The Twelve-Month Mistress (2 page)

‘Manhandling?’

In his indignation, his accent and pronunciation mangled the word so that it was almost incomprehensible.

‘
Manhandling?
You call that manhandling? What has happened to you, my Cassie? You never used to be like this. You always used to like my touch…’

A rush of cold anger at her rejection, the words she had used, pushed him forward, eyes fixed on her face, noting the suddenly watchful expression, the flicker of something new and uncertain deep in those blue eyes.

‘Loved it…’

‘Well not the way you got hold of me just then! I didn’t like that! And I certainly didn’t
love
it!’

‘I hurt you? If I did I’m sorry—’

‘You didn’t
hurt
me! At least, not in the way you think!’

The defiant tilt to her chin was pure provocation; an extra spark in the brilliance of her eyes created an answering fire in the most primitively masculine parts of his body. His heart gave a sharp kick, making his blood pound heavily through his system.

And suddenly he knew that he had to touch her. Really touch her. And not in the way that she had accused him of,
manhandling
her. He wanted to hold her close, kiss away the blaze of rejection in her eyes…

‘And you can
perdón
till you’re blue in the face and it won’t do a blind bit of good!’ she flung at him furiously. ‘You’re not going to treat me like this and get away with it!’

The sting of the words made him check himself. Think.

He didn’t like the direction his thoughts led him in.

Joaquin drew his brows together sharply, not knowing in the mixture of disbelief, incomprehension and anger that was suddenly bubbling inside him exactly which emotion was uppermost. His frown revealed them all.

‘Treat you in what way, precisely,
querida
? Cassandra, you’re really not making sense. And just what brought on this mood in the first place?’

‘You did!’

She was treading on dangerous ground here, Cassie admitted to herself. If she wasn’t prepared to tell him the real truth, then she was taking a risk even hinting at it. She had vowed that until Joaquin himself raised the topic of their year together then she wouldn’t say a word. Wouldn’t even hint at the way it was making her feel.

But an accusation like that last one came too close to what was really tearing her up inside.

‘And you can keep your hands off me!’

‘Oh, no, my lovely…’

He shook his dark head slowly but so emphatically, his voice a predatory purr.

‘That I cannot do. It is impossible. I cannot be with you, near you, and not touch you. I only have to look at you to want you, and you know that. Even now, when you are in this wild, crazy mood, my fingers itch to touch…’

He suited action to the words, reaching out and hooking one hand very gently around the back of her neck, the
warmth of his palm along the soft skin of her throat, his thumb brushing her cheek.

‘To caress you.’

That strong, broad thumb moved against her flesh, stroking delicate, erotic circles that woke every nerve, bringing their endings rushing to the surface.

‘To hold you.’

His other hand trailed softly up the right side of her neck, silky touch moving over satin and raising cold prickles of awareness all over her body as it did so, making her shiver in uncontrollable response. A moment later her face was cupped in both his hands, being drawn slowly and irresistibly towards him.

‘Kiss you…’ he murmured, his breath warm against her lips.

No! It was a cry of protest in her mind as panic set in at the thought of just how easily he could do this. How casually, how often he used the fierce, blazing, physical passion between them to avoid anything truly emotional. To dodge talking about anything that mattered.

Like their future. If they had one.

She tried to shake her head, to break away, but he held her too firmly for that.

‘Cassandra,
querida
, you know what you do to me.’

And what he did to her. And it was happening right now, no matter how hard she struggled against it.

His kiss was pure Joaquin. Pure enticement; pure seduction in a caress. It snatched her thoughts from her brain, reduced what was left to nothing but mush, and left her adrift on a sea of sensation, floating, melting, not knowing where she had been going or why.

‘Joaquin…’

His name was a sigh against his mouth, drawn from her by the pressure of his lips on hers.

‘So now,
mi belleza
, how am I doing now?’

She could hear the smile in his voice though she couldn’t actually see it on his face.

‘How am I touching you?’

Warm arms slid round her, closing tight across her shoulders, drawing her to him with soft but irresistible strength.

