Don Joaquin's Pride

‘Shopping,’ Joaquin rephrased, in some surprise that the explanation was necessary.

He swept through a door off the courtyard to mount a back staircase while still holding her as if she weighed no more than a child. He paused on the lofty landing above to claim her lips in a slow, sensual kiss that she found totally electrifying.

Hot and breathless in the aftermath, Lucy opened eyes she didn’t remember closing and found herself spread across Joaquin’s imposing bed. Her critical faculties were not working at speed and her entire attention was absorbed by the fact that Joaquin had just finished extracting her from her skirt. As she sat up in some confusion, for matters were moving faster than she had naively expected, Joaquin settled crystalline green eyes full of intent on her and peeled off his shirt.

‘Oh…’ Lucy gasped.

‘Oh…what?’ The most glorious smile she had ever seen curved Joaquin’s mouth.

She was just dazzled by that smile. Heart going nineteen to the dozen, she rested back on her elbows and just stared at him. Shorn of his shirt, he was magnificent. Bronzed skin, black hair, whipcord muscles. As he embarked on his chino trousers she could feel her face hotting up, but she could not resist her own curiosity when that lithe powerful physique was being revealed inch by tantalising inch.

She focused on his washboard-flat stomach and the tantalising silky furrow of hair arrowing down to disappear below his waistband. Then her scrutiny strayed lower and she blinked, jolted out of her voyeuristic reverie. The potent thrust of his arousal was patent. Enervated by the sight, and suddenly desperately self-conscious, she jerked her head away and stared a hole in the door instead.

Nervous as a kitten now, she sat forward, hands linking together. Curiosity had certainly been satisfied. Long past time too, she told herself urgently. Here she was, pushing twenty-three and a virgin. She loved him. He might not love her, but if she chose to overlook the fact that was her business, wasn’t it? But if being in a bedroom just watching Joaquin remove his clothes struck her as being the ultimate in intimacy, how was she going to handle what followed? Oh no, she thought, gripped by sudden panic, suppose he realised that she wasn’t the experienced lover he thought she was?

‘Joaquin…?’ she began tautly.

‘Getting impatient?’ Joaquin teased in his dark deep drawl.

‘Well…er, no—’

He came down on the bed beside her and separated her hands so that he could divest her of her top. The operation was so slick she started talking again, only to discover that what she was saying was being muffled by the fabric.

‘Cómo?’ Joaquin prompted with a frown.

Lucy tugged the gypsy top from him before he could dispose of it and ventured, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t be rushing into this—’

‘Do you feel rushed?’ Joaquin rested his hands lightly on her slight shoulders and very gently eased her back against the pillows. ‘You are very tense, querida.’

‘Yes, but…b-but…’

‘I love your mouth,’ Joaquin confessed as he leant over her, his breath fanning her cheek, his proximity sentencing her to stillness.

She stared up into his burnished eyes. He lowered his arrogant dark head and very gently brushed her lips with his. ‘Oh…’

‘You were saying?’

‘Nothing…’ Engaged on stroking her fingers through his hair, Lucy blinked and turned her mouth up under his in a move so instinctive she didn’t even have to think about it.

With a sexy sound, low in his throat, Joaquin pulled her under him and tasted her parted lips hungrily with his own. The concept of escape had evaporated from her mind. As he crushed her into contact with every angle of his overpoweringly male body, she was in more danger of expiring from over-excitement. Her pulses were racing. With the achingly familiar scent of him in her nostrils, every sense she possessed went into overdrive.

He lifted his head and whisked away the crumpled top which still lay between them. His hand curved over the small pouting mounds of her breasts and she quivered, heat curling in her pelvis, making her restive.

‘I love your breasts too,’ Joaquin muttered unevenly as he disposed of her last garment.

