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He wanted unrestricted, uninterrupted access and time with this woman. He deserved it—he needed it. And so did she.
He glanced at her and she turned big hazel eyes up to him. He put his arm round her shoulders and squeezed her into his side. She reached up and touched his chest, scraped her fingers across the new wound that throbbed under his shirt. Better than any physio, she would be the ultimate remedy for every last thumping bruise and cut from today’s match.
‘How long until you go back to Europe?’
He nodded to the doorman and walked her down the carpeted steps. His car rolled into view. He checked each way and across the street. Nobody. He checked behind them. Clear. He always checked. He was always his own security, but he was hers, too—for now.
‘A week. We go to Punta del Este later today—Esme and Brett and me. Then I have a business trip to the Pampas on Thursday. Flying back on Friday.’
So she was heading to Punta, too?
‘They’ll be going to the Turlington Club party,’ he said, almost to himself. So was he. He never missed it.
But if the world was heading to Punta, he would be heading in the opposite direction. With Frankie.
‘I’ll take you to Punta. Tomorrow.’
Dice rolled. Decision made.
She stopped right there on the pavement, a flare of anger replacing the passion that had flooded her body. ‘I told you my plans. There’s no way I’m changing them.’
‘No? You’ve already changed them. You’re here now. Are you really saying that you’d rather lie on a beach with your friend than climb into bed with me?’
He trailed a thumb across her jaw as her mouth pursed, framed a retort, then slid into a sexy smirk.
She dipped her eyes, then fired him a look. ‘I’ll give you a day of my time. After that I’m back on plan.’
He couldn’t help but smile back. He didn’t normally deal well with independence—women were all about love, not combat. But for the few hours they were going to have together, it wasn’t going to be a deal-breaker. So far it had even added to her allure. So far …
He kept his hand on her jaw.
‘I’ll take your kind offer of a day.’
He stepped a little closer to her, gripped her chin a little more firmly and watched as she dragged a breath in through bared teeth.
‘And since that’s all you’re offering, we’re not going to waste a moment. I’ve got a place round the corner …’
His eyes dropped to her mouth. Wet lips.
‘If you behave yourself I’ll take you to your friends so you’re …”back on plan”. Does that meet with your approval?’
Her narrowed eyes signalled that she knew he was mocking her.
‘It does.’
‘Excellent. Our first compromise. We’ll head straight to my town house, then.’
He held open the car door and waited. She fired him a look that told him he’d only won the first round. Then she slid inside. He scanned the street again and joined her.
The moment he closed the door they slammed together across the leather.
Seconds later and the flames roared around them. A pyre of passion.
But she hauled herself back, splayed her hands on his thighs and looked up, straight into his eyes.
‘Just for the record, I wasn’t playing games. I went to the party because I didn’t want to let Esme down—not to flaunt myself in front of you. If it hadn’t been for her I’d still be tucked up in my bed. So consider yourself lucky.’
Still in combat.
He grabbed her bare arms, his fingers closing round them easily. He stifled a chuckle. Nodded seriously. ‘Oh, I do—I do.’
But suddenly he was struck by just how close they’d come—how far they’d journeyed. How easily they could have lost this opportunity. How hard he needed to pursue her just to scratch this itch.
He added quietly, ‘I think there’s more than luck at work here. It was always going to end this way with us.’
The car moved slowly; the darkness loomed. Her heaving breaths answered him. Her skin looked silvery smooth, each slim arm still braced on his thighs. She was mesmerising.
He grabbed a handful of silky hair and tugged her head back. He wanted to savour every second, to devour her, to linger over every moment like an eight-course, wine-matched gourmet meal—to swallow her whole.
He met her mouth as she reached for his—succulent as watermelon, sweeter than syrup.
He tasted. Lost himself. Scooped her like sauce onto his lap and let her soak against him.
He sat back as she straddled him … as they went up in flames again.
Seconds more and the car turned a corner, then stopped. They were here.
He reached for the door handle, caught the flash of the driver’s eyes in the mirror, held her as he stepped out of the car and strode to the iron gates.
