Chapter Twelve
In her hotel room, London’s heart slammed in her chest as Mateu closed the door and turned the lock. The soft tsk signaled a point from which she could never return.
Surprises, gifts, all of it was so new to her. The only gifts she ever received were the new collections of Hanky Panky underwear, when she actually wore any, that she gave herself each year for Christmas, and the occasional facial from her mother. Both were her thirty-something-year-old attempts to stay sexy and keep gravity from pulling on her ass and cheekbones like the magazines all warned. She always did prefer to plan ahead.
“You know you didn’t have to get me anything. Taking me to your family’s orchard was more than I’d ever expected.”
He backed her toward the bed with a decidedly wolfish grin. “You know I did. I’ve been in physical pain since kissing you at the museum.” His tone was desperate and in no way matched the look in his eye or the strength in his touch when he picked her up and tossed her on the bed.
She caught herself in a not so graceful stumble and blew her hair from her face. “Men are such babies,” she teased, trying to lighten the pressure gathering in her center.
“Now see, I think you’re mistaken.” His voice was low as he toed off his shoes, then removed his shirt, exposing inches and inches of what would surely be her new favorite meal. “It’s not a matter of being weak and helpless, it’s a matter of craving something you know you’re going to love.”
His words washed over her as soft as a caress. She wouldn’t read too much into them. He may not admit anything about his scheme, but there was no way he could connect with her so completely if he didn’t care a little. It wasn’t love, but it was enough for tonight.
Rising to her knees at the edge of the bed, she pulled her shirt up over her head, taking her bra along with it, while he removed his pants. Then she made quick work of her shorts, catching them on one foot, then giving them a little toss. His eyes skimmed over her naked body, lingering at her breasts, then again at the juncture of her thighs.
A warm, persistent throbbing deep inside her answered the heat in his eyes.
His voice was gruff, turning his accent into an aphrodisiac. “If I’d have known you weren’t wearing any underwear at the orchard, we wouldn’t have made it back to the hotel.”
She slid her hands onto his shoulders. “I find them constricting and rarely wear them. It’s my little secret.”
“I don’t like secrets.”
Sliding her tongue along his lower lip, she nipped him gently with her teeth. “Then you shouldn’t keep any.”
He pulled back, staring down at her as she toed off her shoes. “That reminds me…” Breaking away from her grasp, he strolled across the room and grabbed the gift bag he’d brought up from the car.
“Like I said, you didn’t have to get me anything. It’s all been too much. The food, the hotel, being driven from place to place with no lines or waiting or worry. It’s going to be very hard going back to reality.”
The look in his eye softened. “I’d make this your reality if I could.” His voice was low, almost to the point that she missed what he’d said.
She stared at him hard and matched his tone. “But you can’t. I have my mother and my work and my bills in the States.”
“And I have my family’s orchard. Besides, I learned a long time ago that things were rarely what they seemed. This vacation has an expiration date. It’s easy and fun and will end before it has a chance to go bad.”
Her heart rebelled at his words, but she dug her fingers into her palms and forced a smile on her face. “You’re right. No way for anyone to get hurt.”
He studied her for a beat, then handed her the bag. “Believe me when I say these are as much for me as they are for you. But I wanted you to have them. Something to take home with you.”
Pulling a familiar box from the bag, she gasped. With her heart in her throat, she whispered, “Wait…you didn’t.” It was a shoebox from the boutique she first shopped at when she arrived in town. With one finger, she lifted the lid and peeked inside. “You did.”
Her sex-on-heels with the dainty chains that she’d had to return. Why would he get these for her if he didn’t care? How did he know she’d loved them so much? It was a pair of shoes, mundane to most people, but the thought, the generosity, turned over her heart.
He picked up one from the box and moved to kneel at her feet. It was like nothing she’d ever seen before. The muscles he displayed in the wide set of his thighs boasted of more time at the orchard than the office. It took all her strength not to reach for him.
Tipping her off her feet with a gentle push, his hand fell to her calf then slid down to her sensitive arch. Nerve endings she never knew she possessed woke up with his touch. With a gentle grip holding the back of her ankle, he slid the straps of the shoe over her toes, then fit it into place.
“What are you doing?” The rise and fall of her chest competed with her need to breathe.