‘How am I holding you? Am I
manhandling
you now?’

‘N-No…’

‘Should I take my hands off you?’

‘No!’

It was a cry of protest when the pressure of his arms eased slightly, and it seemed he would have drawn away.

‘No—not now…’

In her heart, even that faint lessening of his hold felt like a little death, like the loss of something most precious to her, and something she would do all she could to keep.

But at the same time, unwanted and unwelcome, a tiny, lingering voice of common sense was whispering at the back of what was left of her mind, underneath all the sensual onslaught.

No, no, no, no
…it was saying, over and over. And in a very different tone from the one she had used.

It was like being in the middle of an emotional civil war where one part of her yearned to surrender to the sexual appeal of Joaquin’s touch, the heat that his kiss triggered all through her body. But at the same time that warning voice was demanding to know why she was making this so easy for him. Why she was going under without a struggle.

Because she didn’t want to fight. She didn’t want to struggle against her own feelings, her own desire to meet his kiss with her kiss, his caress with her own gentle touch. Even after just that one kiss, the feel of his arms around her, her whole body ached with a need that she could hardly control. She yearned to crush herself closer to him, to feel the heat and masculine power of his body against her own.

‘Not now…’ Joaquin echoed.

His mouth was on her throat now, making a slow, se
ductive journey from her shoulder to her jaw, kissing his way along. And Cassie would never have thought that there could be such variety in the simple sensation of a kiss.

But now it seemed that a kiss could be both hard and soft, light and then forceful against her neck. It could be oh, so tender and enticing, so that she felt she would almost weep at the gentleness of it. And then again it could be sharply, faintly cruel when his teeth grazed her skin, occasionally nipping lightly so that she gasped in shock.

‘Not now,’ he repeated, the words forming against her jaw-line in the warmth of his breath. ‘Now I am not manhandling you, but treating you as a woman should be treated. As a man should touch his woman—as I want to touch my woman.’

My woman.

The words were like a slap in the face, forcing her out of the heated daze into which she had fallen and making her look reality right in the eye.

My
woman.

The darkly possessive tone revealed more of Joaquin than anything else could.

‘So,
mi belleza
, perhaps we should continue this somewhere more comfortable, hmm?’

Mi belleza.
My woman.

Always, to Joaquin, it was what he owned, what he controlled, what he had power over that mattered. He ran his life with a ruthless, almost brutal discipline. Everything was as he wanted it and nothing happened without his approval.

It was what had brought him his success and what kept him right where he was. Always at the top of his game, always on the peak of the mountain.

Always having things on his own terms, and only his terms.

She had come into his life on his terms, lived with him on his terms. And would she be expected to leave on his
terms too? To walk out the door when he said it was time, whether she wanted to or not?

Was she only ever going to let him dictate things to her?

‘Querida?’

Joaquin had noticed her sudden silence, the withdrawal that had taken her away from him, mentally if not physically.

‘What is it?’

Cassie opened her mouth to reply, found that her throat was too dry and tight to form any words, and had to clear it harshly before she could manage to speak.

‘I thought you came home to work. And I really need that coffee.’

At least her voice was croaky and raw enough to make it believable. She sounded as if she had a ton of sand roughening her throat and she had to lick at her lips nervously to stop them from drying out. The way his eyes followed the betraying movement had a hawklike intensity that made her shiver deep inside.

‘I’m parched.’

His stillness betrayed the way he was feeling, the anger he was holding in check. Joaquin Alcolar wasn’t a man who gave in to rages and blazing tempers. The fury he felt was cold, hard as ice, bitter as a cruel winter wind, but it was no less savage for that.

And it was always preceded by one of these sudden silences. The freezing of his long frame into the total stillness of a hunting predator who had spotted his prey and had every muscle tense and bunched, waiting for just the right moment to pounce.

‘You’re
thirsty
?’

His tone made it plain how ridiculous he thought it. How impossible it seemed to him that anyone could want to choose the simple practical need for a drink over the sensual banquet he had obviously intended enjoying.

