A Spanish Awakening (11 page)

Her eyes slid guiltily from his.
I’m yours and I love you. I actually pretty much always have,
was a fairly accurate summing-up of the situation, but she doubted it would go down too well.

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me that you—?’

Her voice tight with humiliation, Megan cut across his incensed demand. ‘You didn’t seem all that interested in conversation at the time.’

The line of colour across the angle of Emilio’s cheekbones deepened as their glances clashed. Even now the air between them hummed with a sexual tension that was almost tangible. Despite the intensity of their lovemaking it had not even taken the edge off his hunger for her.

He did not need reminding that his actions had been ruled by his own selfish carnal desire, a carnal desire that after two years of denial had been stripped to its primitive and most basic form.

It had been a point of pride with Emilio that he had never been a victim of his hormones. He had certainly never lost control in bed before, and now the one time he should have shown restraint with a woman, when he should have been gentle, he had snapped. His relentless, ravenous need for her had made him utterly blind to her inexperience until that last moment.

There must have been clues? How had he missed them? Missed the opportunity to make her initiation special.

‘And you were not acting like a virgin,’ corrosive shame made him retort defensively.

‘Know a lot about virgins, do you?’

His eyes narrowed as his eyes drifted to her tender lips still swollen from his kisses. ‘Nothing, as it happens,’ he said, thinking it seemed he also knew even less about women, or this one at least.

‘You’re making a big thing of nothing. Being a virgin isn’t like having a contagious disease. It’s not obligatory to go into isolation.’ Her mouth settled into a mutinous line
of defiance as she tried to hide her hurt. ‘I’m sorry you feel cheated and short-changed but I’m not about to say sorry.’

His brows lifted. ‘What are you talking about now?
Cheated …?’
he asked irritably. ‘You are not making sense.’

Face scrunched in an effort to hold back the tears that threatened to spill over, she lifted her chin and blinked hard.

‘Well, so sorry,’ she drawled, ‘if I’ve lost my edge of clinical objectivity, but I’ve never been in this situation before.’

‘And you think I have?’

‘Yes, I get it, you don’t need to spell it out.’ She had been slow but the penny had finally dropped. She knew why he was acting this way. ‘You thought you were getting someone who knew what she was doing in the bedroom and instead—’ she broke off to give a loud sniff and passed a hand across her suspiciously bright eyes as she gulped ‘—instead you got me.’

She heard the unattractive, self-pitying whine in her voice and shook her head, mumbling, ‘Even you could not have got it perfect your first time.’

He probably had. Megan closed her eyes, hating the woman he had got it right with.

Torn between frustration and tenderness, Emilio levered himself into a sitting position with the fluid grace that typified all his actions.

‘Have I got this right?’ he asked, placing one hand beside her head as he looked down at her. ‘You think I feel
short-changed? Short-changed?’
he repeated, shaking his head as he added something, not appearing to realise he had
slipped into his native tongue, and laughed. ‘The way your mind works,
querida,
is a constant source of amazement to me. Listen, you may not value what you gave me highly, but I do.’

M
EGAN’S
eyes slid slowly up from the expanse of golden chest she was staring at. ‘You value? ‘

She parroted the words like someone speaking a foreign language.

Emilio nodded and framed her face between his long brown fingers, smoothing the strands of hair spread around her face from her brow. ‘I am your first.’ The sheer impossibility of it still shook him. ‘Do you know how that makes me feel?’

Her eyes darted from side to side, refusing to meet his. ‘Annoyed? ‘

‘Privileged.’

She froze at the throaty rebuttal, her eyes heavy, lids half closing as he touched her cheek. The tremor she felt in his fingers as they brushed slowly across the downy curve shocked her.

Her lips, soft and warm and so incredibly sweet, trembled under his as he kissed her softly.

‘And in shock,’ he admitted, pulling back. ‘I still don’t understand how it is possible.’

Arm curved above her head, she watched as he propped his broad shoulders against the carved headboard. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the tangled strands off her hot face
with one hand and, anchoring the sheet over her breasts with the other, pulled herself up into a kneeling position.

‘Because you thought I slept my way through college?’

The suggestion drew a dark frown from Emilio. ‘No, because you’ve been living with a man for two years.’ And though he had buried it deep, the knowledge had driven him out of his mind. He took a deep breath, let the anger pass through him and released it; despite a lot of practice he had never quite perfected the technique.

‘A man!’ Megan sank deeper into confusion.

‘All right, live-in lover, boyfriend, whatever he was to you.’

Megan sat back on her heels, lifting a hand to balance herself as the mattress shifted. She was totally at sea. Live-in lover? She had barely had a date!

