There was something raw and elemental about him that made her traitorous heart skip a beat and her mouth dry and her knees weak.
A lot of other things were going on that she didn’t even want to think about right now. Deep breaths, Lucy … deep breaths.
He held her eyes with a steady stare and watched the colour in her face fluctuate. Her skin fascinated him, so creamy he wanted to feel it to see if it felt as soft and satiny as it looked. He wanted to feel her naked underneath him. He had wanted it from the moment he had set eyes on her and, damn her, she had known it.
His chest swelled. He had never wanted a woman this much in his life, so badly that he could taste it. He wanted to taste her so badly that … He embraced his anger just to stay in control.
Lucy sucked in a deep, wrathful breath and blurted, ‘You are one manipulative—’
He moved so fast that it seemed that one moment he was standing several feet away, the next he was beside her with his finger poised a whisper away from her parted lips. She felt the pressure building inside and felt totally helpless to do anything about it.
‘Think very carefully before you continue, Lucy. I am not my brother and I am not in the habit of turning the other cheek.’
‘You mean you haven’t mastered meek—imagine my amazement,’ she drawled, slapping his hand away and taking a shaky step back.
Her heart was beating so hard it felt it might explode from her chest; the simple act of drawing air into her lungs required conscious effort … The musky scent of his warm skin lingered tantalisingly in her quivering nostrils.
He laughed. The sound was not unattractive; actually nothing was unattractive about him but his personality.
‘Whereas you have.’
She gritted her teeth in response to the silky sarcasm of his retort and wrapped her arms around herself.
His brow furrowed as he watched her shiver. ‘You’re cold.’
He faked solicitude well, but Lucy recognised this new tactic for what it was—an attempt to soften her up. She knew that she was not the sort of woman who brought out the protective instincts in the opposite sex. She was not small or delicate and she did not consider this a bad thing. She had never envied the fragile little creatures that made men feel macho and strong.
‘Look on the bright side—I might get pneumonia and die. Problem solved.’
A spasm of impatience tightened the hard contours of his jaw. ‘Do not be stupid.’ But she wasn’t, anything but; the evening had proved that he had underestimated Miss Lucy Fitzgerald.
For ‘stupid’ Lucy translated ‘anyone who didn’t act as though his every word was engraved in stone’. She watched as he began to shrug off his jacket. The shirt he wore underneath was white with a subtle silver stripe and in the moonlight it was possible to see the lean shape of his body beneath it as he held out the jacket towards her.
She lowered her gaze but not before her insides had dissolved.
‘You’ve got to be joking.’
His face was in darkness now, but bands of moonlight fell across his body. ‘You find old-fashioned courtesy amusing.’ His hand smoothed the contrasting silk lining of the jacket he had shrugged off.
‘In the light of the fact you’ve spent the entire evening being as rude as hell to me … yes, actually, I do!’
Lucy planted her hands on her hips, her breasts under the red silk heaving as she glared up at him. ‘You know something—I feel sorry for you!’
‘Is that a fact?’ he drawled, sounding bored. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope you are not going to tell me why I am an object of pity in your eyes?’
‘Because people like you—’
‘People like me?’
‘Sorry, I forgot, there are no people like you—you’re special,’ she drawled, sketching speech marks in the air. Her mocking smile faded as she added in a voice that shook with contempt, ‘But actually you’re not. Living in a castle and having pots of money makes you lucky—not special.’
‘And you were born on the wrong side of the tracks forced to live off your wits? I don’t think so,’ he drawled.
Lucy blinked, but recovered quickly. ‘I don’t live in a castle.’
‘And the Fitzgeralds are paupers, I suppose?’
Her blue gaze grew frosty. ‘Leave my family out of this,’ she warned fiercely.
This display of protectiveness struck him as ironic. ‘Like you did? Did it ever occur to you to consider how your actions would affect them? How do you think they feel when they see you use your body and beauty as a weapon?’
Lucy laughed, finding the accusation particularly ironic when she was standing here struggling to control her breathing. If only!
‘What can I say? I’m a shallow and superficial person.’
‘You’re …’ He lunged without warning and grabbed her by the waist, the other hand went to the nape of her neck, his fingers pushing into her hair as he pulled her into him.
Panic made her struggle but then his mouth was on hers and her resistance melted, she melted; the arm banded around her narrow waist took her weight as she went limp.
He sank his teeth into the plump fullness of her lower lip, sighing as she moaned. The heat of his body penetrated the silk of her dress … nothing she was feeling was like anything she had experienced before.
‘I really want to taste you.’
His smoky voice shivered through her body, awakening an answering need deep inside her. Using what strength she had to force her heavy lips open, she looked up at him with passion-glazed blue eyes.
‘Yes,’ she breathed huskily. ‘Please.’
He kissed her deeply, his warm lips seductive, his probing tongue shockingly intimate, but it was the contrast of soul-piercing tenderness and ravenous hunger of the carnal assault on her senses that drew a series of soft moans from Lucy’s throat.
Overwhelmed by the need his touch awoke, she wound her arms vine-like around his neck and kissed him back hard, meeting his tongue with her own.
The shocking rock-hard imprint of his erection as it ground into her belly excited her incredibly, making her gasp and moan, giving herself over totally to the wild hunger in her blood as the passion generated between them burned hotter. His mouth demanded more and she struggled to give it.
His hands moved down her body, moulding her against him, as Lucy’s hands slid over his shoulders feeling the hard ridges of muscle through his clothes feeling the racing of her pulse, feeling his heartbeat, the two sounds becoming one.
The desperation of their soft moans and murmurs grew more frantic and uncontrolled until finally Santiago pulled back.
It took a few seconds for sanity to return. When it did the shocking
