Barely had she taken a step when he seized her arm. ‘Take my advice, Lizzie, and let the past stay in the past. And don’t play me,’ he warned, bringing his face close.
‘Don’t play you?’ she demanded, shaking him off. ‘I have no idea what you mean.’
‘Really?’ He boxed her in again. ‘You play hot then cold. What’s going on, Lizzie?’
‘What’s going on is this,’ she said coldly. ‘You walked out twelve years ago after promising to take me away from that hellhole. You left without a word.’
‘I had my reasons.’
‘Self-preservation?’ she suggested.
‘You know nothing about it,’ he snarled.
‘Clearly.’
Chico towered over her, menacing and as furious as she was. ‘Do you mind?’ She tried to find a way around him.
‘Yes, I mind.’
‘I’m going to bed now.’
‘Yes,’ Chico said as he huffed a derisive laugh. ‘Bed is exactly what you need.’
There were so many angry words she longed to say to him, but she bit them back. There was too much to lose.
‘I left you in the care of your grandmother,’ he called after her as she walked away. ‘I did know how hard it was for you—your parents, those endless parties. I allowed myself to be persuaded that your grandmother would keep you safe.’
She stopped walking. ‘You were easily persuaded,’ Lizzie retorted, still with her back to him. ‘And you could have said something to me before you left.’
‘If I had stayed to explain it would have cost me my freedom. I was a youth with no money and no influence, and Eduardo and your grandmother gave me no alternative when they decided I must leave.’
She shook her head. ‘I thought you understood, Chico, but you knew nothing about my life, just as you know nothing about it now.’
‘As you know nothing about mine,’ he fired back.
As the temperature soared between them she whirled around.
Lizzie started to say something—something angry to hit back at Chico; something passionate to express all the hurt she’d felt when she was a teenage girl—but as she speared a glance into his blazing eyes Chico reached out and caught her to him. Holding her breath, she stared up. He wouldn’t dare—surely he wouldn’t dare—?
His grip tightened and, slowly and deliberately, he brought her inch by reluctant inch to within a whisper of his mouth. And when he brushed her lips with his, she shivered and sighed, because she could do nothing else. He moved closer until his hard body controlled hers. Resting his forearm on the wall above her head, he dipped his head to tease her with almost-kisses until she was helpless with desire. Need collected inside her until, finally, it overwhelmed her. She tried to hold back, but every hungry impulse she had ever experienced seemed to have gathered in one place, and Chico’s hard thigh was brushing her—
‘No—don’t move!’ she gasped out in desperation when, sensing her crisis, he made as if to pull away.
With a low laugh, he increased the pressure just enough, and the dam broke inside her. Without any curbs available to her, she convulsed against him, helpless as she called out his name and yielded to pleasure.