His Suitable Bride(157)

And still Santos prowled closer, big and dark and sleekly dangerous, like some elegant hunting panther that knew it had its prey totally cornered and was enjoying delaying the moment of pouncing until the very last second.

She tried to get up, but it was as if all the bones had been removed from her legs and she couldn’t find the strength to push herself to her feet. And suddenly he was there. Looming over her, with one hand each side of her, long, lean, bronzed fingers spread out over the crisp white cotton, square-tipped nails immaculate.

For the first time, seeing them this close, she noted a scar that ran across the knuckles of the right hand. Obviously made a long time before, it was just a fine, silvery line in the tanned skin, but her fingers itched to reach out and trace their way along it, and the need to ask how it had happened burned on her tongue.

But in the same moment Santos spoke her name, his voice low and soft, disturbingly cajoling, and instantly she forgot what she was thinking, every last trace wiped from her mind. The scarred hand moved, sliding under her chin, lifting her face towards his, and his dark head bent slowly, his beautiful mouth coming closer to hers inch by infinite inch.

She’d stopped breathing. Her mouth was painfully dry but her throat seemed paralysed unable to swallow, and she couldn’t do anything to ease it. She was sure that even her heart had ceased to beat, though the blood still throbbed at her temples and at the vulnerable pulse point at the base of her throat. The way he held her, with his proud head, his handsome face coming between her and the light, meant that she could look nowhere but into his eyes, seeing the way that his pupils had expanded, black where they had once been silvery grey.

Suddenly afraid of what her own eyes might reveal, she lowered her lids hastily, retreating inside herself, fighting the need that simply having him so close was already sparking off inside her. But her temporary blindness only made matters so much worse, heightening every other sense to painful sharpness. She could smell his skin and the faint tang of some citrus soap or shampoo that lingered on his body, hear the soft sound of his chest rising and falling as he drew air into his lungs.

‘Belleza,‘ Santos murmured and she felt his breath against her lips, snatching it in with the oxygen she needed so that she felt she could already taste him in her mouth, against her tongue.

But when his lips finally touched hers it was as if she had never known anything like it before in her life. As if she had never been kissed before, never felt the brush of a man’s lips against her own at any other time, with anyone else in the world.

After the force of his approach, the power of his movements as he strode towards her, she might have expected that his kiss would be forceful too. Her whole body was tense, waiting for the impact of his mouth on hers, the feeling close to being punished for daring to challenge him, for defying his declaration that he wanted her. So it was a shock to her system when his kiss was the softest, most gentle touch she could have imagined, a butterfly-wing stroke of his lips to hers with a delicacy that tore at her heart, drawing out her soul and making her sigh her response straight into his caressing mouth.

Just one kiss and then he drew back again. And the ache of loss when he did so was almost more than she could bear, bringing an involuntary murmur of protest that there was no way she could hold back.

‘Patience, querida … ‘

Never before had his voice sounded so sexy, so enticing, and behind her closed eyelids she could almost hear the smile that curved his seductive mouth.

Santos …

His name sounded in her head, never quite reaching her tongue because even as she tried to speak he kissed her again, with just the faintest increase of pressure so that her heart kicked against her ribs, her senses swimming.

Again he kissed her, and again, harder each time, until she was breathless with response and with the growing need that he had sparked off inside her. Each time his lips touched hers she wanted it to last for ever and each time he took them away again she felt as if something was breaking up inside, splintering into a thousand tiny, yearning, needy pieces.

‘Santos!’

The sound of his name brought her lips against his in the first kiss she had given him and the sensation of it was like a bolt of burning lightning flashing through her, making her toes curl, her hands clench against her sides, fighting the need to reach out and touch him, to lace her hands in the midnight-dark silk of his hair, feel it curl around her fingers. Heat was building in her veins, hunger uncoiling in the pit of her stomach. And obviously Santos felt it too because he slid both hands into the fall of her hair around her face, cupping the bones of her skull and holding her head in just the right position so that he could deepen the kiss, bring her mouth open under his.