the aggravated plunge of his fingers and he reached down and zipped his trousers with a purposeful movement. ‘It was a joke or a punishment?’
‘Neither.’ Shivering and shaking, she stooped and retrieved her dress, holding it in front of her like a shield.
‘Then what? You wanted it as badly as I did,’ he said in a driven tone. ‘So don’t pretend that you didn’t.’
‘I’m not pretending anything.’
‘So why did you stop?’ His eyes were dark as a winter night and Faith licked her lips, trying to ignore the fact that her entire body was suddenly alive with anticipation.
‘Contraception,’ she croaked, watching as his expression froze. ‘For a man who doesn’t want babies, you’re extremely careless, do you know that?’
He stilled and a sudden silence screamed through the room.
‘I am not careless.’ His breathing suddenly shallow, he ran a hand over the back of his neck. ‘Not usually. I did not intend to put you at risk—I forgot that you didn’t use protection.’
And there it was, back again. This thing that lay between them. ‘I did use protection,’ she said flatly. ‘But I stopped taking the Pill when I found out that I was pregnant. And I didn’t start taking it again after I lost the baby.’ She looked away from him but felt the tension levels rocket in the room.
‘So, clearly that’s something we need to address sooner rather than later.’ His voice was rough, still laden with the passion that thickened the air and scraped along the edges of their nerve endings.
‘No, we don’t!’ She took several steps backwards and found herself against the wall again. The same wall that just moments earlier she’d been pinned to under the weight of his body. ‘We shouldn’t even be thinking about sex when things are so complicated between us, Raul!’
‘We have thought about nothing but sex since the first moment we met, cariño, and you know it.’
Faith wished there was a switch she could flick to turn off the responses of her body. She didn’t want to feel like this. ‘And that’s our problem, isn’t it?’
‘Problem?’ One dark eyebrow swooped upwards in sardonic appraisal. ‘The fact that you are capable of satisfying me in the bedroom is the one thing that is absolutely right about our relationship. I certainly don’t see it as a problem.’
His oblique reference to her abandoned response to him sent the colour flooding into her cheeks. ‘You can’t base a relationship on sex!’
‘Never underestimate the importance of sex.’
Her heart rate doubled. ‘I know it’s important, but if sex is the only thing that is right about our relationship then we’re doomed, Raul. A marriage is about trust and caring. We need to talk.’
Casting her a glance laden with hot-blooded volatility, Raul stepped back from her. ‘If you want to talk, phone a girlfriend.’ Simmering with unfulfilled passion and male hormones, he strode into the bedroom, leaving her staring after him in disbelief.
Stunned by the suppressed violence she sensed in him, Faith followed. ‘You can’t just walk out in the middle of a conversation just because you don’t happen to like the subject matter—’
‘Dios mío, not now!’ With a low growl of impatience he turned, his hand on the bathroom door, his eyes burning into hers. ‘You’re a highly intelligent woman. Surely you’re not so naïve that you can’t see what is happening here? Either get dressed or get out.’
‘But—’
‘Faith—’ The word was a deadly warning, as if he were holding on to control by a thread. ‘I’m telling you now that if you stand there naked, I will finish what we started, contraception or no contraception. You will be back against that wall and this time I will not be stopping!’
Stunned by the appalling frankness of his words and the barely subdued violence of his reaction, she gave a little gasp. ‘But there are so many issues between us—’
‘At the moment I’m not interested in the issues, I’m just interested in sex.’ Interpreting her shocked expression, he ran his hand over his face and swore long and fluently in Spanish. ‘Does that make me shallow? Yes, probably, but I warned you before that I wasn’t anyone’s idea of a good catch. Remember that before you start trying to change me.’
‘I don’t want to change you,’ Faith said honestly. ‘I just want to understand what you’re thinking.’
‘No, I don’t think you do, because what I’m thinking right now this moment,’ he said in a silky tone, ‘is that it is either a long, cold shower or you on that bed, naked with your legs wrapped around my waist. Your choice, cariño.’
‘You’re being shocking on purpose.’
‘I’m being honest,’ he said harshly. ‘Because I thought that was what you wanted. Maybe now you’d like to rethink that particular demand, given that the truth of what is on a man’s mind is so rarely what a woman wants to hear.’
Shaken to the core by the savagery in his voice, Faith backed towards the door. ‘I’ll—I’d better leave you alone. I’ll see you later.’
‘You certainly will and by then I will have addressed the issue of contraception so you can knock that particular excuse off your list.’ He gave a humourless laugh and opened the bathroom door. ‘In the meantime, we have guests for dinner. They arrive in two hours, and in order to concentrate on business I have to not be thinking about sex all the time. So this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to delve into that expensive wardrobe of yours and find something that covers you from head to toe. I want nothing showing.’
‘Raul—’
‘If necessary, sew two things together. Wear a coat! But I don’t want to see cleavage or leg or so help me, Faith, I’ll show you in public just how important sex is to me.’ And with that rejoinder he strode into the sanctuary of the enormous bathroom and slammed the door firmly shut behind him.
Dios, she was driving him wild.
In the fierce grip of dark, primitive sexual need, Raul slammed the palm of his hand against the shower controls and sent fierce jets of freezing water cascading over his tense, throbbing body.
He closed his eyes, his jaw clenched, his teeth locked as he tried to let go of the tension. Every muscle in his body was pumped up and hard, the hormones coursing round his blood like a dangerous drug.
Litres of cold water sluiced over his heated, throbbing flesh and he stood there with grim determination until he finally acknowledged that he would develop pneumonia long before the desperate need in him died.
Unaccustomed to feeling sexual frustration, Raul leaned both hands against the wall and breathed deeply, trying to use his brain to calm the overwhelming need that tortured his body.
He hadn’t intended to touch her like that; not then. What had happened to him? He, who prided himself on his control. He had more finesse than to indulge in mindless, animal sex and yet the facts spoke for themselves.
