The Twelve-Month Mistress (3 page)

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 adjusted his position, opening his legs so that she was drawn into the space between them, then closing
them again around her, imprisoning her tightly, his hands on her hips, warm fingers brushing against her skin.

‘You’re naked. And—and
aroused
…’

‘Absolutely,’ he nodded smilingly. ‘But then…’

His grin widened, there was a faint tug between her legs, and the next moment he raised his hand from under the water to reveal the bright pink material of the bottom half of her bikini crushed in his large male hand.

‘So are you.’

While his eyes had held hers, keeping her attention transfixed, his fingers had been busy under water, pulling loose the bow-tied strings that had fastened her bikini bottom over both hips, and sliding it away from her body.

Now he tossed the sliver of cerise material from him, aiming it back over his shoulder so that it landed on the bright blue tiles that surrounded the pool.

‘Joaquin!’

Cassie didn’t know if her startled response was one of reproof or delight, and clearly Joaquin didn’t care as he settled her into an ever more intimate position between his powerful thighs, the thrust of his manhood hard against her, and brought his mouth down crushingly on hers.

And while he kept her mouth from speaking, effectively stopping her thoughts from functioning too, once more those wicked hands were busy, twitching loose the ties on her bikini top and letting it fall free, floating on the top of the clear water.

‘So now you too are naked.’ He spoke huskily, looking deep into her eyes, resting his forehead against hers. ‘Naked and—
aroused
?’

He echoed her own words, adding an upward, questioning note at the end of the sentence, but Cassie had no doubt that he knew exactly how she was feeling.

He must know it from the way that her pulse was thudding, her heightened breathing and the vein at the base of her throat giving away too much. And the pressure of his
hands at her hips was lighter than her own instinctive movement towards him, the way that she was writhing softly against his heat and hardness, revelling in the extra sensation since he had tossed aside her clothing.

And when his hands, cool and wet, came up out of the water to cup her breasts, softly teasing their peaking nipples, she knew it was impossible to hide her need from him. She didn’t even want to try.

‘What do you think?’

She whispered it against his ear, her head lifted to press against his cheek, and she let her teeth graze the skin of his earlobe very slightly, feeling the long body crushed against hers shudder in instant response.

‘I think…’

Those knowing hands were on the move again, wandering over her body, stroking the swaying curves of her breasts.

‘I think it might be so. But I also think…’

His fingers slid down under water, travelling over the flat plane of her stomach, smoothed through the wet curls at the juncture of her thighs, slid lower…

‘Joaquin!’ Cassie gasped as his daringly intimate touch made her insides clench, her whole body convulsing on a wave of hungry need. ‘Oh, please…’

‘I think that you should say—that you should tell me how you feel—don’t you?’ he urged softly, a knowing smile curving up the corners of his wickedly sensual mouth in the same moment that his deep, deep eyes took in the unconcealed evidence of the effect his touch was having on her.

‘Joaquin…’ she moaned as a searching finger slid into the moist cleft, found the tiny, pulsing bud and touched softly, creating an effect much like setting light to the fuse on a powder keg.

‘
Tell
me…’ he persisted, almost roughly, clearly determined that she should say exactly what she wanted even
though it had to be so blatantly obvious that it was impossible he didn’t know. ‘Cassandra,
querida
, tell me.’

‘I think—I
know
—I want you!
Want
you!’

And now that she’d said the words, she couldn’t hold them back, but repeated them over and over in a growing litany of need.

‘I want you, want you,’ she muttered with her mouth against his shoulder, her teeth scraping his tanned skin, her fingers digging into the tight muscles.

She heard his muttered curse, felt the struggle he was having to contain himself, control himself, and was determined to break it down totally, absolutely.

‘Want you here with me, close to me, inside me…Joaquin, I need you!’

‘And I want you!’

It was a cry of surrender, an admission of total loss of control. His eyes were wild and blazing, his face set in a mask of urgent need as he stood up, hands closing over her, swinging her up into his arms and hoisting her bodily out of the pool and up the shallow steps, trailing dripping water behind them as he carried her over to one of the wooden loungers and set her down, not exactly gently, on the green-and-white striped cushions.

‘Now…’

This was what he wanted, Joaquin told himself as he looked down at Cassie, sprawled on the lounger, her wet blonde hair struggling loose from the pony-tail in which it had been fastened.

This woman, hot and hungry and wild—this was what he wanted from the relationship. This was what was worth having, worth putting up with any other uncomfortable feelings for. This burned away the unease, the doubt, leaving room for only one, blazingly powerful emotion.

Lowering himself to kneel at the side of the lounger, he picked up one slim, elegant foot, still damp from the swimming pool, and pressed a kiss against the big toe.

