The Spaniard's Woman

Throwing her head back, her fingers convulsing in his soft dark hair, a strangled groan of tumultuous, feverish ecstasy was wrenched from her. Lifting her pelvis, drawn by an instinct as old as time, Rosie shifted her feet and parted her legs.

‘Perfeccion!’ Sebastian whispered the word aloud. Rosie was curled around him, her soft fine hair spread out on the pillow. He couldn’t stop looking at her and his heart was bursting with so much tenderness he thought it might explode.

She had slept for a little while. Half an hour, no longer, but by the amber glow of the single bedside lamp he could see she was beginning to wake, the thick twin crescents of her lashes stirring against her fine, slightly flushed skin.

His heart twisted with a happiness he could barely contain. He had found what he’d previously cynically believed to be an entirely mythical creature: a woman he could trust with his life, adorable, trusting, incredibly sexy, open and generous in her lovemaking. A woman without a devious or greedy bone in her beautiful body.

Gently tracing the kiss-swollen outline of her slightly parted lips, he willed her to wake. He needed her to wake, if only for long enough to hear what he had to say

.

Throughout this never-to-be-forgotten night their lovemaking had been too tempestuous to allow for words, and the final time, just before she’d given a drowsy purr of pleasure and fallen asleep in his arms with the total grace of a felled sapling, it had been so slow and beautiful it had brought tears to his eyes.

He would ask her to be his wife. He could no longer envisage a life without her.

Putting a curb on his impatience, he slowly withdrew his fingers from the totally erotic exploration of her mouth and dropped his hand, curving it gently around one pert breast, allowing her to wake naturally.

Rosie couldn’t feign sleep for a single moment longer. How could she when the peaking of her breast as it surged into his hand was a dead giveaway? Her conscience, always such a drag according to her former classmates, was giving her hell. Whatever happened, she would love this man to the end of her days. She had to be honest with him, she thought emotionally.

No more hiding behind half-truths and evasions. He might hate her for what she was going to have to tell him, but it was a risk she was going to have to take.

Her eyes opened unwillingly and met his. She tugged in a sharp huff of breath. Propped up on one elbow, he was leaning over her. His mouth curved in a smile, and if that wasn’t blind adoration on his lethally handsome face then the light, or her wishful imagination, had to be playing tricks on her.

‘Querida—’ The throaty catch in his voice made her almost lose her nerve, abandon herself to the glistening intent in his eyes.

‘But, I have to tell you something.’ She reached up to place a warning finger across his mouth, then hastily withdrew it when he laved it with his tongue. Out with it, she reminded herself sternly, and dragged herself up against the pillows, pulling her knees right up under her chin, unconsciously making the smallest possible target for the distaste that would surely follow.

Her voice rasping as she did her utmost to school out the slightest unsteadiness, she admitted, ‘I should have told you before. I am Sir Marcus’s illegitimate daughter.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

A HEAVY heartbeat of breathless silence. Rosie felt like bursting into tears. He didn’t have to say a word. She knew he had gone from her, retreated behind the bleak facade he seemed able to summon at will. It hurt horribly and, too late, she wished the words unsaid.

Sebastian swung his long legs off the bed, located his towelling robe and shrugged his shoulders into it. Tying the belt around his waist, he turned to face her and said flatly, ‘I don’t believe you.’

His perfect woman was as flawed as all the rest. He had no idea what kind of devious game she was playing, but, by all that was holy, he knew Marcus had adored his wife—his own wonderful, loving Tia Lucia.

Marcus had devoted his life to his invalid wife, caring for her to the end of her days. He could not, would not, believe him capable of straying, much less of getting his mistress with child and casually abandoning her—which was what Rosie had to be implying if what she had let slip about her mother’s single status and financial struggles could be believed.

If he could believe anything she said!

‘I’m sorry, but it’s true.’

Her voice was thick with unshed tears and her eyes were anguished. She could easily convince a more gullible man, he thought, his breath shortening, his mouth flattening. She was a pretty fair actor, he granted her that. Hiding behind that air of injured innocence. Well, it took one to know one—he was just as successfully hiding the savagely painful blow she had dealt him.

Turning sharply, he strode across the room to press the overhead light switch. He needed to see her more clearly, read what was going on inside her beautiful lying head.

In the few seconds while his back had been turned she’d dragged the coverlet up to her chin. A bit late to modestly hide her nakedness, considering the wild intimacies of the past few hours, he decided sardonically. Then he saw the tears that were now flooding and said more gently than he’d intended, ‘I don’t know what you hope to gain by claiming my godfather got your mother pregnant and then apparently washed his hands of her and you. A slice of the good life? Is that what you think you can get? For that you’d need proof. Yes? Your mother is no longer here to provide it, so it’s up to you. Presumably you wouldn’t be making such an outlandish claim if you hadn’t cooked up something to back your story up.’

He turned away. Some weak part of him couldn’t stand to see her crying, the silent tears streaming unchecked against the sudden pallor of her skin. ‘I’m going to take a shower,’ he told her heavily. ‘That gives you five minutes to decide how you’re going to convince me. And I warn you, it won’t be easy. You’re out for what you can get, aren’t you?’ he stated bitterly.

‘Convince Marcus you’re his long lost daughter and sit back and wait for your healthy inheritance. In your dreams, Rosie. It’s not going to happen. I won’t let it!’

Watching him stride into the en suite bathroom, firmly closing the door behind him, Rosie felt her heart break. The beautiful fairytale she’d been part of ever since she’d joined him for dinner the evening before had turned into a black tragedy.

She loved him to pieces and he thought she was scum!

Immediately marking her down as a lying con artist cooking up an evil scheme to somehow convince a wealthy man that she was his flesh and blood just so she could get her hands on a whole load of money! So much for her silly romantic dreams!