He raised a brow. “I’ve wanted to see you in nothing but these heels since meeting you at the bar.”
Well, hell. She’d been more successful with her plan that night than she knew. He slid the next shoe into place, taking his time with the tiny clasps of each delicate chain. Each slide of his fingers left waves of goose bumps washing up her legs, and her body wound tight with need.
Pushing back to his feet, he helped her from the bed. Holding one of her hands above her head, he turned her before him. “Deu meu.” He groaned, deep and low in his throat.
“Mateu.” She wanted him. Now.
“I’m here.”
His growl reached her ears, sending her heart off on a rampant beat. She might be playing with fire, but she’d never felt sexier in her life. And it wasn’t so much the shoes as it was the look of possession, of need, completely bare on his face.
“Do you like them?” she asked as he lowered to the edge of the bed.
He grabbed her hand and tugged her toward him. She slid her knees to either side of his thighs, straddling him. The length of him pulsed insistently against her center. Leveraging against his shoulders, she slid forward then back. No one ever set off her body like he did, made her feel so beautiful or powerful. “Oh my God. I don’t think I can play games anymore.”
“Good.” Wrapping his arms about her waist, he stood, then walked over to the large desk positioned in an alcove and flanked by mirrors. With one sweep of his hand, he cleared the surface.
She squeezed his shoulders trying to find leverage, wanting to feel more of him, all of him.
“Be patient. I don’t know when I’ll kiss you again. I don’t want to rush this moment.”
“I can’t help it. Kiss me now. I can’t wait.” She didn’t care that she was begging.
“I’ve never needed anyone before, but I need you. I need to touch you everywhere, to taste you everywhere.” He gripped her thighs tighter, sliding her up and down the heat of him, as his mouth finally gave her what she wanted.
Diving her fingers through his hair, she slid her tongue along his lips to memorize his taste. A low groan rumbled from his throat as he lowered her backside to the desktop.
There was an urgency in their touch now; the knowledge that it was the only chance they had roared in the silence. With a quick tug, he brought her bottom to the edge and spread her legs.
She ran her fingertips from the tip of him to the base, then gently cupped his balls in her palm. This time he sucked in a breath, and a thrill shot through her body.
“Don’t push me too far our first time out, carinyo. You expect too much of me.”
“You promised me once in a lifetime. You haven’t disappointed me yet, and I don’t think you will this time, either.”
He chuckled, grabbing her wandering hands as they made their way up the ridges of his stomach to his chest. “If you don’t slow down, I’ll give the whole male Spanish population a bad name. Don Juan would roll over in his grave.”
“Don’t you mean Catalan?”
With one hand, he pinned her arms against the wallpaper above her head and with the other, he gently pushed her thighs wide. Seeing his head lower to her breast was almost too much. He ran a hand up her side to cup her breast and taste it with his hot mouth. He flicked his tongue over her nipple, tightening it to a peak, and she arched into him. The feel of him would stay with her forever.
“You are so beautiful. More than I’d ever imagined, if that’s possible,” he whispered against her skin.
She gave a small shake of her head and squirmed beneath him, tugging her hands, but he kept hers imprisoned in his. Trailing his fingers along her rib cage, then the hollow of her navel, he followed suit with his tongue and lips, causing a shiver to flair across her skin.
Her stomach dipped at his touch, so he repeated the motion again and again. With deft fingers, he skimmed over her most sensitive place that was throbbing with need.
“Hurry.” She slipped her hands free and explored him. If the strain in his eyes or the tight set of his jaw was any indication, she challenged his already strained self-control. And when she closed around the length of him once again with a firm squeeze, his eyes slammed shut.
“Deu meu.” He groaned deep and low in his throat.
“I want to taste you.”
He resisted her attempt, sliding down her body to situate himself between her legs. “Not yet. You’re too much.”
“I can work with that.”
Grazing his fingers up along the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, he encouraged her bottom closer to the edge of the desk, toward his mouth. With a featherlight touch, he glided his tongue over her folds.
Every thought flew from her head, and she sucked in a breath, forgetting she’d eventually need to breathe. He gripped her ass tighter in his hands and tasted her—a long suckle, a longer stroke, then short fluttering flicks of his tongue in a rhythm set long before either of them knew what they were doing. Pressure built, her legs trembled, and she gripped his shoulders in a wild attempt to ground herself.