‘Yes.’

It was all she could manage. That and the brief, uncomfortable ducking of her head, carefully avoiding his burning gaze. If she looked into his eyes she would see the anger there that wasn’t in his voice and she knew it would destroy her nerve to go on.

‘I said I was thirsty when I came down. I’m still thirsty now. I was on my way to make a coffee…’

‘You’re joking,
sì
?’

He couldn’t believe it, she realised uncomfortably. He really couldn’t believe that she would reject his seductive advances. That she would turn them down—turn
him
down.

And even worse, he hadn’t ever thought that she could resist him. He had assumed that she would be putty in his hands, easily distracted from her purpose by what he wanted. That she would do as he wished, without any questions. That she would respond to his whim as swiftly and obediently as a trained dog. And that if he told her to jump then she would simply ask how high.

‘Why should I be joking?’

She tried to assume an airy carelessness that she was very far from feeling. The look in those deep-set eyes was dangerous, and the strong body was still too taut, too unmoving for comfort.

‘Cassie…’

Whatever he had been about to say, he didn’t finish. Even as he spoke her name in that harsh way of his, the edge on the word so rough that it scraped its way over her exposed skin, there was the sound of another key being inserted into the lock behind them.

A moment later the door was pushed open, swinging back on its hinges until it slammed against the wall with an ominous-sounding thud. A man, tall, dark, strong like Joaquin, stood in the doorway framed against the still-burning sunlight outside.

‘Cassie?’

Her name was spoken in a voice so very similar to
Joaquin’s, the intonation, the accent an almost exact match for his. But where Joaquin’s tone had been so cold and distant, the warmth and welcome in this one were so evident that she turned to him in instinctive relief, her eyes lighting up, her mouth curving into a ready smile.

‘Ramón! Come in!’

‘Ramón.’

Joaquin’s echoing of his half-brother’s name held none of the warmth and welcome that Cassie had shown.

‘What are you doing here? And where the hell did you get the keys to the house?’

‘I was invited,’ Ramón returned casually. ‘And keys—well, Cassie lent hers to me so that I didn’t have to hang about outside. Here,
querida
…’

He tossed the keys and a smile in Cassie’s direction and as she caught the clinking bundle she saw the brooding look in Joaquin’s dark eyes and was unable to suppress a faint smile herself.

So Joaquin was none too pleased with his brother’s sudden appearance. Perhaps even a little jealous?

Surely that was a hopeful sign? Perhaps even something she could play on to find out the real state of her lover’s feelings?

Taking a couple of quick steps forward, she enfolded Ramón in a warm hug, pressing her cheek to the lean, hard planes of his.

‘Come in, Ramón. Would you like a drink? We were just about to have coffee.’

And the look on Joaquin’s face as she led the way down the hall towards the kitchen gave her a sudden lift to her spirits that made it almost worth the risks she had taken by provoking him in this way.

D
AMN
Ramón!

‘Damn, damn, damn him!’

Joaquin slammed his fist hard against the side of the window frame as he stared across at the terraced expanse of his garden, to where the clear water of the curved swimming pool glinted in the last of the afternoon sun.

Damn him for appearing at just the wrong moment! For walking into the house as if he owned it, flashing that smile at Cassandra and interrupting…

Interrupting what?

The question froze him suddenly, hand still clenched tight into a brutal fist, the knuckles of his fingers showing through white under his tanned skin.

This time, the muttered curses in his native Spanish were harsher, more savage—and aimed at himself instead of his brother and his ill-timed visit.

Interrupting what? That was the real problem. The uncomfortable, nagging worry at the bottom of his mind, that corrupted and distorted everything until he wasn’t sure what to think.

He had thought that he’d succeeded in what he’d planned for his early arrival at the
finca
. That he’d enticed Cassandra out of her difficult mood, charmed away the un-characteristic coolness and distance in her attitude—seduced it out of her. And he had believed that she was ready, as she had always been in the past, to put their differences behind them, and do their making up where they always did it so well—in bed.

