The Brazilian's Blackmailed Bride

They fell on the bed in a spray of clean water droplets, rough towelling and deep, hungry kisses. They made love while the afternoon sun dropped lower in the sky. And when it was over it wasn’t over, because they still touched, kissed, drew out the after-loving like a trailing silken thread, until hunger and thirst sent her leaping off the bed to pick up the tray.

She’d forgotten nothing. Anton smiled as she placed the tray on the flat of the bed between them, then gave him the wine bottle to open while she knelt beside him, golden, slender, totally carefree in her nakedness, as she broke off chunks of bread and smeared them with conserve, offering him a piece, then smiling at him as he handed her the wine to pour while he bit into the bread. His bowtie had managed to stay in her hair, though he didn’t know how it had, considering what they had been doing. She looked loved and lovely, lips soft and swollen from his kisses, the swing of her nipples dark and tight.

She offered him a glass of wine. He took it and drank, then his face instantly contorted at the harsh, brackish taste.

‘My God, you’re trying to poison me,’ he gasped.

To his shock, huge glistening tears filled her eyes.

‘What did I say?’ he demanded in bewilderment, then saw the way she was staring at his glass of wine. ‘Christina…’ He sighed. ‘Don’t be such a baby. I was joking! Here—try the wine,’ he invited. ‘I can guarantee it will knock your eyes out.’

She shook her head, mouth small now, and trembling, those tear-filled eyes too big in her face. Anger roared up like a mo

nster inside him. Who the hell had knocked the spirit out of her to the extent that she could almost fall apart over a glass of poor wine?

That bastard Ordoniz?

He tossed the rest of the wine to the back of his throat and swallowed, then slammed the glass back down on the tray.

‘All right,’ he said then. ‘Let’s talk about this. Since when did you get this upset over a lousy glass of wine, instead of just tossing your own glassful into my face for being so insensitive?’

‘I wanted it to be perfect.’

‘Wanted what to be perfect?’

‘This…’ She stared at the bed, the tray—him. ‘You, me, here—our last time together,’ she whispered.

Our last time…

The rumbling beginnings of their next major battle began to roll around the room. Anton tried to hold it back by clamping his lips together and clenching just about every muscle he could. But it was not going to happen. Anger six long years in the fermenting, it was filling with a bitterness that by far outstripped the taste of the wine.

‘So this—’ he flicked a hand at the tray ‘—the surprise visit to the bathroom and the rest—was just for the sex, was it?’

‘No—’

‘A last good old frolic with your Englishman before you kicked him out of your life again?’

‘Y-you—’

‘I’ve had it,’ he announced, and launched himself right off the bed.

‘Luis—no!’ she cried. The look he sent her had her scrambling off the bed. ‘You don’t understand!’

‘What’s to understand? I’ve noticed the pattern here. Have you noticed it?’ he rasped. ‘You run; I follow. You take the sex. You run again—or in this case you kick me out.’

‘I don’t mean it to be like that—’

‘No?’ He released a hard laugh, dragged on a pair of pale chinos and zipped them up. ‘I’ve offered to marry you—again,’ he delivered. ‘I’ve offered to save this bloody awful place. I’ve given you the sex! Who is the fool here, do you think? You or me?’

This time she didn’t answer. Reaching out, he picked up a white T-shirt and dragged it on over his head.

‘And of course I must not forget that you have other options now,’ he continued bitterly. ‘Enrique Ramirez has seen to that.’

‘Y-you said—’

‘What did I say?’ he lanced at her, ignoring—refusing—to see the way she was standing there naked, shivering, face as white as the worn sheet on the bed. ‘That I would sell you out to the Alagoas Consortium if you tried to pay me back? Do I really come over to you as the kind of bastard who would do that to you?’

Without wanting a reply, he ripped out a sigh and went hunting for a clean pair of socks in his bag. He came out with another folded white T-shirt and tossed it at her.