Still dark, the straight path to the curved, domed entrance was softly illuminated with studs of light. His finest home. His proudest purchase. Every step proof of how far he had come from thieving street child to national hero. Normally he lingered, savoured. But not tonight. Tonight he marched with his treasure. Past the low sweet-scented bushes, the spiky-headed lavender and geometric box hedge. None of that mattered.
He had waited for her. And now she was here. Right here in his city, in his house, in his arms.
The heavy half-glazed door reflected them as they stepped up. She looked tiny, slight, and for a moment he remembered the girl she had been. So full of energy, so bold and uncompromising. She might have grown up, filled out slightly, but under her subtle make-up and silky hair and the well-cut dress, she was still that refreshingly natural, honest creature he’d first laid eyes on in that muddy lane.
And finally he was going to take her in the way he had longed to take her. He could hardly bear any more heat at his groin right now. He was slightly out of control—he could feel it.
His hand was steady as he pressed the keypad, but that was sheer force of will. The door swung open into the high domed entrance. Lamps glowed like sleepy sentries down the hallway. Palms bent their heads in welcome. Portraits calmly considered them. It was as if the whole house was waiting.
He felt her step in beside him.
‘Mother of God, what a place …’ she breathed.
She was turning three-sixty, gazing at the glass, the gilt, the marble, the grand sweep of carpeted stairs. But the normal flush of pride, the pause and then the proud history lesson, didn’t ease from his lips.
‘Upstairs,’ he said.
He caught her as she turned back to him, hoisted her weightless body into his arms and strode to the stairs.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said.
She didn’t lie back—not Frankie. She grabbed his head, tried to kiss him.
It was the sheer force of the habit of climbing those stairs that got him to the top without missing a step. She was insatiable. He could hardly contain her as she slid her legs round his waist, held on to his head and licked and tongued her way across his face.
He had to stop—couldn’t take another step with this erotic creature writhing all over him. He had to take her now. Here in the hall.
In a heartbeat he’d scooped his arm up her spine, bent her backwards and laid her straight down on the floor. Her eyes flew open with the speed of his move, but the wicked flash of joy told him she was even more fired up.
‘You don’t want to take this slowly, do you, querida? You haven’t got the patience.’
‘You can go slow with your blondes.’
She blew in his ear, her hot breath sending him into a fury of desire for her.
‘But I haven’t got all day, so get a move on.’
He braced himself just to look at her. No one spoke to him like this—no one. He would never tolerate any mention of previous partners, never entertain censorious comments. But she did it. And he was loving it.
‘You think …?’
She lay still. Just for a moment. Her hair was a spill of the darkest rum, her eyes diamond black in the hollows of her satin-skinned face. Mesmerising. Absorbing. So beautiful.
Something hovered between them in that second. Heavy, humid, portentous.
And then, like a tide taken at the flood, they grabbed for each other.
She pulled at his shirt—fingers grabbing, nails scratching. Vaguely aware of his wound throbbing, he filled his hands with her. Hauled her dress up and over her hips. She tried to scrabble towards him, to get at more of his clothes, but he had to see her and touch her. Had to.
He pinned her to the ground with his hand and stared at her slender bones, at the tiny triangle of her panties. She was so delicate, so feminine … Another jolt of lust made him even thicker. Even harder. He grabbed the fine fabric that covered her in his fist and tugged. She yelped and breathed out hard. But she still clambered to clutch at him as he balled the shredded silk and tossed it aside.
‘I liked those,’ she said.
‘You put them on knowing I’d take them off. Didn’t you?’
‘You’re so hot for yourself—aren’t you, Hurricane?’
He grinned at her again—couldn’t help it. She fired him up to be a little more rough, a little more bold.
‘I’m hot for you.’
He pulled her dress right up to her waist, exposed her nakedness to his hungry eyes.
‘You’re perfect.’
She was. Exquisite. The neat V of dark hair drew his gaze, and as the words left his lips he parted her flesh and slid his fingers home.
Like a wild beast calmed, she stilled, threw back her head, closed her eyes and moaned. She was swollen and soaked. Just as he’d known she would be. As he’d always remembered. Her clitoris was engorged, begging for his touch, and he circled and slid his finger over it just once. Her cry echoed off the walls and went straight to his heart.