In one smooth motion, he rose and settled between her legs, stopping just at the point where their bodies could and would unite. The length of him pulsed, and with each one, her fingers flexed into his biceps. He hesitated, staring into her eyes, as if making sure she was with him, that this was surely what she wanted.
“Yes,” she said, desperate for him to continue.
“Yes, what?” he demanded.
“Yes, I want this. I want you.”
The sound of cellophane tearing barely reached her ears. Then he whispered with desperate intensity against her lips, “I wish we had forever.”
She fell back against the textured wallpaper, dropping her head to one side, with his declaration echoing in her heart.
Their image greeted her and went on forever in the endless reflection of opposing mirrors. The look on her face was open and vulnerable and completely new, making her almost unrecognizable. It wasn’t a vulnerability based in weakness or fear, but total acceptance of the truth.
She’d fallen for him, regardless of the con.
Her body was ready, primed and greedy with need. With one long thrust, he buried deeply, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, crossing her ankles at the chains of her magic heels. They moved together as if it was a dance choreographed for them and them alone.
There was a desperation to their lovemaking. An attempt to hold onto something that was fleeting. His hands were in her hair, massaging her scalp, teaching her how sexual her flipping head, of all things, could be. Then his hot mouth encased a sensitive nipple, and her body arched into him with a mind of its own. That’s what it was like with him. His body spoke and her body answered, and no matter how hard she tried to take control, the effort was useless. In those moments of passion, she was helpless against the power, the beauty that was between them.
He suckled her in a matching rhythm to the joining of their bodies, and the intensity of pleasure was so great, her head spun.
Mateu pulled, and she pushed. Faster, deeper, until they broke over the threshold and released all their building energy into each other in waves of spiraling pleasure.
Over the ragged sounds of their breathing, the little chains of her heels jingled against each other as her legs slid off his hips in the heavy-limbed aftermath of her release. “Mateu.”
A tightness banded around her chest. How was she going to leave?
“I know.” Wrapping himself around her once more, he lifted her from the desk, then carried her to the bed. He drew back the blankets, tumbling them both onto the sheets, blissfully cool against her skin. She wanted to say something to acknowledge how powerful what they’d just shared had been, but he pulled her into his arms and buried his face into her neck.
“I don’t want to think about anything but how you feel right now in my arms.” His whisper was both a demand and a request.
With each steady beat of his heart, she fell deeper into her post-hottest-sex-in-her-life coma.
She wasn’t sure what time it had been when she’d fallen asleep wrapped in Mateu’s arms, but if she was reading the clock correctly through the tangled tendrils of her hair, it was about time she should be getting up. The memories of the night and all the feelings associated with it came crashing back to her in the early light of a new day with a certain measure of pain.
Careful not to jostle the bed, she turned toward him. She wasn’t so sure she was ready to face him yet. She’d never connected with someone so intensely, but it shouldn’t have happened. Not with all the lies between them.
And apparently, she wasn’t the only one to think so. The pillow next to her was empty. She slid her hand along the indentation where his head had been and found it cool to the touch. Whatever time they’d fallen asleep, he hadn’t stayed long. On a sigh, she sat up, holding her sheet at her breast. “Mateu?”
Silence greeted her.
Over on the desk was her pair of heels sitting in front of a painting. Pushing from the bed, she made her way to the desk. There, leaning back against the wallpaper, was a limited-edition print of the painting of a woman with a red flower, Profile of a Young Girl. One of her favorites.
She reached out her hand, lightly trailing the edge of the print. Her heart was so bombarded, she almost felt numb. A note lay between the shoes and the print.
A small sample of the Picasso tour soon to come.
A memory to take with you,
since you’ve left so many here with me.
M.
A burning pressure built in her chest. The thought and effort behind the painting, not to mention her heels; it was all too much.
What was she doing? She wanted everything between them to be real, to be true.
But there was no truth between them. Not on his side…or hers.
How could she expect him to confess his sins while she still committed her own? As much as she wanted to continue her vacation in the luxury of Mateu’s lifestyle, of the Huntington lifestyle, she wanted honesty more. And she wanted love.
His love.
There was only one thing she could do now.
