands flew to his hair, twisting the familiar springy silken coils in her fevered fingers, holding him against her for fear of losing him again.
But he was lost, her tormented senses reasoned. He hated her. Believed she had wronged him and not the other way around. This was the torment he had promised her. But surely he must be in pain too? Surely this wasn’t an act put on for the purpose of revenge? He needed her, desperately. The hardness of his body thrusting against the heat of her own, the breath quickening in his throat, his moist mouth so possessive and demanding on her breasts, couldn’t be faked.
And then it was all over, the desire swept away on a swirling current of painful memories of betrayal. Their thoughts and reasoning coupled as their bodies weren’t going to be allowed to.
They both drew back from each other at the same instant and their glazed eyes locked painfully.
‘Hardly the way I had anticipated it ending,’ he grated harshly, pulling her robe around her and tightening the belt viciously.
Gemma clasped her shoulders and hugged herself for some sort of comfort. Her body trembled under the satin, not with desire but with the shock of the cold cessation of his embrace.
‘I…I thought that was the whole point of the exercise,’ Gemma whispered in a voice roughened by the intensity of her confused feelings. She knew in that moment that she wanted him as much as she ever had, not a need fuelled by just wanting his body but a need fuelled by love. She hadn’t been wrong about her feelings for him and a week had been long enough to prove that it was real. Her love was all still there, badly tarnished by his cruelty, but nevertheless there, deep in her heart. The confusion came for him. Didn’t he realise that too, that they had had something special and that whatever had passed could be resolved?
‘You’d better eat before your food gets cold,’ he said brittly, turning away from her and stopping at the door.
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, this abrupt change of subject once again. She wanted him to tackle her, she wanted a blazing row because sometimes good came out of such furious confrontations. But he had stopped and he was facing her and he had something more to say. She held her breath, absurdly anticipating and wishing something harsh and cruel to come from his beautiful mouth, an insult she could match and thrust back at him to start the ball rolling.
‘Tomorrow, after you are fully rested, I’ll show you over the rest of the hacienda. You’ll find enough to occupy yourself with till Agustªn returns.’
‘I already have something to do,’ she blurted, ridiculously hoping that he would object to her intermediary commission and so start the row she so longed for. ‘Maria asked me if I would do a painting of Christina for her.’
Her heart raced as his brow darkened. ‘She shouldn’t have done that,’ he said tightly. ‘I’ll have a word with her.’
‘No!’ Gemma cried, clenching her fists at her side. That hadn’t been her intention, to get Maria into trouble. She’d handled it all wrong and now Maria was going to be on the receiving end of his wrath, not her.
His eyes narrowed at her protest and his fingers whitened on the edge of the door.
‘No,’ Gemma repeated. ‘She was hesitant about asking me, said she shouldn’t have, but Christina is all she has and…and she wanted something to remember her by if…if one day she decided to go away.’
She didn’t mention Mike. He might not know that Agustªn’s pilot was in love with Maria’s daughter. She was walking a tightrope for Maria as it was.
‘She kindly offered to pay, but I said I would do it for nothing. It will keep me busy while I’m waiting. I don’t know what Christina’s position is in the household, but I promise I won’t let it interfere with her duties.’
Suddenly she didn’t want the row she had been needling for. It had all gone wrong and he wasn’t angry with her any more but with Maria, and that wasn’t fair.
‘She has enough spare time, so I don’t think it will be a problem,’ he said quietly, and relief flooded Gemma. ‘At least it will keep you out of my hair,’ he added brutally. ‘Give you time to reflect on what nearly happened in this room tonight. Don’t think for a minute that I’ve eased up on you, Gemma. Making love to you tonight doesn’t fit into my plans. But when I’m good and ready for you, you’ll know. I’ll have you hammering on my bedroom door before very long.’
All hope faded and Gemma tensed the body that only minutes before had melted in his arms like butter in the sun.
‘Sure you will,’ she conceded, braving a cynical smile. ‘I’ll be hammering on your door with a feather and I won’t have to do it twice, will I? Because you’ll be waiting eagerly enough, and you won’t have torment on your mind, will you?’
She thought that his rage would burst out and he’d murder her there and then and put them both out of their misery. His face darkened thunderously, his grip tightened so fiercely on the door that she feared he’d rip it from its iron brackets. But this was a new Felipe, one she was so terribly unsure of, one who didn’t do what she expected of him.
‘Sleep well, querida,’ he said, controlled and immobile now. ‘Think on what I have said and prepare yourself for the onslaught. It’s not a threat but a promise.’
He closed the door infuriatingly softly behind him and Gemma stemmed a cry of frustration in her throat.
CHAPTER THREE
GEMMA was up early the next morning. She’d slept enough for a month and awoken refreshed, though as soon as her feet touched the rug by the bed Felipe’s threats swamped her once again.
