The Balfour Legacy. Кэрол Мортимер
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wouldn’t a lie or an evasion only sound hollow?
Play it as cool as he is, she told herself, even though her heart felt as raw as her newly awoken senses.
‘Flattered?’ she answered softly. ‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
Black eyes iced into her. ‘But that’s precisely the point, isn’t it? If there was any telling to be done, then it should have been you. Telling me.’ He gave a short and disbelieving laugh, saying the words aloud in some vain hope that she might deny them. ‘That you’d never had sex with a man before.’
Kat swallowed. He made her virtue sound like a moral offence! But still she was determined to keep calm. She tried for her best light, cocktail-party tone. ‘Is that how it’s usually done, then—some kind of confession from the woman before it all begins?’
His face darkened. ‘I wouldn’t know, since you’re the first virgin I’ve ever had.’
She tried to be flip. ‘And did you like it?’
‘Of course I liked it!’ he bit out. ‘It just might have been better if you’d warned me.’
Warned him? You warned people about ice on the road or about high winds at sea, but surely it was the wrong word to use when talking about the fact that a woman was completely innocent of men. Suddenly, faced by the censure which blazed from his eyes, Kat found the shaming words slipping from her lips, as if trying to offer him some kind of explanation. ‘I thought…I thought it might spoil the mood.’
There was a pause. ‘Damn right it would have done.’ In fact, it would have spoilt the mood so completely that he would have dragged himself from her cabin—no matter how hot and how aching he’d been—and spent a night in bed alone with his frustration.
But instead…Instead, he had taken the sweet, curvaceous body she had offered him so willingly. Had entered her with a fierce hunger of his own and discovered that he was thrusting into hot virgin tightness. Carlos winced, for he was macho enough and old-fashioned enough to acknowledge virginity as sacred territory. And somehow he felt as if she’d tricked him into taking her. The protectiveness he had been feeling towards her after her nightmare had somehow been warped by what had just happened. As if she had cast some dark net over him and dragged him forcibly into her inner life—a place he had no desire to be.
And now…What the hell did he do now?
‘Madre de Dios, I can scarcely believe it,’ he exclaimed softly. ‘You always look like you…’
Kat’s heart missed a beat. ‘Like I what, Carlos?’
He shrugged but didn’t falter. ‘Well, let’s face it—you hardly dress or act like an innocent, do you?’
It hurt—and yet it was true, wasn’t it? Apart from these past few days, she always dressed in haute couture—and sometimes those clothes were very provocative. Kat now saw that she might be guilty of sending out the wrong message entirely. And coupled with the way she’d come onto him at last year’s Balfour Ball, who could blame him for thinking that she was a woman of the world, with many lovers in her past?
‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ she said quietly.
So could women, he thought bitterly. ‘You should have told me.’
‘And if I had?’
‘I would never have done it, Princesa’.
‘Maybe that’s why I didn’t.’
‘So why?’ His words were soft now. ‘I mean, why me?’
She wanted to laugh. Was he serious? Possible explanations buzzed around in her head. She could tell him the truth. That he had enchanted her from the moment she’d laid eyes on him—and that on some subliminal level she’d always wanted him. Or would that inflate his already swollen ego? Fill him with fear that she might now demand some kind of commitment from him? Of course it would! Women always wanted Carlos—he had told her that himself—and she was no different from any of the others who had shared his bed. Just because she’d willingly given him her virginity wouldn’t—and shouldn’t—make a difference.
So she must show him. Show that she wasn’t going to become needy or dependent. Wasn’t going to fall in love with him. She wasn’t.
Raking her hand back through her tousled hair, she shrugged, as if she’d given the question some thought. ‘Well, you do have a bit of a reputation, Carlos.’
‘Really?’ he questioned silkily. ‘Pray, enlighten me, querida. What kind of a reputation is that?’
‘You’re known in certain circles as a lover par excellence. And let’s just say that I decided that it was time to lose my innocence.’ Deliberately, she injected a nonchalant note into her voice. ‘Virginity can become such a burden after a while. I wanted a lover and I wanted the best—and you, it seems, fitted the bill very nicely.’
He had never heard anything so outrageous in his life—and for a moment her sheer audacity took his breath away. But then the truth behind her words began to nag at him, like a rogue grain of sand which rubbed insistently at the skin. Because this was a scenario with which he was all too familiar. When he’d been a young matador, born on the wrong side of the tracks, rich and predatory women had made no secret of their desire to be possessed by his hard, powerful body.
And yet, hadn’t she now made it easy for him? Easy for him to just give her one more taste of pleasure and then tell her that it wasn’t going to happen again.
‘Like a common stud, you mean?’ he demanded hotly. ‘A little bit of rough for the princesa?’
The accusation was angry and harsh, and completely at odds with what his hands were doing—for one was cupping her breast and feeling the nipple spring to instant life again beneath his questing fingers. While the other…
Kat gasped.
The other hand was inching its way down over her body once more and this felt like pleasure and punishment all in one. It was lingering provocatively on the swell of her belly and now it was skating down to the soft fuzz and the fork at her thighs—which instantly parted as if she were a puppet and he was jerking her strings. His fingers danced briefly on the warm cushions of her thighs and Kat held her breath…wanting him to touch her—not there, but there…where she ached so much that she began to squirm restlessly.
Waiting for an objection which never came, Carlos gave a low and savage laugh as a feather-light fingertip alighted with unerring precision at the hot, hard nub of her femininity. Felt her buck as pleasurable sensations rocketed through her.
‘Oh!’ she breathed.
‘Oh, indeed.’ Carlos groaned as he began to rub her sensitised flesh, watching her with almost clinical detachment as he brought her closer and closer to orgasm. He knew that she wanted him again—and he wanted it too—indeed he was hard enough to explode. But something stopped him from entering her body a second time. Something which niggled at the back of his mind and filled him with disquiet. But he carried on with what he was doing as he leaned to whisper in her ear.
‘You know that this should never have happened?’ he demanded. ‘We’re too different—we come from different worlds. Do you understand?’
‘I…don’t…care!’ she gasped, greedy for him now. Wanting that amazing feeling to wash over her body once more and wanting the hard pressure of his kiss.
His finger still applying its remorseless rhythm, Carlos leaned over her and kissed her at the very moment of her orgasm. His lips quietened her soft squeal of delight and briefly he closed his eyes as she clung to him—her moment of vulnerable trust making him want to melt right into her. But he extricated himself from her arms as soon as it was decently possible. ‘Go to sleep now,’ he said roughly.
Pulling the sheet over the distraction of her naked body, he hardened