He’d tried to find it elsewhere—tried for two long, frustrating years. And no woman had ever even come close. He would do anything, pay any price, resort to any blackmail, just to have this woman where she belonged—in his bed.
‘You’re not leaving.’
‘No? Just watch me.’
She flounced past him, tossing that glorious red hair as she did so. He knew from the flashing, sideways, wary look she gave him that she expected him to try and grab at her, hold her back, so he derived a dark satisfaction from wrong-footing her, instead leaning back against the wall, folding his arms across his chest and watching her, waiting a nicely calculated moment.
‘Don’t you think that you’d be better off with something on your feet?’ he drawled at last, just in time to stop her halfway across the room.
‘What?’
Alannah stopped dead, half turned back, then looked down at her bare feet, pale against the deep burgundy colour of the carpet.
‘Where—?’ she began, but Raul ignored her and cut across her indignant question.
‘And were you really planning to walk through the hotel—and all the way back to your flat—dressed, or perhaps I should say undressed, like that?’
As he spoke he let his cool gaze slide from her angry face and down over her body, lingering deliberately at the spot where three buttons were missing and the front of her dress gaped wide over the lace of her bra.
She looked a total mess, Alannah admitted, while he … well, his clothes were faintly crumpled from their time on the floor and on anyone else that should have looked untidy, even messy, but somehow on Raul they had a very different effect. He looked ruffled, relaxed—and real. Light-years away from his normal smooth, sleek, business-suited self—and very, very sexy. It was impossible to look at him, at the expanse of broad chest exposed by the still unbuttoned shirt, and not think of how just a short time before she had lain with her head pillowed on that chest, the crisp dark hairs tickling her cheek as she heard his breathing slow, the thundering of his heart gradually ease as he too recovered from the wild ferocity of their lovemaking.
Gasping in shock, she felt the hot colour flood her cheeks as she grabbed at her dress again, pulling the pieces back together as closely as she could. But holding it there meant that she had no way of opening the door. And she still had to find …
‘Where are my shoes?’
Close to something like panic, she scanned the room, searching for any sign of the pale leather pumps she had worn on her way here. She couldn’t see them anywhere.
‘Raul …’
‘Alannah …’
He levered himself up from his position against the wall, and she watched warily as he came towards her slowly.
‘Why don’t you sit down for a moment and let’s talk about this?’
He sounded so calm, so reasonable that her mouth actually fell open and she gaped at him in blank bewilderment. Whatever had happened to Mr ‘Of course this is going to happen again’? Was he actually prepared to be reasonable? Or was he just hiding his darker side behind this suddenly civilised veneer?
She had no way of knowing and the truth was that her own thought processes were far from trustworthy. She felt as if she had been at the eye of a tropical storm ever since she had come to Raul’s hotel room, picked up and whirled around, battered by a fury of conflicting feelings. Even now, her body still ached with the hungry passion that had raged through her in the moment when Raul had taken her in his arms and kissed her. The honest truth was that even as she’d collapsed into sated exhaustion from his lovemaking a weak, greedy part of her had already been anticipating something more.
If the knock at the door had never happened, or if it had come a minute or two later, then there would have been no going back. She would have turned to Raul once more and if he had taken her into his arms and kissed her again then she would have gone to him, opened herself to him willingly and eagerly. All it would have taken was another kiss, another caress from Raul to stoke the fires that she knew had only died down, not died away. She knew she would have been incapable of saying no—that she wouldn’t have wanted to say no—and once more Raul would have made her his, stamped his possession on her without a thought.
But the knock at the door had come. It had broken through the burning haze that had filled her mind, snatching her out of the delirium of need and right back into harsh reality in the space of a couple of seconds.
She had waited, shivering in heated reaction, in the bedroom, listening to him dealing with the porter, handing over the case, heard the door shut. Every nerve in her body had still been so alive, so awake that if he had come to her then she still wouldn’t have been able to think. If he had walked through that door right then she knew with a sense of despair that she would have gone straight into his arms, drawn to him like a fragile needle was brought close by the fierce pull of the strongest magnet. She would not have been able to stay away. All he would have had to do was to say ‘Come’, and she would have obeyed. So great was the spell he had cast over her.
But he hadn’t come to her. He hadn’t opened his arms. He hadn’t said ‘Come’. Instead he had paused, picked up the phone and called Carlos.
And suddenly it was as if the bottom had dropped out of her world. Her heart had plummeted, twisting as it went and every last trace of heat had ebbed from her body, leaving her shivering in a very different way.
‘I’ve called him already,’ Raul had said. ‘And told him not to come at the time we originally arranged but to leave it until I called him.’
But she didn’t need him to tell her that. She didn’t care what he had said, or, rather, exactly how he had phrased it. She had heard him through the door. Heard how, once he had got rid of the porter, his first instinct had been to pick up the phone, call his driver. She’d heard the name Carlos, and even if she hadn’t understood the rest of the fast, autocratic Spanish, she had known only too well what was going on.
