Duarte's Child

Momentarily, Duarte paused and cast her a gleaming glance of vibrant amusement. He slid out of the shirt with the fluid grace of a matador in the bull ring. ‘This is one battle you’re destined to lose—’

‘But I can’t… We can’t. This…this is not the answer!’ Emily surveyed him with guilt-stricken intensity as he stood there poised, all hair-roughened bronzed skin and lean hard muscle. Him looking like a Greek god was not exactly the biggest help she’d ever received in her belief that she had to put a lid on what was happening between them.

‘Isn’t it?’ Duarte reached out and hauled her into his arms, smouldering dark gaze roaming over the rise and fall of her breasts. He unclipped the bra, found a pouting swell of tormentingly sensitive flesh and rubbed his thumb over the throbbing tip. ‘I want you so much I’m in agony…’

She leant into him even though she tried to stop herself. She could feel the same want mounting like a hungry, conscience-free flood inside her. Last night might never have happened. She was shocked at the strength of her own yearning, shocked by the overpowering surge of excitement awakened by the sight of his lean hand cupping her breast.

‘This is what we need now, minha esposa,’ Duarte asserted, pulling into him and lifting her to bring her down on the side of the elegant sleigh bed. ‘Talking is too dangerous. Talking when there is no solution is just stupid.’

Hearing those sentiments pronounced with such unquenchable masculine conviction should have sent her leaping from his arms in angry frustration. But he was arranging her on the bed with the care of a male about to extract the utmost from the experience and she could not take her eyes from his. Dear heaven, those wonderful eyes. He just had to look at her and her own thoughts just dwindled and yet somehow she felt secure about that, safe. That was all wrong and she knew it was but when Duarte loomed over her like every fantasy she’d ever had, self-control was not an option her overheated body wanted to consider.

‘Talking is supposed to be the solution,’ she murmured in a last attempt to place head over heart.

‘It put us in separate beds last night. It made me kick in a door. You think that’s healthy?’ Duarte challenged as he stripped down to a pair of black silk boxer shorts that were the very last word in sexy apparel. ‘No, my way is better.’

My way is better. Not exactly the last word in compromise, was he? But she gazed up at him and the most enormous swell of love surged through her and, all of a sudden, nothing else mattered.

‘Once, you used to look at me like that all the time.’ Duarte came down on the bed like a predator, taking his time, and a helpless little shiver of anticipation rippled through her taut and restive limbs. ‘I became accustomed to it…’

Most men would be pretty content to be uncritically adored by their wives, Emily reflected. And the ironic truth was, while she’d remained content to settle for less on her own behalf, she had been happier. Whether he knew it or not, the wild card that had upset the balance had been the very unsettling discovery that he had loved Izabel. No, nobody had told her that; even at her worst, Victorine hadn’t been that cruel. She had seen it in that wedding photograph of Izabel and Duarte together, the love, pride and satisfaction he had had in his acquisition of his beautiful bride.

‘I want it back,’ Duarte said lazily and he pressed his wide, sensual mouth to the tiny pulse below her ear, a sensitive spot that seemed to overreact with blinding enthusiasm and sent her momentarily haywire with hunger.

Gasping for breath and trying to sound cool, Emily looked up at him and trying to sound dry but actually sounding very stressed, she said, ‘I don’t do adoration any more. I grew up.’

Duarte let a provocative hand roam over her distended nipples and her back arched as if he had burned her. ‘But you can regress,’ he murmured smooth as silk.

Regressing felt so darned good, she thought helplessly. He pushed her flat again with a husky laugh of amusement and lowered his carnal mouth to her tingling breasts where he turned torment into a new art form. Control evaporated about there for Emily. Her body was all liquid burning heat powered by a hunger that was steadily overwhelming her.

‘You want me?’ Duarte demanded, fierce control etched in his dark features.

‘Now…’ she begged.

He spread her thighs like a Viking invader set on sexual plunder and it still wasn’t fast enough for her. He came over her, into her, in a shocking surge of primal male power and she almost passed out at the wave of intense pleasure.

‘You feel like hot silk,’ he groaned with raw sensual appreciation, plunging deeper still.