But Ramón’s arrival had interrupted all that. Broken the mood totally and left him fuming with frustration while
his woman and his half-brother made coffee and chatted affably.

It seemed that Ramón had a habit of turning up unexpectedly, just when he was least wanted. After all, hadn’t he arrived on their father’s doorstep, unannounced, nothing known of him until then, just at the moment when Juan Alcolar and his son by marriage had been at the lowest point of their relationship together? And now here was Ramón, the illegitimate son—
one
of the illegitimate sons, Joaquin corrected, because there was Alex too. But Ramón was the son who was everything that his father would have wanted—who had everything going for him—except that he was not Juan’s legitimate heir. ‘No!’

He muttered it aloud to emphasise the word, driving it home to himself.

It wasn’t Ramón’s fault that he was who he was. Not Ramón’s fault that their father was a philandering womaniser who couldn’t keep his trousers on when he was with another female. He was their father’s son after all; no one could have any doubt about that. You only had to look at the three of them together and it was as plain as could be.

And it wasn’t Ramón’s fault that he had wandered in on the awkward, uncomfortable confrontation between his brother and Cassandra.

The sort of awkward, uncomfortable, uneasy confrontation that was becoming more and more common between them. So much so that the nagging unease was the norm rather than the rare occurrence it had been at the beginning of their relationship.

At the beginning…

Joaquin’s hard features softened from the taut, harsh lines into which they had been drawn, and a smile of memory played over his sensual mouth.

At the beginning— Oh, their relationship had been amazing then. Amazing, fantastic—mind-blowingly sensual.
They had been caught up in a whirlwind of sexual desire and passion, unable to keep their hands off each other, not daring even to kiss in public for fear of the blazing, hungry desire such a small caress might spark off. If they had been in the house, then they had been in bed. It seemed that they had never left the bedroom, except occasionally to eat, for almost all of the first six months.

But that had changed so much lately.

The frown was back, creasing his forehead harshly.

The sex was still great—the best, for him at least. Cassandra turned him on as no other woman had done in his life before. But out of bed, so often he had the uneasy feeling that her mind was somewhere else. And…

But at that moment his thoughts stopped dead, his rational process arrested by the sight beyond the window.

‘Cassandra!’

Where he had opted for a shower to wash away the heat of the day and freshen up, Cassie had decided to go for a swim. So now he stood transfixed, his ebony gaze caught and held by the tall, slender figure making her way down the path towards the cool, inviting water of the pool. Her long blonde hair was caught up in a high pony-tail at the back of her head, and she wore a hot pink bikini, fastened at the back and the sides by shoestring laces.

‘Bella!’

It was a fervent, almost reverent exclamation, expelled on a low, sighing breath. He had thought that after their twelve months together the effect her beauty had on him might have lessened, not hitting home quite so hard. But now he found himself caught and held unmoving by just the sight of her, and the sensation deep in the pit of his stomach felt as if someone had just punched him there, very hard.

The hot pink bikini might not be as microscopic as some things he had seen her wear in the privacy of their bedroom, but to a man who knew her body intimately the way that
the tight Lycra clung to the smooth curves of her breasts and hips, even before it was wet, was pure torment. The brilliant colour of the material was in sharp contrast to the smoothness of her slender limbs, only just touched with the faintest hint of a pale gold tan after her year here.

Joaquin’s mouth dried, his lower body tightening sharply at just the thought of sliding his hands over the heated satin of her flesh, over the long, lean lines of her legs, trailing along the waistband of the bottom half of the swimming costume. His touch would follow the indentation of her waist, skim over the delicate ribcage, and up, towards the soft swell of her swaying breasts.

‘Hell-fire!’

This time the kick of need was sharper than before, making his head swim, his breath catch. He was hard already. Hard and hot and hungry. So much so that watching Cassie move to the edge of the pool and lift her arms above her head, bringing those luscious breasts into even sharper prominence, was like some form of delicious torment, one he wanted desperately to end and yet also longed to prolong as much as he possibly could.