She wasn’t going to let it weigh her down, though, she determined. That was what he wanted: to undermine her confidence till she was an emotional wreck. She was halfway there, she suspected, but no one was going to know it.
After showering she dressed in a cool lemon sundress with thin shoulder straps and slipped on soft leather flip-flops. She grabbed her Ray-Ban sunglasses as she went out of the room. Her eyes ached this morning, a reminder that she wasn’t as brave as she was trying to be. She’d fought tears last night, battled with them till her eyes ached so badly that she had been tempted to give in and let them flow. But she wouldn’t give him an inch, let alone her tears!
The villa was still and Gemma hoped she was first up, hoped that no one would mind if she got her bearings in the old villa.
She paused on the stone stairway
to study the paintings. Nothing she recognised, like a Renoir, a Turner or a Picasso. Mostly old portraits of the family, handed down from generation to generation. She wondered if any were of Agustªn but saw none that had been painted in the last fifty years. There were no portraits of women, she noted, but wasn’t surprised. This was a macho country where the women didn’t count for much, she cynically supposed.
The downstairs rooms were cool and airy. Huge rooms with high ceilings, heavily beamed, whitewashed stone walls and polished terracotta floor tiles throughout. The furnishings were in keeping with the villa, heavy antiques of dark carved wood. Tapestries of ancient hunting scenes decorated the walls and the sprawling sofas were upholstered in luxurious brocades. The Hereke rugs on the tiles were flat woven in shades of blue, red and ivory with flashes of gilded thread. Real gold? Gemma wondered.
There were bowls of flowers everywhere, roses to scent the air, lilies and the exotic orchids that decorated her own bedroom. The house, though sombre, was very beautiful, and a peculiar thought struck Gemma—that no children had exploded with laughter within these walls. In fact it had the awesome feel of a museum where children were inhibited and silent.
One room was locked and Gemma presumed that to be Agustªn’s private domain, his study possibly. Running out of rooms, she followed the corridor to the kitchen. She opened a door at the end, a heavy studded affair similar to all the doors in the house but this one somewhat newer.
This was where the heart of the home pulsed. The kitchen was huge, bright and a century more modern than anything she had seen so far.
Maria turned from the huge stainless steel range where she was frying crisp bacon and turning round flat pancakes in a pan. The smell was delicious and cheered Gemma, which made her reflect that though the rest of the house was beautiful it had slightly depressed her.
‘Gemma, you are well, si? Felipe is with the horses.’
Gemma could see for herself. She saw him through the open door at the back of the kitchen. He was exercising a black stallion in the paddock in front of the stables. He wore a black T-shirt with white riding breeches and even from this distance she could see that the gauntness she had first noticed about him was confined to his face, not his body. He was still a muscular, powerful man, but the hunted look gave the impression of an overall weight loss.
Her heart ached to think she might be the cause, but surely not? He hated her now, didn’t he? But the torment he had promised her was giving him no satisfaction. This revenge that was powering him was doing more harm than good.
Gemma turned away from the door as Maria called her for breakfast, an informal affair round an oak refectory table, which reminded Gemma that she was here for a purpose, to work—she wasn’t a guest in the house.
‘Christina cleans the bedrooms and will be finished soon. You start the picture then?’ Maria asked eagerly as Gemma ate her breakfast.
‘Later, Maria,’ came a voice from the back door, and Gemma turned her head to look at Felipe. He stood framed in the doorway, the glaring light of the day behind him silhouetting him as if he were the devil himself taking a day out from hell.
‘I wish to spend the morning with Gemma. Christina can sit for her this afternoon.’ He sat across the table from her and laid his riding crop down on the bench seat next to him as if he might need it at any moment.
Gemma mentally slapped herself. She was becoming paranoid with the thoughts of the torture he had predicted for her.
‘You slept well?’ he asked, concentrating on the enormous breakfast of bacon, eggs and pancakes Maria set down in front of him.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she answered politely, lifting her coffee-cup to her lips and watching him over the rim. ‘I thought I was an early riser but you beat me to it. I saw you exercising your horse.’
‘A gentle exercise. I breed racehorses. Tomorrow he goes to stud and needs his strength. Would you like to watch?’ There was a glint of cynical humour in his dark eyes at the suggestion and an apprehensive Gemma saw it as another cut and thrust.
‘No, thank you,’ Gemma said primly, lowering her lashes in embarrassment.
‘Perhaps you would like to see the teaser stallion at work, then. Not quite so stimulating but very necessary and interesting none the less.’
‘Teaser stallion?’ Gemma breathed cautiously, her curiosity reluctantly aroused.
‘A teaser stallion is introduced to the mare to get the heavy business of courtship over before the sire takes the final glory. If the teaser tries to mount the mare, she’s ready, then the breeding stallion is brought in.’
‘That’s awful!’ Gemma protested. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘There’s not much fair in love and war,’ he said meaningfully.