‘Joaquin…’ Cassie protested, but only faintly. ‘We’re out in the open…’

‘And there isn’t another house for miles,’ he returned smoothly, moving on to all the other toes in succession. ‘No one to see us. Besides, that didn’t trouble you that other time.’

‘We were in the pool then—the water—oh!’

She broke off sharply, her eyes closing, her head moving restlessly against the cushion as his warm mouth closed over one toe and his tongue circled it enticingly.

‘We’re as private here as in the bedroom,’ Joaquin told her, abandoning her toes and turning his attention to her foot, kissing his way from her instep to her ankle. ‘So just lie back and let me pleasure you.’

If the truth were told, he didn’t know if he was pleasuring her or himself, he admitted inwardly as he made his slow, caressing way up her leg, heading for the softer inner skin of her thighs, one of the parts of a woman that he loved most of all. There were times when only the hot, hard rush of fiery passion would do, when speed and urgency were everything. And there were times when the slow, sensual build-up, the piling of delight upon delight, was what it was all about.

And this time was one of those.

This was a time to savour. To enjoy to the fullest the pleasures of the flesh.

But at the touch of his mouth on her thigh Cassie moaned aloud, her hands reaching down, reaching for him, pulling him up to cover her until their mouths met, clashed, clung in a soul-searing kiss that was hotter than the sun in the sky.

‘Querida!’
Joaquin muttered against her lips, the sensation of her naked, sun-warmed body under his pushing all his earlier thoughts of patience, of slow sensuality, right out of his mind. ‘Cassandra,
querida
, you are all that a man could ever ask for in a woman—in a lover.’

His strong, tanned legs pushed at her slimmer, paler ones, opening her to him so that he lay between them, the essential heat and hardness of him just nudging against her exposed flesh.

‘Joaquin…’

It was a soft, moaning whisper, the sound of his name an enticement, a caress and a reproof all in one.

And the reproof was because she was getting impatient. He could see it in her face, read the gathering storm of hunger in her eyes.

That was what he had always enjoyed so much about this woman.

The fact that she not only matched his desire head-on, but that her own passion often surged ahead, leaving him breathless with the need to equal her, satiate her, appease the hunger her demands woke in him.

He had never had a sexual partner like her. Never known someone who satisfied all his fantasies in one glorious, sensual, physical package, and yet somehow always managed to leave him hungry, looking for more.

Cassie’s clutching hands held him where he was, close on top of her body. The soft, sweet pressure of her breasts against his chest was a torment of sensuous delight, making him harden even more.

With his lips taking delicate, nipping little caresses, he kissed his way down her neck, making her stir and murmur faintly, tilting her head back against the cushions. The movement opened the way to the rest of her upper body, taking his kisses over the slopes of her breasts, one after the other, so she arced ever higher, exposing the hardened, thrusting nipples to tempt him.

A temptation there was no way in hell he could resist.

‘Oh, dear heaven…!’

The uncontrolled cry escaped her as his mouth fastened tight over the pink nub, suckling hard, grazing the skin faintly with his teeth.

‘Oh, Joaquin…’

Her body convulsed under his, her legs opening wider, exposing the innermost core of her, inviting…

With a single, forceful, uncontrollable thrust, he answered that invitation, taking himself into her body and into the realms of pure sensation in the space of a split second.

There was no room for thought in his head. No room for anything but sheer physical delight. Hunger, passion, burning, blazing excitement that exploded inside his brain, took him higher, further…

And Cassandra came with him every inch of the way.

Having been together for a year, their bodies were attuned. Each knew the other’s private pleasure spots, and used that knowledge shamelessly to entice, to tantalise, to arouse even further. And the warmth of the sun, playing over bare flesh, the evening scent of the plants in the garden, the sound of the birds chirping in the trees, were extra enhancements to the erotic pleasure that swamped their thoughts.

They were lost, abandoned. Totally absorbed in each other. Totally given up to each other, the primitive rhythm pulsing harder, hotter, faster, higher. Until it took them right over the edge and into the mind-blowing explosion of perfect ecstasy, falling headlong into an oblivion of delight.

As their breathing gradually slowed, Joaquin buried his face against her neck, under the now-dry, tangled fall of her hair, and kissed away the faint sheen of perspiration from her skin.

‘This is why you’re mine, Cassandra,’ he muttered, his voice thick and rough with satisfaction. ‘This is why we’re together, why we’ve stayed together. Why we’ve lasted this long.’

His breath escaped in a long sigh that stirred her almost-dry hair.

‘You’re
mine
!’ he declared possessively, making it plain that that was as much as he wanted.

And at that moment, replete and totally exhausted by the blazing, primitive ardour of their lovemaking, Cassandra allowed herself to believe that perhaps, after all, for now that might just be enough for her too.