His Suitable Bride(167)

Alexa’s only response was a furious hiss, like a hostile snake. She tried to find something coherent to say but every single line escaped her and there was no way any words would form.

‘And I was right. Which means that I’ve made it so much easier for you.’

‘Easier!’ The word exploded from Alexa’s tongue, all the anger, the disbelief she was feeling rolled up into the three short syllables. ‘Easier, precisely how?’

Santos struggled against the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth. He knew it would only incense her further, her fury giving away just how much he had got to her, which was exactly what he wanted. He wanted her off balance—on edge—just as he was feeling right now.

There was no way he was going to let her know just how he too had gone up in flames that night; the hell of frustration he’d been going through ever since. The hell he was still experiencing as his aroused body yelled a furious protest at being held back like this, at being deprived of the pleasure and satisfaction it had been anticipating all the way here. The pleasure and satisfaction that had been in his mind from the moment that Alexa had opened the door. Or even before that. As he had driven up the narrow, rutted road that led from the village to this cottage, the image of Alexa that had haunted his dreams and driven him to distraction in the day had been there in his mind, taunting him, tempting him, arousing him.

And once he had seen her in the flesh again, looking so appealing in the casual red sweater and denim jeans, her hair a soft cloud around her face, he had known that he could never leave again without having her in his bed, without knowing that slender body intimately once more. The problem was that he suspected that ‘once more’ would never, ever be enough and the way that his arousal nagged at him reinforced that idea in a painful way.

‘You know how the sex was between us—how it will be again. And so you can see that our marriage will be good for both of us—’

‘It will not be good for me—for either of us—because we are not getting married! I will not just replace Natalie as your bride.’

‘No,’ Santos agreed with feeling, knowing that he had shocked her by doing so, leaving her gaping faintly in surprise.

Feeling he might be more comfortable standing up, he got to his feet, that temptation to smile surfacing again as he saw the way her eyes sparked and she edged away like a nervous horse. If only she realised just how much she was giving away by her unthinking action.

‘You will not just replace Natalie in any way because I never felt this way about her. My relationship with her never had this heat, or this intensity.’

Oh, how she wished that he would stop saying things like that, Alexa told herself. She didn’t want to hear them, didn’t want to believe them.

And yet they were the things she most wanted to hear in the whole world.

The thought that a man—this man—this devastatingly handsome, stunning man—might actually prefer her to her sister, that she might have an effect on him that all Natalie’s blonde beauty had never managed, made her head spin and her nerves fizz with purely feminine excitement.

‘We’d be good together, Alexa.’

Hastily she dragged her weak thoughts back from the enticing path they were tempted to follow. A path that might lead to some immediate pleasure, a sort of satisfaction, but one that would never last and that would only leave her so much more lost and bereft when it was over. She had always vowed that she would never lurch into some half-formed or just plain bad idea of a liaison simply because of the attraction she felt.

But oh, if there was ever a man who could tempt her to go back on that resolve then that man was Santos Cordero.

As he stood before her, black hair mussed, silvery eyes gleaming, his half-fastened shirt revealing part of the olive-toned chest she had once caressed and kissed, the man was temptation personified. He was the handsome, irresistible, seductive snake in the Garden of Eden. And he had made no secret of how much he wanted her.

Dear heaven, but she was tempted. Just for once she wanted to let go of all common sense, throw off the restraints she had imposed on herself and enjoy the fizzing, burning, wild, crazy excitement a hot-blooded, purely sexual affair could bring.

But even as she thought them, the words wild and crazy hit home, forcing her to reconsider. Wild and crazy was not part of her make-up and never would be.

‘Good together in bed maybe—but that’s no reason to get married!’

‘Is it not? To me it seems like one of the best reasons there is.’

‘But we don’t even like each other—except in that way.’

‘Does that matter?’