‘I’ve got to taste you, hermosa.’
Hands to her hips, he slid her swiftly up the silk rug. She hauled at her dress, dragged it over her head and unhooked her bra. She lay back in the moonlight, clothes cast around under the domed ceiling. She was some bewitching fairy or nymph, clouding his head. Entrancing him. Robbing him of sense.
He lifted her hips, held her open under his gaze, drinking in the moonlit sight of her that he’d never had a chance to see properly in those few stolen minutes years ago. Then he bent his head until his lips and tongue lay between her splayed legs. And then he lapped her, tasted her and relished her.
She had orgasmed in seconds that first time. Caught him completely by surprise. And herself. He doubted she had even known what had happened. He’d catapulted himself out of bed in shock.
But this time as her legs tensed, her arms gripped his and she burst apart, pulsed and jerked in his mouth. As her cries echoed in the hallway he held her in place and licked at her until she thrashed her arms and legs and begged him to stop.
‘Rocco—Rocco, please!’
The words rang out, almost dragging him out of his frenzy. And then he was lifting her, hugging her up, plastered against his body, striding along the hallway, taking them both to his suite. She hung her head on his shoulder, lay limply in his arms.
‘Is that what it takes to calm you, Frankie? I must remember that …’
She felt so soft in his arms, lying back quietly as he paced past closed doors. Light was beginning to flood in through the huge stained glass window that marked the end of the hallway and the door to his suite.
‘I’m only taking a moment …’ She smiled, then tipped up her face, softened by dawn’s golden light.
God, she was even more beautiful like this. He didn’t think he could wait another second to have her.
He kicked open the door. Three paces and he laid her down on his bed. She leaned up on her elbows, completely naked. He zoned in on her tiny curved breasts, pink nipples erect and inviting. His hands fumbled like a teenager with his belt, his fly, his shirt buttons.
Her chest heaved up and down with hard, shallow breaths, then she kneeled up and grabbed at his shirt, hauled at it. Kissed him.
‘Back in the game—Hurricane.’
Sweat beaded between them—he didn’t know from whom. They made noises … breathed and gasped and murmured each other’s names. She was licking at his nipples, her fine little fingers running over his flesh, tracing the fresh scar that had begun to bleed.
‘Oh, my God—did I do that? I’m sorry.’
He kicked off the last of his clothes, pulled a handful of condoms from the drawer and scattered them on the bed.
‘Doesn’t matter. Come here. Lie down.’
He grabbed her by the wrists and held her as he kneed her legs apart and then tipped her down.
She strained, held herself taut as he positioned her. Her eyes were on him. His erection. He was so swollen it stood proud, huge, and just the sight of her staring made him nearly lose his grip.
‘Rocco, my God … my God.’
She leaned up, licked her wet lips and raised her eyes to his. He felt like a god. She did that to him.
His fingers peeled a condom packet apart and she reached to take the condom out. Then she cupped his straining sac and began to roll it delicately. Too delicately.
He’d had enough. His control was shot. He couldn’t wait any more.
He shook his head. ‘Lie back. Let me do this, Frankie. Come on, hermosa. Come on.’
She did as she was told. But her eyes drank him in. Every part of him.
Finally he was just where he wanted to be, leaning over her as he’d wanted, as he’d imagined. Finally he was getting to hold her under him and nudge the tip of his shaft inch by inch into her hot, sweet heaven.
She was so slight, so slender. But so ready. And even if he’d had an ounce of self-control left—even if he’d wanted to take it slowly—she had other plans. She slid down to meet him, her eyes never leaving his even as her body took him in and her hands smoothed their way around to his backside.
And he slid home.
The strain not to take her hard and fast nearly broke him, but he lifted her hips and took it as slowly as he could. He felt her fingers frame his face … looked down, opened his eyes. She was staring with those huge eyes, deep and dark and so full of secrets. She licked her lips and drove him on with her hips. Her breasts jiggled as he thrust into her and he knew then that this was the most erotic experience of his life.
