Mistress: Pregnant by The Spanish Billionaire

Nell’s wild, darting eyes meshed with his and gradually her breathing slowed as she relaxed against him, her face pressed into the angle of his chin.

As he cradled her body in his arms he felt her breath warm on his neck, and the tremors that ran through her slender frame at irregular intervals. Luiz stroked her hair gently, filled with a strong need to comfort her.

When Nell finally lifted her head and pulled away a little from him her face was tear-stained and pale from sleep deprivation.

‘I’m sorry.’ She angled an anguished look of mortification at his face.

‘There is no need to be sorry.’

She attempted a smile but it was a weak affair. ‘I should have stayed at the car. I’ve ruined your shirt.’ She loosened her grip on his shirt that now gaped.

‘I have more.’

‘Ones that have buttons,’ she said, smoothing down the fabric with a shaky hand.

He caught her hand and placed it palm flat on the warm skin of his chest. ‘It is fine. Are you all right?’ He had seen nightmares, had nightmares, but he had never seen such feral, visceral terror before.

Nell couldn’t take her eyes off her fingers spread out pale against his dark skin. Her brow puckered, her teeth were chattering hard as she struggled to sound matter-of-fact. ‘It was a night terror.’

‘Night terror…?’

Nell moved her fingertips slightly and froze, scared but excited, as her fingers skated across his satiny hair-roughened skin. ‘I never r…remember…I used to have them when I was a girl. It’s more scary for other people than me. I always used to curl up and go back to sleep. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’

‘Disturbed me?’ he echoed.

She frowned, puzzling over the strange sardonic inflection in his husky voice as he hooked a finger under her chin and, tilting her face up to his, rasped, ‘I wasn’t asleep.’

‘This has been the oddest day of my life,’ Nell confided in a breathless rush.

His expressive lips curled into a sardonic smile. ‘It is not over yet. You’re not safe back in your library. Madre de Dios,’ he added, raking her face with a raw intensity that made her tremble, ‘I wish you had never left it!’

She flinched at the passionate angry declaration.

‘You do know you scared me witless?’

‘I scared you?’ Nell felt pretty witless herself as he trailed his finger up from her chin and over the curve of her cheek. His actions had all the hallmarks of compulsion as his square fingertip moved across her skin, barely grazing the downy hair on her cheek, his eyes following the track.

It was the tactile equivalent of a whisper but it caused a disproportionate degree of damage to Nell’s nervous system. The little shiver of excitement in the pit of her belly expanded and grew into a butterfly tremor of anticipation as the air around them grew dense with sexual tension.

Somewhere above their heads came the eerie predatory sound of a hunting owl.

CHAPTER NINE

THERE was a smoky, unfocused expression in Luiz’s dark eyes as he placed one hand behind Nell’s head, his splayed fingers sinking deep into her hair as he supported its weight. The bands of colour along the sharp angle of his cheekbones deepened as his eyes moved across the soft contours of her face.

‘Yes, you still are scaring me.’ He curved his hand around her face and brought his mouth down on hers. The touch was brief, hard and angry.

Nell forced her eyelids open. They felt hot and heavy—as heavy as the strange lethargy that had invaded her limbs. She looked at him and shook her head slowly in a mute plea.

‘Don’t look at me that way!’ he groaned.

He didn’t want to feel this way, but there was no element of choice involved. He had been taken over by a force that was stronger than intellect. The feeling this woman awoke in him was primal. It filled every cell of his body, consumed him, and roared in his veins, wiping away his ability to think about anything but sinking into her, possessing her.

He couldn’t think around it or past it.

In the glow of the fire she could see the sheen of moisture on the bronzed skin of his face and neck. Her eyes slid lower to where his shirt hung open. His ribcage rose and fell in tune with his laboured inhalations. She could see the clear delineation of the slabs of ridged muscle on his flat belly.

Things moved deep inside her as emotions she could not name thickened in her throat—he was beautiful, the essence of primitive masculinity.

His hand continued its compulsive journey as he angled it slowly from side to side; the other moved across her ribcage before tracing a slow path down her spine until it rested in the small of her back. His fingers were warm through the fine fabric of her dress.