his edge …? Hell, at times it felt as if he had lost his mind!
While she was obviously not the two-dimensional scarlet woman the media had painted her, she clearly had a past, but then who didn’t? He did not require every woman he took to bed to be a blameless virgin. In fact had such a female existed such attributes would have immediately put her offlimits, not to mention bored him senseless.
The last thing Santiago was looking for at this stage in his life was a woman who had been waiting for the ‘right man’; he was nobody’s right man.
He had tried denying the existence of this strong attraction—it hadn’t worked. He had tried waiting for it to pass—it hadn’t. That just left working through it … the third was by far the most attractive option.
‘I’ve had an interesting conversation with Ramon.’
Lucy tensed at the seemingly casual comment. Her guilty conscience was making her jumpy—if Ramon had come clean about their fake romance, Santiago would have come in here breathing fire and retribution.
The knowledge made her relax slightly.
‘How is he?’ she asked, matching his casual tone as she sat back in her seat, leaning her elbows on the wooden arms of the chair.
‘They are discharging him at the weekend.’
Her relief was genuine. ‘Great!’
‘So you can take up where you left off with the big romance.’
‘I wouldn’t call it a big romance … exactly …’ she muttered, dodging his gaze and taking another gulp of the brandy—too much too fast. She choked as it hit the back of her throat and settled in a warm glow in the pit of her stomach.
‘No? What would you call it?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ she admitted, sidestepping the issue.
Santiago laced his fingers and, resting his chin on the bridge they made, smiled at her. ‘Try.’ His voice was not smiling; neither were the eyes fixed like lasers on her face.
She slung him an irritated glance, compressed her lips and crossed one ankle over the other. ‘We’re not in a long-term relationship, all right?’ she snapped without looking at him.
‘And have you ever been—with anyone?’
‘The odds are not exactly stacked in favour of lasting relationships, are they?’ The sad fact did not stop her being a ridiculous optimist and believing that there was someone out there for everyone, just sometimes they missed one another.
The reply would only have displeased a man who was looking for long term and he wasn’t. ‘So you are not looking for anything permanent.’ All good, he told himself.
Show me a woman who says she isn’t and I’ll show you a liar, she thought. ‘Permanent requires making concessions and I’m not good at that.’
‘So you don’t believe that there is someone out there who will complete you … a soul mate …?’
Was that what his pretty wife had been, his soul mate?
Lucy lifted her gaze, bright smile in place the moment their eyes meshed. Her smile guttered as she searched his face and her eyes widened.
‘You know.’
‘Know what?’
The display of fake ignorance drew a growl from Lucy.
‘Ah,’ he drawled. ‘You are referring to the fact you haven’t actually slept with my brother, that there is no steamy affair.’
In retrospect Santiago could see that he should have guessed the truth sooner, and would have had his judgement not been clouded by sexual jealousy. He had watched them together, seen them flirt and fought a desire to rip them apart. If he’d been thinking straight he might have seen past the window dressing to the lack of chemistry.
Her chin went up. ‘Not yet.’
‘Not ever!’
He acted with bewildering speed and zero warning. One minute he was lounging in the chair several safe feet away, the next he was right there, pulling her out of her chair and drawing her body up against his hard, lean front.
She opened her mouth to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing when he took her face between his big hands, framing it with his fingers, resting his thumbs in the angle of her jaw as he tipped her face up to his.
The rampant wild hunger in his glowing eyes drew a raw whimper from her aching throat.
His eyes were like a dark flame as they moved across her face. ‘You’re so beautiful.’ His powerful chest lifted in a silent sigh as he shook his head in an attitude of disbelief. ‘I keep looking for a flaw but there isn’t one.’
Lucy trembled, weak with lust and longing as she stared up at him with passion-glazed drowning blue eyes. ‘What is happening?’ she whispered.
‘I think you know.’
Her stomach quivered and clenched as his long fingers speared deep into the single skein of her hair, lifting it off her neck to expose the smooth lines of her throat.
Her head went back as his warm lips nuzzled the wildly beating blue-veined pulse spot at the base of her throat. The moist contact sent a fresh slug of frantic desire shuddering through her trembling body.
Her even white teeth clamped along the quivering curve of her full lower lip and her heavy lids drifted closed as he moved up her throat, his lips barely touching her skin, the light contact blitzing a tingling, erotic trail of sensation.
His lips brushed her cheekbone, her ear, then, lifting his head, he touched the cushiony softness of her full lower lip, dragging his thumb across the outline before he bent his head. Slowly he fitted his mouth to hers, but when the kiss came it was not slow, it exploded, searing, not gentle, but rough, raw and hungry. Swept away on a swirling tide of elemental need, she reached up her arms, circling his neck as she met the darting intrusion of his tongue with her own, the taste of him exciting her unbearably.
As they kissed his hands were on her body, sliding down her spine, cupping her bottom, pulling her up and against the rock-hard bold imprint of his erection.
‘You’ve been waiting for this.’
She looked into the silver lights shining in his dark eyes and felt dizzy. ‘Yes,’ she admitted, thinking, I’ve been waiting for you.
Nostrils flared, he breathed in the scent of her hair. ‘I want to wrap myself in this,’ he said, letting the pale strands slip through his fingers. ‘I want to be inside you.’
The throaty admission sent a jolt of sexual longing through her body and the need inside her rose until she could barely breathe, think … ‘Take me to bed, Santiago?’ she whispered, simultaneously shocked and excited by her own boldness. ‘Please.’
The febrile glitter of passion in his dark eyes made her tremble while for several heart-stopping moments he searched her face, then nodded. Taking her hand, he walked