Because by then realisation had already hit home. And realisation had brought with it a heavy dose of cold reality—the sort of reality that she couldn’t dodge away from, couldn’t avoid, no matter how much she might want to.
While she was still dealing with the aftershocks of the hurricane of feeling that had swept her up, while her body still trembled in stunned delight at the sensations she had experienced and her mind whirled and spun from the force of feeling she had been subjected to, Raul had been calmly and coolly getting on with his life, dealing with the practicalities.
The practicalities of packing and checking out of his hotel room—leaving England, going back to Spain.
And leaving her behind.
Well, what had she expected, poor stupid fool that she was? Had she really thought that there might be more for her than this? That he might actually want more than he had just had—her willing body under his in the bed? Could she really think that once he had made love to her … had sex with her—she forced herself to look at what had just happened as it truly was—even the hotly passionate, wildly fulfilling sex that they had both enjoyed, he would put all his plans on hold, wanting to stay with her, wanting to have her in his future?
If she’d even allowed herself to dream of that then she would have been desperately disappointed. No sooner had he had his way than Raul had called his chauffeur, sorting out the arrangements for his journey back to Spain as if nothing had happened.
Because to him, nothing had happened. Lying alone in that bed, with her passionate responses cooling as rapidly as the sheets that Raul had just left, Alannah had had to force herself to face the real truth. Two years before, when he had believed her worth marrying, even if her value to him had been only that she would be his virgin bride and bear him the children he so desperately longed for, Raul had always held back; always restrained his hungry passion for her.
He would not make love to her until they were married, he’d said, and he’d held to that no matter how hard it had obviously been for him. Until tonight.
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If she had needed any proof of how little she meant to him then it had been there in the way he had taken her here, in this bed that she now could no longer bear to stay in but had flung herself out of, grabbing at her clothes and rushing into them in miserable desperation.
She had handed herself to Raul on a plate and he had taken everything she had offered. He didn’t want to want her but he couldn’t stop himself. And as soon as he had had what he wanted he had been making plans to leave. Assuming that what had happened had meant as little to her as it had to him.
And then he had strolled back into the room, large as life and twice as arrogant, assuming something else. Assuming that she would be sitting there—preferably lying there—waiting for him to take up where he had left off. So that he could deal with the problem as quickly as possible and be on his way.
And, fool that she was, she had been waiting. She had stayed in that room, silent and—damn it—obedient to his wishes! No wonder he had thought that he could take what he wanted from her, that she would pander to his every desire. If she had had any sense she would have snatched the opportunity while the porter was at the door to come out of the bedroom, sweep past him and out of the door before he had a chance to protest or complain. And the thought of him trying to explain why a half-dressed woman with no shoes might need to get out of the hotel suite as swiftly as possible brought a certain grim satisfaction to her mind.
‘Why should I want to sit down? And what could we possibly have to talk about?’
‘I have a proposition I want to put to you.’
‘A proposition?’
Alannah eyed him warily. He still looked calm—worryingly so. What had happened to the hotly passionate lover of just a few short minutes before—and the arrogant swine who had declared ‘I don’t have to snap my fingers—just use them to touch you, and you’ll be mine to do exactly as I command’? It seemed that in the space of just a few brief moments Raul Marcín had been at least three different men, if not more. There was the hotly passionate lover, the man who with calm good humour and spectacular arrogance had dismissed her protests as unnecessary and now here, it seemed, was the businessman who had a proposition to put to her. And she had no way of beginning to guess just which of them was the real person.
‘What sort of a proposition?’
Why was she even asking? She didn’t want to spend any more time in his company. It was too upsetting, too disquieting, too dangerous to her peace of mind and her sense of self-preservation. She wanted to get out of here.
Didn’t she?
But just as her mind threw the question at her she knew that she had already hesitated for too long even to convince herself. The angry impetus that had fired her, driving her feet towards the door, refusing to let her look back or even consider any other possible alternative, had seeped away from her, her yearning senses were already reminding her of what they were missing and the nagging ache of frustration low down in her body was almost too much to bear.
‘Sit down and I’ll tell you.’
Raul gestured towards the settee but the memories the big leather sofa held were too strong, too devastating for her to be comfortable. So she deliberately chose another seat, one of the big armchairs that matched the settee, and sat there stiffly, legs primly together, her hands clasped on her knees. She was painfully aware of the way that there must be a huge contrast between her position and the state of her tumbled hair, the still gaping dress.
‘So I’m sitting—tell me what you want to talk about. About this—prop …’
To her consternation and horror she couldn’t actually find the right word in her thoughts. The one her bruised mind kept throwing at her was ‘proposal’—this proposal. And she knew that proposing was the furthest thing from Raul’s thoughts.