He ran an exploring fingertip over a swollen pale pink nipple and then he dropped his head and let his mouth close round that straining peak instead. The hot rush of physical pleasure took her by storm. She jerked, her whole body trembling. Her skin felt super-sensitive, the force of her own response shocking her, but there wasn’t time to dwell on that discovery. His erotic appreciation of her tender flesh was utterly absorbing—until her rising need demanded more.

‘Please…’ she moaned then.

Eyes glittering, Joaquin surveyed her and let a relaxed hand skim down a taut thigh. Her muscles contracted. She reached up to him, possessed of a fever she barely understood but which nonetheless controlled her. The forceful kiss he claimed only partially eased her nagging tension.

‘So you really do want me…’ Joaquin husked, hauling her even closer with glittering eyes full of conquest.

‘Don’t you know that?’ She gave him a bemused look.

‘Women are better liars than men.’ He studied her with slumbrous satisfaction. ‘But if you had tried to fake your response I would have known it, gatita.’

He smoothed a possessive hand over her quivering length. He let his tongue delve between her reddened lips, stoked the hunger she couldn’t hide with a carnal level of expertise that she could not resist. As he traced the hot thrumming centre of her body, she arched her spine, a sob of response escaping her convulsed throat. The pleasure became so intense she writhed, driven mindless by her own lack of control.

And then, when she was at the stage when she might have pleaded could she have found her voice, Joaquin came over her, settling between her thighs. ‘You’re so small, I’m afraid I’ll hurt you, querida,’ he complained raggedly.

Duly forewarned, she still retained enough brain power to react and tense. ‘Joaquin?’ she gasped.

‘Cristo…I know,’ he groaned feelingly, scanning her with glittering eyes filled with need. ‘I can’t wait any longer either. Never have I been so hot for a woman as I am for you!’

In an instant, the incipient panic she was fighting vanished. Lucy had a vision of herself as the kind of woman who drove a man crazy with desire. She loved that vision. He moved against her. She closed her eyes, and then he was there and it was the most extraordinarily intense moment. Her whole being was centred on that alien intrusion, the sharp stab of momentary pain which made her grit her teeth, but then, caught up in returning excitement, she stopped thinking and started just feeling again.

‘You feel incredible, gatita,’ Joaquin groaned, driving deeper inside her, provoking the

most awesomely pleasurable sensations.

From that point on she was lost in her own stormy response. Heart thumping, breath catching, she was caught up in the wild passion he generated. With every smooth rhythmic thrust, he drove her hunger for him higher. She was burning, reaching for the mindless peak of ultimate fulfilment. And then she was there, plunged into ecstasy, crying out in surprise at the height of that pleasure before slowly sinking down to planet earth again.

In the aftermath, she studied Joaquin with wondering eyes. She remembered him shuddering with a driven growl of raw release and she quivered, cocooned in a feeling of decided smugness as she curved up against his big damp body and kissed his shoulder. She was awash with sunny feelings and satisfaction and appreciation.

‘You’re wonderful,’ she whispered dreamily.

‘It was good…’ Joaquin purred like an indolent jungle cat above her head, accepting the compliment as his due with complete cool. ‘In fact, it was spectacular, gatita.’

He rolled over, carrying her with him. Then he rearranged her on top of him. He looked down at her, smoothed her tumbled curls back from her brow and slowly eased her back up level with him again to study her with almost frowning fascination. ‘I want you all over again.’

‘Sí…’ Lucy said, suddenly feeling confident enough to tease him.

A heartbreaking smile curved Joaquin’s beautiful mouth and he relaxed even more. ‘And again,’ he confided with a husky laugh. ‘And again. How many repeat encounters am I allowed?’

She blushed, and pushed her happy face into a broad brown shoulder. ‘Who’s counting?’ she whispered shyly.

He kicked back the sheet. Then he frowned and sat up. She followed the path of his gaze and froze in dismay and chagrin, for there was a small bloodstain on the sheet.

‘Por Dios…’ Joaquin exclaimed.