—Romantic Times Mothers-To-Be(10)

“Yes,” she muttered, turning away, barely knowing what she was saying, suddenly engulfed by a level of physical awareness that she had never felt before, struggling to thrust that intimate memory away again.

“You remind me of a marmalade cat,” he said abruptly. “It’s the hair.”

“I can see you slinking through the undergrowth, stalking your prey.”

“I haven’t heard that one before.” She forced a laugh and vanished back through the curtain. At the sink she washed her face and hands, dried herself on one of the two rough, faded towels available, peered at the still wrapped toothbrush and paste. The kidnappers hadn’t planned to make Rico too uncomfortable. The conviction was soothing.

“Can we share a toothbrush?” she called in a lull in the noise.

“If we can share a bed we can share a toothbrush,” Rico murmured lazily.

But they were nOt going to share that bed. They would take turns.

Very democratic. Very sensible. One asleep, one awake and alert. And always that background of deafening noise. Thud, thud, crash, crash.

It was impossible that anyone could fall asleep against that background. Having removed her boots and her tights in the kitchen section, Bella walked back to the bed. Covertly undoing a couple of the buttons on her fitted jacket, she slid below the blanket, rested her head on the pillow, and turned away from him towards the wall.

But still his image lingered behind her lowered eyelids, stamped there like a cattle brand seared into her flesh. Involuntarily she remembered the kiss, relived the wildness he had unleashed—from inside her, from inside him. Trying to fly off the top of a tall building would have been less dangerous, less foolhardy. She shivered. The fire had simply taken over, burning out all self-control.

No man had ever made her feel like that. And she didn’t ever want to feel like that again. Passion was greedy and mindless. Passion was lust, a purely physical thing which had no staying power. Bella knew that some people were lucky enough to find both love and passion in a lasting relationship but those people were in the minority. Many more mistook infatuation for love and then wondered why their feelings faded so quickly. But Bella knew the difference and knew what to guard against.

Both of her parents had been passionate people and neither Cleo nor Ivan had controlled that side of their nature. Neither of them had ever managed to sustain a stable relationship, not with each other and not with anybody else. Their love affairs had been volatile, short-lived and unful-filling. Why? Because they had been greedy, impatient and always afraid that the grass might be greener with someone else.

Bella was determined not to fall into the same trap. Yes, she had needs and drives just like any other young, healthy woman, but she wanted to choose her life partner with her intellect, not with her body. It dawned on her that she had not thought of Griff in almost twenty-four hours. She was shaken. But then, it had been a frantic and worrying twenty-four hours, and Griff had hurt her, and no doubt she was already in the recovery phase. Bella’s feelings shut down fast when she was disappointed or betrayed.

But she had been very fond of Griff. She had enjoyed his company, respected his intelligence and believed that his outlook and expectations of life matched her own. That, she had foolishly assumed, had been a sufficient basis on which to build a good relationship. Only it hadn’t been enough for Griff. She had refused to go to bed with him in the absence of any deeper commitment on his part.



That giggle in the background on the phone had told her that he had been finding physical entertainment elsewhere. Griff had made his choice but she knew him well enough to know that he would still believe that he could string her along. But Bella wouldn’t allow that. It was over. Griff was immature, clearly not yet ready to think in terms of permanence in spite of all the things he had said to the contrary.

That sorted out tidily in her mind, Bella contrived to do What she had not believed possible. She fell asleep. And she awakened to a situation that was entirely new to her.

She was lying on top of a living, breathing pillow. Her nostrils flared at the clean, soapy scent of warm male. Her breasts were crushed against a rough-haired chest, her cheek pillowed in the hollow of a smooth shoulder, and her pelvis was in direct contact with the thrust of a very masculine arousal. In the darkness her head flew up, her eyes wide with consternation.





CHAPTER FOUR


A HAND pressed her back down again.

“Go back to sleep,” Rico breathed tautly.

“Like hell I will!” Bella gasped in alarm, trying to rise but thwarted by the powerful arm wrapped around her hips. “Dios!