Gemma ignored the indication and retorted, ‘Tell that to the poor teaser!’
‘Oh, they have their moments,’ he told her, refilling his coffee-cup. ‘Haven’t you heard the story of Archive, a not very successful racehorse who was demoted from the turf to life as a teaser? Bright Cherry fell in love with him and wanted only him, continually spurned her classier intended. Her owner sympathised and eventually let her have her own way. The foal that came out of that illicit union was Arkle, one of the greatest steeplechasers of all times.’
Gemma smiled, reluctantly. ‘That sounds like a shaggy horse story, if you ask me.’
‘It’s true, I promise you,’ Felipe told her convincingly.
Gemma let the smile fade from her lips. Maybe there was a warning disguised in that tale too. Maybe Bianca was the female counterpart of a teaser, being brought in as part of Felipe’s plan to torment her, to drive her into his arms so that he could spurn her. But wasn’t it more likely he simply wanted Bianca here for himself, in which case she, Gemma, might turn out to be the teaser in Bianca’s eyes!
‘Are you ready for your tour of inspection?’ Felipe asked, pushing his breakfast plate away.
‘Yes, but first can I see where I’m expected to paint the portrait? Did you order everything I asked for?’ She could hardly believe her own voice, behaving as if everything was perfectly normal between them.
Felipe picked her sunglasses up from the table and handed them to her as they got up. Their fingers brushed and their eyes locked for a second. Both looked away at the same time.
‘It wasn’t necessary to order everything on the list. The canvases, yes, but there is a fully equipped studio here.’
The shades over her eyes concealed her look of surprise as they stepped outside.
‘Who’s the artist, then?’ she asked. She still knew nothing about the man she was going to paint. She’d seen no evidence of a wife or children of Agustªn’s, though like her they would probably be grown up now and have fled the nest. So who was the artist: Agustªn himself?
‘No one,’ Felipe told her tightly as they strolled through the rose gardens towards the pool.
Gemma didn’t press him. Maybe the studio was a whim of a rich man, one who had so much money he didn’t know what to splash out on next. It was a bonus for Gemma, though; she’d been worried about where she was going to work. She’d seen nowhere suitable to set up her canvas in her foray this morning. Only the kitchen had sufficient light and she could hardly picture the wealthy oil baron posing with a backdrop of culinary paraphernalia.
‘Do you swim?’ Felipe asked as they paused on the terrace overlooking the pool.
It was a stunning pool, circular, blue, cool and inviting. A fountain splashed gently in the centre surrounded by natural stone. The water cascaded down the rock and back into the pool. Gemma was mesmerised by the light spinning off the tumbling water, shafting tiny rainbows around the fountain. She tore her eyes away to look at Felipe. Her heart ached to think he didn’t even know she could swim; it ached to think she didn’t know if he could either. But thoughts like that were non-productive. He was being passably reasonable to her at the moment and she owed him some effort of her own.
‘Yes, I’m no dolphin but I love the water,’ she
murmured.
‘Good, then later we will bathe. Do you ride?’
‘Definitely not,’ Gemma told him with a grin. ‘Anything bigger than a Shetland pony terrifies me.’
Felipe laughed but didn’t suggest he teach her. She was grateful for that small mercy.
They strolled round the pool and through an archway of crimson bougainvillaea to a part of the garden that took Gemma’s breath away. It was shaded by fronds of sun-wilted cane but what hung beneath in rows and racks raised up from the ground was a delight to the eye. Orchids, hundreds of them, waxy, exotic, colourful. They trailed from tubs and baskets, thick and heavy with blooms.
‘They are beautiful, quite fantastic!’ Gemma breathed.
Felipe broke off a flower, creamy white and slightly trumpet-shaped, so perfect it would have cost a mint if boxed and offered for sale in London or Paris. He smiled and tucked it behind Gemma’s ear, arranging her thick silken mane of jet hair around it to hold it in place.
Gemma couldn’t hold his eyes. She was distressed and yet puzzled by the pain in his, and fearful of the touch of his fingers lightly brushing against her cheek.
She turned away, not really understanding that look. She pretended to study one of the more unusual blooms. She heard him emit a small laugh behind her and then she understood. It was all a game to him, she thought bitterly, a very cruel one at that. Well, she wouldn’t toss the flower crossly aside. He would expect that and he’d know he’d got to her.
‘Are they yours?’ she asked.
‘Mine and Agustªn’s. A hobby we share.’
Gemma frowned. She wanted to know more but Felipe had already turned away and was heading back to the pool area. She caught him up.
‘Do you work for him?’ Another question that shouldn’t need to be asked. After the intensity of their affair she should know everything about him but sadly she didn’t.
‘Yes. I’m his financial director.’
Gemma wanted even more. ‘Can you tell me a bit about him? I mean…it’s necessary for my work. I need to know what sort of man he is if the portrait is to be a success.’