‘Rocco, baby, this is too good … too good.’
She squeezed her hips even more, and just the perfect tilt of them sliding together nearly killed him. She called out to the day-brightened room as she lost it. He was losing it with her. This was it. The wait was over.
He grabbed her wrists with one hand and pinned them above her head, held her down. Then he threw each of her legs round his waist and hauled her by her hips as close as he could get her. She curled back on the bed, for once his supplicant, and he leaned over her, stared into her and ground himself free.
Released.
It was immense.
He came and didn’t stop coming. And she was there, squeezing him home.
Cradling her in his arms, he rolled over and spread her like silk over his body while he crashed back down to earth. His heart hammered and his vision struggled to return. The edges and curves of the white plaster cornice slowly took shape around the dark grey ceiling high above him. The blackout blinds were high on the windows, letting in the morning’s brightness.
It was days since he’d been here. Weeks, maybe even months since he’d had a woman here. And he’d never, ever had a girl like Frankie here. Anywhere. Ever.
He squeezed her to his chest, almost as if checking she was real.
‘What do you think? Worth the wait?’ he said finally.
She lay still. ‘I hate to burst your bubble, but I think it might need to be the best out of three.’
He smiled. Trust her …
She smoothed her hands over his chest, pressed her fingers into the bruise that now bloomed like a map of the world over his right pec.
‘Is that sore? Am I hurting you?’
He snatched at her skinny little wrist as she fired him one of her wicked grins.
‘The purple skin and burst stitches don’t give you a clue?’
She batted her eyes and lowered her head. Kissed the bruised flesh—little whispers of touch with that fiery mouth.
‘Is that better?’
He threaded his fingers through her hair, caught them up in a tangle and worked it free.
‘I’ll live. Come here.’
He wanted to feel her close against him. He was acting out of character, but having her wrapped over him felt so damn good. He loved women—of course he did—but he knew the chemistry, the bonding, the whole emotional fallout attached to the aftermath of lovemaking could lead to expectations he was never going to fulfil. But this moment he had waited for. And he was going to savour it.
‘Makes a change from the last time, when you tried to kick me out of bed.’
‘At least one of us had our head screwed on.’
He leaned up on his elbow to look at the sleek cat that lay across him.
‘You know how crazy that was? You tested me to the max. I’ve never been so tempted, and you were—what?—sixteen? Have you any idea how wrong that would have been?’
‘Didn’t feel wrong at the time, though, did it?’
She twisted her head round to look at him, pressed another whisper-kiss to his chest. Nothing about her felt wrong. Then or now.
He shook his head. ‘Your family didn’t strike me as being the most freethinking. It was a miracle that we weren’t caught.’
She turned her head, pulled herself away. Lay back on the bed beside him and stared up at the ceiling.
‘We were. Caught. Actually.’
‘What? Are you kidding me?’
He shifted up. No way. No. Way. He would have known—he would have been called to account. There was no chance her brother would have continued to do business with him—no way their professional or personal relationship could have withstood that type of interference.
She twisted her head. ‘Oh, don’t worry—I denied it. Until I was hoarse. And Mark doesn’t know—at least I think he doesn’t. But my dad—let’s just say he has suspicions … deep suspicions.’
Damn. He hadn’t considered that.
‘Angel—I’m sorry. I’d never have left you to handle that on your own had I known. What happened?’
She sighed, and he saw her twist at the silver ring on her finger.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if we woke him with our noise or if he was just awake anyway. But after you’d got your stuff together and walked out I went to go back to my room and he was there—at the top of the stairs. He asked me outright what the hell I’d been doing.’
He remembered every second of that night. Stifling her cries with his mouth as she came in his hand from those few fevered touches. Pinning her down and then reality crashing round him as he’d realised what the hell had just happened—what the hell he’d been about to do. Trying to get out of bed, pulling on clothes that were icy and damp, buttoning himself up over the erection that wouldn’t go down. Heaving on his boots as she’d still tried to tempt him back to bed. Finally grabbing her shoulders and hissing at her to stop, to leave him, she was too young!
