‘So tell me you’re not mine now, minha pequena esposa,’ Duarte invited, a roughened edge to his dark, deep drawl as he lifted his head from the glistening buds still begging for his attention.
‘Don’t stop…please,’ she heard herself beg like a supplicant and even as she said it she knew she would cringe for herself later, but just then the sheer craving he had unleashed took precedence.
‘Was it like this with Jarrett?’
For a split second she could not think who ‘Jarrett’ was. Toby, Bliss’s cousin. Toby Jarrett. The name stood out in her mind’s eye and made her tummy clench. She gazed up at Duarte, suddenly as terrified as an animal knowing it was about to be slaughtered, and knowing that there was absolutely nothing she could do about it because he wouldn’t believe her.
‘You are just sick with shame,’ Duarte bit out, studying her as if he had her under a microscope and could read every nuance of expression.
She shut her eyes on the hot scorch of threatening tears. Even while her wretched body leapt and burned for him and her every thought was at bay, he was still in sufficient control to attack.
‘Much good that does either of us,’ Duarte growled in an oddly ragged undertone and then suddenly he was gathering her back into his arms, reclaiming her mouth with a kind of blazing fiery desire that went through her quivering body like sheet lightning. He shuddered against her and then he stilled and, for a split second of horror, she thought he was about to pull free of her and instinctively she wrapped her arms round him as tightly as she could.
And then she felt a long forefinger stroking her cheek where a tear had escaped and left a telling trail and he cursed in Portuguese. He claimed her lips again at the same time as his exploring hand teased the aching points of her breasts. That instant of all too painful self-awareness was sent into oblivion by the renewed force of her own response.
‘Duarte…’ she moaned at the peak of an almost agonised gasp as his stroking fingers discovered the dampness of the triangle of fabric stretched taut between her restive thighs.
He stripped away that last barrier and found the hot moist core of her femininity. Her heartbeat seemed to thunder in her own ears as her body writhed without her volition. There was only wild sensation and overwhelming hunger for anything that would ease the tormenting ache of pressure clawing at her. She could feel him against her thigh, hot and hard and rampantly aroused and just knowing that she could still have that effect on him intensified everything that she felt.
‘I can’t be gentle…’ he groaned, rising over her and parting her thighs with impatient hands to haul her back to him.
‘Doesn’t matter…’
Nothing mattered then but the driving thrust with which he entered her. Her body was just one gigantic source of longing and then he was there, dominantly male, stretching her with his strength and fullness and there was so much intense pleasure she cried out against it.
‘Emily, meu bonita…’
My beautiful one, she savoured in stunned surprise and gazed up at him to register the hard-edged need etched into his lean dark devastating face but saw the concern in his hot golden eyes. ‘I hurt you?’ he prompted.
She shook her head, beyond speech, and even if she could have spoken she could not have thought of any way to tell him that that much pleasure came close to pain. But it seemed he understood, for a flash of raw male amusement flared in his spectacular eyes and he came into her again, hard and fast and not to be denied. She arched her hips up to him in helpless encouragement. He set a raw sensual rhythm that heightened her excitement to a level she could not control. There was nothing but him and the wild surging rise of her own excitement, her own primal delight in his erotic dominance. Every pulse racing, his name on her lips, she reached the dazzling instant of release and cried out in ecstasy at the explosive charge of sensation pulsating through her in waves. She clung to him as he shuddered over her and vented a ragged groan of intense satisfaction.
Happiness was bubbling up inside her now. To be so close to Duarte again, to feel so at home, to feel needed, wanted, secure. As he freed her of his weight, she followed him across the bed to stay close. She buried her face in a smooth brown muscular shoulder and drank in the hot, husky scent of him like an addict. One arm sliding round his neck, she lay across him, happy but engaged in frantic thought. Intimacy was the foundation stone of any normal marriage. My goodness, what had possessed her when she had briefly believed that she ought to be saying no?
In fact, so strong was her sense of joy and relief that she had not made that foolish mistake, she found herself muttering feverishly, ‘You’re just so fantastic…’