Duarte's Child

Emily dropped her head and tried to swallow the great fat lump of guilt in her throat. She was in turmoil, wanting to scream and sob and attack him all at one and the same time. Once again she’d been her own worst enemy. Why, oh why had she been foolish enough to even speak to Victorine? Why hadn’t she just minded her own wretched business and walked away? But she knew why, didn’t she? She had not wanted to feel that the older woman’s departure was yet one more sin to be piled up at her door.

‘But now you’re about to make me feel much better about that difficult decision,’ Duarte completed in a charged undertone that sent the oddest tremor down her responsive spine.

‘Oh…and how am I going to do that?’ she prompted chokily, fighting to hold the tears back until he left her again. He hated her, he absolutely hated her and she could not imagine how she had ever managed to persuade herself that Duarte had no truly strong emotions where she was concerned.

‘Sex.’

Engaged in an apparently enraptured scrutiny of his soft leather loafers, Emily blinked rapidly in receipt of that explanation. Mentally she strained to persuade herself that he had not uttered that single unexpected word with the smooth cool of a male who had already overcome his anger while she was still struggling even to think like a rational being.

The silence seemed to rush and eddy around her like a high wind.

She raised her gaze to the well-cut beige chinos sheathing his long, long powerful length of leg and lean hips, up more slowly still to the belt encircling his narrow waist and the casual white shirt open at his bronzed throat.

‘Sex…?’ Emily almost whispered as if it physically hurt her to say the word.

Duarte lifted a lean hand and pushed up her chin. Volatile golden eyes set between spiky black lashes inspected her disbelieving face. ‘Sim, querida.’

Yes, he said in confirmation but her brain refused to credit the evidence of her hearing.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘S-SEX?’ Emily stammered helplessly.

‘The concept appeals and intrigues,’ Duarte murmured silkily.

Emily drew in a very ragged breath but still her voice was faint. ‘Does it really? Tell me, when did this sudden attack of lust occur to you? Is this like…your equivalent of that ancestor of yours who bricked his wife up alive in a wall?’

‘Such a very insightful question, querida.’ Duarte surveyed her with brilliant dark eyes alight with hard amusement. ‘But rather naive. I don’t need to explain myself to you and why would I?’

As Duarte narrowed the distance between them, Emily went as rigid as a porcupine going on the offensive. ‘Don’t you dare touch me!’

Duarte scanned the flushed oval of her delicate face, his strong jawline hardening. ‘Perhaps I want to remind you that you’re mine. Perhaps it is that basic…I don’t care.’

‘Basic’s not me,’ Emily framed unevenly because she trusted herself even less than she trusted him. She could feel his proximity with every skin cell she possessed. In her mind’s eye she could even visualise every shameless skin cell sitting up and begging and that made her cringe. For what had always lain at the very heart of Duarte’s total irresistibility had been the simple truth that her own resistance was nil.

He hooked a lean brown finger into the towel she was still clutching. ‘Overkill, don’t you think?’

She trembled, a liquid sensation of heat pooling deep inside her, her legs welding her to the spot. He was so close she could smell the warm male scent of his sunwarmed skin, so close she could feel deliciously threatened by the sheer size differential between her and the potent masculinity of his lean hard physique.

‘You signed up for your own personal punishment plan while we were still airborne,’ Duarte delivered in a tone as smooth as silk.

She was staring up at him, wholly enveloped in her own growing reaction to him. It had always been that way, which was why when things were wrong between them she just never looked directly at him, out of fear that he would guess how great his power was. Only now, she’d reached the point where she could not stop staring, drinking in every taut angle of that strikingly dark and handsome face of his, the proud arrogant jut of his nose, the fabulous cheekbones that lent his features such pronounced strength and definition, the fine grain of his skin that roughened round his hard jawline. And still she was not satisfied; still it was not enough to satiate that need within her.

‘S-sorry? Punishment plan?’ she echoed a whole ten seconds after he had finished speaking and only after frantically plundering her memory.

‘My kind of punishment,’ Duarte spelt out with measured satisfaction.