Relax,” he hissed with raw impatience.

“You’ve just got to be kidding! You’re in bed with me!”

“Madre de Dios, it’s four in the morning—’ ” Time I got up and took my turn at thumping walls! ” Both arms closed round her.

“Forget it,” he groaned.

“It’s the middle of the night. I need sleep. If you start, I won’t get any.”

“I am not sharing this bed with you!”

“What do you think I am—a rapist?” he growled incredulously.

“How … do … I … know?” she fielded with growing fury. “You’re not wearing any clothes!”

“As I have only one set I refuse to go to bed in them. But I am not naked.” Closing his hand round one of hers, he thrust it down to the hard jut of his hips, splaying her fingers against the band of cloth there to prove his point.

Bella nearly went into orbit at the intimacy of the gesture. “How dare you?” she screeched, snatching her hand back even though she hadn’t been anywhere near the danger zone that she was already outrageously aware of.

He expelled his breath in a resonant hiss of exasperation. “You are not that naY ve I am a man, lying in bed with a half-naked woman on top of me. I’m not a corpse, devoid of all sexual response. But I have no intention of making love to you.”

“I don’t believe you!” she bit out, rigid as a stick of rock, holding her entire length taut in a fruitless endeavour to lessen the points of contact between them.

“I am fully in control of my sexual urges,” he extended grittily into her ear.

“But not my temper, I warn you.”

“I don’t trust you,” she whispered back with venomous bite, infuriated by the position in which she found herself. “I could fall asleep and you—’ ” Oh, I do believe you would wake up if I touched you. I believe that I can safely say a woman has never slept through my attentions! “

“Don’t be disgusting! Let me go!”

He gave vent to something rough and charged in Spanish and moved with an abruptness that took her completely by surprise. Suddenly she was flipped onto her back and Rico was lying above her instead, their positions reversed without warning. Before she could open her startled lips to demand an explanation he took her mouth in a surge of angry passion.

And what happened next she definitely wasn’t prepared to deal with.

As his tongue drove into the moist interior she had already accidentally opened to him she was seized by an explosive wave of excitement. It left her dizzy and stripped of every coherent thought.

The intensity of her own response electrified her, opening up another world that was full of unbearable physical temptation. She returned the kiss with a kind of wondering innocence, arching her head back to deepen the pressure, involuntarily greedy and inviting more.

“Por Dios…” he groaned raggedly, his lean, hard body coming down into abrupt and abrasive contact with her yielding curves where, seconds earlier, he had held himself at a distance.

“I—’

Driven entirely by instinct, Bella speared her unsteady fingers into the thick silk of his hair and held him down to her, tracing the shape of his head in an exploratory caress. Touching had never felt so good, never felt so necessary.



Entrapped by the discovery and fired by the leaping, un familiar energy sizzling along her nerve-endings, she threw herself with natural generosity into the conflagration of their mouths’ second meeting a split-second later.

Incredible heat rose from deep inside her, making her body shake and quiver with the sheer power of what she was feeling. He pulled her to him as he slid onto his side, his hand curving to the pouting thrust of one full breast, inadequately protected by the thin lace cup of her bra. And then the barrier was inexplicably no longer there, his fingers shaping her naked, sensitised flesh with an expertise that made her gasp. In the darkness she felt him move, and the yearning peak of one engorged nipple was brushed by the tip of his tongue and then engulfed by his mouth.

Bella moaned, and jerked as though she had been electrified. All she could hear was the rasp of her tortured breathing, the thunder of her heartbeat. Sensation so intense that it came close to torment had her in its grip. She was out of control, sensed it, felt it, knew it, and being out of control was something Bella never, ever allowed herself to be with a man. The shock of that realisation awakened her brain from its slumber, and in panic she wrenched herself free by rolling backwards.

“No!” she slung at him from between clenched teeth as she hit the hard floor with a force that hurt. Rolling over, feeling the nakedness of her back and breasts in dismayed confusion, she fumbled out blindly to feel-the wall opposite the bed and sat there, hugging her knees and shivering as the light went on.