He wanted this woman. Wanted her with a need that was more than words could describe. With a hunger that all the many, many times they had made love over the past twelve months could do nothing to assuage. If anything, he wanted her more now than that day when he had first set eyes on her and felt that he might die if he didn’t get her into his bed—and fast!

But then she lifted herself on her toes, gave a little spring and dived neatly into the pool, disappearing under the cool water in a couple of seconds.

And before those seconds had ended, before she had a chance to fully submerge herself, Joaquin found that he was moving. The towel he had been drying his hair on was discarded somewhere, he didn’t give a damn where, and he was thundering down the stairs, leaping the last section all
in one jump, and dashing out, on bare feet, towards the terrace and the pool.

Her blonde head had barely just broken the surface as he arrived at the spot from which she had dived, the golden hair sleeked and darkened by the water, the long pony-tail floating on the surface beside her. And as he checked briefly at the edge of the pool she shook the water from her face, kicked her legs and set out at a steady breaststroke for the far side, away from him.

She hadn’t seen him, didn’t know that he was there. But she would do soon. He had no intention of hanging around here, waiting. He wanted her in his arms, her body tight against his. And he wanted that
now
.

Barely pausing for breath, he executed a perfect racing dive, plunging into the water and setting off after her in a fast, powerful crawl.

The first indication Cassie had of Joaquin’s presence in the pool was the sudden splash, the sound of his powerful body entering the water in a clean dive. The next moment he had surfaced and was coming after her, strong arms cleaving through the waves he’d created in forceful strokes.

A shattering range of feelings assailed her, whirling through her mind in quick succession, battering her with swift, violent changes of mood.

Shock was first. Simple, startled, physical shock at the unexpectedness of his arrival, the suddenness of the splash and swirling waves at his appearance.

Apprehension followed. Uncertainty at not knowing why he was here, what he wanted, just what his mood might be this time.

But then, suddenly, old habits reasserted themselves. Old habits of thought and actions as she recalled the number of times in the past that he had come after her in just this way. Knowing she was a strong swimmer, he had thrown out an unspoken challenge, encouraging her to race him to the far end of the pool.

‘Okay, then…’

Reacting instinctively she turned, ducked under the water, kicked hard and, surfacing fast, struck out for the blue-painted edge.

At first she had a noticeable lead, but a quick glance over her shoulder showed that Joaquin was coming up fast behind her. Exhilaration and excitement flooded her veins, pushing her into even stronger movement, putting all her heart and energy into it.

She was holding her own. The finishing line was almost within reach. But Joaquin’s tanned arms, his dark head, were drawing level, matching her stroke for stroke.

She saw him turn his head. Caught the swift, brilliant flash of white teeth against the dark olive of his skin as he grinned in wicked triumph. Another forceful kick from his muscular legs, an extra spurt of speed, and he had passed her, tanned fingers reaching out and touching the edge of the pool just bare seconds before her own paler ones.

‘Okay, you win!’

Somehow all the uneasiness of earlier that afternoon had evaporated, leaving her with a rush along with her gasps for air as she regained her breath. Letting her feet sink slowly to the base of the pool, she stood upright in the shallower water, wiping her hands across her skin and back over her hair in order to brush away the lingering water, clearing it from her face and her eyes.

Joaquin lounged just feet away, half in, half out of the water, his back against the tiled edge of the pool, his hair, jet-black and slicked back, clinging to the fine shape of his skull. Once more those white teeth flashed in a wicked, triumphant grin.

‘Show-off!’

But of course he had every right to show off, she admitted inwardly. Unlike herself, he was hardly even breathing faster; the broad, muscled chest rose and fell as easily as if he had just had a short, casual stroll along the
side of the pool and not powerhoused his way through the water after her.

Glinting in the sunlight, tiny drops of water slid over the bronzed skin and came together in a tiny rivulet that trailed its way through the black body hair and down over the flat plane of his stomach. 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.