‘What are you talking about? I haven’t been living with a man!’ She stopped, her eyes widening in comprehension, before sliding back down in the bed with a laugh and a billowing of silken sheets. ‘You’re talking about Josh?’ She chuckled.

He arched a brow, his focus drifting as his eyes were drawn to the outline of her body against the silk. She gave a sinuous wriggle. All he had to do was reach out and lift the sheet … He swallowed as he struggled to banish the image of her smooth, naked body from his head.

The effort made sweat break out along his upper lip.

‘There were others?’ He immediately recognised the irrationality, given the topic under discussion, of his jealous question. More? There hadn’t been any!

‘What is this about?’

Emilio looked down at her lying there, looking like a wild-haired wanton angel, and felt a pulse of desire throb
through his body. ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. This

Josh,
he—’

Megan’s brows twitched into a perplexed line. Her fingers restlessly tugged at the sheet. ‘What is this thing you have about Josh? You sound as if you don’t like him.’

‘I have no thing about
Josh.
I’m sure he was perfect, but …’

‘Pretty much,’ she admitted. It was a view shared by all her female friends. They had all bemoaned the fact that the perfect men were always gay.

The smiling insertion drew a dark frown from Emilio. ‘You lived with the man!’

His accusing manner and bewildering interest in the subject of her ex-flatmate was beginning to make Megan feel angry. ‘It’s hardly a crime to share a flat with someone and I’m not on trial,’ she added, growing more bewildered by the second—his condemnatory attitude. ‘What has living with Josh got to do with anything?’

‘You have been living with the man for two years. What am I to think you spend your time doing? Playing Scrabble?
Por Dios!’
His upper lip curled in a derisive sneer as he shook his dark head slowly from side to side. It was inexplicable to him that any man could live under the same roof as Megan for two hours and not make love to her—this man had spent two years!

She stopped, her startled stare flying to his face as the penny finally dropped. ‘Josh—my boyfriend!’

‘What was he waiting for—your wedding night?’ Emilio growled.

The question touched a nerve with Megan. ‘And would that be so weird?’ she asked him sharply.

Emilio stared at her. ‘In one word—yes.’

‘Well, call me weird but actually that was my plan up until an hour or so ago.’

It turned out it was easy to have lofty principles when there was no temptation. Not that she regretted her change of heart for a millisecond.

He swore under his breath.

‘Well, I don’t expect you to understand,’ she conceded with a sleepy yawn. Her time clock had to be seriously skewed. ‘Look, the fact is it’s true that I didn’t ever plan having sex before marriage, but that’s not the reason I hadn’t slept with Josh. I didn’t sleep with Josh because I am really not his type.’

Emilio frowned skeptically. To his mind Megan was every man’s type.

‘I mean
really
not his type.’

Emilio stiffened. ‘You’re saying …?’

Megan nodded, amused by the look of amazement on his face. Propping her chin on her hands, she shook her head and teased, ‘For a smart man you can be awfully slow sometimes.’

Emilio exhaled a long, slow breath. It whistled through his clenched teeth before he framed a grim smile. ‘It certainly looks that way.’

‘I really miss Josh.’

A few minutes ago this wistful statement would have roused Emilio to blind fury. Now he was able to offer a sympathetic smile and murmur, ‘Gay?’ Just to doublecheck the facts.

‘Yes, my perfect flatmate was gay. He has gone to do aid work overseas. Josh is lovely. You’d really like him.’

She chattered on, blissfully unaware of the thoughts going through the head of the man beside her.

Gay! The guy he had spent a year being jealous of, twelve months torturing himself imagining the other man with Megan, and the guy was gay.

Did irony get any darker than that?

‘Emilio?’

The questioning lilt in her voice roused him from his bitter reflections.

He rolled towards her.

‘How did you know I shared a flat with Josh?’

‘Philip must have mentioned it and I assumed.’

Rachel nodded. ‘That must be it,’ she agreed as she leaned across him, the tips of her breasts brushing his chest as she stroked his cheek. ‘Wait until I tell Josh in my next letter.’

‘Nobody writes letters,’ he said, tangling his fingers in her hair.

‘I do. There’s something about putting a fountain pen to paper that’s more personal,’ she mused.

‘Nobody saves themselves for their wedding night either.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I don’t expect you to propose, Emilio. Marriage is not meant for men like you.’

She blinked in bewilderment as she found herself exiled from his arms. She turned her sleepy stare on Emilio, who was sitting upright in bed with his arms folded across his chest. He looked magnificent and inexplicably furious.

With a resigned sigh she pushed her hair back from her face and propped her chin on the heel of her hand. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘What do you know about
men like me?
And what exactly would I be incapable of understanding?’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to generalise,’ she soothed.