She’d already bared everything else to him, now she had to bare her soul and tell him the truth.
…
Mateu stared across the orchard as Friday’s first rays peeked out from the horizon and wondered if he’d ever sunk as low as he had last night.
He was on the brink of something foreign, something that both scared and enthralled him. There’d been a risk in making love to her. And though, deep down, he knew he should have stopped, there was nothing save a natural disaster that could have made him give her up.
Her warm scent had clouded his head. Would he ever tire of her taste, of the feel of her in his arms?
The answer was terrifying.
But he had no choice.
He’d never been in this position before. Oh, he’d had plenty of bedmates, but nothing like this. Nothing that left him feeling as though he stood on rocky ground. The last time he let himself feel even a fraction of what was running through him, he’d had his heart tossed to the ground a week after he’d proposed.
Something he’d do well to remember.
Before he knew it, she’d be on a plane back to the States.
“Estimat.”
His mother’s voice carried through the large French doors from his bedroom to the balcony. She stood in the doorframe as the curtains fluttered about her. She was still so beautiful, and it killed him to see the worry in her eyes whenever he caught her watching his father.
“Mare. Did I wake you?” he asked in Catalan, carefully sliding from the hammock.
“No, just getting the day started.” She gripped the railing in her hands, her gaze moving along the landscape toward the sunrise. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
He joined her. “You were right, she was tired, so I took her back to the hotel. She was sorry not to have said good-bye.”
“Of course, we loved having you.” His mother looked back at the rumpled condition of his bed. “You are having trouble sleeping? You missed Horchata. You never sleep as well when you miss your Horchata.”
He rubbed a hand through his hair with a look of chagrin. He hadn’t grown up in a household of secrets. So there was something uncomfortable in not telling his mother the truth.
“I like her, estimat,” his mother said sweetly.
He glanced over to where he’d lain in the hammock, dreaming of her. It was as if she’d rested with him against the painted sunset of the sky. “I do, too.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.” He’d already caused irrevocable damage by sleeping with her.
“You have always been so smart. Help me understand why you stopped.”
A soft chuckle escaped his lips. Moving closer to the railing on the other side of his mother, he leaned in to it. “I can’t do that again, Mare. Open myself up like that. I learned my lesson.”
“This young lady is nothing like Clara. You can tell in the way she smiles at Felip and listens to your father.”
He furrowed his brow. “Maybe so. But she’s going back to the States.”
And I’m using her. For work, anyway, because the God’s honest truth was that he hadn’t enjoyed the sights of Barcelona more with anyone else. She was smart and kind and pulled an energy from him he hadn’t felt in a long time.
“Her mother is there, her work is there. And mine is here.”
“But, carinyo…”
“Mother, she may seem much different from Clara. But she isn’t, really.” He fell back on the one sticking point that was beginning to feel more like an excuse than a reality. “I’ve spent the last few days with her, and she enjoys the depths of my wallet without blinking an eye. I will not be used like that again.” His tone dismissed further conversation, but he did not miss the disappointment in her eyes.
“I think you’re wrong.”
Sliding his arm around her shoulders, he kissed the top of her head. “She is lovely, of course. And she had the nicest visit thanks to you. But she is not for me.” The truth was that he wasn’t the one for her. She deserved better.
Agueda turned a smile up at him. “Like I said, you are usually so smart.”
His father’s figure appeared along the edge of the lemon orchard with a ladder in tow and two of his cousins following behind him with their hands gesturing wildly in the air.
“Why is he up so early?” he asked, bewildered.
“There is the other one I used to think was so smart.” His mother huffed and hurried back through his room. “Think about what I said. I need to go stop that stubborn old goat before he breaks something we can’t fix.” His mother stepped through his door, closing it behind her.
“I will.” He promised. It wasn’t possible to stop thinking about London, but it didn’t change the facts, either.
She haunted his dreams then disappeared in the cruel light of day. He’d watched her sleep a bit before he’d left the hotel. He loved the way her face rested so easy, absent of the constant worry always evident in her gaze.
His mother was right, she was different.
But different wouldn’t help his father. It wouldn’t help the family orchard. Short of quitting the job he’d sweat blood and tears for over the past decade, the only way he could be there for the family that had always been there for him was through using her.