was not your job to think of her that way. Not your job to be sympathetic. She is your mother, and she should have taken better care of you.”
“Still,” she said softly. “I think you’re right.”
“Often, the great and terrible tyrants in our lives are just as great a tragedy to themselves as they are to us.”
“Except that your father was a greater tragedy to your mother.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. The women who love the men in my family do not come to good ends.” She could feel a warning implicit in those words, and if she had not been feeling so much, such a large weight sitting on her chest, she might have said something sharp to lighten the mood. Might have argued with him, called him out on his ego for suggesting that a woman might fall for him.
But things had changed too much between them since they had gotten in the car tonight. And she knew more about him than she had earlier. More than that, she felt...
Somehow, the idea of being without him did not feel like freedom anymore, and that frightened her very much.
“I think we’re drawing a lot of attention,” he said. “It is that dress of yours.”
“It is the ring on my finger,” she returned. “And the fact that I’m with you.”
“You’re the most beautiful woman in this room,” he said. “They’re all flowers. Pale, lovely, but insipid. You are the sun itself.”
She felt her face growing warm, her breasts getting heavy, aching. She didn’t know what to make of that. Didn’t even know what it meant. What it might be preparing her for. And yet, she knew that was what it was. A preparation of some kind. For something more. Something from him. Something she didn’t even have a name for.
Sex.
She shifted uncomfortably in his arms, and suddenly was very aware of that space between her thighs, of the ache there. Of the fact that she was aroused, and that she wanted him. Wanted him to touch her there. More thoughts that should shock her, and yet didn’t. None of this did. She couldn’t account for that. Couldn’t account for who she was when she was in his arms. But it was something different. Someone different. A different creature entirely than she had been when she had first arrived at his rancho.
“I’ve never been called beautiful before,” she said, and then cringed as the words left her mouth, because it was such a vulnerable thing to admit. To a man who was beauty incarnate. Who had to keep women off his property so they would not make fools of themselves around him.
The look in his eyes was so hot, it melted her. And when he spoke it was slow, steady and with such grave purpose she could not doubt him. “Perhaps it is simply because no one has ever taken the time to look,” he said. “When you first arrived at my rancho I didn’t look at you. I looked through you. But I am looking now. And I see you, Camilla.”
His tone was so grave, his eyes so serious, and resting on her with a kind of intensity that she wasn’t sure he could manufacture. But surely, it was all for show. Surely, this conversation was simply so he could paint the appropriate picture to the people around them.
Surely, it wasn’t because she was truly beautiful. Surely, that wasn’t why he continued to look at her, why his hand suddenly drifted down, lower on her back, and why he suddenly released his hold on her, and reached out to cup her chin with his thumb and forefinger.
Her lips felt like they were on fire, and she was suddenly so acutely aware of them she could scarcely breathe. She had never felt so very conscious of her face before, of every minute thing her expression might be doing. And when she realized how dry her mouth had become, when she slipped her tongue out to moisten her lips, it felt like a sexual act. Like an invitation.
One she would have said only a moment ago she had not even known how to issue. And yet apparently, she did.
Apparently, she did, because only a breath later, he closed the space between them, and claimed her mouth with his own.
IT WAS FOR SHOW, of course. That was why Matías had leaned down and pressed a kiss to Camilla’s mouth. Not because it was so full and edible he could no longer resist it. Not because keeping his hands off her had been an exercise in futility from the moment he had seen her earlier. Not because he would rather kiss her than continue their entirely too honest brand of conversation.
Not because he was beginning to feel an impossible, immeasurable shift happening inside his chest that seemed to uncover parts of him that he had thought long destroyed.
A part of his soul he thought had bled into the earth and soaked into the ground along with his mother’s life’s blood on that terrible day.
This was for show. It was for the cameras. For the pictures that his grandfather would expect to see in the papers tomorrow. To go with that perfect headline he had spoken to Señora Gomez earlier in the evening.
Yes, that was why he pressed his mouth to hers. That was why he parted those delicate, sweet lips with his tongue and thrust deep inside her mouth, gripping her chin hard as he angled her head so that he could taste her deeper, take greater advantage of her inexperience, of the involuntary gasp she made, so that he might gorge himself on her.
It was all to give the impression of a man consumed by passion. It was not because he was a man consumed by passion, that was impossible. He was Matías Navarro, and he was consumed by nothing. He controlled each and every impulse, had dominion over all that he was, all that he wanted.
He did nothing more than what he chose to do. He was not a man like his father, ruled by temper. Or like his brother, steeped in debauchery.
He was not seduced. He never had been. He had always done the seduction. And the fact that she was trembling beneath his touch indicated that he was doing the seducing yet again. And if he was shaking, as well, it was only because of adrenaline. Because of arousal. Because his body was readying itself for an intimate act that would never eventuate. Not with her.
Though, he was having difficulty remembering why now.
When he pulled away from her, he remembered. Her lips were flushed with her arousal, her eyes glassy, but it was the look of wonder in them that hit him square in the gut.
The innocence there.
If there was any part of him that was pretending she was not a virgin, he could no longer pretend. He was not a man who had ever allowed himself to entertain the idea of taking a woman’s virginity. That was the territory of villains like his brother, and the fact he wanted Camilla, even though he did not intend to make their union permanent, appalled him. It had been different with Liliana. He had intended to offer her a commitment that would last. To do the honorable thing. To offer her his name, his protection. She was like a hothouse flower. She would not only require protection, require being coddled, but she would expect and demand it.
Camilla would never submit to such a thing. She was wild, untamable. She was nothing like Liliana and all her pale, quiet beauty. Camilla was the sun, but she was also a storm. Uncontrollable. Unmanageable. She would tear through the rancho, tear through his life and tear through her own with all that same vigor and carelessness
