She began to unzip her dress. When it was completely unfastened, she slipped it off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor, then kicked it away. She risked a glance at him uader her lashes and saw with heart-stopping satisfaction that she had his whole and undivided attention. She unhooked the waistband of her lacy underskirt and let it float away. She was by no means as confident as she hoped she appeared. In fact, she could easily have cracked apart with nervousness. She lifted her hands as if to unclip her bra, then raised them further to pull loose the ribbon confining her hair instead. She shook the long tawny strands over her shoulders, and moistening suddenly dry lips, reached once more to undo her bra.
She hadn't seen him move, but he was beside her, his hands slipping round her body, pulling her against him. His dark head bent over her in passionate acceptance of the mute invitation of her parted lips.
When at last she could speak, she said huskily, 'Señor, this is an outrage! The audience are forbidden to take part in the floorshow.'
'Is that so, mi amada?' His voice held an edge of laughter. 'Naturally, I know little of such things, but I always understood that the show was over-once the girl was naked.'
Nicola was going to say, 'But I'm not,' when she realised in time what those sensuously caressing hands had achieved while he was kissing her. She felt hot colour invade her face.
'Blushing, querida?' He touched his lips to one flushed cheek. 'I am sure no real showgirl would do so.'
'But I'm not a real showgirl,' she said in a low voice, staring as if mesmerised at his shirt buttons. 'I'm not even a real wife-but I love you, Luis, and I want you so much that if you don't take me, I think I'll break into little pieces,' she ended on a rush of words.
He slid a hand under her knees, swinging her up into his arms. 'Then I am at your service, querida,' he said softly. 'It would be a tragedy if harm should come to anything so exquisite-----' he bent his head and kissed her body -- 'and so perfect through any neglect of mine.'
There was no longer any room for doubt and misunderstanding, and certainly none for fear. He kissed her as he lowered her gently on to the bed, and her arms clung round his neck as at last he made to draw away slightly.
'Querida, I'm not leaving you,' he whispered. 'I only want to take off my clothes and then . . .'
'I'll help you.' She knelt up on the bed, tugging at the buttons on his shirt, the speed of her shaking fingers not matching her eagerness, so that she tore the buttons from their fastenings, and when at last there were no further barriers between them, and for the first time she felt the warmth and strength of him totally against her own skin, she gave a little sigh of sheer sensual delight.
His hands and mouth caressed her, arousing such unhurried, delicious torment that the last remnants of her self-control fled, and she clung to him mindlessly, her body moving against his in fevered excitement while she whispered his name against his skin. There were no inhibitions left in her response. She kissed him as he was kissing her, touched him as she had yearned to do, her hands sliding without reservation along the lean, graceful length of his naked body, knowing a stinging joy when her caresses made him groan with pleasure.
His patience with her was endless, his generosity infinite, and although she was prepared for more pain, there was none-only a shattering pleasure as he took her with him into a vortex of sensual satisfaction bordering on agony.
Later, lying dreamily content in his arms, she said, 'I tore your beautiful shirt.
'I have numerous shirts, amada. If it is to be the prelude to this kind of paradise, then you may rip each of them to shreds with my blessing.' His hand cupped her breast, his fingertips drawing tiny erotic spirals on her skin.
Nicola giggled, brushing her lips against the bronze column of his throat. 'What would the servants say?'
'Nothing, if they know what is good for them,' he returned lazily.
'Luis, can I ask you something? You won't be angry?'
'Ask anything you wish, mi mujer. And I am never less likely to be angry in the whole of our lives together than at this moment.'
She said shyly, 'You said-paradise, but it can't have been like that for you. You-you've had other women, and it was really the first time for me-so . . .'
'So it was also the first time for me. The first time with you, querida, my wife, the woman I love. Yes, I admit there have been other women, although I have not spent my entire life in bed,' he added wryly. 'And now I will make an even more shocking confession, my liberated English rose. I would rather have rny wife a willing pupil in my arms than my match in experience.'
She gasped. 'That's a double standard!'
'I know, my beloved, and I am deeply ashamed.'
'You are a liar, señor.' She bit him delicately on the shoulder, then kissed him, her mouth lingering softly on his. 'Has anyone ever told you that you're beautiful?'
'No,' he said gravely. 'So-another first time for me. Muchas gracias, mi amada. And has anyone ever told you how sweet you are, how smooth and soft and completely desirable? And that I love you more than life itself?'
'Then why did you try to send me away?'
He sighed. 'What else could I do? I told myself I had ruined everything, destroyed for ever any chance we had of happiness together. I was so cruel to you, amiga, so clumsy and brutal, and my only excuse was that I was crazy with wanting you, and crazy with jealousy of poor Ramon.'
'That was my fault.'
'A little, perhaps,' he said. 'But it doesn't matter. I told myself it was impossible you could forgive me after what I had done to you, that I would always be terrified that you would look at me as you did on our wedding night-as if I was some kind of satyr. I lay here last night, holding you, and realised I could not face that again. But having tasted your sweetness, however briefly, I knew also that I could not go back to leading the separate lives we had lived up to then. So it seemed best to send you away.'
Nicola said in a low voice, 'Luis, I never thought of you as a satyr. It was myself I was frightened of then- and later-and all the things I knew you could make me feel, I knew that I loved you, and I was scared to show it in case you laughed at me.'
'Laughed?' He sounded shaken. 'Nicola, I would have thanked God on my knees for one kind word, one look from you. Before all this happened with Pilar, I had already decided that I had been wrong to try and start our life together here, although you seemed to like La Mariposa. I thought I would take you away-on that trip to the south you had planned before we met. It would be our honeymoon, I told myself, and I would do anything in the world to make you fall in love with me, and with me alone. Then today after you had gone, I rode out to the cabin to find the butterfly I had given you. I stayed there for hours, remembering how we met, torturing myself, and I knew I could not let you go. When I came back I phoned the airline and booked myself a ticket to England. I thought you might go home to your family, and that if you did I would be there waiting for you, asking you to come back to me on my knees if necessary.'
Nicola's heart lifted. Teresita had been wrong about his pride. He had been ready to sacrifice even that because he loved her.
'But instead I came to you,' she said. 'And you got what you wanted.'
He grinned lazily. 'Indeed, señora, in innumerable ways. Which particular one were you thinking of?'
'You once said that you wanted to hear your name and no one else's on my lips,' she reminded him. 'Luis, can I tell you about Ewan?'
He shrugged slightly. 'If you wish, querida. He is hardly important.'
'No, but I don't want any question marks from the past cropping up in the future,' she said, knowing that the shadow of Carlota Garcia no longer lay between them. Briefly she told him of the events which had led up to her leaving Zurich. 'Those dreams I had were really of you, only I'd had this letter which my parents sent on to me. They didn't know who it was from, and neither did I until I opened it. I read it, just before you came to my room on our wedding night-and it was then I realised that I'd hardly loved him at all. That when I measured it against what I felt for you, it barely existed.' She swallowed. 'I realised too why I'd never tried to run away again, and I was frightened.'
'So that was it,' he said softly. 'I knew there was something, although at first I decided you were merely absorbed in the music I had arranged for you.'
'And so I was. That was a lovely thought, Luis.' She paused. 'Why didn't you let those others play for us at the motel that night?'
He grimaced. 'Because I was just beginning to realise that my plans for you went further than mere seduction, querida. The serenaders thought we were lovers, which was what I had intended, and then it occurred to me that I wanted serenades for you on all kinds of occasions, and not just as a. means to get you into my bed.' He kissed her mouth. 'I have cursed myself for my scruples since, believe me.'