The Best Of February 2016. Catherine Mann
shower? An hour ago?” An avid light fired his gaze and his hand wrapped firmly around her arm. He steered her down the hall, but rather than taking her toward the main area of the house, he tugged her past the office she’d seen last time, then into a billiards room.
She scuffled along, fearful she’d be pulled off her heels. “Cesar, you’re scaring me.”
“I wait three damned years, then you disappear for eight months. I marry you and still have to wait six weeks...”
He pushed through a frosted door into a humid solarium. The scents of oranges and earth, lilies and herbs, were so pungent, it was almost overwhelming. The room was dark, lit only by the lights surrounding the tents erected outside. The glow filtered through small panes of glass, most of the light kept out by the abundance of greenery growing upward and dangling from hooks.
It was enchanting, but... “You want to, um, here—?”
“I want,” he growled, pulling her into his arms and pressing a hot, openmouthed kiss against her neck. His hand slid low, taking firm possession of her bottom to press her into the hardness of his unquestionable erection.
“Oh!” she cried, clutching at his shoulders for balance.
“I have been wanting and waiting and you finally tell me I can have you, but that I have to wait a little longer? I never took you for cruel, Sorcha.” His breath moved the tiny hairs along the edges of her updo, tickling and stimulating her sensitive nape, sending shivery waves of pleasure through her whole body. Gooseflesh rose on her arms.
She had wondered what had happened to the unabashedly sexual playboy she used to work for and here he was, flicking his tongue against her earlobe before he caught it in his teeth. He was moving his hands all over her waist and hips, sliding the silk against her skin, learning the shape of her thighs and buttocks. It was a disconcertingly familiar touch, kind of shocking in its level of ownership, but it sent tingles of anticipation and excitement through her. It felt really good to be touched. By him. So greedily.
Heat suffused her as she arched her neck and found herself turning her face, seeking his mouth with her own.
A sound tore out of him and he covered her lips with his own, full and knowledgeable. The sweet, occasionally lingering kisses of the past six weeks were gone. This was raw, undeniable passion. His tongue pierced unapologetically and searched for hers. Her abdomen contracted with excitement.
A deeper moan escaped her and she crowded closer to him, loins flooding with a hot ache, dampening with excitement. They stood there barely moving but for caressing each other in erotic pulses of their bodies against each other, mouths mimicking the thrust and reception they both craved.
With a little sob, she tore her lips from his, panting as she said, “I didn’t bring any condoms with me. I left them in the table by the bed. Do you have one?”
He drew back and even in the shadowed light, she could tell he was glaring.
“You had one that day,” she protested. “I thought it was something you always carry, like a credit card.”
“No,” he growled. “I don’t have one and I’m not about to consummate our marriage on a potting table in my parents’ garden shed.”
“Save it for our anniversary?” she suggested.
He looked to the glass panes of the ceiling, shaking his head. His hands were still flexing on her. “This is going to be a very hard, hard evening to get through.”
She ducked her head against his chest, sheepishly delighted. The evening ahead began to feel more like a date.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “I feel pretty now.”
“You are more than pretty. You’re radiant,” he said, sounding as if he meant it. They exchanged another kiss that promised a “to be continued.”
A moment later, drunk with arousal, she let him lead her back into the billiards room. They would make love later. The knowledge whispered and sang inside her, like a delicious secret. Like Christmas was coming.
He followed her into the powder room and stood next to her in front of the mirror, swiping her color off his mouth, then expertly refolding his kerchief to hide the stain before replacing it in his jacket pocket.
She eyed the maneuver.
“I won’t ask how many women you’ve dragged into that solarium,” she said as she reapplied fresh lipstick to her tingling mouth. She really didn’t want to know.
“I’ve never fooled around with anyone in there during a party,” he said. “Too much chance of running into my brother.”
BUOYED BY HER dalliance with Cesar, Sorcha felt radiant. And optimistic.
He made her feel magnetic, looking at her constantly, hand not just resting on her back, but thumb caressing the edge of her gown where her skin was exposed.
Even the thought of having to face down Diega didn’t dent her confidence. She felt rather protected, flanked by Cesar on one side and Rico on the other. Like one of the fold. Rico was cast from the same mold as his older brother and father, dark and handsome, tall and well built, capable of flirting and flattering, but with the same distance from emotional attachments as the rest of them.
“Did Cesar tell you I offered to marry you?” Rico had asked while bringing her a cocktail earlier.
“No,” she had said, stunned. “Why on earth would you do that?” She’d met him several times while working for Cesar, but had rarely exchanged more than appointment details or an offer to fetch him coffee. With Cesar firmly holding her interest from the first, she’d never seen Rico as anything but one of her boss’s high-level associates, never a romantic prospect.
“You’re smart, pleasant and attractive. It was a practical solution. Enrique would have had our name and a proper share in the family fortunes. Diega would have had the title she wanted,” Rico said with a diffident shrug. “You could have relayed the offer,” he added, speaking to Cesar now. “She might have preferred a lower profile. Did you think of that?”
He wasn’t joking.
Neither was Cesar when he said a clear and flinty “No.”
“It’s moot now,” their father said, and the men began discussing the technical properties of new alloy.
“Tell me about the house,” La Reina prompted Sorcha.
She gave a short rundown, carefully filtering everything she said, determined to leave the right impression. “Cesar said I should hire an assistant, but I’ve been interviewing staff for the house and the idea of going through the process for yet one more position right now... I can’t face it. What are your thoughts? Do I need one?”
She mentally laughed at how pretentious she sounded.
“I’ll have mine do the preliminary screening. You’re right, it’s too much when you’ve just had a baby. You have just the one nanny?”
Their nanny was the most underworked caregiver in continental Europe, considering how enamored Sorcha and Cesar were of their son, but Sorcha only said, “For now.”
The small talk wrapped up and they now stood in the foyer of the family mansion, greeting all of Spain as far as Sorcha could estimate.
She might not have been raised in high society, but her father had been titled, educated at Cambridge and a member of the House of Lords. She knew what good manners looked like and had learned early to adopt his posh accent for job interviews, especially in London. Cesar had been taken aback the first time he’d overheard her talking to her mother, falling into their broad Irish accent as she did. Already firmly entrenched as his PA, she had had a moment of insecurity as she danced around explaining that she was actually peasant stock, not the snobby aristocrat she mimicked.