But she hadn’t given up. Naked, driving him wild. He’d hauled the sheet off the bed and wrapped her up. As he’d yanked the door open and tried to remember which way was out the farmhouse’s narrow windows and dark passages had lent him no clue.
Finally he’d stumbled down to the kitchen, past the sheepdogs lying in front of the fire’s dying embers, heard the tick of an old clock, heaved on the rusty bolts that had held the door closed.
She’d come down to stand in the doorway to the hall with a haunted look—as if the heart had been ripped out of her. He’d stopped then—aching to go to her, to make her feel better, to take away the hurt, take away his own hurt.
But he’d been young—only twenty-one! He’d spent so long getting to that point, working through his own pain. La Colorada had finally been ready. His polo career had been taking off. He hadn’t been able to stay there, to ally himself to a woman—a girl. He’d been only just beginning to taste the chance of a sweet future. It would have been madness to go to her.
So he’d turned back to the door, hauled it open and stepped out into the early-morning rain. She’d come right out into the daylight, onto the huge slabbed courtyard, called his name one final time. But he’d just slung his bag onto his shoulder, taken one final look at her, wrapped up like temptation’s gift. And then gone.
‘He was just standing there—then he went into the guest bedroom, saw you were gone and the state of the room. Saw me in the sheet.’
She turned her face away.
‘He slapped me and called me a whore.’
Rocco sat up, but she’d turned onto her side. He scooped her in close, feeling the shock of those words.
‘Hermosa, lo siento mucho,’ he soothed, furious that he had not known this.
‘It’s fine,’ she said—too brightly. ‘I lied. I said you must have left ages earlier. That I’d just pulled the sheet off. I don’t know what else I said. I made it up.’
He kissed her shoulder, cursed his stupidity. Of course they had been heard. They’d been wild for each other—then and now. And he’d thought they hadn’t been. Stupid.
‘It’s not fine. I apologise.’ He pulled her back and turned her round, right round, until her head was tucked under his chin. He rocked her, hating the thought of her hurting. ‘What did he do? Were you punished?’
She gave a hollow little laugh.
‘If you can say being sent away to a convent for two years is punishment, then, yes, I was punished.’
He struggled to get his head around this, but knew he had no small part to play.
‘And he made sure that Mark sold Ipanema. That she went to you was coincidence, but it made it all the harder.’
Rocco squeezed his eyes closed, feeling her pain.
‘I see. Now I see. I didn’t think … Angel, I’m sorry. If you’d got in touch I could have sorted it—I could have spoken to him. I wish you’d let me know.’
‘You made it quite plain that the last thing you wanted was for me to get in touch, Rocco. Anyway, it’s totally in the past—it’s fine. I served my time.’ She laughed. ‘Honestly. It’s done.’
He pulled her close. He couldn’t deny that. Any more than he could deny how deep the scars of childhood could wound. How hard they were to heal. His own were like welts under his skin. No one could see them, but they were always there—always would be. Despite the ‘luxury’ of enforced therapy for five years. Five years until he’d learned to say what they wanted to hear: that he didn’t hold himself responsible, that it wasn’t his fault his baby brother had died.
Who else was to blame if not him? Who else had dragged him from doorway to doorway, scavenging, begging, stealing and worse? Who else had got caught up with the gangs, the drug runners and the killers?
He glanced past Frankie’s scooped silhouette to the tiny battered photo of Lodo that he carried with him and placed at his bedside wherever he was. Precious life snuffed out before he’d even turned four years old. Being responsible for him, letting him down, losing him—it was the hardest lesson he had ever learned. But he had learned it. And he would never ever forget it.
The knowledge that Martinez, Lodo’s killer, had never been held to account was like a knife to his ribs every day. But he would make it happen. One day.
He felt Frankie stirring, trailing hot little kisses over him and moaning with hot little sounds. She wriggled against him and he reacted instantly, his mouth seeking hers, his hands cupping her breasts and his knee shifting open her thighs. He positioned himself between her legs, so ready to slip inside her.
‘You owe me,’ she said as she rolled beneath him, ‘and I’m here to collect.’