‘But now you have—’

‘I’m not judging,’ she promised earnestly. ‘And I’m sure you did love Rosanna, but you said yourself that being married didn’t stop you from feeling sexually attracted to other women, and I’m sure most men are, but they don’t act on it. You did.’ The worst torture in the world, it seemed
to Megan, would be to watch the man you loved cheat on you. ‘You obviously tried not to be unfaithful.’

Emilio stared at her in amazement as she gave his shoulder a comforting pat.

‘It’s a fact of life that some men are simply not suited to monogamy or marriage.’ She pushed away the sadness and added with a wicked laugh, ‘But you do make the most perfect lovers.’

‘We try,’ Emilio husked, pulling her into his arms. ‘We try. This time,’ he promised, ‘it will be better.’

‘I don’t see how,’ Megan said honestly, though the idea of trying to achieve the impossible did hold its attractions.

He fitted his mouth to hers, one hand cupping her breast, the other stroking the smooth curve of her thigh.

‘I’m going to touch you everywhere,’ he whispered thickly. ‘I’m going to taste all of you,’ he told her as he slid his tongue between her parted lips. ‘Everywhere,’ he said, kissing her closed eyelids. ‘All of you.’

Megan prised her eyelids open. She was breathing hard. ‘You’ll own me,’ she whispered, thinking, You already do.

His dark eyes glowed with approval as he slid down her body. ‘Believe it.’

Her entire body was bathed in a rosy glow of arousal as he parted her legs. Her heart thudded heavily as his hand slid between them, pushing them further apart, opening her up to him.

She gasped, her hips lifting from the bed at the first intimate touch.

‘Relax. We’re going to take our time,
querida,’
he soothed, stroking his tongue wetly along the silky skin of her inner thigh.

Megan closed her eyes and said, ‘Oh, God, you’re incredible.’

It was a theme she returned to on several occasions during the next couple of hours, because, true to his word, Emilio did take his time. He took her to the brink of paradise several times before he finally slid on top of her and led her screaming over the top into the waiting golden glow of fulfilment.

As they lay side by side, their bodies trembling and slick with sweat, he turned his head and grinned at her. ‘I’d ask how it was for you but I think I already know. Who’d have guessed you were a screamer?’

‘I’m just an excellent actress, that’s all,’ she teased, curling happily up to his side. ‘Next time, Emilio, I wouldn’t mind being the one driving you a little crazy.’

‘Works for me. I have no problem at all with a woman in charge.’

It was a couple of hours later that Megan was woken by the sound of the door hitting the wall. She blinked to see Emilio approaching, bearing a tray.

He laid it on the bed.

‘What’s this?’ she said, looking at the array of cold meats, cheese and crusty bread laid out.

Emilio pulled the cork on the bottle of red and filled two glasses. ‘It’s a picnic in bed.’

‘I really don’t have an eating disorder, you know.’

‘You have expended a lot of energy.’ Her blush made him grin. ‘Any athlete will tell you that taking on fuel at regular intervals is essential to maintain performance.’

Glancing at the food, Megan realised without the prompting of her rumbling tummy that she was hungry. ‘Shouldn’t we get up? It’s …’ She glanced at the face of her watch and gasped. ‘My God, we’ve been in bed all day.’

Emilio appeared unperturbed. ‘Yes, deliciously decadent, isn’t it? I could get used to it.’

I can’t let myself, she thought.

Pushing away the sad thought and telling herself to just enjoy the moment, she sat up, pushing her hair from her face with both hands.

‘I am quite hungry,’ she admitted.

‘I love watching you eat,’ he said when she was allowing herself to be tempted by another piece of cheese. ‘You do it with such … relish.’

‘You mean I’m greedy.’

‘So am I every time I look at you.’

‘I feel so guilty.’ She saw the flash of annoyance cross his face and added quickly, ‘Not about the food or the sex, but it’s a weekday and I haven’t done a scrap of work. It’s all right for you—you’re your own boss.’

‘Has it occurred to you that you could be too?’

She flashed him a surprised look. ‘As a matter of fact, yes, it has.’

‘You should. You’re obviously not stretched now. You are capable of much more.’ He hesitated. ‘I know that your father might say that—’

‘He’ll hand the reins over to me?’ she interrupted with a laugh. ‘Oh, I know that’s never going to happen. I’m a woman and I’m only accepted as an Armstrong up to a point, but I’ve learnt a lot working for him and made some very useful contacts.’

And he had been worried Armstrong was taking advantage of her. It turned out that Megan was no doormat. Emilio chuckled low in his throat.

‘I’d ask you to come work for me, Megan, but it’s a rule of mine not to mix business and pleasure.’ With a low growl he lunged for her, rolling her underneath him. ‘And you are definitely pleasure.’