The Secret Mistress. Emma Darcy
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than any one man should ever have.
Shontelle stood rooted to the floor, speechless, breathless, mindless, her good intentions instantly zapped out of existence. Her scalp tingled. Every millimetre of her skin tingled. Her fingers curled into her palms, nails biting into flesh. Her toes scrunched up in her walking boots. Her heart swelled, throbbed, its heavy beat of yearning echoing through every pulse point.
She wanted him.
She still wanted him.
“Welcome back to my part of the world.”
His voice jolted her back to the chilling reality of why she was here. She’d loved his voice—its deep, rich, flowing tones—but there was no caress in it now, nothing warmly intimate. No welcome in his smile, either. The full-lipped sensual mouth that had once seduced her with such passion, was curled into a sardonic taunt, and the dark blaze of his eyes held a scorching intensity that shrivelled any hope of reviving good feelings. Or even a workable understanding.
He stepped aside to make room for her to enter, derisively waving her into his domain. For one nervejangling instant, the highly civilised Plaza suite blurred in Shontelle’s mind and the Amazon jungle leapt into it—its overwhelming sense of the primitive pressing in on her, vampire bats biting for blood, big black tarantulas hiding in trees, ready to pounce on their prey...
“Scared?” Luis mocked, his eyes raking her with contempt.
It goaded her forward. “No. Should I be?” she tossed at him as she passed by, determined on holding a brave front.
He closed the door behind her.
The metallic click felt ominous.
“Spurned Latin lovers are notoriously volatile,” he remarked, still in a mocking tone.
“A lot of water under the bridge since then, Luis,” she answered, shrugging off the implied threat and walking on through the sitting room of the suite, aiming for the big picture window on the other side of it.
The spectacular view of La Paz at night was not the drawcard. She desperately needed to put distance between her and the man who’d deliberately raised memories of their affair. And its ending.
“I must say you look as dynamic as ever,” she threw at him, forcing herself to attach a conciliatory smile. “I’d say life has been treating you well.”
“It could be better,” he replied, watching her move away from him with a dark amusement that raised Shontelle’s sense of danger several notches.
“I expect you’re married by now,” she added, trying to drive a moral wedge between them.
His white shirt was half unbuttoned, revealing a provocative arrowhead of his broad muscular chest, dark skin tipped by a glimpse of the black curls she knew spread across it. His forearms were bare, too, sleeves rolled up, flaunting his strong masculinity. She hated the thought of his wife knowing him as intimately as she had.
“No. As it happens, I’m not married.”
The cold, hard words were like nails being driven into Shontelle’s heart. Had she made a mistake? A flood of hot turmoil hit her. Fortunately she’d reached the window. She swiftly turned her back on him, hiding her wretched confusion, pretending to be captivated by the spectacular view.
Surely to God he was lying! He’d been betrothed to another woman—the Gallardo heiress—before and during their affair two years ago. He’d lied then, by omission. He’d left Shontelle blindly believing she was the only woman who counted in his life when there were two others who had a longer, deeper claim on him.
How could anyone not count Elvira Rosa Martinez?
More to the point, it had been totally unconscionable of Luis to remain silent about the young woman designated as his wife; the sweet, convent-raised, beautifully mannered Claudia Gallardo.
His silence had spelled out where Shontelle stood in his life—a handy bit of foreign fluff on the side, out of his mainstream, suitable only for fun and relaxation. But then he hadn’t made any promises, she savagely reminded herself.
“I assume you’re not married, either, since you’re travelling with your brother,” he drawled, each word sounding closer.
He was coming after her.
“I’m here on business, Luis,” she said tersely, wishing she hadn’t raised anything personal. He couldn’t be believed anyway. He’d undoubtedly say—or not say—whatever suited his purpose.
“Do you have a lover tucked away at home, waiting to serve your inclinations?” His voice had the stinging flick of a whip.
“I’m all out of lovers at the moment,” she answered flippantly, disdaining even a glance at him.
“Which is why you came on this trip, mmh?”
The silky taunt hit her on the raw. The urge to swing around and let him have the sting of her tongue almost blew her mind off her purpose here. She gritted her teeth, folded her arms to hold wayward impulses in, and stared fixedly at the myriad of lights beyond the window.
“It looks like a fairyland outside, doesn’t it?” she remarked as lightly as she could.
It was true. La Paz was the highest capital in the world and it appeared to be built in a moon crater. From where she was viewing it from the low downtown area, the lights of the city rose in a great circular curve, going up so high they seemed to be hanging in the sky. Incredible there were actually people living behind them.
“You need a magician to get you out of it,” Luis mocked, standing right behind her now.
“We need a bus,” she said quickly, fighting her intense awareness of his nearness.
“The curfew doesn’t lift until six in the morning.”
Her heart skittered. What was he implying? They had all night to negotiate?
“I don’t like your hair constricted in a plait,” was his next comment, confusing Shontelle further.
Her spine crawled at his touch as he lifted the rope of hair away from her back. She knew what he was going to do but her mind couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t still love her hair. He couldn’t still want her!
Or maybe he didn’t.
Maybe he was playing some cruel cat-and-mouse game.
She wanted to look at his face but she was frightened to. What if he was waiting to feed off her feelings? Pride insisted she deny him the satisfaction of knowing she was rattled. Could he hear the mad thumping of her heart? Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm, she recited feverishly.
He’d worked off the rubber band and was separating the twisted swathes, seeming to take sensual pleasure in the feel of her hair. Impossible to ignore it. Impossible to stay calm.
“What do you want from me, Luis?” she blurted out.
“What I had before.”
Her mind fragmented under the force of her own desire to have him again, and his apparent desire to recall and repeat the passion they’d shared. Some tattered shreds of reason shrieked that he was only playing with her, using his power to make her succumb to him, but she had to know, had to see.
As she jerked around to face him, her arms flew out of their protective fold and lifted into an instinctive plea for truth. “What do you mean?” she cried.
He still held a skein of her hair and he wound it around his hand as his eyes blazed their dark purpose into hers. “I mean to seize the day, Shontelle. Or to put it more graphically...the night. You want a bus. I want one more taste of you.”
Shock waves slammed through her.
One more taste...
Only one...
Payment for the bus.
“Not such a difficult deal, is it?”