But what truly scared her was the fact that she had actually thought of anything to do with proposals and marriage in connection with Raul at all. That was the last thing she wanted. The last thing she …
Rational thoughts evaporated, driven away by an explosion of disbelief inside her head as Raul came close—and went down on one knee just before her.
‘R-Raul…’ she began but the heat of panic inside her head dried her mouth and she had to slick her tongue desperately across her lips in an attempt to get any control over her voice again.
Panic? Or did she mean anticipation? Either way she could only be grateful that she hadn’t actually been able to say anything when he turned slightly and fished under the base of the settee, pulling out first one and then the other of her flat cream ballerina pumps.
‘Your shoes, querida,’ he said on a note of irony. ‘Here, let me help you …’
When his hand fastened around her ankle to lift her foot, his touch was warm and gentle and she shivered in a contradictory response to the heat that radiated out from where he held her. With care and skill he slipped her foot into the shoe and then reached for the other one, helped her into that one too.
‘There you are, Cenicienta.’
Cenicienta—Cinderella. From somewhere came the memory of Raul telling her of a children’s opera with that name. But when her mind made the dangerous connection between Raul and Cinderella’s hero in the fairy story, she forced it away from the foolish path down which it wanted to go.
The pad of his thumb smoothed along the top of her foot, leaving a trail of fire in its wake as he smiled up into her uncertain eyes.
‘Now you can run away as soon as you like.’
If anything was going to bring her back down to reality with a bang then it was that snide comment, and every last temptation to imagine Raul as Prince Charming evaporated in a flash.
‘I was not running away! So if you have any stupid ideas of coming after me with one shoe, to see if it fits, then you can forget them.’
Why wouldn’t her voice work in the way she wanted it to? Why did it come and go in the most peculiar way? And there was the strangest thickness in the back of her throat that was forcing her to swallow uncomfortably. It couldn’t have anything to do with tears, could it?
But the pricking at the backs of her eyes told its own story. As did the blurring of Raul’s face. She wasn’t going to give in to them, though. Swallowing hard, she forced her chin up, her mouth firming. So what if it was just a little too tight to be called firm and might actually merit the description clamped shut instead? No tear had fallen and now her eyes felt burning dry and gritty. Not in the least bit comfortable but at least she was safe from giving away her foolish, naïve dreams.
‘And you’re definitely no Prince Charming. So what exactly do you want? And please get up from your knees. You look ridiculous—and it’s not as if you’re about to ask me to marry you or anything like that.’
‘Why not?’ Raul astounded her by saying and he sat back to stare her straight in the face. ‘Marriage might not be a bad idea, after all.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘WHAT?’
Strangely, in spite of the fact that she was now looking slightly down at him, his position in no way diminished him, and the expression—or, rather, the total lack of expression—on his features made her shiver faintly inside. But in a very different way from the sensual reaction that had run through her body before. Now she felt both hot and cold as if in the grip of some nasty fever.
And what she had heard—thought she’d heard—had to be part of the delirium.
‘What—what did you say?’
‘That marriage might not be a bad idea. In fact …’
To Alannah’s shock and horror he moved again, coming back onto one knee. He reached for her hand and, nerveless with disbelief, she didn’t even have the brain power to snatch it back in time.
‘Alannah, would you consider marrying me?’
If what she had heard before had been ridiculous—then this was totally impossible. It couldn’t be happening. Not only did Raul seem to be proposing, but he was also actually doing so in a far more traditional and, some would say, romantic way than t
he first time. Then he had been supremely casual, almost flippant—‘I think we should get married; how about it?’ Now he was actually down on one knee.
Except that this time he wasn’t serious—he couldn’t possibly be serious. The cruel irony of that stabbed at her as she struggled to stammer out some sort of a response.
‘Mar—I—Why would I want to marry you? Why would you even ask?’
‘I would have thought that was obvious.’
‘Not to me it isn’t!’
Nothing about this was obvious. Nothing at all. She could see no reason why Raul should suddenly start offering marriage proposals—proposals that made no sort of sense that she could find.
Except …
Oh, dear God, no …
It wasn’t possible, was it? The fear that had just slid into her mind, cold and sneaking and chilling her soul with a terrible sense of creeping desolation.
Of course. Raul had never expected to find that she was still a virgin; never thought that he would be the first, and outside of the marriage he had once offered her. And Raul was a true Spanish aristocrat, proud to the bone and imbued with the high standards, the fierce sense of honour that came down through his ancestry.
She couldn’t bear to think that he was only proposing out of that sense of honour. That once again the idea of marriage came with no sense of love, only the most pragmatic reasons for even thinking of it. How could she ever even consider accepting it when she knew that one day, inevitably, he would come to feel trapped in such an arrangement, maybe even fall in love and want someone else? And then he would resent her, grow to hate her for coming between him and his true desires.
She wanted desperately to pull her hand away. In spite of the warmth of his clasp around it, her fingers felt like ice. But when she tried to withdraw his grip around her tightened, holding her captive.
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