Cassie found that her mouth had dried suddenly, her throat tightening on a wave of response, and she tried to swallow as inconspicuously as possible in order to ease the constricting sensation.
Joaquin treated her to another wide grin, eyes gleaming knowingly.
‘Maybe, but I still won! So now you owe me.’
Something tightened deep in Cassie’s stomach, twisting sharply on a touch of nerves.
It was no good trying to pretend that she didn’t know what he meant. From the very first time when he had discovered how much she liked to swim, and how fast she was in the water, he had issued a challenge, tempting her to race him.
‘And to make it interesting,’ he’d said, ‘we’ll compete for a prize. Whoever loses owes the winner a forfeit—whatever they demand.’
So now, seeing that taunting smile, hearing the words ‘you owe me,’ Cassie knew just what was going through his mind.
‘It wasn’t a proper challenge!’ she hedged warily.
‘Which it wasn’t the last time—when you won,’ Joaquin reminded her. ‘But as I recall you still claimed your prize.’
That gleam in his eyes brightened vividly, reminding her without words just what the prize she’d claimed had been, and letting her know that he remembered only too well. She felt as if her whole body must be blushing, her skin suffused with rich colour as she recalled the passionate way he had responded to her begging him to make love to her right here, in the pool, under cover of the darkness of late evening.
But that had been over a month ago. It was five weeks since they’d last raced in this way. Five weeks since they had even swum together. Five weeks in which Joaquin had had little time for relaxation, little time for leisure, little time, it seemed, for her. So that now things seemed so very different. The unspoken split that had opened between them had turned into a gap and from a gap into a chasm, until she was beginning to wonder if it was possible to bridge it at all.
And the worst thing was that she knew she was partly responsible. That her own inability to hide her feelings, her constrained, preoccupied mood, had driven a wedge between them and she hadn’t been able to stop it.
This time she did slick her tongue over her painfully dry lips. She just couldn’t stop herself.
‘So what is it that you want?’
Watching that gleam flare into flame, blazing suddenly in the darkness of his gaze, she knew just what was in his mind. But a second later, to her bewilderment, he closed down on the heat in his eyes, and instead let his stare fall to her mouth.
‘A kiss,’ he said softly. ‘Just a kiss. Is that too much to ask?’
But would it stop at just a kiss? She doubted it.
A kiss that would lead to an open mouth? A kiss that would lead to a caress, the smoothing, stroking of his hands all over her body? A kiss that would lead to lovemaking?
Was that what she wanted?
But did she care?
There was no room inside her head for the memory of the uncertainty of earlier that day. And other thoughts were crowding into her mind, making it spin even more wildly.
The exhilaration sparked by the race was still fizzing through her veins, buzzing inside her head so that she couldn’t think clearly. The sheer sensual pleasure of standing here, with the sun warm on her head and shoulders, the cool water lapping around her waist, was enough to make her forget any colder, calmer, common sense. And there were other feelings too. Feelings sparked by the sight of Joaquin’s lean brown body, the tight lines of his muscles still glistening with traces of moisture. The stunningly carved face was turned towards her, gilded by the sun, black eyes brilliant as jet, the high, slanting cheekbones sharp as blades under the bronze skin.
She felt dizzy with excitement, tension, admiration.
Need surfaced, caught and held.
And need she gave into, reaching out a hand that shook faintly to smooth it over the broad, straight lines of his shoulders, the strength of his arms and then along the ridges of muscle that lined his powerful chest, tracing tiny, erotic circles in the dark body hair that hazed his flesh.
‘Cassandra…’
Joaquin stirred convulsively under her touch, his voice husky and soft.
‘So do I get my kiss?’
Like someone in a trance she leaned forward, pressed her lips softly against the hard plane of his lean cheek, feeling the faint roughness of male skin beneath her mouth, tasting the intensely personal flavour of him. On a sigh she inhaled the equally intimate scent of his body.
And knew that she was lost.
And that she didn’t give a damn.
‘That, querida,’ Joaquin complained as she withdrew slightly, ‘was not a kiss. It does not pay the forfeit you owe me.’
With an effort Cassie forced herself to look up, into the sensually darkened pools of his eyes, knowing from his smile that he saw his answer in her own gaze.
‘Oh, doesn’t it?’ she managed huskily. ‘Then I shall have to do better.’
‘Much better.’
‘Then what about this?’
She had barely finished speaking before she took his mouth, teasing and tantalising him with her own lips, letting her tongue run along the warm cleft that separated the finely carved upper lip from the fuller, more sensual lower one. And she knew his reaction when she heard him catch in a breath on a faint gasp, his mouth opening under hers, his tongue meeting the tentative exploration with an erotic enticement, drawing her in deeper and closer.
‘That’s more like it,’ he muttered, rough and urgent against her mouth. ‘That is a kiss. The sort of kiss I wanted.’
And as his kiss encouraged her, so his arms drew her closer too, fastening tight around her slim waist and pulling her sharply towards him. So sharply that her feet left the bottom of the pool and she floated towards him on the gentle eddies of the cool water.
But there was nothing gentle, or cool, about the part of his body that she connected with as she came tight up against him, her stomach cradled in the hard arc of his pelvis, her hips crushed against his.
And what she felt was hard and hot and intensely male. The forceful power of his arousal, reaching through the thin and ineffective barrier of her clinging costume, sent a shudder of response rushing through her. And that tiny movement only added to the stunned sense of intimacy as she was crushed closer.
‘Señor Alcolar!’ she managed on a choking gasp, turning shock into a teasing provocation. ‘You—you have no clothes on!’
Joaquin’s grin in response was totally unrepentant.
‘Nothing at all,’ he returned smoothly, lowering his dark head to press a hot, hungry kiss on her shoulder, one that stirred the potent heat of his lower body, pressing even more intimately against her.
Joaquin
